“Every four hours.” Nasr eyed the images with concern. “They are… unhappy with their circumstances. They have, I believe, gone through denial, anger, and bargaining. They are now in depression. I am not sure they will ever reach acceptance.”
It might have been funny except for the obvious misery of the two lieutenants, who had one moment been walking along a street on Old Earth, and the next found themselves awakening together in the tightest form of medical quarantine current technology could achieve. “Are they being medicated?”
“Yes. Minimum necessary doses.” Nasr squinted at the two figures again. “I will have to increase it. I do not know what else I can do to ease their mutual distress.”
“I know how they feel, I think,” Geary said. “From what I’ve seen of Castries and Yuon, they get along all right normally, but these are not normal circumstances. On my first ship, there was another junior officer and I who did not get along at all. The only thing that made it tolerable was that we occupied different watch sections. When I was awake and working, he was usually asleep, and vice versa. We rarely had to actually interact. If we had, we probably would have been like those two are now.”
The doctor frowned, then smiled. “We should speak more often, Admiral. That is an excellent solution.”
“It is?” Geary asked, flattered by Nasr’s praise but also uncertain what solution he had apparently just provided.
“Yes.” The doctor was already at work, entering commands on the unit he held in one hand. “I will shift the sleep cycle of one of them and keep the other awake, using the proper dosages of medications. Within a few days, I will have their patterns firmly established, so that when one is awake, the other is asleep. While they will continue to physically share the compartment, they will not have to endure the conscious presence of the other but can even feel some degree of privacy with their forced company rendered insensible.”
“Will that be safe?” Geary asked. “Doping them for the next few weeks like that?”
“Perfectly safe,” Nasr said, waving his hands in a dismissive way. “And much, much safer than keeping them both awake and aware of each other for that period! I am grateful to you, Admiral. I made the elementary mistake of assuming I knew what the question must be, which made me see the wrong paths to the answer.”
Geary looked at Dr. Nasr, running the physician’s words through his mind. “We need to be sure we’re asking the right question in order to get the right answer? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes. If you only think you know the question, the answers you come up with will not be adequate or correct.”
Geary left sick bay, deep in thought, barely aware of greeting the sailors he passed as he walked. What the doctor had told him was important. Very important. Something told him that.
Unfortunately, whatever that something was could not tell him why the words were important.
Among the many things he had once never considered worrying about was what he might find when arriving at an Alliance star system. It would have been like being concerned every time he got home for the night and opened the door, wondering what might be inside. Certainly there was the chance of a surprise, but not the sort of surprise that might threaten not only him but also all he cared about.
But that, and many other things, had changed in the last century.
He was on the bridge again, which felt fairly crowded with all of the official representatives present. The three senators were at the back, pretending not to fight over precedence for the observer’s seat and its display. General Charban and Victoria Rione, the two envoys, stood to one side, pretending to be engaged in a casual conversation, having formed an unlikely alliance of their own against the covert pressures being brought against each of them.
Desjani was doing her best to ignore all of the representatives, pretending to be totally absorbed in preparing her ship for arrival at Varandal.
That left Geary to offer respectful greetings in a manner he hoped would not be interpreted as pretend, and to notice a certain level of tension among the three senators. They seemed to be just as worried about what they might find at Varandal as Geary was.
There wasn’t any transition jolt confusing the mind such as occurred when coming out of jump. Instead, the stars appeared around them as Dauntless arrived at Varandal, the only immediate and obvious indication that they had left the bubble of nothing inside the hypernet and were surrounded by the real universe again. Geary dropped his study of the three senators and scanned his display, waiting as impatiently for it to update as he would when showing up at an enemy star system.
“Dreadnaught is gone,” Tanya said just as he also caught that. “So are Dependable and Conqueror.”
“There are some heavy cruisers and destroyers missing, too,” he said.
“Looks like two divisions of heavy cruisers and four squadrons of destroyers.” Desjani shook her head. “A task force of some kind.”
“Why would Jane leave Varandal when I left her in temporary command of the fleet?” Geary demanded, keeping his voice low.
“If you’re thinking she just hared off on her own initiative, I don’t think that happened,” she cautioned. “This looks like an ordered movement to me.”
“Those three battleships weren’t in very good shape. They needed a lot of repair work. Why would anyone order them—”
Senator Costa’s voice broke into their discussion. “Some ships are missing! Why? Where did they go?”
Geary took a moment to ensure that when he turned to answer, his irritation at both the question and the suspicious tone in which it had been voiced wasn’t showing. “I will let you know as soon as I know, Senator.”
“You’re asking us to believe that major components of this fleet have gone somewhere without your orders?” Costa asked.
Rione answered before he could. “Why is that so remarkable? Fleet headquarters, or the government, could have sent the entire fleet on some task while we were gone. Were you expecting something different here?”
That question, though posed in a diffident and mild tone, made Costa flush slightly. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing! Is anyone implying anything?” Rione could sound amazingly innocent when she wanted to.
Costa’s flush changed into a glower. “I will go collect some updates on the situation here. I am certain there will be messages waiting for me,” she announced, pivoting to march off the bridge.
Suva had said nothing, scanning the situation with wary eyes.
Senator Sakai, though, walked up to Geary’s seat. “Admiral, I would be grateful for your honest appraisal of what we are seeing here.”
“It’s still hard to tell much.” Geary hedged, trying to decide how much to trust Sakai. After all, Sakai must have voted in favor of a number of actions that struck Geary as misguided at best. But if he is trying to help, if what we saw on Old Earth has made Sakai rethink things, then I would be a fool to keep him at arm’s length.
“But I am concerned,” Geary continued. “The battleship that is commanded by the acting fleet commander is gone, along with the rest of her division. She wouldn’t have left unless ordered to go, but none of those battleships was in good enough condition to conduct a combat mission after they were badly damaged fighting the Kicks and the enigmas.”
“I will see what I can learn,” Sakai told Geary, then left.
Geary beckoned to Rione, who came close enough to be inside the privacy field he activated around his seat. “Do you think that Costa or the other two senators were expecting anything to be happening here?”