Victorious tlf-6

by Jack Campbell

  “I would be grateful if you would grant CEO Boyens the right to transmit communications to me separately.”

  “Fat chance,” Desjani grumbled, then her expression brightened. “We can monitor anything he says and anything she sends.”

  “Right,” Geary said. “Can you set it up, Captain Desjani? Please ensure that Lieutenant Iger is in the loop.”

  It was almost three hours after that when they finally heard from the small Syndic flotilla. “This is CEO Fourth Rank Kolani, commander of Syndicate Worlds’ Flotilla Seven Three Four.” Kolani’s voice and posture were unusually stiff, lacking the standard false smile and real arrogance of a Syndic CEO. She looked young for her position, but then more experienced Syndic commanders had already been sent to die fighting the Alliance. Her uniform was nicely styled, though, and her hair absolutely perfect. Apparently it took more than this kind of crisis to have an adverse impact on the grooming of even junior Syndic CEOs. “I have been ordered to contact you regarding the defense of this star system.”

  “And isn’t she unhappy with those orders,” Desjani remarked gleefully.

  “I … request,” CEO Kolani continued, almost choking on the word “request,” “that you provide your … suggestions regarding the deployment of …” She had to pause for a moment. “… of both Syndicate Worlds’ and Alliance mobile assets within this star system.” The Syndic CEO’s eyes blazed, and her posture grew more taut. “We are prepared to die in defense of our people. Kolani out.”

  Desjani’s glee had faded into a grudging smile. “That’s one tough kid. She’d be fun to trade blows with.”

  “No doubt,” Geary agreed.

  “Are you planning on asking them to fight alongside us?”

  He glanced at her. “That doesn’t strike me as a good idea. What about you?”

  “It’d be a horrible idea,” Desjani stated firmly. “Going into battle with Syndic warships within weapons range? I don’t care what the peace treaty says; I don’t care that we’re suddenly supposed to be on the same side here. You’d still have a very high chance that any number of Alliance warships would ‘accidentally’ target those Syndics.” She thought, then shrugged. “Actually, in the heat of an engagement they might really target the Syndics just out of force of habit, without deliberate intent to strike at someone we’re supposed to be at peace with now. We’ve spent our whole lives thinking of the Syndics as the enemy, as targets. That won’t change overnight.”

  Desjani held his eyes for a moment, and he saw the message there. If Dauntless were within range of some of those Syndics, I might do that in the heat of battle, target them because they’ve always been the enemy. I probably wouldn’t do it on purpose, but I probably wouldn’t feel bad about it afterward, either.

  So Geary nodded in a way that conveyed he understood both what she had said and what she had not said. “Thank you for your candor. It’s very important that I keep hearing things like that. Even aside from the concerns you rightly raised, I don’t think having the Syndics operate with us would work. We don’t have any procedures in place for that, nothing that would ensure we and the Syndics can follow what each other says and does.”

  “There’s that, too. Are you going to tell her to keep far, far away from us, then?”

  “Not in so many words.” Geary kept his voice level and expression neutral as he sent his reply to the Syndic flotilla commander. “Thank you for your offer of assistance, but given the recent state of hostilities between our peoples and the lack of mutually agreed-upon operating procedures, the chance of misunderstanding or misinterpretation would be too high. We request that your flotilla assume a position roughly one-third of the distance from this star system’s primary inhabited world to the location at which the aliens are expected to appear. This fleet will proceed to an orbit about two-thirds of the distance to the expected alien position. To the honor of our ancestors. Geary out.”

  Desjani shook her head in apparent disbelief. “I don’t know how you can talk to them.”

  “You mean how I know how to phrase things? I encountered Syndic warships earlier in my career, over a century ago, when we were at peace. I had to learn the wording back then.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Desjani’s jaw tightened as her eyes went distant with memories. “I don’t know how you can talk to them at all except to threaten or demand. I couldn’t. I’m not sure any other officer in the fleet could.” She switched her gaze to him, appraising now. “The living stars knew more than we imagined. They knew we’d need you to save the fleet, to win the war, and that we’d also need you now, someone without the bitterness and anger of the rest of us who’ve been fighting these bastards all of our lives. Someone who could talk to the Syndics once more.”

  The mission again. He had hoped with the war over the idea that he had been sent from the past by the living stars would fade quickly. But Desjani had always held fast to her faith, and she wouldn’t be the only one who kept seeing the hands of higher powers in events. So Geary tried not to flinch at her words.

  But she saw his reaction anyway. “I’m sorry. I know you aren’t comfortable with my speaking of it.”

  “I’m only a man,” he reminded her.

  “Only?” Desjani grinned. “Yes, sir.” He had figured out sometime ago that a simple “yes, sir” from Desjani meant she didn’t really agree. But then her grin went away as quickly as it had come. “The point is, you’re still needed.”

  “I can’t be the only one who can do certain things, Tanya. Others have to learn because I can’t be everywhere, and I won’t be around forever.”

  “Granted.” She grimaced. “I’ll try.”

  “You’ve already done a lot more than try, Captain Desjani, and I appreciate that. All right, another six hours or so, and we’ll know what that Syndic flotilla is going to do. We’ll be in position before that. If those aliens show up, we’ll be ready for them.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “We improvise, Captain Desjani.”

  She grinned. “Yes, we will.”

  They were in orbit and waiting when a reply came from the Syndic flotilla. The Syndic CEO in command of the flotilla had the same tight expression as during her last transmission, her words coming out like a prepared script. “The mobile forces of the Syndicate Worlds in this star system concur with your request. We will proceed to an orbit from which we can react as necessary to events. For the people. Kolani out.”

  Senator Sakai leaned forward, his expression intrigued. “She used the formal, polite ending to her transmission. The Syndics stopped doing that with us over a generation ago. I only know it from viewing historical records. Perhaps this is a sign that they will be willing to speak to us again in meaningful ways.”

  Desjani appeared alarmed, then determined. “Not before we do. They will not learn to talk to us again before we learn to talk to them again,” she vowed.

  And then they waited. The Alliance fleet had taken up an orbit that held it motionless relative to the jump point for Pele. The Syndic flotilla, about a light-hour closer to the main inhabited world, had assumed a similar orbit. The Syndic transports, with their human cargoes of evacuees, kept fleeing, the planets and asteroids of the star system kept in motion around their star as they had for countless years, but the warships waited. The Syndics sent no more messages to the Alliance fleet, and Geary noticed that his own officers seemed to be deliberately ignoring the presence of the Syndics, as if the Alliance personnel preferred defending an empty star system to one occupied by the people they still thought of as enemies.

  Restless again, Geary did one of his walk-throughs of Dauntless, going down the passageways and exchanging a few words with the officers and crews standing by for whatever might happen. Only one of them, a chief petty officer, asked the question that all of the Alliance sailors must have been thinking. “What are they, Admiral? These aliens?”

  “We don’t know,” Geary replied. “That’s a big part of the reason why we’re here, Chi
ef, to find out what they are and what they want.”

  “Word on the decks, Admiral, is they want a bunch of Syndic star systems.”

  “It looks like it, Chief. But we don’t know where that would stop, or how long it might be before they were knocking on the doors of the Alliance. If they’re really hostile, we want to stop them here, before they can strike at our homes.”

  The chief and the sailors around him nodded. That sort of logic made sense to them. “They had something to do with Kalixa?”

  “We think so.”

  All of the sailors grimaced. “Ugly thing to do,” the chief said for them all. “We don’t want them trying that with an Alliance star system.”

  “No,” Geary agreed. “We don’t want them even thinking they could get away with that.”

  “Sort of like Grendel, isn’t it, sir?” the chief commented. “Only this time it’s not the Syndics planning to hit us by surprise. We thank the living stars that you’re here, sir, like you were there then.” More nods.

  “Thank you. I thank the living stars that you all are here with me now.” He never knew how to handle things like what the chief had said, but a simple truthful reply seemed best, and the sailors all seemed happy when he walked onward.

  Geary thought about the chief’s words as he walked, though. In some odd ways, this did resemble Grendel. The Syndic flotilla here was actually fairly close in size to the one that Geary had faced at Grendel along with the officers and crew of his heavy cruiser Merlon. But here it had been the Alliance fleet’s warships that had arrived in a Syndic star system without warning, proclaiming their peaceful intent, the opposite of what had happened at Grendel. And this time the odds versus the Syndics overwhelmingly favored the Alliance forces; the Alliance actually had been invited here and actually did intend no threat to the owners of this star system. Like Grendel, but very different from Grendel.

  The people of today fervently believed that he had won at Grendel even though Merlon had been destroyed. He wondered what people a century hence would believe of the coming confrontation, and what price might have to be paid.

  Eventually, Geary found himself back on Dauntless’s bridge, staring at a display in which nothing important had changed even though the alien deadline had expired hours ago. Desjani, still in her own seat on the bridge, didn’t seem to have moved, sitting as intent as a great cat waiting to pounce when her prey appeared. The watch-standers on the bridge reflected the same vigilant tension, their confidence in their commanders and their abilities warring with worries about the unknown. Behind Geary, Senator Costa grudgingly gave up her place in the observer’s seat to Rione, who settled silently, apparently unconcerned.

  Another hour went by, Geary’s thoughts dwelling on the battles he had commanded, on the men and women and ships who had survived and on those who hadn’t. His decisions, his responsibility. He remembered the Marine officer Carabali’s words. I’m tired of deciding who lives and who dies.

  Suddenly, they were there, shocking Geary out of his memories. Space that had been empty a moment before was abruptly filled with ships.

  Lots and lots of ships.

  Geary could feel the tension level on the bridge shoot upward and tried to maintain his own external calm. “Looks like they outnumber us.”

  “By about two to one,” Desjani agreed with an equally composed voice. He wondered if she was feigning her own calm as he was his. Desjani had always seemed to grow more tranquil as the chances for combat grew higher.

  “They’re about two and a half light-hours distant from us, and what looks like an unusual distance from the jump point. Lieutenant Commander Kosti, what do the ship’s systems say?”

  Kosti, seemingly glad for a chance to focus on something other than the numbers of the alien ships, studied his own displays. “They came in at a much greater distance from the jump point than our ships would. The systems can’t tell whether that’s because the aliens are using a totally different kind of drive exploiting the jump phenomenon, or if the aliens are using the same sort of drive but getting different results out of it.”

  Desjani nodded. “Thank you. That means they could have longer jump ranges, too.”

  “Yes, Captain. Maybe a lot longer. We can’t tell, though.”

  Geary focused back on the aliens, whose armada was arranged in six subformations, each shaped like a disc. The six subformations were combined into two v-groupings, with one subformation slightly ahead of the other two. The two v-groupings were stacked one atop the other, the higher one slightly forward of the lower one. “I can’t figure out how they’d fight in that configuration. Is that the best resolution we can get on individual alien ships?” The sensors displayed nothing but vague blobs.

  “Yes, Admiral,” Lieutenant Commander Kosti replied. “That’s all we can see. We can tell a ship is there, but not anything else, not even its size, let alone any details about it. I have no idea how the aliens are managing to conceal something the size of ships that well.”

  “Get a link to Boyens activated. I want him seeing this but not able to hear us unless we address him directly.”

  “I told you they have awesome stealth capability,” CEO Boyens announced after his virtual presence appeared and took in the information on the displays. He wouldn’t actually be allowed on the bridge, not when the prospect of combat loomed. “That’s the best picture we’ve ever gotten of the aliens. Sometimes they’re completely invisible until they reveal themselves.”

  “Have you ever seen this many ships before?” Geary asked him.

  “No. Nothing close to this.” The Syndic CEO’s face scrunched up in puzzlement. “Why so many? They couldn’t have expected us, the Syndicate Worlds that is, to have very much available to oppose them.”

  “Do they usually appear to want an overwhelming advantage when dealing with humans?” Rione asked.

  “It’s really hard to say. There hasn’t been that much contact for the last few decades, and no fighting with them that I know of for at least that long.”

  “We’ll see what happens this time,” Geary said. Despite the presence of the Alliance politicians aboard Dauntless, he felt that he should be the one speaking to the aliens. This looked far more like a military confrontation than it did a diplomatic matter. “This is Admiral Geary, commanding officer of the Alliance fleet, speaking to the unknown spacecraft that have arrived in Midway Star System. You are to identify yourselves and refrain from heading deeper into this star system. We do not desire hostilities, but the Alliance fleet will take whatever action is necessary to repel any attack on this star system.”

  Rione’s face was bleak as she stared at her own display. “So it will be a fight, another war.”

  “Maybe. I’ll try to avoid that.”

  “I know you will, but they saw us here as soon as they arrived, yet they’re still coming in toward the star. I had hoped we could talk to them, but if they outnumber us so much, they may not feel any need for that.” On the displays, the alien ships were coming around and heading inward, closing on the Alliance fleet.

  “They won’t receive my message for another two and a half hours. We’ll see how they respond then.”

  “But they already know we’re here, and they’ve chosen to keep coming.”

  “Yeah.” There wasn’t much more he could say about that.

  Rione came close to him, almost whispering. “Can you defeat so large an alien armada, Admiral Geary?”

  “I don’t know. There’s too much we don’t know about them.”

  Desjani spoke up, her voice louder than Rione’s. “If anyone can beat them, it’s Admiral Geary.”

  Rione kept her eyes on Geary. “I’m in agreement with her again. Sorry.”

  “Just try not to make a habit of it. It’s a little unsettling.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Rione responded dryly, and Desjani, her own gaze still fixed on her display, nodded.

  The alien reply showed up in a little over five hours, re
vealing that they had taken some time to come up with their response. All three senators were present, hoping to be on the bridge when the historic communication arrived, but since they were behaving themselves, Geary didn’t ask any of them to leave.

  The alien transmission showed a bridge like that of a Syndic warship, with what seemed to be humans on it wearing totally nondescript outfits. Boyens pointed. “See? It’s all fake. Our first transmissions to the enigma race were full video, of course, but they only responded at first in audio, and then only a word or two. Then we started getting images like this from them. We ran some analysis of the bridges we were seeing and were able to identify them as composites of bridges from Syndic ships that had communicated with the aliens. Same thing for the ‘humans’ we’re seeing. They’re just digital composites of Syndicate Worlds’ personnel.”

  Geary, studying the depiction of a Syndic bridge, nodded. “It’s all old, isn’t it? I recognize some of the features of that fake bridge from Syndic warships a century ago. The aliens never updated their images.”

  “You’re right,” Boyens agreed. “We’ve debated whether the fact they didn’t change the depiction meant they didn’t care whether it gave away their game, or if they somehow didn’t realize the old, unchanging bridge image was a giveaway.”

  The “man” seated in the command chair on the bridge of the alien ship smiled in a perfect re-creation of a Syndic CEO’s insincerity. “I wonder if they realize that’s an obviously fake smile?” Rione asked in a quiet voice.

  “Damned if I know,” Boyens replied. “They seem to be better at mimicking false human emotions than they are at mimicking real ones.”