Dreadnaught tlfbtf-1

by Jack Campbell

  “Thank you, Admiral Geary, but I have no alternative. My duty to the Alliance demands that I ensure orders are valid before I carry them out.” Timbale actually seemed very tranquil as he said that. “You know, Admiral, we talked once about the cat in the box, about not knowing whether you’d do the right thing, no matter what, when the time came. I’m happy to inform you that the cat is alive.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that. Rest assured that I will take my own steps regarding this matter when I can.”

  “Are they trying to outright sabotage you?” Desjani asked in disbelief as Timbale’s image vanished.

  “I can’t believe anyone would do that,” Geary said slowly. “There are other explanations.”

  “I’d love to hear them.”

  “Maybe someone got hints of what Smythe is up to—”

  “Not enough time has gone by, Admiral. Try again.”

  She would keep him honest no matter how much he wanted to avoid considering some possibilities. “Maybe someone finally ran the numbers,” Geary said, “and realized how much it’s going to cost to keep those four big auxiliaries in commission and figured getting rid of them would save a lot of money. The orders didn’t say that was the intent, but that might have been a deliberate move to avoid letting us know that we’d lose the support of those ships not just temporarily, but permanently.”

  “Humph,” Desjani snorted skeptically. “It might save money in one or two places but add a lot of expenses elsewhere. Who would they have to pay to do the jobs that the auxiliaries are doing? Private contractors? Didn’t we hear that the Syndics use that kind of system?”

  “Yeah. And their mobile forces hated it.” Geary checked his display. “All ships are reporting readiness for departure. What do you say we get the hell out of here now instead of waiting another half hour?”

  “I say that’s an excellent idea, Admiral.”

  He sent the orders, watching as nearly three hundred warships, auxiliaries, and assault transports lit off their main drives and began moving into formation for the transit to Atalia. Even though the war with the Syndics had ended, and even though Atalia had declared its independence from the rapidly imploding empire of the Syndicate Worlds, Geary had decided to make jumps in formations suitable for immediate combat just in case unexpected threats materialized.

  The growing experience and skill of his crews had led him to choose a formation that involved six subformations. Five of those were built around cores of battleships or battle cruisers, with heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers arrayed around them. The sixth was made up of the eight auxiliaries, divided into two divisions, and a single division of four assault transports. He had a lot more Marines along than before since no one knew what he might need when dealing with the aliens, but the Marine force commanded by General Carabali only required two transports to carry those Marines not dispersed among the major warships. As a result, Tsunami, Typhoon, Mistral, and Haboob were only half–loaded out with Marines and their equipment, as well as the small contingent of civilian experts on nonhuman intelligent species. The extra capacity to carry people in those four transports would be useful when they picked up the POWs at Dunai, and in case they found any humans alive and captive inside alien space.

  The subformations were arranged with the largest combatant subformation in the lead, the auxiliaries and transports behind that, and the other four combatant subformations spaced evenly around the support ships, as if the warships formed a huge cup, bottom facing forward, holding the auxiliaries and transports inside. Front and center in the largest subformation was Dauntless, the flagship, literally the moving point around which the rest of the fleet aligned itself.

  He felt a sensation of being watched and looked over to see Desjani gazing at him and smiling. “Now what did I do?”

  “It’s just so obvious how proud you are of them,” she replied. “When I watched Admiral Bloch, and some other admirals, at times like that I always got the feeling they felt that having lots of ships respond to their orders showed how powerful and special they were. From you, as you watch those ships, I get the feeling that you feel privileged to command them.”

  “I am privileged,” he muttered. “Do you know what tomorrow is, Tanya? It will be the one hundred and first anniversary of the day I assumed command of the heavy cruiser Merlon. I found the responsibility of being Merlon’s commanding officer to be very humbling. Now, all of these ships are under my command.”

  “They all will be if we can get out of this star system before any more messages come from headquarters.”

  At point one light speed, it took almost three days to reach the jump point for Atalia, but the only surprise occurred on the second day, when two civilian ships jumped in from another Alliance star system and began broadcasting messages, which finally reached the fleet’s ships hours later.

  “Do not export human aggression!”

  “Exploration not conquest!”

  “Keep our taxes and our soldiers at home!”

  “I don’t disagree with the sentiments,” Geary commented. “Except for the fact that they seem to think we’re the ones picking a fight with the aliens.”

  Desjani, uncharacteristically, didn’t reply for a moment, but finally shrugged. “It was a long war. You know how we all felt. Most of us kept fighting because we didn’t see any good alternatives. I lost a lot of friends, so I understand why some people wanted other decent choices. But wanting it didn’t make it so. It still doesn’t.”

  He nodded slowly to her. “True. Right now I’d love some good alternatives to going across half of human space, then jumping into alien territory armed to the teeth. But from what we know, none of those alternatives would be better than what we’re doing.”

  She smiled wryly. “I wonder what they’d do if they actually encountered the aliens they’re worried about us attacking.”

  “Our job is to make sure they don’t, or if they do, that the aliens are willing to talk and coexist.”

  This time Desjani laughed briefly. “Which means if we succeed at what we want to do, then those protestors will probably never realize what we did.”

  “Somebody asked me why I still believed in ‘fair,’ ” Geary commented. “When I think of things like you just pointed out, I have to admit that’s a good question. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen ‘fair.’ ”

  “Just because you’ve never seen something doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

  He was still contemplating that statement when the communications watch made a report. “They’re broadcasting their junk on every channel, Captain, official and unofficial. Apparently that’s become standard protest tactics.”

  Desjani shook her head. “Idiots. They’re blocking emergency coordination frequencies. The people in this star system won’t be sympathetic to their messages anyway, but that move will ensure any possible agreement is swamped by irritation. I hope Varandal’s defense forces can catch those fools.”

  One of the watch-standers grinned. “Those ships couldn’t outrun specters, Captain.”

  Instead of smiling in return, Desjani gave him a flat look. “We don’t fire on peaceful protestors, Lieutenant. If those people transmitted on authorized frequencies only, then they’d be allowed to as long as they wanted. We’re the Alliance, not the Syndics.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the lieutenant said, reddening slightly in embarrassment. “I wasn’t serious.”

  “Understood. But people controlling the amount of firepower that we do have to be careful of the jokes we tell.”

  Geary nodded to Desjani, then checked his own comms. “Most of my channels are still clear.”

  “Admiral, that’s because our transmitters are powerful enough to punch through the interference from distant ships,” the comm watch explained.

  “Good. I guess we just ignore those guys, then. They’re not our problem, and they’re not telling us anything we haven’t already thought about.”

  A couple of dest
royers assigned to Varandal’s defenses were still chasing the protestors the next day, when the fleet reached the jump point for Atalia. Geary took a deep breath, wondering if jumps would ever feel routine again or if he would always be haunted with worry about what might await at the exit for another star. “All ships, jump at time one zero.”

  On the outside views, the endless stars and the black night between them vanished, replaced by the gray nothingness of jump space. As if greeting the fleet’s arrival, one of the strange lights that came and went in jump space grew in brilliance somewhere directly before them, near or far impossible to tell since there was no means of determining the distance to it, though it somehow felt close. The light glowed briefly, then faded out to be lost amid the drab gray.

  It took Geary a moment to realize that while he had been watching the light, everyone else on the bridge had been watching him. The moment they realized he might be aware of that, they all busied themselves at their jobs. All except Desjani, who glowered around the bridge menacingly before giving him a rueful look. “They still wonder if you were in those lights for the century you were gone.”

  “If I had been, wouldn’t I know something about them?” he snapped in reply, irritated. “I told you that I wasn’t there.”

  “You told me that you couldn’t remember being there.”

  He could stay angry to no purpose, because there wasn’t any proof either way, and there couldn’t ever be, or he could accept that the question was going to dog him for probably the rest of his life. “I guess there are some things I’ll never be able to get away from.”

  She nodded. “Not totally. But once we get into Syndic territory, everybody will have other things to occupy their minds.”

  ATALIA hadn’t changed much in the few months since they had last passed through the star system. Even though new buildings were no longer being turned into craters by Alliance bombardment almost as soon as something important could be built, and even though the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds would no longer be using the star system as an occasional battleground, there was a tremendous amount of damage to clean up, and Atalia wasn’t a wealthy star system. Even if it once had been prosperous, the frequent fighting within it would have reduced it to poverty over the century of war.

  One difference was that an Alliance courier ship hung near the jump point, ready to tell the Alliance if anyone attacked Atalia. Thus far, that was the sum total of the Alliance’s commitment to the defense of Atalia.

  Desjani sat with her chin resting in one hand as she looked at her display. “It doesn’t seem right to be here and not be blowing up things.”

  “There’s not much worth blowing up.” Geary shook his head as he looked at his own display. “The war did a number on this star system.”

  “Actually, it got off fairly easy.” Her voice had suddenly become tense. “Compared to others.”

  “I know.” Sore subject. Too many star systems had been battered into far worse condition. Too many of those star systems had belonged to the Alliance. He had avoided any information on how many billions had died during the war on both sides, not being willing to face that. But Tanya, like the others in the fleet, had grown up with such awful statistics, had seen them continue to rise year by year. Time to talk about something else. “They’ve got a HuK now.”

  “I noticed.” One Syndic Hunter-Killer, a warship slightly smaller than an Alliance destroyer, orbited in the inner system. Even if it hadn’t been almost six light hours distant, the single small warship posed no conceivable threat to the Alliance fleet. “I wonder if it’s here by orders of the Syndic government or if it’s declared allegiance to Atalia?”

  “I’ll let our emissaries worry about that,” Geary said.

  “Good idea! Maybe we could leave one of them here.” Desjani glanced back to the empty observer’s seat. “I suppose I should be grateful that they’re not hovering on the bridge constantly. That general likes to walk around trying to ingratiate himself with the crew—”

  “He’s practicing to be a politician.”

  “—but I haven’t seen the other one at all.”

  Geary nodded, thinking that was one more thing about Rione that had changed. “She was always very careful and calculating before, trying to keep on top of everything. Now, she sits in her stateroom.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Desjani said. “I hope that you’re not worried about her.”

  “Tanya, she brought new orders for us. As you already pointed out, we don’t know what orders she might have been given.” He hunched forward, clasping his hands tightly together as he remembered his conversation with Rione. “When I talked to her right after she came aboard, I got the feeling that she wanted to see how far she could lean over the edge of a cliff without falling off. There was a heedless quality, a sense that she’ll jump off that cliff just to see how it feels on the way down.”

  “Normally,” Desjani murmured, “I’d just wish that she’d jump. But if she has other orders from the government that we don’t know about . . .”

  “Orders that may account for the changes I’ve noticed in her.”

  “Something she knows?” Desjani asked. “You never could trust her. I hope you understand that now. Maybe it’s something she did. There have to be a thousand skeletons in her closet. Or maybe it’s something she has to do. Though I find it hard to believe that her conscience is bothering her.”

  Geary made an exasperated gesture. “If it’s something purely personal, then that’s unfortunate for her but unlikely to impact us. But she is an emissary for the government.”

  “Wouldn’t that general . . . what’s his name?”

  “Charban.”

  “Yeah. Him. Wouldn’t he also know if it involved some orders for the emissaries?” Desjani paused, her expression hardening. “Unless he’s a throwaway. A dupe to give cover for her. He’s a retired general. What if he’s being used?”

  Too many questions and, as usual, not nearly enough answers.

  EVEN though Atalia was an easy destination from Varandal, there weren’t many good options from Atalia, one of the things that had kept the star system from being battered even worse during the war. One option was Padronis, a white dwarf star that had never had much human presence, even the small orbital station once maintained by the Syndics having been abandoned decades ago. The other choice, Kalixa, had once been a good option itself, a fine star system with a large population and a gate in the Syndicate Worlds’ hypernet system. But that gate had collapsed and annihilated the human presence in Kalixa, apparently on orders from the same alien species Geary’s fleet was en route to investigate. Now the only signs that humans had ever been there were shattered ruins on the wreck of what had once been a habitable world.

  But from Kalixa, the fleet could jump to Indras, where a Syndic hypernet gate should still be intact. The Alliance had already used that gate once, in the final campaign against the Syndics.

  Geary stood before the conference table, once more viewing the images of the fleet’s captains sitting around it. This time, the fleet being in a much more compact formation, only the most distant ships would have any noticeable time lag. He gestured to the star display. “We’ll have to go through Kalixa again.”

  Most of the officers listening displayed distaste or unhappiness at the idea of revisiting that star, where the dead emptiness somehow emphasized the millions of lives that had been destroyed there. But they knew as well as he did that the only efficient path for the fleet led through Kalixa.

  “Then back to Indras,” Geary continued. “My initial plans had been to take the Syndic hypernet from Indras directly to Midway, keeping travel time to a minimum. However, we’ll be going via Dunai, which means taking the Syndic hypernet to Hasadan, making a short jump to Dunai, then jumping back to Hasadan to reenter the hypernet for the transit to Midway.” Laying it out that way only emphasized what a pain in the neck this diversion was. “Dunai has a Syndic labor camp still holding an estimated six hundred Alliance pr
isoners of war. We’re going to lift them out of there.”

  “On the way out?” Captain Vitali asked. “But if we waited until the way back, they’d be in Syndic custody for months longer, wouldn’t they?”

  “Exactly,” Geary agreed. If Vitali’s suggestion hadn’t been so convenient, Geary would have been seriously irritated. It had taken him hours to come up with that same explanation for the diversion since parts of the fleet didn’t believe he could be ordered to Dunai by the government; but Vitali had thought of the same rationale in two seconds. “If we still have extra passenger capacity on the way back, we’ll pick up more prisoners in another star system.” That wasn’t in his orders, but it wasn’t forbidden by his orders, either. “We don’t anticipate any trouble at Dunai.”

  Tulev tightened his lips slightly before speaking. “If the Syndics intend to drag their feet on any aspect of the peace treaty, Dunai will tell us.”

  “Does the treaty allow us to go anywhere we want in Syndic space without their approval?” one of the heavy cruiser commanders asked. Noticing the expressions on the other captains at his question, he hastily added, “Not that I care whether they approve or not.”

  “Yes, it does allow us to enter and leave Syndic territory,” Geary said. “When the treaty was being hastily negotiated with the new Syndic government, the newly in charge CEOs desperately wanted the Alliance fleet to go to Midway to defend it against the aliens, so our ability to go through Syndic territory was part of that agreement. I’m sure the Syndics intended that as a one-time deal, but our negotiators worded that part of the treaty so it’s actually open-ended.”

  “Sometimes even our politicians come in handy,” Duellos remarked.