“Yes, sir,” Desjani replied.
He lay back down, feeling guilty. Desjani was on the bridge, monitoring the situation and watching the enemy, while he was in his stateroom in bed. Of course there was nothing he could do on the bridge, but it still felt wrong.
One of Rione’s hands snaked slowly over his chest. “They’ll be coming after us to Lakota?” she murmured in his ear.
“Yeah. Sorry that woke you.”
“That’s all right. You’ll probably have trouble getting back to sleep.” Her hand slid lower. “There’s no sense in wasting us both being awake, is there?”
News of Syndic warships arriving in this star system didn’t seem to have upset Rione. Or maybe she was trying to distract him from his worries. Or maybe she was still very worried about what would happen at Lakota and really didn’t want to waste any opportunities together.
After a few moments, he stopped caring about her motivation.
GEARY sat on the bridge of Dauntless, eyeing the display showing his fleet. He’d arranged it in an old formation known as Echo Five, consisting of five subformations resembling coins, each a disk facing forward with a little depth to it. Leading the fleet was Echo Five One, built around the remnants of Captain Cresida’s Fifth Battle Cruiser Division plus the understrength Seventh Battle Cruiser Division. Two battle cruiser divisions totaling only five ships combined. That was depressing if he dared think about it. With the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers attached, the vanguard had decent fighting capability.
On either side of the main body sat Echo Five Two and Five Three, Five Two containing the eight battle cruisers of the First and Second Divisions plus plenty of lighter units, while Five Three was built around the eight battleships of the Second and Fifth Divisions plus lighter support. In the rear of the fleet, Echo Five Five contained the four auxiliaries, the damaged warships with them including Warrior, Orion, and Majestic, plus Indefatigable, Defiant, and Audacious from the Seventh Battleship Division.
The remaining five battle cruisers, including Dauntless, the thirteen other battleships, and the two scout battleships, formed the core of the main body in Fox Five Four, the rest of the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers escorting them. Taken all in all, the Alliance fleet should be able to handle anything it encountered coming out of the jump exit at Lakota.
“All units have slowed to point zero four light speed,” Captain Desjani reported. “All units report prepared to jump.”
Geary nodded slowly, hoping he wasn’t finally making the mistake he’d dreaded since assuming command of this fleet. “All units, be prepared for combat upon exiting jump at Lakota. All units, jump now.”
EIGHT
FIVE and a half days to Lakota. Another five and a half days of staring at the endless gray nothingness of jump space.
“Are you all right?” Rione asked him.
“Worried,” Geary replied, keeping his eyes on the display.
She sat down next to him, her own gaze going to the display. “So tell me, how was it in the lights of jump space?”
“Very funny.”
“I’m not entirely joking, you know.” Rione took a deep breath. “Do you remember anything?”
He glanced at her. “You mean from survival sleep?”
“Yes. A hundred years. There aren’t a lot of people who’ve been kept suspended that long and lived. Only one I know of, actually.”
“Lucky me.” Geary thought about the question. “I don’t honestly know. Sometimes I think I remember dreams, but those could be memories of dreams before the battle at Grendel. I jumped into the escape pod as my ship was about to blow up without time to have thought about the battle or what had happened, and when the doctors in this fleet woke me up, it was as if I’d only been asleep for a few moments. I didn’t believe them at first. Thought it was some Syndic trick. I couldn’t believe that everyone I’d ever known was dead, everything I’d known lost a hundred years in the past.”
“And then you found out you’d become Black Jack Geary, mythical hero of the Alliance,” Rione added softly.
“Yeah. The only thing that saved me was having to take command of this fleet. It forced me to pull out of my defensive shell.” He remembered the ice that had once filled him, the cold that had tried to wall out the world around him. “If not for that…” Geary shook his head.
“Lucky us, lucky you,” Rione noted.
“And are you lucky?” he asked.
“Me?” Rione sighed. “I wonder if my husband is one of those lights. I wonder what my ancestors think of me. I wonder what Lakota holds, and what will happen to the Alliance. Is that luck, to live in such times and face such issues?”
“Not good luck.”
“No. Definitely not.”
AT least there was always paperwork to fill the time, to distract him from worries about whatever waited at Lakota, though so very little paperwork actually got printed on paper that he wondered where the name had come from. Geary frowned down at a message from Furious. Routine administrative personnel transfers between ships shouldn’t be sent to him even as an information copy. He’d be buried in paperwork if that started happening.
Then he read the name on the transfer and called Captain Desjani. “I’ve got a transfer order from Furious and-”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be right down to discuss it, sir.”
Geary waited, wondering what was going on now, until Captain Desjani arrived. He waved her to a seat, where she sat at attention as usual. Since the rumors of something between them had started, Geary had stopped asking her to relax. He wondered if the transfer order was somehow related to those rumors. “This is an order to transfer Lieutenant Casell Riva from Furious to the Vambrace.”
Desjani’s expression didn’t change as she nodded. “A heavy cruiser may suit him better, but the needs of the fleet take priority in any event.”
“I see.” No, I don’t. “Were you aware of this?”
“Captain Cresida had informed me that she intended transferring Lieutenant Riva, sir.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
“Sir, I can’t concern myself with the fates of junior officers on other ships.”
Geary tried not to let his surprise show. “Normally that would be true. I shouldn’t be worried about it, either, except that the last I heard, you had hopes that you and Lieutenant Riva would be able to reestablish a personal relationship.” How long had it been since he’d talked to Desjani about that? He wasn’t sure. So much time devoted to his own relationship with Rione and all the emotional fallout from that, plus the rumors of involvement with Desjani. It had obviously been too long since he’d expressed any interest in how Desjani’s own life was going.
Desjani shrugged. “Co-President Rione and I do have some things in common, sir.”
That came as a surprise to Geary.
She must have read his expression, because Desjani spoke carefully. “Ghosts from our pasts, churning up old emotions and leaving personal wreckage in their wake.”
“I don’t understand. I thought you and Lieutenant Riva-”
Desjani shook her head. “Lieutenant Riva developed a strong interest in a fellow officer on Furious, and he chose to act on that interest.”
“But that’s-”
“Yes, sir. Captain Cresida had to come down hard on him for violating good order and discipline. Which is how
