The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible

“Your guess is as good as mine. Senator Navarro provided me with some of his suspicions before we left. He suspected Syndic meddling in Alliance politics, economic sabotage, and stirring up dissent wherever possible. Navarro had no proof, but in his willingness to bait you, CEO Boyens has given us the clearest confirmation about what the remnants of the Syndicate Worlds are up to. The Syndics have lost the war, but they don’t intend to let the Alliance enjoy the peace.”

“Which officer survived?” Geary asked again.

“Perhaps the one you hope for,” Rione answered obliquely, “but there have been rumors that some of the executions we saw were faked.”

“Bloch?” Desjani demanded, shocked into speaking to Rione. “Admiral Bloch?”

“I have no more idea of the answer than you do. But it was someone that Boyens expected to cause trouble for us. Perhaps he’s just baiting us, trying to create as much anxiety in us as possible. Admiral, you know how shaky the Alliance is in the aftermath of the war. The war broke the Syndics, and it nearly broke us. There are those who for their own reasons would not hesitate to add a small push as the Alliance teeters on the edge of the abyss. How quickly can we get home?”

“I suspect not as fast as we thought,” Geary said. Was Admiral Bloch really still alive? There had been Alliance senators who had backed Bloch in the past, either through believing he was right or out of personal ambition. Or was Boyens just playing on their worst fears? “We can’t leave here without necessary repairs or we might lose more ships on the way home. And once we start back, Boyens implied that some roadblocks have been thrown up.”

“They want Invincible,” Desjani said. “They might want it badly enough to try something while we’re on our way back. And we need to make sure the Dancers don’t suffer any ‘accidents’ while they’re in space within Syndic reach.”

A playing board that already had too many players, many of them hidden, had just acquired more pieces, which might upset a lot of strategies and possibly the Alliance itself.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

There have been a few changes around here.

—CAPTAIN TANYA DESJANI

Way back in the twentieth century (the late 1960s to be exact), I lived for a few years on Midway Island in the center of the Pacific Ocean. In those days satellite TV was, well, science fiction. The only TV we had on the island came from a single local station that broadcast old programs for a few hours a day. Even white sand beaches, a beautiful lagoon protected by a coral reef, and the antics of the gooney birds wear thin at times. When that happened, I could read, and most of what I read in those days was history.

But there was another diversion available at the base movie theater. On Saturdays and Sundays, it would show matinees consisting of a one-hour TV show like Mission: Impossible or The Big Valley, and a one-hour episode of Star Trek (the original series, of course). While the rest of the world watched Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on their small TV sets, I got to see their adventures on the big screen.

When I started writing I found that those influences showed up in my stories. History offered many ideas, and the original Star Trek had shown me how SF could be exciting, thought-provoking, and fun. It had also impressed upon me how important the characters were. The spaceships were cool, but the stories wouldn’t have been the same without people in them whose actions mattered and who tried their best even against seemingly impossible odds.

A lot of other things went into the Lost Fleet series. At its core lie those basic influences, but when a writer creates characters they can start influencing the story, telling you what they would and wouldn’t do, telling you they would make a different decision than you had originally planned. As I’ve told Black Jack’s story, he has surprised me more than once. He has found friends and allies, overcome a wide variety of enemies, and developed a very close relationship with a certain battle cruiser captain. When the opportunity arose to take him to new places and face new challenges, I was glad to carry on Geary’s story in the Beyond the Frontier series.