“I don’t know,” Rione said. “Costa sounded as if she was worried as well as suspicious, so if she was expecting something, it is not what we see. Suva has a deer-in-the-headlights look. I would guess that she has no idea what is going on and therefore is worried about what you, and Costa, and everyone else, is up to. But Sakai is sincere. I will stake my reputation on that.”
“Your reputation?” The words slipped out before Geary could stop them. He waited, expecting Rione to flare with cold fury.
Instead, she laughed. “You’re right. My reputation is something I would want to lose.”
“Not with me,” he insisted.
“I did lose it with you,” Rione said with self-mockery, a rare open (if oblique) mention of their brief liaison before they had learned that her husband had not died fighting the Syndics but was still alive as a prisoner. “I’ll see what I can find out,” she added, parroting Sakai, then left the bridge.
Desjani was still studying her display. “Admiral,” she said in low tones, “I don’t entirely trust what we’re seeing.”
He focused intensely on his display, seeing the many warships, each accompanied by status markers. The fleet looked like it had accomplished a lot of repair work while they had been gone.
A whole lot of repair work. An impossible amount of repair work. “Everything looks really good,” he commented back to her in a skeptical voice.
“That’s what I was thinking. The status feeds, the official status feeds, look like they’ve been heavily gun-decked. But this can’t be the work of a few officers falsifying the status of their ships to make them look good. Everybody must be doing it.” She gave him a frustrated look. “Let’s hope whoever has been in charge since Jane Geary left can explain what’s going on.”
“It’s probably Duellos,” Geary guessed, though he wondered if that was only because he hoped that was the case.
“Captain Duellos would be the wisest and best choice,” Desjani agreed in a way that made it clear that the last thing she expected from fleet headquarters was choices that were either wise or good. “The comm traffic we’re seeing is all routine, for what that is worth.”
“If not Duellos, maybe Tulev,” Geary suggested.
“If they went by seniority, it would be Badaya.” Tanya eyed him. “I admit that I’ve been wondering how much of his conversion to the wisdom of letting the government stay in control is real. He used to be very enthusiastic about the prospect of a military coup.”
“I’ve convinced him otherwise,” Geary said with more certainty than he felt. “If Badaya had done something, we would be hearing all about it in the messages and news feeds we’re receiving.”
“Except that the status reports for the warships in the fleet look faked,” she reminded him. “How do we know the rest of this stuff hasn’t been scrubbed and sanitized to present an image of normalcy?”
“I don’t think ‘normalcy’ is a word,” he grumbled.
“Yes, it is.”
Instead of continuing the debate, Geary called up one of the news feeds which Dauntless could now receive. Even after so much time in space, he still half expected the news to be immediately filled with excited reports of Dauntless’s return to Varandal. But it would be hours before the light from Dauntless’s arrival got to the inner star system, and hours more before the reactions to that in the news would be seen by the battle cruiser. Instead, the news seemed to be the same mix of political turmoil and dissent, economic worries, concerns about what was happening in those Syndic star systems nearest to Alliance territory, and speculations about the future of the Alliance. A “special report” on the two new alien species whose existence had been discovered by Geary’s fleet in the regions beyond Syndicate Worlds space contained a great deal more speculation and some information he recognized as coming from his own reports to the government. Word that Dauntless had escorted the six Dancer ships to Sol Star System had clearly spread far and wide, with various “experts” who had never actually encountered the Dancers or any other alien species holding forth on the perceived wisdom and significance of that mission.
At best, it was entertaining. But the plethora of message traffic and video feeds they could receive was more than anything else exasperating because none of them addressed the fact that Captain Jane Geary and her battleships had left Varandal or revealed who had been in charge of the fleet since her departure. All Geary and the others aboard Dauntless could do was wait the more than three hours it took for a welcoming message to be sent and finally reach them.
Humanity might still be trying to figure out what time was, but there was no doubt in Geary’s mind that time deliberately ran slower at times like this. The three hours felt like an entire day of waiting. He was nonetheless startled when a high-priority message was received within seconds of the earliest possible time they could have expected one.
“Badaya?” Desjani murmured as that officer’s image appeared.
The message-origin identification on the transmission left no doubt that Captain Badaya, once the loosest cannon among those in the fleet who proposed a military coup to replace an Alliance government seen as corrupt and incompetent, was acting commander of the fleet.
As if anticipating the reaction to seeing him, Badaya grinned wolfishly.
Seven
Badaya smiled wider. “Welcome back, Admiral. I am in command of the fleet.”
He paused, while Geary glowered at his image and Desjani muttered some curses involving a quick trip to the afterlife and abundant torture therein for Badaya.
“Or, I was in command,” Badaya continued. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. “I will now, of course, return command of the First Fleet to you. My report of significant activity while serving as acting commander of the fleet will be very brief because not much of significance happened. I am looking forward to seeing you in person, of course.
“Just to clarify things, I was ordered to act as fleet commander until your return. Ordered by fleet headquarters, in the same set of orders that tasked Captain Jane Geary to take her battleship division and some supporting forces to recover some Alliance prisoners of war from former Syndicate territory. Captain Geary followed her orders, as did I.”
Badaya smiled again, and Geary finally understood the reason for his delight. “They expected him to run amuck,” he said to Desjani. “He knew that, and he didn’t do it. He’s happy because he screwed up the plans of whoever decided to send Jane off and specified Badaya to be acting fleet commander.”
“Why is it that people I don’t like keep doing the right things?” Desjani complained.
“I am now once again subject to your orders, Admiral,” Badaya finished with obvious satisfaction. “The fleet has followed all orders, just as you ordered. Our honor remains unstained. To the honor of our ancestors, Badaya, out.”
Geary sat silently for a few moments after the message ended, then looked over at Tanya. “What do you think?”
“I think,” she said, “that Captain Badaya knew exactly what we would be worried about, me especially, and took considerable pleasure in letting me and those senators, who you notice are listed as cc recipients on that message, know that he has done exactly as ordered and has done nothing treasonous, dishonorable, criminal, treacherous, seditious, corrupt, insubordinate, subversive, or stupid.”
“No loose cannons here,” Geary said. “He wasn’t exactly subtle about the everyone following their orders thing.”
“Badaya?” she asked. “Badaya’s idea of subtle is a supernova.”