The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible by Jack Campbell Page B

to watch as well, pointedly ignoring the arch look that Rione sent their way at the physical proximity.
    In the new virtual window that popped up before him, Geary saw serried ranks of bear-cows bearing shields and long spears, advancing steadily against foes that battered vainly against the shield wall. Occasionally, one of the maddened predators would leap high enough to clear the shields, only to be impaled on the bristling field of spears behind that.
    “It’s an impressive display of discipline,” Charban commented. “The bear-cows all stay in position in the formation, all stay in step, all respond immediately to orders.”
    “I’m not seeing much drama,” Desjani commented. “They’re just using the weight of numbers to push back those predators, encircle them, and spear them.”
    “That’s all that happens,” Charban said. “All of these historical videos are the same. We haven’t seen a single case where a lone bear-cow plays the hero. Apparently, the bear-cows get their pleasure from watching the mass movements of their own armies. I checked, and there are rough analogues to that in human history. One ancient society on Old Earth, for example, who fought in similar tight formations with locked shields, and found heroism and drama in the simple question of whether or not each soldier could hold their place in formation as two forces clashed.”
    “They’re not totally different from us,” Rione said. “There are ways in which we could find common ground if they would talk to us. But our earlier estimate that these herbivores attacked us solely because we appeared to be predators was incomplete.”
    “There’s another reason?” Geary asked.
    She waved in the direction where the distant bear-cow planet lay. “We would be competition, Admiral. They don’t allow competition of any kind. They’ve wiped out the competition on their home world, and if they had not been pinned here by the presence of the enigmas, they might have expanded to human-controlled space by now, plowing under every other life-form they encountered.”
    “What about in the other directions? Do we have to assume that the bear-cows are surrounded by enigma-controlled space?”
    “We can hope,” Rione said. “And, yes, I know none of us would have hoped for that before coming to this star, but now the enigmas do seem to be the lesser of two evils.”
    “Pandora,” Desjani said.
    “What?” Geary spoke for everyone else on the bridge.
    “One of those old legends,” Desjani explained. “The type that blamed everything that was wrong on women. Pandora opened some box and found all kinds of bad things in it. I think Pandora might be a good name for this particular star.”
    “Those old legends didn’t blame all women for everything that was wrong,” Charban said. “They only blamed women who . . . didn’t do as they were told.”
    “A critical distinction,” Rione said in dry tones. “It is, after all, hard to overemphasize the importance of obedience in women.”
    Desjani grinned at Charban’s discomfort, then suddenly realized that she had allied with Rione in this matter and shifted her attention back to Geary. “Five minutes until we see their reaction.”
    Not wanting to get involved in the discussion of historical views on “appropriate” female behavior that Charban had unwittingly opened, Geary simply nodded, focusing back on his display. The bear-cows should react to his last maneuver by coming to port, heading down very slightly, and accelerating again to set up another intercept with the human fleet.
    “There’s always the chance,” Desjani said, “that the armada will peel off to let the fortress deal with us.”
    “I know. Our next maneuver will get us much closer to them, though. If what we know and guess about the bear-cows is right, they’ll keep after us.”
    The bear-cow armada shifted vector exactly on schedule, making the exact changes in course necessary to bring about another