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  “Has our government made that many mistakes?”

  She waved an angry hand. “It’s made its share of mistakes. So has the military. But it’s not about that. It’s about frustration. A century of war and no end in sight. People want something, anything, that would hold out hope for an end to it.” Rione shook her head at Geary. “And then you show up. The hero who legend decreed would return to save the Alliance in its hour of greatest need. Do you wonder that so many are looking to you?”

  “That hero is a myth,” Geary insisted.

  “Not entirely, no, and in any event, what you think scarcely matters. It’s what everyone else thinks. You can save the Alliance. Or you can destroy it. It took me a while to put that together. You embody the ancient duality, the preserver on one side and the destroyer on the other. I saw the destroyer at first, then I saw the preserver, and now I see both.” She shook her head again. “I don’t envy you having to personify those two contrary roles, but that’s what comes with being the legendary hero.”

  “I never volunteered to be a legendary hero!” Geary stood up and began pacing angrily again. “You did this to me, the government, while I drifted around Grendel Star System in survival sleep, making me into every schoolkid’s greatest idol so you’d have something to keep inspiring people to fight.”

  “The Alliance government created a myth, John Geary. You’re real, and you have the real power to preserve or destroy the Alliance. If you haven’t fully accepted that yet, do it now.”

  He stopped pacing and gave her a sour look. “I’ve never been the type to believe I was sent by the living stars to save the universe, or even just the Alliance.”

  Rione raised an eyebrow at him. “That may be the only thing that keeps you from destroying the Alliance. Maybe that’s why you were chosen.”

  “Don’t tell me that you’re starting to believe that, too!” Geary made a frustrated gesture. “I get too much of that as it is.”

  “I thought you liked it when your special captain gazed at you with those worshipful eyes,” Rione observed.

  “No, I don’t, and no, she doesn’t. And why the hell are we talking about Captain Desjani all of a sudden?”

  Instead of answering, Rione simply stood up. “I have some other business to attend to. You’re still going to jump the fleet to Branwyn as scheduled?”

  “Yes,” Geary snapped, still aggravated with her. “We’ll be at the jump point in four days, barring any more ‘accidents. ’”

  She was heading for the hatch but paused to look back at him. “I would have tried to stop it if I’d known someone was going to sabotage that shuttle. Yes, I thought Casia and Yin should die because of their actions and because I saw them as a threat to the Alliance, but I wouldn’t have let a number of innocent people be killed.”

  He stared at her. “It never occurred to me to think you would have.”

  “Sooner or later, it would’ve occurred to you.”

  Geary kept looking at the hatch after she had left, realizing that she was right, and wondering why sometimes his allies scared him as much as his enemies.

  The transmission from what had once been the habitable world in Lakota Star System was streaked with interference, the sound portion garbled by static. Geary tapped the control to apply enhancement filters, and the image cleared, the sound now audible, though with occasional odd gaps as attempts by the software to guess which word to use came up blank.

  A man stood in the front of the image, behind him a table at which a half dozen other men and women sat. All of them looked as if they’d been wearing the same clothing for days, and as if those days had been arduous ones. They were in some room without visible windows, whose construction and fittings conveyed a feeling of being an underground shelter.

  The man spoke with weary desperation, blinking with fatigue. “We are appealing to any ships in this star system to carry news of our disaster to authorities who can provide aid. Lakota Three is undergoing intense storm activity. Estimates are that between ten and twenty percent of the atmosphere is gone. Lakota star’s output may be fluctuating, causing more havoc on this world. Most electrical systems on the planet were destroyed by the energy pulse that struck us. We’re incapable of estimating the number of dead but it surely runs into many millions. We’ve been unable to establish contact with anyone in the hemisphere that faced the energy pulse. The survivors in this hemisphere are in desperate need of food, shelter, and other necessities. Please notify anyone who can help.”

  The image stuttered, then the message began repeating.

  Geary shut it off, letting out a long, despairing breath. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Desjani nodded gloomily. “We can’t even run shuttles down into that atmosphere right now without risking their loss.”

  “Did you find any signs of Alliance prisoners of war on the planet?”

  She shook her head, looking depressed now. “A few marginal indications. But even if they were there, we couldn’t get to them. The planet is going to be a hellhole until the atmosphere stabilizes again.”

  Geary tapped his communications controls. “Authorities on Lakota Three, this is Captain John Geary, commanding officer of the Alliance fleet. We deeply regret our inability to offer immediate assistance, but have no capability for disaster relief. We will notify any and all Syndicate Worlds’ entities encountered of your need.” It occurred to him that with so many electronic systems destroyed, the authorities on Lakota Three might have no idea what was going on above the world’s atmosphere. “Be advised that a few Syndicate Worlds’ civilian ships survived the energy pulse and are heading for jump points out of this star system. I have given orders that they not be engaged by my units and have provided them with clear records of the disaster here to assist authorities in other Syndicate Worlds’ star systems in responding to your need. May the living stars provide for you and may your ancestors offer you what comfort they can.”

  He ended the transmission, then looked to the communications watch. “Try to punch that through to the origin of the distress message, and set it to repeat until we leave this star system. Also forward that distress message to the Syndic merchant ships heading out of the star system.” With a fleet configured for war, there wasn’t much else he could do. “Captain Desjani, I’m going to hold a small meeting in one hour. I’d like you to be there.”

  “Of course, sir,” Desjani acknowledged. “Is there anything I should do to prepare for the meeting?”

  “Just bring your brains and your common sense.”

  One hour later, Geary looked around the conference room, where he, Captain Desjani, and Co-President Rione were physically present and Captains Duellos, Cresida, and Tulev were virtually present. To the naked eye, all six figures appeared identical, but the occasional extra couple of seconds’ delay in reactions from the three who were attending via conferencing software betrayed their virtual nature. “I wanted to talk to you because you’ve all been told about our belief that there’s a nonhuman sentient species on the other side of Syndic space.”

  “Belief?” Captain Cresida questioned. “From the evidence I’ve seen, it’s a lot stronger than a belief.”

  “And there’s more evidence that I haven’t had a chance to share before this.” Geary paused, uncertain how to say it. “You know we were on our way to defeating one of the Syndic flotillas in Lakota when a much larger Syndic force arrived via the hypernet gate. This fleet was almost trapped and destroyed as a result.” Rione knew what he was talking about, but none of the other officers did, and they were all watching him, plainly trying to figure out the connection to the aliens. “Intelligence on Dauntless intercepted a number of signals from the Syndic ships that had arrived via the hypernet gate, messages that clearly revealed that the Syndics were shocked to be in Lakota. They’d entered their hypernet system with a destination of Andvari Star System.”

  He let them absorb that for a moment. Cresida, perhaps the fleet’s best expert on the hypernet, responded first. �
��They made that big a mistake? No, it’s impossible to make that kind of mistake. There’s no way to set one destination on the hypernet and end up in another.”

  Geary nodded. “So I was told. No way that we know of.”

  Desjani got it first, her face reddening with rage. “They did it. Whatever they are. They changed the destination of those Syndic ships so we’d be confronted by an overwhelming force.”

  “That’s the only conclusion that makes sense,” Geary agreed. “They intervened in an attempt to destroy this fleet.”

  “Why?” Tulev, not surprisingly, had been the first to look past the outrage of the aliens’ actions and search for a reason.

  “Damned if I know. They don’t want us to get home. Is it because they want the Alliance to lose? I don’t think so. If they wanted to help the Syndics defeat us, they could provide the Syndics with more of their technology, but as best we can tell, they secretly gave the hypernet technology to both the Alliance and Syndicate Worlds at about the same time several decades ago.”

  “What are they?” Desjani demanded. “What do we know of them?”

  This time Geary shrugged. “Shadows and scientific wild-ass guesses. We see signs of them, apparent proof they’re out there and intervening in this war, but nothing about them directly. If they did redirect that Syndic flotilla, it not only means they can mess with a hypernet in ways we don’t understand, it also means they can covertly monitor where this fleet is and where it’s going, and get that information somewhere at something close to real time over interstellar distances.” The others stared at him as the implications of that struck home, but none of them denied his logic.

  “The Syndics certainly know more about the aliens,” Rione added to the group. “But that knowledge has apparently been kept very close, and even the existence of the aliens kept secret from most Syndic citizens. Only the Syndicate Worlds’ highest leaders may know everything there is to be known. We’ve found nothing in captured records.”

  “Are they human?” Tulev wondered.

  “I don’t think so,” Geary answered. “If they were human, why would the Syndics have kept them secret? And how could another human power strong enough to hold the Syndics on a border exist without us knowing something? They would have had to come from somewhere.”

  “Not human.” Tulev shook his head. “How do they think? Not like us.”

  “Surely we can still figure out their intent,” Desjani insisted.

  Duellos was frowning in thought. “My grandmother taught me an ancient riddle when I was quite young. That riddle might help us understand what we’re dealing with.”

  “Really? What is it?”

  Duellos paused dramatically. “Feathers or lead?”

  Geary waited, but nothing else came. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Feathers or lead?”

  “What kind of riddle just asks you to chose between two things?” Cresida asked, then shrugged. “I give. What’s the answer?”

  “It depends.” Duellos smiled as everyone looked aggravated. “The one asking the riddle is a demon, you see. The demon chooses which answer is right. In order to guess the right answer, you have to know what the demon thinks it should be that particular time.”

  “How are you supposed to know what a demon thinks?” As soon as Geary said the words, he got Duellos’s point. “Like the aliens.”

  “Exactly. How do we answer a question posed by something that isn’t human, when we have no idea what the question means or what the ones asking it want the answer to be?”

  “And what do they expect from us? Honor or lies?” Captain Cresida asked. Everyone turned to look at her. “Who have these aliens been in contact with? The Syndics.”

  Rione nodded. “Whose leaders have broken every agreement made with us, even when abiding by those agreements would have been in the long-term interests of the Syndicate Worlds.”

  “The Syndic leaders don’t think long-term,” Duellos pointed out. “Short-term gain is all that matters to them.”

  Geary shook his head. “Would they have been stupid enough to use those kinds of tactics against an alien species that clearly has technological superiority over the human race?” He saw the answer on every other face in the room. “Yeah. Maybe they would have.” After all, those same leaders had repeatedly broken agreements with this fleet, even knowing that the fleet could easily retaliate by wiping out entire worlds.

  “The superior technology would have been irresistible bait for them,” Rione observed bitterly. “They would have been willing to try to acquire it by any possible means, leaving the aliens to conclude that the human race could not be trusted. Anything the aliens have done could have been seen by them as defensive, a means to neutralize humanity.”

  “But if the Syndics were dealing with aliens,” Cresida argued, “and unsuccessfully dealing with them apparently because they’ve never surfaced with any technology far in advance of the Alliance except the same hypernet we got, why would they turn around and attack us? We know from the disposition of Syndic hypernet gates on the far border that the Syndics fear the aliens. Why start a war with us?”

  “Because they were surrounded?” Duellos offered. “The Alliance on one side and these aliens on the other side. That leaves the Syndicate Worlds pinned between two powers. They must have feared being crushed between us once we learned of the existence of the creatures.”

  “Then why start a war with us?” Cresida demanded. “Why make their nightmare come true?”

  Geary shook his head. “During peacetime, Alliance ships traveled through Syndicate Worlds’ space. Only occasional warships carrying out diplomatic missions, but more frequent freighters. Alliance citizens also traveled through the Syndicate Worlds on business or pleasure. Any of those might have found clues to the existence of the aliens or been contacted by them directly.”

  “Well enough, sir, but starting a war to prevent occasional Alliance traffic through their territory seems like massive overkill. It’s not like the Syndics ever invited much Alliance shipping into their areas of control. They could have choked it off completely using any number of excuses, and what could the Alliance have done? Besides, how could they know the aliens wouldn’t attack them while they were involved in fighting the Alliance?”

  Duellos shrugged. “Maybe the Syndic leaders thought they could defeat us quickly.”

  “That’s irrational!” Cresida objected. “Even the Syndic leaders couldn’t have been so stupid as to believe they could do that!”

  “They thought the Alliance would crack under the first blows,” Desjani cut in. “That we wouldn’t have the spirit to rebound from the initial losses and hit back.”

  “We don’t know that,” Rione replied with a slightly but unmistakably dismissive tone. “That was the argument used to rally the Alliance after the first attacks. That was why the Alliance made the most of whatever heroic examples existed, as proof that any such Syndic belief was wrong.”

  Which was where the legend of Black Jack Geary began. Fighting to the last against overwhelming odds. A heroic example to inspire everyone else. Geary tried not to notice everyone not looking at him.

  Tulev shrugged. “It may have been a useful rallying argument for the Alliance, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true,” he suggested with a glance at Desjani, whose eyes had narrowed in response to Rione’s tone. “What other explanation exists?”

  “Perhaps they reached some sort of agreement with the aliens,” Rione suggested. “Doubtless planning to go back on it as soon as they’d dealt with us.”

  “What kind of agreement?” Geary wondered, his mind going back to a time that was the recent past for him but a century old for the others here. “A nonaggression pact might temporarily secure their border with the aliens, but the Syndics couldn’t have decisively beaten the Alliance. They didn’t have military forces large enough to overcome the sheer size of the Alliance, any more than the Alliance could muster enough force to defeat the expanse of the Syndicate W
orlds. We knew that as well as they did. That’s why the surprise attacks, including the one in Grendel, came as such a shock.”

  “Maybe there’s the answer,” Desjani declared, her expression shadowed with an emerging idea. “What everyone’s been saying made me think of something.” She tapped some controls and an area of space that Geary found heartbreakingly familiar was displayed above the table. “Alliance space along the frontier with the Syndicate Worlds,” Desjani explained to Rione as if she couldn’t be expected to recognize a display of the area, causing Rione’s expression to harden slightly this time. “I’ve spent some time recently studying the start of the war. This shows the initial Syndic attacks a century ago. Shukra, Thabas, Diomede, Baldur, Grendel. Why did they hit Diomede instead of Varandal? Why Shukra instead of Ulani?”

  Geary frowned. He didn’t know this, hadn’t ever known it, because he had been lost in survival sleep since that first Syndic surprise attack at Grendel. In the months after his awakening, he’d avoided studying the early Syndic attacks closely since he still felt the pain of knowing his crew from those days had all died in either that battle or later battles or, if lucky, from old age, while Geary’s survival pod drifted among the other debris of battle at Grendel. “Good question. I just skimmed those events and assumed they must have hit the Alliance base at Varandal.”

  “They didn’t,” Duellos confirmed, studying the display. “Varandal was a major base back then as well?”