“You gave us the idea,” Geary responded.
Desjani nodded again. “An object lesson in what happens when you do what the enemy wants you to do.”
“Yeah. The trick is figuring out what the enemy wants you to do, and doing something different.” He pondered the state of his fleet. “All units, rejoin Dauntless in fleet general purpose Formation Echelon. Captain Tulev, I want your battle cruisers and escorts with the auxiliaries division so they can provide support to you. Give me estimated repair times for your ships when possible. To all ships in Formation Gamma, very well done.”
Desjani gave him a glance. “Are we leaving Sancere soon?”
“That’s right.” Geary ran his eyes across the system display, remembering the mass of installations and shipping that had greeted the Alliance fleet when it had arrived here. Very few of those were left. Let’s see if the Syndics can try to spin this into a victory. “We’ve done all the damage we need to do here. And we’re going to be needed at Ilion. If we’re lucky, there’ll be some ships rejoining us there.”
“And some Syndicate Worlds forces right behind them,” Rione noted.
“Yeah. I’d better make sure the auxiliaries are manufacturing more weapons as well as more fuel cells during the transit. I’m assuming we’ll need both at Ilion.”
Before they went into jump, Geary took the time for a private conference with Commander Cresida. “If not for your ideas on controlling that hypernet gate collapse, there’s a good chance none of us would be here. As fleet commander, I can authorize the award of a Silver Nebula, and that’s what I’m giving you. I hope you don’t mind that the wording on the citation may be a little vague.”
Cresida flushed with pleasure. “Thank you, sir. Hopefully we won’t need that firing algorithm again.”
“Let’s hope not,” Geary agreed. “You’ve done outstanding work as an independent formation commander.” He paused. “I’m also granting a battlefield promotion to captain. Congratulations. You earned it. We’ll have a proper ceremony at Ilion if time permits.”
“Captain?” Cresida smiled, looking stunned. “Thank you, sir. I don’t know what else to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Like I said, you earned it. Task Force Furious has proven to be a very valuable asset to this fleet.” Geary leaned back, relaxing in a way he knew communicated that the formal portion of the conference was over. “Commander Cresida—excuse me, Captain Cresida, there’s something I’ve been wondering.” She gave him an attentive look even as she smiled at the first use of her new rank. “When that hypernet gate here was destroyed, what happened to any ships heading for Sancere?”
“There’s two possibilities, sir,” Cresida stated. “One is that when the pathway between the Sancere gate and whatever gate they come from was broken, everything in it was destroyed in one manner or another.”
Geary nodded, thinking of ships suddenly dying without any warning. Enemy ships, but still…
“What’s the other possibility?”
“It’s actually considered by far the most likely, sir,” Cresida assured him. “It’s believed that when the path ceases to exist, any ships affected simply fall back into normal space.”
“That’s all?” On the heels of his statement, Geary realized what that meant. “They drop into normal space. Somewhere between whatever star they came from and Sancere.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Which could be a long, long ways from any star,” Geary added.
“Yes, sir.” Cresida grimaced. “With luck, and rationing, and some creative attempts at converting compartments into growing areas to recycle waste, grow food, and regenerate oxygen supplies, they should be able to make it to a star from which they could use jump points to get somewhere safe.”
“It’d take years, though, even if they were only a light-year from the nearest star.”
“At the sort of economical cruising speed they’d have to use, yes, sir. Probably at least ten years. Possibly a lot more.”
Geary shook his head. “I guess it beats dying. Oh, hell, they could use some of their escape pods. Put most of their crews into survival sleep without launching the pods. That would stretch all of their supplies a lot. I wouldn’t want to be one of the guys left awake, though. That’d be a long time staring at a star getting bigger very, very slowly.”
“It’s not like we’re going to be home tomorrow,” Cresida pointed out wryly.
“True. And if we caused a lot of Syndic warships to get stuck between stars for a decade, that ought to help out the Alliance a bit.” He smiled somewhat, too. “Maybe they’d finally get to a star and find out the war had been over for years. I wonder how that would feel?”
Cresida didn’t reply for a moment. “Some of us wonder if the war will ever be over, if we and the Syndics will just keep fighting no matter what happens.”
Geary looked at her, recalling that the war had been going on for Cresida’s entire life and long before then. “I suppose sometimes it must seem like it’ll last forever. But there must be a way to bring it to an end in a way that preserves the safety of the Alliance and ensures the Syndics won’t attack again.” The ability to use hypernet gates as means of unparalleled destruction came back to him, then. That would end the war and eliminate the Syndic threat. Would he ever come to believe that was the only thing to do? Or, worse, that it was the right thing to do? “I’ll see you at Ilion, Captain.”
TEN
After the riches of Sancere, Ilion seemed bare and bereft. A single marginally habitable world boasted a few enclosed cities, one of them already apparently shut down for lack of inhabitants. The only shipping to be seen were a few aged in-system ships running between the habitable world and some old industrial facilities near an asteroid belt. No warships to be seen, and the Syndic military base that had occupied a moon of a gas giant about two light-hours out from the star had also been mothballed.
Geary decided not to bother communicating with the inhabitants of the Syndic planet. He had no intention of bringing the fleet near them and couldn’t imagine they had anything he needed. Indeed, careful examination of the closed Syndic military base showed that it been stripped of supplies, with even some of the equipment cannibalized. “It looks like they’ve been taking that base apart for a couple of decades, at least,” Desjani observed. “With Sancere so close, everybody who could leave must have already left.”
“Why do you suppose the Syndics haven’t already evacuated the planet, then?” Geary wondered.
“I’d bet because moving all of those people would cost a fair amount of money. They’ve probably been left there to fend for themselves because on a Syndic corporate balance sheet they’re not worth moving.”
“Abandoned in place.” Geary nodded, wondering how that would feel. It was something sometimes done to equipment. He had never expected to see it being done to people. How long could these people keep going on what they could grow, manufacture, and cannibalize? It was a good bet the population left here was still shrinking. Would the day arrive, centuries from now perhaps, when the last human in Ilion died? He had seen a number of systems bypassed by the hypernet before this, but Ilion carried the worst impact. “Let’s get the fleet moved to cover the jump point from Strena.” If any of those almost forty ships with Falco survived, they would have to come here through Strena. “I want us ten light-minutes from the jump point. If anyone comes through, they may need very fast rescue.”
Geary took another look at the display. At their current speed it was about two days to the jump point he wanted to cover. “I guess it’s time for another fleet conference.”
It felt good to have the thirty ships from Task Force Furious back at the table. It felt good to see everyone pleased with how well Sancere had gone. For the moment at least, no one seemed ready to openly display hostility or dislike. Once again, Co-President Rione had chosen not to attend. Geary wondered what she was up to, why she was depending on secondhand accounts of these meetings rather then being a
t them to raise questions and objections. Surely she knew that as long as the objections were reasonable he wouldn’t take them wrongly.
The days spent in jump space between here and Sancere had been mostly given over to resting and recovery after the extended pressures of the operations at Sancere. With no alerts in the middle of sleep periods, Rione had been able to actually sleep while sleeping with him and seemed to have enjoyed that. But she hadn’t told him anything to explain why she wasn’t present at this conference. The woman remained an enigma.
“We can only estimate what the ships that left the fleet have been doing,” Geary told his assembled ship commanders, deliberately avoiding loaded terms like mutiny and fleeing. “The best guess our simulations have generated show that any that survived their certain encounter with vastly superior Syndic forces at Vidha would have retreated through these stars to reach Ilion, with their last waypoint at Strena.” He laid that out bluntly. It was the simple truth, and if none of those ships had survived to reach here, he didn’t want anyone wondering why. “If these estimates are correct, any ships seeking to rejoin the fleet will arrive sometime between tomorrow evening and the next four days.”
“How long will we wait?” the commanding officer of Dragon asked.
Geary gazed on the display for a moment before answering. “At least through the end of those four days. How much longer, I haven’t decided. We can’t stay indefinitely, but if anyone shows up, I want to be here.”
“What if the Syndics show up first?” the captain of Terrible wondered.
“If it’s within those four days, we’ll fight,” Geary confirmed. “After that will depend on a lot of factors. It will be my decision.” Heads nodded, some in agreement and others just in acknowledgment that he was in charge. That was something, anyway. “If the Syndics come through on the heels of any ships trying to rejoin us, we’ll have a fight on our hands. I expect to have to protect the ships arriving, since they’ll probably have sustained a lot of damage, plus we’ll have to do our best to wipe out the Syndic force.”
Geary gestured toward the star display. “Once we’ve recovered our missing ships and dealt with any Syndic pursuers, my plans are to leave here for Tavika.” That brought some smiles. Tavika would bring them back toward Alliance space. “Tavika will give us three options for the next jump. If it looks like Baldur is safe, we’ll jump there next.” More smiles. Between Baldur and Tavika the fleet would have made up the distance to Alliance space lost jumping toward Sancere. “At this point the Syndic command structure at a lot of places, including their home system, still hasn’t heard that we paid a visit to Sancere. Which means they have no idea where we are. Once they hear we were at Sancere, they’re going to start looking, but they won’t find us soon.”
He paused, looking around the table. “If any ships rejoin us, we’ll have to evaluate their damage. It’s possible I’ll have to order one or more to be evacuated if the damage is too great. Be ready to take personnel on board in case that happens. Ideally, we won’t leave any ships behind. We will not leave any people behind regardless of the circumstances. Are there any other questions?”
There weren’t. Everyone was being too compliant. Maybe he was being paranoid, but Geary found it hard to believe that every one of the commanders who had regarded him skeptically was now willing to simply accept whatever he said. Or maybe they were just tired. It was pretty late in the official day. “Thank you.”
When the others had “left,” Captain Duellos’s image remained, his eyes on the display. “It’s frustrating, not being able to do anything but wait and hope for some of those ships to show up, isn’t it?”
“Very,” Geary agreed, flopping down into his seat. “Why is everybody being so quiet and accepting? Why aren’t I getting more questions?”
Duellos bent a enigmatic look toward Geary. “Because everybody else is frustrated, too. They want to help those fools who ran off with Falco, but they can’t think of any way to do it better than what we are doing, waiting here and hoping some of them make it to Ilion. Even the worst skeptic with the fleet approves of the risk you’re taking in waiting here. If Falco was around to rally them with some fool plan to charge back and forth among Syndic star systems looking for our missing ships, then it might be different. But Falco didn’t want to wait to build up more support.”
“Lucky for me, I guess,” Geary noted gloomily.
“Lucky for all those ships that didn’t go with him as a result,” Duellos corrected. “Cheer up, Captain Geary. Things are going well.”
“They could be worse.” Geary paused. “Okay, I’ve got a personal question. About me.”
“About you? Or about you and the iron-jawed Co-President of the Callas Republic?”
Geary smiled. “Iron-jawed?”
“She’s a tough woman,” Duellos explained. “The sort who makes a valuable friend and a dangerous enemy.”
“That describes Co-President Rione,” Geary agreed.
“But I understand you’re on friendly terms with her at the moment.”
“You might say that. The entire fleet knows, right?”
Duellos nodded. “I haven’t personally polled every sailor in the fleet, but I think it would be hard to find one who hasn’t heard.”
“No one’s saying anything.”
“What are we supposed to say?” Duellos asked. “Congratulations? Ask you what tactics you employed to achieve your objective?”
Geary laughed as Duellos grinned. “That’s a good point. I just want to know if it’s causing any problems. I know Numos and his friends wanted to make an issue of my relationship with Rione back before there was any substance to the rumors.”
“I’ve heard little,” Duellos admitted. “As I once told you, it’s your business and doesn’t reflect on your professionalism. As long as you and Co-President Rione refrain from acting out in public, I expect no one will say anything. Openly that is. Those opposed to you will try to find a way to paint it in a negative light. I can’t see the issue gaining much traction, though, if you two continue to carry on as you have. The most damaging rumor would be that you’ve compelled Co-President Rione to become a sort of concubine, debasing her, but no one who has ever met that woman would believe such a rumor. Nor would rumors that you two are plotting against the Alliance hold up. Aside from the legend of Black Jack Geary’s devotion to the Alliance there’s also Co-President Rione’s well-known loyalty to her world and to the Alliance as a whole.” He gave Geary a questioning look. “How serious is it, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Frankly, I don’t know.”
“Not that you’ve asked, but I personally wouldn’t toy with the affections of a woman like Co-President Rione. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the expression about ‘hell hath no fury’ was coined about a woman very similar to her.”
Geary smiled again. “I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.”
Duellos frowned down at his hand as if examining it. “On the other hand, the woman standing beside Black Jack Geary when he returns this fleet safely to Alliance space will be in an enviable position for a politician.”
“That’s true,” Geary stated, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
Duellos glanced back at Geary. “You’re riding a tiger. You know that.”
“Yeah. I know that.” The old saying had already occurred to him, that someone riding a tiger is fine except for the fact that the tiger is taking them where it wants and they don’t dare get off, because the instant they do, the tiger can turn on them. She’s powerful and can be dangerous. I wonder if those are some of the things that attracted me to Victoria Rione?
Geary was still musing over that when he got back to his stateroom and found Victoria Rione waiting for him there. “Did the conference go well?”
“Your spies haven’t reported in yet?” Geary replied.
It didn’t faze her in the slightest. “Not all of them, no. It’s rather inconvenient for them when you hold fleet conferences in
the evening.” She indicated the star display over the table. “I have something to show you.”
He sat down, his eyes on the region of stars shown. He could usually guess which general area of space he was looking at by spotting particularly noteworthy stars, nebulas, or other features, but not this time. There wasn’t a single thing he could identify from memory. “Where is this?”
“The far side of Syndicate Worlds space. It’s not surprising you can’t recognize it since no one from the Alliance has ever been allowed there, except perhaps as prisoners en route to labor camps.” Rione’s fingers danced delicately across the controls, rotating the view. “I’ve been studying some of the Syndic records we acquired at Sancere. This is the latest information available in them on the far side of the Syndicate Worlds. Do you notice anything?”
He watched the stars swing past slowly as the star field pivoted under Rione’s commands. The boundary with unexplored or uncolonized star systems was a lumpy thing, of course. The arrangement of stars in the cosmos didn’t lend itself to the neat lines that human minds liked to see. Something about the view teased at him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“Perhaps if I highlight star systems abandoned within the last century,” Rione suggested. “And by abandoned I mean not left to wither, but rather star systems in which all human presence was withdrawn.” She pushed another control, and several stars glowed brighter.
The picture clicked into place in Geary’s mind. “It doesn’t look like a frontier. It looks like a border.”
“Yes,” Rione agreed calmly. “It shouldn’t look like a border, because there’s not supposed to be anything bordering the far side of Syndicate Worlds space, but it does. The region of occupied star systems doesn’t bulge and extend as it should to cover particularly rich stars. There’s no gaps where much poorer stars have been left unoccupied.”
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