“Of course.” He felt ashamed for his anger of a moment earlier. Benan and the others liberated with him were still stressed by the long captivity and bewildered by recent events. They needed to know how things had changed, that the fleet had returned to the honorable practices of their ancestors.
Gazing back at the other liberated prisoners, Geary saw an admiral and a general looking his way. Time to reposition before I get pinned down. “I need to return to the bridge,” he said to no one in particular in a voice loud enough to carry. He offered the prisoners a quick wave and smile, then dashed off before they could leave the line.
He made it there only twenty minutes after leaving, finding everything still going well. Of course, he could have directed the operation from anywhere within Dauntless, but humans had long since learned that leaders needed to be seen and needed to issue orders from professionally appropriate locations. Geary had discovered that the old (and apparently true) story of the admiral who had issued orders during a battle from the comfort of his stateroom while drinking beer was still well-known.
Carabali’s shuttle was the last to dock on Tsunami. “All shuttles recovered, all Marines accounted for, all prisoners located and liberated,” she reported to Geary. “No damage to shuttles, personnel casualties limited to several sprains incurred during the landings.”
“Outstanding job, General.” Geary let out a long breath that felt like he had been holding it for hours. “All units, execute Formation November at time four zero.”
Forming into five rectangles, broad sides facing forward, the largest rectangle in the middle itself centered on Dauntless, the Alliance fleet accelerated away from the Syndic planet, heading for the jump point that would take it back to Hasadan. But this time, from Hasadan the fleet would take the Syndic hypernet to Midway. He stood again, stretching out the accumulated tension. “I think I’ll take a break in my stateroom, Captain Desjani.”
“Get something to eat, too,” she said.
Resisting the urge to say, “Yes, ma’am,” and salute her in front of the bridge crew, Geary headed for his stateroom by way of a mess compartment to pick up a battle ration. It wasn’t the best food, and arguments within the fleet debated whether battle rations qualified as food at all using most definitions of that word, but the rations filled you up and met minimum daily nutrition requirements.
He was almost to his stateroom when Desjani came quickly toward him down the passageway, her expression stiff. She gestured wordlessly toward Geary’s stateroom, letting him enter and following closely behind. Once inside she closed the door with great care, then turned to him, her face a mask of barely contained fury, all the more fearsome for the coldness of the fire in her eyes. “Request permission to speak freely, sir.”
“You never require permission to do that,” he replied, keeping his own voice low and steady.
“I have been informed of the identity of one of the liberated prisoners. Her husband.”
“That’s right.” He wondered if her anger was directed at him for not telling her, but it seemed aimed elsewhere.
“What an amazing coincidence. She came aboard with new orders, diverting this fleet from its planned course and its planned mission in order to come to the prisoner-of-war camp in this star system, a camp that just happened to have her husband among its number.” Desjani’s words came out clipped, hard as a barrage of grapeshot. “We came here on her personal errand.”
“That’s possible, but—”
“Possible? She jerked around this fleet for her own personal purposes—”
“Tanya, hear me out!” He waited as she took a deep breath, the heat in her eyes subsiding to a controlled blaze. “I’ve had time to think about this. First, my impression was that she was shocked to see her husband. But she’s very good at concealing her real feelings, so that’s far from definitive.”
“She’s—”
“I’m more worried about dealing with all of the other VIPs.”
Desjani took a long, slow breath, still furious but keeping the feelings on a shorter leash. “Like Falco.”
“Multiplied a hundred times.”
Her eyes narrowed as the fires in them became a white-hot, focused torch. “Why? She didn’t like Falco. Neither did the government. Why unleash dozens more like him?”
“I don’t know.” He sat down, one hand to his forehead, trying to blank out anger and frustration. The battle ration sat untouched, his appetite fled for the moment. “All I know for certain is that they’re here, and we’re taking them into alien space with us.”
“Hundreds of loose cannons.” Now Desjani seemed baffled. “What possible advantage does that give anyone?”
“I think Rione knows why we were sent here to get them.”
“Her secret orders. But why wouldn’t the government want those Falco-wannabes left in Syndic hands as long as possible? Why make them a priority for release?”
“I don’t know.” Geary let his eyes rest on the star display floating above the table, which he had left centered on Dunai Star System. “Even if Rione knew that her husband was at Dunai, why would the government have agreed to let her divert this fleet for a personal matter? She’s not that powerful. She’s been voted out of office. And what possible reason would the government have for agreeing if it had any idea that all of those other senior officers were there?”
“It must have been a price,” Desjani insisted. “Something she demanded in exchange for agreeing to go on this mission and carry out whatever orders she has.” Desjani seemed ready to order Rione’s arrest.
“She’s still a legal, authorized representative of the government, Tanya. Even if the government agreed to order us to this star system to satisfy Rione’s personal agenda, it’s within the rights of the government to do that.”
Desjani sat down, too, glaring at him. “Are you sure you don’t want to be dictator?”
“Yes.” That brought up another thought, though. “We know the government fears this fleet. They fear what I might do with it. But now they’ve ensured that lots of other senior officers who might back a coup are also present with the fleet. It’s either irrational or so brilliantly Byzantine it only seems to make no sense at all.”
“What if those secret orders jeopardize the safety of this fleet?”
“We don’t know that—”
“We don’t know anything.” Desjani jumped up, walked to the hatch, and yanked it open. “It’s like dealing with the aliens.”
“SOME amount of disorientation is normal in cases like this,” the fleet’s senior medical officer explained to Geary. “But the readjustment difficulties are higher than usual for these individuals. It was a good idea to place many of them on Mistral, where I could conduct personal examinations.”
Geary smiled and nodded as if he had indeed thought about that on the spur of the moment.
“Call me old-fashioned,” the doctor continued, “but I think even the best virtual-meeting software misses things. Tiny things, but important in evaluating an individual.”
“Can you summarize your impressions?” Geary asked.
“I already did.” The physician hesitated. “I could go into a little more detail, I suppose. As I said, some disorientation is normal. They’ve been in a Syndic labor camp for years at least and, in many cases, decades. They are accustomed to being confined to certain areas, to being subject to arbitrary rules, to having their actions controlled by authorities whose judgment can’t be questioned.”