Dreadnaught tlfbtf-1

by Jack Campbell

  “As far as we know,” Geary agreed.

  He had no chance to say more as Rione appeared, coming down the same passageway with a clear intent to intercept them.

  Rione came right up to them and stopped in their path. “Admiral, I need to speak with you.”

  “You and General Charban can sort out how to—”

  “It’s not about that.” She took a deep breath, seeming to fumble for words for a moment, something unusual enough that Desjani’s frown took on a different cast. “My—Commander Benan. He has been told . . . about events concerning you and me . . . in the past.”

  From somewhere in Geary’s mind one question arose. “Are you in danger?”

  “No! Not me.”

  “Not you.” That left one other person.

  But Rione shook her head. “I don’t think he would—”

  Hearing a sudden hiss of breath from Desjani, Geary looked up to see Commander Benan walking steadily toward him.

  NINE

  DESJANI took a step forward, putting herself between Benan and both Geary and Rione. “Is there a problem, Commander?”

  “I must speak with . . . the admiral.” Paol Benan’s face was deathly pale, his voice rough. “There is a matter of honor between us. I must—”

  Desjani broke in, her voice sharp, at command tone and volume. “Commander Benan, are you aware of fleet regulations?”

  Those fevered eyes turned on her. “I do not need to be lectured on regulations by—”

  “Then you know what will happen if you continue on your current course,” Desjani said, her tone growing colder. “I will not have such a breach of discipline aboard my ship.”

  “Aboard your ship? After what you and he did? You disgraced your position and should have been relieved of command and called to account for—” Other members of the crew had halted to watch the scene, and now a low growl arose from them, menacing enough to draw Paol Benan’s attention and choke off his words.

  A chief petty officer stepped forward, speaking in a firm voice. “Sir, if there had been any grounds to question the honor of our captain, we would have been aware of it. She and the admiral never violated their duties or responsibilities.”

  “Their honor is not stained,” an ensign added.

  Whatever Benan might have replied was cut off by Victoria Rione, who pushed past Desjani to stare at him, then in a low, furious voice spoke to her husband. “We will talk. In private. Now.”

  A flush spread across Benan’s pallor. “Anything you have to say—”

  “If you still care about me at all, you will not proclaim in public anything regarding my honor or my actions,” Rione said in a voice that seemed to physically force Benan back.

  That got through to him. Benan swallowed, then nodded, suddenly subdued. “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Vic.”

  “Come with me. Please.” Rione faced not Geary, but Desjani. “If you will excuse us, Captain. My . . . thanks,” she got out in a strangled voice, then spun and led her husband away.

  Desjani watched them go, then focused on her crew members, who were standing about, uncertain. “Thank you.”

  They nodded or saluted or smiled and moved on as Desjani beckoned to Geary. “Let’s keep moving. That was close.”

  “What was close? What was Benan doing that you interrupted?”

  She stopped in midstep to stare at him. “You really don’t know what he was doing?” Desjani asked. “He was about to challenge you to an honor duel.”

  Geary wasn’t sure that he had heard right. “A what?”

  “An honor duel. To the death, usually.” They reached her stateroom, and she gestured him inside. “Hopefully, you can spend five minutes in here without anyone assuming we’re acting like rabbits in heat.” Desjani flopped down on a chair in an attitude very different from her usual rigid posture, her face troubled. “Honor duels started, I don’t know, thirty years ago maybe. Fleet officers calling each other out on matters of honor. We couldn’t beat the enemy so we started eating ourselves alive.” Her gaze locked on his eyes. “Matters of honor, like accusations of unfaithfulness.”

  “That happened in the fleet?” Geary demanded.

  “You know what we’re like even now! Honor is all that matters, displays of courage are all that matter.” Desjani made a disgusted face. “Challenged officers couldn’t back down without being accused of cowardice. We didn’t have enough officers as it was, and those we did have were killing each other in a frenzy of misguided zeal. Finally, fleet stepped in with very harsh regulations mandating serious penalties for anyone making a challenge. It took a little while to stick, and more than a few firing squads; but by the time I entered the fleet, honor duels were just stories told by the few who were still alive from those days. But the regulations are still on the books. We had to memorize them in officer training. If that idiot had finished stating his challenge to you, I would have been forced to have him arrested and locked in the brig, pending court-martial upon our return.” She gave him a speculative look. “Unless you decided on a summary execution in the field, which is permitted under the regulations.”

  Geary looked around. He couldn’t remember ever being in her stateroom before. Choosing a seat, he sat down facing her. “That’s not funny.”

  “I didn’t think it was. He almost challenged me as well, or didn’t you notice?”

  He stared at her. “That bit when he began to say something about how you should have been relieved of command?”

  “Yeah. That bit,” Desjani spat out.

  “Your crew defended your honor,” Geary pointed out.

  “That’s because they don’t know how dishonorable my feelings were,” she said, bitterness growing in her words. “You could have had me for the asking. You knew it then, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit to that. Don’t pretend I’m this model of honor when I would have done anything you asked of me even though you were my superior officer.”

  “You didn’t—Tanya, you believed I had a vital mission to carry out. Even our harshest critics could never point to anything you did—”

  “I am my harshest critic, Admiral Geary!” She glowered at him. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  “I suppose I should have.”

  Desjani stared into one corner of the room for a while, then shook her head. “I could have been her. You know I had relationships before you. It’s possible that one of them could have resulted in marriage, and at least one of the officers I could have married was captured by the Syndics. I could have spent years and years burnishing the memory of him and of our relationship, then found out when he was liberated just how much difference there was between those dreams and the reality of who he had been and who he now was. And be forced to explain and live with whatever I’d done while he was captive for what we all thought would be the rest of his life.”

  He lowered his head, seeing the emotions in her and not wanting to see them. “You wouldn’t have—”

  “I could have. You know that. Don’t patronize me. Only chance kept me from living what she’s stuck with right now.”

  He looked up, fixing a baffled gaze on her. “That’s why you stepped between her and Benan? You wanted to protect her because you feel sorry for her?”

  “I am the commanding officer of this ship! I will not tolerate breaches of discipline!” Desjani glared at him again. “That is why I intervened. Because it was my responsibility. Understand?”

  He eyed her, knowing that this was a subject that Desjani would never discuss without holding a lot back. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Dammit, Jack! Stop pushing me!”

  He had never liked the Black Jack nickname, had been horrified to discover that the Alliance government had made it part of him while building him up as the greatest hero the Alliance had ever known, but Desjani had taken to on rare occasions calling him just Jack as a personal nickname, and he had found he liked that. But for her to say it now spoke to how upset she was. “All right. I really am sorry.
How long are you going to beat yourself up about your feelings that developed when I was your superior officer?”

  She flipped one hand toward him. “The rest of this life. Part of the next one, probably. I’m sure by the life after that I’ll have plenty of other sins to occupy my sense of guilt.”

  “So what do I do if Commander Benan tries to challenge me again?”

  “I’d have the bastard shot, but that’s just me.” She frowned down at the deck. “Sorry. I know you’re asking for advice. Assuming that the harpy he’s married to hasn’t already gelded him over this, you should just shut him up. Put a fist in his gut if you have to. Keep him from finishing his challenge. Otherwise, you’ll face some ugly choices.”

  “All right.” He stood up, knowing that eyes outside would be on her closed door. “Thank you again for ensuring that no incidents occurred on your ship.”

  She gave him a suspicious look. “You’re welcome.”

  He started to go, then paused, looking at a plaque on the bulkhead next to the entrance where Desjani would see it whenever she left her stateroom. Names were listed there, alongside dates and different stars. The long list had obviously been added to over the years. The earliest names were those of junior officers, the ranks increasing in the later years. “Who are these people?”

  “Friends.”

  He spotted the last name on the list. “Captain Jaylen Cresida.”

  “Absent friends,” Desjani said.

  He looked back at her. She had her eyes on the plaque, avoiding meeting his. “May the living stars shine on their memory,” Geary said, then left, closing the hatch gently behind him.

  A very restless night, which finally found him walking the passageways again. That required some good acting, to be seen roaming the passageways in the middle of the night yet not appear nervous or worried to the crew members who worked that shift. What the hell am I going to do about Jane Geary? Tanya’s right. As much as I’ve managed to make this fleet more professional, the fact is they still place a priority on the attack, on being bold, getting to the enemy fast and fighting it out. And while Jane disobeyed orders, she did so for a daring attack that took out an enemy threat. In terms of getting the job done and protecting our troops on the ground while also minimizing the chances of Syndic civilian casualties, she did everything right.

  Which leaves me very little room to hammer her. I can’t condemn initiative that effective, not without sending some wrong messages of my own. If I make obedience the only virtue that counts, I might be creating a culture that is at least as bad as the undisciplined mess I first found here. Do I want a fleet full of officers like Captain Vente, who apparently requires exactly what he’s supposed to do spelled out for him? I have to find grounds for relieving him from command of Invincible, but I don’t have any yet.

  There were a lot fewer people out and about at that hour, and most of those were at duty stations, so when someone else turned a corner ahead of him, Geary instantly noticed her.

  Rione.

  She hesitated, then came on toward him until both stopped, facing each other.

  “How are you?” Geary asked.

  “I’ve been worse.”

  Guilt stabbed at him. “Is there anything I can say or do?”

  “I doubt it. It’s what you did, what we did, that led to this.” She looked away. “The fault is not yours. It wouldn’t have been even if you had dragged me into your bed because I was willing. In fact, I did the seducing, not you. And I have been candid with my husband about that. But it’s not just about your and my shared past.” Rione lowered her gaze, her expression somber. “Something’s changed in him. He’s darker, harder, more angry.”

  “A lot of the former prisoners have serious issues to deal with,” Geary said.

  “I know. His are worse. Your fleet medical personnel are worried.” She shook her head. “All he talks about is vengeance. Getting even with the Syndics, getting even with people back in the Callas Republic who he imagines once slighted him, and of course now getting even with you. But I am told that thus far his expressions of anger are within acceptable parameters.” She gave the last words an ironic and bitter twist.

  “What about you?”

  “Me.” Rione shrugged. “I don’t know. For the sake of the man he once was, I will continue trying to reach him. He is now under no illusions that I will tolerate behavior such as you saw today. But he has trouble accepting that I am not the woman that I once was, that I became a Senator and Co-President of the Callas Republic, that I have done many things while we were apart. In his mind, I was always at home, waiting for him, unchanging. How can I be angry with him for clinging to that vision to sustain him in the darkness of that labor camp? But how could he not know that I would not sit alone in a silent home, endlessly waiting, but instead go out to do what I could?”

  “It can be very hard,” Geary said slowly, “to learn how much the world you once knew has changed.”

  “You would know.” Her expression and her voice were both growing distant, taking on a strange remoteness even though Rione stood beside him. “And things are always changing, even as they always stay the same. Never trust a politician, Admiral Geary.”

  “Not even you?”

  A long pause before she answered. “Especially not me.”

  “What about the senators on the grand council?” The question he had been wanting to ask for some time.

  Rione took even longer to answer this time. “A living hero can be a very inconvenient thing.”

  “Is that how the government still thinks?” Geary asked, letting his tone be as blunt as his words.

  “The government.” Rione breathed a single, soft laugh though her expression didn’t change. “You speak of ‘the government’ as if it were a single, monolithic beast of huge proportions, with countless hands but only a single brain controlling them. Turn that vision around, Admiral. Perhaps you should consider how things would be if the government was in fact a mammoth creature with a single tremendous hand but many brains trying to direct that hand in its powerful but clumsy efforts to do something, anything. You’ve seen the grand council at work. Which image seems more appropriate to you?”

  “What’s going on now? Why are you really here?”

  “I am an emissary of the government of the Alliance.” Her voice held not a hint of emotion.

  “Who made you an emissary? Navarro?”

  “Navarro?” She looked right at him again. “Do you think he would betray you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re right. Not knowingly. But he was tired, worn-out from his duties on the grand council. Look elsewhere, Admiral. Nothing is simple.”

  “We didn’t come to Dunai because your husband was here. You didn’t know he was one of the prisoners here. Who did we come for?”

  Another long pause. “Are you looking for one person?” With that, Rione began walking down the passageway away from him.

  “Would you withhold anything I needed to know to get you and your husband home safe again?” Geary called after her.

  Rione didn’t answer, walking steadily away.

  HE had managed to deflect some of the numerous requests and demands for personal meetings relayed through Charban until Dauntless and the rest of the fleet jumped into the nothingness of jump space. Out of respect for the rank and service of the liberated prisoners, Geary had found time to meet with a number of them, finding the meetings often difficult since he could offer those officers none of the things they expected and more than one kept insisting on those things anyway.

  He had never before appreciated just how pleasant the isolated nothingness of jump space could be.

  The work on Dauntless continued to clog passageways, but the slow progression of work areas provided evidence of progress, interspersed by sudden leaps across areas in which earlier battle damage had already resulted in extensive replacement of original system components. “Rebuild work on Dauntless is fifty-one percent complete,” Captain Smythe had pro
udly declared before jump. “Of course, that last forty-nine percent might be a real bitch. We’ve done the easiest-to-access work first.”

  Soon afterward, Desjani had shown up at Geary’s stateroom. She indicated the sailor beside her, a master chief petty officer whose girth must be right on the upper edge of fleet body-fat standards. However, the master chief’s uniform was immaculate, and he wore the ribbons for some impressive combat awards. “Admiral, have you met Master Chief Gioninni?”

  Geary nodded, having encountered the stout master chief a number of times. “We’ve talked.”

  “In those conversations, did Master Chief Gioninni ever mention that while he has never been convicted of violating a single law or regulation, he is nonetheless widely rumored to be constantly juggling so many schemes and scams that the tactical systems on the average battle cruiser would have trouble keeping track of them all?”

  “Captain, there’s no evidence any of those rumors are true,” Gioninni protested.

  “If we could find the evidence, you’d be in the brig for about five hundred years, Master Chief.” Desjani made a gesture in the general direction of the auxiliaries. “Master Chief Gioninni is, I believe, the perfect individual to monitor activities on some of the other ships in the fleet for anything contrary to regulations.”

  “On account of my professionalism and keen observational skills, that is, of course,” the master chief explained.

  “Of course,” Geary agreed. He wondered if Gioninni was the reincarnation of a senior chief that he had known a century ago. “Why would anyone running his own schemes and scams be interested in reporting on similar activities being carried out by others? I’m asking on a purely theoretical basis, of course.”

  “Well, sir, speaking purely theoretically, of course,” Gioninni said, “someone who might be doing such improper and unauthorized things wouldn’t want too much competition, and he . . . or she . . . wouldn’t want the competition to maybe try to dig up evidence against him . . . or her. Not that there could be any such evidence, of course.”