Dreadnaught

Desjani sat with her chin resting in one hand as she looked at her display. “It doesn’t seem right to be here and not be blowing up things.”

“There’s not much worth blowing up.” Geary shook his head as he looked at his own display. “The war did a number on this star system.”

“Actually, it got off fairly easy.” Her voice had suddenly become tense. “Compared to others.”

“I know.” Sore subject. Too many star systems had been battered into far worse condition. Too many of those star systems had belonged to the Alliance. He had avoided any information on how many billions had died during the war on both sides, not being willing to face that. But Tanya, like the others in the fleet, had grown up with such awful statistics, had seen them continue to rise year by year. Time to talk about something else. “They’ve got a HuK now.”

“I noticed.” One Syndic Hunter-Killer, a warship slightly smaller than an Alliance destroyer, orbited in the inner system. Even if it hadn’t been almost six light hours distant, the single small warship posed no conceivable threat to the Alliance fleet. “I wonder if it’s here by orders of the Syndic government or if it’s declared allegiance to Atalia?”

“I’ll let our emissaries worry about that,” Geary said.

“Good idea! Maybe we could leave one of them here.” Desjani glanced back to the empty observer’s seat. “I suppose I should be grateful that they’re not hovering on the bridge constantly. That general likes to walk around trying to ingratiate himself with the crew—”

“He’s practicing to be a politician.”

“—but I haven’t seen the other one at all.”

Geary nodded, thinking that was one more thing about Rione that had changed. “She was always very careful and calculating before, trying to keep on top of everything. Now, she sits in her stateroom.”

“I’m not complaining,” Desjani said. “I hope that you’re not worried about her.”

“Tanya, she brought new orders for us. As you already pointed out, we don’t know what orders she might have been given.” He hunched forward, clasping his hands tightly together as he remembered his conversation with Rione. “When I talked to her right after she came aboard, I got the feeling that she wanted to see how far she could lean over the edge of a cliff without falling off. There was a heedless quality, a sense that she’ll jump off that cliff just to see how it feels on the way down.”

“Normally,” Desjani murmured, “I’d just wish that she’d jump. But if she has other orders from the government that we don’t know about . . .”

“Orders that may account for the changes I’ve noticed in her.”

“Something she knows?” Desjani asked. “You never could trust her. I hope you understand that now. Maybe it’s something she did. There have to be a thousand skeletons in her closet. Or maybe it’s something she has to do. Though I find it hard to believe that her conscience is bothering her.”

Geary made an exasperated gesture. “If it’s something purely personal, then that’s unfortunate for her but unlikely to impact us. But she is an emissary for the government.”

“Wouldn’t that general . . . what’s his name?”

“Charban.”

“Yeah. Him. Wouldn’t he also know if it involved some orders for the emissaries?” Desjani paused, her expression hardening. “Unless he’s a throwaway. A dupe to give cover for her. He’s a retired general. What if he’s being used?”

Too many questions and, as usual, not nearly enough answers.

EVEN though Atalia was an easy destination from Varandal, there weren’t many good options from Atalia, one of the things that had kept the star system from being battered even worse during the war. One option was Padronis, a white dwarf star that had never had much human presence, even the small orbital station once maintained by the Syndics having been abandoned decades ago. The other choice, Kalixa, had once been a good option itself, a fine star system with a large population and a gate in the Syndicate Worlds’ hypernet system. But that gate had collapsed and annihilated the human presence in Kalixa, apparently on orders from the same alien species Geary’s fleet was en route to investigate. Now the only signs that humans had ever been there were shattered ruins on the wreck of what had once been a habitable world.

But from Kalixa, the fleet could jump to Indras, where a Syndic hypernet gate should still be intact. The Alliance had already used that gate once, in the final campaign against the Syndics.

Geary stood before the conference table, once more viewing the images of the fleet’s captains sitting around it. This time, the fleet being in a much more compact formation, only the most distant ships would have any noticeable time lag. He gestured to the star display. “We’ll have to go through Kalixa again.”

Most of the officers listening displayed distaste or unhappiness at the idea of revisiting that star, where the dead emptiness somehow emphasized the millions of lives that had been destroyed there. But they knew as well as he did that the only efficient path for the fleet led through Kalixa.