The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

Geary remembered the special forces troops he had met on Umbaru Station at Varandal, themselves wondering what they would do now that special forces troops weren’t needed in anything like the numbers once required. It would have been different if the war had been much shorter, five or even ten years. Not long enough to have become a way of life for those engaged in it. But as Duellos had said, these were people whose entire lives had been about the war. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Duellos said. “I’m a fleet officer. It’s what I grew up expecting to be. It’s all I’ve ever done. I expected to die at some distant star, battling the Syndics, or perhaps at some Alliance border star system, throwing back a Syndic offensive. If by some miracle I survived long enough to retire, I would go home and watch more men and women go off to war. It’s been that way for a century. I didn’t expect it to ever end. We had all stopped believing that it would ever end. But it did end.” He raised a hand, fingers curled as if he held a glass, in a toast and salute to Geary. “And now they don’t want fleet officers.”

“Not as many fleet officers,” Geary said, “but the need—”

“No, Admiral. They don’t want fleet officers. They are sick of war, of sending off their young men and women to disappear into the maw of war, of broken bodies coming home, of the wealth of their world being consumed by war.” Duellos shrugged again. “How can I blame them? And yet, now so many of us who always had a purpose no longer have that purpose.”

What could he say? Geary looked down for a while, trying to find words, then back at Duellos. “How does your wife feel?”

“Grateful that I came home alive. Grateful that no more of our children will be sent off to die in an endless war. Perplexed at the melancholy with which I confronted a world changed beyond recognition, a world in which what I am became obsolete in the blink of an eye.” Duellos shook his head, gloom showing. “It’s been wearing on me. Peace is good. The cost of war is so terrible. But I know nothing of peace. I’ve been molded for war. I hate war. I hate the death, I hate knowing more will die, I hate being away from those I love, but . . . but it is what I know. Everyone back home wishes to put it all behind them as fast as possible, to forget it happened, but when they forget the awful things, they also forget the sacrifices, the deeds done by those they sent off to fight. They don’t want to hear about that now. And I simply don’t know what I am supposed to be now that what I am has ceased to be wanted.”

Geary looked away, trying to think of what to say. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Admiral,” Duellos said. “You did what you should do. You did what legend said you would.” He paused and looked closely at Geary. “But the legend never said what Black Jack would do after he saved the day, did it?”

“I don’t know. I never wanted to hear about the legend.”

“Tanya and I have talked about it. It’s something we never realized even though we grew up being told that legend. It never had a ‘happily ever after’ or anything like that. Black Jack would save us, then . . .” Duellos looked at Geary again. “It doesn’t say. The story just ends. Now we face the reality. Is there still a need for Black Jack? How many people still want Black Jack?”

“I don’t exactly want to be Black Jack, remember?” Geary replied. “And you know about the popular movements to make me run things back home, to take over the government and ‘fix’ it, whatever that means, or somehow miraculously root out all of the corruption and misdeeds that plague any form of government. People want that.”

“Do they?” Duellos asked. “They say that, but what if you were actually given those tasks? How long would it take for the hero to develop feet of clay?”

“The hero has always had feet of clay,” Geary replied. “It would be a relief for me if people stopped thinking I should step in and save the day. It wouldn’t break my heart to just . . . just . . .”

He paused to order his thoughts. To just what?

“Roberto,” Geary said slowly, “you know I wasn’t thrilled to have to assume command of the fleet back when it was trapped by the Syndics. You know that I never liked the Black Jack legend. For some time, I consoled myself by thinking that I would get the fleet home, then I would go somewhere and . . . hide. Just go away, to somewhere where no one had ever heard of Black Jack. Winning the war wasn’t my job just because the government had dreamed up some stupid myth about me being the hero to end all heroes.”

“But you changed your mind,” Duellos said, pretending to be examining the imaginary wine in the imaginary wineglass he was still pretending to hold.