Dauntless

by Jack Campbell

  Cresida nodded, her eyes on Rione. “Yes, Madam Co-President. Under the file name ‘Safe-fail’ in my personal files.”

  “Then I will acquire it without your assistance since I have the means to access those files. Your hands will be clean.”

  “Clean? But we know you’re going to do this,” Duellos pointed out.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “You told us.”

  “The words of a politician?” Rione smiled again, almost as if she were enjoying this. “You have no reason to believe anything I say is true. You probably think I’m just trying to entrap you by urging a course of action I won’t actually carry out. You can’t be absolutely certain I’m not doing that.”

  She left quickly, before anything else could be said. Cresida, a pondering expression on her face, suddenly nodded, looking from Geary to the door by which Rione had left. “I finally understand why—”

  Biting off the words and reddening slightly, doing her best not to look at Desjani, Cresida rose to her feet, saluted hastily, then her image vanished.

  Tulev rose with unusual speed, saluted as well, and also departed.

  Desjani, a look of weary resignation on her face, stood up. “I’ll get back to the bridge.”

  “But—” Geary began.

  “I’ll see you up there, sir.” Desjani saluted with careful precision, then stalked out of the room.

  Geary frowned at Duellos. “What was that about? What Cresida said?”

  Instead of replying, Duellos held up a warding hand. “You’re not getting me involved.”

  “In what?”

  “Talk to your ancestors. Some of them must know something about women.” Duellos paused before leaving, then shook his head. “Oh, I can’t leave you hanging hopelessly. I’ll give you a hint. When two people get involved, however briefly, other people who know at least one of them naturally wonder what they saw in each other.”

  “You mean Rione and me? You all wondered what I saw in her?”

  “Good heavens, man, how can that surprise you?” Duellos cast a bleak look at the deck. “We humans are a strange bunch. Even in the midst of dealing with a threat to our entire race, we can be sidetracked for a moment by the oldest and smallest of personal dramas.”

  “Maybe we’re trying to avoid thinking about all of this,” Geary suggested. “The consequences if we fail. Before, failure could mean our deaths, the loss of our ships, perhaps eventually the defeat of the Alliance. Now, it could mean the loss of everything. What do you think of our chances?”

  “I didn’t think we’d make it half this far home,” Duellos reminded him. “Anything is possible.”

  “Why? Why are they doing it?”

  “The aliens? Perhaps, before all is said and done, we’ll have the chance to ask them directly.” Duellos’s face grew uncharacteristically harsh. “And when we do, perhaps we’ll have hell-lance batteries pointing at their faces to ensure we get a reply.”

  “Another war?” Geary asked.

  “Maybe. Or maybe not. The aliens don’t seem to like stand-up fights.”

  “But we do.”

  “Yes.” Duellos smiled unpleasantly. “Maybe that’s why they’re acting already. Maybe right now they’re getting scared.”

  SEVEN more hours until they reached the jump point for Varandal. About six more hours until the fleet crossed the path of the second badly damaged Syndic battle cruiser, the one hurt by Intractable’s final blows. Geary wandered restlessly through Dauntless’s passageways, exchanging brief words or conversations with the crew, acutely aware that in some critical ways events were coming to a head. A successful battle at Varandal was the key to saving the fleet and the Alliance, even though getting the fleet back to Alliance space would still leave some critical issues to resolve. Without victory at Varandal, there could be no next step. So he strode through the now-familiar passageways of the battle cruiser, speaking with the hell-lance battery crews, the engineers, the cooks, the administrative personnel, the specialists of every kind, and all of the other individuals who made Dauntless a living ship.

  For the first time, he realized that even though he wasn’t her captain, losing Dauntless would hurt at least as much as losing Merlon.

  He went down to the worship spaces and consulted with his ancestors, finding small comfort this time. If only his ancestors could warp time and space, bring the fleet to Varandal now so the Syndic reserve flotilla could be confronted now. Decide it now, end it now. But space was huge, and there were still six hours to jump for Varandal, then almost four days in jump space afterward.

  Finally, he made his way back to the intelligence spaces. “Where’s the Syndic commander?” Geary asked.

  “On her way to the brig, sir,” Lieutenant Iger responded. “Captain Desjani is accompanying her there.”

  Something about that felt odd. “Is there something unusual about that?”

  Lieutenant Iger nodded. “Yes, sir.” He looked toward the interrogation room, making an expression of distaste. “We don’t allow physical harm to be inflicted on prisoners, sir. But, they get escorted to and from their cells through the same passageways the crew uses. The crew reacts by making those trips as unpleasant as possible.”

  “The prisoners have to run a gauntlet.”

  “Yes, sir.” Iger shrugged. “No physical harm, but words, gestures, noninjurious things thrown at them and their uniforms. Emotions run high, sir. The Marines do have orders to protect their prisoners, but certain things are accepted.”

  Easy enough to understand. Ships’ crews rarely saw the hated enemy face-to-face. Geary looked at the hatch through which Desjani had gone. “But the crew won’t do those things to this prisoner if Captain Desjani is with her.”

  “No, sir, I wouldn’t think so.”

  Odd. A chivalrous gesture toward the enemy. Geary waited a decent interval, then requested that Desjani visit his stateroom at her convenience. “I didn’t get a final assessment from you on our plans,” he said when she arrived.

  “My apologies, sir,” Desjani replied. “It’s the best of a bad situation. That’s my assessment. I can’t think of any better courses of action.”

  “Thank you. I wanted to be sure of that.” He paused. “I understand you escorted the Syndic commander to the brig.”

  Desjani gave him an impassive look, betraying nothing. “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it? If we ever want a chance at ending this war, officers like that are the people we need to deal with. Officers willing to keep their word with us and who care enough about their crews to put aside uncompromising orders. But in order to get the Syndics to the negotiating table, we need to keep doing our best to kill officers like that.”

  “I suppose ‘strange’ is one word for it.” Desjani’s expression was still impossible to read. “If people like that weren’t fighting so hard for a government that they fear, then the war might have ended a long time ago. It’s not like we can trust the Syndics as a group to negotiate in good faith anyway. You know that now, after seeing how many times they tried to double-cross this fleet as we headed toward home.”

  “That’s true,” Geary agreed. “Can I ask a personal question?”

  Desjani looked down, then over at him and nodded.

  “Why did you escort that Syndic commander through the passageways of your ship?”

  Instead of answering immediately, Desjani looked down again, then eventually shook her head. “She acted with honor. I was granting honorable treatment in return. That’s all.”

  “She was willing to sacrifice herself to save the surviving members of her crew,” Geary pointed out. “I know that impressed me as a former ship captain myself.”

  “Don’t push me on this.” Desjani met his eyes, her own expression hard. “I still hate them for what they’ve done. Even that one. I’m certain she hates us, too. If she were truly honorable, why did she fight for the Syndics?”

  “I can’t answer that. I just see some common grounds, that’s all
. With her, anyway.”

  “Did we kill her younger brother?” Desjani closed her eyes after that slipped out, then drew in a long breath through clenched teeth. “Maybe we did. At what point do the hate and the killing no longer make sense?”

  “Tanya, hate never makes sense. Killing is sometimes necessary. You do what must be done to protect your home and your family and what’s precious to you. But all hate does is screw up people’s own minds, so they can’t think straight when it comes to knowing when they have to kill, or when they don’t have to kill.”

  She gazed back at him, her face still hard, but her eyes searching his. “Did the living stars tell you that?”

  “No. My mother told me that.”

  Desjani’s face slowly softened, then she smiled with one corner of her mouth. “You listened to your mother?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “She—” Desjani broke off the sentence, her half smile vanishing.

  Geary didn’t have any trouble knowing why. Whatever Desjani had been planning on saying about his mother, she’d realized that Geary’s mother had been dead for a very long time. Like so many others in his life, Geary’s mother had aged and died while Geary drifted in survival sleep amid the wreckage of war in the Grendel Star System. Because the Syndics had attacked, because the Syndics had chosen to start this war.

  “They took your family from you,” Desjani finally said. “They took everything from you.”

  “Yeah. That’s occurred to me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He forced a smile. “It’s something I have to live with.”

  “Don’t you want revenge?”

  It was Geary’s turn to look down for a moment as he thought. “Revenge? The Syndic leaders who ordered the attacks that started this war are themselves long dead and beyond any vengeance I can manage.”

  “Their successors are still in power,” Desjani argued.

  “Tanya, how many people do I kill, how many people do I ask to die fighting, in the name of avenging a crime committed a hundred years ago? I’m not perfect. If I could somehow get my hands on the Syndic bastards who started this war, I’d make them suffer. But they’re all dead. Now I’m damned if I can figure out what this war is still about aside from avenging the latest defeat or atrocity. It’s turned into a self-sustaining cyclic reaction, and you and I both know the Alliance as well as the Syndicate Worlds are starting to crack from the pressure of a war without end.”

  Desjani shook her head, walking over to a chair and sitting down, her eyes on the deck. “I spent a long time just wanting to kill them. All of them. To get even and to stop them from killing anyone else. But it’s never even, it just goes back and forth, and how many Syndic deaths would it take to equal my brother’s life? Every single one of them dead wouldn’t bring Yuri back, and then at Wendig I saw a Syndic like Yuri, and I wondered what the point would be of killing somebody else’s brother to avenge my own. To make them hurt, too? Once that would have been reason enough. Now, I’m starting to wish that no one else’s brother or sister or husband or wife or father or mother had to die. But I don’t know how to make that happen.”

  Geary sat down opposite her. “We may have a chance, once we get home, and you’ll have played a big role in making that chance happen.”

  “Once we get home, you’ll have other things to deal with, too. I wish I knew how to make that easier.”

  “Thanks.” He gazed to one side, eyes focused on nothing. “It still doesn’t feel real to me, that everyone I once knew is gone. At home, I’ll really have to face it. I wonder if I’ll hate the Syndics then as much as you have.”

  She gave him an annoyed look. “You’re supposed to be better than us. That’s why the living stars gave you this job.”

  “I’m not allowed to hate the Syndics?”

  “Not if that gets in the way of your mission.”

  He looked back at her for a moment. “You know, Captain Desjani, it has just dawned on me that every once in a while you give me orders.”

  Desjani’s annoyed expression deepened. “I’m not giving you orders, Captain Geary. I’m just telling you what you need to do.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Of course there’s a difference. It’s obvious.”

  Geary waited a few moments, but Desjani didn’t elaborate on what was apparently obvious to her. Debating the issue didn’t seem likely to produce a win for him, so he finally made a noncommittal face. “All right. But . . .” He hesitated, wondering if he could bring up something that had haunted him, then deciding that if he could ever speak of it, then it should be now with Desjani. “I’m worried about how I may react. It hasn’t really hit me, I think, on some level. I was so stunned when I was awoken from survival sleep, and I went numb when I learned what had happened, how long it had been.”

  “You looked like a zombie,” Desjani agreed, her voice much softer now. “I remember wondering if Black Jack really still lived.”

  “I don’t know about Black Jack, but I did.” Geary looked down at his hands and inhaled deeply before being able to speak again. “But I had to put that aside when I had to assume command of the fleet. I put it aside. I don’t think I really resolved it. What’s going to happen when we get home, when the reality of everyone I once knew being dead and gone hits me because I’ll see the changes and know that I’m alone?”

  Desjani’s voice was very low, but he could hear her very clearly. “You won’t be alone.”

  That statement came far too close to a subject they could never speak of or even acknowledge existed. Startled, he looked up and caught her eyes.

  Desjani looked away. “You needed to hear me say that.” She stood up, straightening her body to the posture of attention. “By your leave, sir, if there’s nothing else, I have some matters I should attend to.”

  “Certainly. Thank you, Captain Desjani.”

  He checked the time after she left. Five hours to jump for Varandal.

  THE ball of wreckage that had been the last Syndic battle cruiser in Atalia Star System fell away in the wake of the Alliance fleet as it neared the jump point for Varandal.

  “Captain?” The face of Dauntless’s systems-security officer floated in a window before Desjani. “There’s been some uncleared transmissions from our ship.”

  “Uncleared transmissions?” Desjani asked mildly.

  “Yes. Unencrypted broadcasts to anyone in this star system. I’m trying to identify the source within Dauntless.”

  “Is the information within the broadcasts classified?”

  The systems-security officer blinked as he considered the question. “No, Captain, not as far as I can tell. There’s no formal classification attached, and the security review scans didn’t match the contents of the broadcast to any known classified material.”

  “Then I don’t see any need to make it a priority,” Desjani said. “We need to ensure the ship’s systems are as close to optimum as possible when we arrive in Varandal.”

  “But . . . Captain, any broadcast to the enemy is prohibited.”

  “Of course,” Desjani agreed. “But since no classified material is involved, the damage assessment from this incident will surely place it as a low-priority matter. Let’s focus on preparing for battle, Commander.”

  “Uh, yes, Captain.”

  After the security officer’s image vanished, Desjani gave Geary an enigmatic look. “I wonder what that could have been about.”

  “Probably nothing important, like you said,” he replied.

  She was studying the information forwarded to her by the systems-security officer. “The same records from Lakota that this fleet already broadcast, a description of something at Kalixa, plus some kind of equipment schematic and a narrative. No transmission authorization code.” Desjani tapped her controls. “Nothing that threatens my ship or the fleet. I have more critical issues to deal with.”

  “Agreed.” He wondered how Rione had managed to trick the communications system on Dauntles
s into sending a broadcast without an authorization. Despite the things that Rione had already admitted she could do with the supposedly secure systems throughout the fleet, Geary suspected there were plenty of other capabilities available to Rione that she had never disclosed.

  He studied his display, taking a last look at the situation in Atalia. Task Force Illustrious, now a good two light-hours behind the fleet’s main body, was still collecting escape pods. The survivors from Intractable weren’t far from the fleet’s main body, but picking them up would be impossible at the speed the fleet was traveling. They’d have to wait for Illustrious and her companions to get here.

  Fuel-cell reserve levels were hovering around 20 percent on most of the warships, though some like Rifle were significantly lower. Only three specter missiles were left in the fleet. Grapeshot inventories were at 60 percent.

  On the fringes of Atalia Star System, Syndic HuKs, couriers, and merchant ships were still heading for jump points, racing either to escape or carry word of the Alliance fleet’s movements. Most of them would receive the broadcasts from Dauntless before they jumped.

  There hadn’t been any communications from the Syndic authorities in Atalia. No demands for surrender. Nothing. He wondered if the highest-ranking CEOs in this star system knew about the reserve flotilla’s mission, if they had been told about Kalixa. They’d know now.

  “Five minutes to jump.”

  Geary tapped his controls. “Captain Badaya, we’re about to jump for Varandal. We’ll see you there. Good luck.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, and in any case Badaya wouldn’t receive the message for close to two hours.

  “Four. Days.” Desjani closed her eyes in resignation.

  “Yeah. It’s going to be the longest four days in jump that I’ve ever spent,” Geary agreed. The Syndic reserve flotilla was still in jump space, still headed for Varandal. So were the Alliance warships ahead of the Syndics. Now the fleet would join them. The maneuvering system flashed an alert, and Geary sent another message. “All ships, jump at time two zero four nine. We’ll see you in Varandal. Be prepared for combat immediately upon arrival.”