Geary looked back at Desjani, only then realizing that both women were talking just to him and ignoring each other, as if they were in separate rooms and could only communicate directly with him.
Desjani shrugged slightly. “The Syndic CEO we saw is a politician, and I suppose a politician might feel less compunction about the sacrifices of military personnel.”
That made Rione’s jaw visibly tighten, but she still didn’t look at Desjani. “You have my assessment, Captain Geary. Now if you will excuse me, I have other matters to attend to.” She swung around and left the bridge.
Geary pressed the fingertips of one hand against his forehead for a moment in an attempt to push away an impending headache. “Captain Desjani,” he murmured so only she could hear, “I would appreciate it if you refrained from engaging in open combat with Co-President Rione.”
“Open combat?” Desjani replied in similar low tones. “I don’t understand, sir.”
He gave her a sharp look, but Desjani was eyeing him with what was surely pretended innocent puzzlement. “I really don’t want to go into details.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to, sir.”
Desjani might consider him guided by the living stars when it came to command of the fleet, but when it came to dealing with Rione, she obviously had a different opinion. “Just try to act like she’s in the same room with you.”
“She’s not, sir. She left the bridge.”
“Are you mocking me, Captain Desjani?”
“No, sir. I would never do that, sir.” Perfectly serious, as far as he could tell.
It was clearly time to withdraw from the engagement. He couldn’t go into more detail or get angry without drawing attention from the watch-standers on the bridge, and he didn’t need that. “Thank you, Captain Desjani. I’m very happy to hear that. I have enough other things to worry about.”
Desjani at least looked a little regretful as Geary left, trying to catch up with Rione. He suspected she’d had some other important insights to share, and he wanted to ask Rione something.
She wasn’t moving fast, so he caught up with her halfway down the passageway. “Tell me the truth,” Geary requested. “Is the Alliance that badly off as well? Is the Alliance ready to crack?”
“Why do you ask?” Rione’s tone was as unemotional as ever.
“Because you didn’t seem happy at the evidence of how bad things are for the Syndics. You’ve told me the Alliance military is unhappy with the Alliance government, you’ve told me that everyone is tired of war, but is it as bad as here in Syndic space? Is the Alliance threatening to fall apart?”
Rione stopped walking, her gaze directed at the deck, then slowly nodded without looking at him. “A century of war, John Geary. We can’t be beaten, neither can they, but both sides can push until they fracture.”
“That’s why you came along on this expedition? Not just because you were afraid that Bloch might try to become a dictator, but because you were sure that he’d succeed, that the war-weary citizens of the Alliance would follow him because they’d lost belief in the Alliance.”
“Bloch would not have succeeded,” Rione stated calmly. “He would have died.”
“You would have killed him.” She nodded. “Bloch must have known what you intended. He must have had precautions in place against you.”
“He did.” A very small smile flicked on and off Rione’s face. “They wouldn’t have been enough.”
Geary stared at her. “And what would have happened to you?”
“I’m not certain. It wouldn’t have mattered. What counted was stopping a dictator in his tracks.”
He couldn’t spot any trace of mockery or dishonesty in her. Rione meant it. “You were willing to die in order to make sure he was dead. Victoria, sometimes you scare the hell out of me.”
“Sometimes I scare the hell out of me.” She still seemed absolutely serious. “I told you, John Geary. I believed the man I loved had died in this war. I’ve had nothing else to live for since then but my devotion to the Alliance. If the Alliance itself was about to crumble, then I’d have nothing left at all. My husband died for the Alliance, and if necessary, I could as well.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this right from the start?”
Rione watched him for a moment before answering. “Because if you were someone in the mold of Admiral Bloch, you didn’t need encouraging. But if you were truly like Black Jack, you wouldn’t believe me, because the idea of the Alliance falling apart would have been too hard for you to accept. You needed to see enough for yourself to understand how bad things are. And I did tell you things, though you may not always have recognized it.” Rione shook her head. “I sounded you out, I watched you, I did what I had to do in order to influence your attitudes toward the way things are now.”
“What you had to do?” The phrase sounded cold even for Rione. “You told me once that you didn’t sleep with me just to influence me.”
Her eyes stayed on his. “That wasn’t the only reason, no. But it was part of it. Satisfied? You got my body, I got yours, and in the dark watches of the night I whispered to you about the need to protect the Alliance from those who would destroy it in the name of saving it. Oh, I enjoyed the sex. I admit that freely. But the day came when I knew that I no longer need fear you, and when I knew that my feelings were beginning to betray the husband I still love and who may still live. I didn’t give you to her because I’m noble, John Geary. I did it for myself, and because I’d done what I needed to do.”
He didn’t believe all of that. Rione’s posture and expression hadn’t changed, but he remembered the drunken words she’d once spoken, and he noticed that even while dispassionately justifying all she had done, Rione still didn’t say Tanya Desjani’s name. “You haven’t given me to anybody, let alone Captain Desjani.”
“You may have to lie to yourself, John Geary, but give me some credit.”
“Why are you staying on Dauntless, then? There are plenty of surviving ships from the Callas Republic to which you could transfer.”
“Because you’ll need me close when we get home. Not as a threat, as an ally. I know how the political leaders of the Alliance will react to you. Black Jack has returned, the savior of the fleet and the Alliance. You won’t take what some of them will offer in exchange for more power for themselves. You won’t do what others of them will fear, taking all power for yourself. No, John Geary,” Rione insisted, “you will stand atop the bulwarks of the Alliance and defend it against all enemies, both those inside and those outside, because that’s who you are, someone out of a simpler past. And I will help you against those inside who seek to use you or act against you out of fear.”
“Against me? Do you think I’ll be in danger from the political leadership of the Alliance?”
“If I had been on the Governing Council when you returned, I would have argued for your immediate arrest and isolation under the public deception of your being on some secret mission. Because I would have thought you were someone in the mold of Admiral Bloch or Captain Falco. I’ve learned different, and I will tell the other senators what I know. Believe me, you will need me,” Rione declared. “Even those politicians who dislike me, and there are plenty of those, know that I will not betray the Alliance. My words will matter to all of them.”
Geary looked away, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and trying to think. No matter how complex getting this fleet home in one piece had always been, life once the fleet got home had seemed so simple. Resign his commission, go somewhere he wouldn’t be recognized, try to hide from the legend of Black Jack and the unrealistic, devout expectations of those who believed he had been sent by the living stars themselves to this fleet to save it and the Alliance. He’d kept focused on that to keep everything from overwhelming him, even as the idea of walking away from this fleet and its people felt less and less right. Now he had to admit that at the very least he’d have more problems to deal with before he could leave these responsibilities behind. “Than
k you, Victoria. I’m sure your help will be critical.”
She shook her head. “Don’t thank me. I’m not doing it for you.”
“Thanks, anyway. Do you want to discuss the upcoming battle?”
“You’ll be fine. You always are.”
His temper threatened to explode. “Dammit, the last thing I or anyone else in this fleet needs is for me to become overconfident! I’m going to try to minimize our losses, but this battle will not be simple or easy or painless!”
Rione smiled in an infuriating manner. “See? You already know that. You don’t need me to tell you. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Geary stated between gritted teeth. “How about whether we should go to Anahalt or Dilawa afterward?”
Rione spread her hands in a dismissive gesture. “Follow your instincts, Captain Geary. They’re much better than mine, at least while we’re still in Syndic space.”
“I’d still like your opinion on whether or not we can trust that Syndic CEO.”
“Of course you can’t. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t being truthful this time. See if what she said about Dilawa matches the Syndic star-system records we’ve captured.” Rione turned to go, then spoke over her shoulder. “That’s my political advice. If you want military advice, go ask your captain for her opinion. It’ll give you two another professional opportunity to huddle close together.”
He watched Rione walk away, without saying anything else that might have just invited another parting shot.
Four hours until contact with the Syndics. The Alliance fleet and the Syndic flotilla were less than fifty light-minutes apart, each force moving at point one light speed, their combined rate of closure at the point two light speed maximum for effective targeting. He could now see what the Syndic ships had been doing just less than an hour earlier, just as they could see the status of the Alliance fleet that long ago. It was still too early to set his combat formation, too early to let the Syndic commander know how Geary planned to meet the enemy.
“Captain Geary? There’s something we need to show you.”
He acknowledged the message from Captain Desjani and headed for the compartment she’d called from, trying not to look apprehensive as he passed members of Dauntless’s crew. Despite the need to concentrate on the upcoming battle, Geary had been constantly distracted by worries about what his internal enemies might do. It sounded like they must have tried striking again.
The compartment proved to be one of the primary-systems control stations, apparently confirming his fears. As the hatch sealed behind him, Geary saw Desjani, the lieutenant commander who was Dauntless’s systems-security officer, and the virtual presence of Captain Cresida. “What is it this time?”
Desjani and the lieutenant commander both looked at Cresida, who gestured toward some of the system modules behind her. “I’d been thinking, sir,” Cresida began. “Trying to figure out how the aliens could be tracking us. The business with the worms got me wondering about our systems, about whether anything else could be hidden in them.”
Geary frowned. “The aliens? This isn’t about a new worm generated from somewhere within the fleet?”
“No, sir. We found something that couldn’t have come from internal sources. We had to get Captain Desjani’s systems-security officer involved.”
“It couldn’t have come from the inside?” Geary gave Desjani and her systems-security officer a puzzled look. “But you found something else?”
Cresida nodded. “Yes, sir. What I was wondering was, if something else was there, something that let the aliens track our movements, how could it still be hidden? It would have to be something unlike anything we’ve used or tried to use if our security scans missed it. So I’ve been looking at different things, just off-the-wall stuff, seeing if anything unusual or unexpected showed up anywhere inside our systems.”
Desjani’s systems-security officer tapped a control, and a virtual display popped up beside him, showing a weird image of what looked vaguely like overlapping waves with fluctuating boundaries. “This shows commands being sent through the navigational system, sir,” he explained. “Not the code, but the actual electron signal propagation. It’s a representation, of course, rendered in terms understandable to us. What Captain Cresida found was that the commands had something else piggybacking on them.” He indicated the fluctuating tops and sides.
Cresida pointed to them as well. “I don’t know how they do it, but somehow they’re encoding a worm using self-sustaining probability modulation on a quantum scale. Every particle making up this signal has quantum characteristics, of course. Well, the aliens have imprinted some kind of program on those characteristics. I know it’s not natural because there should be probabilistic variation in how these actions are occurring on the quantum boundaries of the particles making up the signal. There isn’t. It’s following patterns. We can’t tell what those patterns do, or how they do it, but it’s definitely something that shouldn’t be there.”
Desjani nodded toward the display. “We think we’ve found our alien spy, Captain Geary.”
“I’ll be damned. This is in the navigational systems?”
“And the communications systems. We’re still screening the other systems but haven’t found anything like it, yet.”
Geary stared at the display, amazed. “It’s set up to know where we’re going and tell someone else. Can this thing send messages at faster-than-light speeds?”
Cresida made a frustrated gesture. “I don’t know! I don’t know how it works at all, let alone what it can do. I just know it’s not supposed to be there.”
The lieutenant commander spoke up. “Naturally, none of our security programs or firewalls could spot this. It’s, uh, alien to them, if you’ll pardon the term.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it?” Geary demanded. “We just have to leave this thing infesting our systems?”
That drew a fierce smile from Cresida. “No, sir. I may not know how it works, but I know how to kill it.”
“That’s the first time I ever heard you talk like a Marine, Captain Cresida. How do we kill it?”
Cresida indicated the wavery boundaries again. “I’m sure we can generate quantum wave patterns that have opposite characteristics to these waves. In effect, using destructive interference to cancel out the modulated overlays. We don’t have to know what the pattern does or how it’s sustained to create a very short-lived negative image of it. Once the overlays go to a zero probability state, none of them should reappear except in rare random pieces that couldn’t possibly function.”
Geary frowned in puzzlement. “How could even random pieces reappear if they’ve been reduced to zero probability?”
“It’s … a quantum thing, sir. It doesn’t make sense to us, but that’s how things work on that level.”
The systems-security officer nodded. “In effect, sir, Captain Cresida has suggested creating an antiviral program using quantum-probability-pattern detection and cancellation. It’s a totally new concept, but the actual creation of the program is well within our capabilities.”
“Thank you, Captain Cresida. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that all humanity is in your debt. I want Lieutenant Iger in intelligence briefed on this, too. Any ideas how it got into our systems?”
The others exchanged glances, then Desjani answered. “I’ve been thinking about it since Captain Cresida showed me this. You suspect the hypernet gates were the products of aliens’ technology, sir. Dauntless, like every other ship in the fleet, has an Alliance hypernet key on board that carries its own operating system.”
Cresida’s eyes widened. “Which interfaces with the ship’s navigational system. You could be right. We’ll get into the keys and see what we can find.”
The systems-security officer frowned this time. “But if it is coming from the hypernet key, do we dare sanitize the key? It could somehow bear on the proper functioning of the key.”
“Very good point,” Cresida agreed. “We’d have to
tread very carefully there. But we can set up an antiviral screen between the key and the rest of the ship’s systems once we get the program working.”
“Do it now,” Geary commanded. “If you need anything, and you’re not getting it, make sure I know.”
“Yes, sir, but I’d like to wait until after the battle to start.”
“The battle?” Geary almost slapped his own forehead. Between concerns about internal enemies and hostile aliens, the actual looming battle had slipped his mind for a moment. “Yes, of course, after the battle. And if anything else about this comes up that doesn’t have to be dealt with until after that, wait to tell me.” I can’t risk being that badly distracted again. A lot of ships in this fleet could die if I’m not focused on the most imminent threat. What Cresida had found wouldn’t have any effect on the outcome of this engagement, but it would make a very big long-term difference in the aliens’ ability to intervene again on the side of the Syndics. We’re figuring out your tricks, you bastards. And when we’ve figured out enough of them, we’re going to discuss this war with you and what humans do to nonhumans who try to manipulate them.
One hour to engagement range if both forces continued on their current course and speed vectors. Now Geary could see the Syndic formation as of twelve minutes ago, still in its rectangular box shape, one of the short sides facing the Alliance fleet like a hammerhead rushing to strike. “Ready?” he asked Desjani.
“Now?” Her eyes were already locked on the enemy formation.
“Yeah, I couldn’t do it earlier without acting uncharacteristically, but I need to give the Syndic CEO commanding that flotilla time to see what I’m doing so I’ll have time to see how they react.” Geary tapped his controls. “All units in the Alliance fleet, assume stations in Formation Echo Four at time three zero, formation stations to form relative to flagship Dauntless.”
At time three zero, the big Formation Delta the fleet had been in broke apart, warships weaving everywhere in a complex dance as they proceeded to stations in five subformations. “This is like the formation you used in Lakota the first time,” Rione noted, as the shapes became apparent.
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