“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 “And by abandoned I mean not left to wither, but rather star systems in which all human presence was withdrawn.”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.”
“Just like the boundary between the Syndicate Worlds and the Alliance.” Geary leaned closer, studying the region. “Isn’t that interesting.” He moved one finger to point to the abandoned star systems that Rione had indicated. “And these places would’ve penetrated beyond that ‘border’ that isn’t supposed to be there.”
“I was put in mind of the buffer zone you had the Marines create in that orbital city,” Rione remarked. “A place no one is supposed to occupy to separate the Syndicate Worlds from…who or what? Now, I’m going to superimpose a representation of the Syndic hypernet in that region.” Stars glowed a different color, forming an intricate lattice. “What do you see?”
“Are you sure of this?”
“Absolutely.”
Geary stared at the depiction. He had been told hypernet gates had gone into the systems rich enough or unique enough to justify the expense, places people wanted to go, stars whose resources and populations generated enough wealth to make the gates worthwhile there. But the hypernet had a military use as well, of course, allowing forces to be shifted very rapidly to where they were needed. A poor star, but one strategically placed, could earn a gate on that basis. There were a lot of poor stars with hypernet gates on the far side of Syndicate Worlds space. “They seem to be worried about something, don’t they?”
Rione nodded. “But if your speculation is correct, whoever or whatever gave humanity the hypernet technology has simply given the Syndicate Worlds the means to build nova-scale bombs in every system facing this unknown-to-us threat. It looks like a wall of defenses. It’s actually a minefield on an unimaginable scale, aimed at the people who think it’s defending them.”
“It’s more than that,” Geary replied. “I talked to Commander—blast it, Captain Cresida about what happens to ships headed for a hypernet gate that ceases to exist. Those ships might be lost, or they might be dumped into interstellar space a decade of travel time at least from any star. If the Syndics tried to rush reinforcements to that area, anything actually there would be destroyed by the energy discharge from the gates, and anything on the way would either be destroyed or eliminated as a threat for years.”
“Thereby eliminating a very large proportion of the Syndicate Worlds’ military capability? A retaliatory strike would be rendered impossible.”
“Yeah.” Geary tried to get his mind around the potential scale of destruction those hypernet gates represented and couldn’t manage it. “How are they keeping this quiet, Victoria? How can even the Syndics keep knowledge of this from spreading?”
“It’s a society that tightly controls information anyway,” she pointed out. “Add in the war to justify telling people to keep their mouths shut. On top of that, add the sheer volume of information available. It’s easy to bury important facts in a mountain of trivia. We picked up a tremendous amount of material at abandoned installations at Sancere. I’ve only skimmed small parts of it. I’ll keep looking, but I don’t honestly expect to find some information that proves all of this. The records we seized are all at or near the lowest level of classification. Anything regarding a nonhuman intelligence, especially a threat from such, would be very highly classified.”
“Meaning we probably vaporized any copies of those records when we bombarded the Syndic headquarters sites at Sancere. I almost wish we could go to this far frontier ourselves to find out for sure, go beyond that border to see what lies on the other side.” Geary realized he had been mentally tracing possible paths to the far side of Syndicate Worlds space without realizing it.
“That would be suicide,” Rione stated crisply. “Even if the fleet would follow you.”
“Yeah. I know. They wouldn’t follow me. At least, I hope not.” Geary leaned back, closing his eyes. “What can we tell anyone else about this?”
“Nothing, John Geary. Because, really, we have nothing but speculation.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I fear it.”
“Me, too.” Geary opened his eyes again, gazing upon the unfamiliar star systems of the far side of Syndicate Worlds space. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, already. I was told there isn’t recent intelligence about the progress of the war in the captured files. Have you found any?”
“No. It’s all old.”
Geary nodded, wondering again what had been happening on the border between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds. It occurred to him, looking at the picture from deep within Syndic space, that from the perspective of the Syndicate Worlds they might see themselves as being pinned between two other powers. Did that viewpoint cause the Syndicate Worlds’ leaders to feel menaced on two sides? “The Syndics told their own people that they’d destroyed this fleet in their home system. They surely announced the same thing to the Alliance, and the Alliance doesn’t have any way of knowing that’s a lie. Do you think they’d sue for peace?”
“No.” Rione let pain show momentarily. “Many in the Alliance warm themselves against the cold of endless war with hatred of the Syndics. They wouldn’t trust any peace terms offered.”
“We’ve seen they have grounds for that distrust. The Syndics have broken every agreement we reached with them and laid traps everywhere they could.”
“Which has worked against them in the long run despite any temporary advantage they gained, because now they can’t even get an agreement favorable to them because they aren’t trusted to abide by it.”
Geary nodded, his eyes on the star display. “Since we’re keeping a lot of Syndic warships tied up trying to catch us, the Syndics hopefully haven’t been able to exploit the current military situation.”
“You’ve destroyed more than a few Syndic warships as well,” Rione noted.
“This fleet has,” Geary corrected, “but still…I wonder what kind of battles are being fought near the border with the Alliance right now? Those Syndic sailors we captured who had fought at Scylla couldn’t tell us anything.” Were there elements of the Alliance fleet that had been left behind fighting desperate battles against long odds while the Alliance frantically tried to construct replacement warships and train replacement crews? How many of the warships guarding the border would be lost while the fleet under Geary fought its way home? “I’ve got a grandniece on the Dreadnought.”
Rione raised her eyebrows in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“Michael Geary told me just before Repulse was destroyed.” Just before his grandnephew sacrificed himself and his ship to help the rest of the fleet escape from the trap in the Syndic home system. “He gave me a message for her.” “Tell her I didn’t hate you anymore.” Not that I could blame him for hating Black Jack Geary, the impossible-to-match hero whose shadow had dogged him his entire life. Thank the living stars we had a few brief moments for him to learn I wasn’t really the Black Jack he had grown to resent. Does my grandniece hate me, too? What could she tell me of the family I lost to time?
“I hope you find her,” Rione stated quietly.
“You’ve never told me whether you have any family back home,” Geary noted.
“I have a brother and a sister. They have children. My parents still live. I have everything that was taken from you by chance. I hope you understand why I don’t speak of them much to you. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of forci
ng you to recall your own losses.”
He nodded. “I appreciate that. But feel free to discuss it if you want. Denying what you and other people have won’t bring back what I’ve lost.”
“You’re not very good at denial?” Rione asked with a small smile.
Geary snorted in self-derision. “I imagine I’m as good at it as anyone can be.”
“I disagree.” She indicated the star display. “You’ve found something the rest of us have missed. Or found reasons to avoid seeing.”
This time Geary shook his head. “We haven’t found anything. As you pointed out, there’s no proof here. Do you think people in authority in Alliance space will believe it?”
“That worries me less than the fact that we might have to tell them about the potential to use hypernet gates as weapons in order to explain it.”
He stayed silent for a moment. “You still think they’d use those weapons?”
“I’m not certain, but if the Alliance governing council knew, I couldn’t swear a majority wouldn’t agree to use the Syndic hypernet gates as weapons. My instincts tell me they would decide to use them.” Rione gazed at the star display, her face bleak. “And the Alliance senate would very likely muster a majority in favor if given the opportunity for a vote. Think of it, John Geary. We could send task forces to every Syndic star system within range of our frontier and blow the gates in them, then proceed on deeper and deeper into Syndic space, leaving a trail of utter devastation behind.”
“That wouldn’t work,” Geary corrected. “You saw what the collapsing gate was like at Sancere. The energy burst released would destroy the ships that destroyed the gate. It would be a one-way mission.”
She nodded, her eyes distant. “So we would construct robotic warships, crewed and controlled by artificial intelligences, and send them to destroy star systems. And because space is vast, the Syndics would have time to realize what we were doing, time for their spies to report, and they would retaliate in kind. Fleets of artificial minds shattering star systems and wiping mankind from the galaxy. What a nightmare we could unleash.”
He felt a tight, sick feeling in his gut and knew Rione was right. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dump this kind of thing on you.”
“You didn’t have much choice, and your intentions were good.” She sighed. “I can’t ask one man to carry every burden in this fleet.”
“I didn’t even ask you if you wanted to share those burdens.”
“Ah, well, you’re a man, aren’t you?” Rione shrugged. “It’s worked out all right.”
“Has it?”
Rione tilted her head slightly and regarded Geary. “What’s bothering you now? Unless I miss my guess, that last wasn’t about Syndics or aliens or robotic slayers of mankind.”
He returned her look. “It’s about you and me. I’m just trying to understand what’s going on between us.”
“Good sex. Comfort. Companionship. Are you looking for anything else in our relationship?”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know.” Rione considered the question, then shook her head. “I don’t know,” she repeated.
“You’re not in love with me, then.”
She had that cool, amused expression again. “Not as far as I know. Are you disappointed?” Geary’s face or body language must have betrayed his feelings, because Rione dropped the amusement. “John Geary, there has been one love in my life. I told you that. He’s dead, but that hasn’t changed my love for him. I’ve dedicated myself since then to the Alliance, trying in my own way to serve the people my husband gave his life for. What’s left over is currently yours, for what it’s worth.”
Geary found himself laughing softly. “Your heart can’t be mine, and your soul belongs to the Alliance. Just what is left over?”
“My mind. That’s no small thing.”
He nodded. “No, it’s not.”
“Can you be happy with that part of me, knowing the rest belongs to others?” Rione asked calmly.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re too honest, John Geary.” She sighed. “But then so am I. Perhaps we should try lying to each other.”
“I don’t think that would work,” he stated dryly, unable to keep from wondering if she was being honest, if there wasn’t still some agenda here that he didn’t know about. In many ways, Victoria Rione’s mind seemed as unknown to him as the far frontier of the Syndicate Worlds.
“No, lying probably wouldn’t work.” Rione gazed past Geary. “But then, will honesty work?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“Time will tell.” She reached to turn off the display of stars, then stood up, regarding him with an expression Geary couldn’t interpret. “I forgot that there’s one more part of me available to you. My body. You haven’t asked, but I’ll tell you. That has been offered to no one else since my husband died.”
He couldn’t see any trace of insincerity in her and wouldn’t have been fool enough to question her statement even if he had. “I really don’t understand you, Victoria.”
“Is that why you’re keeping your emotional distance from me?”
“Maybe.”
“That may be for the best.”
“You’re not exactly opening up to me,” Geary pointed out.
“That’s true enough. I haven’t given you any promises. You shouldn’t give me any. We’re both veterans of life, John Geary, scarred by the losses we’ve endured because we cared for others. Someday you should tell me about her.”
“Her?” He knew exactly who Rione meant but didn’t want to admit it.
“Whoever she was. The one you left behind. The one I see you thinking of sometimes.”
He looked down, feeling an emptiness inside born of might-have-beens. “I should. Someday.”
“You told me you weren’t married.”
“No. I wasn’t. It was something that could have happened and didn’t. I’m still not sure why. But there was a lot left unsaid that should have been said.”
“Do you know what happened to her after your supposed death in battle?”
Geary stared at nothing, remembering. “Something happened before my battle. An accident. A stupid accident. Because her ship was a long ways off I didn’t even hear about it until she’d been dead for three months. I’d been planning on getting back in touch and apologizing for being an idiot, rehearsing what I was going to say.”
“I’m very sorry, John Geary.” Rione looked at him with eyes filled with shared sorrow. “It’s not easy for dreams to die, even when they’ve remained only dreams.” She reached down to take his hand and pull Geary up to stand next to her. “When you’re ready, you can speak more of it. You never have spoken of it to anyone, have you? I thought not. Open wounds don’t heal, John Geary.” She stepped close and kissed him slowly, her lips lingering on his. “That’s enough companionship for one night and far too much thinking for both of us. I’d like to enjoy the other benefit of our relationship now.”
Her body was warm and alive in his arms, and for a short while at least the concerns of the present and memories of the past were forgotten.
* * * *
The right formation had been the dilemma. The Alliance fleet was pretty close to the jump point from which any Syndic force would exit. That meant he would have little time to adjust his formation and would probably have to fight from whatever formation he had the fleet in when the enemy arrived. But he wouldn’t know how the enemy was formed up until they got here.
The one thing he did know was that if the Syndics were in hot pursuit of a small, badly battered Alliance force, they wouldn’t be wasting time. It was a safe bet that there would be fast, light units coming in right behind any fleeing Alliance ships. Those would be easily disposed of no matter what formation Geary adopted. The problem was what came next. Heavy cruisers would be quickly annihilated, but if the Syndics had battleships coming in soon after the light units, Geary had to make sure those capital ships couldn’t take too man
y of his own ships with them.
In the worst case, the Syndics would have a superior force, in which case the Alliance would have to strike fast and hard to take advantage of any element of surprise and any momentary numerical lead as Syndic ships exited the jump point.
“It could be very ugly,” Geary remarked after discussing options with Captain Duellos. “But we’ll be close to the gate, which means they can’t be spread out. I’m going to keep us in a modified cup formation.” On the display floating between them, the formation resembled its namesake, with a thick circular bottom formed by over half the fleet in a matrix with interlocking fields of fire, the remainder of the ships arranged in flat, semicircular formations extending outward toward the enemy. “We’ll be able to hit them hard in one spot, then come back and hit another part of whatever formation they’re in.”
“If they’re truly superior in numbers to us, we will beat the hell out of them even if we’re destroyed in the process,” Duellos replied. “Not the best outcome, but combined with the losses we inflicted at Kaliban and Sancere, it will leave the Syndics without numerical advantage in the war.”
Geary nodded, gazing at the star display. “So the war would just go on.”
“The war would just go on,” Duellos agreed.
“I’d like to manage a better outcome than that.”
Duellos grinned sardonically. “You can count on the fleet. Everything’s coming together here. The pride of the fleet, the need to rescue our fellow ships, the confidence born of recent victories, and the training you’ve given us. We’ve got a chance, even if the odds are bad.” His grin widened. “And I just thought of something else we can do to even the odds a bit.”
* * * *
You would think someone who had spent so many years in the fleet would be used to waiting by now, Geary thought as he wandered the passageways of Dauntless. A very large amount of time in the fleet was spent just waiting. Waiting to get somewhere, waiting once you got there, waiting for an emergency or crisis that might not happen, waiting to find out how long you would have to wait. That seemed to be as much a part of military life as risking your life and bad food.
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