The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

by Jack Campbell

  “Emissary Charban,” Geary said, “you’ve proven remarkably good at grasping the way the Dancers think. You figured out why the enigmas fear us so. You explained Kick behavior before any of the rest of us figured it out. You have a talent for this. Of course I am taking you seriously.”

  This time Charban’s smile was genuine. “I thank you again. It has been a humbling and frustrating experience for me since leaving the military, Admiral. Diplomats and politicians know much I do not and yet seem to miss things obvious to me. Our experts in nonhuman intelligent species have a vast formation of advanced degrees following them around, yet often circle around answers instead of seeing them.”

  “Our experts in nonhuman intelligent species,” Geary said dryly, “had never actually known anything about any real nonhuman intelligent species until they joined us on this mission. When it comes to real aliens, you seem to have a feel for the right answers.”

  “Would you recommend me for a position working with such aliens?” Charban asked. “I should tell you that our experts would be very put out by an amateur like me getting such a job over them.”

  “All of our experts?”

  “Not Dr. Shwartz.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Dr. Shwartz seems to be unique among them in recognizing that real-life experience can sometimes be more valuable than academic degrees. But understanding the Dancers is a unique challenge.”

  Charban frowned. “I don’t know why the Dancers would be delaying more open communications with us. I don’t have a sense of ill intent. I don’t have any sense of any reason. What I do have is a feeling that they are choosing to go slow on this.”

  Geary looked toward the star display, thinking. “If they can understand us better than they are letting on . . .”

  “It is my feeling that is the case.”

  “But are keeping their own speech with us at basic levels . . .” Geary shook his head. “That would mean they can understand what we’re saying but would be pretending not to be able to tell us things.”

  “Yes.” Charban nodded toward the star display. “And what would they not want to tell us?”

  The potential answers to that question were almost infinite. Geary shook his head once more. “If they think in patterns, as you and Dr. Shwartz suggested, they might be seeing a pattern they don’t want to tell us about. What kind of questions are they being asked?”

  “All sorts of things. Basic information about themselves, about other alien species, scientific and technical questions, what they know of us, and how long they’ve known of us.” Charban shrugged. “Pick your possible secret.”

  “But the experts disagree with you?”

  “Yes. Except Dr. Shwartz. She listens. I don’t know if she agrees, but she’s reserving judgment.”

  Geary caught Charban’s eyes. “Tell me your gut feeling. When we take the Dancers back with us to Alliance territory, should we regard them as a potential danger?”

  “My gut feeling, Admiral, is that they’ve already been to Alliance space, that they’ve been watching us for a long time. If they meant to harm us, as the enigmas did, I believe they have had opportunity. Instead, I think they have been studying us. They—” Charban broke off speaking, showing dawning realization. “That could be it. If they’ve been watching us, they may have seen a pattern. Something involving us. A pattern or patterns that are still playing out.”

  An odd sense of cold ran down Geary’s back. “Something they see coming. Something they don’t want to tell us.”

  “It could be.” Charban spread his hands. “Telling us might change the pattern. Change what we do and how we do it.”

  Geary leaned forward and adjusted the view of the star field, expanding it to include all of human space. “We know what’s happening to the Syndicate Worlds right now. We know some of the strains the Alliance is under.”

  Charban nodded slowly. “And we know that pattern from human history. Great empires, powerful alliances, grow and flourish, then weaken and fall. And afterwards, cultural and political fragmentation, wars, declines in population, standards of living, scientific progress, and much else.” His smile now seemed wan and tentative. “I would not wish to tell any friend of mine that sort of prophecy for their future.”

  “They don’t know us, General. Not that well,” Geary said, scarcely noting that he had referred to Charban’s old rank rather than his current position as emissary. “Patterns can change. They can be altered.”

  “They can.” Charban laughed. “Is that the Dancers’ secret? They believe they know what we should do, but if they tell us, it will change what we do? Or they do not know what we will do but do not wish to influence our actions? The Observer Effect, applied to relations to alien species.”

  “The Observer Effect?”

  “Sort of an offshoot of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Schrödinger’s cat.”

  “I see,” Geary said in the way that conveyed that he didn’t, in fact, see at all.

  This time Charban smiled. “A dissolute youth spent partly in the realms of physics left me with bits of knowledge. Basically, the Observer Effect says that the act of observing something alters the outcome. It’s been proven in physics. Even with particles like photons. If you’re watching them, they act differently. It’s very strange, but it’s true. Social scientists still debate whether that concept also applies to their work. But if the Dancers believe that what they tell us can change what we do, they might be slow-pedaling communication for just that reason.”

  “That could be.” Geary gave Charban a questioning look. “The Dancers might have been watching us for a long time, watching us fight that war for the last century. But they only intervened very recently, during the battle with the enigmas at Midway Star System.”

  “The difference is that now we know we’re being observed,” Charban said. “However long they have been watching us, we weren’t aware of it before. Once we came to them, arriving in a star system where their ships were, that fundamental fact changed.”

  “That could be it,” Geary agreed. “Or is that too simple an answer? Keep doing your best to find out.”

  “I always do my best, Admiral.”

  As Charban got up and turned to go, Geary stopped him. “Emissary Charban, if you had received secret orders from the government, would you tell me?”

  Charban looked Geary in the eyes and nodded. “I wasn’t sent to do anything to mess you up, Admiral. I think I was sent in the expectation that I would mess things up thanks to my lack of political experience and my disillusionment with the ability of weaponry to resolve issues short of genocide.”

  “If they expected you to just cause trouble for me, you’ve exceeded expectations in the right way as far as I’m concerned.”

  The emissary grinned. “It’s not so hard to do when the bar is set so low.”

  “In this fleet, it’s harder to set the bar lower than politician,” Geary said. “I wish more people would realize how much someone like Victoria Rione has contributed to what we’ve achieved. And how much someone like you has contributed.”

  “Thank you, Admiral.” Charban shook his head. “But I don’t think I’ll ever be a politician. I thought I wanted to do that, but after working with the Dancers, I want to continue doing that a lot more.”

  “I’ll do my best to see that you are allowed to continue doing that. Who would have guessed that a career leading ground forces troops would have suited you so well for dealing with different sorts of minds?”

  Charban, halfway out the hatch, turned and smiled again. “My career involved a lot of interaction with the aerospace forces, and the fleet, and Marines. If you want to talk about different sorts of minds, all of those were good practice for trying to understand alien ways of thinking.”

  The hatch closed behind Charban, and Geary turned back to his work. Results of fleet mess facility cleanliness inspections. Ancestors help me. Even at the best of times, concentrating on that kind of important but tedious matter w
as difficult. Right now . . . “Emissary Rione, are you free to talk?”

  “Your place or mine?” her image asked as it appeared near his desk.

  “This is fine.” For once he didn’t have to be too worried about someone’s intercepting a conversation. “How is Commander Benan?”

  “Sedated.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “And you’re wondering why I’m not in tears of despair because my husband is under sedation?” she asked. “Because being sedated is the best condition he can be in right now. It keeps him out of trouble, and to be honest, which I know is unusual for me, he’s a lot easier to handle that way these days. And we are on our way back, where, one way or another, we will be able to deal with his condition.”

  He regarded Rione’s image, wondering exactly what she meant by “deal with his condition.” To say that she wanted both Benan cured of his mental block and vengeance against whoever had ordered that mental block was to put it mildly. Even after the months he had known her, Geary was still not certain just how far Rione would go to accomplish something she had resolved on. He did know he wouldn’t want to be someone she had resolved to go after. “I promised to get that block lifted, and I will.”

  “You’ll threaten the Alliance grand council if necessary? No, you don’t have to promise to do that. I’ll threaten the grand council, and they’ll know I mean it. Were you just calling to see how I was feeling?”

  “Partly,” he said. “But I wanted your opinion of the leaders of Midway now that we’ve had a week away from them.”

  “You mean Iceni and Drakon, or others as well?” Rione asked.

  “Just those two,” Geary said. “The self-styled president and the newly minted general. I think they’re the only ones in that star system who count.”

  “I strongly suspect you’re wrong about that. There are hidden currents moving in the star system. I could only observe things from afar, but I am certain of it.”

  Geary looked at her dubiously. “Lieutenant Iger’s intelligence team didn’t report anything like that in their analysis of the situation at Midway.”

  Her smile was scornful. “Lieutenant Iger is not bad at all when it comes to collecting intelligence, but political analysis? I think you’d be well advised to listen to someone who knows politics from the inside. I also think you already know that since you asked me for my opinion despite Iger’s report.”

  “Are you saying that there’s some counterrevolution being planned to regain Syndic control of the star system from within? Or a revolution against the revolution of Iceni and Drakon to maintain an independent star system but with different leaders?”

  “I don’t know. There are monsters in the deep, Admiral. Have you ever heard that saying?” Rione leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. “Neither Iceni nor Drakon are fools. But neither are they all-wise and all-seeing.”

  Rione opened her eyes and looked over to one side, her expression darkly thoughtful. “I have the distinct impression that President Iceni is making this up as she goes along. There are strong remnants of the Syndicate CEO attitude in her, leading me to think that Iceni planned on a change in title but not a change in function.”

  “Just what you’d expect from a Syndicate CEO,” Geary said. “She wants to stay an absolute ruler.”

  “Yes, I think she wanted to. But. She’s already permitted things no Syndicate CEO would have allowed. There seem to be real reforms under way. Iceni may be faking it all, but my gut feeling is that she is pursuing some real changes despite whatever her initial plans were.”

  He considered that, measuring it against his own impressions of Iceni. “An interesting assessment. What about General Drakon?”

  “Ah. General Drakon.” Rione smiled with amusement. “No guesses are needed there. He’s military, and that’s all he wants to be. The Syndics made him play the CEO game.”

  “That’s all? He just wants to be a soldier?”

  “Do you find that so hard to understand, Admiral?”

  “Those two aides of his. Morgan and . . . Malin.” Geary spoke slowly, trying to put his impressions into words. “They were . . . not like the sort of aides I would have expected from someone who just wants to be a soldier.”

  Rione smiled thinly this time. “The assassins? The bodyguards? The trusted agents in tasks above and below the board? I am certain they are all of those things. Remember the environment in which Drakon operated. Such assistants may be as much a matter of survival for him as armor is for one of your battleships.”

  She paused, then spoke in more serious tones. “We received a lot of reporting from the planet when the bombardment the enigmas launched was on its way. Free-press reports, but also a lot of chatter in personal conversations that your intelligence people have been busy vacuuming up. I assume you have seen the analysis of all that.”

  “And I assume you have as well.”

  “Of course. The bombardment would have inflicted massive damage on that world if the Dancers hadn’t stopped it, but every report agrees that neither Iceni nor Drakon made any moves to flee the surface. If what we’ve learned about Drakon so far is right, he has demonstrated loyalty to those who work for him before this, so that action would have been consistent with a man who never bought into the CEO-first-last-and-always attitude of the Syndicate Worlds.”

  “That’s how I felt about him from the messages I’ve received from him,” Geary said. “I felt . . . well, I felt like he was somebody not all that different from me.”

  “Be careful who you say that to,” Rione advised dryly. “A former Syndic CEO who is a decent commander and cares about those under him? ‘Heresy’ is too kind a word.”

  Geary shook his head. “The Syndicate Worlds couldn’t have held together as long as it did, couldn’t have sustained the war as long at it did, unless there were some capable people in positions of authority. Some people who could inspire those under them or make the right decisions regardless of what it meant to them personally. Why people like that worked for a system like that I have no idea, but they must have been there.”

  “Maybe you should have asked General Drakon,” Rione said with every appearance of meaning it.

  “Maybe someday I will. But you said Iceni didn’t try to run to safety, either. She didn’t before, the first time we were here, when it looked like the enigmas were certain to take over this star system.”

  “It is a pattern,” Rione agreed. “At the least, it implies a sense of responsibility consistent with her position of authority. I think both of them can be worked with in the long run, Admiral. More than that, I think if they avoid giving in to Syndic ways of doing things, they might be able to build something at Midway that the Alliance would be happy to do business with.”

  “Assuming those monsters in the deep don’t devour them.”

  “Assuming that, yes.” She looked over to the side again, a flicker of concern appearing before she could suppress it, and he realized that Commander Benan must be lying in his bunk over there in her stateroom. “Is that all, Admiral?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Victoria.”

  —

  THE alerts sounding as the fleet exited the hypernet gate at Sobek were cautionary, not full-scale alarms, but Geary still focused as quickly as possible on the objects highlighted on his display. “What are they?”

  “Syndic courier ships,” Lieutenant Yuon replied. “Unarmed.”

  That should have been reassuring information, but not in this case. You might occasionally see a couple of courier ships in a star system, especially if it was an important star system, but never a large group of them. Even stranger, these courier ships were not spread throughout Sobek Star System as if en route various missions, but were clustered together in a narrow swath of space facing the hypernet gate. “Why are there over twenty Syndic courier ships five light-minutes from this gate?”

  “They’re broadcasting merchant identity codes,” Lieutenant Castries reported. “Not Syndic military and government codes. All twen
ty-three courier ships are claiming to be private shipping.”

  “This stinks,” Desjani growled. “We’ve never encountered a Syndic courier model that wasn’t government or military. What are they doing here?”

  Geary already had Lieutenant Iger on the line. “Can you confirm that, Lieutenant? These courier ships should actually be military or otherwise under the control of the Syndic government?”

  “Yes, sir,” Iger replied after a two-second pause that felt far longer. “Proving that might be difficult. Very difficult. But all of our experience is that courier ships have always been reserved by the Syndics for official use only. The fact that these are pretending to be something else is highly suspicious.”

  “What threat can those courier ships pose to us?”

  “I don’t know, Admiral. Fleet sensors aren’t spotting any indications of weapons add-ons.”

  “They’re not here for a party,” Desjani said.

  He stared at his display, feeling the same sense of threat and wrongness that Tanya obviously was. His fleet had automatically slewed about after exiting the gate, carrying out the preplanned maneuver to avoid a possible minefield. But there were no mines, just that very odd grouping of courier ships. “All units in First Fleet, come starboard three zero degrees, up four five degrees at time two four. Maintain all systems at full readiness.”

  The ships of the fleet were coming around to face the courier ships when the supposed merchant craft pivoted and began accelerating to meet the Alliance ships. “They’re approaching at maximum acceleration,” Lieutenant Castries said as alarms pulsed from the fleet’s combat systems. “Projected tracks are for an intercept with the center of our formation.”

  Desjani took in a deep breath, then spoke calmly. “They’re coming straight at us at max acceleration, and they have no weapons.”

  “Reconnaissance?” Geary asked, knowing that wasn’t the real answer.

  “You know better than that. Those things accelerate like bats out of hell. By the time they reach us, they’ll have achieved a closing speed of at least point two light and probably faster. They’d want to be able to see details if they were on a recce mission, and at those kinds of velocities details tend to smear. No. There’s only one possible reason why those ships would be coming directly at us that way.”