“I know. That just means we have to win despite the logistics situation.” As plans went, that was inspiring but totally useless. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, though.
“We’re better than they are,” Desjani interjected calmly. “We can fight smarter and harder.” Officers were perking up around the table at her words. Badaya gave Desjani an approving look that Desjani didn’t seem to notice. Kila gave her an equally scornful look, but Desjani ignored that as well. “We’ll win again, because we also have a combat leader the Syndics cannot match.”
That went over very well. Even Tulev quirked a small smile. “I cannot argue with Captain Desjani on that last. I have full confidence in Captain Geary, based on his record against the enemy.”
“Thank you,” Geary said. “Now, you all know what we’ll face. We’ll deal with this Syndic flotilla just as we have the other enemy flotillas we’ve encountered. I consider the chances of that reserve flotilla being at Padronis to be very small, but we’ll also be ready when we arrive there just in case. I’ll see you all again at Padronis.”
When the virtual presences had all vanished, and Lieutenant Iger had hastened out of the room with ill-concealed relief, Geary turned to Desjani with an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. I know I lost it with Kila.”
“It’s what she wanted,” Desjani pointed out. “She’s an enemy, sir, and you need to follow the same rules with her that you do with the Syndics. Don’t let her lure you into an ambush.”
“Okay. I got it. Next time I start to say something stupid, give me a good swift kick.”
Desjani raised both eyebrows. “That would certainly earn me some interesting glances. Lately, I’m already getting too many of those as it is every time I open my mouth.”
“Uh, yeah. Maybe instead you should just discreetly give me your don’t-go-there look.”
“I have a don’t-go-there look?”
“Hell, yes. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I haven’t any idea.” Desjani headed for the hatch. “Just be careful what you say around Kila. She’s waiting to pounce.”
“One more thing.” Desjani paused, waiting for Geary to continue. “Co-President Rione asked me to thank you for the way you handled Commander Fensin. It did him a lot of good.”
Desjani shrugged. “I did my job, sir. I’m pleased I was able to render assistance to Commander Fensin.”
“Is there any response you want to give Co-President Rione?” Geary pressed, hoping for some thaw between the two women.
“No, sir. I wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to speak with her on my account.”
He watched her go, knowing full well that the bad blood between Desjani and Rione was partly his fault but having no idea how to win that particular engagement.
THERE was one last thing that had to be done before the fleet left Heradao. It had happened in every star system in which the fleet had fought, but that didn’t make the event any easier. Geary had put on a dress uniform and stood stiffly in the shuttle dock before a ceremonial guard of Marines and sailors similarly attired in their most formal uniforms. Black bands with a broad strip of gold trim on either end adorned every left arm.
Geary cleared his throat and tried to speak evenly. “Every victory comes at a price. Many of our comrades have died in this star system, fighting for their homes and families, for what they believed in, for the friends who fought beside them. Now we must bid farewell to the remains of those who fell in honorable battle. May all honor be given to their memories, and may all comfort be given to those they leave behind. Their spirits have already gone to join their ancestors, and now their bodies will be consigned to one of the beacons the living stars have given to us. Our prayers and our thanks go with them.”
Captain Desjani stepped forward, her face stern, and pivoted to face the Marines. “Ready.” The Marines brought their weapons up. “Fire.” The weapons, set to the lowest discharge levels, winked bright lights off the overhead. “Fire.” More lights. “Fire.”
Desjani stepped back.
Geary turned to face her. “Launch the remains of the honored dead on their final journey.”
Desjani saluted, pivoted again to give the order and transmit the same command to every ship in the fleet that had suffered losses.
The Alliance fleet launched its dead, hundreds of capsules holding bodies, a flotilla of the departed aimed for the star Heradao.
Geary heard Desjani praying softly and similar sounds from others around him. He waited a respectful interval, breathing a few words to his own ancestors on behalf of those who were gone, then called out a last command. “Dismissed.”
Marines and sailors marched out slowly, along with most of the others who had been present. Geary stood silently, his eyes on a large display screen showing the multitude of body capsules sailing away from the fleet.
Desjani came to stand beside him. “It’s always the hardest part,” she commented. “Saying good-bye.”
“Yeah. I wish we could have taken them home for burials on their home worlds.”
She shook her head. “It’s not practical. We’d have to wrap garlands of the dead around the outer hulls of our ships. There wouldn’t be anything dignified about that. This way they get the most honorable burial possible, consigned to the embrace of a star.”
“Burials in space were rare in my time,” Geary said. “But then, we didn’t have so many dead to deal with.”
“It’s the best possible resting place,” Desjani insisted. She placed one hand on her heart. “Everything that makes us came from the stars. Now these dead are returning to a star, and someday it will cast the elements within them outward just as stars have done since the beginning, and in time those elements will combine to form new stars, new worlds, new lives. ‘From the stars we came, and to the stars we return,’ ” she quoted. “This is a good fate, the last honor we can render those who died alongside us.”
“You’re right.” Even the most militant agnostic couldn’t argue the literal truth of what Desjani had said, and though Geary found the sheer scale of the time involved to be unnerving, he also felt the comfort of being part of an eternal cycle symbolized by the gold strips on either side of the black mourning band he wore. Light, dark, light. The dark was just an interval.
“And you must never forget,” Desjani added, “that if not for you, every man and woman in this fleet would either already be dead, or would be in a Syndic labor camp with nothing to look forward to for the rest of their lives except their eventual deaths far from all they loved.”
“I didn’t do it alone. It couldn’t have happened without the efforts and courage of every one of those men and women. But thank you. You give me strength when I need it the most.”
“You’re welcome.” Her hand rested very briefly on his arm near the mourning band, then Desjani left without another word.
He stayed there a little longer, watching the capsules recede on their journey to the star.
Several hours later, the Alliance fleet jumped for Padronis, the cities and planets of Heradao still convulsing in civil war in the fleet’s wake.
ANOTHER star system abandoned by humanity, Padronis held nothing the Alliance fleet could use. Geary shook his head as he took in the assessments of the fleet’s sensors on what the Syndics had left behind at one small rescue station when they abandoned this star. There couldn’t be anything there for which it would be worth slowing down any of his ships.
Not that they’d expected anything else. Padronis was a white dwarf star, glittering alone in the emptiness of space, unaccompanied by the array of planets and asteroids that usually orbited stars. Like other white dwarf stars, every once in a while Padronis would accumulate too much helium in its outer shell and go nova, ejecting the outer shell and brightening a great deal for a short time. These occasional novas hadn’t been beneficial for anything once near Padronis. Any worlds or rocks had all been long since smashed and hurled into the darkness between stars, leaving only the relatively recent and now-abandoned Syndic facility orbiting Padronis. Someday, Padronis would go nova again, and that facility would be blown away as well, but the fleet’s sensors had analyzed the star’s outer shell and concluded that the date of that event was still comfortably distant in the future.
“Imagine having to be the crew on that thing,” Geary remarked to Desjani, indicating the abandoned Syndic facility on his display. “They needed an emergency station here when lots of ships had to pass through using jump drives, but those on it must have felt murderously isolated. This is as close to nothing as any star system can be.”
She grimaced and nodded. “The only thing worse would be getting stuck in a black-hole system, though no one but science geeks would be likely to do that. I’ll lay you odds they crewed the station here using criminals. Go to a labor camp for years or go to Padronis. I wonder how many chose the labor camp.”
“I think I would’ve.” Geary was about to add something else when his display flickered, then vanished completely as the lights on
Dauntless
’s bridge dimmed.
“What happened?” Desjani demanded of her bridge crew, punching her own nonresponsive controls to try to get status reports.
“Emergency system shutdown,” a watch-stander reported, his voice startled. “As far as I can tell just about everything on the ship has gone off-line except for the emergency backups.”
“Why?”
“Cause unknown, Captain. I—Wait. Engineering is using the sound-powered comm system to update us. They say the power core did an emergency crash. They’re running evaluations on everything before bringing it back online.”
Desjani clenched her fists. “What could have caused the emergency crash?”
The engineering watch-stander looked pale under the dimmer emergency lighting. “Unknown as yet. Thank the living stars the core managed to shut itself down, Captain. Anything that would trigger an emergency crash would be as serious as it gets.”
Geary spoke into the silence that followed that report. “We just narrowly avoided a power-core failure?”
“Looks like it. A catastrophic power-core failure.” Desjani’s face was grim as she turned to her watch-standers. “I want full status reports from all departments as soon as possible and an estimated time from engineering to restart the core whenever they can provide one.”
“Do we have any communications with the rest of the fleet?” Geary asked.
“Emergency systems are online, sir. Voice only, no data net.”
“Notify the rest of the fleet what happened to us.”
“Yes, sir.” The communications watch paused, then drew in a shocked breath. “Sir, we have a message from
Daring
reporting that
Lorica
suffered a power-core failure at the same time as our system shutdown.
Lorica
was totally destroyed. No signs of survivors.”
One such failure in routine circumstances would be a rare but-not-impossible event. Two at the exact same time could only mean sabotage. Whoever had been planting worms in the fleet’s systems had struck again.
“Bastards,” Desjani breathed, her jaw muscles standing out. Raising her voice, she spoke with what Geary thought was amazing control. “Inform engineering that the likely cause of the emergency crash of the power core was a worm in the operating systems.”
All of the watch-standers stared back at her, their expressions horrified, then the engineering watch hastily nodded. “Yes, Captain.”
“Captain Geary,” the operations watch-stander called. “
Daring
is asking what instructions to relay to the rest of the fleet. Should they maintain station on
Dauntless
even if she drifts off course and speed?”
That had the virtue of being a relatively simple decision. Maneuvering one ship back into position would cost a lot less in fuel than having the entire fleet trying to match anything
Dauntless
did while her own propulsion and maneuvering systems were shut down. “Tell
Daring
to assume role as fleet guide until
Dauntless
gets power back.”
It was less than twenty minutes before
Dauntless
’s systems-security officer called the bridge, but it felt like the longest twenty minutes of Geary’s life. It was easy to overlook how accustomed he was to being able to scan a display and see everything he needed to see, easy until that display was gone and nothing could be seen in front of his fleet command seat but the part of
Dauntless
’s bridge visible from that angle. There weren’t any physical windows, of course, not here deep within
Dauntless
’s hull, and not on the outer hull, either. That arrangement made a great deal of sense in terms of maintaining hull strength and integrity, but at times like this even a single small window would have been a welcome connection to the rest of the fleet.
“We found it, Captain Desjani,” the systems officer reported, his voice sounding oddly distant across the voice-powered emergency circuit. “The worm tried to induce core overload failure, but our safety backups managed to crash the core first.”
“Do you have any idea why
Lorica
’s safety backups didn’t manage to save her?” Desjani asked.
“I can only guess, Captain. Operating systems are hugely complex, so every ship’s operating systems are subtly different even when they’re supposed to be identical.
Lorica
’s safety backups may have been just enough dissimilar to add up to a critical difference. Or maybe the attempted overload instructions came during the right portion of the millisecond when our backups were watching for something like that, but not when
Lorica
’s were. I don’t want to imply carelessness by the dead, but it’s possible that
Lorica
’s systems people hadn’t tweaked their safety backups recently enough. There’s just no telling, and we’ll probably never know since I assume there’s not enough left of
Lorica
to tell us anything.”
Desjani closed her eyes momentarily, her lips moving in a brief prayer. Geary understood how she felt.
Dauntless
’s survival had been a near thing. “Are you certain,” she demanded of her officer, “that there’s nothing else lurking in the systems?”
“We’ve found nothing else, Captain.”