Incansable (48 page)

So obsolete, in fact, that nickel corvettes had been operating a hundred years ago, back when they’d been given that nickname by the Alliance because they were seen as cheap and easily expended in battle. Back when the war began. Images from his flashback returned, of nickel corvettes making firing runs on
Merlon
.

“Sir?” Desjani asked.

Geary shook his head, startled to realize he’d let his mind drift like that. “Sorry.”

Only Geary might have been able to see the concern in the look Desjani gave him, but she went on speaking as if everything was routine. “The first nickel corvette may jump back for Cavalos in a little while to let them know we’re still here.” Her expression shifted, now professionally unrevealing. “Since we are still here.”

“We need everything we can salvage from the materiel the Syndics left behind when they pulled the last people out of this star system decades ago,” Geary replied, trying not to speak angrily in response to Desjani’s prodding.

“We’ve lifted all of the abandoned food already.” Desjani made a face. “If I can use the term ‘food’ loosely. The fleet is still going to have to reduce rations again to stretch out what food we’ve got left.” She shrugged. “That’s one good thing about the slop we’re getting from the cast-off Syndic stockpiles. No one really wants to eat a lot of it, so shortening the rations doesn’t bother the crews as much as it would if the food were edible.”

“I guess there’s a bright side to everything.” Geary smiled briefly as he rechecked the information on the raw minerals being loaded into the bunkers on the fleet’s auxiliaries, then realized that Desjani had first made her point about the need for the fleet to move and then deliberately changed the subject to defuse his resentment.

I shouldn’t be angry. It’s a legitimate concern for every commanding officer in this fleet. When are we leaving Dilawa, and where are we going? We’ve been here for almost a day and a half, and that’s probably at least one day too long.

There weren’t any good reasons for staying at Dilawa. A star without any habitable worlds orbiting it, Dilawa had once boasted only a small human presence, perhaps several thousand judging from the facilities the Syndics had left behind. Those humans had been here because the old faster-than-light system jump drives could only take ships from star to nearby star, requiring ships to pass through every star system on the way to their objectives. The hypernet had changed that, allowing ships to go from any gate in the net directly to any other gate, leaving the human presence in many unexceptional star systems to dwindle gradually as the interstellar traffic bypassed them.

But those old jump drives were getting his fleet home, one star system at a time, and the hypernet had proved to be a threat to the very existence of humanity.
Dauntless
was also carrying a Syndic hypernet key, which could provide a decisive advantage to the Alliance if it could be safely delivered into Alliance space. If he didn’t get the fleet home, that key and the knowledge of the threat posed by the hypernet would be lost along with the warships and their crews. The costs of failure seemed higher every time he thought about them. “Let me know if anything changes,” he asked Desjani.

“Yes, sir.” Desjani’s image disappeared, but not before her expression and her tone somehow conveyed the message that something needed to be changing and wasn’t.

He sat there, the star display centered on Dilawa once again floating above the table before him. No matter how long he stared at it, though, the display refused to perform like a crystal ball and offer answers from its depths to the questions he had to resolve.

Primarily, where to go from Dilawa.

Just make up your mind,
Geary told himself. He’d done it many times already during the fleet’s long retreat through enemy space. It shouldn’t have been that hard a decision. There weren’t that many jumps left before the fleet reached a Syndicate Worlds’ border star system from which it could jump back to Alliance space. It should be easy, with safety so close. Instead it felt harder every time he approached the decision. He kept hesitating, each possible choice running hard into visions of what had gone wrong at Lakota and the losses suffered at Cavalos. And now memories from the destruction of
Merlon
were adding to the mix.

He’d considered asking Victoria Rione, Co-President of the Callas Republic and a member of the Alliance Senate, for her opinion. But the Alliance politician had refused to offer advice of that nature for some time. Outwardly, Rione claimed it was because she’d been wrong so many times in what she wanted the fleet to do. If there was another agenda driving Rione in the matter, he wasn’t sure what it was. Though for a while they’d been off-and-on lovers in the physical sense, Rione had kept much of herself hidden from him even during that phase of their relationship, before they both ended it.

In any event, he’d seen little of her in the last couple of days. “I need to concentrate on employing my informants throughout this fleet,” she’d told him. “We need to find which Alliance officers have escalated their opposition to your command of the fleet to the point of employing malicious worms in the fleet’s operating systems.” Since those worms had once nearly caused the destruction of some of the fleet’s ships, Geary couldn’t argue with her priorities.

There were others he could ask. Intelligent, reliable, and thoughtful officers like Captain Duellos of the
Courageous
, Captain Tulev of the
Leviathan
, and Captain Cresida of the
Furious
.

But Geary sat alone and eyed his star display, feeling a strange reluctance to seek advice, despite knowing that further delay could be fatal.

His hatch alert chimed, identifying the person seeking entry as Captain Desjani. He authorized entry, wondering what could have brought her here. Given the widespread rumors about his being involved with Desjani, she didn’t come to his stateroom very often.

The truth was that they were involved, though neither would, in any way, speak of or act on the feelings they hadn’t sought. Not while he was fleet commander and she was in his chain of command.

“Has something happened?” he asked.

Desjani nodded toward the star display. “I wanted to talk with you privately about your future operational plans, sir.”

That should have been welcome, because he knew how well Desjani could handle a tactical situation, but this was an operational decision. Or so Geary told himself, wondering why he was reluctant to hear what she had to say. But how could he put her off? Admitting uncertainty would only justify Desjani’s request to discuss the matter. “All right.”

She walked in, seeming unusually distant, then stood before the star display, not directly facing Geary. “You seemed a little off earlier, sir.”

“Bad dream.” Desjani looked his way with a wordless question, and Geary shrugged. “About my old ship, and waking up and everything.”

“Oh.” Desjani’s eyes went back to the star display. “We were so caught up in finding you that we didn’t realize how badly shaken you were. I’ve often wished we’d handled it differently, telling you how long it had been, the fate of your crew. I must have sounded very callous.”

“I don’t think there was any good way to tell me all of that, and no, you didn’t strike me as callous. It was obvious you knew I had to be told, and no one else was going to do it.”

“Certainly not Admiral Bloch,” Desjani agreed. “I’ve often wondered what your first impressions of me were.”

He grimaced, trying to remember. “I wasn’t thinking clearly at all. There was so much. I remember wondering how you could possibly have accumulated so many battle ribbons. And the Fleet Cross. How did you earn that, anyway?”

Desjani sighed. “At Fingal. I was just a lieutenant on the old
Buckler
. We’d fought until the ship was a wreck, and the Syndics boarded.”

“What did you do?”

“I helped fight them off.” Her gaze lifted, focused somewhere else.

“Any actions worthy of the Fleet Cross must have been a great deal more than ‘helped fight them off,’ ” Geary commented.

“I did my duty.” She fell silent for a moment.

Geary respected Desjani’s right to tell that story where and when she wanted. There might be a lot of trauma behind the events that had led to the medal. He watched her, surprised by the topics she’d brought up. “Did you come down here just to talk about those things?”

“Not just that.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’m aware that you don’t usually discuss your plans in advance,” Desjani began in much more formal tones.

“Sometimes I do,” Geary admitted.

She waited, but when he didn’t say anything else, didn’t offer his thoughts on what he intended, Desjani’s brow lowered slightly. Her voice still didn’t betray any emotion, however. “I’ve been reviewing the information we have on Syndic star systems we can reach from Dilawa. I assume you intend going to Heradao Star System, but you haven’t yet communicated that intention even though the fleet needs to leave this star system.”

If he’d heard right, that was one of the closest things to a rebuke that he’d ever gotten from Desjani. Geary frowned a bit. “I haven’t decided on our next destination.” There. He’d said it.

Desjani waited again for him to elaborate, then spoke firmly. “The other star systems accessible from here are back to Cavalos, which wouldn’t accomplish anything but getting us farther from home, Topira, which leads down and back into Syndic space, Jundeen, which is isolated and would offer no destinations within jump range except back here, and Kalixa, which has a Syndic hypernet gate. Heradao is the only reasonable objective given the threat posed by that hypernet gate at Kalixa and the lack of advantages in going to Cavalos, Topira, or Jundeen.”

“I’m already aware of the situations in all of the star systems we can reach from here,” Geary replied. “Is there anything else?”

She gave him a hard look, apparently ignoring his implied dismissal. “Some of the Syndic records we captured at Sancere indicate there are Alliance prisoners of war in a labor camp at Heradao.”

“I’m aware of that as well.”

“Captain Geary,” Desjani said in a low voice, “I am a fleet officer and the commanding officer of your flagship, and both of those positions require that I communicate my opinions and advice when I deem it necessary.”

Geary nodded. “I don’t deny that. You’ve given me your opinion. Thank you. There are a lot of other factors for me to consider.”

“Such as?”

He stared at her, startled by the abrupt question. “I’m still . . . formulating them in my own mind.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

A wall of resistance rose in Geary, though he didn’t understand why. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not ready to discuss options yet. There are advantages and disadvantages to all possible star systems we can reach from here.”

“Captain Geary, it’s not like you to avoid making a decision.”

His frown returned, deeper this time. “I’m not avoiding making a decision, and this conversation isn’t helping things. Is there anything else?” he repeated.

“What about the Alliance prisoners of war at Heradao?” Desjani asked, her tone getting more clipped.

“For one thing,” Geary replied, getting aggravated himself, “we don’t know that they’re still at Heradao. The Syndic records we’ve acquired are all old. That POW camp might have been relocated a long time ago. For another thing, the Syndics will know that the presence of Alliance POWs in the system will increase the chance that this fleet will go there, and that means they could be laying a trap in Heradao right now.”

Desjani stood silently, her breathing unusually controlled, then finally spoke. “How would the Syndics know that we knew a POW camp was at Heradao? They don’t know what Syndic records we’ve picked up.”

That was a legitimate question, but for some reason it made Geary even more irritated. “You know full well that I’m willing to take reasonable risks to rescue Alliance POWs.”

“Yes, sir.”

No matter the literal meaning of the words, Geary had learned that a simple
yes, sir
from Desjani meant that she was unhappy, that she was disagreeing with something. “I’m not at all certain that the advantages of going to Heradao outweigh the risks,” Geary added, growing aggravation giving extra warmth to his words.

“Sir, I must
respectfully
point out that there are risks no matter where we go, and the longer we linger here, the worse those risks will become.”

Geary heard her tone and felt his jaw tighten. “And I must
respectfully
point out that I, not you, have responsibility for the survival of this fleet.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind, sir,” Desjani stated crisply.

Geary glowered at her. “You know, that sort of attitude and this conversation aren’t exactly making my life easier.”

She turned slightly to face Geary and glowered right back. “Not to be too blunt about it, but at the moment the question of how easy your life happens to be is rather far down the list of priorities. That’s true of a ship’s commanding officer, and it’s even more true of the fleet commander. I repeat that I have a duty to give the best advice I can to the commander of this fleet, and I will damned well do so even if he chooses to disregard it.”

“Fine.” Geary made a sharp wave at the star display. “What’s your advice?”

“I told you. Go to Heradao.”

“And I told you that I’ve already considered that.”

She waited for him to continue, then shook her head. “You’re afraid. I’ve seen it growing since Lakota and Cavalos.”

Geary stared at Desjani, shocked to hear those words from her. “Is that advice supposed to be helping me? Why are you talking like Numos or Faresa?”

Desjani’s face reddened alarmingly. “Don’t you dare compare me to those individuals!
Sir.
”

Geary tamped down his own temper and swallowed a biting response. She had a right to be upset. He never should have even implied Desjani was like those two officers. She wasn’t political, she’d never questioned his status as commander of the fleet, and she was a fine commanding officer of her ship. All of which made her totally different from under-arrest Captain Numos and now-dead Captain Faresa. “My apologies,” Geary said in a stiffly proper voice. “Why did you accuse me of being afraid?”