Valiant tlf-4

by Jack Campbell

  “Maybe they’ll meet me,” Geary agreed. “But the Syndicate Worlds haven’t had a lot of luck with stopping this fleet so far. Besides, you know as well as I do that I don’t need to get the entire fleet home to tip the balance in this war. I only need to get one ship back to Alliance space. The ship carrying the key to the Syndicate Worlds’ hypernet.” CEO Cafiro couldn’t stop a flinch. “You don’t know which ship that is. How are the Syndicate Worlds going to stop that one ship from jumping for Alliance space? And once that one ship gets home,” Geary emphasized, leaning a bit closer, “the Alliance will be able to duplicate that key, and the Syndicate Worlds will have to destroy their gates one by one to keep the Alliance from using them. It grants the Alliance a huge advantage, and you know what can happen when a hypernet gate is destroyed, don’t you?”

  It had been a shot in the dark, but Cafiro looked away, visibly upset. “I thought Effroen should have been told.”

  “Effroen?”

  “The CEO directing the forces left to defend Lakota. She had orders to keep you from using the hypernet gate at all costs, but even though those of us with some inside knowledge of what had happened at Sancere were worried about what would happen if Lakota’s hypernet gate was destroyed, we were overruled.”

  He seems to be sincere, Iger advised Geary. There’s some anger spikes as memory areas light up, consistent with recalling events that upset him.

  Geary nodded at the Syndic. “Your superiors seem to be willing to run a lot of risks. Very big risks, like the one that got this fleet trapped deep in Syndic territory.”

  “It … it wasn’t my plan.”

  “The ambush in the Syndicate Worlds’ home system? The double traitor who offered the Alliance fleet that hypernet key so it would rush into the ambush?”

  “Yes! I never would have taken such a risk.”

  Geary shook his head. “It looked like a sure thing. You’d have taken it. But it backfired.”

  “Because of you!” Cafiro yelled, suddenly red-faced and openly furious. “If you hadn’t shown up—” He stopped speaking, his flush fading rapidly as his face paled with fear.

  “Yeah,” Geary agreed. “I showed up.” The Syndic CEO swallowed and stared at him. “Let’s think about it. Someone, if that’s the right word for members of an intelligent nonhuman species, tricked the Syndicate Worlds into starting this war. Your Executive Council screwed up royally and has refused to admit it. Now, the Alliance will soon have the means to nullify the Syndicate Worlds’ hypernet system because your Executive Council screwed up royally again. They started the war, and now they’re about to lose it. And you’re remaining loyal to them when you could be talking about ways to minimize the damage.”

  Cafiro plainly did think about it, his eyes shifting before he finally spoke. “Are you … negotiating?”

  “I’m just asking you to consider alternatives.”

  “For the good of the Syndicate Worlds.”

  “Right.” Geary nodded, keeping his face calm.

  “You want the war to end?” Cafiro challenged.

  “You and I both know that humanity faces another enemy. Maybe it’s about time we stopped killing each other the way that enemy has tricked us into doing.”

  More thinking, Cafiro avoiding Geary’s eyes again for several seconds. “How can we know you’ll keep your word?”

  “There’s proof of that in every star system this fleet has traversed since we left the Syndic home system. Don’t try to pretend you haven’t heard.”

  CEO Cafiro pushed his palms tightly together, pressing the tips of his fingers to his mouth as he thought again. “It’s not enough. Not now. I tell you honestly, as long as there’s any chance that you can be stopped, no one will move against the current membership of the Executive Council.”

  He’s telling the truth, Lieutenant Iger reported in an astonished voice.

  “And when this fleet does make it home?”

  The Syndic CEO eyed Geary. “Then the failure will be huge, the costs incalculable, the consequences too serious to contemplate. Even then, the current membership of the Executive Council won’t negotiate. They can’t afford to because that would assign the failure to them.”

  Geary nodded, remembering how Rione had stated the same thing.

  “But,” Cafiro added, his face hard, “after something like that, the rest of the Syndicate Worlds would not be willing to sacrifice themselves to protect the Executive Council from its failures.”

  Ask him if that means revolt, or new members of the Council, Rione urged.

  Geary nodded as if to Cafiro, but also to Rione’s words. “Are you saying there’d be a revolt, or that we’d be dealing with new members of the Council?”

  Cafiro’s eyes shifted. “I don’t know.”

  Lie, Iger advised.

  “Let’s say it’s new members,” Geary pressed. “Will they be willing to negotiate an end to this war?”

  “Under those conditions? I think so. Depending on the terms.”

  Truth, Iger stated.

  “Would they work with us to deal with the aliens and stop pretending they don’t exist?”

  “Yes, I—” Cafiro flushed red again, this time with apparent self-anger at having finally blurted out an admission that he knew of the aliens.

  “We both already knew the truth,” Geary said. “We want the same thing. An end to a senseless war and a united front against something that threatens humanity. That should be grounds for working together.”

  The CEO nodded once.

  Appeal to his self-interest! Rione demanded. Not the best interests of humanity or the Syndicate Worlds! His self-interest! He didn’t become a Syndic CEO by being self-sacrificing!

  She had a point. Geary forced a small smile. “Of course, when I speak of working together, I’m talking about with someone we know. Someone who understands the issues.”

  His brain’s reward centers are lighting up, Iger observed.

  Cafiro nodded again, this time much more firmly. “As you say, we need to think in terms of mutual benefit.”

  “Naturally,” Geary replied in an even voice, though he wanted to spit. Why couldn’t Rione have done this directly? But she would have been tarred like any other current Alliance leader with all the hatred and distrust engendered by decade after decade of war. He, the outsider even now, had a different status. But he didn’t know the right words, and Rione wasn’t feeding them to him, maybe assuming he’d somehow know them. Maybe he did. Geary dredged up memories of a superior officer he’d suffered under for a few years, a man who had nearly driven him from the fleet with his politicking and attempts to manipulate those around him. He just had to remember the sort of things that he had said. “The Alliance needs the right people to work with,” Geary stated, emphasizing the word “right” just enough.

  Cafiro almost smiled, but his eyes lit with eagerness. “Yes. I know others who could work with me. With us.”

  Cafiro favored Geary with a tense smile. “Of course, there’s not much I can do as a prisoner.”

  “It seems we understand each other.” More than Geary wanted to. But then this particular Syndic CEO had been ambitious and power-driven, or he wouldn’t have been second in command of that flotilla. It followed that he’d react this way when offered the sort of deal Geary had implied. Other Syndic CEOs, perhaps less self-centered and more loyal to things other than their personal bottom line (like the CEO in charge of Cavalos Star System), would be far better leaders to deal with. But Geary had to use the weapons he had available.

  Even very distasteful weapons. Weapons that were negotiating for their own freedom but hadn’t bothered yet to ask about the fates of other Syndic survivors from the flotilla that had been destroyed. Geary tried to keep his face calm even as he sympathized with Desjani’s desire to choke this Syndic CEO until his eyes popped. “I think it will benefit all concerned if you are released.” Before I decide to let Desjani in here so we can strangle you together. He couldn’t resist mentioning the o
ther Syndic survivors in a pointed reminder. “We’ve taken no other prisoners here. Some of the escape pods from destroyed Syndicate Worlds’ warships are damaged but appear able to reach safety.”

  “Ah … of course,” Cafiro agreed after a brief hesitation.

  “The Syndicate Worlds will be hearing from us, CEO Cafiro. After this fleet gets home.” Geary stood up to end the conversation and left the room.

  “He’s nervous,” Lieutenant Iger remarked when Geary rejoined the others. “Doubtless wondering whether he’s really going to be released.”

  “Will he really stir up trouble for the Syndics if we let him go?” Geary asked Iger and Rione. Both of them nodded. “Then get him off this ship, please, Lieutenant Iger.”

  “Yes, sir. He’ll be back in his escape pod and relaunched within half an hour.”

  Geary led Desjani and Rione out of the intelligence spaces. “I think I’d rather deal with the aliens,” he remarked, not sure how much he was joking.

  “You might,” Rione replied with absolute seriousness. “If our speculations are right, these aliens acted against us and the Syndics because of their experiences with the Syndic leadership. They might simply want to be left alone or to feel secure against us. Remove the threat of human aggression, and those aliens would have an immense amount of space available to them on their other borders.”

  Desjani, talking as if speaking to herself, gazed down the passageway. “Unless there’s something else on their other borders.”

  Geary frowned, then felt a sudden pang of worry. “If there’s one nonhuman intelligence out there …”

  “There could be more. Almost certainly are more,” Desjani murmured. She looked at Geary. “We have to understand this enemy, and that’s a very important possibility. They might feel penned between potential foes. They might even be fighting a war or wars unimaginably far away from our own battles with the Syndics. Maybe they need to keep us tied down because of that, because they need to protect their flanks. Maybe that means we’ve got potential allies against these creatures. Or even worse potential enemies.”

  Rione looked like she’d swallowed something unpleasant. “That’s a real possibility. We have no way of knowing if it’s true. There’s too damned much we don’t know.”

  “We’ve learned a lot. We’ll learn more.” He hoped that was true, anyway.

  The expanding balls of debris that had been the wrecks of Opportune, Braveheart, the heavy cruiser Armet, and the light cruiser Cercle were well behind the Alliance fleet now as it proceeded toward the jump point for Anahalt and Dilawa. Geary had kept the fleet’s speed down to point zero four light to make it easier for badly damaged ships like Courageous and Brilliant to keep up, hoping they’d soon get more propulsion units repaired. No more attempts to plant worms in fleet systems had occurred. Geary wondered if that was because those responsible for the earlier attempts were busy dealing with damage to their ships, or were trying to find new ways to plant the worms, or were rethinking that tactic after the previous attempts had backfired by alienating most of the fleet. It seemed very unlikely that they’d given up.

  He still wasn’t certain which star to jump to next. Nor did he feel like thinking of that at the moment. The fleet had lost a lot of personnel as well as several ships in the latest battle. He’d spent a long time in the fleet at peace, a hundred years ago, and fought one hopeless battle before going into survival sleep. Others had fought countless battles during the next century, growing accustomed to losing ships and men and women in large numbers. Geary had kept trying to avoid dealing with that but realized he couldn’t keep it up. He had to accept the cost that even victories required, and he needed to call up the personnel records, which would tell him the private prices the people he knew now had paid before he had known them. He owed that to them.

  Geary called up the personnel files and read through them. Captain Jaylen Cresida. Home world Madira. Her first fleet assignment had been as gunnery officer on the destroyer Shakujo. Married five years ago to another fleet officer. Widowed three years ago when her husband had died aboard the battle cruiser Invincible when the ship was destroyed while defending the Alliance star system of Kana against a Syndic attack. Not the same Invincible that this fleet had lost at Ilion, but the previous ship to bear that same name.

  Cresida had told him that if she died, she had someone waiting for her.

  Geary closed his eyes for a moment, trying to dull the pain inside as he read the dry report. Then he read more, forcing himself to confront the costs of this war that had changed the Alliance he knew and helped forge the personalities of the people around him.

  Cresida’s mother and brother were also casualties of the war, the mother dead when Jaylen had been only twelve. The older brother had died a year before Cresida joined the fleet. Not wanting to tally the losses through the generation before that, Geary stopped looking back through the file.

  Steeling himself, Geary pulled up Captain Duellos’s file. His wife was a research scientist in a star system safely back from the front line, but Duellos’s father and an uncle had died in the war. His oldest daughter would be eligible for call-up by the draft next year.

  Captain Tulev had lost his wife and three children to a Syndic bombardment of their home world.

  And Captain Desjani. She’d told him that her parents were still both alive, and that was so. Desjani did also have the uncle she’d spoken of a few times. But she’d never mentioned the aunt who’d died in ground fighting on a Syndic world. Nor the younger brother dead six years ago in his first combat engagement.

  He remembered the young Syndic boy with whom Desjani had spoken when the refugees from Wendig were brought aboard, the way Desjani had treated the boy and the way she’d looked at him as he moved to defend his family. Had she seen her little brother in that boy?

  Geary spent a long time staring at the display, then punched in the other commands he’d never had the nerve to face. The records of what had happened to his family.

  Gearys popped up. A lot of them. He’d left no wife or children behind, something for which he’d often given thanks. But he’d had a brother and a sister, cousins, an aunt. Most of them had children. Many of those had ended up in the fleet. Geary remembered his grandnephew’s bitter words, that it was expected that Gearys would join the fleet. A lot of them had done that, and a lot had died.

  He was still sitting there, trying to take it in, when his hatch alarm sounded. “Come in.”

  Captain Desjani entered, then halted, watching him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just … reviewing some files.”

  She hesitated for only a moment, then came around behind him to read over his shoulder. Desjani was silent for so long that Geary began wondering what to do, then he heard her speak softly. “Haven’t you seen these before?”

  “No. I didn’t want to.”

  “We’ve all paid a price in this war. Your family has paid more than its share.”

  “Because of me,” Geary ground out. Desjani didn’t answer, apparently unwilling to deny something she had to know was true. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about your brother?”

  She was quiet again for a while. “It’s not something I talk about.”

  “I’m very, very sorry. You know I would’ve listened.”

  The reply took a moment to come. “Yes, and I know you would’ve understood. But I thought you had enough things to worry about. My family’s losses aren’t special.”

  “Yes, they are,” Geary objected. “Every single person is special. A hundred years of this, a century of life after life cut short in a war that’s gone nowhere. What a damned waste.”

  “Yes.” He felt Desjani’s hand rest on his shoulder and squeeze lightly, the gesture of a comrade sharing pain, and maybe something more.

  Geary brought his own hand up to cover hers and grip it. “Thanks.”

  “You need everything we can give you.”

  Suddenly it all felt like too much. His responsibilities, the pai
n the war had brought to so many, the feelings for Desjani that he had to keep as hidden as possible. He had to get Dauntless home, he had to get that Syndic hypernet key back to the Alliance, but he had to do so much more as well. People expected him to do so much more. Geary felt as if he would drown under the pressure, his only lifeline the hand resting on his shoulder. He dropped his grasp and stood up, facing her. “Tanya …”

  “Yes,” she repeated, though he wasn’t sure if she knew what it was he couldn’t say, or if she knew and was trying to deflect it. “It’s so much for one man to carry. You will end it, though,” Desjani stated firmly. “You’ll end this war, you’ll save this fleet and the Alliance.”

  Every word felt like a nail in his coffin. “For the love of my ancestors, please don’t give me that speech!”

  “It’s not a speech,” Desjani insisted.

  “Yes, it is! It’s a fantasy about who I am and what I can do!”

  “No. It’s true. Look what you’ve done already!” Desjani gestured to the display. “You can stop this. I know it must be hard to be chosen by the living stars for such a mission, but you can do it!”

  “You have no idea how it feels to have that kind of demand placed on you!

  “I see the effect it has on you, but I know you can handle it. You wouldn’t have been chosen otherwise.”

  “Maybe somebody made a mistake!” Geary almost yelled. “Maybe I’m not able to save the entire damned universe by myself!”

  “You’re not alone!” Desjani was clearly upset now, her face as she gazed at him twisted with hope, fear, and something deeper, all jumbled together.

  “It sure feels like it!” Geary swung his own angry hand toward the display now behind him. “All of those dead, and people expecting me to end that. How can anyone accomplish that? I can’t do this!” Had he ever actually said those last four words to anyone, or had the thought only echoed inside him since he’d been forced to assume command of this fleet?

  “What else do you need from me?” she asked desperately. “Of course you need help. Tell me, and it’s yours. I’ll do anything.” Desjani looked appalled as the last words slipped out, and she stared at Geary.