Dreadnaught

“I don’t know.” Geary let his eyes rest on the star display floating above the table, which he had left centered on Dunai Star System. “Even if Rione knew that her husband was at Dunai, why would the government have agreed to let her divert this fleet for a personal matter? She’s not that powerful. She’s been voted out of office. And what possible reason would the government have for agreeing if it had any idea that all of those other senior officers were there?”

“It must have been a price,” Desjani insisted. “Something she demanded in exchange for agreeing to go on this mission and carry out whatever orders she has.” Desjani seemed ready to order Rione’s arrest.

“She’s still a legal, authorized representative of the government, Tanya. Even if the government agreed to order us to this star system to satisfy Rione’s personal agenda, it’s within the rights of the government to do that.”

Desjani sat down, too, glaring at him. “Are you sure you don’t want to be dictator?”

“Yes.” That brought up another thought, though. “We know the government fears this fleet. They fear what I might do with it. But now they’ve ensured that lots of other senior officers who might back a coup are also present with the fleet. It’s either irrational or so brilliantly Byzantine it only seems to make no sense at all.”

“What if those secret orders jeopardize the safety of this fleet?”

“We don’t know that—”

“We don’t know anything.” Desjani jumped up, walked to the hatch, and yanked it open. “It’s like dealing with the aliens.”

“SOME amount of disorientation is normal in cases like this,” the fleet’s senior medical officer explained to Geary. “But the readjustment difficulties are higher than usual for these individuals. It was a good idea to place many of them on Mistral, where I could conduct personal examinations.”

Geary smiled and nodded as if he had indeed thought about that on the spur of the moment.

“Call me old-fashioned,” the doctor continued, “but I think even the best virtual-meeting software misses things. Tiny things, but important in evaluating an individual.”

“Can you summarize your impressions?” Geary asked.

“I already did.” The physician hesitated. “I could go into a little more detail, I suppose. As I said, some disorientation is normal. They’ve been in a Syndic labor camp for years at least and, in many cases, decades. They are accustomed to being confined to certain areas, to being subject to arbitrary rules, to having their actions controlled by authorities whose judgment can’t be questioned.”

That sounds a lot like just being in the military, Geary thought.

“But in addition to that, there’s the fact that basic certainties are different. The war is over. That’s a major alteration in what they considered a fixed reality, and unlike those of us who were free to see events unfold recently, it is hitting them all at once. They have been told an intelligent species of aliens exists beyond human space, something totally unexpected. Then there’s you, yourself, that Black Jack, against all rational odds, did indeed return from the dead (figuratively speaking naturally) and achieve the seemingly impossible. To these former prisoners, it’s as if they have suddenly found themselves in a fantasy world rather than the universe they occupied before being captured.”

The fleet physician looked down, sighing once, before focusing back on Geary. “There’s one other factor unique to these prisoners. As you may have already been informed, many are fairly senior officers. Before being captured, they were used to either being in charge or being highly influential. Many of them believed that they would play an exceptional, personal role in the war because of their own abilities, that they were fated to do great things. There’s a medical term for this set of beliefs.”

Geary fought down his own sigh. “Geary Syndrome.”

“Yes! You’ve heard of it?” the doctor said in surprised tones, as if amazed that a nonphysician would have such knowledge.

“It’s been brought to my attention.”

“Then I’m sure you understand that they find it hard to deal with a situation where they lack authority in this fleet despite their rank and seniority. Many of them believed that somehow, despite being imprisoned, they would still save the Alliance and defeat the Syndics. Such beliefs helped sustain them. But you already won the war, leaving them without any clear sense of their own destinies.”

He didn’t need any further explanations to see how much trouble all of those disorientations could add up to. “I’m going to speak with them as a group. It’s already set up for ten minutes from now.”

“They’ll expect one-on-one meetings with you. I’ve already heard scores of slight variations on ‘I’m certain that I’ll be assuming an appropriate command position very quickly.’ More than one expect to assume command of this fleet.”