The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

Sakai let out a slow sigh. “Because, Admiral, your most powerful weapon, the belief of others in you, might enable you to save an Alliance I believe to be doomed. Might, I say. It is something. Something small. Yet preferable to surrendering to despair and watching others oh-so-cleverly and oh-so-cunningly bring about the loss of all we and they hold dear.”

“Who is getting the command of that new fleet?”

“Admiral Bloch.”

That answer had come directly, with no evasion or delay. Why? “Even though the grand council must know that Bloch intended to stage a military coup if his attack on the Syndic home star system at Prime had succeeded?”

“Even though.” Sakai looked off into the distance again as if he could see something there that was invisible to Geary. “I wonder why I still try. Then I think of my children and their children. What might happen to them if the Alliance falls apart? I think of my ancestors. When the day comes that I face them, what will I say I had done with the life granted me? How will they judge me and my actions?” He shrugged. “My wish is to be able to face them and say I did not quit. Perhaps my efforts are doomed to failure, but that will not be because I ceased trying.”

“You don’t really believe that it is hopeless,” Geary suggested.

Senator Sakai stood up to leave, his expression unreadable once more. “Say rather, Admiral, that I am afraid to admit that it is hopeless.”

After Sakai had left, Geary found his gaze returning to the link he had opened about returning to Sol Star System. Anachronism, am I? Fine. Traditions hold us together, but a lot of those traditions faded under the pressure of the war. Maybe it’s time for this anachronistic admiral to introduce a few more anachronisms.

—

“WE’RE going to cross the line,” Geary said.

Tanya, called to his stateroom, gave him a puzzled look. “What line?”

“The line.”

“That helps. Not.”

“The boundary of Sol Star System,” Geary explained patiently.

“Star systems don’t have boundaries.” She tapped in some queries, then waited for the results to pop up. “Oh. You mean the heliosphere. The region around the star that defines the boundaries of a star system. I never heard of that before.”

That news should have been astounding coming from a battle cruiser commander whose career had taken her across hundreds of light-years and scores of stars. But it wasn’t. “That’s because the heliosphere of any star is well beyond the places where jump points are found or hypernet gates are constructed,” Geary explained. “The heliosphere of any star is well out in the dark between stars, in the places where human ships never go. Or rather, where they long since stopped going.”

“All right. Why does it matter now?”

“The heliosphere of Sol sets the limit for Sol Star System,” Geary said. “That’s the region where Sol’s solar wind predominates.”

“Yes,” Desjani said with exaggerated patience as she read the results of her query. “In the case of Sol, the heliosphere extends out about twelve light-hours,” she quoted. “Or about one hundred astronomical units. What the hell is an astronomical unit?”

“A very old way of measuring distance. You know, like a parsec.”

“A what?”

“Never mind,” Geary said.

“Fine,” she replied. “This is the line you were talking about? The edge of the bubble that defines the heliosphere for Sol? But it’s way past anything. Nobody goes that far from a star in real space. Why would they? There’s nothing there but dead, wandering rocks.”

“Tanya, once upon a time, people couldn’t use hypernet gates or jump points to travel to other stars. The missions to the first stars reached by our ancestors had to cross that line, physically cross it in real space. It meant something very important. It meant humanity had left the star that had given birth to us and humanity was now reaching into the universe.”

“It was important to our ancestors?” Tanya regarded the display over Geary’s desk with new respect. “Yes. Of course it was. That marked the point where a ship and the people on it left Sol.”

“Exactly. They had a celebration. And even after we discovered jump technology and no longer had to physically leave and enter the heliosphere, ships still used to mark when they crossed that line. Any other star’s heliosphere didn’t matter. But Sol’s did. It was a very big deal to say you’re a Voyager.”

“A . . . Voyager?”

“Once you’ve crossed the line, you can call yourself a Voyager,” Geary said. “That’s the tradition.”

“Our ancestors did this?”

“Yes.”

Desjani nodded. “Then we should. How did you happen to remember this? I can’t recall anyone ever saying anything about it.”