Geary paused again, wondering not for the first time why speaking to his ancestors almost always brought comfort. He wouldn’t have described himself as a deep believer of any kind, but nonetheless always felt that someone was listening at such times. And if a man couldn’t trust his ancestors with confidences, who could he trust? “This is very difficult. I’m doing my best, but I’m not at all sure my best will be good enough. There’s a lot of people depending on me. Some of them are going to die. I can’t pretend that won’t happen. Even if I somehow do absolutely everything just right, some ships are going to be lost before this fleet gets home. If I make mistakes—” He stopped, thinking of Repulse. “If I make more mistakes, a lot of these people could die.
“It’s a long way back to Alliance space. I can’t even be sure what we’ll find if we get there. Hopefully I can tie up enough of the Syndicate Worlds fleet trying to catch us that they won’t be able to exploit our defeat at the Syndicate home world. But we’ll have no way of knowing whether the Syndics have gone after the Alliance using the advantage gained by their victory and by us being trapped out here, not until we get close enough to home to have a chance of getting fairly recent intelligence.”
He paused again. “It’s not that I’m worried about what’ll happen to me. I feel like I should’ve died a century ago. But I can’t give in to that feeling because I do care about what happens to the people who’ve placed so much trust in me. Please help me make the right decisions and do the right things, so I lose as few ships and sailors as possible. I swear I’ll try my best to do right by you and by the living.”
Geary sat for a while longer, watching the candle burn, then reached out, snuffed the flame, stood, and walked out of the room.
As he left the area, several sailors saw him. He nodded in greeting while they watched him with awed expressions. Hell, I ought to be one of the dead ancestors people are talking to, instead of walking these decks. They know that.
But the sailors didn’t act like they’d seen someone who didn’t belong here. A couple of them saluted with the stiff awkwardness of someone who’d recently learned the gesture. Geary found himself smiling as he returned the salutes. Then he caught a flash of wariness in the eyes of two other sailors and his smile vanished. His own people shouldn’t be afraid of him. “Is something wrong?”
The sailor he’d addressed went white. “N-no, sir.”
Geary eyed the man for a moment. “Are you sure? You seem to have concerns. If you need to discuss them privately, I’ve got some time.”
The sailor was still groping for a reply when his companion cleared her throat. “Sir, it’s none of our business.”
“Really?” Geary looked around, reading the disquiet in the others. “I’d like to know what’s bothering you anyway.”
The woman paled slightly as well, then spoke haltingly. “It’s just, seeing you here. There’d been some talk.”
“Talk?” Geary tried to keep from frowning. He didn’t like making a public spectacle of his belief, but this seemed to be something beyond that. “About what?”
One of the sailors who’d saluted answered while he gave the worried ones an annoyed glance. “Sir, nobody’d seen you here since, uh, since we picked you up. And since we left the Syndic home system, well, sir, some people thought maybe what happened there had something to do with that.”
Geary hoped he didn’t look as annoyed as felt by the vagueness of the statement. “What in particular?” Then it struck him. “You mean Repulse, don’t you?” The expressions on the sailors answered his question better than words could have. “You mean because my grandnephew probably died on Repulse.”
He looked down, momentarily not wishing to look at the others, and shook his head. “Did you think I was afraid to come here and deal with him? Deal with that?” Geary raised his head and once again read the answer in their expressions. “I don’t know how much you all know, but Captain Michael J. Geary volunteered to keep Repulse back and hold off the Syndics. If he hadn’t done that, I might’ve had to order it, because that would’ve been my responsibility, but I didn’t order it. I didn’t have to. He and his crew voluntarily sacrificed themselves for the rest of us.”
Their faces told Geary they hadn’t known that. Great. They’ve been thinking that I’d ordered my grandnephew to his death. The hell of it is that I might’ve really had to do that. “I have nothing to fear facing my ancestors. No more than anyone else, I guess. There’s just been a lot going on. That’s why I haven’t been down here before.”
“Of course, sir,” one sailor replied quickly.
“You’re not afraid of anything, are you, sir?” another asked in a rush.
One of my worshippers, Geary thought. How do I answer that? “Like anyone else, I’m worried about doing my best. It keeps me on my toes.” He grinned to show it was meant to be a joke, and the sailors laughed on cue. Now all he had to do was get out of this conversation as quickly as possible without being too obvious about it. “I’m sorry to have kept you from your own observances.”
The sailors offered a chorus of replies indicating the fault was theirs and then made way for Geary. He noted as he passed that the two worried sailors seemed much more comfortable around him now. To his own surprise, he realized he felt a little more comfortable around them. Perhaps, in his own way, he had been shying away from dealing with what had happened to Repulse, but by openly stating his feelings to others, he’d come to accept it somewhat.
He walked on toward his stateroom, feeling that the burdens on him were, for the moment, a bit lighter.
“Captain Geary, may I speak privately with you?”
Geary closed out the item he’d been working on, one of the simulations he wanted the fleet to use in practice for battle once it arrived at Kaliban. It was an older program, one whose ancestral forerunner he’d been familiar with a long time ago, but even this much newer version hadn’t been updated for a while. He wanted the simulation parameters to match the state of this fleet and what he’d seen of Syndic capabilities nowadays. But there was still plenty of time to get that done before the fleet reached Kaliban, whereas Captain Desjani was doubtless stealing time from her duties as Dauntless’s commanding officer in order to talk to him now. “Of course.”
Desjani paused as if ordering her thoughts. “I know this happened almost a week ago, but I was hoping you would tell me why you chose to send the crews of the Syndic merchant ships to safety. I understand your feelings regarding treatment of prisoners, but those individuals were not in uniform. They were in civilian garb. That made them saboteurs at best, and such people are not covered by the laws of war.” She seemed done, but hastily added one more sentence. “I’m not questioning your decision, of course.”
“Captain Desjani, I count on you to question me when you don’t understand why I’m doing something. You may know something I need to know.” Geary screwed his eyes shut for a moment and kneaded his forehead in an attempt to relieve the tension that had sprung up inside. “You’re right, of course, that we weren’t obligated to try to save the lives of those people. In fact, we could’ve executed the lot of them and not be held at fault.” He grinned crookedly. “You didn’t ask this directly, but I’ll answer it anyway. I’m certain that your ancestors and mine wouldn’t have looked askance at us if those Syndics had been dealt with in a much harsher and more permanent manner.”
He could see the puzzlement in Desjani’s eyes. “Then, why, sir? They were planning to kill many of our sailors, and destroy or disable some of our ships, in a sneak attack under the guise of civilians. Why show them mercy?”
“That’s a valid question.” Geary sighed and waved toward the starscape still displayed on one bulkhead. “I could say that sometimes it’s good for the soul to show mercy when none is required or expected. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I think my soul needs all the help it can get.” Desjani looked momentarily startled, then smiled as if she’d decided Geary was joking. “But that’s far from the only reaso
n,” Geary continued. “I had some very practical grounds for letting them go.”
“Practical grounds?” Desjani looked from Geary to the starscape.
“Yeah.” Geary hunched forward, pointing at the pictured stars. “What happened here is going to be heard about in every other Syndic system sooner or later. Oh, there’ll be an official version in which the Alliance fleet was planning to crater the hell out of every population center in the Corvus System, only to be repulsed by the gallantry of the Syndic defenders. They’d put out that kind of nonsense regardless of what we did.
“However, even the Syndics can’t stop unofficial news from making its way around. So what are Syndic populations in other systems going to hear through the grapevine? That we didn’t try to bombard any cities. Of course, they might think that’s because we didn’t have time. But they’ll also hear that we treated their people right when we made them prisoner. When we had the power to do anything we wanted to do, we respected the lives of every Syndic who came into our power.”
Desjani let doubt show. “Surely the Syndics won’t care. They’ll probably see that as a sign of weakness.”
“Will they?” Geary shrugged. “That’s possible. It’s possible that anything we did would’ve been seen as a sign of weakness. I remember being told that mistreating prisoners would be interpreted as a sign that we were too weak to stick to the rules, too frightened to risk any possible advantage.”
“Really?” Desjani stared at him in open surprise.
“Yeah.” Geary let his thoughts wander for a moment, remembering a room and a lecture far distant in space and time. “That was what I was taught, that sticking to the rules would convey a sense of strength and confidence. I suppose that’s arguable. But in practical terms right now, I believe that at a minimum, someone, somewhere, may treat Alliance prisoners better as a result of what we did. More directly important to us, someone we’re fighting might not be as afraid of surrendering instead of fighting to the death. They’re going to hear that we treated surrendered combatants right, that we avoided harming civilians, that we didn’t cut a path of destruction through Corvus System, that even when sorely provoked, we only struck back directly at those who ordered a sneak attack on us. Somewhere along the line, someone who we need something from may remember that.”
Desjani looked uncertain again. “I can see where that could possibly work to our advantage the next time we try to acquire supplies from a Syndic system we’re passing through. But they’re still Syndics, Captain Geary. They won’t change their policies because we act differently.”
“Won’t they? I suppose their leaders might not. Between you and me, I detest the Syndic leaders I’ve encountered so far.” Desjani grinned, doubtless reassured by Geary’s statement. “But I’m sure there’ll be no doubt in the minds of anyone who hears about this fleet, or sees this fleet, that we’re not weak. They’ll know we chose not to do certain acts that we could’ve done.” Geary stared at the stars, feeling an edge of the coldness inside him again as he thought about the century of time and events that separated him from Desjani. “Ancestors help me, Tanya, the Syndic population is human, too. They’ve also got to be feeling the strain of this war. They’ve got to be sick to death of sending their sons and daughters and husbands and wives off to die in an apparently endless conflict.” He looked directly at her. “Let’s face it, we don’t have much to lose by letting the average Syndic know we’ll deal fairly with them.”
“What about the fanatics who were willing to die? Surely they’ll just make another such attempt.”
“They might,” Geary agreed. “But they went off anticipating a glorious death. Instead, they came home unconscious, and their ships tore up their own bases. No glory there. What some of them got instead was death at the hands of their own side. Maybe all that’ll make the next set of suicide volunteers a little less enthusiastic. When someone’s ready to die, killing them just furthers their own objectives. Mind you, I’ll grant their wish if it comes to that, but I’ll do it on my terms. I don’t want their deaths inspiring anyone.”
Desjani smiled slowly. “You frustrated the Syndics’ plan for a strike against the fleet, and frustrated the desire of some fanatics to die in the course of striking or trying to strike that blow. None of them got what they wanted.”
“No.” Geary looked at the stars again, wondering where among them the major elements of the Syndic fleet were currently located, and where those Syndic forces were currently heading in their attempt to find and destroy the Alliance fleet. “If they want to die at our hands so bad, they’ll have to find another opportunity. And if it comes to that, we’ll accommodate them. On our terms.”
EIGHT
Nothing.
They left jump space at full alert, ready for the worst, knowing they might find mines laid in their paths and a Syndic fleet right behind the mines. Knowing they might have to fight their way through that fleet if they wanted to survive another day. But only emptiness greeted the nervous searches of Alliance targeting systems.
The Kaliban Star System, as far as the best instruments available to the Alliance could tell, was totally lifeless. Nothing alive that could be seen, no spacecraft in motion, and not even the feeble warmth given off by a single piece of equipment even in standby mode could be detected. There had been people living here once, but now everything in Kaliban was cold, everything in Kaliban was silent.
“No mines, praise our ancestors,” Captain Desjani exulted. “That means our arrival here was totally unexpected. You outguessed them, Captain Geary.”
“I guess I did.” No sense in false modesty. We came here because I said so, and only because I said so. “Kaliban’s not much of a place now, is it?”
“It never was much of a place.”
Five planets, two of them so small they barely qualified for the name. All hostile to human habitation because of temperatures either far too low or far too high, and atmospheres either nonexistent or toxic. Plus the usual assortment of rocks and ice balls, though even those didn’t seem very numerous or noteworthy compared to other star systems. Nonetheless, people had built homes here. Kaliban didn’t have anything special at all, except for the gravity well provided by its star that made jump points work. Geary could imagine the human history of Kaliban’s system easily, because the same things had happened in so many other places.
Ships had been forced to come through Kaliban to get to other places before the hypernet. And because there’d been ships coming through, there’d been a shipyard or two or three built to handle emergencies and provide maintenance or supplies to the passing ships, as well as work on the ships that stayed in-system to transport workers and their families. The shipyards and the families had needed some services, so small towns had grown up in a few places. Buried under the soil of a hostile world or burrowed out of a large asteroid, they’d provided the things small towns had always provided. Some of the ships coming through would carry passengers or cargo bound for Kaliban. And of course there’d been mines to provide local raw materials instead of hauling mass from another star, and people to work in the mines, and a local government to keep things under control, and representatives of the central Syndic authority to keep the local government under control.
The rest Geary knew only from what he’d heard. The hypernet had come into existence and the ships didn’t need to come through Kaliban, or the innumerable systems like it, anymore. The shipyards had closed as their lifeblood dwindled to a trickle, and without those jobs the small towns started dying. Once there’d been no particular reason to come to Kaliban except for the jump points. Now there wasn’t any reason to stay at Kaliban. How many years did the last holdouts hang on? Maybe not all that long. In a Syndic system, everyone would’ve been a company employee of some sort, and companies cut their losses long before most individual people are willing to give up. There’s no one left now. All the installations we can see are cold. No energy usage, no environmental systems working. They shut down everything. I gues
s the last person who left Kaliban remembered to turn off the lights.
Measured in the life span of a star, the human presence here had lasted the barest flicker of a moment. For some reason, seeing that and knowing it brought the sense of cold back to Geary.
Then he shook it off. Every sailor learned one thing quickly, and that one thing was that everything about space was inhuman. The sheer size of it, the emptiness of it, the death it carried everywhere except for those very, very small places amid the emptiness where humans could walk on a planet’s surface with their faces bare to the wind and breathe the air. It isn’t good and it isn’t bad, the old saying went, it just is.
It’s too big for us, and we’re only here for the blink of eye as far as it’s concerned, an old chief had told Geary when he was so young an officer it almost hurt to remember. Someday, any day, it could take you, because even though it doesn’t care about us, it’ll kill us in an instant if it can. Then, if your prayers to the living stars are answered, you’ll get to go live forever in their warmth and light. If not, you’d best make the best of the life you’ve got. Speaking of which, did I ever tell you about the time my old ship visited Virago? Now that was a party.
Geary became aware he was smiling, recalling that old chief and the often outrageous space stories he’d told. “Captain Desjani, I’m planning on putting the fleet in orbit around Kaliban. Please let me know if you have any recommendations regarding the exact orbit.”
She gave him a mildly surprised look. “We’re going to stay here?”
“Long enough to see what sort of equipment and materials the Syndics might’ve abandoned out here.” He’d reviewed the status of the fleet’s ships during the jump from Corvus and hadn’t been happy to see how low some ships were getting on essentials. Nobody was close to critical yet, but then they were nowhere close to getting home, either. And there was something else he needed to do that required the ships to be in normal space. Something that had to be done before the fleet faced battle again.
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