“I suppose they have to get something right every once in a while,” Badaya replied.
“The key,” Geary said, “is that the treaty allows our movement through Syndic space as long as we’re going to and from Midway Star System. Which we are, despite the detour to Dunai. I’m mentioning this because future missions may also require visits to Midway, not because we want to go there but because it will meet the legal requirements of the peace treaty.”
Commander Neeson chuckled. “That’ll probably come as a surprise to the Syndics at Midway.”
“I imagine that it will.”
When the others had left, Duellos remained seated, his eyes on Geary. “How are you bearing up?”
“I’ve been worse,” Geary replied, sitting down. “How about you?”
Duellos grinned. “Only one thing has been bothering me lately. Curiosity. I’d like to know how your brief visit to Kosatka went.”
“My honeymoon, you mean?”
“Yes. When I’ve asked Tanya, all she does is mumble a lot.”
Geary paused, bringing up the memories. “We both figured that as soon as the passenger ship we were on exited the hypernet gate at Kosatka, the crew and passengers would be fighting to see who could alert the media first that we were aboard. Or, to be accurate, that I was aboard. Just in case they weren’t doing that, a couple of hours after our ship arrived, a fast fleet courier popped out the gate and started broadcasting orders for me to return to Varandal, which even the dullest mind could take as a hint that I was at Kosatka.”
“I assume it also broadcast your promotion back to admiral?”
“Yeah, that, too. Too late to stop us from marrying. Tanya had admiral’s insignia with her, naturally, and immediately pinned it on me, all the while grumbling about how only a total idiot would have given up the rank of fleet admiral. Anyway, the local government and defense forces and media were all reacting about as calmly as you can imagine, which meant not calmly at all. Tanya was determined that she would tell her parents about our marriage before anyone else could. She knew plenty of people in Kosatka, and one of them had access to a shuttle, so the shuttle came winging in and plucked us off the passenger ship while it was still a half hour out from the main orbital spaceport, where everybody was waiting for us. Then the shuttle dove for the planet in a hot, steep reentry while various government, military, and media shuttles chased after.”
Duellos grinned. “You were probably missing the relative peace and quiet of a battle by then.”
“It got worse. We made a secondary landing field without getting overtaken, one the media hadn’t yet staked out, and another of Tanya’s old friends was there with a private vehicle, so we got bundled into that and tore off into the city while Tanya’s friend demonstrated combat driving skills to get around traffic. We made it to the high-rise where Tanya’s parents lived, and it was one of those secured-access places, so we jumped out of the car, ran up to the access panel, and Tanya pounded on it, yelling, ‘They changed the access code! Mom, Dad, let us in!’ ”
“I’ve seen movies like this,” Duellos said.
“And we can hear sirens all over the place, getting closer, and Tanya’s wondering if her mother and father were working extra shifts and not home yet, but finally her mother answers, and says, ‘What are you doing back on Kosatka? Who’s “us”? Who’s that with you?’ and Tanya says, ‘My husband.’ ” Geary returned Duellos’s grin. “For what seemed forever, her mother didn’t say anything, then she looks at Tanya, and says, ‘I thought you were married to that ship of yours,’ and Tanya gets all upset, and says, ‘Her name is Dauntless, Mother, not “that ship.” Now let us in!’
“We got inside and up to the floor where her parents lived, and her mother opens the door, looks at me, sort of freezes when she recognizes me, then finally looks back at Tanya and says in this real quiet voice, ‘You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?’ Tanya says, ‘No,’ and her mother says, ‘Were you hoping for a stroke or a heart attack?’ ”
Duellos nodded thoughtfully. “I see where Tanya gets some of it from.”
“Naturally, her mother was horrified that we’d gotten married on the ship, saying that the whole planet would have wanted to see the ceremony, and it would have been the biggest thing on Kosatka since the royal wedding one hundred and ten years ago, and Tanya demands to know if her mother wants Tanya to have a stroke, and to try to calm everyone down, I mention that I was at that royal wedding over a century ago, and that didn’t exactly work as far as making me seem like just some average sailor who married her daughter.
“By that time, everybody has tracked us down to that building thanks to the city security-camera system, and we’re pretty much besieged in there. Tanya’s father got escorted through, wondering what the hell is going on, and we try to talk and get to know each other while every dignitary on Kosatka tries to crowd into the place. The local military had to establish a fortified perimeter with portable high blast barriers, because by then the word was spreading and the crowds were . . .” Geary’s smiled faded. “Ancestors help me, Roberto, the crowds. Everywhere I went, and on all the media channels, the crowds.”
“Chanting ‘Black Jack,’ no doubt.”
“Yeah. I don’t think before then it had really hit home to me just how dangerous I really was to the government. To the Alliance. Nobody should be that popular, have that much adulation, and especially not me.”
Duellos nodded, his own grin much smaller. “You’re lucky you didn’t see what was happening on my home world. I had people wanting to see me, to touch me, because I’d worked with you. The living stars alone know what sort of thing Jane Geary encountered when she went back to your home world, Glenlyon, for a short visit.”
“She did?” Was that what had caused the changes in Jane Geary? “Has she talked to you about that?”
“No.” Duellos gave him a quizzical look. “She hasn’t spoken to you of it, either? But her behavior in command does seem to have altered a bit since then.”
“Yes.” Maybe knowing that, he could finally get Jane to admit to whatever had caused her to act differently. “So . . . the crowds. Everywhere. Tanya could tell how those crowds are bothering me, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled that the times she got mentioned it was usually as ‘Black Jack’s new wife’ rather than Captain Tanya Desjani. We had to attend a number of official functions so the local authorities wouldn’t feel snubbed, but after a few days, I was happy to have the excuse of my orders to have to leave the planet.”
“You would think,” Duellos said, “that your obvious discomfort with the adulation would have reassured the government.”
Geary shrugged in reply. “Maybe the government is afraid I’ll get used to it.”
THE distance between the jump point from Varandal to the jump point for Kalixa was four light hours, which meant a forty-hour transit at the fleet’s velocity. With the primary inhabited world at Atalia orbiting on the far side of its star, the authorities there didn’t even know the Alliance fleet had arrived until more than five hours later. As a courtesy, Geary had sent a brief message to them saying that the fleet was simply passing through en route to business elsewhere. Their reply to his message took another five hours to reach Geary.
He listened, feeling growing discomfort, as the new rulers of Atalia fell over themselves offering greetings to the fleet in general and to Admiral Geary in particular. It was glaringly obvious that they feared him, they needed him, they wanted the protection of the fleet he commanded against their former Syndicate masters, and the barely concealed pleas from them left Geary unhappy. I’m not the master of this fleet. Ultimate authority rests with my government. Don’t they understand that? I can’t do what they want, what they need. The Alliance has a courier ship here, and, while that in itself offers no defense capability, it is a symbol of the Alliance’s interest here. Or at least the Alliance’s interest in knowing what happens here. That might not be much of a deterrent, but it’s something.
After
several hours of postponing a reply, he sent another message, telling the rulers of Atalia that his fleet was proceeding on a mission elsewhere, and that their requests for further assistance would be passed to the Alliance government. Next time I guess I should let the emissaries talk to the Syndics, or used-to-be Syndics.
Aside from some wishes for a safe journey and swift return sent in answer to Geary’s last message, nothing else of note happened for the rest of the transit. The jump for Kalixa brought a different kind of dread, a reluctance to view that ruined star system again. He wondered if it would be easier to see it the second time.
It wasn’t.
The exit from jump at Kalixa still felt curiously abrupt, as if the impact of the hypernet gate’s collapse there had strained even the structure of space itself. A few moments’ observation confirmed that the star’s intensity continued to fluctuate rapidly. The storms had subsided a bit in the thin atmosphere, which was all the formerly inhabited world had left, but that just made it easier to see the lifeless and almost waterless landscape. Men and women on the bridge of Dauntless muttered prayers to themselves as they gazed on the destruction, and Geary believed crews were doing the same on every ship in the fleet.
He ramped the fleet up to point two light speed through Kalixa, cutting the amount of time spent there in half. It cost in fuel cell usage, but the benefit to morale was worth it.
Indras hadn’t offered any problems the last time the fleet had been through there, and as long as its hypernet gate was still in existence, the fleet wouldn’t linger at that star. “Do you think we should try out one of the copies of the Syndic hypernet key?” The original key aboard Dauntless had been painstakingly reproduced, but only a few copies were still available when the fleet had left. One had been installed on Warspite and the second on Leviathan.
Desjani shrugged. “If you want. The copies should work fine. But I’d advise against it.”
“Because?”
“The Syndics should be able to tell which ship used a key at the gate. They already know about the key on Dauntless. Keeping them in the dark about which other ships now have keys might be a good idea.”
He nodded in agreement. There might formally be peace at present, but trust would be a very long time in coming.
INDRAS and Hasadan had once been military objectives, enemy star systems to be attacked. Now they were simply waypoints, occupied by former enemies who could only watch the Alliance warships passing through their star systems. The hypernet transit from Indras to Hasadan was . . . boring, Geary decided. Jump space felt like a place even though it was a place with nothing there but the mysterious lights, which gave it a sense of being occupied by something unknown and perhaps unknowable to humans. A place humans didn’t belong, and felt increasingly uncomfortable being in the longer they were in jump space.
But for a ship conducting a hypernet transit, there was only an absence of everything, the feeling that the ship was nowhere, something Captain Cresida had once painstakingly tried to explain to him might be literally true. Our best theory is that as far as the outside universe is concerned, ships inside a hypernet have been transformed into probability waves that don’t really occupy any point. They really were nowhere.
And nowhere didn’t have a lot to recommend it, aside from the fact that it got you somewhere else very, very quickly compared even to jump space. “I wonder how jump space feels to the aliens?” Geary wondered out loud. “Does hypernet travel feel like being nowhere to them?”
Desjani, walking beside him down one of the passageways of Dauntless, frowned. “That’s an interesting question. How does nothing feel? Maybe you should pass that on to our experts, so they’ll have something to do.”
Fortunately, once the fleet popped out of the hypernet gate at Hasadan, it was only a short jump to Dunai.
Dunai was a decent star system from a human perspective but had little to distinguish it, which was probably why it hadn’t earned a hypernet gate of its own. Three inner planets, the second one orbiting about nine light minutes from its star in the sweet spot where worlds habitable for humans could usually be found. Much farther out, three gas giants orbited, and on the fringes of the star system, a pair of frozen minor planets orbited around each other as they also whirled about their star more than four and a half light hours distant.
The habitable world looked to be comfortable, resources in the solar system more than adequate, a decent amount of civilian space traffic could be seen moving between planets and orbital installations with raw materials, manufactured goods, foodstuffs, and passengers, and the total population was well into the hundreds of millions. A good star system from a human perspective but not a remarkable one.
“It doesn’t look bad at all from here,” Desjani commented, as the fleet’s sensors analyzed the second planet from the star Dunai. “Usually, the Syndics seem to place their labor camps on less desirable worlds.”
“That’s been our experience,” Geary agreed, studying his own display. A variety of climates, some nicely temperate, plenty of water, an atmosphere close to the habitable standard, and lots of well-maintained towns and cities balanced by some areas left wild. “It’s nice.”
“Too nice,” she muttered.
“Sir?” A virtual window had popped open near Geary, from which his intelligence officer, Lieutenant Iger, gazed out. “We’ve confirmed the existence of the prison camp and fixed its location.” A glowing dot appeared on the map floating to the other side of Geary.
Geary knew he was frowning from the way Iger’s expression grew uncertain. “That’s good work, but isn’t the location here a bit surprising? This seems to be a pleasant world, and that’s a decent spot on that planet instead of the camp’s being set somewhere with harsh conditions.”
“Yes, sir, but I think these images we got of the camp help explain that.” Another window, this one revealing a collection of buildings seen from overhead. Very high overhead, of course, since the fleet’s optical sensors had spotted them from many millions of kilometers distant.
He frowned more deeply, staring at what seemed to be well-maintained structures that, from their arrangement, were probably barracks-type buildings. The three fences enclosing the entire place inside multiple layers of security had only a few guard towers, and only about ten meters of dead ground inside them. Most of the area inside the camp appeared to be covered with grass instead of pavement or crushed rock, but there were a number of shade trees as well. Good roads led into the camp to large parking areas. “It looks like the prisoners get moved from the camp fairly frequently.”
“Daily is our guess,” Iger explained. “You notice the camp is not far from a large city. We’re estimating from the arrangement of the camp and some of the Syndic messages and transmissions we’re picking up that the Alliance prisoners have been used as laborers. That’s not unusual for the Syndics, but we’re more used to seeing our prisoners of war having been forcibly employed in mining or agriculture, well away from cities.”
Geary sat back, drumming his fingers on the armrest of his seat. “You don’t think they’ve been employed in hard labor?”
“They could be, sir. Roadwork, for example. But it could also have been easier labor, such as cleaning buildings. Once we get the former prisoners aboard and can debrief them, we’ll know exactly how they’ve been mistreated.”
The use of the term “mistreated” came automatically to Iger, and Geary knew from the labor camps they had already encountered that it was very likely accurate. Still, this labor camp looked much nicer than the bleak prison complexes the fleet had seen in the past. Definitely a prison camp, but not a hellish one. “Let me know if you find anything else.”
As the window containing Iger closed, Desjani leaned back with a sigh. “Nothing much to worry about here. No warships except a couple of Nickel corvettes in that dockyard orbiting the second planet.”
Geary tapped on the symbols for the corvettes, reading details of what the fleet’s sensors had seen. “Our syst
ems estimate the corvettes have been gutted but not for scrapping. There are indications they’re being refitted with new systems.”
“Maybe they’ve got a Captain Smythe here.”
“Partially completed warships hulls,” Geary mused, pointing to a couple of other orbital shipyards. “Three Hunter-Killer-size warships there and one light cruiser–size hull at that other one. They’re not close to completion.”
“Somebody seems to be building themselves a little fleet,” Desjani commented. “Those HuK hulls vary from Syndic standards. Maybe they’re not being built under contract for the central government.”
That was interesting. “Is the local CEO getting ready to defend this star system or preparing to lean on other star systems? Maybe just extortion backed by firepower, maybe outright expansion of control.”
“Is whatever Syndics do to each other our problem?” Desjani asked.
“No. Not this kind of thing, anyway. If we came across an attack under way, we could intervene, though I have no idea if we’d want to, and our orders are extremely vague on what to do in those circumstances.”
“Those ships under construction are easy targets,” she commented. “It would probably be an act of great charity for surrounding star systems if we blew those hulls into tiny fragments.”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “As impressed as I am by your newfound humanitarian impulses, we are at peace with the Syndics now. That means we need a really good reason to blow up something.”
“Well, if you want to get technical about it.” Desjani shook her head. “But, seriously, won’t this be a problem at some point? As long as we’re transiting Syndic space, that is, which as far as I know may happen a lot, and as long as Syndic government control continues to collapse, which as far as I know is going to keep on getting worse, then sooner or later we’re going to come across some shooting going on when we reach a star system. What if it’s one Syndic star system attacking another? The defenders will ask for our help. What do we say? And what if the attackers belong to the Syndic government, and they’re bombarding their own people to reestablish control over that star system? Are we just supposed to sail on through and pretend nothing’s happening?”
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