The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

“The fleet used to send a ship back to Sol every ten years,” Geary said. “To commemorate the anniversary of the launch of the first interstellar mission from Old Earth’s orbit. We only sent a ship at decade intervals because it was a long haul without hypernet capability. I never went, but I talked to some people who did, and at that time the whole crossing-the-line ceremony was still a big deal.”

“But during the war, we couldn’t afford to send any ships,” Desjani said. “I get it. Those early years were desperate. We couldn’t have spared a ship for that long in those days.”

Geary nodded. “The next ship was supposed to be sent less than a year after the initial Syndic attacks hit. I remember that everyone was wondering who would be selected. It seems strange to think about it now, but wondering which ship would get to make the trip was one of the biggest topics of conversation in the fleet before the fight at Grendel.”

Tanya looked back at him blankly. “That was your biggest concern?”

He felt a flush of shame. Tanya, like all of the officers and crew in the fleet, had spent her career, had spent her entire life, worried about the war with the Syndics, worried about life and death and the lives and deaths of those she knew and loved. How can she imagine a universe where the biggest concern in the fleet was which ship would get to go on a joyride to Sol? How can I ever feel superior to those whose lives have been consumed by issues far more grave than the little things I once had the luxury of being concerned with?

“Yes,” Geary finally said.

“I . . . guess that was important back then,” Tanya said in a way that made it clear she was trying to grasp the concept and failing. “I can understand the crossing-the-line thing,” she added. “And commemorating the first mission to another star. That was so big. They actually traveled at sublight speed across the dark between stars. I read about that when I was a little girl.”

Her eyes went distant with memory, and she smiled. “The Ship to the Stars. I remember the book because I read it so many times. It was about a girl and a boy on the ship. They had been born on the ship because it was a generation ship. The trip would take so long that the crew who had left Old Earth would all die of old age on the way. Their children were brought up to run the ship and continue the journey, and their children would actually reach the other star.”

Geary smiled, too, recalling the story. “I read the same book. I wanted to be that little boy. Anyone could travel to another star, but only people like him ever crossed the dark between stars. Ever since we discovered how to use jump drives, no one has gone into the Great Dark.”

“I talked to Jaylen Cresida about that once,” Tanya said in a low voice, her expression saddened at these memories of their dead comrade. “The observations those people and their instruments recorded are still used. Jaylen had studied some of them. We still depend on that data about the nature of space far from any star because no one else has ever gone out there to collect it.”

“Really?” Geary looked toward a bulkhead as if he could see through it to the space beyond the bubble of nothing in which Dauntless was heading for Sol. “Instruments must have gotten a lot better since then. You would think someone would propose an automated mission to get new data.”

Desjani shrugged. “We’ve been busy,” she said.

He wanted to slap his forehead over his boneheaded statement. Busy. With a century of desperate warfare. “I know. Um . . . there was a ceremony when you crossed the line. This is your ship, so it’s up to you, but it is a tradition.”

“What sort of ceremony?” She started reading. “Are you serious? That’s— All right, we can— No. Not that part. But the rest looks doable. Absurd, but doable. I guess our ancestors had more of a sense of humor than I’ve given them credit for. Are our Very Important Senators and Not So Important Envoys going to participate in this?”

“It’s voluntary,” Geary said.

“Meaning I have to invite them?”

“Yeah. You have to invite them.”

—