It took a conscious effort to open the message and view its contents. Geary braced himself, counting down before his finger tapped the command.
Three. Two. One.
Eight
Like the average fleet officer, Geary had always thought of fleet headquarters as a distant place occupied by people whose primary jobs were to satisfy the desires of supreme commanders to have bigger staff empires than their counterparts, and to make up arbitrary, arduous, and absurd things to order the men and women in fleet units to carry out. But, since being reawakened and thrust into roles in which he dealt much more frequently with fleet headquarters, he had learned a lot more about that staff, and as a result, his distrust had grown by leaps and bounds.
As the message played, Geary saw two images standing before him instead of a single person. “This is Admiral Tosic,” the tall, lean fleet officer said, his tone of voice challenging, “supreme commander of Alliance fleet operations.” The former fleet supreme commander, Admiral Celu, had been replaced already? He wondered if Celu had retired voluntarily or if she had been pushed out.
The woman next to Tosic sounded less belligerent, but still forceful. “General Javier, supreme commander of Alliance ground forces.”
“Your orders, Admiral Geary,” Tosic began without any polite preliminaries, “are to take the First Battle Cruiser Division along with a squadron of light cruisers and three squadrons of destroyers to Adriana Star System. No additional fleet forces are authorized under any circumstances. Operation analysis at fleet headquarters confirms that a task force of that size will be adequate for the assigned mission, and current limitations on funding do not permit the luxury of deploying more forces than needed. Once at Adriana, you are to coordinate with Alliance ground forces to carry out the return of Syndic refugees to Batara Star System, taking any actions necessary and proper to ensure that the refugee problem at Adriana is resolved. Upon completion of that mission, return your forces to Varandal and await further orders. Tosic, out.”
The images vanished. Geary regarded the area before him where they had been, then called up a star display to refresh his memory of Adriana and Batara, wondering why he had a dim memory of the latter star system. As he had recalled, Adriana was inside Alliance space, but Batara… “Tanya, can you come down to my stateroom? I want to discuss my new orders with you.”
She was there within minutes, frowning, as Geary played the message again and Admiral Tosic delivered the orders.
“You know,” Tanya remarked acidly as the message ended, “Tosic thinks he sounds powerful when he talks like that, but he really just sounds pompous. Where’s Batara?”
“Here.” Geary indicated a star display he had just reactivated. “I remembered it because it used to be part of the Hansa Group.”
“The Hansa Group?”
“It was an association of four star systems that rejected all invitations to join with the Alliance or the Syndicate Worlds,” Geary explained. “They wanted to be completely independent.”
Desjani glanced at the star display. “Since Batara has been in Syndic space for a really long time, I guess that didn’t work out too well for the Hansa Group.”
“No. One day, the Syndics swept in, claiming they had been invited, and took over. That was about three years before the Syndics attacked the Alliance. It was the biggest war scare we had before… well, before we had a war.”
“We didn’t do anything?” Desjani asked, biting off each word as it came out.
“No.” He remembered that all too well, the mix of anticipation in the Alliance fleet that the Syndics might finally get their heads slapped hard, and fear of whether such a limited operation to restore Hansa Group independence would escalate into a wider war between the Alliance and the Syndics. But he said nothing about that, guessing that Tanya and other people from this time would find such concerns incomprehensible.
“Maybe if we’d done something…” she growled.
“Maybe,” Geary said. “Maybe it would have given the Syndics enough pause that they never attacked the Alliance. Or, it might have led to the same war, starting three years earlier. It’s a road not taken, Tanya. We don’t know where it would have led. Maybe to this exact same destination.”
“Not exactly. You wouldn’t be here.” She eyed him, then smiled. “Or maybe you would be, if that was intended to happen no matter what.” The smile faded as quickly as it had come. “Refugees from Batara are getting to Adriana? They would have to go through Yokai to reach Adriana. Yokai never fell to the Syndics during the war even though there were some nasty fights there. Why aren’t the Alliance defenses at Yokai stopping the refugees now?”
Geary reached out to tap the image of the Alliance-controlled star, gazing at the data that appeared next to it. “I passed through Yokai a couple of times, a hundred years ago. Not a lot there. Small towns and orbiting facilities scattered around the marginal and uninhabitable planets that orbit the star. They subsisted mainly on the interstellar traffic passing through on its way to somewhere else. It looks like those towns disappeared a long time before the hypernet was constructed and eliminated most of that traffic, though.”
She pointed again. “Everything that wasn’t destroyed by Syndic attacks was abandoned or converted into fortifications and defense facilities.”
“What happened to the people who lived there?”
“The ones who didn’t die? The usual, most likely, since Yokai doesn’t have any planets that are habitable for humans, had a fairly small population, and no cities. See, Yokai is a Special Defensive Zone, off-limits to all but the military. When the star system was designated an SDZ, the civilians who lived and worked there would have been relocated. A lot of them probably got sent to Adriana.” She paused for several long seconds, looking at the star display in a gloomy way. “Not a lot of people, I guess, compared to a star system with a habitable planet and a good-sized population, but they all lost their homes.”
“Alliance refugees,” Geary said.
“Yeah. And now Adriana has a new batch of refugees to worry about. But why aren’t they being stopped before they get there?” She peered at the display, suddenly intent. “Hold on.” Tanya touched an inconspicuous symbol next to Yokai, waited, then touched it again. “I’m getting a classified data refusal. What information is supposed to be classified above the level of a fleet captain? You’re fleet commander. Try hitting that.”
He reached out and touched the same symbol, producing a notice that popped into existence. “I guess I’m cleared for it. Ancestors!” He couldn’t help saying that as he saw what the previously hidden notice reported.
The civilians had been kicked out of Yokai many decades before. Now the military had also left. Even though the outer layer of information on the display had shown strong defenses still in place at Yokai, the classified notice dated to the most recent update of Dauntless’s information reported that in fact those war-related bases were now deserted, hastily closed down and mothballed as part of the drastic scaling back in defense outlays by the Alliance government. “That explains why Yokai isn’t stopping the refugees. There’s no one there to stop them. Or even report that they’re coming through.”
“They shut down the border defenses facing the Syndics there?” Desjani asked incredulously. “Were they surprised when that created problems?”
“They might have been surprised if they were deeply enough in denial,” Geary said. “Or if different offices didn’t tell each other what they were doing. Adriana must be mad as hell about this.”