“That woman has been involved enough in such things to know all about them! Admiral, in this case it seems to me that some of the minds managed to get the hand doing things without a lot of the other minds knowing what was really going on. Suva thought the dark ships would keep her safe, but Costa probably just wanted a new, dangerous toy that would follow orders and not ask questions.”
He looked at her. “That attack on Indras, which could cause the Syndics to retaliate against us. We’ve talked about that, but we haven’t been able to figure out why someone ordered something so stupid.”
Desjani inhaled deeply, then met his eyes. “Looking at this situation now, and what else may have been done to our comm systems, I think our problem was we assumed that everyone else would realize how stupid it was. The Syndics have been violating the peace agreements in lots of ways, including covert actions coming out of Indras. Someone figured the appropriate response to that was retaliation.”
“That’s an appropriate response when you’re at war,” Geary said.
“So? People today don’t know peace. They know war. A lot of people don’t know how to handle peace, so they’re responding as if the war is still on. A war that justifies them and what they want to do, a war that keeps things just like they’d been for a century.” Desjani looked away, then back at him. “Even people in this fleet. Roberto Duellos is facing a tough decision that never would have come up if the war hadn’t ended. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s not the only one.”
Geary shook his head. “No. That doesn’t make sense—”
“It doesn’t make sense to you,” Tanya said forcefully. “To you, war is still an aberration, a temporary, unusual state of affairs. To us, war was how things always were. You, the legendary hero, threw out the certainties of our lives and replaced them with uncertainty.”
“Tanya, the Alliance was on the verge of collapsing from the costs of the war,” Geary said. “The Syndicate Worlds has collapsed in many areas, and—” He paused as he remembered something.
Desjani nodded firmly to him. “And the Syndic leaders have been trying to get the Alliance to attack again because the war justified them, too. The Syndic government wants everyone in Syndicate Worlds space to see us as the threat and themselves as the protectors. Whoever ordered the attack on Indras might have given the Syndic leaders what they wanted, and maybe the people on the Alliance side who gave those orders wanted the same thing as the Syndic leaders, an active enemy to validate what they want to do.”
Geary looked away, fighting off an impulse to reject her words. “You’re right. I can’t put myself in the same mental and emotional state as people today. I can’t imagine wanting to perpetuate war because of feeling that’s the way things should be. But I have seen the disruption that peace has caused, the people like Duellos who feel unmoored, and Duellos is lucky because he hasn’t been downsized and kicked out into star system economies reeling from the costs of the war and the sudden cutbacks in Alliance spending as defense expenditures were slashed. But I can’t imagine anyone seeking war as part of some cynical plan—”
“No.” Desjani shook her head, wearily this time. “You still don’t get it. They’re not being cynical. They’ve convinced themselves that they are doing the right thing. You and I met those former Syndics at Midway, people who have spent their lives serving the Syndic despots and an ugly, dictatorial system. Only a few of them struck me as evil, the sorts of people who did what they did because they wanted power and money and didn’t care who suffered and died. Most of them seemed like average people, who somehow rationalized serving the Syndics. I don’t know all of their reasons, but I suspect they were doing what they thought was the best thing. You met Captain Falco. How do you think he saw himself?”
“I know how he saw himself,” Geary said. “As the savior of the Alliance. As someone who knew the right things to do and would do them. He was wrong on all counts, but he was sincere. You think that’s what we’re dealing with?”
“You already said it,” Desjani replied. “Back at Atalia. They thought the dark ships were the perfect solution to all of their problems. And now that perfect solution has come home to roost.”
His eyes went back to his display. It would be hours before he knew whether or not the two destroyers had followed his orders. Or whether they would hold their ground, determined to do what they saw as their duty.
Usually, waiting was the worst part. This time, the worst part was knowing what was going to happen.
Two
“Admiral Geary, what’s going on?”
Admiral Timbale sounded as if he was torn between confusion and rage. His expression reflected the same tangle of emotions. “I received a fragmentary message from you, which then disappeared from the comm system. My comm techs were trying to find it and discovered that several messages had gone out under my name countermanding something you had sent even though I had no record of whatever that was. I don’t know why you’re heading for the hypernet gate so fast, or why comms between me and most of the ships in this star system are as messed up as if we had a corps of Syndic meegees at work here. I am requesting that you detach one of your destroyers to physically courier your latest messages to me, so I can be sure I have them and know what they say. Timbale, out.”
“He hasn’t even picked up on the threat, yet,” Geary said, appalled. “He thinks it might be the Syndics.” The term “meegee” was an ancient one, derived from an old acronym for electronic warfare techniques like intrusion, jamming, and interference. The equipment employed had changed considerably since the term was first introduced, but the basic concepts for sabotaging and confusing enemy comms and sensors still applied.
“How could he understand the threat if the software is deleting anything that might clue him in?” Desjani asked.
“Could there be Syndic meegees at work here? Or is this all the work of our own meegees?”
She laughed. “The lines blurred on that so long ago that no one knows. Our people weaponize some code, their people find it and mess with it a little and shoot it back at us, then we rework what they did and fire it at them, and who the hell knows where most of it came from anymore? There are more viruses on our systems than there are viruses in our bodies, and the ones in our computer systems keep evolving a lot faster.”
“All right,” Geary said. “But Timbale had the right idea. I’ll detach Hammer to carry my information to him.”
Her eyes were on her display. “She won’t get there in time.”
The dark ships were only ten hours’ travel time away from the hypernet gate as they held their velocity at point two light speed. Two light-hours’ distance. Roughly two billion kilometers. It was a very, very large distance. But in this case, it wasn’t nearly large enough. From where Geary’s ships were, the destroyer Hammer would take nearly seven hours to reach Admiral Timbale at the vast orbiting complex named Ambaru Station. A message sent from Ambaru to the two destroyers guarding the hypernet gate would take four hours to reach them. Even if Timbale sent that order immediately, it would get there an hour too late.
Geary sat morosely on the bridge of Dauntless as he watched the inevitable taking place, the dark ships getting closer and closer to the oblivious destroyers at the hypernet gate. The only good thing was the number of his own ships here, battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers, who were calling in to acknowledge having downloaded the software fix, usually accompanied by startled questions as to what the dark ships were and what were they doing at Varandal.