Dreadnaught

He sat in his stateroom after the fleet had entered jump space again, feeling moody at how poorly things had gone. Despite everything that had happened with the aliens, despite everything the aliens had done, Geary realized he had still had a hope that the enigmas would come around and be willing to at least coexist with humans even if they couldn’t bring themselves to be friendly.

His hatch alert chimed, then Desjani entered. “How do you feel, Admiral?”

“Lousy. How do you feel, Captain Desjani?”

“Mad.” She sat down, looking at him. “Not depressed. Just mad. Unlike some others, I never expected the aliens to be reasonable. Maybe that’s because of my experience with humans. What are you going to name the star?”

The sudden question threw him off. “What?”

“The star we’re heading for needs a name. We can’t just use its astronomical designation. Normally, there’s probably a whole bureaucracy that decides the name of a star, but if you name one out here, that name will probably stick. So what are you going to name it?”

Geary shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“You could name it after someone.”

“Tanya.”

“What?”

“I can name it Tanya.”

“No,” she said, “you can’t. I don’t want everyone looking at a star named Tanya and saying ‘Oh, isn’t it sweet how much he loves her.’ Gag. Name it after someone who deserves to be memorialized that way.”

“All right,” Geary said. “I’ll name it Cresida.”

“A star system controlled by aliens who are hostile to humanity? You want to name that after Jaylen?”

“Fine. I’ll call it Falco.”

“That man does not deserve to have a star named after him!”

“Tanya,” Geary said, “why don’t you pick a name?”

“Because you have the right to choose the name you want,” she replied.

“So, what name is it that I want?”

“Something appropriate! Maybe not a person. Something unknown and dangerous.” Desjani snapped her fingers. “Limbo. Call it Limbo.”

“There’s no star already named Limbo?” Geary asked.

“Let me make sure.” Desjani’s hand flew over her data unit. “No. There have been some planets, but those were all fictional, in old books. Really old books. Did you know people were writing about interstellar travel long before there was any?”

“It must have seemed like a pretty amazing thing to look forward to. All right. I think I’ll call the star Limbo.”

“I think that’s a good choice,” Desjani said. “Why are you smiling if you feel lousy?”

“Something struck me as funny.” He leaned his head slightly to one side to look at her. “What would become of me without you?”

“You’d get by.” Desjani stood up. “Four days in jump space before we reach Limbo. If we’re meant to succeed in this, we will. You know that.”

“Thanks, Tanya.”

THIS time, when Dauntless dropped out of jump, no weapons fired. Geary’s head cleared enough for him to assure himself that no enemies were nearby, then his eyes went to the display showing the entire star system, where fleet sensors were rapidly evaluating and adding data.

“Jackpot,” Desjani breathed.

Limbo held two planets with substantial alien populations, based on the number of towns and cities visible beneath the blurring effects. Many installations orbited those worlds, and scores of freighters crossed between planets. Only a dozen enigma warships orbited the star. If this were a human-occupied star system, they would evaluate it as well-populated and fairly wealthy.

And there was no hypernet gate.

Geary kept staring at his display, wondering why that felt so wrong. There were plenty of human star systems without hypernet gates.

Captain Duellos called in, his expression bemused. “This doesn’t make any sense, Admiral. It’s a good thing, from our perspective, but why would the aliens have hypernet gates in such marginal star systems as Hina and Alihi, but not have one here?”

“That’s a very good question,” Desjani agreed. “Does it mean there’s another sort of trap lurking somewhere in this star system?”

Geary braked the fleet’s velocity, holding it near the jump exit, while the fleet’s sensors scoured the star system repeatedly, fixing the locations of other jump points and trying to spot anything that could pose a potential danger. “Nothing, Lieutenant Iger?”

“No, sir. Just those warships that we can see. If there had been a gate here, and it had collapsed, we should be able to detect the remnants of the tethers. It doesn’t look like there has ever been a gate here.”

He called his senior fleet officers, asking them for opinions on what the lack of a gate here meant. None of them had good explanations.

Rione and Charban had no idea, either.

Admiral Lagemann and his fellow former prisoners couldn’t offer any good suggestions except for reiterating that the aliens liked to spring traps, which did nothing for Geary’s peace of mind.

Finally, in desperation, he called the civilian experts.

“Maybe the answer eludes us,” Dr. Shwartz suggested, “because we’re looking at the situation from a human perspective.”

“What do you mean?” Geary asked.