“If I see him again—”
“Admiral,” Desjani interrupted. “I dealt with it. If it had gone beyond words, I would have brought charges. And I told him that I’d be keeping an eye on him, so I’d know if he tried anything with any of my crew.”
Geary shook his head, still enraged. What surprised him was the realization that while he had been appalled by the idea of Bloch or anyone else breaking their oaths to the Alliance and staging a military coup, he was far more disgusted to know that Bloch had broken faith with his responsibilities as a commander, with his responsibilities to his subordinates, and with everyone else serving. I was already determined to stop Bloch if he tried anything. But now, it’s personal.
The next day, as he was working in his stateroom, still trying to catch up on the status of the First Fleet while fending off requests from the media for more interviews, an urgent call interrupted him. Geary felt a wave of guilty relief at the interruption because plowing through status reports for hundreds of ships and thousands of personnel had never been his idea of a fun time.
“Diamond is back,” Desjani reported.
Diamond? It took a moment for him to recall what the special significance of that heavy cruiser was. “Are the Dancers with her?”
“Not y— Hold on. There they are. All six Dancer ships also arrived. They all came in at a jump point two and a half light-hours from our current orbit.”
General Charban had called in as soon as Diamond arrived at Varandal, his message arriving right after the light revealing the presence of the ships.
Charban looked fairly well rested for once, which Geary realized had to be because he had been able to relax in jump space, where communications with the Dancers were impossible. “You’ll be pleased to hear that the Dancers had an understandable reason for going to Durnan Star System, Admiral. They wanted to check on the remains of a Dancer settlement that had once been there. I know what you’re thinking. How did we miss the presence of ruins of a settlement belonging to an alien species on a heavily populated planet in a star system long occupied by humans?
“According to the local authorities, in the time I had to speak with them, the ancient ruins in question were so odd, so unlike those of any human structures, that they were labeled natural features that just happened to resemble the work of intelligent creatures. Apparently, the concept of alien remains a little unclear among our experts in the field. However, the Dancers also got across to me that their settlement should have been much larger than the small area of ruins that still exist. Somehow, most of the settlement was obliterated so thoroughly that no remains could be detected, nor signs of the destruction.”
Desjani nodded sharply as she heard that part. “Enigmas. It must have been them. You remember how they wiped out any trace of human presence in places like Hina Star System.”
“Something must have interrupted the enigmas in their work at Durnan,” Geary speculated. “The arrival of the first human colony ships?”
“What the hell were Dancers and enigmas doing so deep in what became human space?” Desjani wondered.
Charban was still speaking. “I could not determine from the Dancers why they had long ago attempted to place a colony at Durnan, which is a very long distance from the region of space they currently occupy. They did not express any desire to reoccupy the star system, they did not claim any ownership, they did not even try to claim the ruins. I got the impression that what mattered to them was that someone still lived in that star system. Someone intelligent, that is. After determining that no records or remains of their own kind were located at or near the ruins, the Dancers headed toward the jump point for Kami.
“All they did at Kami was transit through the system, heading straight for the jump for Taranis. At Taranis, they spent a long time traveling through the star system, but wouldn’t explain what they were doing or why. Then they jumped for Dogoda.
“Long story short, we went on a tour of star systems, tending gradually back toward this part of space, until the Dancers finally jumped for Varandal again. Aside from the stop at Durnan, we’re not sure what the purposes of any of the other visits were. Nor am I sure they will remain at Varandal.”
Charban paused, looking worried. “I do have the distinct impression that the Dancers are agitated about something they refer to as unraveling. But who or what is unraveling, they don’t say. I’ll speak more with you as we get closer to your ship and a real conversation is possible. Charban, out.”
“Maybe they were looking for signs of survivors from that settlement who might have tried to get back home,” Desjani speculated. “Here’s how their trip looks on a display.”
The image popped up over the stateroom’s table, a three-dimensional star map with the path of the Dancers through Alliance space marked by glowing lines. “If there’s supposed to be some shape or pattern to that, I can’t see it,” Geary commented.
“It’s sort of a warped sphere, isn’t it? They came back here by a roundabout route so there would have to be something circular about their path. About that unraveling thing, Admiral. I’ve got a suspicion that the Dancers have some sort of faster-than-light communications capability just like the enigmas do.”
“That’s possible. We have no idea how long those two species have been in contact. But the enigma system isn’t instantaneous and doesn’t appear to be capable of sending much data or detail.”
Desjani nodded. “Exactly. Maybe the Dancers themselves don’t know what the problem is. Maybe they got a message that caused them to bolt for Durnan, then later some other stuff that got them worried but couldn’t tell them exactly what’s going on.”
“That’s possible,” Geary repeated. “We can’t know if it’s true, though.”
“If it is true, then I predict the next thing we hear from the Dancers will be an announcement that they want to go home.”
It took barely six hours for Desjani’s prediction to be proven accurate.
“The Dancers want to leave,” Charban reported. “They want to leave soon. They want us to escort them back through Syndic space via the Syndic hypernet to Midway. I’m pretty certain that they intend saying farewell to us at Midway and going the rest of the way home on their own.”
Oh, great. Geary gazed sourly at the representation of the Dancer ships on his display. Here I am, reading the latest government communication directing me to convince the Dancers to visit the Alliance capital at Unity, and the Dancers instead want to leave without ever having gone there. And this morning I got a message saying a team of official alien liaison experts is coming to Varandal to take over all future interactions with the Dancers, but they’re not scheduled to arrive for another two weeks at the earliest.
Charban was wrapping up. “I’ll try to get them to define what they mean by soon. Charban, out.”
Back through Syndic territory. Through the Syndic hypernet, which could be manipulated by the Syndic government to block gates, and through star systems governed by people who had signed a peace agreement but were still waging a form of covert war on the Alliance. The Syndics had already demonstrated their intent to keep destroying Alliance warships when possible, and had not been thrilled to know that the Alliance was establishing friendly contact with the Dancers, a friendly contact that could be disrupted if the Dancer emissaries being escorted by the Alliance suffered from “accidents” while in Syndic space. “Tanya? We’ve got a problem.”