Victorious

TWELVE

It felt odd to be going home with no immediate prospect of combat facing them, to be using the Syndic hypernet, to transit Syndic star systems (or former Syndic star systems) without fear of attack. Some of the Syndic CEOs even offered to sell raw materials to restock the bunkers on the fleet’s auxiliaries, but no one in the Alliance fleet was willing to trust in such a transaction yet.

As they crossed the last Syndic star system before jumping for Varandal in Alliance space, Geary held what felt like a last meeting with his most trusted advisers. Desjani appeared pensive, but she had been finding reasons not to talk to him lately, so he didn’t know why. Duellos had lost the air of melancholy that had always been mostly hidden behind his jauntiness. Tulev seemed like he was considering relearning how to smile but hadn’t yet convinced himself. “Is this what peace feels like?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Geary confessed. “To me, with all of the threats that still remain, it’s not peace.”

“But the Syndicate Worlds will be a shadow of its former self.”

“The Alliance may face the same pressures. Rione expects a lot of star systems, and larger groupings like the Rift Federation and her own Callas Republic, to push for more autonomy and fewer commitments to the Alliance.”

“Fewer commitments,” Desjani said scornfully. “You mean less money. Now that they’ll feel safe, they’ll still want the Alliance to keep defending them, but they won’t want to have to pay to be defended.”

“That’s pretty much it, yeah. The big common threat is gone, and getting across the need to deal with the successor states to the Syndicate Worlds as well as the unknown size of the alien threat isn’t going to be easy with such a war-weary population.”

“The price of winning was very high,” Duellos said. “Almost too high for the Alliance. But then the price of defeat is far worse for the Syndics.”

They toasted victory and survival, then the virtual presences of Duellos and Tulev took their leave.

Desjani stayed sitting at the table, though, her hands clasped before her, head slightly bowed.

Geary waited for a while, but she didn’t say anything, so finally he did. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice came out low.

“Is it anything you can talk about?”

“It’s the one thing I can’t talk about.”

“Oh.” He waited a little longer. “Can we talk about you?”

“About me? No, Admiral. I don’t think that would be wise.”

That hatch had slammed shut firmly. Geary couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed. She seemed to be wanting to talk but wouldn’t. “Let’s try this, then. The admiral is concerned about one of his best commanding officers, who appears to be considerably upset about some personal matter. Is there anything about it appropriate to share with him?”

“Maybe there is.” Desjani looked away, running one hand through her hair. “I’ve spent so many years becoming me. The idea of everyone looking at me and seeing someone else is very hard to accept.”

“You told me that before. I wish I had an answer.”

“I can’t expect an answer, let alone an open discussion. All I need to know right now is whether you can really understand how I feel.”

“Extremely well,” Geary replied. She glanced at him with a frown as he continued. “When I first woke up on Dauntless, and you were all standing there and talking about this Black Jack guy, this hero and these legends, and you were all looking at me. I’ve understood how that feels ever since then.”

Her frown vanished, replaced by embarrassment. “You have me there. It took me a while to look at you and see you, not Black Jack.”

“But, as you’ve said, the universe is always going to look at me and see Black Jack.”

“Do two wrongs make a right?” Desjani wondered. “Two wrong visions of people. I don’t know. I just don’t know. And I don’t know if you really see me. Who do you see? Who do you think I am? Don’t say anything. We can’t go there.”

“I believe I see the real you,” Geary said carefully.

“You’ve been on Dauntless since you awoke. Confined to this ship, for all intents and purposes, while we endured great stresses together because you were required to be in my company.”

“So?”

“Think about it.” She stood abruptly and walked out.

Geary sat for a while longer, then called his niece on Dreadnaught. They talked awhile longer, Jane Geary finally confessing that she couldn’t decide what her future held. “As long as I could understand what being a Geary meant, I’ve always seen the fleet as an inescapable doom. But it’s also what I’ve known as an adult, it’s what I know how to do. I know the survivors from Repulse that we picked up along with other Alliance POWs when we came back through the Syndic home star system don’t think he made it off his ship, but they weren’t certain that he died. Maybe, just maybe, Michael is still alive out there. In the fleet, I can help find him.”

“It’s your choice,” Geary told her, and for the first time he saw Jane Geary smile as she realized that really was true.

The next morning they jumped for Varandal, Geary feeling increasingly restless as the last few days passed slowly. He wanted to ensure critical functions could continue without him personally remaining at Varandal, but there were only so many plans you could make for repairs of battle damage and maintenance and rotation of duty among warships so that crews could get some leave and rest.

Three days out, Rione paid one of her now-rare visits to his stateroom. “My conscience is bothering me, believe it or not. Do I have to warn you what’s going to happen when we get back?”

“I don’t think so, not if you’re talking about the grand council’s promises to me.”

Rione smiled crookedly. “They’ll stand by the exact letter of those promises. Don’t count on anything more than that.”

“So I’ve heard from others. But I’m going to take some time off, some leave, to get some personal things done.”

“Leave?” Rione asked skeptically. “You think they’ll grant you leave?”

“As commander of the fleet, I approve my own leave,” Geary replied.

“How convenient. Do you intend being gone long?”

“No. Thirty days.”

She looked impressed. “If you manage to stay away from the Alliance bureaucracy that long, it’ll be quite an achievement. You must have accumulated a great deal of leave in survival sleep, though I imagine the pay you accumulated during that century is a greater comfort to you.”

“Pay? Leave?” Geary shook his head. “I didn’t accumulate any.” He saw Rione’s puzzlement. “Sometime while I was asleep there were rulings, ‘clarifications’ of the pay and leave regulations, because some guys had been picked up after being in survival sleep for a couple of years. The personnel bureaucracy ruled that time spent in survival sleep did not count toward pay, accumulation of leave, or obligated service time.”

“I see.” Rione also shook her head, smiling ruefully. “The bureaucracy figured out how to avoid paying anyone or giving them credit toward the length of their service contracts. How did they justify that?”

“Because you’re not in a ‘duty status’ while in survival sleep since you are not ‘available for duty if called.’ ” Geary shrugged. “Fortunately, the issue of seniority never came up, so officially my years in survival sleep did count in terms of accumulated seniority in my rank. Otherwise, I might have been the most junior captain in the fleet.”

“I shudder to think how events might have differed if that had been the case.” Rione sighed. “Even an agnostic would have to admit that some very critical things for the Alliance went right in your case, Admiral Geary.”

He laughed briefly. “Too bad the living stars didn’t look after my old bank accounts. They were closed out once I was declared dead, so I don’t even have the benefit of a century’s worth of interest on what I had in them. I have whatever I’ve earned since being found and awakened. The fleet admiral pay I’ve earned lately will be a nice bonus, but I’m not coming out of this well-off. I do have some extra leave time available, because what I had already accumulated a hundred years ago didn’t go away.”

“Ah, well, at least you know that she’s not after your money.”

Geary shot an irritated glance at Rione. “I never suspected her, or anyone else, of being motivated by that.”

Rione feigned a mock spasm of pain. “That hurt.” Geary didn’t respond to her humor, and she raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s the matter? Isn’t everything wonderful now? In another few days you can actually talk to her. Believe it or not, I know how hard it must have been to avoid doing or saying anything that might have compromised either of you.”

“Thank you.” He knew he was frowning as he rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s just … I don’t know.”

“Cold feet?” she asked softly.

“No. Not on my part.”

“Oh.”

He looked at her quickly. Rione was gazing into a corner of the room, her expression once more unreadable. “What’s that mean?”

“It means, Admiral, that you need to deal with this yourself.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I am not the person to discuss your personal relationship problems with. She is the one you need to talk to.”

“I can’t. Not for another week. I just hope I say the right things then.”

Rione shook her head again, but before leaving gave Geary a sharp look. “Follow your instincts, Admiral.”

After Rione had left, Geary sat for a while, thinking, then left his stateroom, walking through the passageways of Dauntless, the passageways filled even at this late hour with excited crew members talking about going home and the end of the war. They looked at him not with hope now but with thanks, and that was much easier for Geary to endure even though he made a point always to tell them that they had won the war and all of the victories leading to its end. He had just been fortunate enough to lead them.

Geary went all the way down to the worship spaces, crowded with those giving thanks to higher powers than mere admirals, and found a room for himself. Inside, he sat for a while in the solitude before lighting the candle and speaking to his long-dead brother. “I still sometimes wonder if it’s all real. From commanding officer of a single heavy cruiser to commanding officer of a fleet a lot bigger than anything the Alliance could muster in my own time. Who would have thought that I’d be stuck with trying to save that fleet lost far behind enemy lines, that I’d be expected to save the Alliance? I know your granddaughter Jane says you always told her I was what the legend said, but you and I both know better. I’m just me. I don’t know how I got through this, but I do know I had a lot of help.

“Tell your grandson Michael I’m sorry. He was a fine officer. He was a real hero. We’re bringing some of the crew from Repulse home with us. They were still being held in the Syndic home star system. They can’t confirm he died, but none of them think he could’ve gotten off the ship alive. I will always regret not being able to save him.

“Your granddaughter Jane is a fine woman. I’ll try to look out for her. But she’s a Geary. Stubborn and willful. I don’t know if she’ll stay in the fleet now, or leave it to become an architect.

“Now she has a choice. So do Michael’s kids. I thank the living stars that I was able to do that.”

“Admiral, the last units of the fleet have assumed their assigned orbits in Varandal Star System.”

“Thank you.” The comm panel in his stateroom went dark again, and Geary looked toward the display floating over the table. Dauntless and a number of other warships had been in position not far from Ambaru station for more than half a day. Shuttles had already taken some personnel from Dauntless to the station for official business or to start long-postponed personal leave. But other warships had taken more time to reach their assigned orbits, some of them near different orbital stations. The fleet was large enough that no one wanted to overwhelm one or two facilities with the amount of personnel traffic all of the warships would generate.

That was it, then. The orders and plans he had worked up for the fleet once it got back had been sent and set in motion. He had now satisfied everything, his promises, his sense of duty, his honor, and the conditions to which the grand council had agreed. Even the threat of a military coup had vanished for the moment, with Badaya and his allies convinced that every important decision was covertly being made by Geary and more than satisfied by the formal end of the war. Geary reached up and removed the admiral of the fleet insignia, not without a pang of regret since Tanya had pinned them on. He stood before the mirror for a moment, attaching his captain’s insignia.

Geary looked around his stateroom on Dauntless, the starscape on one bulkhead, the chairs, the table over which he had worked out countless simulations and battle plans. Except for the couple of weeks before Admiral Bloch died, this had been Geary’s home in this time. His only home in this time.

He was going to leave it for a while. Surely the Alliance owed him a few weeks to rest, and things couldn’t go awry in such a short time. He wondered where to go in Alliance space and what to do there. Everywhere there would be people wanting to mob him, and all he wanted to do was find someplace to hide for a little while, to not have to worry for a brief period about grand decisions or the fates of warships and the Alliance.

Not alone, hopefully. There was someone to whom he could finally speak his heart. Though Tanya Desjani had definitely been avoiding him the last couple of days. Maybe she had felt the same way he had, fighting off an urge to blurt out feelings just a short while before they could honorably speak of them.

Even though he was leaving the ship, he was certain that he’d be back on Dauntless. The Alliance was surely going to be calling on Black Jack again because the universe hadn’t been tied up in a neat package. Just how much the Alliance could or should do inside the mess that had once been the Syndicate Worlds was very much open to question, but Geary had no doubt that the fleet would be called upon. If nothing else, there were a lot of Alliance prisoners of war stranded among the wreckage of the Syndicate Worlds, people to be found and brought home.

And the aliens remained, still far too little known about them, a lingering threat on the far side of Syndic space, doubtless watching humanity, doubtless coming up with new tricks to cause humanity to work against itself, perhaps planning new offensives of their own, their feelings about their own recent losses as unknown as just about everything else about them. What lay beyond the aliens remained a mystery as well. Where there was one nonhuman intelligent race, there could be many others.

No. History hadn’t come to a happy end. But he’d saved the fleet. He’d stopped the war. He had done more than he had believed possible.

Geary did a final check of his message queue, ignoring the long list of transmissions from fleet headquarters. Whatever they were would wait. He was certain that at least one of the messages would be notifying him of a promotion back to admiral, and at least one other would contain orders for him, but the grand council and fleet headquarters had outwitted themselves by giving the messages all standard priorities and innocuous titles. That had been intended to keep him from guessing what was in those messages before he read them, but it also offered him a perfect excuse not to read them since none of them looked important. I may be just a fleet officer, but I’m not a dumb fleet officer, especially not after hanging around Rione and watching her at work.

Geary tapped out a quick message to his chain of command.

Ordering the message actually to be transmitted in ten hours, he headed out to look for Desjani.

But as his hatch opened, Victoria Rione was standing there, eyeing him with an enigmatic look. “Going somewhere?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes. If you don’t mind—”

“They haven’t promoted you back to admiral yet?”

“The promotion message is probably in my in-box, doubtless along with messages containing orders for me to report somewhere and command something, but I have no intention of reading any of those messages for the next thirty days. As far as I know, I’m a captain, and I have no obligations stopping me from taking leave.” Geary gave Rione a half-annoyed, half-apologetic look. “I have to go.”

“But there’s something we have to talk about, Captain Geary.” She brushed past him into the stateroom, and he followed, trying not to get angry as Rione turned to watch him. “Have I told you how grateful I am, Captain Geary?” she continued. “For what you did for the Alliance. For all of the things you could have done and didn’t. I owe you as a senator, I owe you as Co-President of the Callas Republic, and I owe you as an individual.”

“That’s okay.” Geary waved one hand dismissively. “I did my duty.”

“You did much more than your duty, Captain Geary, and that is why despite some personal issues I have regarding a certain other captain of our acquaintance, I have nonetheless come here to inform you that you have one message in your in-box you should read before you go wandering around this ship looking for someone.”

What was Rione up to this time? “Why?”

“Trust me. Call up your in-box.”

Feeling increasingly curious as well as annoyed, Geary reopened his message file. “Which one of these messages is so important?”

“None of those. The one I’m talking about is set for delayed delivery. It’s in your file but won’t be visible for … oh … another hour or so. Unless you happen to enter this override code.” Rione’s fingers danced across the controls, and a moment later another message popped into existence. “My, would you look at that.”

Frowning, Geary examined the message. Eyes Only, Personal For. It had originated on Dauntless. He opened the file and read.

He stared for what felt like a long time at the message, then finally turned to Rione. “What the hell does this mean?”

“Why do you think I’ve read it?”

“Because I know you! What’s Tanya talking about?” Rione spread her hands. “She says it all, more or less clearly. She’s worried that sooner or later the great hero Black Jack Geary, who could have any woman he wanted, will want someone else.” Rione smiled sardonically. “Like me, she won’t be any man’s second choice.”

“How could she think that?” Geary frowned, another question coming to him. “Why did she set this for delivery to me in another hour?”

“I can’t imagine,” Rione replied with mock bafflement. “Did you set your message to the fleet headquarters announcing your departure for immediate transmission?”

“No, of course not, I wanted to be gone before—” He stared at Rione, suddenly remembering something in the last part of Desjani’s message. By the time we meet again. “Desjani’s going? Where?”

“Do I have to tell you everything?”

He stopped to think and immediately realized the answer. “Kosatka. She’s going home on leave.” Geary took a long breath, trying to calm himself. “Why didn’t she talk first? We finally would have been able to talk about it.”

“You read the message. She doesn’t think you’re ready to talk about it.”

“How could she make that decision on her own?” Geary felt himself getting angry now. “I can’t believe she ran away instead of—”

Rione’s snort of exasperation was intense enough to stop Geary’s words. “Are you planning on telling her you think she ‘ran away’?”

He took another deep breath. “No.”

“Good. You’re not hopeless. But you’re not thinking about what’s going on inside her. Duty and honor tell her one thing, not to stand in the way of what you need to do for the Alliance in the future. Even I have to respect her concern on those grounds. Her doubts make her wonder how real your feelings are, feelings you’ve never actually been able to talk with her about, and how long those feelings will last. Is she just an infatuation born of your isolation in this fleet? Is a mere fleet captain going to be a worthy partner for someone as powerful as you? She’s probably even wondering if you’re going to return to me now, as if I’d have you again.”

Geary shook his head, trying to find holes in Rione’s argument. “But—”

“And against all of that,” Rione continued, her voice sharpening, “your captain has only her own love for you, which she also has never been free to express openly and which has no doubt been a source of considerable private guilt for her when she dared dwell on it. Love needs expression, Captain Geary, or doubts grow amid the silence. Doubts of the other and doubts of yourself.”

He took a few breaths this time, then nodded. “You left something out. She’s worried about being known as just my partner, not as herself, as Black Jack’s companion instead of for what she’s accomplished herself.”

“Ah, yes. That’s a big one. So what will you do, Black Jack?”

He glared at Rione. “What am I supposed to do?”

She sighed and relented again. “What would your captain tell you to do if you were facing a very difficult decision?”

He thought about that. “She’d tell me to follow my instincts.”

“What did I tell you to do a few days ago concerning your captain?”

Geary tried to recall. “To follow my instincts.”

“Hopefully you’ll listen to one of us. What do your instincts tell you to do now?”

“To find her and tell her how I feel, to let her know that she won’t stand in the way of my duty, that her honor helps give me the strength to do what I must, that I will always stand beside her and she beside me, and that I will never choose another.”

“Not bad.” Rione pointed toward the hatch. “Then what are you waiting for?”

“I’m still trying to understand why she didn’t wait around for us to talk about it. It’s the first time we’ve had a chance, so why not meet me while we’re still on the same ship?”

This time Rione rolled her eyes. “You mean catch you in your stateroom? On her ship? The ship you’ve been confined to for months? Catch you before you can get away?”

“That’s not—She did say something like that.”

“Of course she did. Your captain is giving you an out, a chance to reset things, to go if you wish, to salvage her own pride and honor without forcing you to tell her that ‘things have changed.’ ”

“But how am I going to catch her if she’s already left the ship?” Somehow he knew that Desjani was already gone.

Rione raised one eyebrow. “You’ve got a chance, John Geary, if you truly want to catch her. That’s what she wants to know, and you’ve got a way to prove it to her. Instead, you’re standing here talking to me.”

Geary was halfway to the hatch before he remembered to turn back to Rione. “Thank you.”

“Thank me?” Rione shrugged. “If my husband still lives, the end of the war and the prisoner-exchange process will return him to me. And you think you owe me thanks?”

“Yes. I’ll see you around, Madam Co-President.”

“Yes, you will, Captain Geary. There’s still much to be done.” She gestured toward the hatch. “Your target is getting away.”

He headed down the passageway, then veered to the nearest comm panel to call the bridge. “Where is Captain Desjani?”

The duty watch-stander on the bridge stared at Geary, then swallowed nervously before answering. “Uh, sir, Captain Desjani is indisposed. She asked us not to disturb—”

That confirmed his suspicions. “Is she still on the ship?”

The bridge watch-stander hesitated, then obviously made a decision. “No, sir. She departed on leave just two hours ago and took a shuttle to the main passenger terminal.” The words came out in a relieved rush.

“You didn’t announce her departure from the ship?”

“Sir, Captain Desjani ordered us not to—”

“All right. I need one of Dauntless’s shuttles for a lift to the main passenger terminal at Ambaru station, and I need it now.”

The bridge watch-stander looked and sounded horrified. “Sir, all of Dauntless’s shuttles are down for maintenance. It’s very unusual to take them all down at once, but Captain Desjani ordered it. The one she took was put into full maintenance as soon as it got back.”She just has to make it as tough as possible. Geary paused, trying to think of the next best course of action. Getting a shuttle sent to Dauntless from another ship would take time, perhaps a lot of time, and might tip off fleet headquarters that he was trying to make his own escape.

But he didn’t have any other option. Geary was about to order that when the bridge watch spoke again, now appearing startled.

“Sir, a shuttle from Inspire just reported that it’s on final approach for our shuttle dock. They say they have orders for a high-priority passenger transport. Is that you, sir?”Thank you, Captain Duellos. I don’t know how you figured out what was going on, but I owe you one. “Yes, that’s me. I need that shuttle ready to go as soon as I reach the dock.”

He ended up having to wait a couple of minutes, though, before Inspire’s shuttle tore away from Dauntless. “Any particular dock in the passenger terminal area, sir?” the shuttle pilot asked. “It’s really big.”

“I need a dock as close as possible to wherever a passenger ship bound for Kosatka and due to leave soon would be loading.”

“Civilian passenger traffic?” the pilot asked doubtfully. “I can find out that dock assignment easily enough, sir, but I’m supposed to use only military docks, so I may still have to dock a long ways away.”

“There’s no way you can use the civilian docks?”

“No, sir. Well, there’s one way. If there’s an in-flight emergency on approach, and I need to get to the nearest dock.”

Geary tried to keep his voice casual. “An in-flight emergency?”

“Yes, sir, like … uh … the cabin-depressurization alarm.”

“I see. What do you suppose the chances are of that alarm going off while we’re close to the dock I need?”

He could hear the pilot’s grin. “For you, sir? I can feel it getting ready to pop right now. I assume we need the least-time-highest-velocity transit to the terminal that I can manage?”

“You got it.”

“Consider it done, sir.”

About twenty-five minutes later, Geary staggered off the shuttle, whose pilot had indeed done an enthusiastic job of hurling his bird through space. At the dock exit, he walked past some annoyed-looking civilians wearing outfits he didn’t recognize. One tried to halt him, but Geary held up a hand. “I’m in a hurry.”

“You still need to—” The civilian’s eyes locked on Geary’s face, and his jaw dropped. “I … I …”

“Sorry. I’m in a hurry,” Geary repeated, rushing past him.

There were plenty of uniforms among the crowds there, but the civilian clothing everywhere still felt jarring, not simply because of all the time he had spent aboard warships but also because the styles had changed so much in the century since he had been among civilians. The senators he had dealt with had all worn formal clothes, the sort of styles that changed very slowly and so had been close to what he had known a century ago, but these civilians were in casual clothing that looked odd to his eyes. He knew those styles were just the tip of the iceberg, a small part of the changes he’d have to deal with.

But that could wait until he reached the right dock. If he could get there in time. He kept running into bottlenecks and knots of stopped people that slowed him down. Geary kept his head lowered and plowed toward the dock whose number the shuttle pilot had provided, trying not to notice the curious glances turned his way. But then a cluster of sailors turned, saw him, and with broad smiles saluted, while some of the other military nearby watched, puzzled by a gesture still unfamiliar to them.

He couldn’t ignore the salutes. Geary returned them, then looked for the dock numbers nearby. One of the sailors, whose patch indicated he was off Daring, stepped forward. “Sir? Do you need something?”

“Dock one twenty-four bravo,” Geary replied. “I need to get there fast.”

“We’ll get you there, sir! Follow us!” The sailors from Daring locked arms, forming a flying wedge, and began charging through the crowd clearing a path for Geary despite angry and surprised cries of protests from those they shouldered aside.

Grinning despite his worry, Geary followed, hearing in his wake startled voices saying his name and hoping he could stay ahead of any gathering crowd.

Moments later, the sailors came to a halt, and their leader gestured. “Here you are, sir. Courtesy of the Alliance battle cruiser Daring. Are you going to be leading us again, sir?”

Geary paused and smiled back at them. “If I’m lucky. Thanks.” Another quick salute, then he was in the waiting area just outside the dock.

Tanya Desjani turned as he entered. She had on a dress uniform, standing out even among the other military personnel waiting to board the passenger ship. He stumbled to a halt at the sight of her, momentarily unable to both move and take in the fact that he had caught up to her, that Desjani was standing there, finally no barriers of honor or duty between them and their feelings, her face lighting with recognition, her eyes widening in what he thought and hoped was sudden joy as she realized that he was there.

Then she was controlling her expression, adopting the formal, professional posture that he had come to know so well. “Sir?” Desjani asked. “What brings you here?” She noticed his captain’s insignia, and new emotions rippled across her face too fast for him to read.

“I think you know the answer to that, Tanya. And I’m not sir to you anymore. I’m not in command of the fleet, we’re both captains, and you’re not my subordinate now. Just how the hell did you expect me to get here in that little time?”

That flash of happiness showed again in her eyes. “You’ve done more difficult things when you really wanted to do them. Are you happy you got here so quickly?”

“Happy?” Geary sighed. “Tanya, when I walked in here and saw you, I swear for a moment there was no one else and nothing else in the universe. Just you. Are you happy to see me?”

“I—” Desjani bit off her words and started again. “If you read my message—”

“I already read it.”

“You already … It wasn’t supposed to …” Desjani looked annoyed now. “All right, then. Wasn’t I clear?”

“Not entirely, no, but I figured it out.” Even he knew that mentioning Rione’s role in the whole thing would be a very serious mistake. “I don’t need time to think it over. I know what I want. I just hope you still want it, too.”

Annoyance shaded into exasperation. “I am giving you every opportunity to rethink things.”

“Thank you. I have no need for those opportunities.”

Desjani leaned close, speaking in a whisper as Geary became aware of all of the eyes turning their way. “You’re not being fair to either of us. You haven’t had any time to really see the Alliance today. In a few months, things will have changed.”

“My mind and my heart won’t have changed.” Geary shook his head. “Tanya, I had a life before Grendel knocked me on a new course. I saw a lot of people then. And I’ve seen a lot of people now, even though almost all of them were in the fleet. There was no one like you a century ago, and there’s no one else like you now.”

“Do not patronize me, Captain Geary! I know how badly losing everything in your past hurt you!”

He spent a moment looking at her, vaguely aware that an increasing number of sailors had gathered facing away to form a protective wall between him and Desjani and the rest of the occupants of the waiting area, as well as the growing crowd outside. “It did hurt. I lost everything. But eventually I realized that I’d gained something, too. If I hadn’t come to this time, I wouldn’t have met you. Maybe that was always what was intended. It just took me a while to get here.”

Desjani stared at him. “You actually believe the living stars sent you to this time because I was here?”

“Why not? Oh, I was able to do a few things, important things, but I couldn’t have done them without the people I met here. And you have been and are by far the most important of those people to me. You give me the strength to do what I have to do. I told you that before, sort of, as best I could at the time. I can’t face this future without you, Tanya.”

She shook her head. “I think you are greatly overstating my importance to you, Captain Geary.”

“It is impossible to overstate your importance to me,” he replied in a low but forceful tone. “You don’t stand between me and my duty, you stand beside me, a strong and remarkable individual, and I swear everyone will know that.”

“You’re hopeless. Do you actually think anyone will listen?”

“I’ll keep saying it until everyone does. I’m sort of stubborn when I have to be, you know.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.” Desjani almost smiled, then turned serious again. “But there was much we couldn’t say, much we couldn’t tell each other.”

“I know. We can say it now. With honor. We can say the truth to each other.”

“And what is that, Captain Geary?”

“That I love you. I am certain of that.”

“You sought comfort during a difficult time,” she said.

“If all I’d wanted was comfort, there were easier ways of finding it.”

“I’m well aware of that. For a while, you did find it, in another woman’s arms.” Desjani’s eyes flashed with anger this time as she brought up Geary’s brief physical relationship with Rione.

He couldn’t very well deny it. “Yes, I did. It was a mistake. I never loved her. She never loved me.”

“And that’s supposed to make it all right that she shared your bed?”

“No. It doesn’t excuse it at all. I’m sorry I did that. The only excuse I can offer is that I had not yet realized how I felt about you. When I did so, it ended. I swear it.”

She gave him another aggravated look. “It would be easier to stay angry with you if you were less repentant and less honest. I’m not perfect, either. But it hurt me.”

“I know. I will never hurt you again.”

“Don’t make promises that no man, or woman, can hope to keep, Captain Geary.” Desjani shook her head. “I know who I am, and I have a pretty good idea of who you are. Even if we resolve every other issue, a relationship of you with me would be … Let’s just say it would be challenging.”

“I know it will be difficult at times,” Geary replied. “It already has been. Being in love with you, and unable to do or say a thing about it, was very hard. You may not believe this, but I don’t go seeking out ways to make my life miserable.”

Desjani’s gaze on him sharpened, her mouth set in tight lines. “Loving me makes you miserable?”

“It did when I couldn’t do anything or say anything.” Geary waved his hands in frustration. “I can’t say this right. I’m bad at this sort of thing. I’m pretty good at commanding a fleet, I guess, but I’m not nearly as good with women.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” Was she still angry, or was she actually making fun of him?

“Have you thought it through?” she demanded. “Believe me, I have. For the moment, we are both captains, but only for the moment. You know the Alliance will promote you back to admiral immediately. The message alerting you to your promotion has probably already been sent.”

“Probably. I haven’t read it though.”

“How long do you think you can go without reading your message traffic? Captains can date each other. Captains can be involved with each other, as long as they’re not in the same chain of command. Admirals and captains cannot engage in personal relationships.” Desjani closed her eyes, her expression hardening. “I will not be your secret, or not-so-secret, mistress.”

“I would never ask that of you. I didn’t and I won’t.”

“But what alternative is there?” she demanded, fixing her eyes on Geary again. “You’re probably already an admiral again.”

He couldn’t argue with that. “I guess that means we’ll have to work quickly, before I have to read any messages or talk to anyone who knows. There’s one way I can prove that I want to be with you and only you, and one way an admiral and a captain can have a personal relationship, and that’s if we’re married before I’m promoted. Before I know I’ve been promoted.”

Desjani seemed to stiffen, then spoke slowly. “Married?”

“Yes. Will you? I mean it. I swear I’ve never meant anything as much as I do this.”

“You’re proposing to me? On a public passenger dock?”

“Um … yes. I’m sorry I couldn’t arrange a better location.”

Desjani looked away, uncharacteristically flustered, her expression once again very hard for Geary to read. “And if I say no? If I tell you firmly, captain to captain, woman to man, that I do not want that, and I do not want you that way, what will you do?”

It was Geary’s turn to just look at her for a long moment. Had he misread every emotion he had thought he had seen in her? “Then I will ask you to reconsider, I will ask you to listen to how I feel, but if you are indeed firm in those feelings, then I must respect them. I’ll treat you from then on as a fellow professional and never raise the subject again.”

“I’m about to leave on that ship. We have only minutes left. You wouldn’t order me to stay? Order me to listen?”

He felt a vacant sensation inside, as if a tiny black hole had appeared at the core of his being and was devouring everything, but he shook his head. It might cost him the most important thing he had left in this universe, but he had to say the truth, had to answer the question without any pretense or shadings. He could not lie to her. “No, Tanya. If you truly wish to go, then go. I have no authority over your person, over your choices, nor would I ever have such authority. If you don’t believe that I’ve given you back your honor yet, I do so now, with no strings attached. You’re the captain of your soul as much as you are captain of Dauntless, but they’re different things. I can give orders to one but never to the other. I know that.”

One corner of her mouth twitched, then Desjani smiled, then she crossed the space between them in one step. Her arms went about him, and her lips sought his in a hard and hungry kiss.

When she finally broke the kiss, Desjani paused to breathe, then smiled. “I’ve been waiting a long time to do that. That was the right answer, by the way.”

Geary, feeling slightly dazed from that kiss, stared at her. “Is that your answer to me?”

“Wasn’t it clear enough? Yes. Yes to everything. Your behavior toward me, your refusal to take advantage of my feelings, gave me my honor back a long time ago. How are we going to get married before that promotion catches up to you? Even if we get out of this star system without the authorities finding you, the promotion will probably be sent by a fast courier ship and will be waiting by the time we get to Kosatka. That means we’ll have to get married on the passenger ship as quickly as we can arrange it.”

“On the ship?”

Something in his tone must have sounded like hesitation, because Desjani narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes. Are you getting cold feet already? You don’t get to back out of this now. I already gave you every opportunity.”

He briefly imagined trying to run away from a vengeful Tanya Desjani. It would probably be an eventful and a short existence. “No. I mean, yes. That is, getting married on the ship is a great idea. Appropriate, I guess.”

“She’s not a warship,” Desjani noted wistfully, “but she’ll do. You do realize that current fleet regulations discourage assigning married couples to the same ship?”

Actually, he’d forgotten to look up that particular thing. “If I’m an admiral again, I won’t actually be assigned to your ship as part of the crew.”

“Space lawyer,” Desjani snorted. “But you’re right. If we’re to work together, though, we can’t be a married couple aboard ship. We have to have the same kind of working relationship we did before.”

“I have to be miserable?”

“If you say that again—”

“Yes, ma’am.” Geary smiled. “I agree. We can do that. We have done that. I was sort of hoping to get married on Kosatka, though.”

Desjani grinned. “We can honeymoon there, until your orders catch up with you. Which means it might be a very brief honeymoon. Our ship is leaving soon. Where’s your baggage?”

“Baggage?” Only then did it occur to Geary that he had rushed off Dauntless with nothing but the uniform he was wearing.

Desjani’s smile grew. “Just like when we pulled you out of that escape pod. You’re not very good at packing, are you? We’ll pick up a few things for you in the ship’s store. I don’t suppose on the way here you bothered trying to get a ticket for this ship to Kosatka?”

“Uh … I was actually just focused on getting to you and, uh … what to say, and …”

Desjani laughed. “That’s okay. I’ve got a private cabin. I hoped against all reason and against all of my own doubts that I’d need it, that we’d need it, and it seems we do. We just have to add your fare on to it.” She laughed again. “I think my parents are going to be a little startled. They thought I was married to Dauntless. Instead I’ll be bringing you home as a son-in-law. Oh, that reminds me. There’s one other nonnegotiable condition on our marriage. If someday we’re blessed with a daughter, she must be named after Jaylen Cresida.”

Geary smiled and nodded. “Of course. Did you think I’d have a problem with that?”

“No, but unlike you, I don’t spring surprises on people. Except my parents in this case.” She paused and gave him a serious look. “What about after Kosatka? If we have the time, do you want to go to your home world, to Glenlyon? The people there will want to see you.”

Geary shook his head. “Someday I’ll have to go back there, but right now it scares the hell out of me. Glenlyon was my home world a century ago. Now my home is the fleet, and wherever you are.”

“Lucky you. Since my home is also the fleet, you won’t be torn between two places.” Desjani looked up as a commander came forward through the ranks of sailors. “Yes?”

The commander saluted, his face a formal mask, and held out a standard fleet duffel bag. “Captain Geary, sir, with compliments from Captain Tulev.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Geary took the duffel and looked inside, seeing it neatly packed with spare uniform items and other travel necessities. “Am I the only person in the fleet who didn’t realize what was going to happen today?”

“No,” Desjani replied. “You and I seem to be the only two people who didn’t know. But then we’ve been the only two people in the fleet who couldn’t talk about it.” A flight attendant was standing at the boarding hatch, vainly trying to get people moving. “Shall we lead the way or wait for someone else to show up with a minister and a marriage certificate?”

“I think we can handle that part ourselves.”

“Yes, we can.” Desjani linked her arm in his and started them both toward the hatch. “Even if the living stars aren’t done with you, and the Alliance certainly isn’t done with you, for now you’ve earned a short respite. Welcome to the rest of your life, Black Jack.”

“I’m not Black Jack,” Geary protested. “I could never be him.”

“You’re wrong, John Geary. You’ve been him every time it counted.”

The sailors broke their wall as Desjani and he, arms still linked, walked toward the flight attendant. Then the sailors and the officers among them began cheering. Desjani flushed slightly but kept smiling, raised her chin with pride, and winked at Geary. Geary brought up his free hand to wave to the sailors, feeling pretty damned proud himself of the woman who’d chosen to link her arm with his.

The past would never be gone, but it no longer hurt, and no matter what challenges tomorrow held, today it was good to be Black Jack.