“Did you see the report that Captain Smythe prepared for us to send to the Syndics?”
“Smythe didn’t write that. I’d like to know who did.”
“Why?”
Rione eyed him. “Because whoever it is has some very useful talents.”
Geary bent his lips momentarily in a totally fake smile. “That person’s identity is my secret for now.”
“Have it your way.”
She had given in too easily. He had a feeling that Rione would be bending some efforts to learn Lieutenant Jamenson’s identity. “Is there anything else?”
“One other thing, Admiral.” She turned an enigmatic look on him. “How do you feel about it?”
“About what?”
“Destroying the hypernet gate. How do you feel about it?”
“What kind of question is that?” Geary said, avoiding an answer.
“You stepped across a line, Admiral. You and I both know that. You ordered the destruction of that gate even though legally you had no right to do so. The collapse of the hypernet gate here will send a clear message to the Syndics about the consequences of messing with this fleet, but you need to keep in mind that the limits on what you can do are only those limits that you place on yourself.”
He almost shouted at her, almost told her to go to hell, that good men and women had died, and the Syndics here should be extremely grateful that he hadn’t launched an orbital bombardment that would have wrecked every human city, town, and installation in this star system. Instead, he counted to ten inside before once again trying to deflect her. “As I recall, someone gave me the idea for that action.”
“Someone did,” Rione admitted calmly. “Is that a defense or a rationalization? I did it, but someone else gave me the idea. You can do better than that.”
“Why did you give me the idea if you’re so worried about the precedent it sets for me?” Geary pressed.
“Because I could tell how angry you were. How angry everyone in this fleet was. I can only guess what you wanted to do after we lost that battleship. The gate offered a means to strike back in a way that would hurt the Syndics badly but not by the sort of overt retaliation that might have created even more trouble.”
He kept his eyes on the star display, trying to come up with another way of avoiding a straight answer. But Geary realized that her warning was justified. That’s why I don’t want to answer her, to admit that she’s right. I wanted to do worse. Maybe I would have, if she hadn’t suggested using the gate’s collapse as a means to retaliate. But that kind of mass retaliation is exactly what we’re supposed to avoid. It’s a Syndic tactic. It’s not what our ancestors would approve of.
I cannot forget that. I have moved my own boundaries for behavior I would accept. I have to hold them where they now are because if they slip any more, Black Jack could get away with doing things I once would never have accepted.
Eventually, he looked back at Rione and nodded. “I understand. I know what you mean, and I understand the potential dangers. I will keep your words in mind.”
“Good.” It was impossible to tell whether or not Rione was pleased that he had accepted her warning. “I’ll send a message to the senior Syndic CEO in Sobek, officially protesting the attack on our forces and explaining that, alas, we could not save the hypernet gate, which was too badly damaged during the fighting. He’ll know that’s not what happened, but there’s nothing he’ll be able to do about it. That report from Captain Smythe will infuriate them because it offers them nothing they can use. This star system is well enough off, but it only has one jump point. It’s at a dead end in space. They’re going to miss that gate.”
“I hope so,” Geary said. “I hope every minute of every day they look up and realize their hypernet gate is gone and that what’s left of the Syndicate Worlds can’t afford to replace it. And I hope a lot of other star systems still loyal to the Syndic government hear about it and reconsider what sorts of orders they’re willing to follow.”
“Don’t hold out hopes for that result.” She shook her head at him, looking severe. “Remember what you reminded this fleet of. Destroying things and killing does not often bend people to your will. They are far more likely to react in classic human fashion, by resolving not to bend or break despite every rational reason to do so. We may have strengthened the hold of the Syndicate Worlds on this star system by destroying their hypernet gate.” She paused to let that sink in, then noticing that Geary wasn’t going to argue the point, Rione went on. “On another matter, I will mention to the Syndic authorities that we hold . . . five . . . yes, I’ll say five individuals.”
“We only captured two Syndics on Invincible,” Geary pointed out.
“Details, details. Two prisoners aren’t enough to make them sweat. Five is a large enough number of prisoners to really worry them. Five individuals who lack any identification but are responding positively to treatment and are beginning to provide us with answers to the questions we are asking.”
“Thank you,” Geary said. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”
“Don’t make that mistake, Admiral,” she warned with every appearance of sincerity. “I am not on your side. I am on the side of the Alliance. That has never changed. One thing more. I will tell the senior Syndic CEO that the Alliance government will hold the Syndicate Worlds responsible for any further attacks carried out using Syndic ships or equipment no matter who is employing those weapons.”
“Can you do that?” Geary asked. “That’s threatening war if we get attacked again.”
She spread her hands and smiled. “I am officially a voice of the government until we return to Alliance space. The government may repudiate my threats once we return, but until then, the Syndics have to take them seriously.” Rione regarded him with a questioning expression, head tilted to one side as if to study him better. “Something else is bothering you, Admiral.”
“Yes, it is.” Geary clenched one fist, looking down at it as he spoke. “Quite aside from your reminder to me that I forgot my own rules about the limitations of reprisals in altering human behavior.”
“Think of the destruction of that gate as vengeance for Orion, nothing more or less, and expect no benefits to flow from the act. You’re human, Black Jack. Take the lesson to heart and move on.”
“All right. But the other thing that worries me isn’t so easily disposed of. Even if the Syndics take your threat seriously, word of that threat will have to filter back to the right people. It will take time, as ships carry the threat to the Syndic government at Prime. Then word will have to come back from Prime. Just because of that time lag, which will measure in months, anything else they have already planned will take place no matter how seriously the Syndic leaders regard your words when they finally hear them.”
“That’s true,” Rione conceded. “Maybe my threats are my own form of retaliation, something I should know won’t really work but make me feel better.”
“No, the threat is still a good idea. The impact will take place over the long haul, so it can’t help us anytime soon, but it might change the plans of the Syndics in coming months. And there’s always the chance that if something else is planned for this star system, the local authorities might call it off, using your threats as justification.”
She nodded, as if thinking of something else, then spoke abruptly. “This diversion through Sobek is costing us time, isn’t it? How much?”
“Not too much,” Geary said, knowing that Rione was asking that question because of her concern for her husband, still sedated and now in sick bay on Dauntless. “It’s a bit longer a path than if we’d come through Indras as originally planned, but only ten days more unless we run into significant obstacles at Simur or Padronis. Atalia is so close to Alliance territory that I don’t think the Syndics could have prestaged any attacks there without them being spotted, even assuming that Atalia would cooperate with the Syndics.”
“Ten days can be a long time, Admiral,” Rione said, one of the few times she openly admitted to
the strains upon her.
Geary nodded in reply, not certain what words would be right, if any, and thinking about the sort of obstacles this fleet might encounter the rest of the way back to Varandal.
—
OVER the next several hours, Geary was bombarded with messages from the Syndic authorities in Sobek Star System. They demanded to know exactly what had caused the hypernet gate to collapse, they demanded to know why the Alliance warships were taking a path diving through the star system if they were simply headed for the jump point for Simur, they demanded that the fleet release to their custody any Syndicate World citizens in Alliance custody, and, in a breathtaking bit of gall, they demanded payment for the Alliance fleet’s use of the hypernet gate.
Geary was on the bridge of Dauntless when Rione informed him of the latest demand. Before replying, he made sure the privacy field around him was activated so none of the bridge watch-standers could overhear. “Emissary Rione, please inform the Syndicate authorities that they can go to hell, where they will doubtless receive everything that is due them.”
“Do you want me to phrase that diplomatically?” she asked.
“If you want to. I’m not worried about offending them. What’s the proper reply on the prisoners issue?”
She spread her hands apologetically. “The individuals in our custody have no proof of Syndic citizenship. We have to assume that they are stateless unless the authorities here want to both claim them as citizens and accept responsibility for their actions.”
“That works for me.” He paused, looking at his display. “Lieutenant Iger and his people have found no evidence of any Alliance prisoners of war in this star system. It’s just as well. If they were here, the local Syndics would probably try to bargain a swap for the prisoners we hold now.”
“There’s been no hint of that,” Rione said.
“What about the stealth shuttles we destroyed? Any comments from the CEOs about that?”
Rione actually rolled her eyes in a rare display of open contempt. “The Syndic authorities here blame that and everything else on rogue elements and unknown actors who are all not operating under the authority of the Syndicate Worlds. They are, in their words, shocked that military equipment ended up in the hands of criminals who, for reasons of their own, attacked us.”
“Too bad you can’t strangle a virtual image in a transmission,” Geary said.
“That is a shame. I’m a bit disappointed they aren’t making a better effort at lying about what they’re doing.” Her expression had turned grim. “It may be that they want us to react, to overreact, in a way that nullifies the peace treaty. Or the opposite could be true, that they think Black Jack won’t overreact, that you will keep your responses limited and thus allow the Syndics to keep inflicting minor injuries upon us until they add up to major injury.”
“Orion wasn’t a minor injury,” Geary said. “What do you think my options are?”
“Walk a tightrope, Admiral. Hit them back harder than they expect but not so hard that they can cry injustice.”
“How am I supposed to figure out what’s hard enough but not too hard?”
Rione smiled. “I can help with that. As I did with the unfortunate loss of the hypernet gate here.”
“I see.” Geary cocked a questioning eye at her. “What exactly have the Syndics said about the gate?”
“You just want to hear how upset they are, so you’ll be pleased to hear that they’re screaming bloody murder about it. Demanding data that explain the collapse of the gate and prove that our engineers didn’t themselves inflict the damage on purpose. Demanding compensation. Expressing great distress at such an act of aggression. Don’t look so murderous, Admiral. If you answered them looking like that, you’d be proving their, um, outrageous claims.”
“I have to admit, the sheer nerve of some of these Syndics is starting to get to me,” Geary said when he thought he had his voice under control.
Rione smiled again. “I’m a bit more used to it. I am expressing surprise, shock, and dismay at their charges. I am asking for evidence. I am invoking the arbitration clause of the peace treaty. I am promising to look into the matter. They know I am playing with them, that nothing will be done, that their hypernet gate is gone, and they will never be able to prove we had anything to do with its loss, and all of that, I assure you, is driving them completely up the wall.”
He smiled back at her. “You’re good at driving people up the wall, aren’t you?”
“It’s a gift.”
“Why are you being so helpful again? Did finding the Kicks and the Dancers really change things that much?”
She looked away, then back at him. “What changed things a lot was your discovering what was wrong with my husband. The thing done to Commander Benan, and the reason why it was done, are so far beyond what the public of the Alliance would accept that I now have a weapon that gives me an immense amount of leverage. Those who tried to use me, who blackmailed me, will know that.”
“But if you go public with that, it might literally kill your husband.”
Rione nodded calmly. “In my place, they would do such a thing anyway, and so they will believe that I would as well. Beware of people who are certain they are right, Admiral. That certainty allows them to justify almost any act in pursuit of their goals.”
“Like the Syndic CEOs in this star system?” Geary asked, hearing the bitterness in his voice. If only there had been some way to make them personally pay for what happened to Orion . . .
She shook her head. “I’d be very surprised if there’s any idealism there, Admiral, any sense of right and wrong. Those CEOs were doing what they thought would benefit them personally. There might have been private motives of revenge if they had lost someone to the war, but my conversations with former-CEO Iceni at Midway gave me some more insight into the CEO way of thinking. Their internal-security service produced true believers, but everyone else was motivated by self-interest or fear.”
“How does a system like that survive?” Geary asked.
“Self-interest and fear.”
“I was asking a serious question.”
Rione gave him that superior look. “And I was giving you a serious answer. Self-interest and fear work, for a while. Until self-interest, unconstrained by any higher loyalty, becomes more destructive than the system can endure, and until the people’s fear of acting against their system becomes less than their fear of continuing to live with it. Eventually, those things always happen. In the case of the Syndicate Worlds, the war meant that their leaders were able to use fear of us to reinforce fear of going against their system. The Syndicate Worlds is coming apart not just because of the stresses from the war and not just because it lost that war and a great deal of its military in the process, but also because fear of the Alliance can no longer be stoked to bind individuals, and individual star systems, to the Syndicate government.”
“I see.” Geary sat, thinking. “The Alliance is facing some of the same strains because fear of the Syndics helped hold us together.”
“An external enemy is a wonderful thing for politicians to have,” Rione said dryly. “They can excuse and justify a great many things by pointing to that enemy. But that doesn’t mean external enemies are never real. What is that old saying? Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t really out to get you.”
“And the Syndics are still doing what they can to get us.” Geary nodded as a thought came to him. “I’ve been wondering what the Syndic goal is. Why are they attacking us in these ways? They must know they can’t win. But I think you just led me to the answer.”
“I’m wonderful that way, aren’t I?” Rione said. “If you are not in further need of my wise counsel, I will now compose my reply to the latest Syndic demands.”
Geary returned to the bridge and settled back in his fleet command seat, trying for at least the hundredth time not to notice the absence of Orion in the fleet’s formation. After spending months watching Orion because t
he battleship had been a poorly commanded albatross hanging about the neck of the fleet, and lately watching Orion because Commander Shen had done such a miraculous job of turning around the ship, making her a real asset to the fleet, Geary kept finding himself looking for Orion and not finding her.
He gave Desjani a sidelong glance. She was working stoically, not displaying grief, but he knew Shen had been a good friend of hers. Another shipmate whose name would adorn the plaque she kept in her stateroom to list those who had died and whom Desjani was determined never to forget.
“Yes, Admiral?” Desjani suddenly asked. She hadn’t looked his way, hadn’t shown any sign of noticing his glance, but had somehow known of it.
“I was just . . . thinking,” Geary said.
She met his eyes, and he saw there that she knew what he had been thinking of. It was scary sometimes how well Tanya could read him. “We have to remember, but we can’t spend too much time thinking about things that distract us from what we have to be thinking about.”
“Believe me, I’ve done almost nothing but think about what else the Syndics might be planning to do. I’ve been holding off on a fleet conference because I wanted to have some ideas to talk about to distract everyone from . . . our losses.”
She watched silently for a few seconds. “I doubt anyone can be distracted, Admiral. Not from that. But if we can’t think of ideas, we ought to call in more thinkers. Have you talked to Roberto Duellos? Or Jane Geary? Anyone besides me and that woman?”
“Yes, I’ve talked to other people. That woman just gave me a good idea of what the big-picture plan might be for the Syndic government.” He made an angry gesture. “But as far as the local threat, I have to face the fact that we don’t have anyone like . . . well, like those two colonels that worked for General Drakon. Someone who thinks like a Syndic, someone who could guess what their next devious plot is going to be.”
“You just want to see Colonel Morgan again,” Desjani said. “Oh, don’t get all defensive. It was a joke. One of my coping mechanisms. You should be used to it by now. All right, we don’t have any Syndics in this fleet, except the prisoners captured aboard Invincible who aren’t even admitting that they are Syndics, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have any conniving thinkers available.” Desjani tapped a control. “Master Chief Gioninni, I am in need of someone with a devious mind.”
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian Page 17