The Lost Fleet - Courageous Part 22

He started to leave, but a young lieutenant spoke desperately. "What'll we do, sir? At Ixion?"

d.a.m.ned if he knew. "I'll consider my options." He forced a look of rea.s.surance. "We're not beaten." Technically, at least, that was correct.

They nodded and looked comforted as Geary left the bridge, Rione going along silently beside him.

THE grayness of jump s.p.a.ce seemed to have invaded his soul. Geary sat in his stateroom, slumped in a seat, his mind running in endless circles while s.h.i.+ps died over and over again in his memory.

"It's been a full day," Rione said in a hard voice. She was sitting nearby, her face looking like she'd aged a decade or maybe two in that day. "Get over it. We have to prepare for Ixion."

"Ixion?" Geary didn't bother laughing scornfully. "Just what am I supposed to do at Ixion?"

"I don't know. I'm not the commander of this fleet. And if you don't do something, you won't be the commander much longer either."

"If that's an oblique reference to the fact that this fleet's destruction at Ixion seems inevitable-"

"No!" Rione made a choking motion with her hands. "It's not. That's a major problem and one I can't help you with, because I don't know how to command a fleet. But it's not just the Syndics you have worry about," Rione stated. "Your fate, your standing, is bound up in the fate and condition of this fleet. Right now this fleet is wounded, and that means you are, too. What happens to a wounded stag, John Geary?"

The vision that brought up wasn't comfortable, but he recognized the truth of her words. "It becomes an attractive target for wolves, who gather, attack, and pull it down."

"You know some of the wolves in this fleet but not all of them. They've been testing you since you took command, looking for weaknesses, trying to trip you up. But you kept winning, kept guessing right, so they couldn't attract enough support. Now there's blood in the water, and at the next opportunity, they'll go after you."

"You're mixing your prey and predator metaphors," Geary noted sourly.

"The results are the same for the prey regardless of the nature of the predator. The first opportunity your opponents in this fleet get after we arrive in Ixion, they will move against you, and because of what happened at Lakota, you will get little support from the disillusioned and the frightened."

Geary managed to work up enough feelings to glare at her. "If this little speech of yours is supposed to be inspiring me to get going again, I have to let you know that your motivational skills could use some work."

She glared back. "Do you think you'll be the only target then? I'm known as your ally and your lover. At least some of your opponents in this fleet have learned that my husband was still alive when captured. Yes, I'm certain of it. They've been waiting to use that information for when it will do the most damage. They will employ it at Ixion, where your lover will be exposed as an opportunistic wh.o.r.e lacking in honor and you will either share that stain by defending me or look weak by letting me be shunned and isolated. Not every weapon aimed at you will strike you directly."

There wasn't anything he could think to say except the weakest possible thing. "I'm sorry."

"Should I be grateful for that?" Rione shot at him, then stood up, turned, and paced angrily. "I don't need you to defend me. I chose to come to you. Any shame is mine."

"I'll defend you."

"Spare me the chivalry!" She thrust an angry forefinger at him. "Defend this fleet! It needs you! I can't save it. I can tell the men and women of this fleet how much I admire and respect them, I can tell them how the Alliance honors their service and sacrifice, but I cannot command them! I don't know how. Nor can any of your allies in this fleet. I know you expect Captain Duellos to a.s.sume command, but he will be in a far weaker position than you and likely fail."

Now he was getting angry, too. "I'm indispensable? Is that what you're saying? I'm the only one who can command this fleet? Ever since we first exchanged words, you've been telling me that I don't dare ever actually believe that! That if I do, I'll be dooming this fleet and myself and the Alliance. And believe it or not, Victoria Rione, I do listen to what you say and consider it very carefully. I'm not Black Jack."

"Yes, you are." Rione came close, held his head in both hands so she could gaze straight into his eyes. "You're Black Jack. You really are. Not a myth, but the only person who can save this fleet and the Alliance. I didn't believe that for a long time. I didn't believe the myth. Maybe you're not that myth, but the legend gives you the ability to inspire and lead. You haven't misused that. Just as important, you brought knowledge with you of how to fight, which has saved this fleet several times already and hurt the Syndics badly. And you can do it again, because so many believe you are Black Jack and because you've done the sorts of things only Black Jack was supposed to be capable of."

"I can't-"

"You must!" She stepped back again. "I'm not saying the right things. We've shared a bed and known each other's bodies, but our souls remain hidden from each other. You need someone whose words you'll believe, someone who can speak to you in the terms you know as a fleet officer."

The anger was gone, replaced by weariness again.

"Words aren't going to make a difference, no matter who speaks them." Words could not change the state of this fleet, change the losses and damage suffered at Lakota, change the size of the Syndic force coming after this fleet.

"We'll see." Rione left, only the automatic closing mechanism on the hatch keeping it from slamming behind her.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, his hatch alert chimed, which at least meant it wasn't Rione back to give him another pep talk since she could have walked in on her own. "Come in."

"Captain Geary, sir?" Captain Desjani stood in the entry, betraying uncertainty.

Geary struggled into a more upright sitting position and straightened his uniform a bit. "Sorry, Captain Desjani." He ought to say something else. "What brings you down here?"

"Iamay I sit down, sir?"

She never asked that. This wasn't routine business. Well, he should have known that. "Certainly. Relax." Ask about her s.h.i.+p, you idiot. "How is Dauntless?"

Desjani sat but of course didn't relax. "We've got all of our h.e.l.l lances back online. Only a single partial volley of grapeshot left in our ammo lockers, and no specters. Hull damage won't be totally repaired by the time we reach Ixion, but we'll patch things up well enough to fight." She paused. "We lost seventeen personnel and had another twenty-six wounded badly enough to be out of service for a while."

Seventeen dead. He wondered how many of those seventeen he would have recognized. Probably most. "I'll be at their services. Tell me when." The funerals couldn't be until they reached Ixion. No one's remains were ever consigned to jump s.p.a.ce.

"Of course, sir." Desjani looked away from Geary for a moment, then spoke quickly. "Sir, Co-President Rione asked me to speak with you. She said you'd taken our losses at Lakota very hard and that I might be able to discuss that with you."

Great. As if he wanted Desjani to see him depressed. Why couldn't Rione let sleeping dogs lie? Or in this case let a depressed dog stay depressed? "Thank you, but I don't think that's necessary."

Desjani's eyes came back to Geary, flicking over his face and uniform, then lowered. "Sir, with all due respect, it doesn't look that way."

He could get mad at Desjani, but that would be unfair and probably too much work. "Point taken. Okay."

She paused again as if waiting to be sure he'd agreed, then spoke with sudden intensity. "I knew you'd feel the losses, sir. That's who you are. It's one of the things that makes you such a great commander. But you're also someone who understands the need to keep fighting. I've seen that so many times. You don't really need my words or anyone else's. You'll come around, and you'll figure out what to do, and then we'll beat the Syndics again."

He had to say it. "We didn't beat them this time."

Desjani frowned and shook her head. "That's not true, sir. They wanted us trapped and destroyed. They didn't achieve that. We wanted to get out of Lakota. We did."

That made Geary frown, too, because Desjani was right. Seen that way, the Syndics had lost, and the Alliance fleet, by surviving and escaping, had won. Stilla"Thank you. ButaTanya, we lost a lot of s.h.i.+ps. A battle cruiser. Four battles.h.i.+ps-"

"I know, sir," Desjani interrupted. "I wish this victory had been like your others, with our losses negligible. But every battle can't be like that, especially when we're facing those kinds of odds."

He shouldn't need her to tell him that. Geary let his real feelings show for a moment, his sorrow and anguish, and saw Desjani react. "They trusted me to get them home. Now they won't get home."

"Sir." Desjani leaned forward, her face lit with the intensity of her feelings. "Not everyone returns from battle.

We all learn that early on, and we've all lost many friends and comrades in action, as did our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers before them. But you were sent to save us. I know that. So do most of the officers and almost every sailor in this fleet. You are on a mission from the living stars to get this fleet home and save the Alliance, and that means you cannot fail. We all know that. Soon you'll remember that, and you'll figure out what to do next."

Her belief was almost terrifying to him, because he knew how fallible he really was and couldn't really believe that someone like him could be on a mission for any greater power. "I'm as human as you are, Tanya."

"Of course you are! The living stars and our ancestors work through the living! Everyone knows that!"

"This fleet doesn't need me. The Alliance doesn't need me. I'm not-"

"Sir, yes we do!" Desjani almost pleaded this time. "I don't know what I-what this fleet would do if you weren't here, what would happen to the Alliance without you. You came to us when you did for a reason. Because if you hadn't been there with us in the Syndic home system, then this fleet would have been wiped out and the Alliance lost. We followed you because we trusted you, and you have shown us again and again by your deeds and your words that you deserve that trust."

Geary opened his mouth to protest again, then understood as if one of his ancestors had whispered it into his ear. He had let down the crews of the s.h.i.+ps lost at Lakota. That was an awful thing. But it would be far more awful to let down the crews of all the surviving s.h.i.+ps still in the fleet, to break faith with their belief in him when that faith was what was keeping them going. They were counting on him, and he knew it, just as the crews of Audacious, Defiant, and Indefatigable had known the rest of the fleet was counting on them. He had to come through, and Desjani and Rione were both right that it had to be him.

Because that faith others had in him meant only he had a halfway decent chance of keeping this fleet together, though keeping it from being destroyed would be just as hard a task. But he had to do it. And that meant he had to figure out what to do next.

So he sat a bit straighter, nodded, and spoke in a firmer voice. "I do have a responsibility." Like it or not, and I don't like it one bit. "Thank you for helping me remember that."

She sat back, smiling with relief. "You didn't need me."

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do." He started to force a smile, then felt it become real. "Thank you. I'm very glad I'm on your s.h.i.+p."

Desjani smiled at him again, then swallowed and looked uncertain before standing abruptly. "Thank you, sir. I should get back to the bridge."

"Sure. If you see Co-President Rione, tell her I'm okay."

"I will, sir." Desjani saluted quickly and then hastened out the hatch.

Geary sat for a while, thinking, then reached slowly for the controls of the display. The image of Ixion Star System appeared, the Alliance fleet on it in the tangled disposition it had been in when it entered jump at Lakota, and in which it would be when it arrived at Ixion. I have to think of something. But what?

TWELVE.

"SIR, this is Lieutenant Iger in intelligence. We have something important that we need to brief to you."

Geary, feeling depression creeping up again as good options in Ixion eluded him, took a moment to consider whether he should answer, but duty sat on his chest and glared at him until he reached out to acknowledge the message. "What does important mean?" he asked.

"Iait's hard to judge, sir. It's something very unexpected, and we really don't know what it means, but it could be critically important."

Intelligence loved modifiers like "could be," but it was unusual to have them frankly admit to not knowing what something meant.

"We have everything ready to show you down here, or I can come up there and brief you, sir," Iger continued, "whenever it's convenient."

Geary looked around. Facing the crew of Dauntless again after the desperate retreat out of Lakota still felt, well, daunting. But he'd increasingly felt as if this stateroom were a prison, one that he had locked himself inside.

It was long past time he got out there and tried to be a fleet commander again. "I'll come down there. Is right now okay?"

"Yes, sir. I'll be waiting, sir."

Standing up, Geary checked his appearance, grimaced, then took a while to clean up and put on a fresh uniform. No matter what had happened at Lakota, he couldn't look defeated.

The members of Dauntless's crew who he encountered wore expressions of worry, which lit with hope when they saw him. Geary tried to project confidence despite the gloom filling him and apparently fooled most or all of them. He'd learned as a junior officer dealing with superior officers that if you acted like you knew what you doing, everyone else a.s.sumed you really did know it.

"What will we do at Ixion?" an anxious sailor blurted at Geary. "Sir?"

"I'm still considering options," Geary replied, as if there were a lot to choose from and any of them were good. But the sailor smiled, rea.s.sured, and saluted briskly.

As he reached the intelligence section, sealed behind multiple high-security hatches, Geary pondered the fact that an intelligence officer had been able to motivate him out of his stateroom, something that neither combat officer Desjani nor politician Rione had succeeded in doing. That had to rank high on the irony scale.

Lieutenant Iger awaited Geary, looking nervous as Geary took a seat and waited. "Sir, we've been a.n.a.lyzing the messages pa.s.sed among the s.h.i.+ps of the Syndic flotilla that arrived via the hypernet gate while we were in the Lakota Star System."

"How much of that can you intercept and break?" Geary asked.

"Not a lot, but some stray signals always leak, and if we remain in the star system long enough for them to reach us, we can record them and then try to break the encryption," Iger explained. "It's not even remotely a source of real-time intelligence, though if we ever broke an enemy message in time to influence an ongoing engagement, we'd certainly bring it to your attention."

"I a.s.sume you'd let me decide if the message could influence the engagement?" Geary asked, knowing that the intelligence types were probably making such calls themselves.

"Uh, yes, sir," Lieutenant Iger a.s.sured him, doubtless already planning to make sure that was done in the future.

"I take it there was something important about the signals you picked up at Lakota?"

"Yes, sir," Iger repeated. "Unusual. Very unusual." He paused, licked his lips, then spoke quickly. "Sir, it's our a.s.sessment that the Syndics were as surprised by their arrival in Lakota as we were."

Geary wondered if he had heard right. "You mean the Syndics already in the star system were surprised by the arrival of reinforcements?" Why would that conclusion bother the intelligence officer?

"No, sir. The only interpretation that matches the messages we've been able to break is that the Syndic s.h.i.+ps that arrived via the hypernet gate were totally surprised to be at Lakota. They thought they'd be arriving in Andvari Star System."

It took a moment for Geary to realize he was staring at the lieutenant. "How often does that sort of thing happen with hypernet travel?" No one had ever mentioned to him s.h.i.+ps getting lost in the hypernet.

"It doesn't, sir," Lieutenant Iger insisted. "The use of a key is exceedingly simple. On the control panel you choose the actual name of the star system you're going to. Once you're on your way between gates, the key still displays the destination star. It would take multiple acts of extreme stupidity or denial to avoid knowing which star you were going to. As far as our files go, and they're very detailed, no s.h.i.+p using the hypernet has ever gone to any star system except the one it intended going to. The process is too simple for even an idiot to mess up."

"Don't underestimate idiots, Lieutenant. Could something have been wrong with their hypernet key?"

Iger made a frustrated gesture. "Again, sir, as far as we know, any problem with the key serious enough to cause that kind of error should have led to it not operating at all."

Geary sat back, thinking, while Lieutenant Iger waited, looking unhappy. He probably expects me to start tearing him and his a.n.a.lysis apart. So why would he brief it to me unless he believes it must be true? "a.s.sume your a.n.a.lysis is correct," Geary began, drawing a clear look of relief from Iger. "How could the destination of those s.h.i.+ps have been different from what they keyed in?"

Iger shook his head. "According to our experts, there isn't any way."

"Did you talk to Captain Cresida?"

This time Iger looked surprised that Geary knew Cresida was one of the fleet's experts on the hypernet system. "No, sir, we couldn't get that long and complex a message to her s.h.i.+p while the fleet was in jump s.p.a.ce. But we did call up a learning simulation based on the teachings of several of the Alliance's leading experts on hypernet, presented it as a theoretical situation, and asked if it were possible. The avatars of the experts in the simulation were all positive that it couldn't happen."

"There's no way to change a destination in midjourney on the hypernet? None at all?"

"No, sir," Iger stated firmly. "But there's only one alternative to that having happened. That's if the Syndics were trying to deceive us and deliberately broadcast a lot of misleading messages knowing we'd pick up some of them and eventually break some of those we intercepted."

"Why don't you think they did that?"

Iger grimaced this time. "Occam's razor mostly, sir. A deliberate deception in this case would be a very complex and uncertain operation. The simplest explanation, that the messages are real, is the best. And the messages feel real, sir. Nothing about them seems deceptive. Everything about them matches our experience with valid Syndic communications. And we can't think of any explanation why the Syndics would try to fool us that way."

"To keep us from using their own hypernet? Sow doubt that it was reliable?"

"But they couldn't know we would pick those signals, sir. Some of them were flying as soon as the Syndics arrived at Lakota, before they even could have absorbed the news that our fleet was there as well."

Geary nodded. "How confident are you of your a.s.sessment that the Syndic fleet that came out of the hypernet gate at Lakota didn't intend going to Lakota?"