“You said you’d kill me if you had to,” Geary agreed. “Maybe I think it’s a good thing to have that threat hanging over me.”
She sounded exasperated now. “You’re either very trusting, very naive, or very stupid.”
“Try scared,” he suggested.
“Of yourself?” Rione didn’t wait for an answer. “I hear you received an offer.”
Geary wished he could make out her expression. He’d wondered if Rione’s spies in the fleet would somehow find out about that. “What else did you hear?”
“That your answer was that you’d think it over.”
“No. My answer was that it wouldn’t happen. Clear and unequivocal.”
She actually laughed. “Oh, John Geary, you don’t know the first lesson any politician learns. It doesn’t matter what you say, it’s what people think they hear. Anyone wanting to offer you control of the Alliance isn’t going to hear you say no.” Rione paused. “You needed to talk. You’re tempted, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Because of the hypernet gates.”
“You don’t trust politicians with knowledge of those weapons? I can’t say I blame you. I don’t want the Alliance government to learn of them, either. But you don’t trust yourself with that knowledge, do you? That’s why you gave me the program for scaling up the energy released when a hypernet gate collapses.”
“Maybe you should be the dictator.”
“I think I’ve given you abundant evidence of my own human failings, John Geary.” She paused, then sighed. “You gave me hard words, and I recognized their truth. You may now make another joke about a woman admitting you were right.”
“No, thanks.”
“By my ancestors, you have learned a little about women, haven’t you? Why is the fleet going to Ixion?”
The sudden change of topic startled Geary. “Because it’s the best of a lot of bad options.”
“You expect the Syndics to be there in force.”
“Yeah. I expect them to be present in force at any star we can reach.” He tossed off the covers and turned to face her. “I can’t stay lucky forever. Daiquon was so close. We might have lost the same number of ships to a finished minefield and not had any Syndic warships taken out to balance the scales. What else have your spies told you? I really need to know what you’re hearing.”
“Casia and Midea aren’t leading the officers opposed to your continued command of this fleet. I haven’t been able to find out who is, but they’re answering to someone else. Despite being under arrest and guarded by Marines, Numos and Faresa have found ways to pass messages to those who still believe in them.”
That shouldn’t have been surprising. “But Numos and Faresa aren’t the leaders of my opponents, either?”
“No.” Rione’s voice altered, becoming strained. “And you should know that rumor holds that I am intensely jealous of your relationship with Captain Desjani.”
Geary slammed a fist onto his thigh. “My imaginary relationship?”
Rione took a moment to answer. “It seems the best counter to those rumors is for me to cease avoiding you and for me to act civilly toward Desjani again. Besides, as you pointed out, I’ve been neglecting my duties. If you’ve been honest with me, my advice has been of value to you. You can count on it once more.”
“Thanks.” Geary hesitated, not knowing how to phrase the obvious next question.
“What’s done is done,” Rione stated softly. “What I first told you remains true-my heart will always remain another’s. But nothing has really changed. Even if my husband still lives, he’s just as lost to me, and me to him, as if death had claimed him. My duty will be to the Alliance. I know you need me.”
That sounded wrong. “Madam Co-President-”
“Victoria.”
It had been a while since she was Victoria to him. “Victoria, I need your advice, and I value your companionship. There’s nothing I can ask of you beyond that.”
“My honor is already compromised, John Geary. I have to do what I think best from this point on. And I have missed you. It’s not entirely a matter of duty.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“I didn’t mean to make it sound so impersonal. Will you have me? I’m not drunk. I…need you.”
He regarded her in the dimness, barely seeing the shape of her face. She sounded sincere. Yet if Rione’s highest priority was saving the Alliance from Black Jack, then she’d want to have him sleeping next to her again. She knew he’d received the offer that she had predicted he’d get someday. And she knew he felt tempted by that offer. Was it a coincidence that she’d finally unbent toward him again on the night of the same day on which Captain Badaya had offered him a dictatorship with the backing of what was claimed to be a majority of the fleet?
Did she truly want him, or was she willing to do whatever it took to be able to act if the time came, or was she hitching herself firmly to his power, an amoral politician ensuring she’d be the consort of the possible future ruler of the Alliance?
Victoria Rione stood up, her clothing falling down around her feet, then walked across the short distance separating them and molded herself against his body. As her lips met his, Geary realized that at some level he didn’t care what the answer was as long as she was in his bed again. As she pushed him down and straddled his body, he realized he didn’t care if she had a knife in her free hand at that very moment.
“ALL ships prepare to jump.” The star Daiquon wasn’t much more than a bright point of light to the naked eye now. The fleet had been in Formation Kilo One for days now, ready for anything when they arrived at Ixion. Or so he hoped.
Victoria Rione was in the observer’s chair on the bridge of Dauntless again, watching the action as if there had never been an interval in which she avoided the bridge. Desjani had greeted Rione politely but with what Geary thought was an undercurrent of worry. For Rione’s part, Geary had suspected he caught a gleam of triumph in her eyes as she acknowledged Desjani’s welcome. But that was certainly just his imagination, wrought to a fever pitch by worries about what awaited them at Ixion.
“All units in the Alliance fleet, upon arrival at Ixion, immediately execute all preordered maneuvers and engage any enemy warships within range. Jump for Ixion now.”
SLIGHTLY less than four days in jump space to Ixion. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but Geary found himself increasingly unhappy with the intervals in jump space. Given the risks they were running, he wished going to Ixion were bringing them closer to Alliance space than it was. Instead of offering a chance to rest and think without the pressure of an immediate Syndic threat, the jump space time felt more and more like wasted periods, the hours and days dragging by while nothing changed outside the ship. Nothing ever had changed outside a ship in jump space, of course, but now that bothered him. He wanted to do something. Confront the Syndics, beat them once and for all in battle, find out the truth about the alien intelligences he and Rione suspected lurked on the other side of Syndic space, and end this damned war.
The fact that he had no chance of actually accomplishing those things even in real space didn’t seem to make a difference to the frustration he felt. And he was coming to recognize that in jump space he had more dreams about the past, dreams with people he had known who were now long dead. It wasn’t pleasant to wake up from a dream holding a conversation with an old friend and realize the old friend would never speak with him again. Not in this life, anyway.
At least he didn’t have to spend this interval in jump space making guilty and sporadic attempts to locate Victoria Rione to learn how she was doing. Rione came to his stateroom every evening and spent every night, her lovemaking seeming to mix passion and desperation in equal measure. When not in bed with him, though, she continued to hide her innermost self, revealing neither passion nor desperation nor anything else.
Geary distracted himself by running simulations, trying to guess what Ixion would hold, what the fleet would have to do there. But it was all guesswork, and only arrival at Ixion would reveal any answers.
GEARY tried to focus his attention on the display as the time to leave jump space at Ixion approached. Right now all it showed was what had been in the obsolete Syndic records they had looted a dozen star systems ago. The data, several decades old, showed a relatively prosperous system with a nearly ideal planet holding a very respectable population and a lot of off-planet activity and facilities. The records, intended for use by merchant
