He slumped back, rubbing his forehead, after the conversation ended.
Desjani gave him a sympathetic look. “Will Incredible make it?”
“Beats the hell out of me. She deserves a chance, though. When is Intrepid going to be scuttled?” As they’d feared, that battle cruiser had suffered so much structural damage in addition to other injuries that there was no way to get her fixed up enough to accompany the fleet from this star system. Instead, her power core would be overloaded, blowing the ship into pieces too small for the Syndics to exploit. Desjani bounced the question to her engineering watch-stander, who answered quickly. “Tomorrow, Captain. Late. They’re sure they’ll have everything salvageable off her by then. The two biggest pieces of Courageous are scheduled to be blown up tonight.”
“Should we tell Duellos?” Desjani asked Geary.
He thought about that. “Have you ever lost a ship?”
“A destroyer at Xaqui, a battle cruiser at Vasil, another destroyer at Gotha, a heavy cruiser at Fingal—”
“You were commanding officer of all those?”
“Just the second destroyer and the heavy cruiser after the one at Fingal.”
Geary stared at Desjani. She’d discussed some of her combat experience, but had never dwelt on her own actions or provided details of what had happened to the ships she’d been on. “I’m sorry. You don’t talk about them very much.”
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t. We both know why. And that answers my question about Duellos and Courageous, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Courageous was his ship. He can decide if he wants to see her final moments.”
“I’ll pass the word to Cresida, then.”
“Thanks. If you ever do want to talk…” Geary offered.
“I know. Same here.”
“I’ll remember that.” He pulled out the scale on the display to view the entire star system. Syndic merchant shipping was still fleeing for any relatively safe place. There didn’t seem to be any fixed-orbit defenses in Heradao to worry about, though he suspected they’d find a number of those on the third planet. As Desjani had pointed out, the smaller Syndic flotilla had broken up, its component ships heading in different directions, none of those vectors anywhere near the Alliance warships. There were still the Syndic HuKs standing picket duty at the jump points, of course, but they weren’t a threat and couldn’t be caught anyway. Geary leaned back, willing himself to relax now that the hard part was over. Maybe it was over not just in the sense of Heradao, either. What could the Syndics have left to contest the fleet’s return to Alliance space? No, the hardest part would be trying to block out more memories of exploding warships.
The only remaining contact with the enemy that the fleet had to handle would be whatever was needed to pick up the Alliance prisoners of war held in the labor camp on the third planet. The fleet’s sensors had confirmed that the camp was still there and apparently still occupied by a couple of thousand Alliance prisoners of war. Getting them liberated would require some negotiations, and doubtless some threats, but they’d been down this road before. “Madam Co-President,” he asked Rione, “could you get in contact with the Syndics and see how difficult it’s going to be to get our POWs off the third planet? Use any necessary threats, and you’re free to promise them that we won’t bombard the planet if they play nice.”
Rione gestured to the communications watch. “Please set up a link to the Syndic command net. When the link is ready, I’ll send them a preliminary message.” She then settled back herself to await the establishment of the link to the Syndic authorities in this star system. And waited.
Desjani finally intervened. She might not personally like Rione, but failing to provide proper support to a member of the Alliance government would reflect badly on her ship. “What’s the difficulty? Why haven’t you established a link for the co-president’s transmission?”
“Captain, the Syndic net we’ve observed since entering this star system doesn’t seem to be working right.” The communications watch-stander seemed baffled. “It’s still there, but we’re seeing very strange activity.”
“Strange activity?” Desjani pressed.
“Yes, Captain, it’s ongoing, so it’s hard to assess. It’s almost as if…” The watch-stander’s apparent bafflement increased. “We just received a transmission addressed to us. Someone calling themselves the Heradao governing council has sent us a message from the third planet. They insist on speaking with Captain Geary.”
Geary covered his eyes with one hand, unwilling to bandy words with Syndic CEOs right now. “Tell them that Captain Geary isn’t particularly interested in talking at the moment.” The third planet was a little over two and a half light-hours away at the moment. Conversations in which an exchange of information required five hours had never been his favorite pastime.
“But… sir, they say they’ve established a new government here, and they want to negotiate the status of the star system with you.”
His hand came down and Geary swiveled to stare at the watch-stander, but Rione spoke before he could. “These people didn’t identify themselves as the Syndic commanders in the star system?” she asked.
“No, Madam Co-President. The Heradao governing council. That’s how the message ID shows up.”
“Are there still transmissions coming from the Syndic authorities in Heradao?”
“Uh… yes, ma’am.” The watch-stander shook his head in puzzlement. “The system just identified another new transmission ID, this time from the Free Planet of Heradao Four, whoever that is. Captain Desjani, the Syndic command and control net in this star system seems to be shredding. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s as if—”
Rione had moved to stand by the watch, peering at the readouts and patterns on the communications display. “As if people are grabbing whichever pieces of it they can get their hands on and trying to break those pieces out from the command net.” She turned to look at Geary. “I’ve seen something like this. This star system is dissolving into civil war.”
“Where could you have seen something like that?” Desjani demanded, shocked into speaking directly to Rione.
“At Geradin. In Alliance space,” Rione added calmly. “I wasn’t there, but the records were provided to the Alliance Senate. I studied them.”
“Geradin?” Geary questioned. “Where’s that?”
“A backwater system, low population and fairly isolated, especially since the hypernet was established, which nonetheless kept sending its best to the Alliance military.” Rione made a gesture of distaste.
“Which left the field open for the far-from-best to foment trouble. An attempted silent coup turned into open fighting and the subsequent collapse of central authority.” She faced Desjani. “And, no, you never heard about it. Security. It wouldn’t do to let the people of the Alliance know what could happen even in a place like Geradin.”
“Collapsing authority,” Geary muttered, eyeing his own display. “Are we seeing signs of open fighting among the Syndics?” No one answered, so Geary punched a control. “Lieutenant Iger. We have indications that central authority in this star system is collapsing or being challenged. I need an assessment and reports on what’s happening on each planet as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir! We’re working on it.”
Geary watched the information available to him, gratified to see more of the Alliance escape pods being picked up. Around the Alliance escape pods, much larger swarms of Syndic pods headed for the nearest refuge. He wondered how the survivors of the Syndic flotilla would align themselves within the star system. For a central authority that might be disintegrating? With any of at least two rebel factions? Or fort up on bases and try to ride out the rebellion until Syndic enforcers arrived in warships to bombard the rebels into submission?