Dreadnaught

Desjani shook her head. “If we hadn’t executed that preplanned evasion the fleet would have gotten far too close to that thing before we could turn it. Good thing—”

She stopped speaking as more alarms shrieked from the combat systems.

Geary stared as part of the surface of the planet-fort seemed to leap into space, then saw that it was actually a dense swarm of small ships so numerous they momentarily blocked a clean view of the fortress. “How many of those things are there?”

No answer came, and Desjani spun in her seat to glare at her combat systems watch-stander. Lieutenant Castries shook her head helplessly. “System is still evaluating. Estimate greater than two hundred. Greater than four hundred. Greater than eight hundred.” Castries took a sudden breath. “Working estimate stabilizing at nine hundred, plus or minus ten percent.”

Desjani also inhaled slowly, then looked at Geary. “Nine hundred,” she repeated in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Plus or minus ten percent,” he added, wondering that he could make a joke of such a thing. “Any idea what they are?”

“If they’re missiles, they’re very big missiles.” Desjani tapped her display. “They have very good acceleration. I wonder if they’re crewed or automated.”

“They’re about twice as large in mass and dimensions than standard human fast attack craft,” the combat systems watch reported. “That’s plenty big enough for crews”

“Or really big warheads.” Desjani pointed at her display again. “They could be mostly warhead and propulsion. If they maintain that acceleration—”

“We won’t be able to outrun them,” Geary agreed, running another estimate on the maneuvering systems. The same answer came up, though. “Not when they’re this close and coming on that fast.”

The rest of the fleet had cleared the jump point by then, and all of the ships were bending onto the new course upward and to the side. “All units, this is Admiral Geary. At time four one, come port zero eight zero degrees and accelerate at maximum.” That would at least line up the fleet’s subformations in a column leading away from the alien force and give him as much time as possible to think of a solution to this mess that didn’t involve massive losses to his fleet. His eyes came to rest on a detailed image of one of the alien craft that the fleet’s sensors had compiled and his display had helpfully parked to one side. Unlike the tortoise-shaped ships they had encountered so far, these alien craft were simply cylinders with rounded bows, some kind of propulsion unit making up the entire back end, and a few low, small spines that must hold sensors sticking out from the sides. And that orbiting fort . . . “This is ugly,” he said to Desjani. “But none of this looks anything like the enigmas.”

“No, it doesn’t. At least there’s no hypernet gate here.”

“One small blessing.” They could race away from the jump exit without worrying about the threat of a gate. But if these weren’t the enigmas . . . “Could we have found a star system colonized by humans ? Some group who found themselves in enigma space and had to keep running until they found a star system on the other side of the enigmas?”

Desjani glanced back to her engineering watch. “What do you think, Master Chief?”

Gioninni shook his head. “No, Captain. None of the stuff we’ve seen resembles human designs. And the industrial base needed to build and maintain something like that fortress would be huge. Not something that could be thrown up overnight or in a few decades. They would have had to have been isolated out here for several centuries at least. How could they have gotten this far out that long ago? Maybe these aren’t those enigmas, but I’m not seeing anything that makes me think human.”

“Have we heard anything from these aliens or humans or whatever?” Geary asked. “There’s been time for at least a challenge to reach us from that fortress.”

The comm watch answered him. “No, Admiral. Not a word that we can tell was directed at us. And nothing that gives any clue to who they are. We’re picking up lots of their comms, but it’s all heavily encrypted.”

“Everything?” Desjani demanded.

“Yes, Captain. There’s no civilian comm traffic that we can find. It’s all military-grade encryption. At least, that’s what we’d call it if they were human.”

“Humans with that kind of discipline? No one taking shortcuts or ignoring comm requirements?”

“That doesn’t seem too likely, does it?” Geary agreed. “We don’t have time to consult the experts, and as long as whoever is directing those small craft keeps charging at us, we also don’t have any option but to defend ourselves.” He turned to look back and saw Rione in the observer’s seat, sitting silently, her eyes watching her own display. “Try to establish communications with them. Tell them we’ll be happy to leave and didn’t intend staying anyway and have no hostile intent. We don’t have much time to get those messages across,” he added, not sure if Rione understood just how bad the situation was.