Steadfast

Eleven

Yokai did not prove to be as empty as hoped.

Geary had jumped there prepared for battle. The battle cruisers and half the destroyers arrived ten minutes before the light cruisers, the rest of the destroyers, and the clutter of refugee freighters. Nothing waited near the jump exit, though, except a few automated Alliance navigation buoys, which were continuing the same mechanically mandated roles they had fulfilled for decades. Amidst the quiet of the shut-down defenses elsewhere at Yokai, one object stood out as very much active.

“Syndic Hunter-Killer,” the combat watch-stander said. “Right next to the jump point for Batara.”

“A picket ship,” Duellos observed. “But whose picket ship?”

The jump exit for Batara was on the other side of the star system, nearly seven light-hours distant. “Let’s see what he does when he sees us,” Geary said. “Are there any indications that someone is trying to set up shop here?”

“There aren’t any signs that anyone has broken into any of the mothballed defense sites,” Duellos replied.

“Monitoring and security systems at some of the sites do report a few attempts at entry, Captain,” the operations watch reported.

“But no reports of actual entry?”

“No, sir. All of the sites are reporting their current status with no discrepancies, so nobody has gone in and shut down anything to try to hide their activities.”

Lieutenant Nadia “Night Witch” Popova, the pilot of the FAC loaded onto Inspire, was also on the bridge and pointed out a large orbiting facility near the edge of the star system, only a couple of light-minutes from where the HuK was loitering. “That’s where our squadron will be based. We’ll reactivate enough of the station to handle our needs and leave the rest dark.”

“You’ll be able to intercept anything coming in,” Geary said. “I wish your people were already there.”

“Me, too, Admiral. I wouldn’t mind having a HuK silhouette painted on the side of my warbird.”

“What will your squadron do if it’s something too big for them to handle?” Duellos asked.

Popova grinned. “Play dead and send off a courier drone to jump for Adriana with the bad news. The base had several of those drones for emergencies, and the colonel is pretty sure they were mothballed in place. While we’re passing through, Catnap is supposed to ping the base’s housekeeping systems to confirm the drones are still there.”

“Catnap?” Geary asked.

“Lieutenant Alvarez, sir.”

“She’s on Implacable,” Duellos said before turning a questioning eye on Night Witch. “Is there a reason why aerospace pilots use those nicknames so much, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Popova smiled wider. “Tradition, sir. And, it does drive the ground forces and fleet forces kind of crazy, sort of as a bonus.”

“Who is on Formidable?” Geary asked.

“Nightstalker, Admiral.”

I guess we’re lucky we got Night Witch. “Were you ever at Yokai before they shut things down?”

The smile faded into seriousness. “Yes, sir. Just a rotation for familiarity. It was busy back then. Kinda spooky now.”

“Let me know what, uh, Catnap finds out about the drones,” Geary directed. “Make sure both of the others know to be ready to launch in combat configuration the moment we arrive at Batara.”

Popova frowned toward Geary’s display. “It’s pretty quiet here, except that one HuK. That should be a good sign.”

Duellos shook his head. “Ah, youth and its optimism. Lieutenant, the Admiral and I look at the lack of freighter traffic here and wonder why there are no refugee ships passing through en route Adriana. The flow of refugee shipping appears to have been choked off. We don’t know why, so we are assuming it means something that will complicate our own mission. We also don’t know who that HuK is here to warn, but it is certain now that we will not have the advantage of surprise when we arrive at Batara.”

The pilot’s frown turned into concern. “Yes, sir. When we get to Batara, we’ll be ready for whatever is there, sir.”

I sure hope so, Geary thought as he nodded encouragingly to the pilot.

Colonel Kim appeared to be as cheerful as ever despite riding one of the refugee freighters. “There’s a little bit of restiveness, Admiral, but most of the refugees were kicked out of Batara, or fled the star system to save themselves or their families instead of leaving because they wanted to. You were right about that. Sitting in overcrowded, stinking freighters for months has cooled any enthusiasm they might have had for being in the Alliance, even if they didn’t think we were monsters to begin with. They seem to be happy to be going home now that we’re actually on the way.”

“They’re not worried about what the government at Batara might do to them?” Geary asked.

Kim grinned wider. “They got kicked out in small groups. They’re coming back in one big bunch, and from what I can tell, they don’t intend getting kicked around anymore. If you ask me, it’s the government at Batara that ought to be worried.”

“That government deserves to be worried,” Geary said, though he had been concerned enough about what might happen when they dropped off the refugees to have been running contingencies through his head for a while.

“Are we going to be doing any shooting?” Colonel Kim didn’t seem to be worried or excited at the prospect, just curious.

“I’m going to try to avoid that,” Geary replied. “How are your soldiers doing?”

“No problems there, Admiral, except the living conditions.”

Geary smiled at the image of Kim seated opposite him in his stateroom. “Freighters don’t offer luxury sleeping accommodations, I’m afraid.”

“It’s not that, Admiral. Ground forces don’t expect opulent living conditions like the aerospace forces do,” Kim explained with another grin. “It’s the smell. Too many people on these freighters for too long. The people stink, the air stinks because life support can’t clear it all out, and, of course, the field rations always smell awful. I expect the refugees will be as happy to get some good showers as my soldiers will be to get the refugees off-loaded.”

“Are there any indications we’ll have trouble doing the off-load at Batara?” Geary asked. “I want to be ready if any of the refugees decide they don’t want to confront their government after all.”

“No, sir. No indications.” Kim looked around theatrically to ensure she wasn’t being overheard. “I’ve been talking to those two leaders on this freighter. That Araya woman won’t lighten up at all. She keeps acting like she expects me to cut her throat during the next sleep period. But Fred Naxos is all right.”

“Fred?”

“Federico, but he prefers Fred,” Kim explained. “You aren’t going to believe this, Admiral, but the refugees are quiet in part because there’s a big rumor spreading among them that Black Jack is on their side.”

“What?” He had thought he was beyond being surprised by what people expected of Black Jack, but this one had blindsided him. “Syndics usually think of Black Jack as some sort of demon.”

“But these guys revolted against what they call the Syndicate. And, before they left Batara, word had been getting to them about your blowing away the old Syndic leadership and defending some rebellious star system way off on the backside of nowhere from the Syndics and aliens.”

“Actually,” Geary said, “the old Syndic leadership was killed by their own forces. I suppose I did cause that to happen. The star system they’ve heard about must be Midway.”

“Yes, sir! Midway. That’s what they said.” Kim grinned conspiratorially this time. “So there’s this rumor going around among the refugees that Black Jack fights Syndics, but he’s a champion of the people. And the refugees figure they’re not Syndics, anymore, they’re the people, and Black Jack is taking them back home, so maybe he’s their hero, too.”

Great. Another group of people expecting me to save the day. “So, they’re coming around to not seeing the Alliance as enemies?”

“Oh, no, Admiral. They still think the Alliance is where ogres live. But any of us who are working for Black Jack are good ogres. Sort of.” Kim looked thoughtful. “It’s a start, though. The idea that the other guy isn’t a monster anymore. It would be nice to be able to trade through Batara again, like in the old days.”

“The old days?” Geary asked.

“Yes, sir. My family has been in trade for a while. We used to do a lot of business into and through Batara, before the Syndics took it over; and then the war came. But we remember before then.” She paused, a variety of expressions flickering over her face. “I wonder if anybody in Batara remembers. We’ve still got our records from those days, the business contacts and all.”

“I imagine that the Syndicate Worlds did a number on the businesses that were there before the takeover, and it’s been more than a century since then. We’ll find out what’s survived.” And what survives once we’re done. “Ask Naxos and Araya about the HuK. I’d be interested in knowing what their impressions are as to who it belongs to.”

The mysterious HuK jumped from Yokai toward Batara ten hours after Geary’s task force had arrived, long enough to have seen all of the warships and freighters and to have confirmed that they were heading for the same jump point.

“We were, that is the government at Batara was, trying to get a damaged HuK working,” Araya had reluctantly admitted. “That might be it. It was all we had in the way of real mobile forces. But I don’t know why they would have sent it here instead of positioning it near the jump point where raids from Yael come in.”

Geary gazed at the stumpy vector line on his display that reflected the relatively low velocity of his ships and tried not to chafe inwardly too much over the time it would take to get to the jump point and head for the place that would have the answers. It was exasperating having to match the velocity of the warships to the freighters. The merchant ships could push themselves to higher velocities, of course. They just had to keep accelerating. But it would take much longer than with warships—and burn more fuel cells—and then it would take just as long and burn just as much fuel for the clumsy freighters to reduce their velocity again.

The Alliance battle cruisers, surrounded by two squadrons of destroyers, popped out of jump space and into Batara Star System. Geary’s display had shown the last-known status of the Syndic defenses at Batara, dating to just less than a year ago, but now he had to shake out of his head the mental grogginess caused by exiting jump and wait while the sensors on the Alliance warships tried to see what was still here and was still working.

The first thing he was aware of was that no alarms were sounding and no weapons were being fired by automated fire-control systems on the Alliance warships. Whatever might await them here, it wasn’t waiting very close to the jump exit.

In fact, as his head cleared, he saw that there were no threats at all anywhere near them.

The jump point from Yokai was a bit above the plane in which the planets of Batara orbited, and nearly four light-hours from the star. Geary had a stronger-than-usual sense that the Alliance battle cruisers had a godlike vantage of the entire star system, looking down and across the vast distances between worlds as if occupying divine box seats.

Like other front-line star systems, Batara had been heavily battered during the decades of war. But the Syndics had followed the same perverse logic as the Alliance in rebuilding and reinforcing it time and again. Marginal star systems, those with barely any population like Yokai, could be turned into purely military enclaves. But any star system with a significant population, cities, and industries had to be maintained as much as possible no matter how many times the enemy hit it and no matter how much it cost to sustain the civilian population there. Anything less would mark yielding to the enemy, would be admitting defeat, and the century-long war had often been more about refusing to admit defeat than it had been about any hope of victory.

Geary could see the small cities on the main inhabited world at Batara, all of them characterized by roughly circular patches of similar buildings that marked reconstruction where orbital bombardments had hit, the patches often overlapping. In a few places, such battered cities occupied areas near the heavily cratered ruins of a former city too badly damaged to rebuild on its original site. Defenses sat in craters where generations of bombardments had knocked out generations of rebuilt weaponry and sensors in an apparently endless cycle. The “empty” spaces between worlds were filled with fields of debris, the remnants of warships from both sides, some of the debris widely dispersed over many years and other clusters fairly compact, marking the deaths of ships and their crews within the last few years. It was a depressing sight, but also an astounding sight. Humans could choose to abandon star systems, but if someone tried to force them to leave, then by all the grace of the living stars and all the blessings of their ancestors they would plant their feet and stay.

“Two light cruisers and four HuKs,” the operations watch reported. “All standard Syndic construction and all orbiting near the primary inhabited planet. Most of the fixed defenses appear to be nonoperational.”

Duellos cast a suspicious eye on Geary. “You told me that you expected those defenses to be out of commission. Was it a guess based on likely Syndic budget problems?”

“No,” Geary replied. “If the defenses had remained active, the people at Batara wouldn’t have had to worry about raids from Tiyannak or Yael. I knew something must have taken out most of the active defenses. But the deep shelters will still be there, meaning Batara’s population can ride out a lot of raids even if they can’t stop them.”

“Those raiders,” Duellos observed, with a gesture toward the light cruisers and HuKs, “don’t appear to be raiding. They’re close enough to that planet to be engaged by some of the defenses that still exist, but they’re not shooting, and neither are the defenses. Are you looking for something?” he asked Geary.

“Yes. I’m looking for that HuK that was performing picket duty at Yokai and jumped here ahead of us. Where is he?”

“He must be one of the HuKs in that group near the primary world. He had plenty of time to join them before we arrived.”

A reasonable assumption, Geary thought. But, still, an assumption. He parked a mental worry chit on the question of where that HuK was as more information about Batara came in.

“Captain,” the operations watch-stander said, “we’re spotting significant crowd activity in the cities that are visible to us. The population is in the streets, not sheltering against bombardment.”

“Crowd activity?” Geary asked. “How full are the streets?”

“Packed, Admiral.”

“Lieutenant Barber,” Duellos ordered, “we need to know what’s going on here.”

“We’re analyzing all the communications and other traffic we can pick up,” Barber said. “There’s a lot for a star system with a population this size. The official newscasts say nothing is happening.”

“But we all know what official news amounts to, don’t we, Lieutenant?” Duellos turned back to Geary. “What are you going to tell them?”

“Batara?” Geary said. “Nothing, yet. We’ll wait here until the refugee ships show up, then all proceed in-system toward that inhabited world. I’ll wait to send any messages to anyone until we have a better idea of what’s happening.”

A flurry of updates on the displays marked the arrival of the refugee ships and their escorts, scores of ships suddenly there in space near the battle cruisers. A thought struck Geary, and he tapped another control. “Colonel Kim, give the refugee leaders Naxos and Araya listening access to the comms on that freighter and see what they think the situation is based on what they hear and who is saying it.” It was annoying not having Lieutenant Iger and his intel team available to handle all this, but he could improvise.

“Let’s get going,” Geary said. “Immediate execute, all units turn starboard one eight degrees, down zero seven degrees, maintain point zero five light speed.”

Since the light cruisers and HuKs were near the primary inhabited world, and that world was swinging in orbit on the far side of the star relative to Geary’s ships, it would be a bit over four hours before the light from here reached them and they learned that the Alliance warships had arrived. It gave him some time to figure out what the situation was in Batara.

It only took about half an hour before Colonel Kim called back. “The refugee leader Araya is certain from the transmissions we’re picking up that what she calls the damned cowardly greedy revolution-betraying traitors-to-the-people who have been running Batara have sold out to Tiyannak.”

“Sold out? They’ve allied with Tiyannak?”

Colonel Kim shrugged. “Even Araya isn’t sure what their status is. Ally. Vassal. Slave. She and Naxos both say if they didn’t know exactly whom to pay attention to in all the transmissions out there, they wouldn’t know what was going on. There are a lot of broadcasts where even they can’t figure out who’s sending them and what side they’re on.”

“You’re certain of that?” Geary demanded. “Araya and Naxos thought the transmissions we’re picking up are unusual for Batara?”

“Pretty certain, yes, Admiral. While she was listening to them, Araya kept saying stuff like what the hell? and what is this? She kept asking Naxos who different people and different organizations were, and he spent a lot of time shaking his head.”

“Thank you, Colonel.” Geary turned to Duellos as Kim’s image vanished. “How is Lieutenant Barber doing on his analysis of the situation?”

Duellos grimaced. “I checked with him while you were talking to Colonel Kim. Barber is doing his best, but he says it’s very complex. He’s a good, smart officer, Admiral. He’ll figure it out.”

“If he doesn’t, it won’t be because he isn’t smart.” Geary pointed to where the primary inhabited world showed on his display. “The refugee leaders say there are a lot of transmissions out there that they have trouble identifying, transmissions that confuse the situation and make it very hard to understand exactly what the status of Batara is.”

“Confuse?” Duellos repeated, his jaw tightening. “The HuK that told them we were coming.”

“And gave them plenty of time to fill space before we got here with misleading, confusing, and false transmissions in order to keep us uncertain about who is in charge at Batara and what they are doing.”

Duellos gazed narrowly at his own display. “To what purpose? Those tricks will delay our understanding of the situation, but they won’t stop us. They must mean to keep us guessing for a while. What advantage will that gain them?”

“Good question.” Geary chewed his lip as he studied the situation. “They knew we had the refugee ships with us. Even a Syndic HuK has good enough sensors to ID those as old Syndic-make merchant ships at seven light-hours distance. Having the refugee ships with us meant we would head for that planet, but the only significant threat to us there are those light cruisers and HuKs, and we should be able to handle them easily.”

“We’ve been keeping a close eye on them,” Duellos said.

“I know you’ve—” Geary stopped, frowning. “We’re watching them.”

“Yes.”

“Focused on them.”

Duellos shook his head quickly. “We are watching for any other threats, Admiral. There’s nothing else out there.”

“There’s nothing else we see,” Geary replied. “If they want to delay our understanding of the situation, that means they have something that requires time to develop.” He paused, eyeing his display, then tapped a command for it to project future movements at a greatly accelerated rate. Ships spun in orbit or raced along vectors, planets rocketed around the star—

Geary almost flinched as he saw something big coming toward the track his ships would be following, then recognized the object swinging toward that track as the largest of the gas giant worlds in Batara.

He froze his display, then tapped another command. “Ten light-minutes.”

Duellos raised an eyebrow, leaning over to check what Geary was doing. “That gas giant? Yes,” he confirmed, “its closest point of approach to our ships as they proceed, and it orbits, will be ten light-minutes distant.” Duellos paused to think, tapping one finger against his lips as he considered this information. “Not awfully close in space terms, but not a long distance, either.”

Geary nodded almost absentmindedly, his thoughts moving ahead as he gazed at the representation of the gas giant. It was fairly gorgeous as planets went, bands of colors rioting across the heavy clouds cloaking it and a single, bright ring marking the ancient fates of one or more moons which must have shattered into fragments long ago. In terms of size, as planets went, it was indeed a giant.

Ten light-minutes. Roughly one hundred eighty million kilometers. A very long distance in planetary terms.

But when he had to worry about a large number of merchant ships that could not run well or fight at all, ten light-minutes might be far too small a distance.

“We’re in space. We’re assuming we can see any threats. But what if,” he asked Duellos, “something was hiding behind that gas giant, maneuvering to stay concealed until it could pop out when it was close enough that the freighters couldn’t get away?”

Duellos nodded, his eyes also on the gas giant. “An ambush from that distance wouldn’t work against warships, but against freighters is a much different matter. We’d also have trouble spotting small, stealthy satellites from this far away under normal circumstances, but that ring offers perfect secondary concealment. They could have a score of small satellites in orbit inside the ring, watching us and relaying their observations to each other by tight beams around the curve of the planet.” He looked at Geary. “That’s just a guess, though. We don’t have any proof.”

“We can get proof.” He pondered his display a moment longer, then called the light cruiser Spur.

Lieutenant Commander Pajari, captain of Spur and commander of the light cruiser squadron, answered less than a minute later. “Yes, Admiral.”

“Which one of the light cruisers has the most reliable propulsion and maneuvering?” Geary asked. He should have been able to get that data from the fleet’s readiness reports, but since headquarters had ordered those to display exaggerated readiness, he could no longer trust the information in them.

Pajari didn’t hesitate. “Fleche, sir. Her propulsion systems failed not long after we returned to Varandal last time, so she was moved up in priority for replacement of the equipment. Her other systems are as old as she is, for the most part, but propulsion and maneuvering are new and solid.”

“Fleche?” Tanya had served on an earlier Fleche, which had been destroyed. There might have been a half dozen other Fleches built and lost in the intervening years. This Fleche with the “old” equipment had been launched barely two years ago, her systems designed to last for the ship’s life expectancy in combat, which had been less than a year. “Very well,” Geary said. “You are to detach Fleche for a reconnaissance mission.” Geary indicated the gas giant on his display. “We need to find out, as soon as we can, whether anything is hiding behind that planet. I want Fleche to go out there, pop over the top, swing wide to take a good look, and rejoin the formation.”

“Yes, sir. Fleche is to go out, reconnoiter the far side of the gas giant by passing over its north pole, then rejoin the formation,” Pajari repeated.

“Fleche is not to engage anything it spots,” Geary emphasized. “If there is something there, it’s probably a lot more than a light cruiser can handle. She is to take a look and get back here, utilizing whatever acceleration is necessary to ensure her safe return to formation.”

“Yes, sir. I will ensure that Fleche’s commanding officer receives those orders word for word.”

Only a couple of minutes later, Geary watched Fleche peel away from the formation and tear off toward an intercept with the gas giant as it lumbered along its own orbit. He could almost feel the eagerness with which the light cruiser embarked on the mission, a welcome diversion from plodding along with the refugee ships.

“If there is something there,” Duellos said, “Fleche won’t buy us much warning. It looks like she’ll get her look at the back side of that planet when it’s about fifteen light-minutes from our track.”

“That’s better than ten light-minutes.”

“True.” Duellos had turned somber as he watched the light cruiser arc away from the other Alliance warships. “This is one of those times when you should be grateful that I’m not Tanya.”

“I’m often grateful that you’re not Tanya and that she’s not you,” Geary said. “No offense. Why in particular this time?”

“She’s very superstitious about light cruisers bearing the name Fleche.” Duellos shook his head, avoiding looking at Geary. “Has she ever told you what she endured in the battle where her Fleche was destroyed?”

“No. She did finally say that I could read her citation for the Alliance Fleet Cross, but she still absolutely refuses to talk about it.” Except once, and Tanya had mostly focused on what had happened afterwards.

Duellos relapsed into silence, but Geary guessed that he was also worried about using a ship named Fleche for this mission. Tanya wasn’t the only superstitious sailor in the fleet. Something about being a sailor, about being out on the vastness of planetary seas or the infinite immensity of space, encouraged the sense of being surrounded by unseen forces that could help or hinder, save or destroy, depending on whether they were appeased or provoked. It was something older and vaster than any religion, and he had felt it often enough himself.

However, there wasn’t a lot he could do in the way of appeasing or provoking the unseen while waiting for Fleche to reach the gas giant. Even with the light cruiser ramping her velocity up a little past point two light speed, it would still be close to three hours before the warship intercepted the gas giant in its orbit.

But he could move his ships around a bit, positioning the battle cruisers so that they were ahead of and to one side of the gaggle of refugee ships, best positioned if something dangerous did lurk behind that gas giant. And he could plan for when they reached the inhabited world, talking with both Colonel Voston and Colonel Kim about the security that would be needed, and with the three FAC pilots about how they would provide protection for the shuttles bringing down the refugees to the surface.

Night Witch, Catnap, and Nightstalker were all attentive as he talked to them, eager to reach the planet and fulfill their mission. Geary had looked up the statistics on FACs, learning that in an offensive combat situation their odds of survival were extremely small, but none of the pilots showed any signs of being fazed by that. They were, after all, pilots, just as the crews of Geary’s ships were sailors.

When all of those preparations were done, and Fleche was still an hour from reaching the gas giant, Geary talked to the refugee leaders Araya and Naxos again. “What are you planning to do once we drop off you and the others?” he asked.

Araya gave him her scornful look. “Are you still pretending to care?”

“Actually, I do care,” Geary replied. “You’ll have a pretty large mass of people with you, most or all of whom think like you do. There are already a lot of people in the streets on that planet.”

Naxos smiled, his eyes on the deck. “The people on Batara aren’t happy. I, for one, will not be exiled again. I will walk into the Hall of the People and kick out the new CEOs who rule there.”

“You’ll have help,” Araya said. “Lots of it. If we can get the ground forces and the security forces, some of them anyway, to back us, we can do it.” Her face lit with dangerous enthusiasm. “And then those scum will find themselves in the labor camps!”

Geary looked at Naxos and Araya. “Do you both hate the Syndic CEOs who used to rule here?”

Both nodded immediately. “They just cared about themselves,” Naxos grumbled, head still lowered.

“There was a revolt in the Midway Star System, too. After they kicked out the CEOs, they shut down the labor camps. Their leaders said there would never again be labor camps anywhere they controlled.”

“How are we supposed to punish the enemies of the people?” Araya demanded.

“Is that the question you should be asking? How to keep doing things the way the CEOs did? Or should you be wondering why you want to act like the people you hate?”

Naxos raised his head and held it up this time, looking intently at Geary. “I said that. Many times. Why change leaders if we’re going to be the same as the old leaders?”

“I can’t make you do things differently,” Geary said. “But I think you’re right to be asking yourself that question.”

“What guarantee would we have that doing things differently would be the same as doing things better?” Naxos asked.

“None. It’s not enough to be different. And there will be lots of disagreement on what is better and what is worse or the same.” Geary paused, remembering his own recent experiences. “But as long as you’re talking, as long as people can change things they don’t like, as long as you aren’t refusing to listen to other people, then you’ll have a chance of doing things better.”

“Do you listen to other people?” Araya asked in acidic tones.

“All the time,” Geary said. “Other people act as a mirror of sorts, second opinions on whether I’m doing the right thing, whether my preconceptions and assumptions are justified, and whether there are better answers than I’ve come up with so far. In combat, I often have to act quickly, but even then I listen when someone suggests alternatives. I don’t have to agree with them, I don’t have to do what they want, but I listen.”

“I had a few good supervisors,” Naxos said, looking at Araya this time. “They listened when I suggested things.”

She flushed slightly, mouth tight, then nodded. “Yes. As a sub-executive, I tried to listen to the workers, including you. I prided myself on that. Did I stop listening?”

“You’re listening now,” Naxos pointed out.

“Ha! You’re a very insubordinate worker, aren’t you?” She addressed Geary again. “We can do more listening, and convincing and planning, if we are allowed to talk to those on the other ships.”

“I’ll tell Colonel Kim to give you access to comms.”

“You’re going to trust us?” Araya didn’t bother hiding her skepticism.

“If you’re going to create trouble, if you’re going to organize a new dictatorship to replace the current one, I’d rather know now,” Geary said. “And, as I’m sure you already expected, those comms will be monitored. Given the potential for riots on the ships, I have no alternative.”

“Why tell us that?”

“Because, at this point, you’re not my enemies, and I’d like to keep it that way. The Alliance already has enough problems and enough enemies.”

Araya and Naxos stared at Geary for several seconds. “How could we ever be anything but enemies?” Araya finally asked.

“Batara used to be on friendly terms with the Alliance, before the Syndics took it over,” Geary said. “If there are any records left in Batara that the Syndics didn’t destroy or alter to fit their preferred version of history, you can look it up.”

She shook her head. “That’s a very big if. The Syndicate tried to destroy all hard copy, so they could easily alter all of the digital histories every time the official version changed.”

Something suddenly became clear. “I was talking to someone else, a former citizen of the Syndicate Worlds like you, and they used the word ‘history’ as if it was interchangeable with ‘lies.’ I didn’t understand that.”

Araya shrugged. “We call what’s real hard copy. History is lies, and hard copy can be lies, but you can’t change hard copy once it has been printed. No undetectable updates, no invisible revisions, no additions you can’t spot. Hard copy is what it is. My friend here”—she gestured toward Naxos—“thinks that you are hard copy, Admiral. I hope he is right.”

By then enough time had elapsed for Geary to return to the bridge of Inspire and wait. The two light cruisers and four HuKs had not left their orbits near the inhabited world, and aside from a few small craft operating near orbital installations, nothing else human could be seen moving in the star system except the Alliance warships and the refugee ships they were escorting.

Duellos had not left the bridge and now shook his head. “I wondered if you were just being extra cautious, but the lack of activity is suspicious. They knew we were coming, and those ships orbiting near the main planet have seen us and had time to react yet haven’t done anything.”

“I ordered Fleche to be careful.”

Shaking his head again, Duellos spoke in a low voice. “This fleet spent decades considering careful and cowardice to be two sides of the same coin. Aggressive action in any circumstance is almost engraved on their DNA. Fleche is less than two light-minutes from intercepting the planet, about seventeen minutes’ travel time if she maintains her current velocity. I would strongly advise reminding her of your orders.”

This seemed like another good time to not just listen but also accept the advice. Geary touched his comm controls. “Fleche, this is Admiral Geary. Maintain caution while conducting your mission. There is a possibility of a serious threat hiding behind that gas giant. Check out the back side, then return to the formation. Geary, out.”

The message should arrive a couple of minutes before Fleche and the gas giant reached each other as the warship zoomed in from the outer star system and the planet swung along its orbit.

Fleche was fifteen light-minutes from Inspire when the light cruiser swooped over the northern pole of the gas giant and got its first look at the side hidden from view of the fleet. Geary watched intently as the images from Fleche appeared on his display. Everything he was seeing had happened fifteen minutes ago.

Fleche’s combat systems sounded alerts as a HuK appeared around the curve of the planet. The HuK had been rising at a slow rate, heading toward the path that Fleche was taking, a dead giveaway that the HuK knew Fleche was coming.

The HuK spun about and accelerated downward, skimming the upper atmosphere of the gas giant as it fled.

Geary watched, appalled, as Fleche rolled, turned, and dove after the HuK in full pursuit. He felt a numbness inside and realized his hand was quivering above the comm controls, wanting to send the commands to the Alliance light cruiser to follow her orders, to finish searching the back side of the gas giant, and to return safely to the rest of the Alliance warships.

But this had all happened fifteen minutes ago. Any order he sent would take fifteen minutes to arrive, and he knew with a sick certainty that would be too late.

As Duellos had reminded him, he hadn’t been in command of this fleet that long. He had been in charge a tiny fraction of the time since the war began, a war whose destructive and mindless path had favored ever-more-aggressive and mindless tactics as trained tacticians died en masse and new commanders sought to make up for lack of training and experience with a narrow focus on what they saw as courage and honor, and on a willingness to die rather than retreat.

Geary had done a lot to change those attitudes. But he could not in a short time eradicate the false lessons created by a century of stubborn bloodletting and pursuit of personal glory. The fact that such attitudes were partly justified by claims that they embodied the true spirit of Black Jack, of him, had only made it harder.

Now he watched Fleche in hot pursuit and waited for what he was certain would come.

Two Syndic-design heavy cruisers appeared around the lower curve of the gas giant, bracketing Fleche and on top of her too fast for the light cruiser to react. The heavy cruisers were too close, the moment of engagement too fleeting, for missiles to be employed, but the two enemy ships each hurled out a volley of hell-lance particle beams and the metal ball bearings known as grapeshot. The fire lashed Fleche’s shields, collapsing them, some of the impacts going on to tear holes in the lightly armored Alliance warship.

Geary could see the damage reports as they appeared on his display, showing that Fleche had suffered serious hits to her maneuvering systems as well as her weapons.

He saw the helm orders appear as Fleche tried to alter her vector.

Ten seconds after the heavy cruisers had flailed Fleche, the Alliance light cruiser caught sight of a massive shape like that of a squat shark rising around the curve of the gas giant. At the velocity the light cruiser was moving, there wasn’t even time for the crew to react before they were within range of the battleship’s weapons.

Two and a half minutes after diving in all-out pursuit of the HuK, Fleche disintegrated under the hammerblows of the battleship’s weapons. None of the light cruiser’s escape pods left the ship. None of the crew had time to reach them and launch them.

The data feed cut off as the light cruiser was blown apart.

Fleche, along with her entire crew, had died fifteen minutes ago.

Geary gradually became aware that the bridge of Inspire was totally silent.

The quiet was finally broken by a single word as a young officer spoke plaintively. “Why?”

“Why?” Geary repeated, wondering why his voice sounded so soft yet could be heard so clearly on the bridge. “Because the commanding officer of Fleche forgot that it was not about him. He forgot that it was not about glory. He forgot his orders, he forgot his responsibilities, he forgot his training and his duty. Because of that, he wasted the lives of his crew. Don’t ever do any of those things.”

Geary took a deep breath, straightened in his seat, then spoke in a firm voice. “We’ve got at least two heavy cruisers and a battleship that must have already popped out from behind that gas giant and will be seen by us at any moment! Do your duties, fight smart as well as bravely, and Fleche is the only ship we will lose today!”

It took them another fifteen minutes to see that the battleship, accompanied by two heavy cruisers and four HuKs, had risen over the top of the gas giant and begun accelerating toward an intercept with the mass of refugee ships.

“We threw off their timing,” Geary said to Duellos. “Fleche accomplished that much. In another hour and a half, we should see those light cruisers and HuKs near the inhabited planet coming toward us, too.”

Duellos’s eyes were searching his display. “Didn’t the refugees say that Tiyannak had four light cruisers?”

“At least four.”

“The other two could be hiding behind this planet,” Duellos said, pointing to a cold, barren world the size of one and a half Earths but lacking much in the way of atmosphere or water. It orbited thirty light-minutes from the star and would cross the path of the Alliance and refugee ships a few hours before they reached that part of space. “Everything else that someone could hide behind is too badly positioned in their orbits.”

“I’ll need to leave the light cruisers and destroyers to screen the refugee ships, while I take the battle cruisers against that battleship flotilla,” Geary said.

“That’s probably your best option,” Duellos agreed. “Given enough time, my battle cruisers can probably wear down that battleship. But we don’t have enough time. How are we going to stop the battleship before it reaches some of the refugee ships, causing them to scatter and become easy prey?”

“I’ll think of something.”