“That’s all it has to be,” Cresida agreed. “If it’s presented as a possibility of any hypernet gate’s spontaneously collapsing at any time or subject to the Syndics causing a collapse, backed up by images of what happened at Lakota, then people will have all the reasons they need to act.”
“Okay. We’ll talk again before we jump for Varandal. Thank you for coming to this meeting, thank you for your advice, and thank you for your continued discretion on what we think is true about these aliens.”
“If only we knew more,” Cresida commented. “I’m still working on my design for a safe-fail system we can install on hypernet gates as quickly and easily as possible. I think I’ll have it ready by the time we reach Atalia.”
“Let’s hope so.” Duellos sighed. “Since we know so little of what these creatures may do or what they want.”
“Feathers or lead?” Desjani asked, invoking the ancient riddle in which only the demon asking the question knew the right answer and could change it at any time. As Duellos had once pointed out, the aliens, too, were riddles in which both the answers and the questions did not just remain unknown but also reflected thought processes estranged from the humans trying to understand their purposes and meaning.
“That’s my question, Captain Desjani. I’ll thank you not to play demon with my riddle. Just out of curiosity, though, what was the right answer this time?”
She smiled unpleasantly. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Women can be just as enigmatic as demons.”
“You don’t honestly think I’m going to touch that line, do you?”
As the images of Tulev, Cresida, and Duellos disappeared, Desjani frowned down at her personal data unit. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m needed in engineering.” She hastened out, leaving Geary and Rione alone. Rione, seeming uncharacteristically subdued, turned to go as well, but stopped before leaving. Standing near the hatch and still facing it, she spoke to Geary. “What happened to Captain Tulev? He said he had nothing left.”
Geary nodded, recalling the personnel files he had read. “His family, wife, and children died in a Syndic bombardment of their home world.”
“Oh, damn.” Rione shook her head. “That’s horrible, but it should’ve left something. Some other relatives. What world was it?”
He tried to remember. There were so many worlds. “Elys… Elysa?”
“Elyzia?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Geary stared at her, bothered that the name had come so readily to her. “What happened to it?”
“Syndic bombardment,” Rione murmured so low he almost didn’t hear. “But prolonged, part of a very large strike at the Alliance. Most of the world’s surface was devastated, the great majority of the population killed. After the Syndics were repelled, the world was written off, the survivors evacuated except for a few who insisted on staying to occupy rebuilt defensive installations, in case the Syndics ever came back. Captain Tulev spoke the literal truth. He has nothing left.” She looked directly at him.
“Except the fleet. Did you realize that you and he share that?”
“No.” Geary searched for other words and couldn’t find any.
“We retaliated at Yunren,” Rione continued, as if speaking to herself. “A Syndic border star system. There’s nothing left of Yunren, either, except a few defenses occupied by diehards who continue to live only for the chance to kill some of those who wiped out their world. Both sides have avoided repeating that since then, though I don’t know if that’s because it takes so much work to devastate an entire world or because everyone was horrified at how low we had sunk.”
Geary shook his head, feeling sick inside. “How could anyone give such orders?”
“Oh, it’s easy enough, Captain Geary. You just have to form your plans somewhere far from the enemy while looking at a large star display with lots of little planets on it. Just dots with strange names. Targets. Not the homes of people like you, but targets that must be wiped out in the name of protecting people like you. It’s very easy,” she repeated, “to rationalize the murder of millions or billions.”
“That’s strange,” Geary commented. “I’ve talked to Marines. They say they have to dehumanize the individuals they kill in order to be able to fight, and they have to worry that the process will go too far and they’ll kill individuals who aren’t really a threat. But on the other end of the scale, the highest-ranking individuals, who’ll never confront an individual enemy, have to dehumanize them by the hundreds, thousands, or millions.”
She turned to look at him. “I sometimes wonder if the aliens are right, and that humanity can be counted upon to wipe itself out someday.”
“I hope not. Personally viewing the events at Lakota seems to have impressed a lot of people in this fleet. There’s no way to distance yourself from events when you watch a habitable planet be devastated that way by a single blow.”
“It does appear to have had a strong impact. What about Captain Cresida? The way she looked at Tulev as if they shared something. Was her family from Elyzia as well?”
“No,” Geary replied. “Her husband was a fleet officer. They were married about a year before he died in battle.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Two years.”
Rione nodded. “After ten years I still expect to see my husband sometimes. Would Captain Cresida accept condolences from me?”
“I think so. She’s never spoken of it to me, but you do share that kind of loss.”
Her sigh came out slow and long, like the last breath of a dying runner. “I don’t know if the living stars truly arranged for you to be here now, John Geary, but there are times when I think about this war and pray desperately that they did, and that you can bring an end to this.”
She left then, leaving Geary looking at the closed hatch.
THREE
Heradao. As the ships of the Alliance fleet flashed into existence at the jump exit from Dilawa, Geary’s first thought was that only three more jumps would bring the fleet home. His second thought was to wonder how hard it would be to get through Heradao Star System, but he’d have the answer to that soon enough. The fleet’s sensors, sensitive enough to spot small objects across light-hours of distance, scanned their surroundings and rapidly updated the display before Geary.
“They’re here,” Desjani noted calmly, even though her eyes were lighting with enthusiasm at the prospect of combat. “But nowhere close by.”
Geary kept his breathing slow and calm as enemy warships multiplied on his display in a flurry of updates. The main Syndic flotilla, arrayed in their customary box formation, was almost four light-hours away, loitering in an orbit around Heradao’s star. A second and much smaller flotilla orbited a bit farther off, about five light-hours from the Alliance ships. As Desjani said, that wasn’t close. Even if the main Syndic flotilla turned directly toward the Alliance fleet for an intercept, it would still be more than a day before the opposing forces got close enough to fight. “I thought we’d see more in the way of system defenses since we’re getting closer to the border.”
Desjani made a noncommittal gesture. “Yes and no. The warships assigned to defend this star system would have been substantially more in quality and quantity than we’ve been encountering deeper in Syndic space. The smaller flotilla we’re seeing may be made up of those system-defense forces. But I’m not surprised to see nothing significant in the way of new fixed defenses. We’re still two jumps from a Syndic star system right on the border. The border star systems get priority on defenses. I’m sure the Syndics would like to be able to place more defenses in star systems farther from the border, but they face the same constraints on resources and funds that we do.” She popped up a display spanning a huge region of space, centered on the border. “That’s especially true because as you get one jump in from the border, you greatly expand the number of star systems that need to be defended. Go two jumps from the border, and the number of star systems in the zone increases exponentially. It’s simply too huge an area with too many star systems to disperse strong defenses across evenly.”