Valiant

“We both already knew the truth,” Geary said. “We want the same thing. An end to a senseless war and a united front against something that threatens humanity. That should be grounds for working together.”

The CEO nodded once.

Appeal to his self-interest! Rione demanded. Not the best interests of humanity or the Syndicate Worlds! His self-interest! He didn’t become a Syndic CEO by being self-sacrificing!

She had a point. Geary forced a small smile. “Of course, when I speak of working together, I’m talking about with someone we know. Someone who understands the issues.”

His brain’s reward centers are lighting up, Iger observed.

Cafiro nodded again, this time much more firmly. “As you say, we need to think in terms of mutual benefit.”

“Naturally,” Geary replied in an even voice, though he wanted to spit. Why couldn’t Rione have done this directly? But she would have been tarred like any other current Alliance leader with all the hatred and distrust engendered by decade after decade of war. He, the outsider even now, had a different status. But he didn’t know the right words, and Rione wasn’t feeding them to him, maybe assuming he’d somehow know them. Maybe he did. Geary dredged up memories of a superior officer he’d suffered under for a few years, a man who had nearly driven him from the fleet with his politicking and attempts to manipulate those around him. He just had to remember the sort of things that he had said. “The Alliance needs the right people to work with,” Geary stated, emphasizing the word “right” just enough.

Cafiro almost smiled, but his eyes lit with eagerness. “Yes. I know others who could work with me. With us.”

Cafiro favored Geary with a tense smile. “Of course, there’s not much I can do as a prisoner.”

“It seems we understand each other.” More than Geary wanted to. But then this particular Syndic CEO had been ambitious and power-driven, or he wouldn’t have been second in command of that flotilla. It followed that he’d react this way when offered the sort of deal Geary had implied. Other Syndic CEOs, perhaps less self- centered and more loyal to things other than their personal bottom line (like the CEO in charge of Cavalos Star System), would be far better leaders to deal with. But Geary had to use the weapons he had available.

Even very distasteful weapons. Weapons that were negotiating for their own freedom but hadn’t bothered yet to ask about the fates of other Syndic survivors from the flotilla that had been destroyed. Geary tried to keep his face calm even as he sympathized with Desjani’s desire to choke this Syndic CEO until his eyes popped. “I think it will benefit all concerned if you are released.” Before I decide to let Desjani in here so we can strangle you together. He couldn’t resist mentioning the other Syndic survivors in a pointed reminder. “We’ve taken no other prisoners here. Some of the escape pods from destroyed Syndicate Worlds’ warships are damaged but appear able to reach safety.”

“Ah… of course,” Cafiro agreed after a brief hesitation.

“The Syndicate Worlds will be hearing from us, CEO Cafiro. After this fleet gets home.” Geary stood up to end the conversation and left the room.

“He’s nervous,” Lieutenant Iger remarked when Geary rejoined the others. “Doubtless wondering whether he’s really going to be released.”

“Will he really stir up trouble for the Syndics if we let him go?” Geary asked Iger and Rione. Both of them nodded. “Then get him off this ship, please, Lieutenant Iger.”

“Yes, sir. He’ll be back in his escape pod and relaunched within half an hour.”

Geary led Desjani and Rione out of the intelligence spaces. “I think I’d rather deal with the aliens,” he remarked, not sure how much he was joking.

“You might,” Rione replied with absolute seriousness. “If our speculations are right, these aliens acted against us and the Syndics because of their experiences with the Syndic leadership. They might simply want to be left alone or to feel secure against us. Remove the threat of human aggression, and those aliens would have an immense amount of space available to them on their other borders.”

Desjani, talking as if speaking to herself, gazed down the passageway. “Unless there’s something else on their other borders.”

Geary frowned, then felt a sudden pang of worry. “If there’s one nonhuman intelligence out there…”

“There could be more. Almost certainly are more,” Desjani murmured. She looked at Geary. “We have to understand this enemy, and that’s a very important possibility. They might feel penned between potential foes. They might even be fighting a war or wars unimaginably far away from our own battles with the Syndics. Maybe they need to keep us tied down because of that, because they need to protect their flanks. Maybe that means we’ve got potential allies against these creatures. Or even worse potential enemies.”

Rione looked like she’d swallowed something unpleasant. “That’s a real possibility. We have no way of knowing if it’s true. There’s too damned much we don’t know.”

“We’ve learned a lot. We’ll learn more.” He hoped that was true, anyway.

THE expanding balls of debris that had been the wrecks of Opportune, Braveheart, the heavy cruiser Armet, and the light cruiser Cercle were well behind the Alliance fleet now as it proceeded toward the jump point for Anahalt and Dilawa. Geary had kept the fleet’s speed down to point zero four light to make it easier for badly damaged ships like Courageous and Brilliant to keep up, hoping they’d soon get more propulsion units repaired. No more attempts to plant worms in fleet systems had occurred. Geary wondered if that was because those responsible for the earlier attempts were busy dealing with damage to their ships, or were trying to find new ways to plant the worms, or were rethinking that tactic after the previous attempts had backfired by alienating most of the fleet. It seemed very unlikely that they’d given up.

He still wasn’t certain which star to jump to next. Nor did he feel like thinking of that at the moment. The fleet had lost a lot of personnel as well as several ships in the latest battle. He’d spent a long time in the fleet at peace, a hundred years ago, and fought one hopeless battle before going into survival sleep. Others had fought countless battles during the next century, growing accustomed to losing ships and men and women in large numbers. Geary had kept trying to avoid dealing with that but realized he couldn’t keep it up. He had to accept the cost that even victories required, and he needed to call up the personnel records, which would tell him the private prices the people he knew now had paid before he had known them. He owed that to them.

Geary called up the personnel files and read through them. Captain Jaylen Cresida. Home world Madira. Her first fleet assignment had been as gunnery officer on the destroyer Shakujo. Married five years ago to another fleet officer. Widowed three years ago when her husband had died aboard the battle cruiser Invincible when the ship was destroyed while defending the Alliance star system of Kana against a Syndic attack. Not the same Invincible that this fleet had lost at Ilion, but the previous ship to bear that same name.

Cresida had told him that if she died, she had someone waiting for her.

Geary closed his eyes for a moment, trying to dull the pain inside as he read the dry report. Then he read more, forcing himself to confront the costs of this war that had changed the Alliance he knew and helped forge the personalities of the people around him.

Cresida’s mother and brother were also casualties of the war, the mother dead when Jaylen had been only twelve. The older brother had died a year before Cresida joined the fleet. Not wanting to tally the losses through the generation before that, Geary stopped looking back through the file.

Steeling himself, Geary pulled up Captain Duellos’s file. His wife was a research scientist in a star system safely back from the front line, but Duellos’s father and an uncle had died in the war. His oldest daughter would be eligible for call-up by the draft next year.

Captain Tulev had lost his wife and three children to a Syndic bombardment of their home world.

And Captain Desjani. She’d told him that her parents were still both alive, and that was so. Desjani did also have the uncle she’d spoken of a few times. But she’d never mentioned the aunt who’d died in ground fighting on a Syndic world. Nor the younger brother dead six years ago in his first combat engagement.

He remembered the young Syndic boy with whom Desjani had spoken when the refugees from Wendig were brought aboard, the way Desjani had treated the boy and the way she’d looked at him as he moved to defend his family. Had she seen her little brother in that boy?

Geary spent a long time staring at the display, then punched in the other commands he’d never had the nerve