The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan by Jack Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

communicate in time to control events. Everything he was seeing had already happened several minutes ago.
    The Alliance light cruisers and destroyers charging toward the dark ships had drastically increased their rate of closure on the enemy. As they reached the right positions ahead of the dark ships, ranged above the track the dark ships were following, the Alliance warships pivoted and began both braking their velocity and swinging their trajectories downward to where the dark ships would pass.
    Geary realized that the bridge of
Dauntless
had fallen silent as everyone waited to see who had outguessed whom.
    “Yes!” Lieutenant Yuon whooped as the dark destroyers suddenly began accelerating at a rate no human-crewed warship could match, their main propulsion shoving them ahead of the dark battle cruisers and toward where the screen of battleships waited. “Sorry, Captain,” Yuon muttered as Desjani turned a withering glance his way for a second.
    But Geary had felt the same exultation.
    If his intercepting light cruisers and destroyers had been coming down to meet the advance of the battle cruisers, they would have completely missed the dark destroyers charging ahead, and instead found themselves tangling with the massively greater firepower of the dark battle cruisers.
    But Geary’s orders had told his ships to bend their intercepts well short of the battle cruisers, to assume the dark destroyers would be out ahead and accelerating.
    “Estimated relative velocity at contact will be two point three light speed,” Lieutenant Yuon reported in a painfully professional tone of voice as he tried to make up for his earlier outburst.
    “Too fast,” Desjani grumbled. As objects accelerated to fractions of the speed of light, their visions of the universe outside them became increasingly warped by the effects of relativity. They no longer saw things where they were. Human ingenuity, always at its best when it came to working on ways to war with other humans, had managed to counter those effects somewhat. At velocities up to point two light speed, human-designed fire-control systems, sensor systems, and maneuvering systems could compensate enough for the distortion to allow hits on other ships as they flashed past at incredible velocities. Beyond that, accuracy fell off dramatically with every increase in velocity.
    “That’s why I sent out twenty-seven destroyers and eleven light cruisers,” Geary said. “Even if most of their shots miss, there should be enough shots being fired to score some hits.”
    Several minutes ago, the Alliance destroyers and light cruisers had raced downward past the dark ships at a high angle, their automated fire-control systems hurling out hell lances, ball bearings (still known as grapeshot) if the range was close enough, and specter missiles from the light cruisers. Automated systems had to be used because humans could not possibly aim and fire in the tiny fraction of a second during which the forces were within weapons range of each other.
    The dark destroyers fired back with implacable and emotionless precision, but their fire-control systems were just as hindered by the velocity of the engagement as those of the human-crewed ships. Even though each dark destroyer carried as much armament as a human-crewed light cruiser, there were still only five of them against thirty-eight of Geary’s ships.
    The Alliance squadrons plummeted away from the encounter, turning back upward but unable to alter course quickly enough to engage the dark battle cruisers and heavy cruiser that rocketed past above them. Geary watched red markers appear on some of the Alliance warships, indicating hits from the dark destroyers. But aside from two blows that had knocked out some of the weapons on the light cruiser
Croise
, Geary’s ships had taken only minor damage.
    But only two of the dark destroyers had emerged from the encounter still on their trajectories toward the screening force. Two others had been