The woman does have a gift for asking awkward questions. Geary considered her for a moment before answering. “We need some time. We’re not sitting idle. As I’m sure you’re aware, we’re getting raw materials to the ships that can use them, Titan and her sisters are churning out new fuel cells as well as replacements for the equipment we’ve had damaged or destroyed and the weapons we’ve expended, we’re getting some major external repairs done to some of our ships that couldn’t be accomplished in jump space, we’re scavenging through the abandoned installations here for anything we can use, and most important of all, we’re training.”
“Training.” Rione’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”
“As I’m also sure you’re aware, Madam Co-President, we’re training for combat. The next time we face a large Syndic force, I want this fleet to operate like a military organization instead of an untrained mob of well-intentioned but overaggressive warriors.” Damn. He had to be careful not to be too blunt with Rione. It wouldn’t do to have a phrase like that repeated too widely.
“Captain Geary, I told you when first we met that this fleet is brittle. You agreed with me. How can you now speak of facing a large enemy force?” Rione’s voice had gotten flatter and harder as she spoke.
Geary, wishing he could strengthen shields around himself against the force of Rione’s words, simply nodded. “I agreed with you then. But brittle metal can be reforged, Madam Co-President. It can be made strong again.”
“To what purpose?”
Okay. She doesn’t trust me at all when it comes to things like this, I guess. Fine. Trust me or not, all she’ll get from me is the truth. “To get home. I mean that. Look.” Geary reached forward far enough to push in a command he’d learned by heart, then waved at the display of stars that appeared over the table between them. “We’re a long way from home by system jumps. I can keep trying to outguess the Syndics and try to plan far enough ahead to keep them from trapping us, but I can’t count on them never second-guessing me, never getting lucky. That means I can’t count on never running into some Syndic force that could hurt us badly. What’s going to happen then? If this fleet is still the force I led out of the Syndic home system, it’ll run the risk of being broken and destroyed. But, Madam Co-President, if I can teach these sailors to fight smart as well as brave, then we’ll be able to fight our way through that Syndic force.”
She watched him for a long time without speaking, her thoughts impossible for Geary to read. Finally, she spoke in a slightly less harsh voice. “You believe you can do this?”
“I hope I can.” Geary hunched forward, trying to project his feelings. “These are good sailors. Good officers. Good captains. For the most part, good captains. I’m sure you know there are some exceptions, but there always have been and always will be. All they need is someone they believe in, who they’ll listen to, to show them how to win.”
“Because they trust you.”
“Yes, dammit! What the hell’s the matter with that? I’ve yet to take one single action to betray that trust, and I never will.”
“Is that an oath, Captain Geary?” Rione’s voice had become very soft but also very clear. “Do you swear that on the honor of your ancestors?”
Geary wondered if Rione knew about his occasional visits to the ancestral spaces, and guessed she’d probably picked up as much information about them as anyone could. “Of course I do.”
“And the Alliance itself? The elected leadership of the peoples of the Alliance?”
Geary stared at her. “What about them?”
Rione glared back, exasperation showing in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. “If I only knew whether you were truly naïve or simply playacting! Captain Geary, you are a figure of legend. What sort of power do you think you will be able to wield if you return to the Alliance with this fleet at your back? Black Jack Geary, the paragon of Alliance officers, the hero of the past, the man every Alliance youth is taught to revere, back from the dead with a mighty fleet he has literally saved from total loss! A fleet you say will be trained to be far better than other Alliance forces. What will become of the Alliance then, Captain Geary? You will hold the Alliance within the palm of your hand, to dispose of as you wish. You know this is true! What will you do?”
“I…” Geary looked away, discomforted by her words and the intensity of the feelings behind them. “I’ll … I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought that far … but, no. No! I don’t want that kind of power. I don’t want to tell the elected leaders of the Alliance what to do. I want…” To get home? Home, for him, was dead and gone. What would be left for him when this mission was done? What life could he hope for? “I want…”
“What, Captain Geary? What do you want, more than anything?”
Geary, worn out mentally and physically by the exertions of the last few days, felt a wave of cold washing over him. “More than once, Madam Co-President, I have wanted more than anything to have died on my ship a century ago.” He regretted the words as soon as he’d spoken them, words and thoughts he hadn’t revealed to anyone else, but which had broken through internal barriers weakened by tiredness and stress.
Rione seemed taken aback for a moment. She watched him silently for a while, then nodded. “Could you walk away from it, Captain Geary? If we get home, can you walk away from the power to decide the fate of the Alliance?”
He took a long, deep breath. “In all honesty, I think I have that power already. If I can get this fleet back, with the device you know is on Dauntless, the Alliance has a real good chance of forcing the Syndics to negotiate in earnest to end this war. But if I don’t, if we’re lost out here, the Syndics will have a very large military advantage, and I can’t imagine they won’t press that advantage for all it’s worth. So, one way or the other, what I manage to do is going to determine a lot about what happens to the Alliance.” Geary looked straight into Rione’s eyes. “I swear I’d walk away from it this instant if I could. But I can’t. You know that, don’t you? There’s no one else here who has a chance of getting this fleet home. I’ve tried to tell myself I’m not indispensable, that there are other officers here who could get this fleet back. But I know it’s not true.”
Rione’s eyes and expression were unyielding. “Democracies and republics cannot live with indispensable men or women, Captain Geary.”
“It’s only until I get this fleet back! Once we get back to the Alliance, Madam Co-President, I fully intend turning over command to the first admiral I meet and then finding a nice quiet planet to hide on for the rest of my life.” Geary stood up and paced despite his weariness. “That’s all anyone can ask of me. That’s all the honor of my ancestors can possibly demand. I’ll resign this command and my commission and go to … to…”
“Where, Captain Geary?” Rione sounded weary now, too, though Geary couldn’t imagine why. “What planet do you think would grant you refuge against the ancient glory of Black Jack Geary and the modern adulation for the man who saved the Alliance fleet and perhaps the Alliance itself?”
“I…” Geary cast about for a name, knowing his own home world would never be such a refuge, knowing it might well have changed beyond recognition in a century’s time and actually fearing to see the sort of monuments to Black Jack Geary that surely existed there, and settled on the one planet he’d heard the most of in the last several weeks. “Kosatka.”
“Kosatka?” This time Rione laughed, though with more disbelief than humor. “I told you before, Captain Geary. Your fate does not lie on Kosatka. Kosatka is a good world, but it is not a mighty world. Kosatka could not hold you now.”