“Practical grounds?” Desjani looked from Geary to the starscape.
“Yeah.” Geary hunched forward, pointing at the pictured stars. “What happened here is going to be heard about in every other Syndic system sooner or later. Oh, there’ll be an official version in which the Alliance fleet was planning to crater the hell out of every population center in the Corvus System, only to be repulsed by the gallantry of the Syndic defenders. They’d put out that kind of nonsense regardless of what we did.
“However, even the Syndics can’t stop unofficial news from making its way around. So what are Syndic populations in other systems going to hear through the grapevine? That we didn’t try to bombard any cities. Of course, they might think that’s because we didn’t have time. But they’ll also hear that we treated their people right when we made them prisoner. When we had the power to do anything we wanted to do, we respected the lives of every Syndic who came into our power.”
Desjani let doubt show. “Surely the Syndics won’t care. They’ll probably see that as a sign of weakness.”
“Will they?” Geary shrugged. “That’s possible. It’s possible that anything we did would’ve been seen as a sign of weakness. I remember being told that mistreating prisoners would be interpreted as a sign that we were too weak to stick to the rules, too frightened to risk any possible advantage.”
“Really?” Desjani stared at him in open surprise.
“Yeah.” Geary let his thoughts wander for a moment, remembering a room and a lecture far distant in space and time. “That was what I was taught, that sticking to the rules would convey a sense of strength and confidence. I suppose that’s arguable. But in practical terms right now, I believe that at a minimum, someone, somewhere, may treat Alliance prisoners better as a result of what we did. More directly important to us, someone we’re fighting might not be as afraid of surrendering instead of fighting to the death. They’re going to hear that we treated surrendered combatants right, that we avoided harming civilians, that we didn’t cut a path of destruction through Corvus System, that even when sorely provoked, we only struck back directly at those who ordered a sneak attack on us. Somewhere along the line, someone who we need something from may remember that.”
Desjani looked uncertain again. “I can see where that could possibly work to our advantage the next time we try to acquire supplies from a Syndic system we’re passing through. But they’re still Syndics, Captain Geary. They won’t change their policies because we act differently.”
“Won’t they? I suppose their leaders might not. Between you and me, I detest the Syndic leaders I’ve encountered so far.” Desjani grinned, doubtless reassured by Geary’s statement. “But I’m sure there’ll be no doubt in the minds of anyone who hears about this fleet, or sees this fleet, that we’re not weak. They’ll know we chose not to do certain acts that we could’ve done.” Geary stared at the stars, feeling an edge of the coldness inside him again as he thought about the century of time and events that separated him from Desjani. “Ancestors help me, Tanya, the Syndic population is human, too. They’ve also got to be feeling the strain of this war. They’ve got to be sick to death of sending their sons and daughters and husbands and wives off to die in an apparently endless conflict.” He looked directly at her. “Let’s face it, we don’t have much to lose by letting the average Syndic know we’ll deal fairly with them.”
“What about the fanatics who were willing to die? Surely they’ll just make another such attempt.”
“They might,” Geary agreed. “But they went off anticipating a glorious death. Instead, they came home unconscious, and their ships tore up their own bases. No glory there. What some of them got instead was death at the hands of their own side. Maybe all that’ll make the next set of suicide volunteers a little less enthusiastic. When someone’s ready to die, killing them just furthers their own objectives. Mind you, I’ll grant their wish if it comes to that, but I’ll do it on my terms. I don’t want their deaths inspiring anyone.”
Desjani smiled slowly. “You frustrated the Syndics’ plan for a strike against the fleet, and frustrated the desire of some fanatics to die in the course of striking or trying to strike that blow. None of them got what they wanted.”
“No.” Geary looked at the stars again, wondering where among them the major elements of the Syndic fleet were currently located, and where those Syndic forces were currently heading in their attempt to find and destroy the Alliance fleet. “If they want to die at our hands so bad, they’ll have to find another opportunity. And if it comes to that, we’ll accommodate them. On our terms.”
EIGHT
Nothing.
They left jump space at full alert, ready for the worst, knowing they might find mines laid in their paths and a Syndic fleet right behind the mines. Knowing they might have to fight their way through that fleet if they wanted to survive another day. But only emptiness greeted the nervous searches of Alliance targeting systems.
The Kaliban Star System, as far as the best instruments available to the Alliance could tell, was totally lifeless. Nothing alive that could be seen, no spacecraft in motion, and not even the feeble warmth given off by a single piece of equipment even in standby mode could be detected. There had been people living here once, but now everything in Kaliban was cold, everything in Kaliban was silent.
“No mines, praise our ancestors,” Captain Desjani exulted. “That means our arrival here was totally unexpected. You outguessed them, Captain Geary.”
“I guess I did.” No sense in false modesty. We came here because I said so, and only because I said so. “Kaliban’s not much of a place now, is it?”
“It never was much of a place.”
Five planets, two of them so small they barely qualified for the name. All hostile to human habitation because of temperatures either far too low or far too high, and atmospheres either nonexistent or toxic. Plus the usual assortment of rocks and ice balls, though even those didn’t seem very numerous or noteworthy compared to other star systems. Nonetheless, people had built homes here. Kaliban didn’t have anything special at all, except for the gravity well provided by its star that made jump points work. Geary could imagine the human history of Kaliban’s system easily, because the same things had happened in so many other places.
Ships had been forced to come through Kaliban to get to other places before the hypernet. And because there’d been ships coming through, there’d been a shipyard or two or three built to handle emergencies and provide maintenance or supplies to the passing ships, as well as work on the ships that stayed in-system to transport workers and their families. The shipyards and the families had needed some services, so small towns had grown up in a few places. Buried under the soil of a hostile world or burrowed out of a large asteroid, they’d provided the things small towns had always provided. Some of the ships coming through would carry passengers or cargo bound for Kaliban. And of course there’d been mines to provide local raw materials instead of hauling mass from another star, and people to work in the mines, and a local government to keep things under control, and representatives of the central Syndic authority to keep the local government under control.
The rest Geary knew only from what he’d heard. The hypernet had come into existence and the ships didn’t need to come through Kaliban, or the innumerable systems like it, anymore. The shipyards had closed as their lifeblood dwindled to a trickle, and without those jobs the small towns started dying. Once there’d been no particular reason to come to Kaliban except for the jump points. Now there wasn’t any reason to stay at Kaliban. How many years did the last holdouts hang on? Maybe not all that long. In a Syndic system, everyone would’ve been a company employee of some sort, and companies cut their losses long before most individual people are willing to give up. There’s no one left now. All the installations we can see are cold. No energy usage, no environmental systems working. They shut down everything. I guess the last person who left Kaliban remembered to turn off the lights.