Dreadnaught

He fell in beside her as they walked, being careful to maintain a distance between them. This was her ship, and the crew would surely note any unprofessional familiarity. “It’s odd. Being back in my stateroom, I started to feel like everything in the previous weeks was some kind of dream.”

She raised one eyebrow at him, then brought up her left hand, holding it straight up with the back facing him so that the new ring on it glinted clearly. “I don’t usually acquire jewelry in my dreams.”

“Me, neither.”

“Something has you on edge. How did your individual meeting go?”

“Well enough, but odd.” He got another questioning look as he described his meeting with Jane Geary. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her. Jane made it clear when I first talked to her that she only joined the fleet because she had to, because she was a Geary. The war’s over now. She’s done her duty, and then some. There’s nothing holding her to the fleet.”

“Something is holding her to the fleet.”

“I told her she was free to leave, to get on with her life.”

Desjani smiled wryly. “Life isn’t usually what we plan. Whatever Jane Geary once thought she’d be, she’s spent her adult life as a fleet officer. Maybe she’s finally realizing that this has become her life. Maybe she no longer knows what else she wants to do. And maybe . . .”

“Maybe what?” Geary asked.

“You’ve told me about your family issues, how they felt about Black Jack.” Desjani bit her lower lip before saying more. “Maybe part of her was not being Black Jack, because she could hate him and think he was nothing actually worth emulating. But now she knows the real Black Jack.”

“Black Jack was never real.”

“Are you always going to be in denial about that? The point is, Jane Geary may be trying to figure who she wants to be now. Not just ‘not Black Jack.’ Something else.”

He grimaced. “That’s what I’m worried about, that she might want to be more like the imaginary Black Jack. Not like the real me. I wish she’d talk to me about it. I’m going to go talk to my ancestors. Maybe they’ll offer some understanding.”

“Have fun and say hi to them for me,” Desjani said. “I need to finish looking over the ship. I’ll go down to the worship spaces after that. To give thanks,” she added with a meaningful look at him, “for all that has gone well and all that could have gone much worse.”

“Message noted, Captain Desjani.” They were together, even if that togetherness would be severely limited, and only a fool wouldn’t give thanks for worst cases that had been averted today.

THE organization message from fleet headquarters had arrived just as Desjani and Duellos had predicted, one week after Geary had assumed command of the fleet and four days after he had organized the fleet himself. He hadn’t been sure how much the other two might have been joking about the nature of headquarters’ micromanagement, but couldn’t resist a grunt of disbelief at the size and detail of the message. Put Inspire and Leviathan in the same battle cruiser division? Why the hell would I do that since it would mean Duellos and Tulev would both be in the same division instead of leading their separate divisions as they’ve done so well? Why scramble the battleship divisions instead of keeping the ships with the comrades they’ve been working with for a while?

No further promotions had been approved. Not the ones Geary had proposed, and none based on length of service or heroic actions or new assignments. With the end of the war and the freezing of the fleet’s size, officer promotions had skidded to an abrupt halt, a standstill all the more jarring for the officers nowadays, who had been accustomed by constant and serious battle casualties to expect promotions as fast as other officers were killed in action and needed to be replaced. Aside from the Alliance’s apparent need to keep promoting him to admiral, and Carabali’s promotion from colonel to general, no one else had been approved for higher rank, not even Lieutenant Iger. “Unfair” was the mildest way of describing it, but the system had been carefully designed so that promotions were never guaranteed, so there were no legal grounds for fighting the lack of promotions. Geary wondered how long it would be before his officers began chafing at the sudden halt to upward mobility and the apparent failure of the fleet to any longer recognize superior performance with higher rank.