The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

As a result of that, no work was done by humans on the outside of ships in jump space. In emergencies, robots might be employed, but with the expectation that those robots would very likely be lost forever.

Was that what the mysterious lights of jump space were? Frantic distress flares from someone or something eternally caught in nothing? Geary almost shivered at the thought. The common belief that those lights had some mystical significance was much more comforting and easier to live with.

Also comforting was the knowledge that no external threat could reach them in jump space. For now, he could truly focus on other issues for a while.

“I’m going to be down in my stateroom,” he told Desjani. “Do we have any of those VIP wraps left?”

“Not that I’ve discovered,” she replied.

“Maybe I’ll eat a meal with the crew and get a feel for morale.”

“Morale on my ship is fine, Admiral,” Desjani said. “I haven’t had to have anyone flogged to improve their morale for days now.”

“That’s good to hear, Captain.”

The walk to a dining compartment did feel almost relaxing, the crew obviously feeling as relieved as Geary to be going away from the bear-cows and toward home. He talked with some of the crew as he ate, asking about their home worlds. Most were from Kosatka, and some had been there during the brief but memorable few days he and Tanya had spent on that planet for what had passed as a honeymoon. “I didn’t buy one drink during those days,” one sailor told Geary. “I’d walk into a bar in uniform, and they’d see Dauntless on my ship badge, and that was all there was to it.”

“I got two marriage proposals,” another crew member said. “I told both of them I was okay with it but that my husband probably wouldn’t go along.”

As the laughter from that died down, the questions turned to other matters. Usually with an admiral within reach, sailors would ask about living conditions and food and time off and working conditions, but this time the questions were about bigger issues. The thousands of Marines who had been aboard the bear-cow superbattleship had spread their stories far and wide, so everyone knew a lot about the creatures. But that still left some serious concerns. “Are we going back there, Admiral, to where the Kicks live?”

Geary shook his head firmly. “No.” He could see the crew members around him relaxing immediately at his unambiguous reply. “Any human ship going there for the foreseeable future would have to be fully automated. I’m not going to risk another human life dealing with the bear-cows.”

“Why are we bringing that huge ship with us, sir?” another sailor asked. “It’s slowing us down, isn’t it?”

“A bit,” Geary admitted. “But it’s incredibly valuable. It’s a treasure trove of bear-cow technology. Maybe when we have time to analyze everything back in Alliance space, they won’t find anything amazing on it, just different ways of doing what we can already do. But maybe they’ll find things we never knew we could do.”

A veteran systems technician nodded. “Something really revolutionary that we never thought of. How do you measure how much that could be worth?”

“Exactly. And, if nothing there is beyond what we can already do, that at least tells us the limits of what the bear-cows can do.”

That earned him more nods, then one sailor proffered her data unit where a picture was displayed. “Admiral, is this really what the B—the things that helped us look like?”

It was a good representation of a spider-wolf, probably taken from one of the messages the spider-wolves had sent to the fleet as a whole when it had arrived at Honor. But although the sailor had shown the sense not to call them Bubs to Geary’s face, the term obviously was still in use. “Yes. That’s what they look like. Unattractive as sin, aren’t they?” Geary asked, trying to disarm the inevitable reactions. “That’s on the outside. On the inside, they seem to have a lot more in common with us than the bear-cows or the enigmas.”

“Some of them tried to help a pod off of Balestra,” another crewman noted.

“That makes them better than Syndics, too,” someone else remarked.

The laughter this time was a bit nervous. “The bottom line,” Geary said as convincingly as he could, “is that they did fight alongside us, and they did attempt to aid us in other ways. They’re letting us use their hypernet to get home a lot faster than we could otherwise. You judge someone by how they act, not by how they look.”

“Tell that to my chief at the next uniform inspection, Admiral!”

“Yeah, Admiral, can I quote you on that?”

Geary laughed, standing up and waving away the eager, joking requests. “I’m only an admiral. I can lead chiefs, but I can’t push them around. Besides, according to Captain Desjani, you’re the best sailors in the fleet. Why would I need to ask for special treatment for you?”