Geary nodded, tasting something acidic in his throat. “So they’ll wait a little while to see what we do. That does give us some time.”
“Not too much time, Captain Geary.” Rione gazed at the star display, her expression somber. “I’ve been considering this in light of what we’ve guessed about the start of the war, that the aliens tricked the Syndics into attacking us by pretending to ally with the Syndics. But did the Syndics attack out of greed, or did the aliens tell them things that led the Syndics to believe an attack on the Alliance was a good idea?”
“What could they have told the Syndics?” Desjani demanded.
Rione gave her a look cold enough to liquefy oxygen. “Anything and everything. False intelligence that the Alliance intended to attack the Syndics, for example.”
“We didn’t have the forces in existence to allow that,” Geary objected.
“Not as far as the Syndics knew,” Rione stated sarcastically. “Why shouldn’t the Syndics have been ready to believe that the Alliance was hiding forces? But the specifics don’t matter. Stop focusing on that. They tricked the Syndics into attacking us. They can do that again.”
“Again?” Captain Cresida leaned forward, her eyes intent. “How?”
“If we don’t seem to be acting, the aliens might try to goad us into using the hypernet gates as weapons. There’s a good chance that they know we’re learning things, and they probably don’t want to give us time to apply that knowledge. We’ve speculated that the aliens have a means to cause hypernet gates to collapse. A trigger signal, somehow propagating faster than the speed of light.” She indicated different stars in the display, one by one. “Suppose a few hypernet gates collapse within Alliance space, one by one, destroying the star systems they served? Who would the Alliance blame?”
“Damn.” Geary could hear the others softly cursing as well. “If we don’t start genocidal attacks, the aliens will provoke us or the Syndics into it by making us think the other side is already doing that.”
Rione’s gaze seemed distant, but it was still fixed on one star far off to one side of the display, on the far-distant fringes of Alliance space. “Sol Star System has a hypernet gate,” she added. “Even though it stands apart from the Alliance and remains weak from the ancient wars that raged there, old Earth abides in that star system, along with the first colonies on the other planets of Sol. The homes of our most ancient and revered ancestors, circling the star we view as the foremost symbol of the living stars. It was given a hypernet gate out of respect and to ease pilgrimages there, even though economically Sol system couldn’t justify such an investment.” She looked around at the others. “What if the people of the Alliance believed that the Syndics had destroyed
that
star system?”
Duellos answered, his voice unusually harsh. “Nothing would stop them, no argument would dissuade them. They’d want every Syndic dead by any means possible.”
“Bloody hell.” Geary wondered why most of his contributions to these discussions were curses. “All right. We can guess that we have some brief grace period after getting home in which the aliens will wait to see if humanity takes the poison bait. If we don’t go for it within whatever period of time they think reasonable, the aliens will start trying to trigger what could well be humanity’s last offensive. I wish I knew what they wanted or intended.”
“We have no way of answering that,” Rione said. “We believe we know what they’ve done. They seem very comfortable with placing weapons in our hands and waiting for us to use them on each other. But we don’t know if they’re avoiding direct actions against us as some sort of strategy or if it reflects some moral or religious aspect of their thinking.”
“What could possibly be moral about that?” Cresida wondered.
“From an alien perspective? They could believe that simply providing the tools places no guilt on them as long we’re the ones who pull the triggers. I don’t know that, it’s just a possible explanation.”
“Or,” Tulev stated, “it could be equally possible that it is a totally amoral strategy to ensure humanity is eliminated or contained as a threat or rival in the most efficient manner possible for these aliens. We have no way of knowing, so we must base our assumptions of future actions on what they have done in the past.”
“You’re right. Unfortunately, if our guesses are accurate, what they’ve done in the past has been very bad for us.” Geary turned back to Rione. “Co-President Rione, can you put together a list of the stars with the highest symbolic importance? We’ll have to make sure those star systems get the highest priority on safe-collapse systems for their hypernet gates.”
“Do you think such a thing could be done? Opinions on levels of symbolic importance will vary.” She eyed Geary for a long moment. “If they wish to incite a massive retaliation against the Syndics, the aliens might target the home star system of the fleet commander and legendary hero Black Jack Geary.”
His breath caught, his eyes suddenly seeing not the compartment they were in or the companions with him, but the world where he’d grown up. The world where his parents and other family members were buried. Home, even though it had surely changed a lot in the century he had been in survival sleep. He imagined a shock wave hitting it like the one that had devastated Lakota Star System, instantly turning a pleasant, well-populated world into a corner of hell and a charnel house.
How could he accept a low priority for his home world? Geary’s vision cleared and he looked at those with him. They all had their own home worlds. Which one did he bump down in priority for his home? Geary sighed, shaking his head. “I’m not very good at making the sorts of decisions reserved for the living stars, I’m afraid. Madam Co-President, if you could just make your best appraisal—”
“You think
I’m
qualified to play at being a deity? Or desire to do so?” Rione cut in, her voice clipped with anger.
Tulev spoke into the awkward silence that followed. “I will make the list.” He gazed into the star display, his eyes distant. “I have nothing left to bias me.”
The image of Duellos on one side of Tulev leaned forward, resting a hand on Tulev’s wrist, while from the other side Desjani wordlessly did the same. Cresida, farther away, nodded once to him, her expression conveying understanding. Tulev nodded to each of them, then to Geary. “I’ll do it,” he repeated.
“Thank you, Captain Tulev,” Geary said. “At some point I’m going to have to tell the fleet the aliens exist, but for now I think we should continue pretending that the danger posed by the hypernet gates is simply an unintended technological side effect.”
“That’s all it has to be,” Cresida agreed. “If it’s presented as a possibility of any hypernet gate’s spontaneously collapsing at any time or subject to the Syndics causing a collapse, backed up by images of what happened at Lakota, then people will have all the reasons they need to act.”
“Okay. We’ll talk again before we jump for Varandal. Thank you for coming to this meeting, thank you for your advice, and thank you for your continued discretion on what we think is true about these aliens.”
“If only we knew more,” Cresida commented. “I’m still working on my design for a safe-fail system we can install on hypernet gates as quickly and easily as possible. I think I’ll have it ready by the time we reach Atalia.”
“Let’s hope so.” Duellos sighed. “Since we know so little of what these creatures may do or what they want.”
“Feathers or lead?” Desjani asked, invoking the ancient riddle in which only the demon asking the question knew the right answer and could change it at any time. As Duellos had once pointed out, the aliens, too, were riddles in which both the answers and the questions did not just remain unknown but also reflected thought processes estranged from the humans trying to understand their purposes and meaning.
“That’s my question, Captain Desjani. I’ll thank you not to play demon with my riddle. Just out of curiosity, though, what was the right answer this time?”
She smiled unpleasantly. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Women can be just as enigmatic as demons.”
“You don’t honestly think I’m going to touch that line, do you?”
As the images of Tulev, Cresida, and Duellos disappeared, Desjani frowned down at her personal data unit. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m needed in engineering.” She hastened out, leaving Geary and Rione alone.
Rione, seeming uncharacteristically subdued, turned to go as well, but stopped before leaving. Standing near the hatch and still facing it, she spoke to Geary. “What happened to Captain Tulev? He said he had nothing left.”
Geary nodded, recalling the personnel files he had read. “His family, wife, and children died in a Syndic bombardment of their home world.”
“Oh, damn.” Rione shook her head. “That’s horrible, but it should’ve left something. Some other relatives. What world was it?”
He tried to remember. There were so many worlds. “Elys . . . Elysa?”
“Elyzia?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Geary stared at her, bothered that the name had come so readily to her. “What happened to it?”
“Syndic bombardment,” Rione murmured so low he almost didn’t hear. “But prolonged, part of a very large strike at the Alliance. Most of the world’s surface was devastated, the great majority of the population killed. After the Syndics were repelled, the world was written off, the survivors evacuated except for a few who insisted on staying to occupy rebuilt defensive installations, in case the Syndics ever came back. Captain Tulev spoke the literal truth. He has nothing left.” She looked directly at him. “Except the fleet. Did you realize that you and he share that?”
“No.” Geary searched for other words and couldn’t find any.
“We retaliated at Yunren,” Rione continued, as if speaking to herself. “A Syndic border star system. There’s nothing left of Yunren, either, except a few defenses occupied by diehards who continue to live only for the chance to kill some of those who wiped out their world. Both sides have avoided repeating that since then, though I don’t know if that’s because it takes so much work to devastate an entire world or because everyone was horrified at how low we had sunk.”
Geary shook his head, feeling sick inside. “How could anyone give such orders?”
“Oh, it’s easy enough, Captain Geary. You just have to form your plans somewhere far from the enemy while looking at a large star display with lots of little planets on it. Just dots with strange names. Targets. Not the homes of people like you, but targets that must be wiped out in the name of protecting people like you. It’s very easy,” she repeated, “to rationalize the murder of millions or billions.”
“That’s strange,” Geary commented. “I’ve talked to Marines. They say they have to dehumanize the individuals they kill in order to be able to fight, and they have to worry that the process will go too far and they’ll kill individuals who aren’t really a threat. But on the other end of the scale, the highest-ranking individuals, who’ll never confront an individual enemy, have to dehumanize them by the hundreds, thousands, or millions.”
She turned to look at him. “I sometimes wonder if the aliens are right, and that humanity can be counted upon to wipe itself out someday.”
“I hope not. Personally viewing the events at Lakota seems to have impressed a lot of people in this fleet. There’s no way to distance yourself from events when you watch a habitable planet be devastated that way by a single blow.”
“It does appear to have had a strong impact. What about Captain Cresida? The way she looked at Tulev as if they shared something. Was her family from Elyzia as well?”
“No,” Geary replied. “Her husband was a fleet officer. They were married about a year before he died in battle.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Two years.”
Rione nodded. “After ten years I still expect to see my husband sometimes. Would Captain Cresida accept condolences from me?”
“I think so. She’s never spoken of it to me, but you do share that kind of loss.”
Her sigh came out slow and long, like the last breath of a dying runner. “I don’t know if the living stars truly arranged for you to be here now, John Geary, but there are times when I think about this war and pray desperately that they did, and that you can bring an end to this.”
She left then, leaving Geary looking at the closed hatch.
HERADAO. As the ships of the Alliance fleet flashed into existence at the jump exit from Dilawa, Geary’s first thought was that only three more jumps would bring the fleet home.
His second thought was to wonder how hard it would be to get through Heradao Star System, but he’d have the answer to that soon enough. The fleet’s sensors, sensitive enough to spot small objects across light-hours of distance, scanned their surroundings and rapidly updated the display before Geary.
“They’re here,” Desjani noted calmly, even though her eyes were lighting with enthusiasm at the prospect of combat. “But nowhere close by.”
Geary kept his breathing slow and calm as enemy warships multiplied on his display in a flurry of updates. The main Syndic flotilla, arrayed in their customary box formation, was almost four light-hours away, loitering in an orbit around Heradao’s star. A second and much smaller flotilla orbited a bit farther off, about five light-hours from the Alliance ships. As Desjani said, that wasn’t close. Even if the main Syndic flotilla turned directly toward the Alliance fleet for an intercept, it would still be more than a day before the opposing forces got close enough to fight. “I thought we’d see more in the way of system defenses since we’re getting closer to the border.”
Desjani made a noncommittal gesture. “Yes and no. The warships assigned to defend this star system would have been substantially more in quality and quantity than we’ve been encountering deeper in Syndic space. The smaller flotilla we’re seeing may be made up of those system-defense forces. But I’m not surprised to see nothing significant in the way of new fixed defenses. We’re still two jumps from a Syndic star system right on the border. The border star systems get priority on defenses. I’m sure the Syndics would like to be able to place more defenses in star systems farther from the border, but they face the same constraints on resources and funds that we do.” She popped up a display spanning a huge region of space, centered on the border. “That’s especially true because as you get one jump in from the border, you greatly expand the number of star systems that need to be defended. Go two jumps from the border, and the number of star systems in the zone increases exponentially. It’s simply too huge an area with too many star systems to disperse strong defenses across evenly.”