“No doubt,” Geary agreed.
“Are you planning on asking them to fight alongside us?”
He glanced at her. “That doesn’t strike me as a good idea. What about you?”
“It’d be a horrible idea,” Desjani stated firmly. “Going into battle with Syndic warships within weapons range? I don’t care what the peace treaty says; I don’t care that we’re suddenly supposed to be on the same side here. You’d still have a very high chance that any number of Alliance warships would ‘accidentally’ target those Syndics.” She thought, then shrugged. “Actually, in the heat of an engagement they might really target the Syndics just out of force of habit, without deliberate intent to strike at someone we’re supposed to be at peace with now. We’ve spent our whole lives thinking of the Syndics as the enemy, as targets. That won’t change overnight.”
Desjani held his eyes for a moment, and he saw the message there. If Dauntless were within range of some of those Syndics, I might do that in the heat of battle, target them because they’ve always been the enemy. I probably wouldn’t do it on purpose, but I probably wouldn’t feel bad about it afterward, either.
So Geary nodded in a way that conveyed he understood both what she had said and what she had not said. “Thank you for your candor. It’s very important that I keep hearing things like that. Even aside from the concerns you rightly raised, I don’t think having the Syndics operate with us would work. We don’t have any procedures in place for that, nothing that would ensure we and the Syndics can follow what each other says and does.”
“There’s that, too. Are you going to tell her to keep far, far away from us, then?”
“Not in so many words.” Geary kept his voice level and expression neutral as he sent his reply to the Syndic flotilla commander. “Thank you for your offer of assistance, but given the recent state of hostilities between our peoples and the lack of mutually agreed-upon operating procedures, the chance of misunderstanding or misinterpretation would be too high. We request that your flotilla assume a position roughly one-third of the distance from this star system’s primary inhabited world to the location at which the aliens are expected to appear. This fleet will proceed to an orbit about two-thirds of the distance to the expected alien position. To the honor of our ancestors. Geary out.”
Desjani shook her head in apparent disbelief. “I don’t know how you can talk to them.”
“You mean how I know how to phrase things? I encountered Syndic warships earlier in my career, over a century ago, when we were at peace. I had to learn the wording back then.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Desjani’s jaw tightened as her eyes went distant with memories. “I don’t know how you can talk to them at all except to threaten or demand. I couldn’t. I’m not sure any other officer in the fleet could.” She switched her gaze to him, appraising now. “The living stars knew more than we imagined. They knew we’d need you to save the fleet, to win the war, and that we’d also need you now, someone without the bitterness and anger of the rest of us who’ve been fighting these bastards all of our lives. Someone who could talk to the Syndics once more.”
The mission again. He had hoped with the war over the idea that he had been sent from the past by the living stars would fade quickly. But Desjani had always held fast to her faith, and she wouldn’t be the only one who kept seeing the hands of higher powers in events. So Geary tried not to flinch at her words.
But she saw his reaction anyway. “I’m sorry. I know you aren’t comfortable with my speaking of it.”
“I’m only a man,” he reminded her.
“Only?” Desjani grinned. “Yes, sir.” He had figured out sometime ago that a simple “yes, sir” from Desjani meant she didn’t really agree. But then her grin went away as quickly as it had come. “The point is, you’re still needed.”
“I can’t be the only one who can do certain things, Tanya. Others have to learn because I can’t be everywhere, and I won’t be around forever.”
“Granted.” She grimaced. “I’ll try.”
“You’ve already done a lot more than try, Captain Desjani, and I appreciate that. All right, another six hours or so, and we’ll know what that Syndic flotilla is going to do. We’ll be in position before that. If those aliens show up, we’ll be ready for them.”
“And if they don’t?”
“We improvise, Captain Desjani.”
She grinned. “Yes, we will.”
They were in orbit and waiting when a reply came from the Syndic flotilla. The Syndic CEO in command of the flotilla had the same tight expression as during her last transmission, her words coming out like a prepared script. “The mobile forces of the Syndicate Worlds in this star system concur with your request. We will proceed to an orbit from which we can react as necessary to events. For the people. Kolani out.”
Senator Sakai leaned forward, his expression intrigued. “She used the formal, polite ending to her transmission. The Syndics stopped doing that with us over a generation ago. I only know it from viewing historical records. Perhaps this is a sign that they will be willing to speak to us again in meaningful ways.”
Desjani appeared alarmed, then determined. “Not before we do. They will not learn to talk to us again before we learn to talk to them again,” she vowed.
And then they waited. The Alliance fleet had taken up an orbit that held it motionless relative to the jump point for Pele. The Syndic flotilla, about a light-hour closer to the main inhabited world, had assumed a similar orbit. The Syndic transports, with their human cargoes of evacuees, kept fleeing, the planets and asteroids of the star system kept in motion around their star as they had for countless years, but the warships waited. The Syndics sent no more messages to the Alliance fleet, and Geary noticed that his own officers seemed to be deliberately ignoring the presence of the Syndics, as if the Alliance personnel preferred defending an empty star system to one occupied by the people they still thought of as enemies.
Restless again, Geary did one of his walk-throughs of Dauntless, going down the passageways and exchanging a few words with the officers and crews standing by for whatever might happen. Only one of them, a chief petty officer, asked the question that all of the Alliance sailors must have been thinking. “What are they, Admiral? These aliens?”
“We don’t know,” Geary replied. “That’s a big part of the reason why we’re here, Chief, to find out what they are and what they want.”
“Word on the decks, Admiral, is they want a bunch of Syndic star systems.”
“It looks like it, Chief. But we don’t know where that would stop, or how long it might be before they were knocking on the doors of the Alliance. If they’re really hostile, we want to stop them here, before they can strike at our homes.”
The chief and the sailors around him nodded. That sort of logic made sense to them. “They had something to do with Kalixa?”
“We think so.”
All of the sailors grimaced. “Ugly thing to do,” the chief said for them all. “We don’t want them trying that with an Alliance star system.”
“No,” Geary agreed. “We don’t want them even thinking they could get away with that.”
“Sort of like Grendel, isn’t it, sir?” the chief commented. “Only this time it’s not the Syndics planning to hit us by surprise. We thank the living stars that you’re here, sir, like you were there then.” More nods.
“Thank you. I thank the living stars that you all are here with me now.” He never knew how to handle things like what the chief had said, but a simple truthful reply seemed best, and the sailors all seemed happy when he walked onward.