The Lost Fleet: Fearless

On Geary’s display, large objects detached themselves from the bulks of Tulev’s ships, hurled forward by propulsion and guidance packs that boosted their speed a little higher than the nearly.1 light speed of the fleet.

Co-President Rione, occupying the observer’s seat on the bridge of the Dauntless, stared at Geary. “We’re firing? At what?”

“Those moons,” Geary advised. He noticed Captain Desjani trying to hide a smile at Rione’s surprise.

“The moons of the fifth world?” Co-President Rione’s voice expressed skeptical curiosity. “Do you have some particular dislike of moons, Captain Geary?”

“Not usually.” Geary got a perverse satisfaction out of knowing that Rione’s spies in his fleet hadn’t heard about this operation.

She waited, then finally unbent enough to ask more. “Why are you launching an attack on those moons?”

“Because I think they’re weapons.” Geary tapped some controls, bringing up magnified images of the moons, their surfaces resembling those of asteroids. “See this? Signs that excavation activity was conducted. Well-concealed, so we had to look for it to find it, but there it is.”

“On a small, airless moon?” Rione asked. “How can you tell it’s recent?”

“We can’t from here. But all five moons show the same signs.”

“I see.” Whatever else could be said about Rione, she thought quickly. “What do you think was buried inside these moons, Captain Geary?”

“Firecrackers, Madam Co-President. Really big firecrackers.” The images representing the massive kinetic energy projectiles, or ‘big rocks’ in Marine terminology, were steadily pulling away from Tulev’s ships on a curving trajectory aimed at the moons. Despite the incredible amount of damage they could inflict, such weapons couldn’t usually be used because they were too easily dodged by anything able to maneuver. But the moons were on fixed orbits, following the same track around the fifth world that they’d coursed for innumerable years. It was strange to think that after today those moons would orbit that world no more.

Geary activated the fleet command circuit. “All units, execute preplanned maneuver Sigma at time four five.”

The time scrolled down, and every ship in the fleet turned itself, using their propulsion systems to reduce their velocity and simultaneously altering course to starboard to pass Sutrah Five on the side away from where the moons of that world had their dates with the projectiles launched by the Alliance fleet. Geary watched and waited, taking pleasure in the intricate ballet, all of those ships moving in unison against the darkness of space. Even the lumbering and partially misnamed fast fleet auxiliaries like Titan and Witch moved with what seemed unusual nimbleness.

Twenty minutes later, as the decelerating Alliance fleet was still approaching Sutrah Five, the huge solid metal projectiles launched by Tulev’s ships slammed at a speed of just over thirty thousand kilometers per second almost simultaneously into the five moons of Sutrah.

Even the smallest moon was massive by human standards, but the amount of kinetic energy involved in each collision was enough to stagger a planet. Geary’s view of the moons was obscured as the Dauntless’s sensors automatically blocked the intense flashes of visible light from the collisions, then by a rapidly growing ball of dust and fragments, some large and some small, flying outward from the points of impact.

Geary waited, knowing Desjani had already passed orders to her watch-standers on what to look for. It didn’t take long for the first report. “Spectroscopic analysis shows unusual quantities of radioactive material and traces of gases consistent with very large nuclear detonation devices.”

“You guessed right,” Desjani noted, her eyes showing the complete trust in him that bothered Geary. He didn’t like seeing it in her any more than he liked seeing it in so many others in this fleet, because of his certainty that sooner or later he would fail that trust. They believed he was perfect, and he knew otherwise.

“Explain, please?” Rione asked in a crisp voice. “Why would the Syndics have placed large nuclear weapons inside those moons? Some of those large fragments will impact on Sutrah Five.”

“That was a risk the Syndics were willing to take and one that I judged I had to take,” Geary advised heavily. “Given the unpopulated nature of much of the world, the odds of anything being hit are tiny. You see, Madam Co-President, the Syndics knew we’d have to do two things to liberate the prisoners on that planet. We’d have to go close to the planet, and we’d have to get the fleet into a tight formation so our shuttles wouldn’t have to fly any longer distances than necessary to handle picking up and distributing the people from the labor camp.”