Lost Fleet 6 - Victorious

by Jack Campbell

  He paused, letting the point sink in. “I don’t know what the next trap might be, but we need to be alert for it. We have to fight as hard and as desperately as we did on the way home because everyone in the Alliance believes we can end this war. We can’t let them down, so we must be brave, wary, wise, and strong. Just as we were before.”

  Another pause, everyone listening, most nodding. Rione mimed clapping her hands in approval. “Thank you,” Geary ended. “We’re going to the Syndic home star system, and we’re going to finish this. That is all.”

  They cheered then, rising to salute. The images of most of the virtual participants vanished rapidly, leaving only the virtual presences of Senators Costa and Sakai, Rione, and the real presence of Tanya Desjani with Geary. Costa was watching Geary with a surprised and wary look she was trying to conceal. Senator Sakai nodded politely to Geary. “A fine speech,” he said softly. “This is your true plan you presented?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t mislead my commanders. If I lose their trust . . . Well, I assume you’re aware of what almost happened to the heavy cruiser Dungeon soon after we arrived in this star system. They need to know they can count on me.”

  “Once the Syndic defenders in their home star system are eliminated,” Sakai continued, “Senator Costa, Co-President Rione, and I will take the lead on negotiations.”

  Rione flicked one finger in a way that told Geary not to debate the issue at this time. “Certainly, Senator.”

  After the images of Costa and Sakai disappeared, Rione laughed. “Did you see Costa?”

  “Yeah. What was bothering her?”

  “She’s just realized that she may have been underestimating the competition. That’s you. Costa believed that she could outmaneuver any military officer, but now she has her doubts.” Rione laughed again.

  “What about the other one?” Geary asked.

  “Sakai?” Rione stopped laughing. “He’s thinking and keeping his eyes open. He’s here representing the part of the grand council that distrusts Black Jack the most. Never forget that. You were busy watching the reactions of your officers, I know, so you didn’t see how closely Sakai watched your captain. He knows if worse comes to worst that he’d have to get through her to get to you, and I believe Sakai is only now understanding just how hard a task that would be.”

  Desjani stood up, her face professionally rigid. “I should be going.”

  But Rione waved one hand. “No need to hurry on my account. I was just departing.” Then her image vanished as well.

  “Can we leave her at Kalixa?” Desjani asked.

  “No. Has Senator Sakai talked to you?”

  “A courtesy call, and occasional drop-ins for leading conversations,” Desjani responded dryly. “You know, politics, the war, your ambitions. That sort of thing.”

  “I hope you reassured him,” Geary replied with a smile.

  “He didn’t believe me, I’m certain.” She blew out a long breath. “Sir, I know Captain Duellos talked to you—”

  “And I know he told you what I said.”

  Desjani shook her head at him. “If I actually told Senator Sakai what your ambitions were, he’d think you were crazy.”

  “So do you.”

  “And now I’m agreeing with a politician. You do work miracles, Admiral.”

  He waited until she left, then called Tulev. “I’m sorry for getting you back here so soon, but I wanted to ask you something.”

  Tulev, stolid, outwardly unemotional as usual, inclined his head slightly. “Nothing too serious, I hope, Admiral.”

  “I don’t know. I understand you served with Captain Kattnig.”

  “Kattnig?” Tulev’s puzzlement briefly showed. “A long time ago, when we were both still enlisted sailors.”

  “He’s mentioned a couple of times that you two were commissioned together.”

  “Yes, that is so,” Tulev agreed. “The fleet was in serious need of new officers after the battles around Hattera. But I have rarely encountered him since then.” Tulev eyed Geary. “Is there some concern about Kattnig?”

  “I don’t know.” Geary pounded the table softly with one fist. “He’s got a good record.”

  “Captain Kattnig has spoken with me a few times since Adroit joined the fleet. He wished to know more about our return to Alliance space under your command.”

  Geary nodded, noting that even Tulev never referred to that return voyage as a “retreat.” No one in the fleet did, and more than once Geary had barely stopped himself from inadvertently using the word “retreat.” But whereas he had to work to avoid employing the term, Geary had slowly come to the conclusion that the rest of the fleet truly didn’t think of the return as a retreat. The Alliance fleet didn’t retreat, it “withdrew,” it “reorganized,” it “repositioned,” it “departed,” or it “altered the axis of attack.” Therefore, the return to Alliance space couldn’t have been a retreat. “Pardon me for saying this bluntly, but Kattnig seems to think that he has something to prove, maybe because he wasn’t with the fleet during the return to Alliance space. He talked about the new battle cruisers proving themselves, but I have a feeling he’s actually most concerned about proving himself, and I don’t know why.”

  Tulev thought about that, then nodded in turn. “I believe that is a fair assessment, yes. Many fleet officers and sailors who were not with us feel the same way. But Kattnig’s record is, as you say, a good one. I will speak with him again, just the two of us, and try to reassure him. He, like the other new officers, is learning to deal with your different way of fighting. Perhaps that is a factor. The new tactics can appear to leave less room for individual valor.”

  “Those new tactics are a century old, and Kattnig has already proven his valor. I’d appreciate your talking to him and driving home that the officers whose experiences he admires gained those experiences fighting with those tactics.”

  “Certainly, Admiral.” Tulev gave him a searching look. “Do you worry about his actions?”

  “I’m worried about all of the new officers,” Geary admitted. “I hope they learned from what happened to Dungeon.”

  “Even though the damage to Dungeon made it necessary for her to return home, no harsher punishment for disobedience could have been possible,” Tulev agreed.

  “They could have died if their commanding officer hadn’t pulled up in time.”

  “They would have preferred death to the dishonor of missing the attack on the Syndic home star system. It would have been a lesser penalty in their eyes.”

  Geary sighed. “I keep forgetting. To me, death is still something to fear.”

  “We fear death, Admiral, but there are other things we fear more.” Tulev nodded to him. “There are other things you fear more as well. I know this. You could not be a good commander otherwise.” Standing again, Tulev saluted, and his image vanished.

  The jump for Kalixa felt routine, though the fleet was once again in combat formation and ready to fight. Geary felt the usual discomfort from being in jump space, a strange, formless, gray universe lit by no stars, but also suffered from a restlessness that drove him to frequent walks around Dauntless. The crew was happy and confident, certain that Black Jack could do anything. When Geary got back to his stateroom, he would sit for a while, watching the mysterious lights that flared and faded in jump space.

  Finally, they reached Kalixa.

  FIVE

  THE drop out of jump space felt curiously abrupt, as if the jump point itself had somehow been disrupted. Since jump points were created by the mass of the star near them, Geary knew the problem was likely related to the star Kalixa. Then the gray nothingness vanished, and the Alliance fleet arrived in Kalixa.

  Nobody spoke for a while, everyone staring at what had been Kalixa Star System. After a few minutes, Geary tore his eyes from his display to check the story there against the Syndic star-system guides the fleet had seized at Sancere.

  There didn’t seem to be much in common between the old guide and current reality. No
t anymore. The guide displayed a fairly well-off star system, one planet comfortably fit for human habitation, other planets and moons with bustling colonies in buried cities, a system-wide population of more than one hundred million, and hanging nearby the hypernet gate, which had helped funnel wealth to Kalixa.

  Until that gate collapsed and released a pulse of energy equal to a significant fraction of a typical nova. Despite the anguished account of a Syndic eyewitness Geary had spoken to, the pulse hadn’t actually destroyed everything. It would have been easier to handle the result if it had. Instead, it left behind plenty of traces of what had once been there.

  “Every planet appears lifeless,” the operations watch-stander reported in a hushed voice. “There’s tattered wreckage on the fringes of the areas that faced the pulse when it hit. Even the places shielded by being on the other sides of their planets from where the pulse hit have been torn up, probably by earthquakes and other shock effects. There’s only a very thin atmosphere left on the main habitable world. Apparently that’s the only reason why everything on the planet stopped burning.”

  Geary had his display fixed on a magnified image of what had been a city on that planet. A few stunted ruins poking up amid the fields of debris, the landscape reduced to rock and rubble, the whole scene having the unnatural clarity of something viewed without much intervening atmosphere. “Can we tell how many ships were here?”

  “No, sir. The fleet’s sensors have picked up debris floating in orbit, but it’s all mangled and dispersed. That Syndic heavy-cruiser officer reported they were the only larger warship present. Based on the damage to that cruiser, any light cruisers or HuKs wouldn’t have survived. Ships without armor and military-grade shields wouldn’t have stood any chance at all here.”

  Desjani pointed to the image of Kalixa. “What shape is the star in?”

  “Highly unstable, but with so much solar mass blown away, it didn’t go nova itself. Nothing is going to be able to live in this star system for a long time, Captain.”

  She looked at Geary, her face hard. “One hundred million. Those bastards killed one hundred million people here in a single stroke. I don’t care that they were Syndics. This can’t happen again.”

  Had the aliens known what was at Kalixa? Had they cared? “At least they can’t do it again in any star system that installed the safe-fail systems.”

  “Until they find another way to do it.” Desjani, aware that the watch-standers on Dauntless’s bridge were watching curiously, trying to figure out her meaning, leaned closer to the privacy field around Geary. “The aliens can’t be permitted to think they can get away with something like this. Lakota was bad enough, but at least other humans pulled the trigger there. The aliens did this.”

  “Agreed. We have to stop it.” He took a long, deep breath, knowing that the images of this star system would stay with him forever. “Madam Co-President, please ensure that Senators Costa and Sakai get a good, long look at this star system. I want them to be absolutely clear on what war using hypernet gates as weapons would have involved.”

  “Yes, Admiral Geary,” Rione agreed in an unusually subdued voice.

  “Captain Desjani, let’s set a course for the jump point for Indras. I don’t want to spend a second longer here than we have to.”

  “I’d rather be around a black hole,” Desjani agreed.

  Aside from serving as an object lesson of what humanity had narrowly avoided having happen in countless other star systems, Kalixa also dampened any excessively high spirits in the fleet, reminding everyone of the risks still to be faced and the potential stakes if they failed. Watching the reactions of Dauntless’s crew, Geary wondered how they would respond if they learned that Kalixa had not been an accident or a Syndic mistake, but a deliberate act. As revolted as he was by the loss of life and destruction in Kalixa, he also wondered if his biggest challenge might involve fending off the aliens without triggering a vengeful war by humanity. His gut reaction, that the aliens had to pay for this, would be a common one. But a price that produced more human star systems devastated like this would only pitch humanity into another endless cycle of retaliation and revenge. And until they learned more about how powerful the aliens were, whether or not, as Desjani speculated, they might have other star-system-killing weapons to employ, an attempt at retaliation could easily risk many more star systems annihilated like Kalixa had been and uncounted billions more dead. As badly as I’d like someone, or something, to pay for this, all we can really do right now is what we can to keep it from happening again and find out more about the ones who did it.

  Maybe there’s something else our resident Syndic can contribute to learning more.

  He had the Syndic CEO Boyens brought from the brig to the interrogation room again. “We know the Syndic reserve flotilla attacked Varandal in response to the gate collapse at Kalixa,” Geary said. “You must have known the Alliance didn’t do that.”

  “No,” Boyens denied, “we didn’t. Who else could have done it?”

  “You’d been facing the aliens all those years.”

  The CEO gazed back at Geary for a while as if trying to link the statement to the collapse of Kalixa’s gate. “They’ve never penetrated that deeply into Syndicate Worlds’ space. In any case, we reviewed the recording of the collapse that Cruiser C-875 brought to Heradao. There wasn’t any trace of alien attack on the gate. They couldn’t have done it. But we knew you’d already collapsed at least one hypernet gate in a Syndicate Worlds’ star system.”

  “Are you talking about Sancere?” Geary demanded. “Where we had to prevent a gate collapse started by Syndic warships from producing the sort of devastation that happened here at Kalixa? Or do you mean Lakota, where Syndic warships took down the hypernet gate completely while this fleet was light-hours distant?”

  Boyens set his jaw stubbornly. “I’ve seen records of your ships firing on the hypernet gate at Sancere.”

  “To cause a safe collapse. But if you’ve seen the records that heavy cruiser brought from Kalixa, you know that there weren’t any Alliance warships at Kalixa when the gate here failed.”

  “That seems to be true.” Boyens furrowed his brow in thought, staring at the deck. “The Alliance was close enough to do it. That was our reasoning. You mention the aliens, but they never collapsed a hypernet gate in the border region facing them. If they were going to attack us, why attack us so far from their border with us?”

  There was something critical going on, Geary thought after the interview was over, something far more important than the Syndics blaming the Alliance for the collapse of the hypernet gates at Kalixa and Sancere as well. Something about how the Syndics thought about the aliens. Unable to figure out what it was, he filed the half-formed idea away in the back of his mind.

  It took three and a half days to reach the jump point for Parnosa. As the haunted ruins of Kalixa vanished and the gray nothingness of jump space surrounded the ships, Geary could almost feel the sense of relief sweeping through Dauntless. He relaxed, too, knowing that the fleet had a long jump ahead. Eight and a half days, almost the limit for normal jump-drive range. By the end of the next week, the strange pressures of jump space would be making people nervous and irritable, but he didn’t expect any real problems from that.

  SEVEN days later, as Geary sat watching the lights of jump space and trying not to let the strange itching sensation that grew the longer people were in jump space get to him, his hatch alert sounded with what seemed particular urgency.

  A moment later, Tanya Desjani stomped into the stateroom, looking ready to tear a hole in the hull with her bare hands. “I will not tolerate that woman on my ship any longer!”

  “Which woman?” Geary asked, already knowing the answer. “And what did she do?”

  “The politician! You know how she’s been acting! You’ve been there when she said nice things to me!”

  Geary stared for a moment. “Uh, yes, I have.”

  “Haven’t you wondered why?” Without waiting fo
r his answer, Desjani rushed on. “I finally asked her straight out, and do you know what she said? Do you?”

  “No.” Monosyllabic replies seemed safest at the moment.

  “Because I’m important to you. That’s what she said. I’m important to you, so she is trying to make sure I stay in a good mood.”

  Obviously, Rione’s efforts had backfired. Geary just nodded silently, not even trusting a single word for a response.

  Desjani raised an angry fist, her face flushing with emotion. “It’s just like those ugly suggestions that I should offer myself to you as a prize if you agreed to become dictator! I am not a toy or a pawn to be used or controlled by your enemies or your friends! I am a captain in the Alliance fleet, a position I earned by my own sweat and blood and honorable service! I will not accept anyone trying to manipulate me or use me or toy with me just because they want to influence you!”