Impávido (58 page)

No reaction. The rebel ships kept going, slicing across the fleet. I can’t convince them. Not now.

They’ve placed their faith in Falco and what they imagine is their own superior moral strength. An appeal to reason won’t work against that. But I need to make sure no one else joins them. What do I say?

“Your duties to the Alliance demand that you remain with this fleet and not abandon your comrades.”

That should sting. As it should, since they were running away from the rest of the fleet. “Return to your positions now for the sake of your ships and your crews, and there will be no disciplinary actions taken.”

There wouldn’t have to be, Geary knew, since an abortive action would convince most of those inclined to follow Falco and Numos that they couldn’t be trusted.

A reply finally came. “This is Captain Falco, commanding those ships willing to uphold the honor and glory of the Alliance fleet. I call upon—” A symbol popped up on Geary’s communications display, and Falco’s voice cut off.

“This is Captain Desjani,” she called down to Geary using the Dauntless’s internal circuits. “I’ve activated the fleet command override. Any signals from other ships on the fleetwide circuits will be blocked. We’ll hear anything sent directly to us.”

“Thanks.” If only he had a fleet full of commanders like Tanya Desjani. Geary himself had realized too late that he couldn’t allow Falco a public forum to broadcast a plea to other ships to desert. He transmitted to the fleet again, keeping his voice firm and calm. “All ships, there is no honor in deserting your comrades, no honor in disobeying lawful orders. We fight for victory, for the safety of our homes, not glory. All units return to your places in the formation. You’ll be needed when we strike the Syndics next.” Maybe that appeal to being in battle would reach some of them.

But the thirty-nine ships making up Falco’s force were rapidly forming their own small formation, heading straight for the other jump point and not far from it now. An irrational urge to open fire on the rebel ships grew out of Geary’s anger at Falco, but he pushed the idea aside almost as soon as it surfaced.

Impossible. I won’t give that order. Even if I did, who’d obey it? That’s what the Syndics would do. But then what can I do? I can’t stop them. They’re only fifteen minutes from that jump point. “All units that have left the formation, reconsider your actions for the sake of the Alliance and the sake of your comrades and the sake of your crews. You will not survive attempting to reach Alliance space along the paths available to you through that jump point.”

The diverging ships were several light-minutes away now. Even allowing for that time delay, it was clear that Geary’s latest appeal had failed. There wasn’t time for another appeal, really, just time for one more short transmission to be received by them before the other ships entered jump space. He took a deep breath, staring at the star display, his mind rapidly running through jump paths connecting the nearest stars. “All units that have left the formation. Ilion. I say again. Ilion.”

Perhaps twelve minutes later, Geary saw the images of the fleeing ships vanish as they jumped out of the system.

He spent a while rearranging his fleet to cover the gaps left by the ships that had fled, then sat silently until they reached the jump point to Cydoni. “All ships, jump now.”

HE had been dreading this sort of thing ever since being thrust into command of the fleet. Dreading a split in the fleet. It seemed obvious to him that dividing their forces while trapped deep inside enemy territory was insane, but it had been obvious from the first that not all of his ship commanders took a rational view of things. Now the precedent had been set. Almost forty ships had headed for an unknown fate under senior commanders whom Geary regarded with misgivings, distrust, and in the case of Numos no small measure of contempt. If only there had been some way for those commanders to meet the fates they deserved without those ships suffering the same fates.

But there is a chance. If they think, if they realize dying gloriously doesn’t do much to protect their home worlds, if they are willing to take advantage of what I taught them while they were with the fleet. If they’re willing to take advantage of what I told them before they left. And if the Syndics don’t hear that information from them and have time to lay an ambush for the rest of us. I wish I knew.

Unable to stand the silence of his stateroom, which seemed to have grown much lonelier since Co-President Rione had ceased dropping by for visits, Geary forced himself to tour the compartments on Dauntless again, showing a confident face to a crew shaken by the departure of many comrades, telling them in a dozen different ways that once the fleet reached Sancere they’d give the Syndics a lesson to remember, trying to focus the crew on the future rather than events in Strabo Star System. He used the minimal communications available in jump space to send a brief variation on that to the rest of the ships in the fleet, hoping to do the same with them.

In the time that was left, Geary threw himself into designing more simulations to run. He kept hoping he could use them to impart some of the fighting skills he remembered from a century ago, skills lost to the fleet in the decades since, as devastating losses in ships and crews wiped out the institutional memory and skills of the smaller professional force Geary had once known. He didn’t know how much longer he might have to try to pass on such lessons.

GEARY strode onto the bridge of the Dauntless as the Alliance fleet prepared to leave jump.

Captain Desjani glanced back at him and nodded in greeting, her concern for him impossible to miss.

Geary nodded heavily back as he sank into his command seat. He hadn’t realized how bad he must look in the aftermath of Falco’s betrayal. Bad enough for Desjani to notice, anyway. Hopefully, the crew hadn’t picked up on it. Or maybe he just looked particularly bad now, after an almost sleepless night wondering what might be in the Cydoni Star System. Wondering if any other ships would bolt the fleet there.

To cover the renewed anxiety he suddenly felt, Geary called up the fleet display and pretended to study it intently. He had been trying to come up with a plan for Sancere, given that he wouldn’t know what was there until they arrived. An idea had occurred to him yesterday, prompted ironically by what had happened in the Strabo Star System, and he spent a few minutes thinking about it, checking on the names and records of some of his ship commanders.

“Preparing to leave jump,” Desjani announced.

Geary hastily brought the system display to life and waited. All it showed now was the historical information the old Syndic Star System guides they had found on Sutrah Five had contained. As soon as the fleet arrived in normal space on the edge of Cydoni System, the sensors on Dauntless and every other ship in the fleet would start updating the display based on what could be seen from their arrival point.

Geary’s insides jerked, and the drab, dull black of jump space was replaced by the glittering, star-filled universe of real space. He waited, watching, as system updates popped onto the display. No ships. No mines detected. Nothing. Captain Desjani was grinning triumphantly.

But Geary still stared at the system display, where the expanding photosphere of Cydoni’s sun had been reaching out for the one habitable world this system had once boasted. The scene held the same sick fascination as a train wreck, though in this case the centuries-long process was playing out far slower than any human vehicle accident, and the wreck was of an entire world.

Most of the atmosphere of the formerly habitable planet had been stripped away by now. Empty ocean basins had long since been drained of their waters, also flung away into space by the bombardment of particles and heat from the swollen sun that had once made life possible on this world. Now that sun was slowly devouring the planet, and no trace of life in any form could be detected anywhere upon it.

“There’s probably some extreme-environment life-forms still existing beneath the crust of the planet,” one of the watch-standers reported. “They’ll hold on a little while longer.”

“How long until the photosphere actually envelops the planet?” Geary asked.

“It’s hard to say, sir. The expansion of a star like this takes place in fits and starts. Probably anywhere from fifty to two hundred years, depending on exactly what happens inside the star.”

“Thanks.” Geary took a look at a magnified image of the planet. Dauntless’s sensors had tagged some areas where ruins still existed, though badly battered and worn by the extreme environmental conditions they’d endured so that they seemed millennia old. One batch of ruins lay next to an empty sea, its partial walls almost submerged in dust dunes blown around before the atmosphere had thinned too much, the land glowing red from the light of the expanding star. Geary wondered what the city or town had looked like when there’d been waters rolling at its feet. The information from the Syndic system guides was at his fingertips, so Geary checked that. Port Junosa. Already completely abandoned before the outdated Syndic documents had been prepared. Lives had been devoted to that city, building it and sustaining it and making it a human community, but all that was left now were the battered ruins, and within another century even those would be annihilated by the expanding star. After seeing desolate places like Strabo and Cydoni, it would be a relief to see a bustling star system like Sancere, even if the robust human presence there was all enemy.

“We’ll have to take a course that will remain well out from that swollen photosphere,” Captain Desjani remarked.

Geary nodded. “Yeah. Do you have problems with the course recommended by the ship’s maneuvering systems? It’ll take us four days to reach the jump point for Sancere, but I don’t see a good alternative.”

“There isn’t one,” Desjani agreed. “This is the best option.”

Four days. Four days for the less reliable among his ship commanders to think about what other ships had done at Strabo. Four days for them to consider heading for another jump exit. I’ll have to keep them busy. Keep them focused on Sancere. Keep them too involved with simulations and maneuvers and plans to give them time to think about anything but Sancere. It’ll drive me to exhaustion, but I don’t see any alternative.

He started setting up a limited fleet conference, involving only the commanders of roughly thirty ships.

Who should lead it? He hadn’t quite decided before, but looking at the list he’d compiled of able commanders, one name stood out. Still, there was one question he hadn’t looked up yet, and the answer didn’t seem readily available within the Dauntless’s databanks. Either that or Geary wasn’t asking the question right, and the artificial minds he was dealing with couldn’t understand him. He’d run into that too many times already. “How long will it take these intelligent agents to understand me?” he openly grumbled.

Desjani directed a glance to one of her watch-standers. That woman cleared her throat before speaking.

“Sir, the intelligent agents have learned a pattern of responses based on the ways of thinking and writing or speaking characteristic of the people they deal with.” She hesitated.

“And I don’t think like them, do I?”

“No, sir. Your unspoken assumptions, patterns of thought, and ways of phrasing aren’t quite the same as…uh…”

“Modern minds?” Geary asked, unable to keep some dry humor out of his voice this time. It made sense, he realized. A century built up a lot of subtle as well as not-so-subtle differences in the way people thought and expressed those thoughts. Either I laugh at this or let it get to me, and I’ve got too many other things trying to get to me.

The watch-stander smiled nervously. “Yes, sir. I’m afraid so, sir. The agents factor in your responses, but the vast majority of people they deal with have, uh, different ways of handling information, which means they aren’t adjusting to you.”

“Why can’t you set up a subroutine for the intelligent agents to use when dealing with Captain Geary?”

Desjani demanded. “Then they could reset to match his patterns of usage while remaining attuned to the rest of the officers and crew.”

“That’s prohibited by fleet regulations on the use of intelligent agents, Captain. Intelligent agents on ship systems are never supposed to become personal agents for any individual. That could create conflicts of interest in the artificial minds.”

Geary shook his head, wondering why even something like this had to be complicated. “Can the fleet commander override that regulation on an emergency basis?”

In response, the watch-stander looked troubled. “Sir, I’d have to look up what constitutes an emergency for official purposes.”

“Lieutenant!” Captain Desjani rapped out. “We’re deep in enemy territory and trying to get home in one piece. That meets my definition of an emergency.”

“Me, too,” Geary agreed. “Make it happen, Lieutenant. It’ll make my life a lot easier.”

The watch-stander smiled with relief on having clear instructions to a way out of the problem. “Yes, sir.

Of course, sir. We’ll get right on it.”

“Thanks.” Geary looked at Desjani. “It’ll help with planning.”

Desjani smiled, as confident in Geary as ever. “You have a plan for Sancere?”

“That’s right. Sancere is unlikely to be lightly defended. I’m assuming we’ll face a strong enough force to be a problem. If I’m wrong, we’ll be able to adjust to less opposition.”

“You’ll strike for the hypernet gate?”

“Yeah.” Geary looked down, frowning. “I’ve been trying to look up something about that. I assume the Syndics might try to destroy the thing. Just how hard is it to destroy a hypernet gate?”

Desjani looked surprised. “I have no idea. It gets talked about sometimes, but no one’s ever actually done it, to my knowledge.”

Geary shrugged. “Hopefully, it won’t be an issue. If we can draw any Syndic defenders out of position and lunge for the hypernet gate, we might be able to keep them from destroying it even if they want to.

After we have that, we can defeat the defenders, loot what supplies we need, and destroy every facility related to the Syndic war effort.”