Fearless

TEN

After the riches of Sancere, Ilion seemed bare and bereft. A single marginally habitable world boasted a few enclosed cities, one of them already apparently shut down for lack of inhabitants. The only shipping to be seen were a few aged in-system ships running between the habitable world and some old industrial facilities near an asteroid belt. No warships to be seen, and the Syndic military base that had occupied a moon of a gas giant about two light-hours out from the star had also been mothballed.

Geary decided not to bother communicating with the inhabitants of the Syndic planet. He had no intention of bringing the fleet near them and couldn’t imagine they had anything he needed. Indeed, careful examination of the closed Syndic military base showed that it been stripped of supplies, with even some of the equipment cannibalized. “It looks like they’ve been taking that base apart for a couple of decades, at least,” Desjani observed. “With Sancere so close, everybody who could leave must have already left.”

“Why do you suppose the Syndics haven’t already evacuated the planet, then?” Geary wondered.

“I’d bet because moving all of those people would cost a fair amount of money. They’ve probably been left there to fend for themselves because on a Syndic corporate balance sheet they’re not worth moving.”

“Abandoned in place.” Geary nodded, wondering how that would feel. It was something sometimes done to equipment. He had never expected to see it being done to people. How long could these people keep going on what they could grow, manufacture, and cannibalize? It was a good bet the population left here was still shrinking. Would the day arrive, centuries from now perhaps, when the last human in Ilion died? He had seen a number of systems bypassed by the hypernet before this, but Ilion carried the worst impact. “Let’s get the fleet moved to cover the jump point from Strena.” If any of those almost forty ships with Falco survived, they would have to come here through Strena. “I want us ten light-minutes from the jump point. If anyone comes through, they may need very fast rescue.”

Geary took another look at the display. At their current speed it was about two days to the jump point he wanted to cover. “I guess it’s time for another fleet conference.”

It felt good to have the thirty ships from Task Force Furious back at the table. It felt good to see everyone pleased with how well Sancere had gone. For the moment at least, no one seemed ready to openly display hostility or dislike. Once again, Co-President Rione had chosen not to attend. Geary wondered what she was up to, why she was depending on secondhand accounts of these meetings rather then being at them to raise questions and objections. Surely she knew that as long as the objections were reasonable he wouldn’t take them wrongly.

The days spent in jump space between here and Sancere had been mostly given over to resting and recovery after the extended pressures of the operations at Sancere. With no alerts in the middle of sleep periods, Rione had been able to actually sleep while sleeping with him and seemed to have enjoyed that. But she hadn’t told him anything to explain why she wasn’t present at this conference. The woman remained an enigma.

“We can only estimate what the ships that left the fleet have been doing,” Geary told his assembled ship commanders, deliberately avoiding loaded terms like mutiny and fleeing. “The best guess our simulations have generated show that any that survived their certain encounter with vastly superior Syndic forces at Vidha would have retreated through these stars to reach Ilion, with their last waypoint at Strena.” He laid that out bluntly. It was the simple truth, and if none of those ships had survived to reach here, he didn’t want anyone wondering why. “If these estimates are correct, any ships seeking to rejoin the fleet will arrive sometime between tomorrow evening and the next four days.”

“How long will we wait?” the commanding officer of Dragon asked.

Geary gazed on the display for a moment before answering. “At least through the end of those four days. How much longer, I haven’t decided. We can’t stay indefinitely, but if anyone shows up, I want to be here.”

“What if the Syndics show up first?” the captain of Terrible wondered.

“If it’s within those four days, we’ll fight,” Geary confirmed. “After that will depend on a lot of factors. It will be my decision.” Heads nodded, some in agreement and others just in acknowledgment that he was in charge. That was something, anyway. “If the Syndics come through on the heels of any ships trying to rejoin us, we’ll have a fight on our hands. I expect to have to protect the ships arriving, since they’ll probably have sustained a lot of damage, plus we’ll have to do our best to wipe out the Syndic force.”

Geary gestured toward the star display. “Once we’ve recovered our missing ships and dealt with any Syndic pursuers, my plans are to leave here for Tavika.” That brought some smiles. Tavika would bring them back toward Alliance space. “Tavika will give us three options for the next jump. If it looks like Baldur is safe, we’ll jump there next.” More smiles. Between Baldur and Tavika the fleet would have made up the distance to Alliance space lost jumping toward Sancere. “At this point the Syndic command structure at a lot of places, including their home system, still hasn’t heard that we paid a visit to Sancere. Which means they have no idea where we are. Once they hear we were at Sancere, they’re going to start looking, but they won’t find us soon.”

He paused, looking around the table. “If any ships rejoin us, we’ll have to evaluate their damage. It’s possible I’ll have to order one or more to be evacuated if the damage is too great. Be ready to take personnel on board in case that happens. Ideally, we won’t leave any ships behind. We will not leave any people behind regardless of the circumstances. Are there any other questions?”

There weren’t. Everyone was being too compliant. Maybe he was being paranoid, but Geary found it hard to believe that every one of the commanders who had regarded him skeptically was now willing to simply accept whatever he said. Or maybe they were just tired. It was pretty late in the official day. “Thank you.”

When the others had “left,” Captain Duellos’s image remained, his eyes on the display. “It’s frustrating, not being able to do anything but wait and hope for some of those ships to show up, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Geary agreed, flopping down into his seat. “Why is everybody being so quiet and accepting? Why aren’t I getting more questions?”

Duellos bent a enigmatic look toward Geary. “Because everybody else is frustrated, too. They want to help those fools who ran off with Falco, but they can’t think of any way to do it better than what we are doing, waiting here and hoping some of them make it to Ilion. Even the worst skeptic with the fleet approves of the risk you’re taking in waiting here. If Falco was around to rally them with some fool plan to charge back and forth among Syndic star systems looking for our missing ships, then it might be different. But Falco didn’t want to wait to build up more support.”

“Lucky for me, I guess,” Geary noted gloomily.

“Lucky for all those ships that didn’t go with him as a result,” Duellos corrected. “Cheer up, Captain Geary. Things are going well.”

“They could be worse.” Geary paused. “Okay, I’ve got a personal question. About me.”

“About you? Or about you and the iron-jawed Co-President of the Callas Republic?”

Geary smiled. “Iron-jawed?”

“She’s a tough woman,” Duellos explained. “The sort who makes a valuable friend and a dangerous enemy.”

“That describes Co-President Rione,” Geary agreed.

“But I understand you’re on friendly terms with her at the moment.”

“You might say that. The entire fleet knows, right?”

Duellos nodded. “I haven’t personally polled every sailor in the fleet, but I think it would be hard to find one who hasn’t heard.”

“No one’s saying anything.”

“What are we supposed to say?” Duellos asked. “Congratulations? Ask you what tactics you employed to achieve your objective?”

Geary laughed as Duellos grinned. “That’s a good point. I just want to know if it’s causing any problems. I know Numos and his friends wanted to make an issue of my relationship with Rione back before there was any substance to the rumors.”

“I’ve heard little,” Duellos admitted. “As I once told you, it’s your business and doesn’t reflect on your professionalism. As long as you and Co-President Rione refrain from acting out in public, I expect no one will say anything. Openly that is. Those opposed to you will try to find a way to paint it in a negative light. I can’t see the issue gaining much traction, though, if you two continue to carry on as you have. The most damaging rumor would be that you’ve compelled Co-President Rione to become a sort of concubine, debasing her, but no one who has ever met that woman would believe such a rumor. Nor would rumors that you two are plotting against the Alliance hold up. Aside from the legend of Black Jack Geary’s devotion to the Alliance there’s also Co-President Rione’s well-known loyalty to her world and to the Alliance as a whole.” He gave Geary a questioning look. “How serious is it, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Frankly, I don’t know.”

“Not that you’ve asked, but I personally wouldn’t toy with the affections of a woman like Co-President Rione. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the expression about ‘hell hath no fury’ was coined about a woman very similar to her.”

Geary smiled again. “I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.”

Duellos frowned down at his hand as if examining it. “On the other hand, the woman standing beside Black Jack Geary when he returns this fleet safely to Alliance space will be in an enviable position for a politician.”

“That’s true,” Geary stated, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Duellos glanced back at Geary. “You’re riding a tiger. You know that.”

“Yeah. I know that.” The old saying had already occurred to him, that someone riding a tiger is fine except for the fact that the tiger is taking them where it wants and they don’t dare get off, because the instant they do, the tiger can turn on them. She’s powerful and can be dangerous. I wonder if those are some of the things that attracted me to Victoria Rione?

Geary was still musing over that when he got back to his stateroom and found Victoria Rione waiting for him there. “Did the conference go well?”

“Your spies haven’t reported in yet?” Geary replied.

It didn’t faze her in the slightest. “Not all of them, no. It’s rather inconvenient for them when you hold fleet conferences in the evening.” She indicated the star display over the table. “I have something to show you.”

He sat down, his eyes on the region of stars shown. He could usually guess which general area of space he was looking at by spotting particularly noteworthy stars, nebulas, or other features, but not this time. There wasn’t a single thing he could identify from memory. “Where is this?”

“The far side of Syndicate Worlds space. It’s not surprising you can’t recognize it since no one from the Alliance has ever been allowed there, except perhaps as prisoners en route to labor camps.” Rione’s fingers danced delicately across the controls, rotating the view. “I’ve been studying some of the Syndic records we acquired at Sancere. This is the latest information available in them on the far side of the Syndicate Worlds. Do you notice anything?”

He watched the stars swing past slowly as the star field pivoted under Rione’s commands. The boundary with unexplored or uncolonized star systems was a lumpy thing, of course. The arrangement of stars in the cosmos didn’t lend itself to the neat lines that human minds liked to see. Something about the view teased at him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“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 forcing 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 many 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.

None of which made waiting to find out if any ships would rejoin them here any easier. The fleet had been positioned facing the jump point from which any of the missing ships would have to come, hanging in space with its movements slaved to the slow progression of the jump point around its star. The auxiliaries were busy enough building new weapons and parts, and every other ship needed routine upkeep and repair, but Geary had done everything he personally could do to prepare. Too restless to address other tasks, he went through Dauntless seeing the crew, finding his increasing ability to recognize the sailors and officers he encountered to be a source of comfort. Slowly, very slowly, he was beginning to feel like he belonged here.

In one passageway he encountered Captain Desjani, surprised to see that she was demonstrating the sort of cheerfulness that usually only appeared after Desjani had watched a lot of Syndic ships be destroyed. “You seem in a good mood,” he commented.

She smiled back. “I recently had a long conversation with someone on Furious, sir.”

Furious was a ways off, with her once-again reconstituted task force, ready to carry off another special mission. Geary spent a moment wondering why Desjani would have had a long talk with Captain Cresida, given the time delay involved, then realized that hadn’t been who she had talked to. “How is Lieutenant Casell Riva?”

Desjani actually blushed slightly. “Very well, Captain Geary. He’s impressed by Captain Cresida and the new sensors and weaponry we have.”

“I see. I’m glad he’s pleased by the new weapons in the fleet.”

“Actually, he’s happy to be liberated, and seemed pleased to talk to me,” Desjani confessed.

“I suspect he really is pleased, Tanya. He’s fitting in okay, then?”

Her smiled faded a bit. “There’s been some rough moments, he said. That much time in a Syndic labor camp with no hope of release or rescue will take a while to overcome. Sometimes he wakes up in a panic, fearing that his liberation was only a hallucination. But of course he has hope now.” Desjani paused. “Cas—Lieutenant Riva was surprised to see the way you’re directing the fleet. The tactics you’re using. He’s still puzzled and torn by Captain Falco’s departure from the fleet. But he watched everything that happened at Sancere and was astounded, sir.”

Geary felt embarrassed himself. “A lot of things worked right. We were lucky.”

“You make much of your own luck, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so.” She paused again. “He’s still the man I remembered. Perhaps something will come of it.”

“I hope so. War messes up enough lives. It’s nice to think that two of them can have a chance to get back on track.”

Desjani nodded, her eyes distant with memory. “We’ll see. There’s a lot of time to make up and experiences to share. Did you know that among the records we downloaded at Sancere there was a huge database of Alliance prisoners of war? It’s not up to date, the latest information is about three years old, but it has a lot of names of people who for all we knew were dead. If—excuse me, sir—when we get back to Alliance space, a lot of people will be happy to see some of the names on that list.”

Geary gave her a curious look. “How long has it been since the Syndics shared captured personnel lists with the Alliance?”

“Decades at least. I’d have to check. At some point they decided not knowing if lost personnel were alive or dead would harm Alliance morale and stopped providing lists of prisoners. The Alliance did the same in retaliation, of course.”

That wasn’t a pleasant thought. Sending friends, lovers, and family off to battle was bad enough, but not knowing afterward what had happened to them was a form of slow torture. “We’ll have to get that list back, and maybe convince the Syndics to swap up-to-date lists.”

Desjani nodded. “If anyone can do that, you can,” she replied. “I’ve just started to look at the list. There’s so many names and the list is organized in an odd way, so I’m stumbling through it usually getting results I didn’t ask for. But there’s some people whose fates I’d like to check. Some of them were supposedly captured, some supposedly killed in battle. Maybe I can confirm those things now.”

“I guess you and a lot of other people will be doing that,” Geary noted, thinking that a list three years old wouldn’t tell him if some miracle had allowed his grandnephew to escape from Repulse before its destruction in the Syndic home system. That would remain an unknown for him, but best to assume Michael Geary was dead and be very pleasantly surprised if he turned up alive. There really weren’t many grounds for assuming he had survived the death of his ship.

Which brought his thoughts back to the thirty-nine ships that had accompanied Captain Falco at Strabo. How many of those had survived? He wished he already knew the answer, as terrible as that was likely to be. The uncertainty was almost as bad as the nagging, ugly conviction that few if any of them would survive to reach Ilion.

“They’re here.”

Geary bolted from his stateroom without bothering to check his own display. He ran down long passageways and up ladders until he reached the bridge, gasping for breath as he dropped into his seat. Only then did he call up the display with a silent prayer for as many survivors as possible.

Amazingly, three battleships were there. Dauntless’s systems quickly identified them as Warrior, Orion, and Majestic. And a single battle cruiser, Invincible, so badly damaged that Geary had to double-check the assessment before he believed it. Of the six heavy cruisers that had accompanied the capital ships, only two remained. None of the four light cruisers were there, and of the nineteen destroyers only seven had survived.

“Those stupid bastards,” Geary muttered. A battleship and two battle cruisers lost, along with a lot of lighter ships. Of the thirty-nine warships that had followed Falco, only thirteen had made it to Ilion.

Captain Desjani’s face was white with anger. “Triumph didn’t make it. I’ll lay you any odds you care to name that Triumph stayed behind to hold off the pursuit while the other big ships got away.”

“That didn’t do Polaris and Vanguard any good,” Geary noted, knowing how much fury his voice was showing. “Look at Invincible. How is she still functioning?”

“I have no idea, sir. But all of those ships are beat up. I don’t know if even Titan can restore those ships to full service no matter how much time she’s given.”

“We’ll find out.” Geary finally punched his communications controls. “Colonel Carabali. Get in touch with your Marine detachments on Warrior, Orion, and Majestic. Captains Kerestes, Numos, and Faresa have been relieved of command effective immediately and are to be placed under arrest. Captain Falco is also to be placed under arrest for the negligent and criminal loss of ships of the Alliance fleet.” Charges of mutiny could wait until later. What really mattered to Geary was knowing that Falco’s stupidity had caused the loss of so many ships. He pushed another control. “Warrior, Orion, and Majestic, this is Captain Geary, acting commander of the Alliance fleet. Your commanding officers are relieved effective immediately. Executive officers are to assume temporary command.” Another push, this time on the fleetwide circuit. “All units that have just arrived in the Ilion system are to accelerate at your best speed, passing through the fleet formation and joining up with the fast fleet auxiliaries and their escorts in the rear. We assume pursuit is coming in after you and want a clear field of fire. Task Force Furious will be executing Operation Barricade in your wake. Please remain clear. All other units in the Alliance fleet, prepare for battle. We’ve got a lot of shipmates to avenge.”

“Operation Barricade?” Rione had arrived on the bridge, breathing heavily from what must have been a run of her own up here. She was gazing at the display, her face bleak as she realized the extent of the losses.

“Operation Barricade is a little idea from Captain Duellos,” Geary explained. “We loaded out the ships under Furious with most of the mines in the fleet. They’re moving across the jump point exit now, planting as dense a minefield as we can manage in whatever time remains.”

Captain Desjani was grinning in anticipation of the Syndics hitting those mines. “What makes it especially sweet is that we’re able to expend those mines because the matériel we picked up in Sancere will let the auxiliaries manufacture replacements. The Syndics themselves provided us the means to replace the mines we use here.”

On his display, Geary could see the time-late images of Furious and the other ships in the task force accelerating across the jump exit to lay their mines as Rione spoke again. “What happens if a large number of Syndic ships exit the jump point as Furious and her sisters are crossing in front of it?”

“There’s a substantial risk there,” Geary conceded. “Even though having Task Force Furious sitting next to the jump exit ready to go minimized the chance the Syndics can arrive before our ships are done crossing in front of the jump point. That’s why I asked Captain Cresida to volunteer for the task.” At least he was finally remembering to refer to her using her new rank.

Rione gave him a flat look. “Do you honestly believe that Captain Cresida would treat a request to volunteer as any different from an order to take part?”

Desjani shot Rione a sour glance while Geary tried not to grimace. There was enough truth to Rione’s accusation to sting. “Madam Co-President, if I refrained from doing or asking anything that might lead to the deaths of some of the people under my command, then I would be paralyzed with indecision, and then all of the people I’m responsible for would surely die or be condemned to Syndic labor camps.”

“As long as you are keeping consequences in mind,” Rione stated.

This time Geary glowered at her, wondering why Rione was being so contrary. Perhaps she was trying to emphasize that she remained the voice of his conscience. “If you’re trying to keep me honest,” he stated in a low voice, “you’ve made your point.”

Focusing back on the display, Geary saw that at least the dispute had distracted him for a few minutes from worrying that Syndic pursuers would erupt into the middle of Task Force Furious. The gate exit was ten light-minutes away. His orders relieving the commanding officers of the three battleships would just be arriving at those ships. The Syndics could have appeared in force several minutes ago, ravaging Task Force Furious, and he wouldn’t have seen it yet.

His display updated, showing where mines were being laid like deadly eggs as of almost ten minutes ago. The field was gratifyingly dense, since Geary had held almost none of his mines back. There would be a price to pay for that later. His ships were certain to expend a lot of grapeshot and specters as well, in addition to taking damage that would need to be repaired and losing equipment that would need to be replaced, and four fleet auxiliaries couldn’t manufacture replacements for all of that at once, no matter how many resources had been plundered from Sancere. It would take a while to make up the expenditure. But at least the auxiliaries could keep working during jump space transits. By the time they reached Baldur a lot of replacement weaponry would be available.

If his fleet reached Baldur, Geary reminded himself. They were a long ways from that star, with very likely a major battle between them and it.

“Invincible’s really lagging,” Desjani remarked.

“I’m surprised she’s still moving,” Geary muttered in reply, taking another look at the amount of damage the battle cruiser had sustained. He studied the display, mentally evaluating the progress of the fleeing Alliance ships, trying to guess when the Syndic pursuers would appear. I can’t be too close to the jump exit when the Syndics arrive, but if I don’t move now, there’s a growing chance we won’t be able to cover Invincible in time.

I had to leave Repulse to her fate. I’m not leaving Invincible. “All units in the Alliance fleet, accelerate to point zero five light speed at time zero four. Maintain position relative to fleet flagship Dauntless.” He turned to Desjani. “Captain, please keep Dauntless on a course centered on the jump point exit.”

“Yes, sir.” Desjani gave the necessary orders, outwardly as calm as usual.

Geary thought a moment longer. “Task Force Furious. Upon completion of Operation Barricade take up position behind and above the exit.” Did he need to do anything else? Warrior, Majestic, and Orion had almost reached the rest of the fleet. Several of the surviving destroyers accompanied them, but the two surviving heavy cruisers and the rest of the destroyers had stayed with Invincible. He would have to remember that they had done that. In the heat of battle Geary couldn’t afford to bother replacing the commanders of the surviving cruisers and destroyers that had gone with Falco. Maybe he didn’t need to do that at all, not if their commanders were displaying the courage and discipline to stick with the badly damaged Invincible when the safety of the rest of the fleet beckoned.

Well behind the Alliance formation the auxiliaries were guarded by a disgruntled group of escorts built around the Second Battleship Division, four powerful ships, which should be enough to fend off or repel any attack aimed at the auxiliaries. No one wanted to miss a battle. But Geary had assured the escorts that in the next battle, and there would surely be a next battle, they would be allowed to occupy the front ranks of the fleet.

Majestic, Warrior, and Orion, moving as if the devil were at their heels, passed through the Alliance formation without a pause. “I would have joined the line of battle,” Desjani grumbled in disgust, clearly unhappy that the three battleships hadn’t turned to help fight their pursuers. She had a point, Geary conceded to himself, despite the damage the three battleships had suffered. Simply replacing their commanding officers isn’t going to turn those three ships into reliable parts of the fleet. Their crews are acting scared and beaten even when the rest of the fleet is here to protect them. I shouldn’t be surprised that ships commanded by the likes of Numos and Faresa don’t have highly motivated crews. Getting those crews retrained and reinspired is going to be a major project.

Once we’ve finished the battle I’m sure is coming.

As if they had heard Desjani, the destroyers accompanying the three wounded battleships turned and headed for the squadrons they had abandoned back at Strabo, trying to take their places in the fleet formation. Geary took a look at the damage they were reporting to the fleet net and shook his head. “Claymore and Cinquedea, this is Captain Geary. Your willingness to continue the fight is noted with pride and pleasure, but you’ve sustained too much damage. Join up with the auxiliaries so you can assist their escorts and they can start fixing you.” He paused, thinking there was something else that needed to be said. “If any Syndics get near the auxiliaries, I know I can count on you to defend them gallantly.” That sounded awkward, but it should satisfy the pride of the destroyer crews. They deserved that much courtesy for volunteering to keep fighting. Fighting spirit did indeed have its place.

The jump point exit remained more than eight light-minutes away. No signs of Syndic pursuers had appeared yet. Task Force Furious had finished its work and was headed for its ordered position. Desjani was eyeing the distance to the jump point exit with concern. “Should we slow, sir? If we’re too close when the Syndics come through…”

Geary shook his head. “Not yet. We don’t have Invincible covered yet.”

“Yes, sir.” Desjani grinned.

If he ever lost Desjani’s approval, Geary reflected, he would know for sure that he had messed up as badly as any human possibly could. “We’ll hold our speed until we’re within a light-minute of Invincible, and if the Syndics haven’t shown up at that point we’ll—”

“Enemy forces at the jump exit,” a watch-stander cried as alarms wailed.

Geary blinked in amazement at the images on his display as the Syndic vanguard flashed into normal space. Not a swarm of light units, but twelve battle cruisers, arranged in three vertical diamond formations. It made sense, he realized, if the Syndic commander thought he would be facing four battered capital ships with very few screening units surviving. Why send light units through to be destroyed by a potential desperate ambush when losses could be minimized by sending through a force capable of overwhelming the four damaged Alliance capital ships if they had chosen to make a stand at the exit?

Unfortunately for the Syndic commander and the twelve battle cruisers, this side of the jump exit actually held the rest of Geary’s fleet and a dense minefield.

The Syndic battle cruisers sailed majestically away from the exit at .1 light speed for a few seconds, doubtless seeing the waiting Alliance force and having those few moments to realize the tables had been turned on the pursuers. Geary watched the images of the Syndic battle cruisers begin to turn, pivoting to alter course downward. He had a second to wonder why fleeing ships almost always sought to “dive” down instead of “climb” up, as if they were aircraft or even people running on the surface of a world, even though the two directions were purely arbitrary and required exactly the same effort in space.

In this case, as the Syndic battle cruisers pivoted their bows downward, it meant they ran into the minefield not bow on, but broadside on, offering even bigger targets for the waiting Alliance mines. If their escorts had been leading the way, the deaths of smaller units on the mines would have warned the battle cruisers, but instead the first warning the capital ships received was when they hit the mines themselves. Explosions rippled down their lengths, collapsing shields so that other mines could strike the hulls. The battle cruisers reeled as the mines blew holes in them and sent fragments flying into space. One of the battle cruisers blew up as its power core overloaded, then two more in quick succession, the three ships turning into fields of shrapnel blossoming out from the scenes of their deaths. Of the nine remaining battle cruisers, eight were drifting away out of control, rocked by occasional new explosions as an outlying mine battered them or as damage set off internal explosions.

The last Syndic battle cruiser, in even worse shape than Invincible, staggered on past the minefield with most of its propulsion blown and combat systems out of action but still managing to hold a course. Geary checked the geometry of the battlefield. “Warspite is just within maximum specter range of that battle cruiser. Is it worth trying to get hits?”

Desjani nodded. “That Syndic isn’t going to be dodging any missiles. He’s a sitting duck.”

“Just like Invincible would’ve been for them,” Geary agreed. “Warspite, this is Captain Geary. Engage the leading Syndic battle cruiser with specters. All other ships hold your fire. This can’t be the entire Syndic pursuit force. You’ll have plenty of targets to play with soon.”

Forty seconds later the answer came back from Warspite. “Aye. Engaging lead battle cruiser.” On his display, Geary could see four specters leaping out from the Alliance battleship and heading in long, shallow curves toward intercepts with the crippled Syndic.

“No matter what they’ve got left, twelve battle cruisers gone is going to go a long ways toward evening things up,” Desjani observed.

“Yeah. Where’s the rest?” Geary wondered.

His words were answered almost immediately. The jump exit, now barely seven and a half light-minutes away, was suddenly filled with ships. Geary forced himself to carefully study the enemy formation. A deep rectangle, broad face toward the Alliance fleet, capital ships arranged at each corner and in the center, the gaps filled with lighter units.

“Twenty capital ships,” Desjani noted. “Sixteen battleships and four battle cruisers. Thirty-one heavy cruisers. Forty-two light cruisers and HuKs.”

“More than enough to wipe out the Alliance ships they followed here,” Geary observed.

“Why didn’t they send more?” Desjani asked. “If there was a chance the fleeing ships would rejoin us they must have known what they could end up facing.”

“Because they didn’t know where the rest of the fleet was. They had to find us and protect every other place we might have gone. Trying to protect against all of the options they expected meant they committed insufficient forces to this mission. If we hadn’t been waiting for them, that might have worked out because they could have run from an engagement, but we’re too close for them to get away without a fight.” Geary tapped the fleet communications control. “All ships accelerate to point one light speed at time one five. Task Force Furious, adjust course and speed as necessary to block the rear of the Syndic formation. Don’t let them turn back toward the jump point. All units, target the capital ships first.” He checked the distance to Invincible, seeing she was still a light-minute ahead, between the charging Alliance fleet and the surprised Syndics. At current closing speed they would meet and pass Invincible within seven minutes.

The main body of the Syndics hit the minefield, many of the ships sweeping unscathed through the gaps swept by the hulls of the twelve battle cruisers in the first wave. But a lot of mines remained.

Syndic HuKs exploded and broke under the force of mine explosions, their pieces tumbling across space. A half-dozen light cruisers shattered into fragments. Three heavy cruisers reeled out of formation, two completely destroyed and the third out of the battle. The Syndic battleships and battle cruisers took the blows on their bows, having had time to reinforce their forward shields, thanks to the sacrifice of the lighter units, and blundered through the minefield with weakened shields but no apparent damage. “That’s for Anelace, Baselard, Mace, and Cuirass,” Geary announced. A low-key cheer sounded around him as Dauntless’s bridge crew acknowledged that Alliance mines were avenging the ships lost to Syndic mines at the jump point at Sutrah.

Invincible staggered through the Alliance fleet formation. Geary winced as he took a moment to stare at the damage to the ship. Invincible had taken so many hits that Geary marveled the battle cruiser had kept moving. He wondered if it would be appropriate to issue a fleet citation to the crew of a ship that had fled the fleet, then decided he didn’t care whether or not it was appropriate.

Past the Alliance mines, the Syndic formation began curving upward, aiming to pass over the Alliance fleet so it could hit the topside ships and remain out of range of most of the Alliance warships.

“That won’t work,” Geary stated out loud. “All units in main body, alter formation course up three five degrees at time four seven.” At the ordered time, the cup-shaped formation swung around the axis formed by Dauntless, aiming the center of the Alliance cup-shaped formation to once again intercept the middle of the Syndic formation, coming up on the Syndics from ahead and beneath now. “Let’s see if he spots that in time to try avoiding us.”

“Estimated time to contact twenty minutes.”

The specters from Warspite finally reached the Syndic battle cruiser badly hurt by the mines, racing in to strike unimpeded by shields. Four massive explosions blossomed on the Syndic ship, smashing any remaining working systems and reducing the ship to a wreck tumbling off to one side.

The surviving Syndic forces were substantially outnumbered but in a more spread-out formation. The Alliance formation aimed at it would only strike half of the Syndic formation if neither Geary nor the Syndic commander changed anything. Geary couldn’t see how the Syndic commander would allow that to happen, since it would grant the Alliance overwhelming firepower superiority at the point of contact.

“The Syndics are moving again. Looks like they’re adjusting course to port and down.”

On Geary’s display, the Syndic formation pivoted up and away, trying to position itself so one side of the Alliance formation would rush upward past the flat side of the Syndic formation. It wasn’t a bad move, Geary conceded to himself. This Syndic CEO obviously wasn’t a fool. “All units, roll starboard nine zero degrees, change course down six zero degrees at time zero six. Task Force Furious, adjust course as necessary to block the Syndic formation from turning toward the jump point to Tavika.” He had to assume the Syndics would break and run, and with the jump point they had used to arrive still blocked by Alliance mines, the jump point to Tavika was the next best option.

“Eight minutes to contact.”

The Syndics had finished rolling, each ship turning within the formation to present its bows to the oncoming Alliance fleet so that the Syndic warships were now coasting sideways within their rectangular formation. The flat side of the Syndic rectangle was now positioned almost vertically “up” and “down,” facing the Alliance formation.

Geary pondered whether to try some fancy use of his ship’s firepower and decided against it. “All units employ weapons at your discretion. Primary targets are the capital ships. Maintain formation except to maneuver as necessary to avoid enemy fire. Permission granted to open fire when favorable engagement opportunities are presented.”

“Six minutes to contact.”

The Syndics were still settling into formation, doubtless worried about being caught in the middle of another maneuver when the Alliance fleet swept into range. Geary watched on his display as the two fleets rushed toward each other, the Alliance cup overlapping the back half of the Syndic formation. He had positioned his ships and positioned his fleet, given his commanders authority to fire, and now had nothing to do but watch as the Syndic warships and the Alliance fleet raced to contact.

“Enemy is firing,” the weapons watch reported unnecessarily as Geary’s display lit up with warnings. Grapeshot, concentrated on the points where some Alliance warships would soon be. It had been fired at extreme effective range. Geary hoped the commanders of those ships would use the very brief time available to alter course slightly to avoid the worst of the barrage. More warning symbols sprang to life. Syndic missiles.

On the visual display, spots of bright light began flaring as Syndic grapeshot struck Alliance shields. Geary could see his own ships firing, their data up to several seconds time-late for the farthest-off ships.

Captain Desjani had her eyes fixed on her own display. She highlighted a Syndic battleship. “That’s our target,” she informed her watch-standers. “Let’s hurt him.”

The sides of the Alliance cup were plunging into the Syndic rectangle, each Alliance ship only briefly exposed to enemy fire as it tore through, while the Syndic ships in those areas were battered by ship after ship. The lighter Syndic units were ripped apart under the repeated blows, flaring and dying around the stronger islands formed by the surviving Syndic capital ships.

Then the main strength of the Alliance fleet reached the Syndic formation.

After long, slowly passing minutes as the final huge distances were closed, the actual moments of fighting were so swift as to be disorienting. If not for the capability of the combat systems to target and fire at speeds far greater than humans could achieve, there probably would never be hits scored as two opposing fleets flashed by each other at decent fractions of the speed of light. Geary felt as if the moment of combat had come and gone between one blink and the next, Dauntless still quivering from the impacts of weapons on her shields and tallying the damage from an occasional hit that had made its way through a spot failure of the shields.

Behind him, the Syndic battleship targeted by Desjani had also taken fire from many other Alliance ships, including Daring, Terrible, and Victorious. Under that hail of fire, the mighty Syndic warship, an S-Class dreadnought, had first lost its shields then taken an onslaught of hits. Something had hit in the wrong place, and the Syndic battleship’s power core blew while some of the Alliance ships were still closing in.

They were too close when it happened. Geary stared at the display, seeing that the trailing battle cruiser in the Alliance formation, Terrible, had been shooting past close to the Syndic ship, battering it with close-range hell-lance fire. Terrible had already taken a lot of hits, substantially weakening her shields. The shock wave from the explosion of the Syndic ship reached out and slapped the Alliance battle cruiser like a huge hand, sending it tumbling. That alone would’ve been recoverable, but one of the surviving Syndic battle cruisers was too close and traveling on exactly the wrong trajectory. Even the ultrafast computers responsible for maneuvering ships to avoid collisions couldn’t avoid the result. Terrible and the Syndic ship collided as Geary watched in horror.

The collision, at a relative velocity of perhaps .06 light speed, or roughly eighteen thousand kilometers per second, turned both ships into a single titanic ball of heat, light, and scattered fragments that blossomed brilliantly against the dark of space, a human-made nebula that would briefly light the void of Ilion Star System.

A collective gasp of shock and dismay went up on the bridge of Dauntless. Geary heard a voice saying “Damn, damn, damn,” and realized it was his own. “May your ancestors protect you and the living stars welcome you,” he murmured to the dead crew of the Terrible.

Desjani, finally seeming shaken for the first time Geary recalled since they had escaped from the Syndic home system, called out commands to refocus her crew. “Damage report!”

“Minor hits on hull. No systems lost,” one of the watch-standers reported in a stunned voice.

Geary got a grip on himself as well, forcing himself to look away from the grave of the Terrible and evaluate the entire situation. There had been eight Syndic battleships and two battle cruisers in the part of the Syndic formation the Alliance fleet had met. Three of the battleships still survived, but all had taken damage. The Syndic light cruisers and HuKs around them had been wiped out, and only a few heavy cruisers still accompanied the surviving battleships. He took a deep breath, focusing on the front half of the Syndic force, which had turned hard to port and was accelerating away toward the jump point to Tavika. They obviously weren’t planning on fighting if they could possibly get away. “All units, come right one two zero degrees down one zero degrees and accelerate to point one five light at time two nine.” The huge cup pivoted again, turning to face the fleeing Syndics.

“We won’t get them,” Desjani grumbled.

“Yes, we will.” Geary pointed to Task Force Furious, slashing in from above and to the side of the Syndics. The Syndic maneuver, necessary as it was to reach the jump point, had turned their force toward Cresida’s formation and made an intercept of the leading Syndic elements possible.

Desjani didn’t so much grin as bare her teeth as Furious and the ships with her cut across the front of the Syndic formation, concentrating their fire on the lighter warships and stripping the remaining capital ships of their escorts. Diving below the Syndic formation with a speed advantage, Furious led the formation back up to hit the bottom of the Syndics. Another Syndic battleship reeled out of the formation, racked by secondary explosions.

Geary studied the situation, evaluating the geometry of the battle and reaching a decision as he watched the three damaged battleships that had survived the first Alliance pass falling farther and farther behind the rest of the Syndic formation. “Second Battleship Division. You are released from escort duties for the auxiliaries. Intercept and destroy the three Syndic battleships trailing their formation.”

Due to distance, the reply took almost a minute but made up for the delay in enthusiasm. “Second Battleship Division, aye! We’re on our way.”

Geary took another look at the battered Syndic formation still trying to accelerate away as Task Force Furious made repeated passes, curving up and down and side to side to keep hitting the front of the Syndics, whose own speed was falling off as undamaged ships reduced speed to stay with their damaged sisters. But Geary could see that the frequent passes were wearing down the shields of the ships in Task Force Furious. “All units, accelerate to point one eight light.” That might not be enough, though. He paused, hating to give the next order but seeing no alternative. “All units, general pursuit. Get those Syndics before they get away. We need to slow down those battleships.”

Geary had seen it before but was still amazed at how quickly one of his carefully built formations could dissolve when he unleashed his ships. A swarm of destroyers and light cruisers jumped ahead at maximum acceleration. Individually they wouldn’t stand a chance of hurting a battleship, but their sheer numbers would be more than the shields of even battleships could endure. And once the propulsion systems of the Syndic battleships had been damaged, they’d be slowed enough for first the Alliance battle cruisers and then the Alliance battleships to catch them, and that would seal their fates. “Task Force Furious, concentrate on slowing down the surviving capital ships.”

The Syndic formation technically still existed but had stretched out as it was hammered by Alliance hits. The sole surviving battle cruiser had pulled ahead of the rest, but that meant it was too far away for the battleships to support it when Task Force Furious swung past, unleashing a rain of hell-lances on its stern and knocking out most of its main propulsion systems.

As the battle cruiser began drifting back, the Alliance escorts drove into range of the trailing Syndic battleships and began slamming every available weapon at their sterns. Within ten minutes those battleships had lost enough propulsion to begin losing ground as well, their own hell lances flashing out impotently at the mass of light Alliance forces sweeping past.

The pursuing Alliance ships swept implacably up the rear of the Syndics, some of the destroyers and light cruisers reeling away with damage but the rest pounding at ship after ship in turn. Falcata got too close or got unlucky and took a series of hits that smashed her into wreckage.

“Heavy cruisers, avoid the battleships and get me that battle cruiser,” Geary ordered. He didn’t want to lose any heavy cruisers in an outmatched slugging contest with still-dangerous battleships. With an obedience that Geary would never have expected a few months ago, the heavy cruisers sidestepped the Syndic battleships, aiming to intercept the battle cruiser, which was still dangerous enough to keep Alliance destroyers and light cruisers at a distance.

Fearless, Resolution, Redoubtable, and Warspite dove at a slight angle toward the farthest-back Syndic battleship. The battleship unleashed a barrage of missiles, grapeshot, and hell lances at Fearless, but all four Alliance battleships kept coming, holding their fire until close enough for their own hell lances to pound the Syndic shields. The aft shields, heavily reinforced, held until Fearless got close enough to hit the side shields as well.

Its shields collapsed, the Syndic battleship was riddled by close-range hell-lance fire, most of its weapons falling silent and the majority of its systems registering as dead on Geary’s display. Fearless fired a null-field charge that bored a large hole right through the battleship, gutting a portion of it. Escape pods began bursting from the battleship, first in a scattering of twos and threes, then in a mass. By the time Dauntless and her sisters roared past, only an occasional escape pod was coming out of the stricken ship. “Finish him,” Desjani ordered calmly.

Dauntless’s own hell lances rained down on the length of the Syndic battleship, punching holes and destroying any remaining functional systems. By the time Daring made its own pass, the Syndic ship was definitely dead.

Captain Duellos’s Courageous, along with Formidable, Intrepid, and Renown, bore down on another damaged battleship and raked it so badly that the after section broke off, leaving the two pieces tumbling along their last trajectories.

The last Syndic battle cruiser, its remaining propulsion systems knocked out, started spitting out escape pods even though many of its weapons still seemed functional. Geary guessed they had been set to fire on automatic, which worked well enough for attackers to respect but didn’t select targets or concentrate fire as well as human-directed weaponry. Under fire from more and more heavy cruisers, the battle cruiser’s shields failed, and it took hit after hit, until the last weapons fell silent long after the final escape pod had left.

Geary took a moment to check on where the Second Battleship Division was closing on the three damaged Syndic battleships. To his surprise, one of those Syndic battleships had already begun throwing out escape pods as well.

“So much for fighting to the death,” Desjani commented.

“What would be the point?” Rione demanded. “They know they’re doomed.”

“You still fight,” Desjani insisted, her eyes on the next Syndic battleship Dauntless was overhauling.

“Why?” Rione asked.

Desjani threw a despairing glance at Geary, who understood what she meant. How to explain the strange logic? That sometimes you had to fight a hopeless battle for reasons that might seem to make no sense, for reasons that had nothing to do with any hope of winning? “You just have to,” he told Rione quietly. “If you don’t understand why, there’s no way to explain it.”

“I understand fighting when there’s a chance, but when it’s hopeless…”

“Sometimes you win even when it seems hopeless. Sometimes you lose there but cause something that helps elsewhere, like hurting the enemy bad enough while they kill you, or keeping them busy for a critical period of time. I told you, I can’t explain. You just do it.”

“Like you did,” Rione stated, eyeing Geary. “A century ago.”

“Yeah.” Geary looked away, not wanting to remember that hopeless battle. He had been the one facing a far superior force that day. He had known he had a chance of delaying the surprise Syndic attack on the convoy he was protecting. He had hoped the convoy would get away, hoped the other warships with him could escape as well. But he hadn’t had any hope of his own ship getting away, even though he had pretended to himself there was a chance. He had tried to remember how it had felt, the numbness inside that let him keep going while his ship was destroyed around him, while his surviving crew members escaped. But most of it was a blur now, fragments of memory in which his ship was torn apart around him, in which the last weapons stopped firing, and he had set the power core to self-destruct, in which he raced through passageways made alien by destruction to reach an escape pod he hoped hadn’t been destroyed. It had been there, damaged, and with no other hope and no time left, he had climbed in and ejected.

To drift for almost one hundred years in survival sleep, his pod’s beacon knocked out so no one found him. Not until this fleet came through the same star system en route to the Syndic home world and thawed him out.

In a sense he had died that day. When he woke up, the John Geary he knew was gone, replaced by the impossibly noble and heroic image of Black Jack Geary, legendary hero of the Alliance. “Yeah,” Geary repeated. “Sort of.”

Rione gazed back, her eyes deep with some emotion he couldn’t quite figure out.

“Fire grapeshot,” Captain Desjani ordered as Dauntless rolled in on another damaged Syndic battleship, the low relative speed allowing a long, slow firing run. The grapeshot formed a pattern of dancing lights as it impacted on the battleship’s shields. Daring and Victorious pounced from the top and bottom, their own fire helping to overwhelm the battleship’s shields. The Syndic battleship poured out a hail of hell-lance fire, concentrating on Dauntless. Geary could see the shields weakening even as the defensive systems on Dauntless automatically shifted power from the unengaged sides of the ship. The Alliance battle cruiser returned fire, its own hell lances digging holes in the battleship’s armor to wreak havoc inside the ship. Null fields shot out from Dauntless and Daring, vaporizing parts of the battleship. With Victorious also pounding away, the already stricken battleship was hopelessly outmatched. Its weapons fell silent one by one, atmosphere venting from compartments holed by Alliance fire, the huge craters left by the null fields looking like bites from an unimaginably large monster.

Dauntless and her sisters cruised past the now-silent battleship, which began tossing out escape pods as it tumbled helplessly, pieces of it breaking off and spinning away. “That’s for Terrible,” Desjani muttered.

Geary checked the overall situation again. The Second Battleship Division had caught up with the two wounded Syndic battleships that were still trying to flee and was methodically pounding them into scrap, while the lighter Alliance units with them continued on to make sure the abandoned Syndic battleship was destroyed. Only one other Syndic battleship was still firing, and as he watched, it shuddered under fire from half a dozen Alliance capital ships.

The Syndic HuKs and light cruisers had already been wiped out, and now the last heavy cruiser succumbed to a flock of Alliance destroyers and light cruisers. A cloud of Syndic escape pods was slowly heading toward the refuge offered by the barely habitable world. Geary gazed at his scattered fleet and the drifting wrecks of the Syndic force that had come charging to Ilion in pursuit of the ships under Captain Falco. We won. How much longer can we count on fighting forces we outnumber enough to win like this? How many more ships can I afford to lose?

Invincible and the auxiliaries force had almost joined up, but Geary didn’t see how the battle cruiser could be saved. Triumph, Polaris, and Vanguard hadn’t even made it this far, along with a bevy of lighter units lost at Vidha. Warrior, Orion, and Majestic had all taken heavy damage and lost a lot of crew.

Escape pods from Falcata were broadcasting requests for rescue, and a few of Geary’s other destroyers were headed that way. But the pieces of what had been Terrible and her crew were too small for even the best sensors on Dauntless to identify. There had been no chance for escape from that ship.

The Alliance fleet had won, but they had paid a bitter price.

It didn’t help Geary’s attitude to recall that this battle wouldn’t have occurred if not for the self-centered certainty of Captain Falco.

The conference room seemed more heavily occupied than usual. It wasn’t just that thirteen surviving ships had rejoined them. It was also that the figures of Captains Falco, Kerestes, Numos, and Faresa were standing to one side. The Marine sentries guarding them on their own ships weren’t part of the program and so were invisible here, but somehow their presence was still obvious in the way the four officers held themselves.

Down the table, the image of Co-President Rione sat with the commanding officers of the ships from the Rift Federation and the Callas Republic. She had finally chosen to be at a conference again but had elected to attend the conference in virtual mode from her stateroom rather than be here in person. Geary wondered what significance that decision held, or if Rione was simply ensuring that she was seen with the ships from her own Republic for purposes of politics or morale.

Falco had his head up and was gazing around confidently as if expecting to assume command of the fleet at any moment. Geary had to wonder at the state of the man’s mind. He didn’t seem concerned at all, not even showing signs of awareness that he was under arrest. Captain Kerestes, on the other hand, appeared almost frozen with fright, everything about him conveying shock and incomprehension. His long and careful career of avoiding doing anything that might backfire in any way had come crumbling down around his ears after he deferred all decisions to the wrong man. Numos and Faresa, though, were standing with angry expressions but not concerned ones. They had something up their sleeves, Geary thought. They should be worried. Numos wasn’t the brightest star in the heavens, but he was clever enough to know when there was hell to pay.

Geary stood, drawing everyone’s attention. “First of all, congratulations to every ship and the officers and sailors of the fleet on an outstanding victory. The loss of Terrible and Falcata was an awful price to pay, but the Syndics paid a lot more. Unfortunately, we now have to also acknowledge the loss of Triumph, Polaris, and Vanguard as well as a number of smaller units. I’ve also been informed that Invincible is beyond our capability to repair and will have to be abandoned.” Everyone flinched at that. “The acting commanding officer of Invincible isn’t present because her ship’s systems are too badly torn up to allow her to participate in this conference. Those who knew Captain Ulan will be distressed to learn that he died in fighting in the Strena Star System as Invincible covered the retreat of her sister ships.” This time a lot of officers turned to glower at Kerestes, Numos, and Faresa. A battle cruiser shouldn’t have been screening its comrades. That was a job for a battleship, better able to absorb hits for a longer period of time. But obviously Warrior, Orion, and Majestic had left that task to Invincible.

“I disagree with the decision to abandon Invincible,” a sharp voice announced. Geary stared in disbelief at Captain Falco as that officer continued, displaying his trademark confident, comradely smile. “We’ll fix up Invincible, then proceed back to Vidha to assist Triumph—”

“Silence.” Geary could feel as well as hear the stillness that followed his command. “The only reason you’re present is so you can hear along with everyone else the reasons for your confinement. I’m still considering whatever charges may be appropriate for a court-martial when this fleet returns to Alliance space.” No matter how popular Falco might be, Geary couldn’t let him go uncharged for something like mutiny.

“Why wait?” Captain Cresida demanded. “Hold a tribunal and shoot the son of a bitch. It would be a better fate than he inflicted on those foolish enough to follow him.”

That caused a reaction to ripple around the table. Some of the commanders present appeared to wholeheartedly support Cresida’s suggestion, but many others seemed either shocked or disapproving. Geary took a deep breath before replying. “Your suggestion was inappropriate, Captain Cresida. Captain Falco has a long and distinguished record of serving the Alliance. We have to assume the stresses that prisoner status placed upon him as the senior Alliance officer at the labor camp have led to long-term problems that must be addressed.” He had spent a long time thinking about what to say about Falco, how to balance the lingering respect so many officers and sailors felt for the man with the need to ensure no one would question keeping Falco under arrest. “Captain Falco appears to be suffering from serious difficulties with judgment and command ability. Preliminary reports from those ships that survived the engagement at Vidha indicate he was unable to offer effective leadership. For his own safety, and for the safety of the ships of this fleet, Captain Falco needs to be kept in custody.”

A lot of officers looked unhappy, some visibly flinched at the news, but no one seemed willing to dispute what Geary had said. Oddly enough, though, Captain Falco only gave one of his customary frowns in response. “Victory remains within our grasp if we act boldly. This fleets needs my leadership. The Alliance needs my leadership.” Silence followed the statement. “When the Syndics arrive in this system, we can be ready for them.”

Geary glanced at the other officers before replying. “Captain Falco, the Syndic forces pursuing the ships with you have already arrived. They’ve been destroyed by this fleet. I’m at a loss to understand how you can be unaware of that.” What was Falco thinking? Charisma was one thing, and self-confidence was important, but speaking as if recent history hadn’t even occurred?

Falco blinked and smiled again. “Good. Exactly as I’d planned. I’ll review the behavior of all ships in the battle and issue commendations and promotions where appropriate.” Captain Falco gazed around, frowning once more. “Why are we holding this conference on Dauntless? Warrior remains the fleet flagship,” he lectured. “Where’s Captain Exani?”

It took Geary a moment to remember that Exani had been commanding officer of Triumph. “He’s most likely dead.”

“Triumph will need a new commanding officer, then,” Falco stated crisply, giving another smile, this one saddened but resolute, to everyone in the meeting. “Any officers who aspire to the command should contact me directly after this conference.”

“Ancestors save us,” someone whispered.

Captain Duellos spoke in a somber voice. “I fear Captain Falco may be more badly impaired than we suspected.”

Geary spoke carefully. “Captain Falco, Triumph was destroyed covering the retreat of the ships with you from Vidha Star System.”

Falco blinked, his smile crumbling. “Vidha? I haven’t been to Vidha. That’s deep in Syndic space. Why was Triumph there?”

That brought a few gasps from the table.

“Following you,” Captain Tulev stated shortly.

“No,” Falco corrected, then stood silent for a moment before speaking crisply. “I need to address the Alliance senate. There’s a way to win this war and I can do it.”

Geary tasted something bitter as he activated a special circuit to speak with the Marine guards on Warrior. “Remove Captain Falco from the conference and return him to his quarters.” The figure of Falco, frowning once again at everyone, vanished. Geary closed his eyes briefly. How could he try a man who had obviously lost his mind? Duellos had been more right than he realized when he said Falco would fall apart when faced with the ruin of the dreams that must have kept him going in the Syndic labor camp. Fantasy had met reality at Vidha, and as fantasy had fallen apart, Falco’s reality had shattered as well. Perhaps Falco couldn’t handle a reality in that he wasn’t the savior of the Alliance.

Painful as watching Falco’s behavior had been, at least it had made it obvious to everyone here that Captain Fighting Falco wasn’t in any shape to exercise command.

Opening his eyes again, Geary focused on Kerestes, Numos, and Faresa. “Do you three have anything to say?”

Numos answered, speaking with all of his usual arrogance. “We followed orders given by a superior officer. We’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing to justify this.”

“Nothing?” Geary felt a stirring of the rage he was keeping bottled up just beneath the surface. “You knew full well that Captain Falco was not part of this fleet’s command hierarchy. You knew the fleet was proceeding to Sancere. You heard my commands to return to the fleet.”

“Captain Falco informed us we were participating in a diversion, and any orders heard from you were part of that,” Numos replied. “He insisted we must keep this secret, sharing it only among the captains of the capital ships.”

Captain Tulev’s voice was as cold as the emptiness between stars. “All of whom are dead except for you three, and the man who you claim told you this is insane. How convenient.”

Numos actually looked outraged. “We had no way of knowing a superior officer had lost his grasp upon reality and followed his orders to the best of our ability as our duty required. How dare you question my honor?”

“Your honor?” Geary demanded, knowing full well how harsh he sounded. “You have no honor. Not only did you break your oath to the Alliance, not only did you violate orders in the face of the enemy, but now you lie about it, depending upon the sealed lips of dead officers and the broken mind of another officer to protect your lie.”

“We demand a court-martial,” Captain Faresa insisted, speaking for the first time, her expression somehow even more acidic than Geary had remembered. “That is our right under Alliance law.”

“A court-martial?” Captain Duellos marveled. “So you can claim innocence based on secret orders supposedly given by Captain Falco? So you can deny the responsibility you share for what happened to twenty-six warships of the Alliance? So you can deny any role in the deaths of their crews? Have you no shame?”

“We have nothing to be ashamed of,” Numos stated with every trace of his old pride.

“I should have you shot now.” It took Geary a moment to realize he was the one who had spoken those words. And even as he realized he had said it, he knew he could do it. Officers accused of mutiny in the face of the enemy would find few defenders and no friends back in Alliance space. Numos and Faresa at least seemed to have no friends left here, though Geary had learned from bitter experience that the friends of people like Numos could hide from his sight. But they weren’t Falco, who had a reservoir of hero worship from the past and a current spate of horror and pity to win him sympathy.

He could do it. He could give the order. Not even bother with a court-martial, let alone a tribunal. This was a battlefield. As fleet commander, he could order summary justice. Who would try to stop him here and now? And when he brought this fleet safely back to the Alliance, who would raise any questions about one of his actions? Who would debate his decisions when he, and he alone, had brought this fleet home? No one in the Alliance would dare.

He could have Numos shot. And Faresa. Maybe Kerestes, too, though the man didn’t seem worth a bullet. No one could stop him. Numos could get what he deserved. Justice would be done and done quickly and damn the legal niceties.

It was so very tempting because it felt so very right and because it was what his anger wanted him to do.

Geary took a long, slow breath. So this is what life as Black Jack Geary could be. Do what I want. Make my own rules. I’m a hero. The hero of the Alliance. The hero of this fleet. And I want so badly to make Numos and Faresa pay.

Badly enough to use the sort of power I swore I had no interest in? Badly enough to act like a Syndic CEO? Badly enough to become the man Victoria Rione believed me to be? Is that what all my lectures to these people about doing what is honorable come down to? Myself breaking the rules because I can when the reason matters enough to me? At least Falco genuinely believed he could break the rules because he was special and the only one who could save the Alliance. I wouldn’t even have that excuse. I’d be doing it because others thought I was special when I didn’t believe it myself.

He looked down the table to where Rione sat. She was watching him, her face devoid of expression, but her eyes bored into him like a battery of hell lances. She knew what he was thinking, knew what he was feeling.

Geary did not look at Numos, not sure he could refrain from giving an order for an execution if he kept seeing Numos’s ugly pride. “I won’t. This will be handled in accordance with the letter and spirit of fleet regulations. Charges will be preferred. If opportunity permits, court-martials will be held before our return to Alliance space. If not, you’ll be handed over to Alliance authorities with charge sheets signed by me.”

“We demand to be released,” Faresa insisted. “There’s no grounds for this unlawful detention.”

“Don’t push me,” Geary warned, realizing as he did so that both Numos and Faresa would probably derive a last satisfaction from driving him to compromise his principles by having them executed. You won’t get that from me. I won’t grant you that victory. Not today. Every day I’m going to wake up and go to sleep knowing I could make them pay. May my ancestors help me avoid the temptation to inflict vengeance upon those two and that idiot Kerestes. “You have the blood of Alliance sailors on your hands,” Geary stated. “If you had honor, you’d resign your commissions in shame. If you had courage, you would’ve stayed and let Triumph escape.” He was using his power to browbeat them now, when they had Marine guards standing nearby and had to just take it. Abuse of power was too damned easy. Calling the Marines guarding Numos, Faresa, and Kerestes, Geary had them dropped from the conference circuit.

He took a moment then to run one hand through his hair, looking at the surface of the table and trying to let his anger drain away. Looking up at the other officers again, Geary spoke in what he hoped was a calm voice. “It will take a little while to properly evacuate Invincible. Her crew performed in an outstanding fashion. Invincible and her crew will receive a fleet citation for courageous action prior to the crew being evacuated and the ship abandoned. We’ll blow up the wreck afterward to keep it out of enemy hands. I deeply regret the loss of that ship, as well as the other ships lost recently. I want us to be ready to leave this star system tomorrow, subject to the readiness of Warrior, Majestic, Orion, and the lighter units that have sustained damage to make the jump. I’d like to be informed of any problems on any of those ships that might prevent us from leaving. Our objective will be Tavika. Are there any questions?”

A commander with a haunted expression spoke in a steady voice. “What are your intentions toward the commanding officers of the other ships that accompanied Captain Falco, sir?”

Geary studied the woman. Commander Gaes of the Lorica, one of the surviving heavy cruisers. Her ship had stayed with Invincible while that ship limped to safety. “What do you think I should do?”

Her mouth worked silently for a moment before words came out. “Hold us accountable for our actions. Sir.”

“How bad was it at Vidha?” Geary asked.

Commander Gaes bit her lip and looked away for a moment. “Very bad. Overwhelming odds. We’d already lost two light cruisers and a destroyer at a mined jump point on the way to Vidha. As soon as we reached Vidha, we lost four more ships to mines right out of the jump point, and Polaris took enough damage she couldn’t keep up. The Syndics were sweeping in. We were asking for orders but none came. Triumph told us to run while she acted as rear guard, otherwise none of us would have made it out.” She paused. “My executive officer is ready to assume command of my ship.”

Gaes was no less guilty than Numos, perhaps, but had the courage to accept the consequences. And she had stayed with Invincible, doing what a damaged heavy cruiser could do to protect a crippled sister ship. “Not yet,” Geary replied. “You made a grave error. So did the commanders of the other escorts. Unlike certain fleet captains, you’re willing to admit that, and willing to take responsibility for your actions. You also had the courage and honor to remain with Invincible. I’m not blind to that. On that basis, I’m willing to give you another chance. Will you stick with this fleet from now on, Commander Gaes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then show me how good a commanding officer you can be. You and the others. I won’t pretend I won’t be paying particular attention to you and them. Can you live with that?”

Gaes looked back at Geary, her expression still haunted. “I’m going to have to live with memories of Vidha, sir.”

“So you will. May it make you and the others better officers. If you or any of those others decide you can no longer bear the burden of command, let me know. Otherwise, carry out your orders, Commander Gaes.”

She nodded. “I will.”

“Then I’ll see you all in Tavika.” Geary waited as the images of the other officers vanished rapidly. Rione’s image disappeared as fast as the others. Desjani, shaking her head and giving Geary a sympathetic look, left with a quick apology about duties she needed to be seeing to.

In a very short time, only Captain Duellos’s image was left, looking pensive. “I never cared for Captain Falco, but it’s a sad thing to see, isn’t it?”

Geary nodded. “How do we do justice to a man who no longer lives in this world?”

“Perhaps the fleet physicians can cure his ailment.”

“Cure him so we can try him? Cure him so he can use his skills to contest command of the fleet again?” Geary gave a bitter smile. “Or just cure him so he can realize what he did to the ships and crews who followed him? That would be a form of vengeance, wouldn’t it? Would Falco ever be able to recognize and accept guilt? Or would he rationalize it all away?”

“I don’t pretend to know what justice would be in a case like this,” Duellos noted. “But Captain Falco has lived in a universe centered on himself for a long time. On devotion of a sort to the Alliance as well, to be sure, but in Falco’s mind he and the Alliance are one and the same. I don’t think he’ll ever be capable of understanding his role in the loss of those ships.”

“What about the others?” Geary asked.

“Contemptible, aren’t they?” Duellos noted with a sour expression. “Maybe that little show of theirs, seeking to avoid all responsibility for their actions, will eliminate the remnants of their support. But maybe not. Some people can find ways to get around anything. I think you handled Kerestes, Numos, and Faresa right, but as far as the commanders of the lighter warships go, you should know that not all of them seem to have learned the lessons that Commander Gaes has.”

“I know. I’ll keep an eye on them. I just hate wholesale sacking of commanders. That’s a Syndic thing to do.”

“Sometimes it’s necessary.” Duellos paused, giving Geary a searching look. “But I imagine you erred on the side of mercy after too nearly erring on the side of vengeance.”

Geary tried to push away a headache. “You could tell?”

“I could. How many others could, I don’t know. There you definitely made the right decision. I say that even though for a moment I was ready to volunteer to be a part of the firing squads for both Numos and Faresa.”

“Thanks.” Geary stared at the system display still floating above the table. “Why do people like the commander and crew of Terrible die while people like Numos and Faresa survive?”

“I fear the answer to that is beyond my knowledge,” Duellos confessed. “I know I’m going to be speaking to my ancestors about it tonight.”

“Me, too. May they grant us the wisdom we need.”

“And the comfort. If you begin to focus too much on those who died here, Captain Geary, remember the sailors who survived this battle, and who escaped from the Syndic home system under your command.”

“You’d think that would balance out, wouldn’t you?” Geary stated. “But it doesn’t. Every ship, every sailor we lose is a blow.”

“And it is nonetheless what we must do.” Duellos nodded and departed.

Exactly sixteen hours later, Geary watched on his display while the drifting wreckage of Invincible blew into fragments as its power core overloaded. There would be no trophy left for the Syndics, and at least the surviving crew members had all been safely transferred to other ships, but it was still a sad moment that called to mind the fate of the Terrible. “All units, accelerate to point zero five light speed and come to course down one three degrees, port two zero degrees at time five one.” It was time to head to the jump point for Tavika, time to bid farewell to Ilion.

He had to be seen on the ship, had to let the crew know he appreciated their efforts and cared about them, even though their welfare was primarily Captain Desjani’s responsibility. Geary walked slowly through the passageways, exchanging brief greetings, occasionally pausing for a short conversation with sailors who seemed to be daring to really believe that they would get home. Their faith in him was still unnerving, but at least Geary could find comfort in knowing that while he had made his share of mistakes, he had also brought them this far in the face of some serious obstacles.

Voices that were low but sounded angry came to him. Geary turned a corner and saw Captain Desjani and Co-President Rione standing almost nose to nose in an otherwise deserted short passageway, their expressions intense. The moment he came into view, they both stopped talking. “Is something wrong?”

“No, sir,” Desjani replied in a crisp voice. “Personal business. By your leave, sir.” She rendered a precise salute to him and walked quickly away.

Geary shifted his gaze to Rione, whose narrowed eyes were watching Desjani leave. “What’s going on?”

Rione glanced at him, her expression smoothing out and hiding any emotions. “You heard your officer, Captain Geary. Personal business.”

“If it concerned me—”

“Do you think we were having a catfight over you, Captain Geary?” Rione asked mockingly.

He felt his temper rising. “No. But I have a right and responsibility to know if there’s bad blood between you and Captain Desjani for any reason.”

Rione was giving him that cool look again, betraying nothing. “Oh, no, Captain Geary. Captain Desjani and I are on the best of terms.” She said it so it sounded like a lie, and he knew Rione had done that on purpose. But why, Geary couldn’t imagine.

Geary tried to control his temper. “Victoria—”

She held up a hand to forestall him. “Co-President Rione has nothing further to say on the subject. Interrogate your officer if you’re not willing to let it lie. Good day, Captain Geary.” Rione turned and walked away, her back and her movements betraying a stiffness of anger he could spot thanks to the time they had spent together.

They were still several hours from reaching the jump point to Tavika, and he already had another problem to deal with. But what was the problem? Desjani had seemed if not welcoming at least more tolerant of Rione lately. Rione, on the other hand, had managed to avoid him since the fleet conference. He still didn’t know how she felt about the events at the conference, and in their brief conversations since then Rione had begged off on the grounds that she was busy on research and other duties.

Geary reached his stateroom, sitting down and staring at the star display for a while before reaching for the internal communications control. “Captain Desjani, I’d appreciate seeing you in my stateroom at your convenience.”

“I’ll be right down, sir,” Desjani replied in a professional voice that revealed nothing. Within a few minutes she arrived, outwardly composed but with troubled eyes.

“Please sit down,” Geary offered. Desjani sat stiffly, her back straight, relaxing not at all. While she normally sat at attention in his stateroom, she was definitely more rigid this time. “I’m sorry if I’m prying, but I needed to ask again. Can you tell me what you and Co-President Rione were arguing about?”

She stared over his shoulder, her face betraying nothing. “I must respectfully decline to answer, sir, as the matter deals with personal issues.”

“That’s within your rights,” Geary agreed heavily. “But I must insist on knowing one thing. Whatever it was about, can you still work effectively with and regarding Co-President Rione?”

“I assure you that I am fully capable of carrying out all of my duties in a professional manner, sir.”

He nodded, letting his dissatisfaction show. “I can’t demand more than that. Please inform me if you think that changes, and please see fit to tell me at some future date if you consider whatever you discussed to concern the safety and welfare of this fleet and its personnel.”

Desjani nodded as well, her expression still controlled. “Yes, sir.”

“You understand I’m in a very awkward position here.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Okay, then.” Geary was about to tell Desjani she could leave when the door to his stateroom opened, and Rione walked in, either deliberately or inadvertently blatantly advertising the fact that she had personal access to Geary’s living area. It was certainly a remarkable coincidence that Rione had chosen this moment to visit his stateroom again after avoiding him since the conference.

Rione eyed them dispassionately. “Am I interrupting anything?”

Desjani stood up and returned the same expression. “Not at all, Madam Co-President. I was just leaving.”

Geary watched them, fascinated in spite of himself. It was like seeing two battle cruisers circling each other, all shields at maximum, every weapon ready to fire, but both maintaining tight control over their every move so that the situation didn’t escalate into a bloodbath. And he had absolutely no idea why the two were at the brink of hostilities. “Thank you, Captain Desjani,” he stated carefully, wondering if the wrong word from him could somehow lead to open warfare. He wasn’t egotistical enough to think the women were sparring over him, which left him baffled as to what had happened between them.

Desjani left, the hatch somehow seeming to close with extra force behind her. Geary exhaled heavily and looked at Rione. “I’ve got a lot of things to worry about, you know.”

“That has come to my attention more than once,” Rione agreed in the same detached tones.

Geary studied her for a moment, wondering at the way she could be both familiar and unknown, sometimes at the same instant. “Who’s here right now? Am I talking to Victoria, or to Co-President Rione?”

She gave him that cool look back. “That depends. Am I speaking with John Geary, or Black Jack Geary?”

“I’m still John Geary.”

“Are you? I saw Black Jack the other day. He was preparing to order someone to be shot. He wanted to do it.”

“He wasn’t the only one.” Geary looked away. “Maybe you did see Black Jack. But Black Jack didn’t make any decisions.”

“He came close, didn’t he?” Rione was keeping more than an arm’s length away, maintaining both physical and emotional separation from him. “How did it feel to know what you could do if you wanted to?”

“Frightening.”

“Was that all?”

He took a long, deep breath and exhaled slowly, recalling the emotions that had filled him then. “Yes. It scared the hell out of me, because it looked so very attractive. Because I wanted those idiots to pay for what they did, and I knew I could get away with it if I wanted. And knowing I could get away with it scared me.” Geary fixed his eyes on Rione. “And what is it you’re feeling?”

“Me?” Rione shook her head. “Why should I feel anything?”

“Does that mean we’re over? Did you come here to tell me that? Is that why you’ve avoided me since the conference?”

“Over?” Rione seemed to need a minute to think about the question. Then she shook her head again. “No. There are … some other issues I need to deal with. However, I want to stay close to John Geary. I think he may need me.”

“What about Black Jack?” Geary asked, recalling that Rione had bluntly declared that her first loyalty was to the Alliance, not to him.

“If he shows up again, I’d like to be close then, too.” She said it calmly, in a voice still almost devoid of emotion, her eyes meeting Geary’s gaze.

To keep me honest? he wondered. Or to make sure you’re in a position to take advantage of the power Black Jack wouldn’t hesitate to use?

Or to ensure Black Jack doesn’t hurt the Alliance by slipping a knife into him while he sleeps? Did I ever imagine I’d be sleeping with a woman who might literally kill me if she thought it was best for the things she believes in? Things that I also believe in?

At least this way I can keep an eye on her, too.

“It’s a very long ways back to Alliance space,” Geary stated. “We will get there, though, no matter how much the Syndics throw at us. This fleet will get back. And Captain John Geary will get back. Any help you can offer is always welcome. Your company is always welcome.” Almost always, anyway.

“I believe now that this fleet will make it back,” Rione agreed in a quiet voice. “We’ll see if John Geary does.”