Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

by Jack Campbell

  “Yes, it was absolutely the right thing,” Desjani said. “Those kids are sort of the conscience of the Alliance. Too many of us can too easily imagine being in their place, and worried about our own children ending up in one of the academies. You did the right thing, there,” she repeated, then paused, just smiling at him.

  “What?” Geary finally asked.

  “I was watching you say those things, in all those press reports, about how we’d rebuild and make a better future because that was who we are, and I thought, I ought to marry that man because I’ll never find anyone better. And then I remembered that I had.”

  He gave her an astonished look. “We’re on duty.”

  “Well . . . damn. Yes, we are. Even I slip once in a while, Admiral.” She winked at him, then adopted a studiously professional expression. “Have you talked to Captain Jane Geary since you got back, sir?”

  “No. I wanted to talk in person, not over a comm line that would probably have eavesdroppers no matter what kind of encryption we used. It was a relief to see that she and her ships got back intact.”

  “Her mission wasn’t a wild-goose chase, either. It may still have been intended to get her away from Varandal, but it was real enough. She’s standing by to talk to you.” Tanya saw his hesitation and smiled crookedly. “Relax. This is Admiral to Captain, not Great-Uncle to Grand-Niece.”

  Geary snorted. “My grand-niece is biologically older than I am, since she wasn’t frozen for a century like I was.”

  “That’s not what’s bothering you. It still concerns you that she grew up hating the legend of Black Jack that has warped the life of every Geary for the last hundred years. You know she feels a lot differently now, having gotten to know you.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t forget that her brother Michael probably died right after I assumed command. I don’t see any way she can forget.”

  Desjani nodded, sadly. “She knows Michael Geary chose to sacrifice his ship and maybe himself as well. I honestly don’t think she blames you for that. You know that Michael Geary himself didn’t blame you. Stop blaming yourself. We don’t know how many of his crew survived and whether he himself still lives. For now, Captain Geary is waiting to talk to you, Admiral.”

  “Thank you.” He said it in a way that made it clear he was thanking her for a lot more than her last words. Tapping a control, he saw Jane Geary’s image appear almost immediately in response. As usual, he couldn’t help searching for resemblances in her to his long-dead brother, her grandfather. “Welcome back, Admiral,” she said.

  “Welcome back to you as well,” he replied.

  “I can provide a detailed report in person later,” Jane Geary continued, “but to summarize, my ships brought back about ten thousand Alliance prisoners of war, most of them elderly, from the middle period of the war.”

  “You didn’t run into any problems? The Syndics cooperated with the prisoner handover?”

  “Yes, Admiral.” Jane smiled thinly. “It was a matter of profit and loss for them. A few Syndic star system CEOs had gathered the Alliance POWs together to hand them back to us so they could close down the POW camps they controlled and save some money. I got the impression that the central Syndic government is offering many star systems a lot more autonomy because otherwise they might revolt.”

  Tanya nodded again. “In addition to Captain Geary’s experience, Lieutenant Iger received a report, which is in your in-box, saying the Syndic internal security forces are going along because a more-loosely-controlled star system with all of the internal security apparatus intact and ready to mobilize is a lot better for them than a rebellious star system with the internal security forces all massacred by the locals.”

  “If they’re thinking long-term for once,” Geary said to both of them, “that would be a smart policy.”

  “Then let’s hope they don’t stick to it,” Jane Geary said, her voice growing rougher with the old hate fostered by a century of war and reinforced by recent Syndic behavior. She made a face. “Captain Michael Geary wasn’t among the POWs.”

  “I’m sorry.” It was a grossly inadequate thing to say, but the only thing he could say.

  Jane Geary nodded, a shadow of emotion crossing her face. “Judging by the way the Syndics have been messing with us in most matters, despite the peace agreement, if Michael was taken prisoner when Repulse was destroyed, they will be holding him as a hidden card to use against us. Have you . . . heard anything?”

  The way the question was phrased told him that Jane wasn’t asking about official reporting or anything like that. “Our ancestors haven’t spoken to me about that. But I haven’t sensed any message from Michael among them, either.” The meaning of that was ambiguous at best, but messages from the ancestors were usually like that.

  “I haven’t, either.” Jane frowned, realizing that they had veered onto personal topics better discussed in person. “That’s all I have for now, Admiral.”

  “Let’s get together tomorrow,” Geary said. “It’s always good to see you again.”

  As Jane Geary’s image disappeared, Tanya, sensing his distress, abruptly changed the subject. “I hear that Roberto Duellos is going on leave for a while.”

  Geary nodded, feeling relieved to be back on more comfortable ground. “Inspire is going to be in dock to get her main propulsion units and some hull structure damage repaired. He didn’t have any professional excuse to stay here, so I suggested he go home and talk to his wife. I told him they had to make some decisions together, or they’d each be making them alone before long.”

  Desjani regarded him closely. “You’ve been doing some thinking, too, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Tanya, in some ways it was good to be away from you.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, it’s hard to think when you’re there. You’re distracting and you demand my attention and—”

  She had stood straight, her arms coming out of their relaxed crossed stance. “I’m demanding?”

  The temperature in his stateroom seemed to have abruptly dropped by several degrees. “You know what I mean.”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  Geary stood up, making a calming gesture. “Then let me explain. When you’re there, I don’t need to ask myself why I’m here. You provide all of the answers, just by being there. You’re my reasons.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “I’m serious!” He gestured toward the star display with a wide sweep of one arm. “But out there, you weren’t around. I had to think about that. I knew what I could do, but what should I do? I’ve had this growing sense that the answer was coming to me, and when I was in a meeting with the government of Adriana and the other Alliance commanders in that star system, I found the start of an answer. I thought more, and I talked to our ancestors, and I think I get it now.”

  Her hostility had vanished, replaced by curiosity. “And the answer is?”

  Geary sat down, frowning at his hands in his lap as he tried to find the right words. “We think that the Dancers believe the universe is a pattern, that everything is a pattern, and we think they act to make the pattern right and strong. What if there’s some truth to that which we humans can see? What kind of pattern do I want to exist, and how can I add to that pattern and make it stronger? Maybe the pattern of humanity is completely coming apart, shredded by our own actions, including the war, and the covert sabotage by the enigmas. Maybe I can still help fix it. Maybe I was given this ability to influence events so I can help make our pattern strong again.”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “How many times have I told you that exact same thing?”

  “You never said anything to me about my place in a pattern.”

  “All right, maybe I didn’t use the exact same words when telling you the exact same thing, but that doesn’t matter. Maybe being away from me gave you time to finally listen to me instead of being,
um, distracted by me.”

  Geary sighed. “I didn’t mean distracted in a bad way.”

  “You know what, Admiral? I’m going to save you by not pursuing that line of conversation any further.”

  “Thank you.” He moved his hands as if trying to shape something. “That’s what I decided to do at Adriana and Batara, to do what I could to strengthen what I thought would be the best pattern. I got a lot of confidence from that because it finally focused me on something other than the mistakes I might make. I may get raked over the coals for talking to the press so freely and for exceeding the letter of my orders, but they said to deal with the refugee problem, so I did what I thought best to resolve that issue for the long term and to leave Alliance security in that region in much better shape. And I planted some seeds at Adriana and at Batara, while also knocking down the threat of Tiyannak, that might bear some good long-term outcomes for everyone in that part of space.”

  Tanya nodded, still smiling. “And you also blew up a lot of stuff. So I’m good with all that.”

  “Is there anything else I need to know that isn’t in the official status reports and can’t be said over any supposedly secure circuits?”

  “Yes.” Her smile disappeared. “You got a message from that woman. It came in two days ago.”

  Geary frowned at Desjani’s tone, trying to parse the emotions behind it and failing. “I’ll check it—”

  “You don’t have to. It was security-sealed eyes only for you, but it opened for me, too.” Desjani didn’t say what they both knew, that Rione must have set it that way. “The entire message was one word, and that was ‘missing.’”

  “The one word was missing?” Geary asked, confused.

  “No,” Desjani repeated patiently. “The entire message consisted of only one word, and that word said ‘missing.’”

  There was only a single likely meaning for that. “Her husband.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They were supposed to be lifting the mental block on him!” Geary yelled in sudden anger. “They were supposed to be repairing the mental and emotional damage the block caused!”

  “Maybe they are, but wherever they’re doing it, that woman can’t find him.”

  “If Rione can’t find him . . .” Geary muttered.

  “Yeah,” Desjani repeated. “I can’t stand her, but I don’t underestimate her. Her husband must be hidden very, very well.”

  Hidden along with the secrets her husband knew about an Alliance biological warfare program that would at the least embarrass some senior officials and might lead to some being charged with war crimes. “Unity Alternate,” Geary said angrily.

  “Unity Alternate? I can’t remember the last time I heard that joke.” Desjani grimaced. “But if a place like that existed, it would be a good place to hide him. And Admiral Bloch.”

  “Still no word on Bloch?”

  “No. It’s as if he vanished off the space of the galaxy, like someone dumped him out an air lock in jump space.” She looked thoughtful. “I doubt we were lucky enough for that to have happened, though.”

  “I’m not sure I would wish that even on Bloch,” Geary said, trying to suppress a shudder at the idea of body and soul being lost forever in the gray nothingness of jump space.

  “I might,” she replied. “He made a heavy-handed pass at me before that last campaign, you know.”

  “He . . . what?”

  “Yeah. Came aboard, I escorted him to his stateroom, this stateroom, and he went over by the bed, then looked at me and said something like You could make admiral yourself someday if you did the right things for the right people. You could start right now.”

  Geary’s earlier emotions were lost in a surge of red rage. “You were already in his chain of command, you were a captain in the fleet, and he . . .”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “On your own ship!” Geary’s anger was replaced by a rush of puzzlement. “You didn’t kill him?”

  “Killing superior officers is frowned upon in fleet regulations. Didn’t we go over that at some point?”

  “You could have brought charges!”

  She shook her head. “I knew he was wearing the same personal security that the politicians do. Nothing he was saying could be recorded by any of the ship’s systems. It would have been my word against his, fleet commander versus one of his subordinates who already had a reputation for her attitude. I’ve been known to fight hopeless battles, Admiral, but I took a pass on that one.” Her smile held a very sharp edge. “But I also made it clear what would happen if he made another pass like that at me.”

  “If I see him again—”

  “Admiral,” Desjani interrupted. “I dealt with it. If it had gone beyond words, I would have brought charges. And I told him that I’d be keeping an eye on him, so I’d know if he tried anything with any of my crew.”

  Geary shook his head, still enraged. What surprised him was the realization that while he had been appalled by the idea of Bloch or anyone else breaking their oaths to the Alliance and staging a military coup, he was far more disgusted to know that Bloch had broken faith with his responsibilities as a commander, with his responsibilities to his subordinates, and with everyone else serving. I was already determined to stop Bloch if he tried anything. But now, it’s personal.

  • • •

  THE next day, as he was working in his stateroom, still trying to catch up on the status of the First Fleet while fending off requests from the media for more interviews, an urgent call interrupted him. Geary felt a wave of guilty relief at the interruption because plowing through status reports for hundreds of ships and thousands of personnel had never been his idea of a fun time.

  “Diamond is back,” Desjani reported.

  Diamond? It took a moment for him to recall what the special significance of that heavy cruiser was. “Are the Dancers with her?”

  “Not y— Hold on. There they are. All six Dancer ships also arrived. They all came in at a jump point two and a half light-hours from our current orbit.”

  General Charban had called in as soon as Diamond arrived at Varandal, his message arriving right after the light revealing the presence of the ships.

  Charban looked fairly well rested for once, which Geary realized had to be because he had been able to relax in jump space, where communications with the Dancers were impossible. “You’ll be pleased to hear that the Dancers had an understandable reason for going to Durnan Star System, Admiral. They wanted to check on the remains of a Dancer settlement that had once been there. I know what you’re thinking. How did we miss the presence of ruins of a settlement belonging to an alien species on a heavily populated planet in a star system long occupied by humans?

  “According to the local authorities, in the time I had to speak with them, the ancient ruins in question were so odd, so unlike those of any human structures, that they were labeled natural features that just happened to resemble the work of intelligent creatures. Apparently, the concept of alien remains a little unclear among our experts in the field. However, the Dancers also got across to me that their settlement should have been much larger than the small area of ruins that still exist. Somehow, most of the settlement was obliterated so thoroughly that no remains could be detected, nor signs of the destruction.”

  Desjani nodded sharply as she heard that part. “Enigmas. It must have been them. You remember how they wiped out any trace of human presence in places like Hina Star System.”

  “Something must have interrupted the enigmas in their work at Durnan,” Geary speculated. “The arrival of the first human colony ships?”

  “What the hell were Dancers and enigmas doing so deep in what became human space?” Desjani wondered.

  Charban was still speaking. “I could not determine from the Dancers why they had long ago attempted to place a colony at Durnan, which is a very long distance from the re
gion of space they currently occupy. They did not express any desire to reoccupy the star system, they did not claim any ownership, they did not even try to claim the ruins. I got the impression that what mattered to them was that someone still lived in that star system. Someone intelligent, that is. After determining that no records or remains of their own kind were located at or near the ruins, the Dancers headed toward the jump point for Kami.

  “All they did at Kami was transit through the system, heading straight for the jump for Taranis. At Taranis, they spent a long time traveling through the star system, but wouldn’t explain what they were doing or why. Then they jumped for Dogoda.

  “Long story short, we went on a tour of star systems, tending gradually back toward this part of space, until the Dancers finally jumped for Varandal again. Aside from the stop at Durnan, we’re not sure what the purposes of any of the other visits were. Nor am I sure they will remain at Varandal.”

  Charban paused, looking worried. “I do have the distinct impression that the Dancers are agitated about something they refer to as unraveling. But who or what is unraveling, they don’t say. I’ll speak more with you as we get closer to your ship and a real conversation is possible. Charban, out.”

  “Maybe they were looking for signs of survivors from that settlement who might have tried to get back home,” Desjani speculated. “Here’s how their trip looks on a display.”

  The image popped up over the stateroom’s table, a three-dimensional star map with the path of the Dancers through Alliance space marked by glowing lines. “If there’s supposed to be some shape or pattern to that, I can’t see it,” Geary commented.

  “It’s sort of a warped sphere, isn’t it? They came back here by a roundabout route so there would have to be something circular about their path. About that unraveling thing, Admiral. I’ve got a suspicion that the Dancers have some sort of faster-than-light communications capability just like the enigmas do.”

  “That’s possible. We have no idea how long those two species have been in contact. But the enigma system isn’t instantaneous and doesn’t appear to be capable of sending much data or detail.”