Geary had never liked bureaucrats, especially bureaucrats who seemed unable to adjust when reality collided with the rules they lived by. “Listen. If any attempt is made to attack my ships, my shuttles, or my personnel when we’re dropping off your civilians, I will hit that station of yours so hard that the quarks making up its component atomic particles will never find their way back together. Is that clear? If anyone fires on the civilians we drop off, I’ll do the same thing. They’re your people. We rescued them at risk to ourselves, we’re taking time we don’t have to spare to drop them off here, and you’d damn well better take good care of them after we do!” Geary’s voice rose as he talked, ending in a roar that seemed to terrify the Syndic station administrator.
'Y-yes, I… I understand,” she stuttered. “We’ll prepare to receive them. Under duress. Please, we have families aboard this station…”
“Then let’s not have any trouble,” Geary replied, trying to get his voice’s volume back to normal. “Some of the people we rescued from Wendig have long-term health problems they couldn’t treat there. We’ve done what we could, but they’ll need more assistance from you. I’m going to be blunt that I find it appalling that your leaders would abandon human beings to eventual deaths when their life-support systems failed.”
“You’re not going to kill us? Or destroy this station?” The administrator seemed to be having a lot of trouble grasping the idea.
“No. Any military value it has doesn’t outweigh the suffering such actions would cause civilian inhabitants of this star system.”
“And you truly saved people from Wendig? We thought no one was left there.” The woman seemed about ready to break down. “Everyone was supposed to have been removed when the system was abandoned.”
“The people we evacuated told us that the corporation they or their parents were employed by never sent ships. They had no way of finding out why, of course. Perhaps you can help them with that,” Geary added pointedly.
“H-how many?”
“Five hundred sixty-three.” He could see the question on her face, the same question all of the Syndics, and many of the Alliance personnel, kept asking. Why? Irritated at again having to be faced with a question whose answer he thought obvious, Geary spoke roughly. “That’s all.”
Desjani was once again pretending to be absorbed in something on her own display.
“When are we loading the Syndics into the shuttles?” Geary asked, his voice angry still.
“They should be on their way to the shuttle dock now,” Desjani replied in a tone that sounded suspiciously soothing to Geary. He was trying to decide whether to get irritated by that, too, when she stood up. “I was about to go down to see them off.”
Calming himself, Geary stood as well. “May I come along?”
“Of course, sir.”
The same scene as from eleven days ago was playing out on the shuttle dock, though in reverse as the column of Syndic civilians shuffled onto the shuttle, some pausing to wave quickly to individual members of
The former mayor of Alpha turned to Geary and Desjani as they walked up. “Thank you. I wish I knew what else to say. None of us will forget this.”
To Geary’s surprise, Desjani answered. “If given the chance in the future, offer the same mercy to Alliance citizens.”
“I promise you that we shall, and we’ll tell others to do the same.”
The mayor’s wife moved forward to gaze intently at Desjani. “Thank you, lady, for my children’s lives.”
“Captain,” Desjani corrected, but bent one corner of her mouth in a crooked smile. She looked slightly down and nodded to the boy, who gazed back at her solemnly, then saluted in the Syndic fashion. Desjani returned the salute, then looked back to the mother.
“Thank you, Captain,” that woman stated. “May this war end before my children have to face your fleet in battle.”
Desjani nodded wordlessly again, then watched with Geary as the last of the Syndic civilians walked quickly into the shuttles. As the last hatch sealed, she spoke so quietly only Geary could hear. “It’s easier when they don’t have faces.”
It took him a moment to realize what she meant. “You mean the enemy.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever met a Syndic before?”
“Only prisoners of war,” Desjani replied in a dismissive tone. “Syndics who’d been trying to kill me and other Alliance citizens a short time before.” Her eyes closed for a moment. “I don’t know what happened to most of them. I do know what happened to some of them.”
Geary hesitated to ask the obvious question. A short time after assuming command of the fleet, he’d learned to his horror that enemy prisoners of war were sometimes casually killed, the outgrowth of a hundred years of war in which atrocity had fueled atrocity. He’d never asked Desjani if she had participated in such a crime.
But she opened her eyes and looked steadily at him. “I watched it happen. I didn’t pull any triggers, I didn’t issue any orders, but I watched it, and I didn’t stop it.”
He nodded, keeping his own eyes on hers. “You’d been taught that it was acceptable.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Your ancestors-”
“Told me it was wrong,” Desjani interrupted, something she rarely did with Geary. “I knew it, I felt it, I didn’t listen. I take responsibility for my actions. I know I’ll pay the price for that. Perhaps that’s why we lost so many ships in the Syndic home system. Perhaps that’s why the war has kept going all of these years. We’re being punished, for straying from what was right because we believed wrong to be necessary. ”
He wasn’t about to reject her, or condemn someone who’d already accepted a full measure of blame. But he could stand alongside her. “Yeah, maybe we are being punished.”
Desjani frowned. “Sir? Why would you be punished for things done while you weren’t with us?”
“I’m with you now, aren’t I? I’m part of this fleet and loyal to the Alliance. If you’re being punished, then so am I. I didn’t suffer through all the years of war that you have, but all I knew was taken from me.”
She shook her head, frowning deeper. “You just said this is your fleet, and the Alliance has your loyalty.
Geary frowned back at her, surprised to realize he’d never thought of it that way.
Desjani gave him an intent look. “They sent you when we needed you. They gave us a second chance. They gave
She had startled him again, with a point of view he’d never considered, and by including him as part of them all. Not a separate hero out of myth but one of them. “Maybe you’re right,” Geary stated. “We can’t win this war by destruction unless we go all out with the hypernet gates and commit species suicide. If this war is ever to end, we’ll not only have to beat them on the battlefield but also be willing to forgive the Syndics if they’re willing to express real remorse. Maybe we’re being given an example to follow.”
She was silent for a few moments, and he stayed quiet as well. The shuttle dock internal doors sealed between them and the shuttle, then the external ones opened, and the bird lifted off, carrying its passengers to the Syndic facility. Finally, Desjani looked back at him. “I’ve spent a long time wanting to punish the Syndics, to hurt them as they’ve hurt us.”
“I can understand why,” Geary said. “Thanks for going along with me on helping those civilians. I know it went against a lot of what you believe.”
“What I believed,” Desjani amended. She was quiet for a moment longer, but Geary waited, sensing that she had something else to say. “But that cycle of vengeance never ends. I realized something. I don’t want to have to kill that boy someday, when he’s old enough to fight.”
“Me, neither. Or his father or his mother. And I don’t want that boy trying to kill Alliance citizens. How can we end this, Tanya?”
“You’ll think of a way, sir.”
