“Dauntless is ready—”
“Tanya, she’s the flagship. She has to stay with the fleet this time.” He scanned the fleet’s formation quickly, then paused as he was about to send a transmission. Damn. I want Tulev running this, but I need to send the other three battle cruiser divisions, which means Badaya on Illustrious . And Badaya is senior to Tulev.
All right. Badaya should be able to do it. If he might end up commanding this fleet if something happens to me, I need to see more of how he handles an independent force. “Captain Badaya, you are to assume command of Task Force Alpha and proceed to intercept and capture the alien craft that just left their installation. We want that ship intact and those on it alive.” Now to call the ships that would make up that task force. It would have to be large enough to handle those dozen enigma warships if necessary, and any more that showed up suddenly, and should use ships already positioned not far from each other. “First Battle Cruiser Division. Second Battle Cruiser Division, Sixth Battle Cruiser Division, Second, Fifth, Eighth, and Ninth Light Cruiser Squadrons, and Third, Fourth, Seventh, Tenth, and Fourteenth Destroyer Squadrons, detach from main formation and form Task Force Alpha under command of Captain Badaya effective immediately.”
Desjani had slumped slightly, glaring at her display. “Every other battle cruiser division gets to go.”
“The task force needs to be strong enough to handle those alien warships if they fight for the freighter. I’m keeping Adroit with us.”
“Ha-ha. You owe me one, Admiral.”
“I’ll add it to the list.”
Badaya didn’t waste any time. Inspire, Formidable, Brilliant, Implacable , Leviathan, Dragon, Steadfast, Valiant, Illustrious, Incredible, and Invincible tore out of the formation, with the light cruisers and destroyers leaping to surround them.
In a very rare move these days, Rione came to lean close to Geary. “Badaya?” she murmured skeptically.
“He knows what he’s doing,” Geary murmured back. “And he has Tulev and Duellos along with him.”
“You’re the admiral. I’d recommend that someone else do any communicating with the aliens, though.” Rione returned to the back of the bridge.
He turned to look at her and Charban. “Excellent idea. The enigmas shouldn’t have any trouble figuring out that our task force is aiming to intercept that freighter, and they already know that we’re heading for the installation. I’d appreciate it if you two broadcast a message to the enigmas telling them that despite their own hostile actions and provocations, we do not intend to harm anyone on the freighter unless we are forced to defend ourselves.”
“Defend ourselves again,” Desjani muttered, then frowned at her display. “That’s odd.”
“What’s odd?” Geary asked.
“The acceleration on that alien freighter. Something didn’t seem right, and now I know what. We know their warships seem to have power core efficiencies an order of magnitude higher than our own. And there’s no reason to think a freighter would have military-grade propulsion. But that freighter’s acceleration rate pretty closely matches that of one of our freighters. If they can build military propulsion an order of magnitude better than on our warships, why can’t they build freighter propulsion an order of magnitude better than on our freighters?”
He fixed his own gaze on the projected vector of the alien freighter. “That’s a good question. It’s not even significantly better. Maybe we’ll get an answer when we capture it.”
She snorted derisively. “Don’t count your freighters before you’ve captured them.”
Charban had finished helping Rione broadcast the message to the aliens and came to stand beside Geary’s seat for a moment. “I’m wondering something, Admiral.”
“You, too?”
“The alien warships could have launched a bombardment aimed at that installation once they knew we were headed that way. They haven’t. Why not? They’re obsessed with privacy, but they’re apparently going to let us examine a large installation without hindrance.”
Desjani gave Charban the first look of respect she had offered the emissary. “There’s a trap?”
“I would be very, very cautious about sending in a landing force, Admiral,” Charban said, then nodded to Desjani before he left.
There wasn’t much to do after that but watch the task force sweeping down on the freighter and wait to see how the dozen alien warships reacted. Several hours passed, with the fleet swinging in toward the installation on the gas giant’s moon, the freighter moving slowly but steadily toward the inner star system, the battle cruiser task force diverging quickly from the rest of the fleet as it kept accelerating toward the freighter, and the alien warships hanging a light hour behind the human fleet. “They’re not doing anything?” Geary finally demanded. He couldn’t help but make a question of it, because it seemed so contrary to alien actions to date.
“It must be obvious to them that the task force is heading for the freighter,” Desjani confirmed. “And we’d have seen their reaction to that long before now. But they’re just holding the same position relative to us.”
“Waiting for orders?”
“Damned if I know. Sir. But with faster-than-light comms, they should have already received orders by now even if their command authority is on one of those inner planets.”
The task force would intercept the alien freighter in another twenty hours. It would be five hours after that before the fleet reached the alien installation. Geary punched his comm controls. “All ships ensure that your crews get chances to rest and to eat.” It could be enormously hard to stand down at times like this, even though any action wouldn’t occur for close to a full day, and even if the alien warships accelerated to attack, it would take them hours to reach attack range. One of the biggest and easiest mistakes to make was sitting, tense and ready, getting worn-out and hungry as you watched ships slowly move closer to each other, even while the vast distances in space ensured that nothing could happen.
“I’m going to get something to eat and get some rest,” he told Desjani.
She nodded. “I’m rotating my crews through normal watch sections. I’ll take a break in a little while, too.”
Despite his words, Geary once again roamed the passageways for a while to tire himself out a little more, taking the time to talk to crew members he encountered. They seemed happier now that there was a prospect of closing with the enemy, though all of them were disappointed that Dauntless wasn’t leading the task force to intercept the freighter.
He ate a meal in one of the mess compartments, talking to more of the crew about their homes. Most were from Kosatka, reflecting common fleet policy these days of crewing ships with a majority of men and women from one planet, and Geary found that they now spoke of home as if he shared that world with them. He found himself oddly grateful for that. He had grown up on Glenlyon, but the thought of the hero worship that would surround him there more than anywhere else made that world now feel almost as alien as Limbo to him.
He also took time for a visit to the worship spaces, praying that somehow they could avoid more senseless loss of life. After that, to his own surprise he got a decent amount of sleep and quite a bit of work done before returning to the bridge.