Relentless (19 page)

Kai Fensin closed his eyes briefly. “I was on the same ship with Vic’s husband,” he explained to Geary. “Excuse me, I mean, Co-President Rione’s—”

“I’m still Vic to you, Kai. Do you know anything?”

“We were separated soon after being captured,” Fensin stated miserably. “Paol was severely injured. Somebody had told me he’d died on the ship, so I was surprised to see that he was still hanging on. Then the Syndics took the badly wounded away, supposedly for treatment, but . . .” He grimaced. “You know what happens to prisoners sometimes.”

“They killed him?” Rione asked in a thin voice.

“I don’t know. As my ancestors are my witness, Vic, I don’t know. I’ve never heard anything else about him or the others taken with him.” Fensin shrugged, his expression twisted with regret. “There were some others at the camp from our ship. I don’t think any of them came to
Dauntless
, but we’ve talked a lot. There’s not all that much to do but talk in the camps when the Syndics aren’t making you dig ditches and break rocks. None of the others could say what had happened to Paol, either. I wish I could give you some last memory, some parting words, but everything was chaos and the Syndics were pulling us apart and he was barely conscious.”

Rione managed a smile. “I know what his words would have been.”

Fensin hesitated, his eyes going from Rione to Geary. “There was a lot of gossip on the shuttle, people trying to catch up. Somebody said something about a politician and the fleet commander.”

“Captain Geary and I had a brief relationship,” Rione said in a steady voice.

“It ended when she learned her husband might still be alive,” Geary added. That wasn’t strictly true, but close enough so that he felt justified in saying it.

Commander Fensin nodded, looking haggard now. “I wouldn’t have blamed Vic, sir. Maybe before I went into that labor camp, back when I thought honor had a few simple rules to it. Now I know what it’s like, thinking you’ll never see someone again because the war has been going on forever and you can see the people dying in the labor camp who’ve been there almost all their lives and figure that will be you someday. There’s a lot of people who were in that camp who found new partners, figuring they’d never again see their old ones. Married people who started caring for someone else, or who looked for someone else to care about them. There’s going to be a lot of pain when they come home, I guess, one way or the other.” He gazed at Rione. “I did it, too.”

Rione gazed back, looking kinder than Geary had thought possible, as if meeting this man from her past had brought her back to a better time for her. “Did she come to this ship with you?”

“She’s dead. Three months ago. The radiation on that world causes problems sometimes, and the Syndics don’t waste money on expensive treatments for prisoners.” Fensin’s eyes appeared haunted now. “May the living stars forgive me, but I can’t stop realizing how much simpler that made things. I don’t know how my wife is now, whether she even knew I was alive, but now I don’t face a choice. I haven’t become a monster, Vic. But I can’t stop that thought from coming.”

“I understand,” Rione replied, reaching for Commander Fensin’s arm. “Let me help you to sick bay for your checkup with the others.” She and Fensin moved off while Geary watched them go.

Desjani cleared her throat softly. “There but for the grace of our ancestors,” she murmured.

“Yeah. It’s a hell of a thing.”

“It’s nice to see that she can be human,” Desjani added. “Vic, I mean.”

He turned a slight frown on Desjani. “You know how she’ll react if
you
call her that.”

“I certainly do,” Desjani replied. “But don’t worry, sir. I’ll save it for the right moment.”

Geary took a few moments of his own to pray that he wouldn’t be too close when that happened. “How many of these liberated prisoners will be able to augment your crew?”

“I don’t know yet, sir. It’s like after we pulled the others off Sutrah. They’ll have to be interviewed and evaluated to see what skills they’ve got and how rusty they are. Then the personnel-management system will help the ships sort out who should go where.”

“Can you—”

“I’ll keep Commander Fensin aboard
Dauntless
, sir.” Desjani gave him a hard look. “Hopefully that commander will keep the politician occupied and off our backs.”

“You know, you are allowed to do nice things just to be nice even for her.”

“Really?” Desjani, her expression unrevealing, looked toward the liberated prisoners again. “I need to welcome the others to
Dauntless
, sir.”

“Do you mind if I welcome them to the fleet at the same time?”

“Of course not, sir.” She gave him a rueful look. “I know how little you like their reactions to seeing you.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s still my job to greet them.”

It felt odd, moving among the liberated prisoners, some of them elderly after decades in the Syndic labor camp, to know that all of them were born long after him. He’d gotten over that with the crew of
Dauntless
, able to forget that their lives had begun many years after his had supposedly ended. But the prisoners brought it home again, that even the oldest of them had come into a universe in which Black Jack Geary was a figure of legend.

But then an enlisted sailor with plenty of years behind her spoke to him. “I knew someone from off the
Merlon
, sir. When I was just a child.”

Geary felt a curious hollowness inside as he paused to listen. “Off
Merlon
?”

“Yes, sir. Jasmin Holaran. She was, uh . . .”

“Assigned to hell-lance battery one alpha.”

“Yes, sir!” The woman beamed. “She’d retired in my neighborhood. We’d go listen to her tell stories. She always told us you were everything the legends said, sir.”

“Did she?” He could recall Holaran’s face, remember having to discipline the young sailor after a rowdy time on planetary leave, see the promotion ceremony in which she’d advanced in rate, and another moment when he’d praised the hell-lance battery of which Holaran was a part for racking up a great score in fleet readiness testing. She’d been a capable sailor and occasional hell-raiser, no more and no less, the sort of so-called “average” performer who got the job done and kept ships going on a day-to-day basis.

Battery one alpha had been knocked out fairly early in the fight against the Syndics, but Geary hadn’t had a chance during the battle to learn which of that battery’s crew had lived through the loss of their weapons. Holaran had survived, then, and made it off
Merlon
. Served through the subsequent years of war and survived that, too, where so many others hadn’t. Retired back to her home world, to tell stories about him to curious children. And died of old age while he still drifted in survival sleep.

“Sir.” Desjani was standing next to him, her face calm but her eyes worried. “Is everything all right, sir?”

Wondering how long he’d been standing there without speaking, Geary still took another moment to answer as feelings rushed through him. “Yes. Thank you, Captain Desjani.” He focused back on the former prisoner. “And thank you for telling me about Jasmin Holaran. She was a fine sailor.”

“She told us you saved her life, sir. Her and a lot of others,” the older woman added anxiously. “Thank the living stars for Geary, she’d say. If not for his sacrifice, I would have died at Grendel and missed so much. Her husband was dead by then, of course, and her own children in the fleet.”

“Her husband?” He was certain Holaran hadn’t been married while on
Merlon
.

Because of what he’d done, she’d lived, had a long life, a husband, and children.

“Sir?” Desjani again, her voice a little more urgent.

Apparently he’d been standing silently again as he thought about everything. “It’s all right.” He took a deep breath, feeling the lifting of a burden he hadn’t been aware of carrying. “I made a difference,” he murmured too low for anyone but Desjani to hear.

“Of course you did.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Geary assured the former prisoner. “To meet someone who knew one of my old crew.” He meant it, he realized with surprise. A moment he had dreaded had brought him release from some of the pain he carried because of the past he’d lost. “I’ll never forget them, and now you’ve reconnected me to one of them.”

The woman beamed with pleasure. “It’s the least I can do, sir.”

“It’s a very big thing,” he corrected the former prisoner. “To me. My thanks.” Geary nodded to Desjani. “It’s all right,” he repeated to her.

“It is, isn’t it?” Desjani smiled. “Liberating POW camps seems to raise a lot of ghosts, doesn’t it?”

“Raise them and maybe bring us all some peace when we look them in the eye.” With some more words of gratitude to the older woman, he moved on to speak to others, a warmth having replaced the hollowness he’d felt for a moment.

The warmth didn’t last too long. He and Desjani were leaving the shuttle dock when an urgent call came down.

“Captain Geary?” the operations watch called, her image small on his comm pad. “There seems to be some problem with the former prisoners of war.”

So much for moments of relaxation. “What is it?”

“The most senior officers from the camp are demanding to be brought to
Dauntless
and kept in protective custody.” From what he could make out of the lieutenant’s expression, even she didn’t believe what she was saying.

Geary just looked at his comm pad for a moment. “They’re asking me to arrest them?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like to speak to them, sir?”

Not particularly.
But he tapped the nearest large comm panel on the bulkhead and gestured to Desjani. “Listen in on this, please.”

The panel lit up with a much bigger image. He saw two women and a man, one of the women and the man wearing fleet captain insignia on the worn civilian clothing the Syndics had provided and the other woman bearing a Marine colonel’s rank. All three of them looked elderly, leaving Geary wondering how long they’d been prisoners. “I’m Captain Geary. What can I do for you?”

They took a moment to reply, a moment spent staring at him in the way Geary had come to expect but never expected to like. Finally, the female captain spoke. “We request that we be placed in protective custody as soon as possible, Captain Geary.”

“Why? We just liberated you from one prison. Why do you want to go into cells on fleet ships?”

“We have enemies among the former prisoners,” the male captain stated. “We were in charge of the prisoners because of our rank and seniority. Some of the former prisoners disagreed with the decisions we’ve made over the last few decades.”

Geary glanced over at Desjani, who was frowning at the three officers. “I’m Captain Desjani, commanding officer of
Dauntless
. Which decisions generated such problems that you want to be transferred to custody on my ship?”

The prisoners looked at each other before replying, then the female colonel answered. “Command decisions. We were forced to take into account the consequences of every decision and every action by the prisoners.”

Even Geary could tell that they were avoiding giving specifics. Desjani leaned close to him. “Do as they want. Arrest them. We want these three under our control while we find out what’s going on.”

Geary nodded to her, but making the gesture seemed to be aimed at the three former prisoners. “Very well. We need to look into this, but until then I’ll grant your request.” He checked the data next to their images. “All three of you are on
Leviathan
? I’ll order Captain Tulev to confine you to quarters.”

“Sir, we’d be more comfortable under your direct control.”

He let his expression harden. “Captain Tulev is a reliable and trustworthy officer of the fleet. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

The three former prisoners exchanged glances. “We need guards, Captain Geary.”

Stranger and stranger. “Captain Tulev will be told to place Marine guards outside your quarters. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

The female captain hesitated. “We’re preparing a full, official report of our actions.”

“Thank you. I look forward to seeing it. Geary, out.” He broke the connection, then called Tulev. “Captain, there’s something weird going on.”

Tulev listened, his face betraying no emotion. “I will have the sentries placed. Captain Geary, I’ve already been questioned by some of the other liberated prisoners, demanding to know where those three senior officers are located.”

“Demanding?”

“Yes. I’ve already chosen to keep those three isolated while trying to discover the reasons for the hostility I’ve seen toward them.”

Desjani broke in again. “Have any of those demanding to know where the senior former prisoners are located expressed any specific grounds for their questions?”

“No. They’re concealing their motives from me. All of them are officers, though. But I will find out what is behind all of this. Now, if you will excuse me, I must get the Marine guards in place.”

After Tulev had broken his connection, Geary looked toward Desjani. “Any ideas what might be behind this?”

Desjani made a face. “A few. They seem to be afraid for their lives, which implies something far more serious than disagreements over the wisdom of decisions.”

“Then why aren’t the other prisoners telling us what happened instead of hiding their problems with those three? They were all down in that camp together. Why wouldn’t the other prisoners have been able—” Geary stopped and called Colonel Carabali. “Colonel, did you meet the three senior Alliance officers at that POW camp?”

Carabali, who looked drained from the recent action, her battle fatigues streaked with sweat and creased where the battle armor had pressed against them, straightened herself as she answered. “Two captains and a colonel? Yes. They came out to meet us as we landed. I think they evac’d on the first shuttle up. I don’t recall seeing them after that. Some of the other former POWs were looking for them.” Carabali paused. “I did see their quarters. Separate from the rest. It looked like a bunker. A Syndic guard post in front of it, though abandoned when we touched down. Odd. But I really didn’t have the opportunity to deal with those things on the surface, sir.”