He felt the old discomfort arise, the sense of being totally inadequate to the myths that had grown up around the hero he was supposed to be. Her faith in that hero still burned strong, though somehow Desjani could keep the hero separate in her mind from the man he really was. She worshipped Black Jack. She loved John Geary, but she would never worship him, and thank the living stars for that. “Tanya, by now you know who I really am.”
“I knew you then, and I know you now. Do you remember the first time you saw me?”
“Yes. Very clearly.” Coming out of the stupor brought on by the very long period of survival sleep, he had seen above him a female captain who inexplicably wore an Alliance Fleet Cross. When he had fought at Grendel, no one in the fleet had earned that award for a generation. The sight of that Fleet Cross had been his first clue that his sleep had been far longer than it should have been. “You looked at me like…”
“Like I knew you. I’ve never told anyone else of that dream. I didn’t know if it had just been born of fever and stress. Or had my ancestors sent me a vision? Would I someday meet that man in my dream? Would I help him end the long and bloody war? And then you showed up, and I knew I did have a role. It would be shown me.”
No wonder Tanya had offered any support he needed, had even offered him her honor if that was what he demanded of her. “You did everything because you thought it was some job you’d been given?”
“Oh, please. I wanted to do it. No, I didn’t want to end up in love with a superior officer. I fought that. It happened anyway. But, every other thing I did because I chose to. The living stars can lead us to tasks, but only we can decide whether or not to carry them out. Of all the people in the universe, Black Jack should be able to understand that.”
“I guess he should.” Geary tried to find words that felt right, and failed. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Desjani blinked, straightened in her seat, and looked back at him as if they had just been discussing some routine matter. “My pity party is over. Now, how about you? I haven’t been so preoccupied that I hadn’t noticed you are worrying about something else.”
There wasn’t any sense in avoiding the truth when Tanya was watching him. “It’s the grand council. I’ve never gotten the impression the grand council is a smooth-running machine, but they seem a lot worse. Instead of talking over issues, they’re just zinging each other with verbal put-downs.”
“Haven’t they always been that way?”
Of course, that would be Desjani’s reaction. Her opinion of the politicians running the Alliance could probably not get a single notch lower. “Not as bad. Not during my first meeting with them. And at the second meeting, the one where I got the orders for our mission into enigma space, I had the feeling the grand council was pretty much united in agreeing on those orders even though different senators had different reasons for wanting us to go on that mission.”
She nodded, smiling without any hint of humor. “Including the hope that we’d go out and never come back.”
“Including that,” Geary said. He didn’t know how many had felt that way. He suspected even Rione didn’t know the exact number. It wasn’t the sort of sentiment anyone would advertise or leave a written record of. “I don’t know how to fix the Alliance, Tanya. The people who might know how to do it are on the grand council, but they don’t seem to be interested in actually doing it.”
“Good thing you’re not dictator of the whole mess, huh?” Desjani asked. “Speaking of which, have you noticed who hasn’t been around?”
“Who hasn’t been around? Tanya, I have no idea—”
“Sure you do.” She waved grandly. “Captain Badaya, who represents those who think Black Jack can wave his magic wand and cure everything that ails the Alliance.”
Geary started to answer her, then stopped. “You’re right. Why hasn’t he been around?” In order to forestall a coup attempt in Geary’s name, Badaya had been led to believe that Geary was secretly running the government already. But then why hadn’t Badaya been by since the fleet made it back to Varandal to ask what Black Jack was doing about the damned politicians?
“If you want my honest opinion, and I know you do,” Desjani said, leaning forward with both elbows on her desk and gazing at him, “Captain Badaya has slowly figured out that if Black Jack did take over, the Alliance house of cards would collapse even quicker. He’s been thinking, which I know is uncharacteristic of him, and he’s putting two and two together at last. He probably figures now that you’re just nudging the grand council in the right directions and otherwise trying to prop up the Alliance rather than knock the legs out from under it.”
She sighed, looking upward. “And after you got us through enigma space, and Kick space, and beat the Kicks and the enigmas and the Syndics again, and didn’t throw him to the wolves because he made some mistakes during the battle at Honor, Badaya is one of your closest allies now regardless of what you do. Which makes it a real shame that I can’t stand the man, but what are you going to do?”
“I hope you’re right. Fleet headquarters has also been oddly silent. We haven’t received any rants from them, any demands to yield important ships or personnel to immediate reassignment, nothing except routine acknowledgment of the reports we’ve forwarded.”
“Do you want my opinion again?”
“You know I do.”
“Yes.” Desjani waved again in the general direction in which fleet headquarters lay numerous light-years distant. “I think they’re scared of you and trying to figure out what to do next.”
“Tanya—”
“I am serious. They thought they had screwed you. Different parts of fleet headquarters thought they had handed you a rotten job and tripped you up in different ways, and at the best you were going to limp home with your reputation and your fleet in shreds. Instead, you came home having far exceeded the scope of your orders, the fleet mostly intact, and won the day for humanity!” Desjani nodded at him. “You’ve got them scared. They’re wondering if you can be beat.”
That was not good news, but it would explain the mysterious silence from fleet headquarters, and perhaps the increased disarray on the grand council. “I hope you’re wrong because I don’t want people trying to think up ever-more-challenging ways to beat me.”
Last time they had lost Orion, and Brilliant, and the-Invincible-before-the-latest-Invincible, along with a number of smaller warships. He didn’t want any more ships and their crews to die because various people were separately trying to figure out how to beat him instead of jointly trying to figure out how to save the Alliance.
Two days before departure, and Geary had to pry more time out of his day in order to grant a request from the senior fleet physician for a meeting. He greeted Dr. Nasr as the physician debarked from a shuttle onto Dauntless. Despite their many face-to-face conversations, this was the first time they had had actually met.
Dr. Nasr looked tired and sad. Geary had often seen him tired, especially in the wake of battles when the fleet’s medical staff had bent every effort to save every injured man and woman they could. But the sadness was a different thing.
“What brings you to Dauntless?” Geary asked.
“May we speak privately?” Dr. Nasr requested.
“My stateroom?”
“I would be honored, Admiral.”
They walked through the ship’s passageways, Nasr silent and carrying a thermal carafe. Once inside Geary’s stateroom, with the hatch sealed, the doctor carefully removed the lid of the carafe and brought out two small, white, porcelain glasses, which he set on Geary’s desk. The doctor then poured a dark, steaming liquid into each glass, not spilling a drop, his every move that of someone used to the most careful and precise motions.