Geary did not want to watch, but he felt a responsibility to do so. He flinched as the dark ships opened fire, dark battle cruisers blowing apart the Alliance fleet tugs propelling the alien warship.
Astoundingly, Invincible got off a few shots at the dark ships from her remaining weapons as the enemy came in close. Geary heard cheers aboard Dauntless and knew her crew was celebrating the heroic resistance of Invincible. It was just the automated weapons systems on the alien superbattleship, but it still felt like a brave ship going down fighting.
But Invincible’s remaining weapons were quickly silenced as the dark battleships came close enough to pour streams of hell-lance fire into the superbattleship.
“They’re smart enough this time to conserve their expendable weapons,” Desjani commented. “No missiles, no grapeshot, not even bombardment projectiles, just hell lances.”
“Yeah. The dark ships learned that lesson as well. Too bad.”
It felt unreal to watch so many hell-lance hits pummeling Invincible, while the superbattleship drifted onward, to all appearances living up to the name that Admiral Lagemann had given her.
But even the Kick superbattleship could not take that kind of punishment forever. Geary saw the dark ships opening their distance to Invincible and guessed what was coming. “One or more of the Kick power cores are going unstable due to damage.”
“They must have been built tough to have stood up to that barrage as long as they did,” she observed.
He glanced at her, saw the unusual intensity with which Desjani was watching events, and realized that she was trying to distract herself. “Are you all right?”
“No. I lost more friends today. I’ll get over it. Or I’ll see the docs for some happy pills. Or we’ll all die soon. Whichever way, it won’t be a problem.”
An explosion ripped a huge hole in Invincible, followed by another that tore another gaping wound in the alien warship. But the superbattleship lurched onward.
The dark battleships closed in again, firing so intensely that they had to pause to prevent their hell-lance batteries from overheating.
Sections began breaking off Invincible, then, as the dark battleships swiftly withdrew once more, three additional massive explosions tore the superbattleship apart.
Geary sighed, thinking of the loss those explosions represented. “There are a lot of large pieces. Maybe there will be something left that we can use or learn from.”
“Maybe,” Desjani said.
Over an hour ago, the dark ships had turned and begun accelerating after the Alliance warships again. “Here we go,” Desjani said.
Word had gotten around that the fleet was unlikely to survive the battle in this star system, as well as why the fleet had to stay and fight even if the opportunity to flee miraculously presented itself.
The officers, sailors, and Marines took the news as the senior captains had. They had long ago resigned themselves to this.
Lines formed outside the worship compartments as men and women took advantage of the time available to make their peace or offer prayers or beg for miracles.
Geary, brooding over their lack of options and half-asleep from fatigue, started back to awareness as Tanya Desjani returned to her seat on the bridge. “Were you saying hello to our ancestors?”
“I’ll probably be able to do that in person soon enough,” she replied. “No. I had some urgent requests to perform marriage services by people who figured they had better get it done fast if they ever wanted it done. I just rushed through six of them, without getting all the proper authorizations and approvals.”
“You could get in trouble for that when fleet headquarters finds out,” Geary commented sarcastically.
“I’ll risk it. I just made sure to ask each couple whether, should we somehow live another day after this, they would regret making this decision. They all said they wouldn’t. We’ll probably never know.” Desjani gave him a sidelong look. “One of the couples were Charban’s lieutenants.”
Geary jerked back to full attention yet again. “Lieutenant Iger and Lieutenant Jamenson?”
“Yeah. Someday there might have been the patter of the feet of little green-haired future intelligence officers.” Tanya gave him another look. “The green-hair thing is dominant, you know. Lieutenant Jamenson’s ancestors made sure of that, and I made sure that Lieutenant Iger was aware of it. It didn’t seem to faze him, though.”
“Thank you for not being from Eire,” Geary said, “not that it looks like you and I are likely to be doing any reproducing.”
This time her look held warning. “Hey, Admiral, we stay professional on this bridge until the end. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” He sat up. They had gone a light-hour outward, deliberately angling away from the hypernet gate to avoid tempting the dark ships to drop the block on it and leave this star system to implement the Armageddon Option before finishing off Geary’s fleet. The government facility was six hours’ travel time behind them. “The dark ships are two light-hours from us, in a stern chase. I should get some rest while I can.”
“Yes, sir, you should.” She smiled at him. “Sweet dreams.”
He had worried that he would be too tightly wound with fears of the continuation of the battle to be able to sleep and too overwhelmed by the losses the fleet had already suffered. But he must have been even more exhausted than he thought. Geary fell into a deep sleep within moments.
He was jolted awake by the loudest, most urgent call alert that his comm panel could produce. Groggy, Geary hit the accept control. “What?”
“That woman is still on the facility!” Desjani yelled.
He had to gather his thoughts to make sense of the words. “Rione? She’s—she’s on Mistral.”
“She is sending messages from the facility, Admiral!”
“What message?” Geary was still trying to grasp what he was hearing.
“I don’t know. It’s set so only you can open it.”
“Relay it to here and set it to play for you as well,” Geary ordered, a feeling of dread beginning to replace his earlier confusion.
He slapped the virtual command to open the message, waited impatiently for the second needed for the system to verify who he was, then saw Victoria Rione’s image appear before him. She was clearly still on the government facility, standing in the command center that Geary had seen earlier. The command center itself had a feeling of abandonment and hasty departure, except for Rione herself, and in the background a man lying in a fully reclined seat. The man appeared to be sleeping, his chest slowly rising and falling.
Rione’s face was drawn even tighter, the skin thin over bones, and she was gazing outward with eyes that held fear as well as a terrible resolve. “Admiral Geary, the first thing I must say is that you must not blame your people for my success at remaining here. The same sort of software that can make my presence appear to the fleet’s systems to be fully authorized can also make it appear to those systems that I am somewhere I am not. The systems on the assault transport told everyone on that ship that I was in my stateroom.”
She paused, as if a little short of breath. “I was right. That is the other important thing. I found the necessary codes for the hypernet gate. Not those to unblock it. That remains beyond my ability. But I was able to use official software, which I am not supposed to have, to reprogram the safe-collapse system on that gate. Its function has been reversed, and it will now ensure the maximum outburst of energy when the gate collapses, something on the order of point eight on the Schneider Nova Scale.”