Leviathan

Fifteen

Lieutenant Castries sounded even more baffled than Geary. “We are picking up indications that power sources are activating in multiple locations aboard Invincible.”

“Multiple locations?” Desjani demanded.

“Yes, Captain, I don’t—”

“Invincible has several power cores,” Geary said. “We weren’t sure why the Kicks designed it that way, but the engineers speculated it was because the ship was so huge that running power from any single location would have been harder than running multiple power sources. But those power cores were shut down! Every one of them was cold. Every piece of Kick equipment on that ship was shut down, deactivated, or disabled.”

“Something is reactivating the power cores,” Desjani said. “I assume that we’re ruling out the Kick ghosts?”

“The Dancers explained that to us. There’s no actual presence. Just an impression of a presence.”

“Then what else—?” Desjani began. “Ancestors save us. Did those maniacs fit Invincible out as a dark ship?”

“She doesn’t have any working propulsion,” Geary replied. “We destroyed her main propulsion drives when we captured her, and we can see that they haven’t been repaired or replaced. What good would it do—”

“Combat systems are activating aboard Invincible,” Lieutenant Yuon reported, sounding dazed. “According to what we’re picking up, it’s the Kick combat systems, not anything retrofitted from human sources. The targeting systems inside the ship and the few weapons that were still operational after we took Invincible are all coming online.”

“The tugs are powering up,” Lieutenant Castries said, disbelieving. “The heavy-hauling Alliance tugs mated to Invincible are activating their systems.”

“How far away is Invincible?” Desjani glared at her display. “Twenty light-minutes. How long does it take to power up one of the fleet’s heavy tugs?”

“Our data says fifteen minutes from standby to emergency movement,” Castries replied. “They were in standby.”

“Then Invincible is probably already underway! What the hell is going on? Those tugs were cold and empty,” Desjani insisted. “No crews aboard. Are the dark ships doing this somehow?”

More alerts sounded, more visual alerts highlighted the same area. “Propulsion on the Alliance tugs fastened to Invincible has lit off at full. Invincible is underway,” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “No life support is active on the tugs.”

“Admiral!” It was General Charban, his image speaking with rapid precision to ensure his words were clear. “We have a message from the Dancers. I won’t read the poetry, just the gist of it. They’re telling us they have ‘reawakened’ the Kick superbattleship and that it is now ‘our distraction.’”

“Distraction?” Geary asked, then suddenly understood. “Diversion. The Dancers remotely reactivated the Kick systems?”

“I assume that’s what they mean,” Charban replied.

“How the hell did they do that?” Desjani asked.

“I don’t know,” Geary replied. “I don’t know why, if they can do that, they didn’t mess with the Kick systems when we were together fighting the Kicks.”

“And they remotely activated Alliance systems,” Desjani added, pointing to the tugs. “They must have remotely overridden access codes and authorization requirements and safety interfaces on the tugs. And now they’ve remotely lit off the tugs’ propulsion and set a vector for them. The Dancers may be allies of ours, but when did they develop that capability?”

“Admiral,” Lieutenant Yuon announced, now breathless. “All of the dark ship formations are turning away.”

Geary switched his gaze back to the dark ship formations, blinking in surprise at his display where vectors on the dark ships had begun swinging wildly. “They were turning for more intercepts and attacks on our formations. Now they’re coming about as fast as they can onto other vectors.”

“All of those other vectors are in the same general… they’re heading for Invincible,” Desjani said, frowning as she studied her display. “I’m certain that’s how they’ll steady out. They are going after Invincible.”

“To the dark ships, Invincible must look like a huge threat even though she is nearly weaponless,” Geary said. “A literally huge threat. It must take priority over any other target as far as the dark ship AIs are concerned. A diversion. The Dancers gave us a diversion, something to get the dark ships off our backs for a short period.”

“A more-than-short period,” Desjani replied. “The dark ships are also about twenty light-minutes from Invincible, which is moving away from all of us. Just because of the distance involved, it will take the dark ships probably about an hour and a half to catch Invincible and more time to destroy her.”

That sank in. Invincible was not simply a distraction. She would also be a sacrifice. “Ancestors forgive us. The knowledge that ship holds, the things we could have learned from it…”

“One more crime to lay at the feet of the idiots responsible for this,” Desjani said in a low, angry voice. “May the living stars give those criminals the fates they deserve. What will we do with the time that the Dancers and Invincible are giving us?”

“Save some lives, at least for now.” Geary gave orders, diverting scores of warships to collect and recover escape pods from the Alliance battleships, battle cruisers, cruisers, and destroyers that had been put out of action or destroyed. “As soon as we have recovered everyone, we’re going to rejoin Mistral and head for the outer reaches of the star system. Another jump point is going to appear eventually. We can’t use it, because we can’t leave any dark ships active to attack the Alliance. But Mistral can.”

Desjani gazed at him, then nodded somberly. “Mistral has to get back. You may have to order some of the Marines aboard Mistral to hold a gun to Commander Young’s head to get her to leave the rest of us, though.”

He had a momentary image of what the rest of her life would be like for Commander Young, ordered to leave the rest, forced to leave the rest, but doomed to be forever remembered as the only one who had left Unity Alternate, the only one whose ship had survived the desperate battle at Unity Alternate. Geary was appalled as he realized that he would be ordering Young to a living nightmare that many would consider a fate worse than death. He wondered how long she could live with that, how long she would live with that.

But he knew he would have to order her to do it.

Geary called Mistral. “Commander Young, the fleet will be repositioning to the vicinity of the orbital governmental facility. You have one hour and ten minutes from the time of this transmission before we get there. Be ready to leave the dock and accompany the fleet at that time. Do not, repeat do not, leave anyone aboard that facility.”

The formations of the First Fleet, already rendered somewhat ragged by the combat losses they had sustained, had dissolved into a mass of individual ships darting about to collect escape pods and rescue the occupants. He did not have to supervise that. The fleet’s automated systems had no trouble figuring out which ship was best positioned to pick up which escape pod, could track when a ship had recovered as many survivors as that ship could safely carry, and could recommend to each commanding officer what to do next.

“It’s ironic,” Geary said as he watched the process. “Our automated systems are making it possible to recover all of the survivors as quickly and efficiently as we can. A lot of men and women will owe their rescue to that. But other automated systems destroyed their ships in the first place and will kill those men and women later if they can.”

“It’s just a matter of whether you’re ordering what to do based on what the systems say, or if they’re ordering you what to do whether you like it or not,” Desjani said. “There isn’t anything complicated about that.”

“There shouldn’t be,” Geary agreed.

The survivor recovery completed, Geary ordered his ships back into their formations, leaving the discarded escape pods drifting in space, and directed every warship to head back toward the government facility.

The dark ships were still swooping down on Invincible. The immense alien superbattleship was moving slowly away from the pursuing dark ships, plodding along under the thrust of the rows of fleet tugs that provided only a fraction of the power that Invincible’s main propulsion units once employed.

Geary felt an odd sense of sorrow at the sight. Not the huge regret that the knowledge represented by the captured alien ship would be lost but sadness at watching the massive ship sacrifice itself to give the Alliance fleet a little time that might make all the difference in being able to destroy the last dark ship before the last Alliance ship. In its willingness to be destroyed for the sake of the human warships, the alien craft itself felt more human, more a living thing, than the dark ships with their AIs designed to mimic human thought processes.

The ship information graphics on the virtual display next to his command seat were filled with red and yellow markers indicating degrees of damage suffered by his warships, amidst too few greens that indicated ships without significant damage. The diversion provided by Invincible would buy a few hours, but what his fleet needed was six months in a major repair facility with a lot of docks.

The sort of facility, in fact, they had been forced to destroy here.

“We’ve got a little time,” Geary told Desjani. “I’m going to hold a senior officer conference.”

She ensured the privacy fields were activated, then Geary called his top officers, their images in their command seats on the bridges of their ships appearing around him. Captain Duellos. Captain Jane Geary. Captain Badaya. Captain Desjani in person. Captain Armus. The sight of those officers brought back with full force the fact that Captain Tulev should have been among them and was not.

Geary took a second to compose himself, to ensure his voice did not falter, before he spoke. “You all know the situation we are in. I would like to know your thoughts and your recommendations.”

Duellos replied in an uncharacteristically grave voice. “As was recently pointed out by a very fine officer who is no longer among us, we only have one option remaining. Fight to the last.”

“That’s right,” Badaya said. “To the last ship, to the last man or woman. Maybe we can’t wipe out the dark ships completely, but we can ensure that none of their battle cruisers and battleships survive this fight.”

“None of ours will either,” Armus said as if that were a matter not of sorrow but of inevitability. “But no one will be able to say we did not die with honor. No one will be able to accuse us of not doing our duty. We will be welcomed by our ancestors.”

“The last charge of the Gearys,” Jane said with the ghost of a smile. “I never thought I’d be part of Black Jack’s real last stand. It doesn’t feel as bad as I thought it would.”

“No one else has any other options to suggest?” Geary said.

Desjani shrugged. “We can’t wipe out the dark ships without paying a very high price. There are too many of them, they have too much firepower, they can maneuver better than we can, and the AIs running them aren’t your equal, but they are close enough to that given those other advantages the dark ships have.”

“It’s not like we could reposition through the hypernet gate, even if it weren’t blocked,” Badaya pointed out.

After being awakened from a century in survival sleep, it had taken Geary a while to understand why Badaya phrased it that way. After a century of war, with little hope of victory and in the face of ongoing awful losses, the Alliance fleet had clung fiercely to its pride, never talking about retreating but only about repositioning. The Alliance fleet might die fighting, it might “reposition” at other times, but it never “retreated.” Geary realized that that attitude, which these officers had all grown up with, made it easier for them to contemplate a last battle at this moment. As Desjani had reminded him, they had all expected to die long before this.

Duellos nodded in agreement with Badaya. “We can’t let the dark ships have access to the hypernet so they can carry out that Armageddon Option. They won’t leave as long as we’re still here fighting them, so we must stay and fight, even if we didn’t have to.”

“That’s true,” Geary said.

“Although,” Badaya added, “part of me wouldn’t mind leading these human-made monsters to Unity so they could carry out their Armageddon on those who created them.”

“A lot of innocent people would die as well,” Jane Geary said. “Otherwise, I’d agree with you.”

“All right,” Geary said. “We are going to undertake one detour.” He explained about his intentions with Mistral. “If the Marines have found the means to unblock the hypernet gate, we can send Mistral to safety using that, but I’m going to assume we’ll have to try to avoid action until a jump point appears that Mistral can use.”

“There are going to be a lot of unhappy people on Mistral,” Armus observed dourly.

“They have to do their duty, just as we are doing ours,” Desjani said.

“I’m not arguing that. I’m just glad I’m not the commanding officer of Mistral.”

“Thank you,” Geary said. “I am honored to have served with you, and with every man and woman in this fleet. Captain Geary, there is one more issue we should discuss alone.” The images of the other captains vanished, leaving Jane Geary watching him expectantly. She made no comment about Tanya also still being present, for which Geary was grateful. “When Admiral Bloch communicated with us, he claimed to know that your brother Michael was still alive and where he was. He offered to trade that knowledge for our rescuing him from his flagship.”

Jane Geary inhaled sharply, then laughed. “Admiral Bloch would say anything to try to save his life. He’s lying.”

“That’s what I thought,” Geary said. “In any event, it is impossible to get him off the dark battle cruiser that is his flagship. The best that Bloch can hope for is that we knock out but not destroy that dark ship, leaving him a chance to get off it. But we can’t limit our attacks, or risk the lives of our people, to try to save him.”

“I agree. Michael would not want such a deal made in his name.” She looked over at Tanya. “He would be happy to know that the family included a worthy new sister when we fought our last fight.”

“Thank you,” Tanya said.

Jane Geary saluted them both, then her image vanished as well.

Geary took a moment to compose himself, then called General Charban. “You’ll need to tell the Dancers what we’re going to do.” He explained the fleet’s plans, then gestured in the direction of the Dancers, who were once again tagging along close to the Alliance warships. “The Dancers are under no obligation to stay here and fight to the death with us, though we will be immensely grateful for their assistance. Let me know what they are planning on doing.”

“Yes, Admiral. What are our chances, do you think?”

“I think our fleet will achieve its objectives, General. I don’t expect to survive that. I don’t think many of us will. Maybe none.”

“That’s what I thought.” Charban shrugged. “At least I can stop worrying about why I survived earlier battles when others did not. This will simplify my life though, of course, I will no longer be alive to benefit from that. We’ll see how the Dancers feel about this kind of fight.”

That done, Geary looked over at Tanya. “Regrets?”

“I’m doing what I love, Admiral.” She looked at him, then smiled. “And in good company.”

“Me, too.”

“I need more time, Admiral,” Rione’s image insisted with a fierce intensity unlike her usual cool outward demeanor. “I think I can find what we need. But I require more time than you are allowing. I must have that time.”

They were still a couple of light-minutes from the government facility. The four-minute delays between each statement and the reply being received made the conversation awkward but not intolerable. “I can’t give you more time,” Geary said. “If you haven’t found anything yet, odds are there is nothing to find. Maybe Admiral Bloch has the codes and hasn’t coughed them up. You can try to convince him to do that. The dark ship battle cruiser he is on has survived so far, and despite his talk about risking a shuttle journey to join our fleet, Bloch didn’t make any moves to do that during any of our engagements so far.

“It would be good to have access to that gate so we could get Mistral out of here fast, but it’s not critical that we use the hypernet gate. It is critical that Mistral take advantage of the opportunity to get back within the protection of our warships while the dark ships are preoccupied with destroying Invincible. The bottom line is that Mistral needs to pull out when I ordered so that we have a chance to get her out of this star system. And you and your husband need to be on Mistral.”

Rione did not reply. He imagined she was angry, but he had no emotional stress left unused to devote to worrying about that.

About an hour later, the Alliance formations swung by the government facility. The dark ships had surely reached Invincible by now, but the light from their attack had not yet traveled all the way from that location to where Geary’s fleet could see it. The Alliance sensors could only see images nearly an hour old of the dark ships closing in on the alien superbattleship. Odds were that the dark ships had actually finished their attacks on Invincible and were already on their way back to deal with Geary’s forces again.

Mistral shot out of the dock, accelerating as rapidly as she could to rejoin the other warships. “Mission completed as ordered,” Commander Young’s image told Geary.

Next to her, Colonel Rico nodded. He looked like someone who had been wearing battle armor for hours and was, in fact, still in it, just his face shield opened. “We have multiple copies of everything in every record file in every storage source aboard that facility, Admiral. There were also papers.”

“Papers?” Geary asked. “What kind of papers?”

“Papers with records on them, and orders, and information,” Rico clarified.

“Really? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that.”

“My hack and cracks think the paper records were used instead of digital files to limit any chance of the information being copied or leaked,” Rico explained. “We discovered something else about their security precautions when we looked outside the facility using the sensors on it. They showed us a star system with only one star, Alpha. Beta was completely screened out, gravitational effects and everything. I bet it was the same way on any ships bringing in people and taking them back. Probably only a few people out of everyone sent here ever knew it was a binary.”

“Clever,” Geary said.

“Yes, sir,” Commander Young agreed. “Some people have gotten entirely too comfortable with the idea of making everyone else see only what is wanted.”

“We brought the private security guards out,” Rico added, “including the body of the one we had to shoot. The guards are prisoners, but they’re not giving us any trouble. They figure we saved them. We’ve also locked up the people who were prisoners aboard the facility. We don’t know why they had been locked up, so we’re not taking chances.”

“That can be sorted out later. What about the suits?” Geary asked.

“Locked in the highest-security cells on Mistral,” Commander Young answered. “The Marines, my masters-at-arms, and our medical personnel gave all of the suits a good going-over before we locked them up to ensure no one had suicide capability on them or in them. I don’t know if all of them are a threat, either. Some of the suits are acting like people who were asking themselves questions even before we showed up.”

“What about codes for the hypernet gate?” Geary said. He already knew what the answer must be because no one had led with that information, but still asked in a sort of forlorn hope.

“No, sir. We didn’t find them. Former Senator Rione thought she had a lead, but there wasn’t any more time.”

“Where is Rione?”

Commander Young checked a display on her ship. “In her stateroom, with her husband. He’s in really bad shape, Admiral. I think that hit her real hard. She’s got a comm block on the stateroom, but I can override it if you need to talk to her.”

“No,” Geary said. “If she had found anything, she would have already told me.”

He had considered having Mistral join Gamma One, positioned near Dauntless, but realized that putting two high-value targets right next to each other would be tempting fate, or at least tempting the dark ships. Instead, Geary ordered Mistral to join with Gamma Three, taking up position near Dreadnaught.

“Admiral, we have our answer from the Dancers,” Charban said. “It’s an odd little song to human ears, but it comes down to a statement that they were sent to stop the dark ships, and they will stay and fight to complete that mission.”

“Thank them for me,” Geary said. “Can we tell the Dancers that we are honored to fight alongside them?”

“Yes,” Charban replied, his expression thoughtful. “It should take the form of saying that we and they belong together in the pattern, I think. Something like that. I’ll put something suitable together.”

“And what have our honored fighting companions said about their undisclosed-until-now ability to activate Kick and Alliance ship systems from very long distances?”

Charban smiled. “I think they may have been embarrassed to be called on that. The answer they gave is that the methods they use are easily overridden by supervisors, whether human or Kick. On the targeted system, if there is someone present to override what looks like a glitch, it is too subtle to be identified as intrusion. But it is also far too weak to work on any system being monitored for glitches. I naturally asked why their methods could not work on the dark ships, and the Dancers replied that the AIs on the dark ships act as supervisors or monitors. The term they used actually translated as ‘over-minds.’ It is, therefore, a potentially valuable capability, but only when dealing with something lacking an operator, human or Kick or artificial.”

Fifteen minutes after the fleet passed the orbiting facility, the light finally reached them from the dark ship attack on Invincible. Despite the millions of kilometers between where the Alliance ships were and the site of the attack, the optical sensors aboard the fleet’s ships could get crystal-clear images through the emptiness of space.

Geary did not want to watch, but he felt a responsibility to do so. He flinched as the dark ships opened fire, dark battle cruisers blowing apart the Alliance fleet tugs propelling the alien warship.

Astoundingly, Invincible got off a few shots at the dark ships from her remaining weapons as the enemy came in close. Geary heard cheers aboard Dauntless and knew her crew was celebrating the heroic resistance of Invincible. It was just the automated weapons systems on the alien superbattleship, but it still felt like a brave ship going down fighting.

But Invincible’s remaining weapons were quickly silenced as the dark battleships came close enough to pour streams of hell-lance fire into the superbattleship.

“They’re smart enough this time to conserve their expendable weapons,” Desjani commented. “No missiles, no grapeshot, not even bombardment projectiles, just hell lances.”

“Yeah. The dark ships learned that lesson as well. Too bad.”

It felt unreal to watch so many hell-lance hits pummeling Invincible, while the superbattleship drifted onward, to all appearances living up to the name that Admiral Lagemann had given her.

But even the Kick superbattleship could not take that kind of punishment forever. Geary saw the dark ships opening their distance to Invincible and guessed what was coming. “One or more of the Kick power cores are going unstable due to damage.”

“They must have been built tough to have stood up to that barrage as long as they did,” she observed.

He glanced at her, saw the unusual intensity with which Desjani was watching events, and realized that she was trying to distract herself. “Are you all right?”

“No. I lost more friends today. I’ll get over it. Or I’ll see the docs for some happy pills. Or we’ll all die soon. Whichever way, it won’t be a problem.”

An explosion ripped a huge hole in Invincible, followed by another that tore another gaping wound in the alien warship. But the superbattleship lurched onward.

The dark battleships closed in again, firing so intensely that they had to pause to prevent their hell-lance batteries from overheating.

Sections began breaking off Invincible, then, as the dark battleships swiftly withdrew once more, three additional massive explosions tore the superbattleship apart.

Geary sighed, thinking of the loss those explosions represented. “There are a lot of large pieces. Maybe there will be something left that we can use or learn from.”

“Maybe,” Desjani said.

Over an hour ago, the dark ships had turned and begun accelerating after the Alliance warships again. “Here we go,” Desjani said.

Word had gotten around that the fleet was unlikely to survive the battle in this star system, as well as why the fleet had to stay and fight even if the opportunity to flee miraculously presented itself.

The officers, sailors, and Marines took the news as the senior captains had. They had long ago resigned themselves to this.

Lines formed outside the worship compartments as men and women took advantage of the time available to make their peace or offer prayers or beg for miracles.

Geary, brooding over their lack of options and half-asleep from fatigue, started back to awareness as Tanya Desjani returned to her seat on the bridge. “Were you saying hello to our ancestors?”

“I’ll probably be able to do that in person soon enough,” she replied. “No. I had some urgent requests to perform marriage services by people who figured they had better get it done fast if they ever wanted it done. I just rushed through six of them, without getting all the proper authorizations and approvals.”

“You could get in trouble for that when fleet headquarters finds out,” Geary commented sarcastically.

“I’ll risk it. I just made sure to ask each couple whether, should we somehow live another day after this, they would regret making this decision. They all said they wouldn’t. We’ll probably never know.” Desjani gave him a sidelong look. “One of the couples were Charban’s lieutenants.”

Geary jerked back to full attention yet again. “Lieutenant Iger and Lieutenant Jamenson?”

“Yeah. Someday there might have been the patter of the feet of little green-haired future intelligence officers.” Tanya gave him another look. “The green-hair thing is dominant, you know. Lieutenant Jamenson’s ancestors made sure of that, and I made sure that Lieutenant Iger was aware of it. It didn’t seem to faze him, though.”

“Thank you for not being from Eire,” Geary said, “not that it looks like you and I are likely to be doing any reproducing.”

This time her look held warning. “Hey, Admiral, we stay professional on this bridge until the end. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” He sat up. They had gone a light-hour outward, deliberately angling away from the hypernet gate to avoid tempting the dark ships to drop the block on it and leave this star system to implement the Armageddon Option before finishing off Geary’s fleet. The government facility was six hours’ travel time behind them. “The dark ships are two light-hours from us, in a stern chase. I should get some rest while I can.”

“Yes, sir, you should.” She smiled at him. “Sweet dreams.”

He had worried that he would be too tightly wound with fears of the continuation of the battle to be able to sleep and too overwhelmed by the losses the fleet had already suffered. But he must have been even more exhausted than he thought. Geary fell into a deep sleep within moments.

He was jolted awake by the loudest, most urgent call alert that his comm panel could produce. Groggy, Geary hit the accept control. “What?”

“That woman is still on the facility!” Desjani yelled.

He had to gather his thoughts to make sense of the words. “Rione? She’s—she’s on Mistral.”

“She is sending messages from the facility, Admiral!”

“What message?” Geary was still trying to grasp what he was hearing.

“I don’t know. It’s set so only you can open it.”

“Relay it to here and set it to play for you as well,” Geary ordered, a feeling of dread beginning to replace his earlier confusion.

He slapped the virtual command to open the message, waited impatiently for the second needed for the system to verify who he was, then saw Victoria Rione’s image appear before him. She was clearly still on the government facility, standing in the command center that Geary had seen earlier. The command center itself had a feeling of abandonment and hasty departure, except for Rione herself, and in the background a man lying in a fully reclined seat. The man appeared to be sleeping, his chest slowly rising and falling.

Rione’s face was drawn even tighter, the skin thin over bones, and she was gazing outward with eyes that held fear as well as a terrible resolve. “Admiral Geary, the first thing I must say is that you must not blame your people for my success at remaining here. The same sort of software that can make my presence appear to the fleet’s systems to be fully authorized can also make it appear to those systems that I am somewhere I am not. The systems on the assault transport told everyone on that ship that I was in my stateroom.”

She paused, as if a little short of breath. “I was right. That is the other important thing. I found the necessary codes for the hypernet gate. Not those to unblock it. That remains beyond my ability. But I was able to use official software, which I am not supposed to have, to reprogram the safe-collapse system on that gate. Its function has been reversed, and it will now ensure the maximum outburst of energy when the gate collapses, something on the order of point eight on the Schneider Nova Scale.”

Touching a control, Rione indicated a number that appeared. “I have just sent the collapse command to the gate, at exactly that time. You can calculate when it will reach the gate and when the resulting shock wave from the gate’s collapse will reach every portion of this star system. I remember what you did at Prime when facing such a threat, taking your fleet into the shadow of the star to protect it from the shock wave. You can do the same here. But the dark ships will not know the gate is collapsing until they see the collapse begin. They will not know the safe-collapse device has been subverted until the shock wave hits them.”

Even though this message had been sent hours ago, she seemed to be staring straight into his eyes. “I’ve learned a lot about space battles since meeting you, Admiral. I have learned enough to know that this is a battle you could only win at tremendous cost. You might even lose, with catastrophic results for the Alliance. So I have done the only thing that will make certain the dark ships are destroyed. It will hopefully also save your fleet. I confess to having developed a fondness for the men and women under your command.

“Do not waste your time trying to get me off this facility. I can read a maneuvering display well enough to know there is no chance of that in the time that you have left.

“I am not alone here. As you can see, my husband, Paol Benan, is here with me. He is fully sedated.” She swallowed before being able to speak again. “According to the records I found here, his treatment to reverse the damage caused by the mental block was delayed repeatedly for ‘security reviews,’ delayed until the damage to his mind was declared irreversible. Paol is now a danger to everyone, including himself, including me. He must remain fully sedated, a living death. They took my husband, Admiral. They denied him an honorable death. And the worst part is, I don’t believe they even cared what they were doing.”

Rione paused again, breathing deeply. “Finish the job, Admiral. Get your ships home. Get Mistral home. The information in the files, and what the people we found here can testify to, will bring to account those who through narrow-sightedness, greed, ignorance, fear, or their own desire for power nearly destroyed the Alliance. Others acted out of wishful thinking or willful ignorance, and while they may not deserve the same fate as others, they do need to answer for their decisions. Some have clean hands, as clean as any hands involved in this can be, and those records will ensure they are exonerated despite the attempts of the guilty to shift blame to them. It is past time the people of the Alliance stopped blaming the government for their ills and looked in the mirror to realize that the government is them.

“Save the Alliance, Admiral. As I told you the first time we met, that is what I am willing to die for. Now, that is my last request. You owe me that.”

Rione paused longer this time, struggling to speak. “Thank you for the services you have done me. Thank you for tolerating my presence, and listening to my advice, and for doing the best you could, and for still believing in the things the rest of us forgot were important. I will not pretend to be facing the certain end with calm resolution. I never claimed to be that sort of person. I am frightened. Once this call is ended, I will take a sedative, lie down with my husband, and when the blow strikes, neither of us will feel it, but we will go through that last door together, where I hope our ancestors will welcome me and forgive me for the things I have felt I must do.”

A flash of her old fire appeared in Rione’s eyes. “Perhaps I will finally earn a little respect from the men and women like those in your fleet who we politicians have for too long sent to their deaths with too little thought or foresight. After all, the people admire dead politicians almost as much as they detest living ones.

“Good-bye, Admiral Geary. Save the Alliance. May you and Captain Desjani survive to live long and happy lives.

“To the honor of our ancestors. Victoria Rione. Out.”

Geary drew in a shaky breath as her image vanished, then his mind shot into action. “Tanya, I’m on my way to the bridge. Start working the maneuvers and see if we can make it to the shadow of one of the stars with the time we have.”

He raced to the bridge and dropped into his command seat. Desjani was working furiously on her maneuvering display, her face rigid with anger. “We can just make it,” she snarled. “Taking into account the limits on propulsion from our most heavily damaged ships, we have a decent chance of getting behind Beta just before the shock wave hits. Damn her! She knew that now I will have to honor her memory!”

Geary quickly checked over Desjani’s work. “We head back in-system, on a vector apparently aimed at returning to the government facility—”

“Then as the dark ships close to intercept, we shift vector to aim for the shadow of Star Beta. But it is going to be close. Depending on how long the gate takes to collapse, we might get caught in the shock wave. We have no time to spare. But if we get there too fast, we’ll be sitting ducks for the dark ships.”

He hit his comm controls. “All units in First Fleet, this is Admiral Geary, immediate execute attached maneuvers. Any unit that believes propulsion damage may limit its ability to carry out these maneuvers contact me at once.”

Dauntless began pivoting, her main propulsion lighting off to push her onto a new vector heading back the way the fleet had come. The battle cruiser’s propulsion didn’t light off at full, instead matching the best effort that some of the most badly damaged ships could manage. “Can we transfer crews—” Geary began.

“It would take too long,” Desjani said. “We would have to limit acceleration even more for the shuttles to transfer crews off the most badly damaged ships so we could leave those ships behind. We’re better off trying to get everyone into the shadow of the star. Damn that woman!”

Geary sat back, trying to sort through his emotions. “She saved us. Maybe.”

“Why did I have to be saved by her?” Desjani shook her head angrily, blinking back tears. “She is braver than I thought. You could see how scared she is. But she went ahead with it.”

“Was she right about it being impossible to get to her?”

“Yes. Any ship we sent would be pulling alongside the government facility when the shock wave got there. Any attempt would be futile and suicidal.”

“Captain?” They looked back to see Lieutenant Castries staring at them. “What has happened?”

Geary sighed, realizing that he must tell everyone about the sudden shift in their fortunes. He tapped his comm controls. “All units in First Fleet, this is Admiral Geary. We have an unexpected chance at victory and survival. Former co-president of the Callas Republic, former Senator of the Alliance, former Emissary Victoria Rione stayed behind on the government facility and was able to break into the hypernet gate controls and order the gate to collapse with the force of point eight nova. We are proceeding at the best rate we can manage to shelter in the shadow of Star Beta so that we will avoid the shock wave that should destroy the dark ships in their entirety, but we will have to also avoid being caught and delayed by the dark ships along the way.” He had to take a breath himself before continuing. “Victoria Rione has no chance of survival. She cannot be rescued from the facility before the shock wave hits. She has sacrificed herself to ensure the destruction of the dark ships and the safety of the Alliance. If we live, it will be because of her. Honor her memory. Geary, out.”

He could hear, could feel, the hush that spread through Dauntless after his announcement.

A minute later, a frantic call came in from Mistral.

“Admiral,” Commander Young said, “our systems assured us she was aboard! We tried to get in just now and found the locks on her stateroom are sealed with overrides. I have crew members breaking in, but there were ongoing, confirmed status feeds from that compartment telling us that Senator Rione was there.”

“She told me that she hacked Mistral’s systems to show that,” Geary said. “There is no fault on your part, Commander.” He wondered if he should ever tell Commander Young of the fate that she had been saved from by Rione’s actions. “I suppose all of us ought to start double-checking more on what our systems tell us.”

“Commander Benan may be aboard. We are checking, sir.”

“He’s not aboard Mistral, either. They are together. You did everything that you should have, Commander.” Having reassured Young, Geary stared at his display for a few moments, not really seeing the information it showed, his mind filled with memories.

Desjani was gazing bleakly at her own display. “We get to spend the next several hours hoping we don’t get annihilated by the shock wave or the dark ships or both. There’s nothing else we can do.”

“It beats what we were looking forward to a half hour ago,” Geary said. “Tanya—”

“Admiral, with all due respect, I am not yet prepared at this time to discuss matters concerning her.”

“Understood.”

“Admiral.” General Charban, calling up from the comm compartment, appeared to be dazed. “I have informed the Dancers of what is happening, which took some very creative poetry. I think it is safe to say that they will remain close to us until the shock wave is past. You will recall that Senator Rione was embraced by one of the Dancers. That gave her some special status with them, and these Dancers… well, I don’t know if the word means the same thing to them, but they said that the pattern will grieve for her.”

“Tell the Dancers that we appreciate that,” Geary said.

“Am I correct, Admiral, in my understanding that our survival is not yet certain?”

“You are, General. We still have to get past the dark ships. If the gate collapses as fast as possible, we won’t be in the shadow of Beta in time. If it collapses more slowly, we’ll get there.”

“Then I will pray that the gate collapses with all due deliberation,” Charban said.