Fearless

FOUR

Seven more hours until the jump to Strabo. Geary arranged the formation for departure carefully. When the fleet arrived at Strabo, it would be in the same disposition as when it left Sutrah, so he wanted to try to set things up so there wouldn’t be any more out-of-control charges. With so many commanding officers to deal with, Geary couldn’t assess how all would react in any given situation, so he tried to place the ones he had reason to believe he could trust best to the forefront. Unfortunately, there weren’t as many of those commanding officers as he would have liked. He glanced at the current fleet formation, wondering why so many shuttles were winging their way between ships.

He looked up as the alert on his stateroom hatch chimed, followed by the entry of Captain Desjani. Geary smiled in greeting. “Good timing. I was just about to call you and ask if you knew what all those shuttle trips were about.”

“It’s a swap meet,” Desjani explained. “Personnel. As the liberated prisoners have been fully debriefed and their particular skills and experience entered into the fleet personnel database, each ship has been checking to see if individuals they need are available. Most of the ships are swapping people right now to get skills they need and transfer surplus skills to other ships that need those individuals more. The fleet database automatically coordinates the whole process.”

Geary felt a brief stab of annoyance. Why hadn’t he been told? Why hadn’t anyone asked for his approval? But then he realized that there’d been no need to tell him or ask approval. He didn’t sign off on normal individual transfers between ships and didn’t have time to try to monitor such things. The ships could easily handle the task with the help of the fleet database, doing their jobs of keeping themselves at the best possible combat readiness and leaving Geary to keep his eyes on the big picture. “I guess if there were any problems I’d be told.”

“Of course, sir.” Desjani paused, looking uncommonly uncomfortable. “Permission to request personal counseling, sir.”

“Personal counseling?” A private matter? One that Desjani wanted him to offer advice on? “Certainly. Have a seat.”

Desjani sat at attention again, chewing her lip for a moment. “Sir, you met Lieutenant Riva when he came aboard.”

Geary took a moment to recall the liberated prisoner. “Right. Your old friend.”

“Lieutenant Riva was … more than a friend, sir.”

“Oh.” Then the phrasing sank in. “Was?”

Desjani took a deep breath. “We’d been hot and cold, sir. But we’d never broken off completely. Now … well, he’s here. And he’s considerably junior to me in rank.”

“That can be a problem,” Geary agreed, thinking of fleet regulations and general appearances. “But if he’s just an old boyfriend, I’m sure you can remain professional enough.”

“He’s not—” Desjani flushed slightly. “Seeing Lieutenant Riva again was a very emotional experience. It took me a while to realize how emotional.”

“Oh.” Stop saying that. “He could be a current boyfriend again?”

“Yes, sir. The feelings are definitely there. On my side, at least. From what talks we’ve been able to have, I think Cas—Lieutenant Riva feels the same way.” Desjani shrugged helplessly. “But nothing can happen while he’s on my ship. It’d be difficult enough because of the rank difference now, but if he’s under my command, it’s simply impossible.”

The scale of the problem finally got through to him. “But after just finding him alive again you don’t really want to ship him off to some other unit.”

“No, sir.”

It was definitely a knotty predicament, the sort of personal dilemma that made commanding officers wish they could gaff the problem off on someone else. But handling things like this, or trying to handle them, came with the job. And, unfortunately, in this particular case he had some personal experience of his own to draw on. “Okay, here’s my advice. If Lieutenant Riva stays on this ship, you can’t pursue a personal relationship with him. That’s true even if we got him a job working directly for me. He’d be as uncomfortable as you would. And if I judge you right, Tanya, anything you think is professionally improper is going to be doomed.” She nodded silently.

“I think he should go to another ship,” Geary advised. “Pick a commanding officer you think well of. You’ll be able to communicate pretty freely while we’re in normal space, and you’ll have the distance to keep things appropriate and to deal with the reality of the changes that’ve taken place since you two last knew each other.”

Desjani nodded, then gave Geary a haunted look. “What if the other ship is lost in combat? The ship I sent him to?”

He wondered if there wasn’t something he hadn’t heard yet. “Why weren’t you and Riva on the same ship at Quintarra?”

“We … needed some time apart.” She clenched her jaw. “I needed some time apart. The ship Riva chose to transfer to was lost.”

Geary sighed, thinking of the guilt Tanya Desjani had certainly been carrying around with her since the battle of Quintarra. “We wouldn’t want that to happen again. Listen, Tanya, all I can say is that I’m doing my best not to lose any more ships. Pick a good captain, someone like Duellos or Tulev or Cresida, someone who you know will fight smart, and ask them to take Riva as a personal favor. If you’re uncomfortable with that, I’ll ask them.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And I want you to tell Lieutenant Riva in no uncertain terms why he’s leaving this ship,” Geary ordered. “Not because you need more time apart or because you want him on another ship. Don’t leave him guessing, because if something happens to you, or to him, he’ll never know how you really felt.”

“Yes, sir.” She stared at him, leaving Geary wondering what he’d betrayed of his own past. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“It was a long time ago,” he replied, looking away. Most things in his life had been a long time ago. “I hope you and Lieutenant Riva work things out for the best, whatever happens.”

He sat for a while after Desjani left, haunted by memories of a woman long dead, and wondering why he kept wishing Victoria Rione were here to talk to about it. But Victoria Rione believed Geary had given in to the worst temptations the situation offered and wasn’t talking to him about anything. With her off-limits, the last friends Geary had known had all been gone for many, many years.

Geary strode onto the bridge of the Dauntless, frowning as Captain Desjani turned an angry face his way, though the anger obviously wasn’t aimed at him. Her watch-standers looked as if they’d all just been given the verbal equivalent of ten lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails. “What’s up?”

“Captain Falco is no longer aboard,” Desjani reported. “He arranged transport on one of the shuttles without my knowledge.”

Geary glanced at the watch-standers. “We assumed Captain Falco was authorized,” one of them explained, his eyes shifting from Geary to Desjani.

Geary sat down, shaking his head. He should’ve guessed Falco would be able to charm junior officers into doing whatever Falco wanted. “Where’d he go?”

“The Warrior, sir.”

“The Warrior?” Geary would have guessed Numos’s ship, Orion, or Faresa’s Majestic. “Who’s the commanding officer of Warrior?” he muttered even as he worked the controls to bring up that information.

Captain Kerestes. The man’s service record was available at a touch, and Geary scanned it quickly. Of course. Kerestes had managed to survive much longer than most officers, so he’d actually served under Falco at the same battle Duellos had mentioned. On the same ship, actually. The inflated language of the performance reports on Kerestes told Geary little, but the fact that he couldn’t recall having noticed either Kerestes or Warrior for any particular reason up to now led him to suspect Kerestes was not the most dynamic and forceful of commanders.

Geary tapped a privacy circuit and called Captain Duellos on Courageous. “What can you tell me about Captain Kerestes? You and he were on the same ship at Batana.”

Duellos seemed surprised by the request. “Did he actually do something that merited attention?”

“Captain Falco managed to get to Warrior. I’m wondering why he chose that ship.”

“Because what Captain Kerestes lacks in initiative and intellect he makes up in slavish obedience. He will do what Falco says.”

Geary nodded, trying not to smile. Don’t hold back, Captain Duellos. Tell me what you really think of the man. “Kerestes isn’t a problem in and of himself, then?”

“Don’t worry about him,” Duellos advised. “Consider Captain Falco to now be the commanding officer of Warrior in every way that matters.”

“Thanks.” Geary hastily checked his planned formation after he had finished talking to Duellos. He’d placed Warrior out on one flank to support the lighter units there. Now it was too late to haul Warrior in and position her somewhere with less room for Falco to cause mischief. I’ll have to live with it and hope Falco is more willing to compromise than I think.

Geary frowned, trying to remember what else he had been planning to ask before the news about Falco threw him off stride. “Captain Desjani, that other officer we discussed. Was that situation resolved in a satisfactory manner?” Given enough time in the fleet, you could learn to describe anything in official-sounding terminology.

“He was transferred to Furious, sir,” Desjani replied in a routine-report sort of voice. “As you suggested, I ensured he was fully briefed on the situation and the reasons for his transfer before his departure.”

“How did he feel about the transfer?”

“He seemed pleased by the opportunity it presented, sir,” Desjani stated.

“Good.” It all sounded so official that Geary had trouble remembering they were discussing personal issues. He hoped his advice resulted in a better outcome for Desjani and Lieutenant Riva than Geary had himself experienced. “Let’s get out of here,” he announced to no one in particular. With a last glance at the hours-delayed images of the Syndic light warships shadowing his fleet, then a careful look down the long list of his ships to see that all showed green ready-for-jump status, Geary ordered his ships to jump to Strabo.

The transit to Strabo through jump space wasn’t long, a mere five days. The jump to Cydoni wouldn’t take a lot of time either, but the jump to Sancere would more than make up for that.

Jump space had always been odd, a strange, apparently endless emptiness of dull black marked only by rare appearances of splashes of light. What those lights were, what caused them and why, had been a mystery in Geary’s time and remained unidentified to this day because there wasn’t any known way to explore jump space. In a way that comforted Geary: something about his past and the present that had stayed unchanged.

But that was the only comfort he felt during the journey. Bad enough that the only person he’d felt able to partially confide in, Co-President Rione, hadn’t come near him or sent any messages since their argument. Bad enough that he had to worry, as usual, that the Syndics would have a nasty surprise awaiting him and the fleet at Strabo. They could’ve thought past him, guessing that he’d guess where his current paths would lead and therefore doubling back like this. But if he surrendered to that kind of fear, then he’d be paralyzed, unable to make any decision because any possible course of action could have been anticipated by the Syndics.

No, there was something else bothering him this time. By the fourth day he’d narrowed the problems down to two. One was the new problem of Captain Falco, and the other the old problem of Captain Numos and the other disgruntled officers he represented. I can handle one of those problems alone. But both of them … What if Numos seizes on Falco as the figurehead he needs to cause me serious command problems? When we arrive at Strabo, they’ll have had almost a week to think up ways to make my life difficult and to imperil this fleet.

Even more frustrating, a review of the mountain of communications between Alliance fleet ships before they left Sutrah had come up with none indicating Falco and Numos had exchanged messages, but that meant nothing. With all the shuttle traffic that had been flying between ships, actual hard copy messages could’ve easily been transferred. The lack of detected messages from Falco to other officers stood out like a warning beacon in Geary’s mind. Falco was obviously someone who thrived on attention and used his interpersonal skills to advance his career and what he thought were the best interests of the Alliance. He wouldn’t refrain from trying to convince other officers to follow him, meaning that the messages Falco was surely distributing hadn’t been detected by Geary or any of his firm allies among the ship commanders.

Am I being paranoid? But both Duellos and Rione warned me about Falco, and those two have proven the worth of their advice. Too bad I can’t talk to Duellos since only simple, brief messages can be communicated while we’re in jump space, and too bad Rione won’t talk to me.

Geary watched the wandering lights, got more and more irritable, and wondered what would happen in Strabo Star System.

For a star, Strabo had very little to boast about. In terms of size, it had barely been big enough for the self-sustaining fusion reactions to trigger and turn it into a star instead of a very large planet. Strabo’s satellites were well-suited for such a planet rather than a star, an assortment of bare rocks in close orbits. Geary had seen a lot of star systems and couldn’t remember any as undistinguished and pitiable as Strabo. Little wonder the small emergency station the Syndics had once maintained here had been mothballed long ago.

“Nothing,” Captain Desjani remarked.

Geary nodded. “Are you talking about Syndic threats in particular, or just commenting on this star system?”

“Both.” Desjani grinned.

“Are the fleet sensors scanning for anomalies that might indicate minefields anywhere in the system?”

“Yes, sir. The sensors are set to do sweeps automatically, though they’re more effective when targeted on a specific area. No mines detected as of yet.”

“Good.” No Syndic ships visible in the system, either. Geary checked the display. The Alliance fleet spread out around Dauntless, every ship maintaining position as ordered. No threats. No apparent problems with Falco or Numos. Like the situations in Sutrah, it left Geary wondering what he might be missing.

Strabo also managed to be unimpressive when it came to the number of jump points it possessed. Even Sutrah had boasted four, but Strabo had only three. Relative to the one the fleet had entered the system using, the jump point to Cydoni was on the other side of the system. In order to get to that jump point, the fleet would swing past a third jump point, which led directly to only another hypernet-bypassed Syndic system before giving access to a couple of Syndic worlds that Geary believed would be defended by traps or mines because they were two of the same ones the fleet could’ve reached from Sutrah. Passing so close to the other jump point worried him, but there simply wasn’t any good reason to swing wide of it. At its closest, the Alliance fleet would still be several light-minutes away. Taking a roundabout track to open the distance even more would surely feed rumors that Geary was too fearful.

Geary checked the maneuvering solution and ordered the fleet toward the jump point to Cydoni. Since Strabo was such a small star system, they would reach the other jump point in only a day and a half.

He took opportunity of the transit time to gather the fleet’s ship commanders together for another simulated battle training session. Everything went off like clockwork, every ship doing exactly as Geary had directed. Which should have made him happy, but it didn’t. His problem commanders were acting entirely too docile. He’d heard nothing from Falco, Numos, or any of the lesser figures who’d been most open about their distrust of Geary since he had assumed command. Occasional shuttles winged their way between ships on what were identified as routine transfers of parts, materials, or personnel. Geary was positive that they were also transferring appeals from Falco but couldn’t think of anything he could do about it. I’ve already checked with security, and they couldn’t guarantee being able to find any short video messages, even if they stripped a shuttle down to component parts. Duellos hasn’t heard anything, but no one would talk to him, since he’s known to be an ally of mine.

I could preemptively order Falco’s arrest. But that probably would trigger mutinies on some of my ships, especially since I have no grounds for arresting the man. I could order him back to Dauntless, but if he delayed or simply refused to comply, I’d be stuck with either letting him get away with it or arresting him.

I can’t act now without certainly causing the problems I’m afraid Falco might be creating.

Geary put in a call to Captain Falco, figuring that facing him was better than worrying about what Falco might be doing behind his back. A nervous-looking Captain Kerestes answered. “Captain Geary, I regret that Captain Falco has been ordered to rest by fleet physicians on Warrior.”

“Captain Falco isn’t well?” He wanted that set out clearly in case anyone else was listening in.

“Just a temporary … illness,” Kerestes advised, looking guilty as hell.

“I see.” Any other attempt to get Falco would only emphasize Geary’s inability to force Falco to talk. “Please inform Captain Falco that I hope he soon feels well enough to continue working on behalf of the best interests of the Alliance and this fleet.”

“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir.” After Kerestes broke the connection, Geary had no trouble imagining the gasp of relief that Kerestes must be producing.

Other than confirming that Kerestes was worried about being noticed by his superiors, though, the call had accomplished nothing.

“Madam Co-President.” His pride had finally been overcome by his worries.

Her voice on the circuit was icy and detached. Rione had blocked the visual screen, leaving Geary wishing he could see her expression. “What do you want, Captain Geary?”

“I need to know if your sources within the fleet are aware of any problems.”

Her answer took a moment. “Problems?”

“Anything concerning Captain Falco or Captain Numos.”

Another pause before the reply. “There’s a little talk. Nothing more.”

“A little talk? That sounds like less than there used to be.”

“It is less,” Rione conceded. “But I’ve heard nothing else.”

“I would be grateful if, should you hear anything, you tell me as soon as possible.”

“What do you fear, Captain Geary? Your own commanders?” Her voice held a clear undercurrent of anger at him this time. “Such is the fate of heroes.”

“I’m not—” Geary counted to five inside. “I’m worried that something may happen that will imperil the lives of many sailors in this fleet. I hope you can put aside your feelings about me and help me make sure no one does anything…”

“Stupid?”

“Yes.”

“As opposed to heroic?” she inquired, as cold as frozen nitrogen again.

“Dammit, Madam Co-President—”

“I’ll recheck with my sources. Out of concern for the well-being of the sailors of this fleet. Someone has to put concern for them first.”

The circuit clicked off, leaving Geary barely restraining himself from slamming a fist into the wall next to the speaker.

“Captain Geary.” Captain Desjani had her battle voice on, controlled and precise. “Something’s happening.”

The fleet was an hour from the jump point. Geary didn’t waste time getting to the bridge, instead pulling up the fleet display above the table in his stateroom.

The “something” Desjani had referred to was all too obvious. The Alliance fleet’s formation had developed gaps and holes as a lot of ships left their assigned positions. Based on the projected tracks the maneuvering system had estimated, all of the ships were headed in the same direction. Geary tallied them quickly. Warrior, Orion, Majestic, Triumph, Invincible, Polaris, and Vanguard. Four battleships and three battle cruisers. Six heavy cruisers, another four light cruisers, more than twenty destroyers. Almost forty ships.

Geary ran the course projections out and saw them heading for the other jump point. Ancestors help them, they’re going to try running straight for Alliance space, no doubt depending on their “fighting spirit” to overcome the odds they must realize they’ll be facing. He brought up the communications circuit, trying to think of the right commands to issue. “All units are instructed to return to formation.” That was totally useless. They weren’t likely to listen if they’d already decided to ignore his orders. “You are heading for heavily defended Syndic star systems. You will not be able to make your way through them.”

No reaction. The rebel ships kept going, slicing across the fleet. I can’t convince them. Not now. They’ve placed their faith in Falco and what they imagine is their own superior moral strength. An appeal to reason won’t work against that. But I need to make sure no one else joins them. What do I say? “Your duties to the Alliance demand that you remain with this fleet and not abandon your comrades.” That should sting. As it should, since they were running away from the rest of the fleet. “Return to your positions now for the sake of your ships and your crews, and there will be no disciplinary actions taken.” There wouldn’t have to be, Geary knew, since an abortive action would convince most of those inclined to follow Falco and Numos that they couldn’t be trusted.

A reply finally came. “This is Captain Falco, commanding those ships willing to uphold the honor and glory of the Alliance fleet. I call upon—” A symbol popped up on Geary’s communications display, and Falco’s voice cut off.

“This is Captain Desjani,” she called down to Geary using the Dauntless’s internal circuits. “I’ve activated the fleet command override. Any signals from other ships on the fleetwide circuits will be blocked. We’ll hear anything sent directly to us.”

“Thanks.” If only he had a fleet full of commanders like Tanya Desjani. Geary himself had realized too late that he couldn’t allow Falco a public forum to broadcast a plea to other ships to desert. He transmitted to the fleet again, keeping his voice firm and calm. “All ships, there is no honor in deserting your comrades, no honor in disobeying lawful orders. We fight for victory, for the safety of our homes, not glory. All units return to your places in the formation. You’ll be needed when we strike the Syndics next.” Maybe that appeal to being in battle would reach some of them.

But the thirty-nine ships making up Falco’s force were rapidly forming their own small formation, heading straight for the other jump point and not far from it now. An irrational urge to open fire on the rebel ships grew out of Geary’s anger at Falco, but he pushed the idea aside almost as soon as it surfaced. Impossible. I won’t give that order. Even if I did, who’d obey it? That’s what the Syndics would do. But then what can I do? I can’t stop them. They’re only fifteen minutes from that jump point. “All units that have left the formation, reconsider your actions for the sake of the Alliance and the sake of your comrades and the sake of your crews. You will not survive attempting to reach Alliance space along the paths available to you through that jump point.”

The diverging ships were several light-minutes away now. Even allowing for that time delay, it was clear that Geary’s latest appeal had failed. There wasn’t time for another appeal, really, just time for one more short transmission to be received by them before the other ships entered jump space. He took a deep breath, staring at the star display, his mind rapidly running through jump paths connecting the nearest stars. “All units that have left the formation. Ilion. I say again. Ilion.”

Perhaps twelve minutes later, Geary saw the images of the fleeing ships vanish as they jumped out of the system.

He spent a while rearranging his fleet to cover the gaps left by the ships that had fled, then sat silently until they reached the jump point to Cydoni. “All ships, jump now.”

He had been dreading this sort of thing ever since being thrust into command of the fleet. Dreading a split in the fleet. It seemed obvious to him that dividing their forces while trapped deep inside enemy territory was insane, but it had been obvious from the first that not all of his ship commanders took a rational view of things. Now the precedent had been set. Almost forty ships had headed for an unknown fate under senior commanders whom Geary regarded with misgivings, distrust, and in the case of Numos no small measure of contempt. If only there had been some way for those commanders to meet the fates they deserved without those ships suffering the same fates.

But there is a chance. If they think, if they realize dying gloriously doesn’t do much to protect their home worlds, if they are willing to take advantage of what I taught them while they were with the fleet. If they’re willing to take advantage of what I told them before they left. And if the Syndics don’t hear that information from them and have time to lay an ambush for the rest of us. I wish I knew.

Unable to stand the silence of his stateroom, which seemed to have grown much lonelier since Co-President Rione had ceased dropping by for visits, Geary forced himself to tour the compartments on Dauntless again, showing a confident face to a crew shaken by the departure of many comrades, telling them in a dozen different ways that once the fleet reached Sancere they’d give the Syndics a lesson to remember, trying to focus the crew on the future rather than events in Strabo Star System. He used the minimal communications available in jump space to send a brief variation on that to the rest of the ships in the fleet, hoping to do the same with them.

In the time that was left, Geary threw himself into designing more simulations to run. He kept hoping he could use them to impart some of the fighting skills he remembered from a century ago, skills lost to the fleet in the decades since, as devastating losses in ships and crews wiped out the institutional memory and skills of the smaller professional force Geary had once known. He didn’t know how much longer he might have to try to pass on such lessons.

Geary strode onto the bridge of the Dauntless as the Alliance fleet prepared to leave jump.

Captain Desjani glanced back at him and nodded in greeting, her concern for him impossible to miss. Geary nodded heavily back as he sank into his command seat. He hadn’t realized how bad he must look in the aftermath of Falco’s betrayal. Bad enough for Desjani to notice, anyway. Hopefully, the crew hadn’t picked up on it. Or maybe he just looked particularly bad now, after an almost sleepless night wondering what might be in the Cydoni Star System. Wondering if any other ships would bolt the fleet there.

To cover the renewed anxiety he suddenly felt, Geary called up the fleet display and pretended to study it intently. He had been trying to come up with a plan for Sancere, given that he wouldn’t know what was there until they arrived. An idea had occurred to him yesterday, prompted ironically by what had happened in the Strabo Star System, and he spent a few minutes thinking about it, checking on the names and records of some of his ship commanders.

“Preparing to leave jump,” Desjani announced.

Geary hastily brought the system display to life and waited. All it showed now was the historical information the old Syndic Star System guides they had found on Sutrah Five had contained. As soon as the fleet arrived in normal space on the edge of Cydoni System, the sensors on Dauntless and every other ship in the fleet would start updating the display based on what could be seen from their arrival point.

Geary’s insides jerked, and the drab, dull black of jump space was replaced by the glittering, star-filled universe of real space. He waited, watching, as system updates popped onto the display. No ships. No mines detected. Nothing. Captain Desjani was grinning triumphantly.

But Geary still stared at the system display, where the expanding photosphere of Cydoni’s sun had been reaching out for the one habitable world this system had once boasted. The scene held the same sick fascination as a train wreck, though in this case the centuries-long process was playing out far slower than any human vehicle accident, and the wreck was of an entire world.

Most of the atmosphere of the formerly habitable planet had been stripped away by now. Empty ocean basins had long since been drained of their waters, also flung away into space by the bombardment of particles and heat from the swollen sun that had once made life possible on this world. Now that sun was slowly devouring the planet, and no trace of life in any form could be detected anywhere upon it.

“There’s probably some extreme-environment life-forms still existing beneath the crust of the planet,” one of the watch-standers reported. “They’ll hold on a little while longer.”

“How long until the photosphere actually envelops the planet?” Geary asked.

“It’s hard to say, sir. The expansion of a star like this takes place in fits and starts. Probably anywhere from fifty to two hundred years, depending on exactly what happens inside the star.”

“Thanks.” Geary took a look at a magnified image of the planet. Dauntless’s sensors had tagged some areas where ruins still existed, though badly battered and worn by the extreme environmental conditions they’d endured so that they seemed millennia old. One batch of ruins lay next to an empty sea, its partial walls almost submerged in dust dunes blown around before the atmosphere had thinned too much, the land glowing red from the light of the expanding star. Geary wondered what the city or town had looked like when there’d been waters rolling at its feet. The information from the Syndic system guides was at his fingertips, so Geary checked that. Port Junosa. Already completely abandoned before the outdated Syndic documents had been prepared. Lives had been devoted to that city, building it and sustaining it and making it a human community, but all that was left now were the battered ruins, and within another century even those would be annihilated by the expanding star. After seeing desolate places like Strabo and Cydoni, it would be a relief to see a bustling star system like Sancere, even if the robust human presence there was all enemy.

“We’ll have to take a course that will remain well out from that swollen photosphere,” Captain Desjani remarked.

Geary nodded. “Yeah. Do you have problems with the course recommended by the ship’s maneuvering systems? It’ll take us four days to reach the jump point for Sancere, but I don’t see a good alternative.”

“There isn’t one,” Desjani agreed. “This is the best option.”

Four days. Four days for the less reliable among his ship commanders to think about what other ships had done at Strabo. Four days for them to consider heading for another jump exit. I’ll have to keep them busy. Keep them focused on Sancere. Keep them too involved with simulations and maneuvers and plans to give them time to think about anything but Sancere. It’ll drive me to exhaustion, but I don’t see any alternative.

He started setting up a limited fleet conference, involving only the commanders of roughly thirty ships. Who should lead it? He hadn’t quite decided before, but looking at the list he’d compiled of able commanders, one name stood out. Still, there was one question he hadn’t looked up yet, and the answer didn’t seem readily available within the Dauntless’s databanks. Either that or Geary wasn’t asking the question right, and the artificial minds he was dealing with couldn’t understand him. He’d run into that too many times already. “How long will it take these intelligent agents to understand me?” he openly grumbled.

Desjani directed a glance to one of her watch-standers. That woman cleared her throat before speaking. “Sir, the intelligent agents have learned a pattern of responses based on the ways of thinking and writing or speaking characteristic of the people they deal with.” She hesitated.

“And I don’t think like them, do I?”

“No, sir. Your unspoken assumptions, patterns of thought, and ways of phrasing aren’t quite the same as … uh…”

“Modern minds?” Geary asked, unable to keep some dry humor out of his voice this time. It made sense, he realized. A century built up a lot of subtle as well as not-so-subtle differences in the way people thought and expressed those thoughts. Either I laugh at this or let it get to me, and I’ve got too many other things trying to get to me.

The watch-stander smiled nervously. “Yes, sir. I’m afraid so, sir. The agents factor in your responses, but the vast majority of people they deal with have, uh, different ways of handling information, which means they aren’t adjusting to you.”

“Why can’t you set up a subroutine for the intelligent agents to use when dealing with Captain Geary?” Desjani demanded. “Then they could reset to match his patterns of usage while remaining attuned to the rest of the officers and crew.”

“That’s prohibited by fleet regulations on the use of intelligent agents, Captain. Intelligent agents on ship systems are never supposed to become personal agents for any individual. That could create conflicts of interest in the artificial minds.”

Geary shook his head, wondering why even something like this had to be complicated. “Can the fleet commander override that regulation on an emergency basis?”

In response, the watch-stander looked troubled. “Sir, I’d have to look up what constitutes an emergency for official purposes.”

“Lieutenant!” Captain Desjani rapped out. “We’re deep in enemy territory and trying to get home in one piece. That meets my definition of an emergency.”

“Me, too,” Geary agreed. “Make it happen, Lieutenant. It’ll make my life a lot easier.”

The watch-stander smiled with relief on having clear instructions to a way out of the problem. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. We’ll get right on it.”

“Thanks.” Geary looked at Desjani. “It’ll help with planning.”

Desjani smiled, as confident in Geary as ever. “You have a plan for Sancere?”

“That’s right. Sancere is unlikely to be lightly defended. I’m assuming we’ll face a strong enough force to be a problem. If I’m wrong, we’ll be able to adjust to less opposition.”

“You’ll strike for the hypernet gate?”

“Yeah.” Geary looked down, frowning. “I’ve been trying to look up something about that. I assume the Syndics might try to destroy the thing. Just how hard is it to destroy a hypernet gate?”

Desjani looked surprised. “I have no idea. It gets talked about sometimes, but no one’s ever actually done it, to my knowledge.”

Geary shrugged. “Hopefully, it won’t be an issue. If we can draw any Syndic defenders out of position and lunge for the hypernet gate, we might be able to keep them from destroying it even if they want to. After we have that, we can defeat the defenders, loot what supplies we need, and destroy every facility related to the Syndic war effort.”

Desjani’s eyes gleamed. “It’ll be a nasty blow to the Syndics, hitting something so important where they surely never expected it to be seriously threatened.”

“Right.” If they’re not waiting for us with the kind of ambush that almost annihilated this fleet in the Syndic home system. And if my fleet doesn’t fall apart any further before we get there. Geary stood. “I’ll be meeting with some of the ship commanders.”

Commander Cresida appeared to sit next to Geary, the other twenty-eight ship commanders ranked down the table, all plainly curious why they’d been singled out for this virtual meeting.

“You’ve been selected because your records and the records of your ships mark you as both brave and steady in combat,” Geary explained. “We’ll be arriving in Sancere with no idea what sort of forces the Syndics have on hand. It’s not likely to be anything we can’t handle,” he stated confidently and hoped fervently, “but it might be enough to cause us losses if we don’t deal with it well. Here’s what I need from you. Commander Cresida on Furious will be in command of a special task force comprising your ships. Task Force Furious won’t be broken out separately from the rest of the fleet when we arrive at Sancere. What you’ll do is simulate breaking formation, Furious first and the others following, as if you were engaging in an undisciplined charge at the strongest force of Syndic ships we can spot.”

Commander Cresida and the other commanders couldn’t hide their puzzlement. “You want us to break formation?” Cresida asked. “To look like we’re being so aggressive we aren’t paying attention to orders?”

“Yes.” Geary pointed to a representation of Sancere’s system. “Charge headlong at the enemy. There’s not enough of you here to deal with the likely number of Syndic ships guarding Sancere or just there getting refitted or undergoing repairs. That’s deliberate. I want you to look like a small force that has rashly separated from the rest of the fleet and can be easily destroyed. You go racing down toward the enemy, but short of engagement range, I want you to turn, raggedly and still in an undisciplined fashion, and flee downward, away from the Syndics and the rest of the fleet.” Geary traced the imagined tracks with his finger.

Cresida looked horrified. “As if we were running from the enemy?”

“Exactly.” None of the commanders looked happy. “There’s a good reason for that. The idea is—”

“Sir,” Cresida interrupted, her expression concerned and earnest. “The Syndics won’t believe it.”

Geary had been momentarily upset at the thought that Cresida might act as bullheaded as Numos. But what she said nipped that anger in the bud because it seemed to have a good reason behind it. “Why not?”

“We don’t flee battle, sir.” The pride in Cresida’s voice couldn’t be missed. “Regardless of the odds.” All of the other commanders nodded in agreement. “The Syndics know this. They won’t believe a feigned retreat.”

That was a problem, but Geary couldn’t see any grounds for denying Cresida’s assessment, especially with all of the other specially selected ship captains agreeing with her. It also matched the fighting-spirit-triumphing-over-all-odds nonsense that he had heard from Falco. How could he disregard the advice of commanders he had already decided were particularly trustworthy? “Then I want your advice. Any of you. How do we draw off Syndic defenders, get them chasing Task Force Furious instead of paying attention to what the rest of the fleet is doing?”

Commander Neeson of the Implacable shrugged. “Captain Geary, if you want to get the Syndics chasing us, then I’d recommend a firing pass. Come in hard and fast, hit the outermost units with everything we can throw at them, then sweep onward.”

Cresida nodded. “Yes. Get them mad. Even better if there’s a follow-on target we seem to be aiming for. Something they can’t let us reach. We hit them, then alter course to head for the high-value target.”

“Sancere’s got to be full of high-value targets,” someone else observed. “We should be able to identify something on the fly.”

Geary thought about the plan, gazing at the representation of Sancere’s system. “What if you get too deep into the Syndic defenses? I don’t want this to be a real suicide charge. I want you to be able to get out without being cut to pieces.”

Neeson studied the system display as well. “We should be able to do that. Set off on a course aimed at something valuable, the Syndics get themselves onto an intercept and crank on the speed, then we swing out, leaving them out of position. What is it we’re trying to distract them from, sir?”

“I want our fleet to get to the hypernet gate before any Syndic ships realize they need to flee through it and manage to get there. If we can seize the gate and block any departures, we’ll have all the time we need to destroy Syndic facilities at Sancere and then ride the Syndic hypernet system back to the doorstep of Alliance space.”

“If they destroy the gate…” Cresida began reluctantly.

“We won’t have to worry about Syndic reinforcements rushing in,” Geary replied.

“But the energy pulse might be dangerous.”

It seemed he’d found that expert on hypernet gates that he needed. “Tell me about it.”

Cresida gestured toward the representation of the Sancere hypernet gate on the display. “The gate is sort of a bound energy matrix. A hypernet key works by pairing the matrix of particles within a gate to the matrix of particles at another gate, establishing a path that ships can use. The matrix is held by these structures,” she pointed to objects ranked around the gate. “As you can see, there’s hundreds of them. They’re called tethers, even though they’re not really tethers, because in one sense they hold the particle matrix in the desired form. That’s how a gate would be destroyed, by disabling or destroying the tethers. But when that happens, the matrix breaks, and the bound energy is released.” A couple of the other commanders present nodded in agreement.

“Good description, Commander,” Geary replied. Geary imagined that the actual science behind the gates was far more complicated than what Cresida had summarized. He wished everyone he needed technical descriptions from could render them so simply and concisely. “How much energy and in what form?”

Cresida grimaced unhappily. “That’s a theoretical question. It’s never been tested in practice. One extreme says the breaking of a gate matrix would generate a supernova-scale burst of energy.”

“A supernova?” Geary questioned, incredulous. “A supernova puts out as much energy in one blast as a star puts out over a ten billion year life span. An explosion like that would fry not only everything inside the entire star system it’s in but also surrounding star systems.”

“Yes,” Cresida agreed. “That’d be a negative outcome, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Geary agreed.

“But the other extreme says the energy in the matrix would, uh, fold in upon itself, like an infinite origami, getting ever smaller and tighter until it dropped into another state of existence and was lost to this universe. Energy output in this universe would be zero.”

Geary sat down, looking around and seeing the other knowledgeable commanders agreeing with Cresida again. “Then our two extremes are that the destruction of a gate would destroy an entire star system and adjacent star systems, or it’d do nothing at all. But what level of energy release is regarded as the most probable outcome?”

Cresida looked to her fellows as she spoke. “Most scientists believe the energy output would fall somewhere between less than that of a supernova and more than nothing, but no one’s been able to confidently predict how much that would be.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, sir.”

“That’s the best science can offer? And those gates got built knowing they could potentially blow the hell out of this part of the galaxy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They let you go really fast,” Commander Neeson noted.

Geary stared at the representation of the hypernet gate at Sancere, wondering just how many disasters traced their origin to the human desire to travel faster than before. I’ve been wondering if nonhuman intelligences might be tied somehow to this horribly destructive war we’ve been fighting for the last century. But I ought to know by now that humans don’t need nonhuman intelligences to influence us to do something stupid.

Hey. Wait a minute. “Why is it we don’t know more about this? We designed and built the hypernet system. How could we be so uncertain about important characteristics of it?”

Commander Cresida exchanged glances with her comrades again. “I can’t answer that exactly, Captain Geary. I know the practical breakthroughs that let us build the hypernet came ahead of the theories that explained it. A lot of the theory is still being worked out. That’s not the first time that sort of thing has happened. People often figure out how to do something before they understand why it works.”

“Us and the Syndics? We both made these practical breakthroughs at about the same time?”

She shrugged. “The Syndics stole the knowledge from us, sir. That’s what we assume, though I don’t have the security clearances to know for sure.”

Or we stole it from them. “The bottom line is, you’re telling me the Syndics won’t dare destroy that gate?”

“Uh, no, sir. We don’t know. They may have decided the risk is acceptable.”

Geary tried not to let his feelings show. We don’t know. What if the extreme guess is right, and this fleet causes the Syndics to do something that fries not only Sancere and this fleet but a lot of nearby star systems? And even just having this fleet appear at Sancere might cause the Syndic commanders to destroy the hypernet gate as soon as they spot us. But I can’t afford not to go to Sancere and attack. This fleet needs the supplies there.

There’s no alternative. I have to hope for the best, that the energy release won’t be so large it threatens anything, either nearby stars or just my ships.

Oh, hell. I know what they’ll do.

“We have to assume the Syndics will plan on waiting until our fleet is near the gate, then destroy it,” Geary announced. The other ship commanders stared at him. “They’re going to hope the gate releases enough energy to fry us but not enough to fry Sancere or anything beyond it.”

Cresida nodded in agreement. “And if it does fry Sancere, then that’s just collateral damage in their eyes.”

“But then what do we do?” Neeson asked. “We can’t just ignore the gate.”

“I’ll think of something,” Geary promised. I hope. “If this diversion plan works, we can keep the Syndics from having forces in place to actually blow the gate. Now, it sounds like we’re in agreement on the best course of action for Task Force Furious. Break from the formation, charge at the Syndic defenders, make a high-speed firing pass, look like you’re heading for something very valuable, but divert after the Syndics commit to an intercept.” He paused. “I’ll send orders what to do after that, based on the situation. The most critical thing is that I don’t want you to actually dive into the heart of the Syndic defenses all by yourselves. Get back out of there so I can employ you in conjunction with the rest of the fleet.” Everyone nodded. “I’ll ensure orders are sent to each of you. Thank you. Commander Cresida, please wait.”

After the virtual presences of the others vanished, Geary turned a serious face to Commander Cresida. “You’re going to be a good ways away from the fleet after you charge the Syndics. You could easily be more than a light-hour distant from the fleet. That means I won’t know if you get into trouble until an hour after the fact. I’m trusting you to fight smart, Commander. Keep the Syndics occupied, keep their attention on you, but don’t get yourself shot up. Can you retreat when it’s the best course of action?”

Cresida seemed to ponder the question for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I want you alive and fighting, not proud and dead.”

She grinned. “Sir, you’ve demonstrated we can be proud, alive, and fighting. I’m still trying to figure out how you managed to bring everything together at Kaliban to smash the Syndics.”

Geary smiled back at her. “Do a great job at Sancere, and I’ll give you personal lessons on how to do it.”

“That’s a deal, sir.” They both stood, and Cresida rendered a precise salute. She’d obviously been practicing. Geary didn’t tell her that fleet salutes tended to be sloppier than that and as a result she looked more like a Marine. Come to think of it, maybe Colonel Carabali had been the one teaching her how to do it. Geary knew the Marines had been deriving considerable amusement from watching the sailors’ attempts to deal with Geary’s moves to reintroduce saluting to the fleet.

He sat down again after Cresida’s departure, gazing at the display, especially the representation of the hypernet gate. It hadn’t occurred to him before now that the gates were potentially dangerous. Potentially extremely dangerous.

Potentially by far the deadliest weapons mankind had ever built.

And he had no alternative but to charge most of his fleet right at the hypernet gate at Sancere.