Leviathan

Nine

“Admiral.” General Charban displayed his now-usual attitude of trying not entirely successfully to deal with frustration. “I’m back from my stay on Inspire. May we speak?”

“Of course,” Geary said. “Take a seat. I imagine that you’re glad you weren’t with us at Bhavan.”

“I know something of how you must have felt, Admiral.” Charban shook his head. “I was in a few ground battles where I was praying for a miracle. Fortunately, either the living stars are fond of me or chance worked in my favor. I don’t think I would have been able to get my force intact out of a situation like that you faced at Bhavan, though.”

“You probably would have thought of something,” Geary said. “Any breakthroughs in the matter of the Dancers?” he asked, naming the alien species which resembled the unholy offspring of giant spiders and wolves, and which were the closest things to friends that humanity had found among the three alien races so far encountered. Given that the other two races, the mysterious enigmas and the homicidally aggressive (as well as cute) Kicks, were both dangerous foes, it did not take much to be friendlier toward humanity. But the Dancers, in their own, mystifying ways, did seem to regard humans as allies.

Charban sat down and shrugged. “Breakthroughs are even harder to come by with no Dancers actually present to talk to. On the other hand, I’m not dealing with vague and simplistic replies from them on a routine basis, so it could be worse.”

“It could definitely be worse,” Geary said. “The dark ships won’t even talk to us.”

“Neither would the Kicks, and the enigmas only do it when they absolutely have to. But you would think something that humans had built like the dark ships would at least give us a little respect.” Charban paused, looking upward, his eyes distant. “Being left here at Varandal did have the benefit of giving me a lot of time to think, and since I didn’t want to spend my time worrying about what might be happening at Bhavan, I spent it thinking about the Dancers. Specifically, about that trip they took.”

“Going home, you mean?”

“No, before that. The trip the Dancers took to Durnan Star System. I didn’t want to talk to other people about this because I didn’t know how important it could be, and I didn’t know whether you would want to keep it as quiet as possible. Can I see your star display?”

“Sure.” Geary called it up, the stars floating in the air between them like jewels suspended in space.

Charban leaned toward the display and used one hand to adjust its scale and focus. “Here. Let’s see. Ah. Look.” Lines appeared, one branching out from Varandal, connecting some of the stars, then going back to Varandal. “This was the path the Dancers took, jumping from star to star.”

“They were going to Durnan Star System to look at those ruins of an ancient Dancer colony,” Geary said.

“Yes,” General Charban agreed, “but aside from the question of how an ancient Dancer colony got there when it did is the question of why the Dancers took the route they did.” He indicated the lines between stars again. “It wasn’t as straight a path as it could have been going out, and wasn’t straight at all coming back. Look how they looped around on their way back to Varandal.”

Geary studied the display, intrigued. “It’s almost like the fragmentary outline of a rough sphere, isn’t it? Why would the Dancers have taken such a roundabout path?”

“I’m assuming they must have wanted to send us some kind of message,” Charban said. “But what?”

“What message could they send with a rough spherical shape?” Geary asked. “Do the names of the star systems they visited spell out anything?”

“No,” Charban said. “I think forming a coded message in the names humanity gave those stars would be even too subtle and convoluted for the Dancers. But it did occur to me that perhaps the message was not in the sphere but in what it contained.”

“What it contained?” Geary looked again. The region of space inside the rough sphere defined by the path of the Dancers contained a few stars with little or no human presence and no particular reason to visit them. “There’s nothing there.”

“What about that?” Charban asked, pointing. “Our systems can’t tell me much about it.”

Geary looked closely. “You’re pointing at a close binary star. I’m not surprised there is little in our systems about it. It’s not really worth noticing.”

“Why not?” Charban asked. He leaned over the low table between them, his extended finger almost touching the image of the binary. “Do the systems on Dauntless know anything more about it than I could have found elsewhere?”

Geary shook his head, frowning in puzzlement at the question. “Probably not, but since Dauntless is the flagship, it’s possible we might have supplemental files. We know it’s a close binary star system, two stars orbiting each other. Let’s see if there have ever been long-distance observations of that star system.” He called up the data. “Yes. It has been viewed from other star systems. That’s not the most detailed way of surveying a star system, but it does pick up larger objects. That particular binary system contains six planets in eccentric orbits, most of them probably captures of wandering planets that got too close to one of the two stars. That’s all we know.”

“That’s what I learned before.” Charban nodded in agreement, but still looked confused as well. “Why is that all we know? No one has ever gone there? Why wouldn’t the Dancers jump there if they were interested in it?”

“You don’t know?” Geary eyed Charban in astonishment that gradually changed to comprehension. “You’re ground forces. Not a sailor.”

“Or a scientist. I was pondering the last message from the Dancers, you see,” Charban explained. “ ‘Watch the many stars.’ And I realized that there was an alternate meaning. It could have been meant to say ‘Watch the multiple stars.’”

“Multiple stars.” Like binaries and the occasional triple star system. “Why would we watch them?”

“Why don’t we ever go to them?” Charban asked again.

“Because we can’t. Not by using jump drives. Do you know how the jump drives work?”

“Vaguely. Something about thin spots in space that the drives can take ships through into somewhere else where the distances are much shorter.”

“Right,” Geary said. “I’m not a scientist, either, but the basics are that space-time isn’t rigid. It bends. The gravity of objects makes space-time bend or dimple, as if you put a heavy object on a flexible sheet. Big objects create big dimples. Stars are massive enough to bend and stretch space-time sufficiently to create thin spots in it. Those thin spots are jump points, places where our jump drives can push ships through into jump space and back through to get out of jump space at the next star. There’s nothing in jump space except that endless gray haze—”

“And the lights,” Charban added.

“And the lights,” Geary conceded. No one knew what the lights were. They came and went at no discernible intervals for no discernible reasons. Sailors tended to regard them with superstition, but given that their nature remained unexplained, perhaps superstition was too prejudicial a word. The lights could conceivably represent just about anything, or Anyone. “The distances in jump space are far smaller than in our universe, as if jump space is a small fraction of the size. It may be, but since we can’t see any distance in jump space, we don’t know if it has limits and how small or large those limits are. But on average it only takes a week or two to get from one star to an adjacent one using jump space, where it would take ten or twenty years at a minimum on average to make that same voyage in normal space using our best technology. The important thing in answer to your question is that the thin spots, the jump points, are stable around each star, so we can find them and know they will be there when we get where we are going and when we want to come back.”

“I see,” Charban said, nodding and frowning in thought. “What does that have to do with not going to binary stars? With two stars close together, shouldn’t they have lots of jump points?”

“Yes, and no.” Geary moved his hands around each other. “When two or more star masses are orbiting each other, the dimples in space-time they cause are constantly interacting. That makes jump points around them unstable. There might be one that vanishes suddenly, then another appears elsewhere. If you detect a jump point that leads to a binary star, it might vanish before you could even jump toward it. Worse, the jump point at a binary that you are heading toward might vanish before you get there, and if that happens you can’t come out of jump space.”

Charban shuddered. “Like the man the Dancers returned to Old Earth?”

“Like that, maybe, yes. The ship might eventually find another jump point and return to normal space, but you’ve been to jump space. You know humans don’t belong there and can’t manage more than a couple of weeks without developing serious problems.”

“Like that itchy, unnatural feeling that your skin no longer fits?” Charban asked. “Yes. The longest jump I was ever on was about two weeks, and I’m not sure I could have endured three weeks. I can understand why no one would want to risk being stuck there. That’s why we’ve never gone to that binary star?”

“Maybe never to any binary star,” Geary said. “I don’t know. You’d have to either risk losing the ships you send, and there’s a high probability of loss, or send the ships through normal space, which would mean a really long voyage even with current propulsion technology. There have been more than enough single stars for humanity. Hell, we’ve abandoned a lot of marginal star systems in the last decades because the hypernet made it easy to bypass them. With no shortage of stellar real estate, why go to the trouble of visiting a binary?”

Charban nodded. “I understand. Indulge me, Admiral. I’m not sure why, yet. What would it take to get to that particular binary star?”

Geary shrugged. “I can estimate that easily enough. Let’s see. The closest star to that binary is Puerta. There’s nothing much at Puerta. It’s a white dwarf, but you could jump there and have less than one and a half light-years to the binary. That’s pretty close as stars go. Load up on sufficient fuel, accelerate to better than point five light speed, then brake down before you get to the binary, and you could make the trip in ten years easy. Maybe significantly less than that.”

“What about a hypernet gate?” Charban asked, squinting at the representation of the binary star. “Would one of those work in a binary star system?”

“I think so. I don’t know why not,” Geary said. “I can ask Commander Neeson on Implacable. The hypernet gates work using something related to quantum entanglement, totally different from the jump drives. They shouldn’t be impacted by the interacting gravity fields of the two stars. But you’d have to get everything to build a hypernet gate to that star system. Aside from taking about a decade, it would be hugely expensive to build a gate to get to a place where there wasn’t anything worth going to. Why do you think the Dancers would have been interested in that binary?”

“Because the Dancers all but drew a bull’s-eye around that binary star! But you have no idea why they would do that?”

“No. Even they couldn’t get there, apparently.”

“Are we certain that there is not a hypernet gate there?” Charban asked.

“There isn’t a hypernet gate for that star in our hypernet keys,” Geary said. “I don’t think.” He touched his comm panel to call Desjani in her own stateroom. “Tanya, are any of the hypernet gates at a binary star?”

“A what?” Seated at her desk, her image focused on Geary as if trying to figure out whether he was serious. “Why would anyone build a hypernet gate at a binary star? How could anyone build a hypernet gate at a binary star?”

“You could send the hypernet gate components through normal space and use robotics to assemble them in the binary star system,” Geary said, wondering why he was justifying the outlandish idea. “You’d probably need some humans to do the oversight and final work and calibrations, but if they didn’t want to put up with a decade-long journey they could be frozen into survival sleep and then be reawakened to work on the gate. Once the gate was done, they would be able to come back immediately.”

“Why would we do that?” Desjani asked. “Do you have any idea how complicated and expensive that would be?”

“Tanya, I don’t know! But the Dancers seem to have tried to focus our attention on one particular binary, one that’s not too far from a white dwarf that could have been a launching point for a normal-space trip to that binary.”

She gave a long-suffering sigh, tapped in some commands, then shook her head. “No. There is no binary star in the destinations available to our hypernet key. Or among the destinations available to the Syndic hypernet key that we acquired.”

“Do you have any ideas why the Dancers would try to focus our attention on a binary like that?”

Another sigh. “Maybe they were looking for something and thought it was hidden there.”

Charban gave a derisive snort. “If someone wanted to hide something, it sounds like a binary star would be the perfect place.”

Geary stared at him. “What?”

“Um, a joke, Admiral. A binary would be a wonderful place to hide something, right? No one goes there. No one can go there. You space travelers don’t even think about them! I had to point that one out to you even though it was in plain sight on the display.”

Tanya was gazing intently at Geary. “What are you thinking?”

“What would the Dancers be looking for?” he asked her. “Something that we know of. Something that has apparently disappeared.”

“Big or little? Are we talking a person?”

“Maybe a person. Maybe something very big,” Geary said, his thoughts crystallizing. “What left Varandal, by hypernet gate, and apparently vanished from human-occupied space? Something that should have been impossible to hide no matter what star system it was taken to?”

Her face lit with understanding. “Invincible. The Kick superbattleship we captured. You think the government took it to that binary?”

“Where else could they have taken it where no one could find it?” Geary demanded. “What else would the Dancers have been looking for and worried about?”

“The dark ships,” Desjani said pointedly. “We need to find their base, and we haven’t been able to find any clue—” She stopped speaking, looking stunned.

“A secret base?” Charban said, astonished. “A secret hypernet gate? I didn’t think something on that scale could be possible.”

“Neither would anyone else,” Geary said, gazing at the depiction of the binary in his star display. “You said it yourself. No one thinks about binaries. No one can go to binaries. A binary would be the perfect place to set up a secret base, a place to hide the captured Kick battleship, a place to hide the base for the dark ships.”

Tanya shook her head, holding out both hands palm forward. “Hold on. We’re talking about a project that couldn’t have been dreamed up in the last few years. There would have been a huge investment in time and money. They would have had to start work on this a long time ago.”

“Maybe they did,” Geary said.

“And kept it secret from everybody?”

“No,” Geary said, looking at her now. “They couldn’t keep it entirely secret. Rumors got out. People talked about it. But no one ever found it, so after enough years had gone by, it was labeled a fantasy, a project that had never actually existed.”

Tanya’s eyes met his. “Unity Alternate? Ancestors save us. You’re talking about Unity Alternate.”

“Yes. The supposedly mythical government project to build a secret, fallback base to continue the war if Unity itself fell to the Syndics. A project important enough to justify a huge expense and a construction time line of more than a decade.”

“In a place no one would ever think to look,” she continued for him. “A place the Syndics would never find and couldn’t reach if somehow they did find it.”

“And maybe more than that,” Geary said. A place to set up the most secret projects, a place to hide anyone that the government, or portions of the government, didn’t want found, as well as a place to homeport a secret fleet.

“How do they get there?” Desjani demanded. “There must be a way. The dark ships use the hypernet. Invincible disappeared after entering the hypernet. There must be keys with access to a gate at that binary.”

“If there are,” Geary said, “we’ll find them.” He turned to Charban. “General, you may have given us the most important piece of information that we needed to have. I’m in your debt.”

Charban still looked dazed. “How did the Dancers know it was there? They are the ones you should thank, Admiral. This is unbelievable. First Black Jack returns, and defeats the Syndics just as he was supposed to, then Unity Alternate turns out to exist. Myths and legends are coming to life all around us.”

“I was never a myth,” Geary said. “And it turns out Unity Alternate wasn’t either. This is all as real as those dark ships, and now we know where they are hiding.”

Desjani grinned ferociously. “Destroy their base?”

“Right. That’s their Achilles heel. Destroy their base, their source of replacement fuel cells, and they’ll be helpless once the fuel cells they are carrying are used up. We’ve got a way to win, Tanya.”

If they could find a way to get there. And if they could get there when the dark ships were not there as well guarding their base.

“We’ll be taking the fight to the dark ships next time,” Geary told the images of his ship commanders assembled in the conference room. Tanya had reminded him that he needed to talk to them, needed to let them know that he and they were not beaten. “We believe that we have identified their base. I don’t know when we’ll be assaulting that base, but all of your ships need to be ready to go.”

“What’s the delay?” Captain Badaya asked. “Why not go now?”

“It’s hard to reach, and we need to find the best way to reach it. We also assume the dark ships are there now, refueling and repairing themselves. We want to give them time to finish that and leave, probably to try to set up another trap for us. While they’re doing that, we’ll go in and knock their feet out from under them.”

“Why couldn’t they have built those dark ships to go against the Syndics during the war?” Captain Armus grumbled. A low, angry murmur of agreement followed his words.

Captain Smythe answered. “The irony is that our victory in the war gave the government the breathing room to undertake such a project. Under the pressure of constant Syndic attacks, they could never divert resources to a risky project like the dark ships. But we lifted that pressure, thereby giving the government the luxury of seeing if they could replace us.”

“And,” Captain Duellos added, “our victory left some powerful forces in the Alliance searching for an enemy to replace the one we had finally beaten.”

“Why are we doing this?” Captain Parr asked, looking depressed. “Why are we fighting again, why are our people dying again, because of the mistakes made by people who will never pay the price for their errors?”

Every eye came to rest on Geary, expecting an answer from him. “If you want my personal opinion,” Geary said, “it’s because we’re better than those people. And if people like us don’t fix the problems created by people like them, if people like us don’t stand up for the core principles of the Alliance and for the people of the Alliance, who will? This is my fight, but it doesn’t have to be. I ‘died’ a century ago. Everyone I knew then is gone. I could have washed my hands of it all. Except that I couldn’t. Because, as some people never hesitate to remind me,” he said, not looking at Desjani but out of the corner of his eye seeing her smile, “Black Jack has a duty to the Alliance because the people of the Alliance are depending on him. Just like they depend on all of you and your crews. Yes, it sucks to be doing this, and doing this again, but it’s what we do. And I’ll keep on doing it until the job is done because I think it is worth doing.”

“Even now?” Parr asked, smiling wryly.

“Even now,” Geary said.

“I didn’t ask for a speech, but I guess a decent answer required one. All right, Admiral. Let’s go clean up the mess again.”

Not everyone seemed happy, plenty just appeared resigned to the prospect, but no one looked to be reluctant as Geary ended the meeting and watched the images vanishing in a flurry, the apparent size of the conference room shrinking to match the apparent number of occupants. It was the one part of meetings that Geary liked, watching the huge room dwindle into a small compartment.

One image remained. Commander Neeson, former commanding officer of Implacable who had moved over to assume command of Steadfast. “I asked you to stay on afterwards because you’re my best expert on hypernet issues,” Geary said. Best surviving expert, that was. Captain Jaylen Cresida had been the best, but she had died in battle when her battle cruiser Furious had been destroyed. “I’ve got an important job for you.”

“I’ll do my best, Admiral,” Neeson said, giving a curious glance at Tanya Desjani, who merely indicated Geary again.

“We have solid reason to believe that the dark ship base is at a star holding a hypernet gate that is not on the keys carried by our ships,” Geary began, watching the surprise bloom in Neeson’s eyes. “I need you to look into finding that gate and a way to get to it.”

“If it’s not on the Alliance hypernet,” Neeson began, then checked himself. “No. It would have to be. We’ve seen the dark ships use our hypernet gates. But that doesn’t rule out a minihypernet that somehow links into our own.” He frowned. “No. That couldn’t work. If it was on a separate hypernet, they would have to have a place where they could go to a separate gate after leaving our own hypernet. Let me see what I can find out, Admiral. If there’s a gate somewhere that is part of our hypernet, there must be some indications of that.”

“Do everything you can and let me know if you run into any obstacles,” Geary told him.

After Neeson’s image vanished, Tanya Desjani smiled at Geary and gave a slow clap. “Nice speech, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Captain. I was inspired by my audience.” He looked at her and smiled ruefully. “Is it wrong that with everything else going on, I wish that you and I could take a shuttle somewhere off this blasted ship and be man and wife for just a little while instead of Admiral and Captain who cannot even touch each other?”

“Good order and discipline require sacrifices, Admiral,” Desjani said. “And kindly do not refer to Dauntless as ‘this blasted ship.’ And I wish the same thing. But you and I have our jobs to do, and people to lead who would not be impressed by our taking time for ourselves when others are giving all that they have.”

“Do you always have to be right?” he asked as he opened the hatch to leave the meeting compartment.

“No. I just usually am.”

He entered his stateroom, feeling weary after the meeting, trying to decide which matter to try to tackle next, but immediately jerked to full attention at the sight of someone sitting in one of the chairs. His stateroom was guarded by a variety of security measures, including locks that were not supposed to let anyone in without Geary’s specific approval.

The seated person stood and turned toward him. “Admiral.”

Geary nodded in reply, startled and yet not surprised by who it was. “Victoria.”

“Nice speech,” Victoria Rione said. When he had first met her, she had been co-president of the Callas Republic and an Alliance senator. After losing a snap election in the aftermath of the war, she had been made an emissary of the Alliance, working for her former colleagues in the Alliance Senate. But he knew that assignment had ended, at least officially. Was she still covertly working for the likes of Senator Navarro? Or was Rione now a free agent, pursuing her own ends and dodging enemies made when she was working for the Alliance government?

“You were listening in?” Geary asked. “To a maximum-security conference?”

“Oh, you make that sound wrong.” She waved Geary to a seat as if this were her stateroom. “Relax.”

He sat down opposite her, studying Rione. She rarely revealed her inner feelings, but he could see that her eyes were slightly sunken from tiredness and her face thinner than he remembered. “You look like you’ve been under a lot of stress.”

She leaned back, shrugging. “I’m still alive and free.”

“How did you get aboard Dauntless and in here without setting off any alerts?”

“I left a few special apps in place in the systems of this ship before I left,” Rione said, her voice casual. “It’s not like enigma-stuff or that nonsense the government has been using to render ships and personnel invisible to sensors. Quite the opposite. The apps reassure anything that sees me that I am indeed authorized to be there, that I am no threat, and no reports of any kind need to be made. Being apparently authorized to be anywhere beats the hell out of hiding, let me tell you.”

“Some of the crew must have seen you,” Geary said.

“Of course they did. And they knew who I was, and that I had been aboard this ship before, and that I was a trusted ally of their beloved Black Jack. They may have their own suspicions of me, being that I am one of those horrible politicians, but they assumed I was back under authorized circumstances and all of the official t’s had been crossed and i’s dotted.” She cocked her head to one side as she regarded him. “So, how is the great hero?”

“I’ve been better,” Geary said. “Sometimes it seems that people start fires just because they know I’ll come running to put them out.”

“It is fun to watch. Nobody but you could have gotten this fleet out of Bhavan in one piece, you know.”

“Are you the same person who once thought I would lead the fleet to ruin? Don’t forget that I got the fleet to Bhavan in the first place,” he reminded her, hearing the bitterness in his voice.

“You made what seemed to be the best decision,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to blame yourself for that. Take it from me. I’m an expert at blaming myself for bad decisions.” Rione looked down, then back up at him under lowered brows. “Speaking of bad decisions that you haven’t made, you’re not going to do it, are you?”

“Do what?” he asked, even though he was pretty sure what she meant.

“Solve all of our problems by riding into Unity aboard a silver starship,” Rione said. “You can save the Alliance in a heartbeat simply by announcing that you were temporarily taking charge in order to sort things out. The vast majority of the citizens and of the military would not just accept that but celebrate it.”

“Save the Alliance?” Geary asked, his anger clear. “That sounds to me like destroying the Alliance in the name of saving it.”

“I agree with you.” She shrugged again, looking away. “That’s your dilemma. The problem can be easily solved, but the solution will be worse than the problem. And you refuse to take that simple, and destructive, course of action.”

“Dammit, isn’t there a good option left?”

“You’re asking me? The same good option there has always been. The citizens take the responsibility for voting for those who will look out for the welfare of everyone, not just their own special interests. Good luck counting on that, though. They’d prefer someone to ride in aboard that silver starship and save them the trouble.”

He started to reply, then abruptly laughed. “We always look at it backwards, don’t we?”

Rione raised an eyebrow at him. “Look at what backwards?”

“Democracies. Voting. People are always talking about demanding more and better performance from elected officials, but when you get right down to it, shouldn’t a democracy demand more and better performance from the citizens who vote? If they do their job well, then the quality of those they elect will naturally follow.”

“I suppose.” She shook her head, her expression morose. “But not entirely true. The leaders have to be worthy, have to avoid the temptations of power, have to be honest even when the people don’t want honesty. Democracy is a team sport, Admiral. If everyone doesn’t play their position well, the whole team suffers.”

He had thought himself tired out, but now stood up and began pacing restlessly. “Is that why you’re here? To tell me there’s nothing I can do that won’t make things worse?”

“No. If nothing else, what you don’t do is always important. Which means you are doing the right things. I thought you needed to hear that.” Rione looked down at her hands as she intertwined her fingers in a twisting pattern. “I couldn’t find him.”

“Your husband?”

“Not a trace. Paol has disappeared.”

Geary fought down a wave of anger. “They promised they would cure him. They promised they could lift the mental block that was put on him for security purposes, a mental block that was illegal under Alliance law, and correct the mental damage that block was causing.”

“Some of them may have been sincere in their promises. Others lied. All I know is that I cannot find any clue to my husband’s fate. Even if they had killed him, I should have been able to find some sign of that.” She clenched her hands into fists. “I’m sure it is not a coincidence that I’ve been marked for disappearance by someone or something. Some part of the government that doesn’t want questions asked or information revealed.”

“We’ve encountered some agents of that,” Geary said. “I’ve got two under detention.”

Rione gave him a keen look. “And no one has shown up demanding their release?”

“Apparently, they’re not supposed to exist,” Geary replied. “So no one has claimed them or been willing to admit they do exist.”

“That must pose an awful dilemma for someone.” Rione laughed harshly. “What are you going to do, Admiral? Go on following orders like a good little officer?”

“It’s that or resign,” Geary said. “But, so far, there aren’t a lot of orders showing up. I can’t be sure, but I think the government has tied itself in a knot over the dark ships. They don’t want to admit they built the dark ships, they don’t want to admit the dark ships are running amuck, they don’t want to admit my available ships are weaker than the surviving dark ship force. They’re not throwing up barriers, not telling me I can’t deal with the dark ships in any way necessary to stop them, but they seem to be hoping I’ll just do that as part of my standing orders to defend the Alliance.”

She smiled. “Isn’t it amazing how many very powerful people confronted with an adverse outcome suddenly find themselves unable to do anything? How they suddenly declare themselves powerless? You’re going to stop the dark ships, then? How?”

It was his turn to shrug. “You said that you listened in to the conference.”

“Yes. A secret base. One you apparently cannot reach.” Rione pondered that. “I have to admit that you have a better plan so far than I do. I know that I’m going to find my husband, that I’m going to make those responsible pay, but I am currently at a total loss for the details on how to do that.” She looked around. “Didn’t you used to keep wine in here?”

“Not at the moment.” Geary regarded her, resting his chin on his interlaced hands, and decided to confide completely in Rione. “What do you know about Unity Alternate?”

Rione paused, then shot a sharp look his way. “A myth, I thought, though there were some classified programs and expenditures I became aware of during the war that led me to wonder about that.”

“They never briefed you on it?”

“Me?” Rione asked. “I may have been a senator of the Alliance, and co-president of the Callas Republic, and briefly a member of the grand council, but I was also a citizen of an allied power, not a citizen of the Alliance itself. There were things I was never officially told but learned about anyway. I have no idea how many things there were that I wasn’t told about and never found out about. Are you saying that you’ve actually found Unity Alternate?”

“We think we know where it is, and we think we know why no one has ever been able to find it. But we don’t know everything that might be there,” Geary added. “Anything you can suggest would be useful.”

She spent nearly a minute thinking, her eyes now focused on a far corner. “Supposedly enough to keep the government and the military running if Unity fell to the Syndics. That’s the long-running legend, anyway. But however many people they planned for if the worst happened, there can’t be that many there on a routine basis. They couldn’t keep the secret if masses of people were being shuttled in and out.”

“A skeleton crew running things?”

“That’s what I would guess.”

“It has occurred to me that other things beside the dark ships, other people, could be hidden at Unity Alternate,” Geary said.

Rione inhaled slowly and deeply, her only external reaction to the news. “People whose existence elsewhere would create problems? That’s very insightful, Admiral. That is where my husband must be. The one place I haven’t looked, because I didn’t think it really existed.”

“We think Invincible is there as well. It has also disappeared without a trace.”

“The alien battleship? Something that massive would be very, very hard to hide. All right, do you want me to beg? Where is it?”

“At a binary star system,” Geary said. “Not too far from here as interstellar distances go.”

She gazed back at him, then laughed softly. “Oh, they were clever. How did you figure it out?”

“The Dancers practically drew a bull’s-eye on it for us.”

“I owe them.” Rione smiled winningly at him. “You’re going there?”

“We’re going there. To destroy the dark ship base.”

“And how, Admiral Black Jack, do you intend justifying attacking Unity Alternate?” Rione asked.

He spread his hands. “As far as we can determine, Unity Alternate has been occupied and is being used by a hostile force. The only way to save Unity Alternate is…”

“To destroy it?” Rione smiled again. “Please let me come along and assist in your efforts.”

Geary smiled back. “You’d come along whether I said you could or not, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d find a way, yes.”

“Then I’d much rather have you out in the open, where I can keep my eyes on you. I’ll notify the commanding officer of Dauntless that you’re aboard again and need a stateroom.”

“And won’t she be thrilled to hear that.”

“Actually,” Geary said, “she’s been worried about you and your husband.”

Rione twisted her mouth and looked off at an angle. “Despite everything.”

“She doesn’t like you or trust you much, but Tanya doesn’t like seeing people hurt.”

“Unless she’s the one hurting them, you mean? With some large weapon?” Rione sighed. “I’m a rotten bitch. I use people. I don’t know why anyone should care what happens to me.”

“You’ve got some redeeming qualities,” Geary said. “I know you deserve better than you’ve received from the Alliance. And I mean to do what I can to make things right.”

“The Alliance… the Alliance is more than some of the people who claim to represent its interests. I’ll take care of making things right, Admiral. Just get me where I can find my husband, and where I’m within reach of some of those who decided they had the right to play God with his life and mine.”

“I’ll do my best,” Geary said. “If you have any sources who can help us find out how to access the hypernet gate that must be at Unity Alternate, it would help get us all there.”

“I’ll do everything I can.” Rione stood up, her eyes downcast. “I long since gave up on the idea that common decency existed in most people, and I… don’t tend to make friends easily. I don’t know entirely why you are helping me, but I do appreciate it. Thank you.”

Geary smiled sardonically at her even though he felt the pain coming off Rione. He knew she wouldn’t want sympathy, wouldn’t want any acknowledgment that she had betrayed vulnerability. “To be honest, Madam Co-President, Senator, Emissary, you do make some friends. Not easily, but it happens occasionally despite your best efforts.”

Rione laughed. “We’ve come a long ways, Admiral. Now let’s go to Unity Alternate. But first, I happen to know there’s another visitor on the way for you, due here tomorrow.”

“Who?” Geary asked.

“Someone important. She might even have what you and I most want at this moment.”