Steadfast

Six

“Is there a reason you’ve been routing these lawsuit notifications to me?” Rione asked, both looking and sounding annoyed.

Geary rubbed his eyes before looking back at his stateroom comm panel and answering her. “What lawsuit notifications?”

“At last count, one thousand, three hundred and twelve.”

“Lawsuits? From who? About what?”

“Let’s see.” Rione pretended to study a screen in her own stateroom. “Third and fourth cousins of some of the criminals who died on Europa alleging wrongful death, property-damage claims, violation of ecological regulations—”

“Ecological regulations?”

“We left litter on Europa,” she explained. “Um… violation of medical quarantine, those brought on behalf of the entire population of Sol Star System, unlawful confiscation of personal weapons, violation of castle doctrine—”

“What?”

“It’s some law about being able to defend your home. Assorted lawyers are claiming that the stealth craft was the home in question and la-di-da.” Rione gave him a flat look. “It appears that a substantial fraction of the population of Sol Star System are lawyers, and it appears that many of them see the Alliance as a cash cow for lawsuits over our actions to recover our two officers and a few other events. You haven’t been forwarding these to me?”

“No,” Geary said. “I hadn’t seen them.” Which told him exactly who had been forwarding those messages to Rione. Tanya must have gotten quite a kick out of doing that. “But I guess you or the senators are the most appropriate recipients.”

“Given the lack of an Alliance embassy or interests section in this star system, I suppose we are.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

She pondered the question. “I’ll need to get agreement from our three senators on this—”

“Hell.”

Rione smiled. “It shouldn’t be that hard in this case. I think all three will agree that sovereign immunity doctrine applies, and therefore I should simply forward all of these notifications back to Sol Star System authorities to deal with. In a few centuries or so, the bureaucracy here will have finished deciding how to handle them, then everyone’s descendants can worry about it.”

“That sounds like a good solution,” Geary said. “What with the attempts against us, the kidnapping of our lieutenants, and now these lawsuits, I’m beginning to understand why the Alliance doesn’t send official representatives to Sol very often.”

She nodded. “Sol Star System is heavily infested with lawyers. If that’s not grounds for a quarantine, what is?”

“Have you heard anything more from any of your friends in this star system?”

“All that I have heard so far is that whatever outcomes occur as a result of our visit and our actions will take a long time to shake out. We don’t fall into the routine or established narrative here, so most of the population has no knee-jerk reaction to fall back on. They will debate and discuss for a long time rather than rush to judgment.”

“Except for the lawyers,” Geary pointed out.

“Well, naturally. That’s about money. I understand that you received a message from Sol as well.”

Of course, Rione would have known that. “Nothing for you to worry about. I asked a question before we left the first spot we visited on Old Earth, and the answer was sent to me.”

“The abandoned town?” Rione asked. “In Kansas? What did you ask about it?”

“One of our escorts said the area was finally recovering from all the blows it had received at the hands of man and nature, and the town might live again. I asked her later if that was true, if there were any plans to rebuild there.”

“Why did you care? We’ve seen entire star systems that have been abandoned by humans, perhaps forever.”

“I don’t know why it mattered to me,” Geary admitted. “But I suddenly felt the need to know the answer, and, as I eventually learned, it was yes. Some people have already begun plans to move back there and reconstruct the old town. They’re descendants of those who once lived there, and they want to honor their ancestors by making that town live again now that crops will once again grow there.”

“It was in pretty bad shape,” Rione observed.

“They’ll rebuild. They’re planning on reconstructing the old courthouse by hand, just like their ancestors did.”

“Interesting symbology,” Rione murmured. “Literally rebuilding the past. Refusing to accept a negative outcome and forging a new one. It’s a pity we couldn’t rebuild Europa.”

“Why did you bring up Europa?” It was only after speaking that he realized how harsh his voice had sounded, how tension had filled his brain with an angry red haze that refused to focus on any particular image.

She looked at him, her expression displaying a hint of sadness. “While that operation was taking place on the surface of Europa, most of the people on the bridge of this ship were watching what the Marines were doing. I was watching you.”

“And?” He still sounded angry, still felt that hot tension inside, but he wasn’t sure why.

“A year ago, I don’t think you could have done it. Everything we did on Europa was necessary. And most of it was also distasteful at best and terrible at the worst.”

He looked down, avoiding her eyes, focusing on his hands, which had clenched into fists. “We didn’t have any choice.” As he said the words, Geary knew they were defensive, as if he was trying to convince her rather than stating a truth.

“I know that. But I believe that a year ago, you still couldn’t have forced yourself to give those orders, to allow those actions. You have learned to deal with things you would have once found too horrible to contemplate.”

Geary took a deep breath, his eyes still locked on his impotent fists. Was that what made him angry? Or afraid? “Just like you. And Tanya. And everyone else alive today.”

“Not just like us.” He had expected some return anger from her, but just heard the same sadness. He looked up again, watching Rione closely as she kept speaking. “You haven’t learned to live with it. Oh, we take our meds and other treatments to keep going, but we accept that as part of life. The actions and the treatments are necessary. To you, the actions are still wrong even while you recognize the necessity at times. That’s why I watched you, Admiral, instead of watching the Marines. I wanted to see if what the Marines had to do still hit you hard. And it did.”

“That was important to you?” Geary asked.

“Yes. I needed to know that, if you had been in the place of that Marine, you could not have pulled the trigger to kill that hostage-taker. The Marine could do it, I could have done it, anyone else on this ship probably could have done it. But not you. And that is very important, Admiral. You are still closer to our ancestors than you are to us. Don’t let that torture you. Embrace it. I didn’t understand it at all when I first met you, but now I think it is very important, though I’m not certain what its eventual impact will be. When is the last time you talked to Senator Suva?” she asked in an abrupt change of topic.

“Probably at the meeting where they voted to approve the rescue operation on Europa,” Geary said. He didn’t call her on the sudden shift in the conversation, glad to be leaving Europa behind in any way that he could.

“She knows you talked to Costa and that you talked to Sakai. You should seek her out.”

“Am I supposed to talk to her about anything in particular?” Geary asked.

Rione shrugged. “How much you look forward to continuing to serve the Alliance, how much fun we had at Sol, whatever. Just speaking to Suva will reassure her that you aren’t plotting with Costa and Sakai behind her back, and maybe she will spill a little more information like Costa did to you.”

Senator Suva was in her stateroom. She invited Geary inside politely enough but stayed seated and didn’t offer him a seat. “Yes, Admiral?”

“I wanted to ask if you were all right,” Geary said. “You haven’t been out among the crew since we left Europa.”

“You keep track of my movements, Admiral?” Suva’s voice stayed low, but an edge of steel crept into it.

“Rarely,” Geary said. “But it’s my job to be aware of your general activities as well as your health. You’ve made a habit of walking through the ship once a day to talk to members of the crew. But you haven’t done that since Europa.”

“How nice of you to be concerned.” Suva looked away, her eyes hooded. “With all that we ask of the men and women in the Alliance military, it’s a small thing for me to meet some of them and ask how they are, how their families are doing, whether they need anything.”

“You may think it’s a small thing,” Geary said, “but it has impressed some of them. They believe that Alliance politicians are all alike, and that those politicians don’t care about the fates of men and women like them. It doesn’t hurt at all for them to learn that politicians, like other people, can’t be categorized so simply. But the crew has noticed that you stopped doing your meet and greets since Europa.”

As the silence lengthened, he wondered if Senator Suva was going to reply. She looked down, twisting a small loop of wooden beads between her fingers. Geary recognized it as similar to the souvenirs many of Dauntless’s crew members had picked up on Old Earth.

Finally, she grimaced, her gaze still fixed away from him. “I have never… had the… opportunity… to watch our military carry out such an… operation.”

He wasn’t surprised at her reason. “What happened on Europa was ugly. No one was comfortable with what we had to do. And I gave the orders to carry out that operation.”

Her gaze shifted to him, appraising, worried. “The point is, Admiral, they obeyed those orders. They were willing to obey those orders.”

“If there had been any alternative—”

“I have been trying to understand them,” Suva finally said. “Perhaps I’m afraid I will understand them and not like it. Because of what they are willing do.”

“You think they like war?” Geary asked. “You think they like what happened on Europa?”

“I mean exactly that. I can’t imagine… how? I couldn’t do it. I could not.”

“That’s why we’re lucky we have people who can do those jobs,” Geary said. “I don’t know if I could shoot someone. I’ve never actually done that.” Suva looked sharply at him, skeptical now. “If I had been in more of the war, involved in a boarding action, it could have happened. But it never did, so I’ve never pointed a weapon at one specific other human being and pulled the trigger. But if you think it’s somehow easy on those who have done it, you’re wrong. The Marines we sent down to Europa were badly rattled by it. They are combatants, not executioners. If the Alliance made a ribbon for that operation, I don’t think any of the Marines would wear it.”

“I could not have done it at all,” Suva said. “I will get out and once more talk with the crew, but there are some things I find it very hard to empathize with.”

“You voted to conduct that operation,” Geary pointed out.

“I was not fully informed of what that involved,” Suva replied.

Were those the exact words that Rione had used to describe one of the excuses that Costa or Suva would adopt? He tried not to let anger appear on his face or in his voice. “If you were aware of any alternatives,” he said once more, “I wish you had mentioned them.”

“It’s your job to produce alternatives for military actions, Admiral. You gave us one choice.”

“I gave you two choices. Do what we did, or leave our officers on Europa along with a threat that might cause the infection to be spread elsewhere in Sol Star System. If there had been a third or a fourth choice, I would have offered them.” He paused to ensure his next words were the right ones. “I made a recommendation in favor of an action I believed to be in the best interests of our two kidnapped officers, in the best interests of the Alliance, and in the best interests of everyone in Sol Star System.”

She did not answer for several seconds, then spoke defiantly. “Narrow definitions of what is best can lead us into actions that are not really in anyone’s best interest. I believe in acting in the best interests of humanity. All humanity. I’m not ashamed to say that I love humanity. As a species, we have enormous potential, unlimited horizons, and an immense ability to care for others. I like that, and I intend working for that even if I am the only one willing to do so.”

Geary ran one hand through his hair as he looked at her, feeling frustration replace his earlier anger. “Why do you think I don’t feel the same way?”

“I think that you’re too powerful and too willing to use the force at your disposal. In that, you are no different from S—” She bit off her next words.

He could guess what they would have been, though. Senator Costa. Or maybe even Syndics. The thought of being compared to a Syndic CEO made it harder to control his voice. “This may be difficult for you to believe, but I have exercised a great deal of restraint in the use of force. I am very careful as to how and when I employ what power I have, and only use it when I must.”

“Is that a threat?”

“What?” Just as with Costa, an innocuous statement had been read as a personal threat. I know that I want senators like Suva and Costa to understand my crew better, but I’m having a hard time understanding the senators. They look for hidden meanings in the most straightforward statements.

Well, damn, of course they do. That’s the sort of battlefield they fight on, the sort of tactics they use. They’re engaging me as if I were one of them. Is that a compliment or an insult? The last thought cooled his temper and any desire to escalate the verbal sparring. Instead, Geary spoke as openly and bluntly as he could. “It was the exact opposite of a threat. I will not threaten the government of the Alliance.”

“I cannot afford to trust you on that, Admiral,” Suva said.

“Then why not trust Senator Sakai?”

“Because Sakai is burned out. He no longer cares.”

“What about Senator Navarro?”

“A hypocrite.”

“Senator Unruh?”

“Arrogant.”

Geary could not help smiling ironically. “For someone who loves humanity, you don’t seem to like very many people.”

Senator Suva’s eyes narrowed as she gazed at him. “Perhaps I have been too candid with you.”

“Not at all. I agree with Dr. Nasr. There are too many secrets, too many things declared secret, or kept secret not because of real need but out of habit.” Geary paused, wondering if he should say what had just jumped into his mind. But it felt like the right thing to say now, and perhaps Suva was the right person to say it to. “And then there are the things kept secret because no one wants to admit to them.”

Suva’s gaze was challenging now. “Such as?”

“The kind of biological warfare program that once wiped out human life on Europa.”

Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. And unless Suva was a brilliant actress, his words had shocked her. “The Syndics did that?”

“I don’t know whether the Syndics had such a program or not.”

“Then who—?” Suva took in a long breath. “Are you implying that the Alliance had such a program?

“I’m saying that it did. I know that it did. The program was supposedly shut down sometime before I was recovered, but I don’t know that for certain. I’m not supposed to know what I do know of it.”

Suva’s voice quavered with tension. “I… I find this very hard to believe. Why should I believe you?”

“Why should I lie about something like that?” Geary asked. “You must have heard something about what Victoria Rione’s husband was suffering from.”

“I heard some information,” Senator Suva confirmed, her voice steadying. “Some of it very prejudicial to Rione.”

Why am I not surprised? “I can tell you with absolute certainty that she had nothing to do with what happened to her husband. That was entirely the work of the Alliance government, or portions of it, under the veils of secrecy.”

“If it was the sort of project you claim, they would certainly have kept it very secret! They’ve kept it secret from me!” Suva was angry now. “Are you saying the military had nothing to do with it?”

“The military did have some involvement. I don’t know how much. I don’t know if they were running the show or just providing support.”

His frank admission that there had been some military aspect to the program appeared to once again surprise Suva. “Assume it is true. Why has no one else spoken up?”

“I can’t speak for everyone else, but I know why Rione’s husband didn’t. He was mind-blocked.”

“That’s why—?” Suva was seething now. “I don’t like being lied to, Admiral.”

“I have never—”

“You’re not among those I am thinking of. Why are you telling me about this?”

“Because it scares the hell out of me,” Geary said. “I’d like to be more certain it was completely shut down. You’re keeping secrets from me. What secrets are being kept from you? And how dangerous to the Alliance are those secrets?”

Suva sat back, covering her eyes with one hand, what could be seen of her face suddenly haggard with worry. “I’m not proud of every decision I have made, Admiral, and if I had my wish, no man or woman would ever again have to die in defense of their homes and families. I have to make imperfect decisions based on imperfect information.”

“I understand that. I often have to do the same, knowing that a bad decision on my part could have catastrophic consequences.”

She lowered her hand, gazing intently at him. “Perhaps we understand each other better than I thought. I will look into this matter, Admiral. But do not assume that means I have become one of your followers. The welfare of the many has to outweigh individual concerns about what has to be done to save the Alliance.”

Once again, it reminded him of a recent conversation. “Senator Costa said something very similar to me not long ago,” Geary said.

“I am nothing like her,” Suva said, her face flushing. “I will look into this information of yours. But I have difficulty fully trusting the source. I have to worry about many things, Admiral. I have to worry about people who will follow your orders to do things I could not do. I have to worry about your deciding there is no alternative to issuing certain orders.”

“No one could seize control of the Alliance by force and hold it,” Geary said.

She stared at him, her face rigid. “Some people, one person, is so revered by the populace that he would not need to use force. All he would have to do is give orders… and they would be obeyed.”

“I will not give such orders,” Geary said with more force than he had intended.

“Can I afford to believe that? Is that all, Admiral?”

“Yes, Senator.” Geary left the stateroom, wondering what questions Suva would pose to her colleagues after Dauntless got home, and whether Suva would reconsider the wisdom of the secrets she was keeping. But at least Suva had laid out some of the reasoning by which she might have justified voting for actions that seemed otherwise inexplicable.

About half an hour until Dauntless reached the hypernet gate. Geary was almost to the bridge when the battle cruiser shuddered like a living creature that had felt a tremor run through its body.

He sped up, reaching the bridge a few seconds quicker, and slid into his seat next to Tanya Desjani’s. “What happened?”

Her answer wasn’t to him, but to the commander visible in a virtual comm window next to the captain’s seat. “See if you can identify the original source. Let me know if anything else comes in.”

Sighing, she leaned back, then turned a glare on Geary. “Another system virus, courtesy of the good folk in Sol Star System.”

“That seemed like an effective one,” Geary said.

“It was. The vast majority of the worms, Trojan horses, viruses, vamps, ’bots, zaps, and assorted other malware that have been thrown at us while we’re here has bounced off like an ion hitting a magnetic field. The local hackers don’t know enough about our systems to make their stuff stick.” Desjani waved one hand around. “But this last one was tough. My top code monkey says it’s an import. He recognized portions of it as resembling offensive malware employed in Alliance space.”

“Maybe another present from someone back home trying to mess with us.” Geary looked around. “But we’re all right now?”

“Oh, yeah. No problem. Since it was cobbled together from known malware, our system security spotted the thing and shut it down immediately. What you felt was some of our systems having to reset after being swept.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “The source was a message, allegedly from a young lady on Old Earth to one of our sailors, with ‘special pictures’ attached.”

“Ancestors help us,” Geary said. “The sailor opened them?”

“He’s a sailor. Of course he opened them.” Desjani pointed toward the hypernet gate. “I cannot wait to get out of this star system. Sol Star System isn’t some special place of wisdom and peace. It’s the snake pit where humanity has had the longest to work on our worst impulses. We’re lucky that Castries and Yuon were the only two members of the crew actually kidnapped. I don’t mind too much that no one here thanked us for getting rid of those Shield of Sol clowns. And it doesn’t matter to me that no one here seems to care that we risked our Marines to save our own people and prevent any contamination from leaving Europa. It doesn’t even bother me much that Lieutenant Cole on the Shadow keeps sending us frequent status reports to let us know that he’s watching us for any signs that we’re breaking any more of the endless rules in this star system.”

The small Sol Space Guard cutter had doggedly followed Dauntless toward the gate, like a small terrier trailing the dire wolf of the battle cruiser. “What does bother you?” Geary asked.

“That they keep trying to mess with us!” She glared at her display. “Should we ask for formal permission to depart from traffic control or just head out when we reach the gate?”

“Technically, we’re supposed to ask for permission. And we wouldn’t want to upset the Sol Space Guard.”

“Ancestors, no,” Tanya agreed. “Not with the indefatigable Lieutenant Cole on our tails. I’m not sure I’m joking about that, by the way.”

“My instincts tell me we’d be better off not crossing him, too. But I’m also tired of being here. We’ll send a formal notification of our departure to Sol Star System authorities, then head out without waiting for a reply.”

“You’ve got fifteen minutes until we reach the hypernet gate,” Desjani advised cheerfully. “I hear you’ve been talking to politicians.”

“I often talk to some politicians,” Geary reminded her.

“I mean in addition to that woman and retired General Charban.”

“Yes.” He made sure the security fields were activated around his and Desjani’s seats before saying more. “One is willing to make every required sacrifice to save the Alliance, as long as someone else actually makes those sacrifices. Another loves humanity but doesn’t seem to trust or like many humans.”

“I can guess which two those are,” she replied dryly. “How about our new pal?”

“Who do you mean?”

“Senator Sakai.” Desjani gave Geary a questioning look. “I’m wondering if he’s sincere, but he’s been a lot more… open, lately.”

“Open?”

“You know. Talking to members of the crew. Showing more obvious interest in things instead of just watching with that poker face he used to have all the time.”

“I’ve seen some of that,” Geary said. “I wondered if Sakai was doing it around others.”

“He is.” She watched the hypernet gate, which was growing visibly larger now as they approached it. “I noticed he started changing after watching the Dancers on Earth.”

“After they returned the body, you mean? The impact of that seems to have worn off for Suva and Costa, but if it has stuck with Sakai, it could gain us a strong supporter.” He paused, thinking. “Though I wonder if the event has worn off for the other two, or whether they are trying to pretend it didn’t affect them. Maybe in the long term, it will still make a difference.”

“And in the short term?”

“In the short term,” Geary announced, “I must inform various important people of our impending departure.” He touched one control. “Senators, we will be entering the hypernet gate in about ten minutes.” Another control. “General Charban, the Dancers are sticking close to us but please ensure they know we’re going to enter the gate in about ten minutes so they don’t suddenly take off before then.” A third touch. “To Lieutenant Cole on the cutter Shadow, be advised that you are within the radius of the hypernet field we will employ for Dauntless and the six Dancer ships. We appreciate your escort to this point, but unless you intend accompanying us back to Alliance space, I recommend that you quickly open the distance between your ship and ours by at least five hundred kilometers.” A final tap. “To Sol Star System authorities, this is Admiral Geary aboard the Alliance battle cruiser Dauntless. We will be departing Sol Star System via the hypernet gate in nine minutes. Thank you for your cooperation, assistance, and the warm welcome given us. Farewell. To the honor of our ancestors, Geary, out.”

Desjani raised one eyebrow at him. “Warm welcome?”

“A lot of people on Old Earth were nice to us.”

“And a number of other people in this star system shot at us. I guess that also qualifies as a ‘warm welcome.’” She nodded toward her display. “It appears that Lieutenant Cole isn’t coming along after all.”

Geary took a look at his display, seeing that Shadow had pivoted and was rapidly moving away from Dauntless, heading back into the star system, back toward Sol and the battered Home of humanity.

Tanya paused, perplexed. “You know, I’ve gotten so used to Lieutenant Cole’s status reports that I might actually miss them.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. Seriously. For the next few days I’m going to be wondering off and on what Lieutenant Cole and his cutter are doing right now, what Lieutenant Cole is thinking right now, what Lieutenant Cole had for dinner…”

He grinned. “From what I understand, when one ship is in a hypernet and the other is in normal space in a distant star system, the concept of right now is ambiguous at best.”

Desjani looked thoughtful. “One of my friends went into high-end theoretical physics. She told me a few years ago that one of the ongoing debates was whether humanity carried our own sense of time with us to other stars, that the presence of humans in the different star systems was what produced a unified sense of time among them despite the span of light-years between them. Don’t look at me like that. It’s actually a profound question that we don’t know the answer to.”

“We don’t know what time is?” Geary asked.

“Not really. Some ancient scientist said that time is what prevents everything from happening at once. My friend told me that, too, and said the quote still pretty much summarized everything that we know about time. I never forgot that quote because it reminds me of how little we know even today about the most fundamental things.”

He gazed at his display, looking past the depiction of Sol Star System to the galaxy and the universe looming beyond. “There’s so much we want to learn. So much we need to learn. Why do we as a species spend so much time trying to destroy ourselves when we could be spending it trying to understand ourselves and the universe we live in?”

Tanya shook her head. “Maybe they’re related. Maybe whatever drives us to want to learn also drives us to compete in ways that can destroy us.”

“The Dancers may give us some insight into that,” Geary suggested.

“Yeah. If we can ever figure them out. Understanding the Dancers may be harder than understanding time.”

Her hand went to the hypernet controls. “Destination set as Varandal. The Dancers are within the radius set for our hypernet field. Request permission to head for home, Admiral.”

“Permission granted.”

The stars and everything else outside the ship vanished. Unlike jump space, with its gray monotony and strange flashes of light, when traveling by hypernet there was literally nothing outside the bubble containing Dauntless and the six Dancer ships. And, literally, Dauntless and the other six ships weren’t moving. But in sixteen days, they would pop out of the hypernet gate at Varandal, hundreds of light-years away, thanks to the mysterious and still-dimly-understood quantum connections between the gates.

Geary could sense the tension on the bridge relaxing and feel the same sensation inside himself. “Do you ever find it odd,” he asked Tanya, “that we’re more comfortable right now?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?” she asked, stretching like someone coming off a long and grueling task. “No one, and nothing, can touch a ship once inside the hypernet.”

“Yeah, but, according to what Jaylen Cresida told me, that’s because while we’re in the hypernet we don’t actually exist except as some sort of probability wave.”

She made a face at him. “That’s just how the rest of the universe sees it. From our frame of reference, we exist, and I’m not going to let you ruin a chance to unwind by overthinking things.” Desjani turned to face the bridge watch team. “Keep an eye on things. Pass the word for half-watch shift holiday routine for the rest of the day.”

“You are in a good mood,” Geary muttered as they left the bridge.

“I can start ordering floggings again tomorrow. For now, I’m going to talk to my ancestors for a little while, our ancestors that is, to give them some thanks for the safe recovery of my two lieutenants, which it wouldn’t hurt you to do, either, before I try to catch up on some paperwork.”

“I’m going to look in on sick bay, first,” Geary said. “I want to see how Castries and Yuon are doing.”

“Not all that well,” Desjani said with a grimace. “But you’ll see.”

It wasn’t one of the blocks of time set aside for routine sick call by crew members concerned about nonemergency medical issues, and there weren’t any medical emergencies at the moment, so when Geary reached sick bay, he found Dr. Nasr sitting at a desk deep in study. Nasr only gradually became aware of Geary’s presence, blinking at him like a man coming up from deep sleep. “Is anything wrong, Admiral?”

“Nothing beyond the usual at the moment.” Geary always felt uncomfortable in sick bay. He had been brought to Dauntless’s medical spaces after being recovered from the damaged escape pod in which he had drifted, frozen in survival sleep, for a century. From here, he couldn’t see the bunk in which he had awakened, disoriented and dazed, to learn that everyone he had once known was long dead, and that while he was supposedly dead he had been turned into the myth of Black Jack. Even his first sight of Tanya, an officer inexplicably wearing the Alliance Fleet Cross which no one had earned for almost a generation in Geary’s time, was bound up in the shock of those moments.

He suppressed his uneasiness, trying to look unruffled as he gestured toward the bulkhead behind which Lieutenants Castries and Yuon were confined in medical quarantine. “How are the patients?”

“You can view them remotely,” Nasr advised Geary as he brought up a virtual window.

Geary peered into the window floating before him, seeing Yuon and Castries in the small compartment. They were sitting with their backs to each other, as far apart as the tiny space permitted (which was barely beyond touching distance), pieces of the Marine battle armor they had been cut out of piled between them like a wall. Far from betraying romantic involvement, Yuon and Castries were acting like a brother and a sister who could barely tolerate each other’s existence. “How much longer do they have to stay in there together?”

“Two weeks, four days more,” Nasr said. “I am certain that Lieutenant Castries could provide you with the exact hours and minutes remaining as well if you asked it of her.”

“Lieutenant Yuon doesn’t seem too happy, either.”

“The feelings do appear to be mutual,” Dr. Nasr agreed.

“No signs of infection yet?”

“None. You will be informed immediately if there are any signs.”

Geary watched small medical devices crawl up the right arms of Yuon and Castries, both of whom studiously pretended not to notice. “How often are you drawing fluids?”

“Every four hours.” Nasr eyed the images with concern. “They are… unhappy with their circumstances. They have, I believe, gone through denial, anger, and bargaining. They are now in depression. I am not sure they will ever reach acceptance.”

It might have been funny except for the obvious misery of the two lieutenants, who had one moment been walking along a street on Old Earth, and the next found themselves awakening together in the tightest form of medical quarantine current technology could achieve. “Are they being medicated?”

“Yes. Minimum necessary doses.” Nasr squinted at the two figures again. “I will have to increase it. I do not know what else I can do to ease their mutual distress.”

“I know how they feel, I think,” Geary said. “From what I’ve seen of Castries and Yuon, they get along all right normally, but these are not normal circumstances. On my first ship, there was another junior officer and I who did not get along at all. The only thing that made it tolerable was that we occupied different watch sections. When I was awake and working, he was usually asleep, and vice versa. We rarely had to actually interact. If we had, we probably would have been like those two are now.”

The doctor frowned, then smiled. “We should speak more often, Admiral. That is an excellent solution.”

“It is?” Geary asked, flattered by Nasr’s praise but also uncertain what solution he had apparently just provided.

“Yes.” The doctor was already at work, entering commands on the unit he held in one hand. “I will shift the sleep cycle of one of them and keep the other awake, using the proper dosages of medications. Within a few days, I will have their patterns firmly established, so that when one is awake, the other is asleep. While they will continue to physically share the compartment, they will not have to endure the conscious presence of the other but can even feel some degree of privacy with their forced company rendered insensible.”

“Will that be safe?” Geary asked. “Doping them for the next few weeks like that?”

“Perfectly safe,” Nasr said, waving his hands in a dismissive way. “And much, much safer than keeping them both awake and aware of each other for that period! I am grateful to you, Admiral. I made the elementary mistake of assuming I knew what the question must be, which made me see the wrong paths to the answer.”

Geary looked at Dr. Nasr, running the physician’s words through his mind. “We need to be sure we’re asking the right question in order to get the right answer? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. If you only think you know the question, the answers you come up with will not be adequate or correct.”

Geary left sick bay, deep in thought, barely aware of greeting the sailors he passed as he walked. What the doctor had told him was important. Very important. Something told him that.

Unfortunately, whatever that something was could not tell him why the words were important.

Among the many things he had once never considered worrying about was what he might find when arriving at an Alliance star system. It would have been like being concerned every time he got home for the night and opened the door, wondering what might be inside. Certainly there was the chance of a surprise, but not the sort of surprise that might threaten not only him but also all he cared about.

But that, and many other things, had changed in the last century.

He was on the bridge again, which felt fairly crowded with all of the official representatives present. The three senators were at the back, pretending not to fight over precedence for the observer’s seat and its display. General Charban and Victoria Rione, the two envoys, stood to one side, pretending to be engaged in a casual conversation, having formed an unlikely alliance of their own against the covert pressures being brought against each of them.

Desjani was doing her best to ignore all of the representatives, pretending to be totally absorbed in preparing her ship for arrival at Varandal.

That left Geary to offer respectful greetings in a manner he hoped would not be interpreted as pretend, and to notice a certain level of tension among the three senators. They seemed to be just as worried about what they might find at Varandal as Geary was.

There wasn’t any transition jolt confusing the mind such as occurred when coming out of jump. Instead, the stars appeared around them as Dauntless arrived at Varandal, the only immediate and obvious indication that they had left the bubble of nothing inside the hypernet and were surrounded by the real universe again. Geary dropped his study of the three senators and scanned his display, waiting as impatiently for it to update as he would when showing up at an enemy star system.

“Dreadnaught is gone,” Tanya said just as he also caught that. “So are Dependable and Conqueror.”

“There are some heavy cruisers and destroyers missing, too,” he said.

“Looks like two divisions of heavy cruisers and four squadrons of destroyers.” Desjani shook her head. “A task force of some kind.”

“Why would Jane leave Varandal when I left her in temporary command of the fleet?” Geary demanded, keeping his voice low.

“If you’re thinking she just hared off on her own initiative, I don’t think that happened,” she cautioned. “This looks like an ordered movement to me.”

“Those three battleships weren’t in very good shape. They needed a lot of repair work. Why would anyone order them—”

Senator Costa’s voice broke into their discussion. “Some ships are missing! Why? Where did they go?”

Geary took a moment to ensure that when he turned to answer, his irritation at both the question and the suspicious tone in which it had been voiced wasn’t showing. “I will let you know as soon as I know, Senator.”

“You’re asking us to believe that major components of this fleet have gone somewhere without your orders?” Costa asked.

Rione answered before he could. “Why is that so remarkable? Fleet headquarters, or the government, could have sent the entire fleet on some task while we were gone. Were you expecting something different here?”

That question, though posed in a diffident and mild tone, made Costa flush slightly. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing! Is anyone implying anything?” Rione could sound amazingly innocent when she wanted to.

Costa’s flush changed into a glower. “I will go collect some updates on the situation here. I am certain there will be messages waiting for me,” she announced, pivoting to march off the bridge.

Suva had said nothing, scanning the situation with wary eyes.

Senator Sakai, though, walked up to Geary’s seat. “Admiral, I would be grateful for your honest appraisal of what we are seeing here.”

“It’s still hard to tell much.” Geary hedged, trying to decide how much to trust Sakai. After all, Sakai must have voted in favor of a number of actions that struck Geary as misguided at best. But if he is trying to help, if what we saw on Old Earth has made Sakai rethink things, then I would be a fool to keep him at arm’s length.

“But I am concerned,” Geary continued. “The battleship that is commanded by the acting fleet commander is gone, along with the rest of her division. She wouldn’t have left unless ordered to go, but none of those battleships was in good enough condition to conduct a combat mission after they were badly damaged fighting the Kicks and the enigmas.”

“I will see what I can learn,” Sakai told Geary, then left.

Geary beckoned to Rione, who came close enough to be inside the privacy field he activated around his seat. “Do you think that Costa or the other two senators were expecting anything to be happening here?”

“I don’t know,” Rione said. “Costa sounded as if she was worried as well as suspicious, so if she was expecting something, it is not what we see. Suva has a deer-in-the-headlights look. I would guess that she has no idea what is going on and therefore is worried about what you, and Costa, and everyone else, is up to. But Sakai is sincere. I will stake my reputation on that.”

“Your reputation?” The words slipped out before Geary could stop them. He waited, expecting Rione to flare with cold fury.

Instead, she laughed. “You’re right. My reputation is something I would want to lose.”

“Not with me,” he insisted.

“I did lose it with you,” Rione said with self-mockery, a rare open (if oblique) mention of their brief liaison before they had learned that her husband had not died fighting the Syndics but was still alive as a prisoner. “I’ll see what I can find out,” she added, parroting Sakai, then left the bridge.

Desjani was still studying her display. “Admiral,” she said in low tones, “I don’t entirely trust what we’re seeing.”

He focused intensely on his display, seeing the many warships, each accompanied by status markers. The fleet looked like it had accomplished a lot of repair work while they had been gone.

A whole lot of repair work. An impossible amount of repair work. “Everything looks really good,” he commented back to her in a skeptical voice.

“That’s what I was thinking. The status feeds, the official status feeds, look like they’ve been heavily gun-decked. But this can’t be the work of a few officers falsifying the status of their ships to make them look good. Everybody must be doing it.” She gave him a frustrated look. “Let’s hope whoever has been in charge since Jane Geary left can explain what’s going on.”

“It’s probably Duellos,” Geary guessed, though he wondered if that was only because he hoped that was the case.

“Captain Duellos would be the wisest and best choice,” Desjani agreed in a way that made it clear that the last thing she expected from fleet headquarters was choices that were either wise or good. “The comm traffic we’re seeing is all routine, for what that is worth.”

“If not Duellos, maybe Tulev,” Geary suggested.

“If they went by seniority, it would be Badaya.” Tanya eyed him. “I admit that I’ve been wondering how much of his conversion to the wisdom of letting the government stay in control is real. He used to be very enthusiastic about the prospect of a military coup.”

“I’ve convinced him otherwise,” Geary said with more certainty than he felt. “If Badaya had done something, we would be hearing all about it in the messages and news feeds we’re receiving.”

“Except that the status reports for the warships in the fleet look faked,” she reminded him. “How do we know the rest of this stuff hasn’t been scrubbed and sanitized to present an image of normalcy?”

“I don’t think ‘normalcy’ is a word,” he grumbled.

“Yes, it is.”

Instead of continuing the debate, Geary called up one of the news feeds which Dauntless could now receive. Even after so much time in space, he still half expected the news to be immediately filled with excited reports of Dauntless’s return to Varandal. But it would be hours before the light from Dauntless’s arrival got to the inner star system, and hours more before the reactions to that in the news would be seen by the battle cruiser. Instead, the news seemed to be the same mix of political turmoil and dissent, economic worries, concerns about what was happening in those Syndic star systems nearest to Alliance territory, and speculations about the future of the Alliance. A “special report” on the two new alien species whose existence had been discovered by Geary’s fleet in the regions beyond Syndicate Worlds space contained a great deal more speculation and some information he recognized as coming from his own reports to the government. Word that Dauntless had escorted the six Dancer ships to Sol Star System had clearly spread far and wide, with various “experts” who had never actually encountered the Dancers or any other alien species holding forth on the perceived wisdom and significance of that mission.

At best, it was entertaining. But the plethora of message traffic and video feeds they could receive was more than anything else exasperating because none of them addressed the fact that Captain Jane Geary and her battleships had left Varandal or revealed who had been in charge of the fleet since her departure. All Geary and the others aboard Dauntless could do was wait the more than three hours it took for a welcoming message to be sent and finally reach them.

Humanity might still be trying to figure out what time was, but there was no doubt in Geary’s mind that time deliberately ran slower at times like this. The three hours felt like an entire day of waiting. He was nonetheless startled when a high-priority message was received within seconds of the earliest possible time they could have expected one.

“Badaya?” Desjani murmured as that officer’s image appeared.

The message-origin identification on the transmission left no doubt that Captain Badaya, once the loosest cannon among those in the fleet who proposed a military coup to replace an Alliance government seen as corrupt and incompetent, was acting commander of the fleet.

As if anticipating the reaction to seeing him, Badaya grinned wolfishly.