Twenty-nine enigma warships were still coming, but they had to get past Tulev’s battle cruisers first. Though they hadn’t had a long time to accelerate, the battle cruisers were still deadly, and the enigma warships had to go through them if they wanted to reach the asteroid.
Specters volleyed out, followed within moments by hell-lance fire and grapeshot as the two forces clashed.
“They hit Valiant hard,” Geary heard someone saying, then realized he had been the one who spoke. But only sixteen alien warships were still coming, and led by Dauntless, the eight remaining Alliance battle cruisers were accelerating furiously toward them.
Desjani’s hand danced over her firing controls, and Dauntless shuddered slightly as specter missiles launched, then the battle cruiser’s hell lances speared out as well, aimed and fired automatically by combat systems reacting far faster than any human could. Volleys of grapeshot followed in the instant before the far faster moving alien warships slashed through the human ships in the blink of an eye.
Geary kept his eyes on the display as it updated rapidly in response to sensor reports from every ship in the fleet. Only three alien warships were still moving, and they were still heading straight for the asteroid, making no attempt to turn or slow down. “What the hell?”
An instant later, the three surviving enigma warships smashed into the asteroid while moving at sixty thousand kilometers per second.
No one spoke for a long moment as the displays updated to show nothing but a rapidly expanding cloud of dust where the asteroid and three enigma warships had once been. Geary finally tore his eyes from that, only to see that, once again, every other nearby enigma warship, whether badly damaged or completely knocked out, had self-destructed.
It was close to half an hour later when they saw the sole remaining enigma warship in the star system veering off when the Alliance light cruisers and half the destroyers came right for it as the rest of the destroyers braked to pick up the Marine. “Why do they sometimes kill themselves for what seem to be totally unnecessary reasons, and other times they show reasonable discretion in the face of the odds against them?” Geary wondered. His eyes went back to the assessments of the damage to the battle cruisers, focusing on Valiant and her seventeen dead.
“I don’t know,” Desjani replied, “and I don’t care anymore. If any of the aliens come within range of my weapons, I’ll remove any options from their futures.”
The destroyers intercepting the Marine slowed further, until Carbine could snag the suit and haul the scout aboard. “Goal!” The triumphant message arrived from the rescue force several minutes later, the entire group of light cruisers and destroyers by then accelerating back to the main body of the fleet.
“The destroyers are asking for ransom,” Carabali reported to Geary, looking considerably more relaxed than she had during the operation at the asteroid.
“Anything the Marines aren’t prepared to pay?”
“We’ll buy rounds for their crews at any bar wherever the fleet has liberty next, Admiral. Thank you.”
“I wasn’t going to leave that scout, General.”
“You didn’t have to make that decision, Admiral.”
Desjani glanced at Geary as he ended that call. “You should get some rest.”
“So should you.”
“I told you first.”
“Damn good job back there.”
“Why, thank you, Admiral. Can I still shoot Vente?”
“No.” Geary closed his eyes for a moment, a great wave of weariness washing over him now that the days of tension had ended in success. “That threat did seem to motivate him, though. Another couple of minutes, and we’d still have been too close to that asteroid when those alien ships turned it into high-velocity junk.”
Her voice sounded a little distant. “We had to succeed this time because we can’t do it again. Next time we come within a light hour of any place they’re holding humans, they’ll blow it apart.”
He knew she was right. This had been a victory, but it had ensured no similar victories could be won.
GEARY took the time to gather the fleet and organize it back into a single formation despite the appearance of almost twenty more enigma warships at other jump points. The days required for that and the journey to the jump point they planned to use next also provided time to learn something about the humans they had rescued.
“They’ve never seen any of the aliens,” Lieutenant Iger reported to Geary. “Even the ones who were captured as opposed to being born in there.” He activated another window showing a man who looked well past middle age. “This man was a crew member on a Syndic HuK. He doesn’t know how long ago that was because the humans inside the asteroid had no means of telling time, but by comparing his account to the records the Syndics provided, it was probably forty years ago when a HuK transiting through the border star system of Ina disappeared.”
The old man began speaking. “I don’t know what happened. I was at my watch station, and suddenly we started taking hits out of nowhere. I remember that. Everyone yelling ‘where’s it coming from?’ Then we got orders to evacuate, and I made it to an escape pod with two others from the crew, and we punched clear, and that’s the last I remembered until I woke up in that place. An asteroid. I always thought it must be an asteroid. I don’t know what happened to the other two who were in the pod with me. I was the only one from our mobile force unit who showed up there. No. No one saw me arrive. I was just there. The lights would go out sometimes, then we’d all fall asleep, and when we woke up, there might be a new person lying next to the lock, or maybe some crates of food, or somebody who had died would be gone. When someone died, we knew that either a new prisoner would show up eventually, or one of the women would become pregnant and have a child. Always the same number of us. Yes. Three hundred thirty-three. Don’t know why.”
The freed prisoner had stopped speaking, blinking away tears. “I know you’re Alliance, but . . . can I go home, sir? It’s been a long time, and I thought I’d die in that place. I want to go home, sir.”
Geary looked away, trying to control his emotions, trying not to let pity for that man and hate for his captors sway his decisions. How would we have treated aliens that we captured? Maybe not the Alliance. But the Syndics, they could have built something like that asteroid prison. “He can’t tell us anything, Lieutenant Iger?”
“No, sir. None of them can.”
The fleet’s chief medical officer had an only slightly more encouraging report. “We didn’t find any biological agents in them, or evidence that any such had been tested. But they did have nanodevices inside them, which outside the asteroid would have triggered fatal reactions if we hadn’t neutralized them as quickly as we did.”
Another form of dead-man switch. “How’s their health now?”
The doctor shrugged. “Not bad, considering. They had a closed community. Human-origin equipment and devices for survival, medical care and the like. Two of the prisoners had enough medical training to use the equipment and take care of all but the most serious afflictions. They grew crops, and occasionally, quantities of foodstuffs that had clearly been manufactured by humans appeared near the air-lock. From the state of their health, they’ve had adequate nutrition, though of course the diet lacked variety most of the time.”
“What about mentally? How are they?”
The doctor looked down before answering. “Fragile. They had constructed a society inside that asteroid, something stable enough to pass on knowledge and maintain order. There’s a council of sorts that made decisions. But they’ve been so isolated, subject to the whims of totally unseen and unknown captors. Now . . . some of them are excited at the thought of seeing the sky. Others are terrified of the same thing. Their world, their source of stability, has been destroyed, and not just in the literal sense of the asteroid being shattered.”