The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan (18 page)

Timbale smiled as if uncertain whether Geary was joking, then shifted to a resigned look. “Speaking of the government, I wanted to give you a heads-up. Orders have arrived to reassign
Tsunami
,
Typhoon
, and
Haboob
.”

“Why not
Mistral
as well?” Geary asked. “Why leave me with one assault transport?” Not that the assault transports were any use against the dark ships, but the transfers coming now did feel like adding insult to injury.

“I have no idea,” Timbale replied.

Geary paused to check
Mistral
’s status on his fleet database. She was in as good shape as the other assault transports. There didn’t seem to be any reason for her to be left at Varandal while the rest of her division of ships was sent off on another assignment. “Do you know where
Tsunami
,
Typhoon
, and
Haboob
are going?”

“Unity.”

“Unity?” Geary stared at Timbale. “Why?”

“Contingency emergency evacuation force,” Timbale explained. “That’s what the orders say.”

“Evac—?” Geary shook his head and tried to speak calmly. “They’re finally taking the dark ships seriously? I guess this is a clear sign the government has lost control of them and is afraid where the dark ships will attack next. I assume that fleet headquarters told the government that every assault transport in the fleet combined wouldn’t be able to lift off the population of Unity.”

“You can’t assume anything with headquarters, but I guess three assault transports have got enough capacity for the important people, and that’s what the government was probably worried about,” Timbale said. “Oh, and they’re supposed to take most of your Marines with them.”

“Most of my Marines? To do what, hold back the crowds trying to find space on the assault transports?”

“I don’t know, Admiral.” Timbale spread his hands. “This set of orders is clear-cut. You either do as ordered or you violate the order. There isn’t any work-around on this one.”

Geary nodded heavily. “I understand. Fine.
Tsunami
,
Typhoon
, and
Haboob
will go to Unity, along with . . . how many Marines exactly?”

“Two of your three brigades, plus their supporting elements. Two thousand, one hundred in total. General Carabali is to go with them.”

“Do I get to at least choose which two brigades go and which I keep?” Geary asked.

Timbale squinted at something. “Ummm . . . no. First and Second Brigades go with the assault transports. You get to keep Third Brigade. Are you feeling the love?”

“Not at the moment.” But after Timbale had ended the call, Geary sat frowning in his stateroom for a while, wondering what was really behind the orders.
The government has access to a lot more assault transports than the few I had. And a lot more Marines. Why do they want mine at Unity?

He called General Carabali. “Have you heard about the orders for the assault transports and two-thirds of your Marines?”

“Just now, yes, sir.”

“Do you have any idea why the orders designated your First and Second Brigades to go to Unity and the Third to stay here?”

“Yes, sir,” Carabali replied, a slightly apologetic note entering her voice. “While you were detached, I received a request for recommendations on which of my brigades was most effective at assaults. Based on their experience and their commander, I replied that Third Brigade was the most qualified. That may be why it was designated to stay here. I sent you a notification on the matter, but with everything else going on, you might not have noted it.”

“Thank you for being diplomatic about my not seeing it,” Geary said. “So they’re leaving me the best brigade?”

“That’s a relative term, Admiral,” Carabali said, a little stiffly this time. “All of my brigades are the best.”

“Understood,” Geary said. “And I agree with you. I should have spoken more carefully. Do you have any indication of what your mission will be at Unity?”

“No, sir.”

“Thank you, General. Let me know if you need any assistance preparing for the movement of your Marines.”

He sat back when the call ended, now having even more questions than before he had spoken to Carabali.
I was thinking I might need some of my Marines if I could locate the dark ship base. Someone who could seize the dark ship facilities and disable them without destroying them. I want the evidence of those facilities if anyone tries claiming the dark ships never existed or weren’t official or some other nonsense.

If I do need some Marines for that task, it sounds like the Third Brigade is the unit I would have picked. And that’s the unit that is being left for me. But why do that without talking to me about it?

And it’s all meaningless anyway if I don’t know where the base for the dark ships is located.

Ancestors, I really, really need some help here.

The alert on his stateroom hatch announced a visitor.

“ADMIRAL.”
General Charban displayed his now-usual attitude of trying not entirely successfully to deal with frustration. “I’m back from my stay on
Inspire
. May we speak?”

“Of course,” Geary said. “Take a seat. I imagine that you’re glad you weren’t with us at Bhavan.”

“I know something of how you must have felt, Admiral.” Charban shook his head. “I was in a few ground battles where I was praying for a miracle. Fortunately, either the living stars are fond of me or chance worked in my favor. I don’t think I would have been able to get my force intact out of a situation like that you faced at Bhavan, though.”

“You probably would have thought of something,” Geary said. “Any breakthroughs in the matter of the Dancers?” he asked, naming the alien species which resembled the unholy offspring of giant spiders and wolves, and which were the closest things to friends that humanity had found among the three alien races so far encountered. Given that the other two races, the mysterious enigmas and the homicidally aggressive (as well as cute) Kicks, were both dangerous foes, it did not
take much to be friendlier toward humanity. But the Dancers, in their own, mystifying ways, did seem to regard humans as allies.

Charban sat down and shrugged. “Breakthroughs are even harder to come by with no Dancers actually present to talk to. On the other hand, I’m not dealing with vague and simplistic replies from them on a routine basis, so it could be worse.”

“It could definitely be worse,” Geary said. “The dark ships won’t even talk to us.”

“Neither would the Kicks, and the enigmas only do it when they absolutely have to. But you would think something that humans had built like the dark ships would at least give us a little respect.” Charban paused, looking upward, his eyes distant. “Being left here at Varandal did have the benefit of giving me a lot of time to think, and since I didn’t want to spend my time worrying about what might be happening at Bhavan, I spent it thinking about the Dancers. Specifically, about that trip they took.”

“Going home, you mean?”

“No, before that. The trip the Dancers took to Durnan Star System. I didn’t want to talk to other people about this because I didn’t know how important it could be, and I didn’t know whether you would want to keep it as quiet as possible. Can I see your star display?”

“Sure.” Geary called it up, the stars floating in the air between them like jewels suspended in space.

Charban leaned toward the display and used one hand to adjust its scale and focus. “Here. Let’s see. Ah. Look.” Lines appeared, one branching out from Varandal, connecting some of the stars, then going back to Varandal. “This was the path the Dancers took, jumping from star to star.”

“They were going to Durnan Star System to look at those ruins of an ancient Dancer colony,” Geary said.

“Yes,” General Charban agreed, “but aside from the question of how an ancient Dancer colony got there when it did is the question of why
the Dancers took the route they did.” He indicated the lines between stars again. “It wasn’t as straight a path as it could have been going out, and wasn’t straight at all coming back. Look how they looped around on their way back to Varandal.”

Geary studied the display, intrigued. “It’s almost like the fragmentary outline of a rough sphere, isn’t it? Why would the Dancers have taken such a roundabout path?”

“I’m assuming they must have wanted to send us some kind of message,” Charban said. “But what?”

“What message could they send with a rough spherical shape?” Geary asked. “Do the names of the star systems they visited spell out anything?”

“No,” Charban said. “I think forming a coded message in the names humanity gave those stars would be even too subtle and convoluted for the Dancers. But it did occur to me that perhaps the message was not in the sphere but in what it contained.”

“What it contained?” Geary looked again. The region of space inside the rough sphere defined by the path of the Dancers contained a few stars with little or no human presence and no particular reason to visit them. “There’s nothing there.”

“What about that?” Charban asked, pointing. “Our systems can’t tell me much about it.”

Geary looked closely. “You’re pointing at a close binary star. I’m not surprised there is little in our systems about it. It’s not really worth noticing.”

“Why not?” Charban asked. He leaned over the low table between them, his extended finger almost touching the image of the binary. “Do the systems on
Dauntless
know anything more about it than I could have found elsewhere?”

Geary shook his head, frowning in puzzlement at the question. “Probably not, but since
Dauntless
is the flagship, it’s possible we might have supplemental files. We know it’s a close binary star system, two
stars orbiting each other. Let’s see if there have ever been long-distance observations of that star system.” He called up the data. “Yes. It has been viewed from other star systems. That’s not the most detailed way of surveying a star system, but it does pick up larger objects. That particular binary system contains six planets in eccentric orbits, most of them probably captures of wandering planets that got too close to one of the two stars. That’s all we know.”

“That’s what I learned before.” Charban nodded in agreement, but still looked confused as well. “Why is that all we know? No one has ever gone there? Why wouldn’t the Dancers jump there if they were interested in it?”

“You don’t know?” Geary eyed Charban in astonishment that gradually changed to comprehension. “You’re ground forces. Not a sailor.”

“Or a scientist. I was pondering the last message from the Dancers, you see,” Charban explained. “‘Watch the many stars.’ And I realized that there was an alternate meaning. It could have been meant to say ‘Watch the multiple stars.’”

“Multiple stars.” Like binaries and the occasional triple star system. “Why would we watch them?”

“Why don’t we ever go to them?” Charban asked again.

“Because we can’t. Not by using jump drives. Do you know how the jump drives work?”

“Vaguely. Something about thin spots in space that the drives can take ships through into somewhere else where the distances are much shorter.”

“Right,” Geary said. “I’m not a scientist, either, but the basics are that space-time isn’t rigid. It bends. The gravity of objects makes space-time bend or dimple, as if you put a heavy object on a flexible sheet. Big objects create big dimples. Stars are massive enough to bend and stretch space-time sufficiently to create thin spots in it. Those thin spots are jump points, places where our jump drives can push ships through into jump space and back through to get out of jump space at
the next star. There’s nothing in jump space except that endless gray haze—”

“And the lights,” Charban added.

“And the lights,” Geary conceded. No one knew what the lights were. They came and went at no discernible intervals for no discernible reasons. Sailors tended to regard them with superstition, but given that their nature remained unexplained, perhaps superstition was too prejudicial a word. The lights could conceivably represent just about anything, or Anyone. “The distances in jump space are far smaller than in our universe, as if jump space is a small fraction of the size. It may be, but since we can’t see any distance in jump space, we don’t know if it has limits and how small or large those limits are. But on average it only takes a week or two to get from one star to an adjacent one using jump space, where it would take ten or twenty years at a minimum on average to make that same voyage in normal space using our best technology. The important thing in answer to your question is that the thin spots, the jump points, are stable around each star, so we can find them and know they will be there when we get where we are going and when we want to come back.”

“I see,” Charban said, nodding and frowning in thought. “What does that have to do with not going to binary stars? With two stars close together, shouldn’t they have lots of jump points?”

“Yes, and no.” Geary moved his hands around each other. “When two or more star masses are orbiting each other, the dimples in space-time they cause are constantly interacting. That makes jump points around them unstable. There might be one that vanishes suddenly, then another appears elsewhere. If you detect a jump point that leads to a binary star, it might vanish before you could even jump toward it. Worse, the jump point at a binary that you are heading toward might vanish before you get there, and if that happens you can’t come out of jump space.”

Charban shuddered. “Like the man the Dancers returned to Old Earth?”

“Like that, maybe, yes. The ship might eventually find another jump point and return to normal space, but you’ve been to jump space. You know humans don’t belong there and can’t manage more than a couple of weeks without developing serious problems.”

“Like that itchy, unnatural feeling that your skin no longer fits?” Charban asked. “Yes. The longest jump I was ever on was about two weeks, and I’m not sure I could have endured three weeks. I can understand why no one would want to risk being stuck there. That’s why we’ve never gone to that binary star?”

“Maybe never to any binary star,” Geary said. “I don’t know. You’d have to either risk losing the ships you send, and there’s a high probability of loss, or send the ships through normal space, which would mean a really long voyage even with current propulsion technology. There have been more than enough single stars for humanity. Hell, we’ve abandoned a lot of marginal star systems in the last decades because the hypernet made it easy to bypass them. With no shortage of stellar real estate, why go to the trouble of visiting a binary?”

Charban nodded. “I understand. Indulge me, Admiral. I’m not sure why, yet. What would it take to get to that particular binary star?”

Geary shrugged. “I can estimate that easily enough. Let’s see. The closest star to that binary is Puerta. There’s nothing much at Puerta. It’s a white dwarf, but you could jump there and have less than one and a half light-years to the binary. That’s pretty close as stars go. Load up on sufficient fuel, accelerate to better than point five light speed, then brake down before you get to the binary, and you could make the trip in ten years easy. Maybe significantly less than that.”

“What about a hypernet gate?” Charban asked, squinting at the representation of the binary star. “Would one of those work in a binary star system?”

“I think so. I don’t know why not,” Geary said. “I can ask Commander Neeson on
Implacable
. The hypernet gates work using
something related to quantum entanglement, totally different from the jump drives. They shouldn’t be impacted by the interacting gravity fields of the two stars. But you’d have to get everything to build a hypernet gate to that star system. Aside from taking about a decade, it would be hugely expensive to build a gate to get to a place where there wasn’t anything worth going to. Why do you think the Dancers would have been interested in that binary?”

“Because the Dancers all but drew a bull’s-eye around that binary star! But you have no idea why they would do that?”

“No. Even they couldn’t get there, apparently.”

“Are we certain that there is not a hypernet gate there?” Charban asked.

“There isn’t a hypernet gate for that star in our hypernet keys,” Geary said. “I don’t think.” He touched his comm panel to call Desjani in her own stateroom. “Tanya, are any of the hypernet gates at a binary star?”

“A what?” Seated at her desk, her image focused on Geary as if trying to figure out whether he was serious. “Why would anyone build a hypernet gate at a binary star? How
could
anyone build a hypernet gate at a binary star?”

“You could send the hypernet gate components through normal space and use robotics to assemble them in the binary star system,” Geary said, wondering why he was justifying the outlandish idea. “You’d probably need some humans to do the oversight and final work and calibrations, but if they didn’t want to put up with a decade-long journey they could be frozen into survival sleep and then be reawakened to work on the gate. Once the gate was done, they would be able to come back immediately.”

“Why would we do that?” Desjani asked. “Do you have any idea how complicated and expensive that would be?”

“Tanya, I don’t know! But the Dancers seem to have tried to focus our attention on one particular binary, one that’s not too far from a
white dwarf that could have been a launching point for a normal-space trip to that binary.”

She gave a long-suffering sigh, tapped in some commands, then shook her head. “No. There is no binary star in the destinations available to our hypernet key. Or among the destinations available to the Syndic hypernet key that we acquired.”

“Do you have any ideas why the Dancers would try to focus our attention on a binary like that?”

Another sigh. “Maybe they were looking for something and thought it was hidden there.”

Charban gave a derisive snort. “If someone wanted to hide something, it sounds like a binary star would be the perfect place.”

Geary stared at him. “What?”

“Um, a joke, Admiral. A binary would be a wonderful place to hide something, right? No one goes there. No one can go there. You space travelers don’t even think about them! I had to point that one out to you even though it was in plain sight on the display.”

Tanya was gazing intently at Geary. “What are you thinking?”

“What would the Dancers be looking for?” he asked her. “Something that we know of. Something that has apparently disappeared.”

“Big or little? Are we talking a person?”

“Maybe a person. Maybe something very big,” Geary said, his thoughts crystallizing. “What left Varandal, by hypernet gate, and apparently vanished from human-occupied space? Something that should have been impossible to hide no matter what star system it was taken to?”

Her face lit with understanding. “
Invincible
. The Kick superbattleship we captured. You think the government took it to that binary?”

“Where else could they have taken it where no one could find it?” Geary demanded. “What else would the Dancers have been looking for and worried about?”