The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast Read Online Free PDF

But that man had it right. We’re not different from them. The violence and politics and sheer stupidity we deal with are here, too. They’ve always been here.
    “When humanity left Old Earth for the stars, we didn’t leave any of it behind. We took it all with us.”
    She paused, eyeing her comm unit. “
Dauntless
says we’re veering off a direct vector to her.”
    “What are we headed for?” Geary demanded. “Where does the new vector aim?”
    “No telling.” Her eyes met his. “
Dauntless
was cut off in midmessage. Our comms are being jammed.”

TWO
    GEARY, his expression grim, tapped the comm panel near his seat. “No response from the pilot.”
    “None here, either,” Tanya said, rapping a fist against the surface of her seat’s comm panel. “What do you suppose they’re planning?”
    “Didn’t you say
Dauntless
was tracking us?”
    “Yes, indeed.” She smiled unpleasantly. “If I know my crew, and I do know them better than anyone, my battle cruiser is currently accelerating to a fast intercept with this shuttle.”
    The shuttle lurched as it twisted up and to their right. “Evasive maneuver,” Geary commented, checking his comm unit again. “The automated antijamming routines on my unit have found something.”
    Desjani studied hers. “Mine, too. It found a path through the jamming to something, but it’s not
Dauntless
. Oh, hell, it’s internal.”
    “The control deck on this shuttle,” Geary suggested.
    “Probably. We might be able to screw with their controls if we established contact, but our units can’t shake hands with the Earth systems. This won’t get us anywhere.”
    The shuttle rolled to their left.
    Tanya frowned, then looked at Geary. “If they are trying to evade
Dauntless
, why aren’t they diving into atmosphere?”
    “You think there’s—?”
    The panel next to Geary suddenly flared to life, revealing a woman in the flight-engineer seat on the control deck. “Whatever you’re trying to do, please be so good as to stop. The signals coming out of there are confusing our systems.”
    “Stop jamming our comms,” Desjani demanded before Geary could say anything.
    “Your comms?” The woman appeared to be genuinely puzzled as she checked some of her readouts. “Oh. Our stealth systems cut in jamming automatically when they identified your signals.”
    “Then manually override them,” Geary said.
    “If you emit signals, you’ll compromise our stealth!” the woman pleaded. She looked to one side as if listening, then back at Geary. “Your ship keeps adjusting its track to maintain an intercept. You must still be sending it some locating data despite our jamming.”
    “My ship doesn’t need any help from us to track this shuttle,” Desjani said. “You can’t evade her. I strongly suggest you give up trying.”
    Puzzlement appeared on the woman’s face again. “Evade your ship? We’re not trying to evade
them
.”
    Tanya glared at the woman’s image. “Who are you trying to evade?”
    “We don’t know, exactly, but our flight controllers on the ground say there are at least two other stealth craft up here that are trying to close on us. We’re trying to remain clear of them until we reach your ship, which is very difficult when we have only vague ideas of where the other stealth craft are and is being complicated even more by your systems interfering with ours.”
    “If that’s true,” Desjani said in a voice that contained considerable skepticism, “then stop jamming our comms so my ship can send you position and vector data on those other craft.”
    “
Precise
positions and vectors,” Geary added.
    “You can—?” The engineer turned again, speaking rapidly to the pilot, her words and lip movements obscured by the security functions in the panel.
    But Geary could make out her expression, which quickly went from questioning to insisting to demanding. “She’s reading the pilot the riot act.”
    “Good,” Desjani retorted. “Pilots need