That made Geary frown, too, because Desjani was right. Seen that way, the Syndics had lost, and the Alliance fleet, by surviving and escaping, had won. Still…“Thank you. But … Tanya, we lost a lot of ships. A battle cruiser. Four battleships—”
“I know, sir,” Desjani interrupted. “I wish this victory had been like your others, with our losses negligible. But every battle can’t be like that, especially when we’re facing those kinds of odds.”
He shouldn’t need her to tell him that. Geary let his real feelings show for a moment, his sorrow and anguish, and saw Desjani react. “They trusted me to get them home. Now they won’t get home.”
“Sir.” Desjani leaned forward, her face lit with the intensity of her feelings. “Not everyone returns from battle.
We all learn that early on, and we’ve all lost many friends and comrades in action, as did our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers before them. But you were sent to save us. I know that. So do most of the officers and almost every sailor in this fleet. You are on a mission from the living stars to get this fleet home and save the Alliance, and that means you cannot fail. We all know that. Soon you’ll remember that, and you’ll figure out what to do next.”
Her belief was almost terrifying to him, because he knew how fallible he really was and couldn’t really believe that someone like him could be on a mission for any greater power. “I’m as human as you are, Tanya.”
“Of course you are! The living stars and our ancestors work through the living! Everyone knows that!”
“This fleet doesn’t need me. The Alliance doesn’t need me. I’m not—”
“Sir, yes we do!” Desjani almost pleaded this time. “I don’t know what I—what this fleet would do if you weren’t here, what would happen to the Alliance without you. You came to us when you did for a reason. Because if you hadn’t been there with us in the Syndic home system, then this fleet would have been wiped out and the Alliance lost. We followed you because we trusted you, and you have shown us again and again by your deeds and your words that you deserve that trust.”
Geary opened his mouth to protest again, then understood as if one of his ancestors had whispered it into his ear. He had let down the crews of the ships lost at Lakota. That was an awful thing. But it would be far more awful to let down the crews of all the surviving ships still in the fleet, to break faith with their belief in him when that faith was what was keeping them going. They were counting on him, and he knew it, just as the crews of Audacious, Defiant, and Indefatigable had known the rest of the fleet was counting on them. He had to come through, and Desjani and Rione were both right that it had to be him.
Because that faith others had in him meant only he had a halfway decent chance of keeping this fleet together, though keeping it from being destroyed would be just as hard a task. But he had to do it. And that meant he had to figure out what to do next.
So he sat a bit straighter, nodded, and spoke in a firmer voice. “I do have a responsibility.” Like it or not, and I don’t like it one bit. “Thank you for helping me remember that.”
She sat back, smiling with relief. “You didn’t need me.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” He started to force a smile, then felt it become real. “Thank you. I’m very glad I’m on your ship.”
Desjani smiled at him again, then swallowed and looked uncertain before standing abruptly. “Thank you, sir. I should get back to the bridge.”
“Sure. If you see Co-President Rione, tell her I’m okay.”
“I will, sir.” Desjani saluted quickly and then hastened out the hatch.
Geary sat for a while, thinking, then reached slowly for the controls of the display. The image of Ixion Star System appeared, the Alliance fleet on it in the tangled disposition it had been in when it entered jump at Lakota, and in which it would be when it arrived at Ixion. I have to think of something. But what?
TWELVE
“Sir, this is Lieutenant Iger in intelligence. We have something important that we need to brief to you.”
Geary, feeling depression creeping up again as good options in Ixion eluded him, took a moment to consider whether he should answer, but duty sat on his chest and glared at him until he reached out to acknowledge the message. “What does important mean?” he asked.
“I … it’s hard to judge, sir. It’s something very unexpected, and we really don’t know what it means, but it could be critically important.”
Intelligence loved modifiers like “could be,” but it was unusual to have them frankly admit to not knowing what something meant.
“We have everything ready to show you down here, or I can come up there and brief you, sir,” Iger continued, “whenever it’s convenient.”
Geary looked around. Facing the crew of Dauntless again after the desperate retreat out of Lakota still felt, well, daunting. But he’d increasingly felt as if this stateroom were a prison, one that he had locked himself inside.
It was long past time he got out there and tried to be a fleet commander again. “I’ll come down there. Is right now okay?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be waiting, sir.”
Standing up, Geary checked his appearance, grimaced, then took a while to clean up and put on a fresh uniform. No matter what had happened at Lakota, he couldn’t look defeated.
The members of Dauntless’s crew who he encountered wore expressions of worry, which lit with hope when they saw him. Geary tried to project confidence despite the gloom filling him and apparently fooled most or all of them. He’d learned as a junior officer dealing with superior officers that if you acted like you knew what you doing, everyone else assumed you really did know it.
“What will we do at Ixion?” an anxious sailor blurted at Geary. “Sir?”
“I’m still considering options,” Geary replied, as if there were a lot to choose from and any of them were good. But the sailor smiled, reassured, and saluted briskly.
As he reached the intelligence section, sealed behind multiple high-security hatches, Geary pondered the fact that an intelligence officer had been able to motivate him out of his stateroom, something that neither combat officer Desjani nor politician Rione had succeeded in doing. That had to rank high on the irony scale.
Lieutenant Iger awaited Geary, looking nervous as Geary took a seat and waited. “Sir, we’ve been analyzing the messages passed among the ships of the Syndic flotilla that arrived via the hypernet gate while we were in the Lakota Star System.”
“How much of that can you intercept and break?” Geary asked.
“Not a lot, but some stray signals always leak, and if we remain in the star system long enough for them to reach us, we can record them and then try to break the encryption,” Iger explained. “It’s not even remotely a source of real-time intelligence, though if we ever broke an enemy message in time to influence an ongoing engagement, we’d certainly bring it to your attention.”
“I assume you’d let me decide if the message could influence the engagement?” Geary asked, knowing that the intelligence types were probably making such calls themselves.
“Uh, yes, sir,” Lieutenant Iger assured him, doubtless already planning to make sure that was done in the future.
“I take it there was something important about the signals you picked up at Lakota?”
“Yes, sir,” Iger repeated. “Unusual. Very unusual.” He paused, licked his lips, then spoke quickly. “Sir, it’s our assessment that the Syndics were as surprised by their arrival in Lakota as we were.”