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  “The recent realization that I’d hardly noticed either of them even though they’re both battle-cruiser captains. Kila finally spoke up at the last conference.”

  “That’s the way Caligo is,” Duellos explained. “He and I have never talked much. He mostly sits and watches. He likes to stay in the background.” Duellos’s thoughtful expression shaded into a frown. “Interesting, given the sort of officer we think is working against you.”

  Geary couldn’t help thinking the same thing. “But what’s he like?”

  “I haven’t heard bad things about him, or all that many good things for that matter,” Duellos observed. “He does his job and doesn’t make waves, yet he’s impressed people enough to earn command of a battle cruiser.”

  Under other circumstances, that would have sounded like the sort of officer Geary liked to have working for him. Now it left him wondering, and feeling angry with himself for worrying about the loyalty and intent of a fellow officer based on such nebulous information. “What about Kila?”

  “Kila. She’s been unusually quiet, now that you mention it.” Duellos looked slightly embarrassed. “I’m a bit biased. She and I were involved as ensigns. It didn’t really last past our training. Once we went our separate ways, she made it clear that we had separated in more ways than one.”

  “Ouch,” Geary said sympathetically.

  “I was eventually very grateful,” Duellos responded. “Sandra Kila is ambitious and aggressive. Smart, too.”

  “She sounds a bit like Cresida.”

  “Ummmm, more like Cresida’s evil twin. Kila tends to impress superiors but isn’t well liked by her peers or subordinates because her aggressiveness shades too easily into ruthlessness, even in matters of competition for assignments or ranking in evaluations.”

  It didn’t fit. Geary shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like someone who’d just sit quiet and remain essentially unknown to her fleet commander. She won’t earn good marks that way. Why isn’t she in the forefront of argument and debate? Why hasn’t she tried to suck up to me? The points she brought up at the last conference weren’t pressed hard and seemed aimed at pressuring me, not supporting me in a way that would impress me.”

  “Perhaps she has a larger goal in mind.” Duellos let that sink in, then spoke pensively. “But too many officers don’t like her because of personal experience or her reputation. If she were an animal, Kila would be known as one of those which eats its young.”

  Geary raised an eyebrow at Duellos. “Did you say you were a bit biased?”

  “Just a bit,” Duellos admitted. “But my opinions are far from unique. Kila would never be accepted as acting fleet commander, and she’s smart enough to know that.”

  “Why would an officer that ambitious suddenly recognize a ceiling above her? I’ve known officers like that. They want to reach the top. They don’t aim to get so high and no higher, but don’t realize that their tactics often eventually get them tarred so that they can’t rise any further in the ranks.”

  “Yes, but …” Duellos made an annoyed gesture. “This isn’t the fleet you knew. If Kila could continue impressing superiors, she could hope to be promoted to command despite the wishes of those serving under her. Diplomatic skills are far more important for anyone aspiring to the highest levels of command.”

  “Don’t you mean political skills?” Geary asked sarcastically.

  “There’s no need to be insulting.” Duellos sat silent for a moment, then nodded. “As much as we refuse to confront the issue, you’re right. Admiral Bloch was a much better politician than he was an officer, and that served him well enough for promotion and eventual command of the fleet. It didn’t serve the fleet or the Alliance nearly so well, of course. Maybe we’ve been increasingly hostile to people like Co-President Rione because we look at them and see a mirror of what we’ve become.”

  “Rione’s not that bad,” Geary objected almost automatically. Duellos just gazed back at him. After a long pause, Geary nodded in turn. “Maybe she is sometimes. But she’s on our side.”

  “Let’s hope she stays there.”

  Time to change the subject again. “Do you have any idea whether or not Caligo or Kila is among those supporting Badaya’s bid to make me a dictator?”

  Duellos thought for a while. “I would have said Caligo was, but can’t recall a single thing that makes me think so. Kila … well, I don’t think Kila would be happy at accepting any other officer as a dictator. It’s less a matter of her support for the elected government and more a question of her own ego. I’ll see what I can find out. You sound worried, if I may say so.”

  Geary blew out a long breath. “I suspect the accident that killed Casia and Yin wasn’t an accident. Either one might have chosen to name other officers, but the shuttle explosion eliminated that possibility.” Duellos’s face froze for a moment, then he slowly nodded. “And if the people who oppose me, who want someone else in command of this fleet or someone else as dictator, were willing to do that, then they might do worse next time.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out. You have more friends and supporters in this fleet than ever. Perhaps one of them can tell us something.”

  “Something tells me that it’s my enemies we need to start telling us things,” Geary replied.

  They were nine hours from the jump for Wendig and in the middle of Dauntless’s night cycle when the pinging of a message alert woke Geary. He hit the acknowledgment button, then frowned as he saw that the message was from Commander Gaes on the heavy cruiser Lorica. Why would she be sending him a high-priority message under maximum security lock?

  There wasn’t any video, just Commander Gaes’s voice, sounding strained. “Drive fleet jump in worms systems.” The message cut off, leaving Geary frowning a lot more heavily. What the hell had that meant? The sentence sounded scrambled, as if the words had been mixed up.

  Which they would be if someone was trying to confuse software monitoring fleet transmissions and scanning for word combinations. Nothing should be able to spy on messages under high-security lock, but Geary now had a lot less faith in the protection rendered by security systems than he’d had a few months before.

  Which words obviously went together? Jump and drive. Jump-drive systems. Fleet jump-drive systems. In. Worms.

  The phrases suddenly strung together properly. “Worms in fleet jump-drive systems.”

  He rolled out of bed, pulled on his uniform, and called Desjani. “Captain, I need to see you and your systems-security officer as soon as possible.”

  Less than ten minutes later, Desjani was at the hatch to his stateroom, accompanied by a tall, lean lieutenant commander whose eyes seemed permanently focused in front of his face rather than on the outside world.

  Geary ensured the hatch was sealed and his stateroom’s security systems were active, then repeated the message he’d received.

  Desjani sucked in her breath. “Who sent you this, sir?”

  “I’d rather not say. Can you confirm whether or not it’s true?”

  “On Dauntless? Yes, sir,” Desjani promised, turning to her systems-security officer. “How long?”

  The lieutenant commander’s mouth twisted as his eyes studied a virtual display only he could see. “Give me half an hour, Captain. We’re assuming the worm is malware?”

  “Until we learn otherwise, yes.”

  Twenty minutes later, Desjani was back in Geary’s stateroom along with the lieutenant commander, who now looked very upset. “Yes, sir. It was there. Very well hidden.”

  “What would it have done?” Geary asked.

  “When we jumped, it would have initiated a series of destructive system failures.” The lieutenant commander’s face seemed paler than before in the low nighttime lighting of Geary’s stateroom. “Dauntless never would have come out of jump.”

  Geary wondered how pale he himself looked. “How did someone manage to plant something like that?”

  “They had to know our security systems backward and f
orward, sir. Whoever they are, they’re very good, too. It’s a sweet design for something created to cause that much damage.”

  Geary glanced at Desjani, who looked ready to break out enough rope to hang every person she even suspected of imperiling her ship that way. But the message had said the fleet’s systems were infected. Had every ship been sabotaged for destruction, or was this aimed at him alone? He could get a better idea of the threat by checking on the ships of officers known as his closest allies. “Captain Desjani, I want you and your systems-security officer to notify the commanding officers of Courageous, Leviathan, and Furious under maximum-security seal. Tell them what was hidden inside Dauntless’s jump-drive system and ask them to examine their own jump systems immediately and tell me whatever they find as soon as they find it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Desjani’s salute was as rapid and sharp as the swing of a sword blade, then she left quickly with the lieutenant commander.

  Half an hour later, Geary was in the fleet briefing room, looking at the angry and determined faces of not just Captain Desjani, but also Captains Duellos, Tulev, and Cresida, who were there in the virtual conference mode. Tulev, seeming unusually rattled, spoke first. “A worm. Yes. When Leviathan tried to make our next jump, the worm would have instead taken the jump system off-line.”

  Duellos nodded in confirmation. “Courageous as well. We couldn’t find any destructive component, just a worm designed to disable the jump drives for a while.”

  Cresida spoke uncommonly quietly, as if trying to maintain extra control. “Furious had malware similar to that on Dauntless. We would have jumped and never come out.”

  Desjani’s face reddened. “Then whoever was behind this wanted at least Dauntless and Furious destroyed, and at least some of the rest of the fleet left behind.”

  “Those seeking to end Captain Geary’s command have decided to declare war on their comrades in the Alliance fleet,” Duellos observed, his harsh tone at odds with the measured words. “This isn’t just politics. It’s sabotage. It’s treason. Furious must have been targeted because Captain Cresida is known as a strong supporter of Captain Geary.”

  “Then why not you and Tulev as well?” Desjani asked.

  “An interesting question, and one to which I have no certain answer. I can guess that Captain Cresida is more impulsive than I and Tulev, and those responsible for this might have feared that she would take aggressive action against anyone trying to assume command if she even suspected they had been responsible for the loss of Dauntless.”

  “And they would have been right! We need to make an example of them!” Cresida added, one hand flexing as she already had a pistol in it.

  “We will when we find them,” Geary promised.

  “Arrest alone won’t be sufficient,” Cresida insisted. “This is far worse than what Casia and Yin did. It’s possible to argue that the actions of Falco or Numos were meant in good faith, but there can’t be more than a handful of people in this entire fleet who would accept the idea of deliberately trying to destroy at least two of our own battle cruisers. Especially that way, trapped in jump space forever.”

  Geary nodded, feeling his own guts tighten again at the idea. “If we positively identify those responsible, I will have them shot.” That was a big if, yet Geary found himself surprised by how calm he felt this time while promising summary executions of fellow members of the fleet. But as Cresida said, this was the sort of stab in the back that would horrify most of the personnel in the fleet. Captain Casia had let down his comrades, but he hadn’t tried to kill them. “How do we find the ones responsible?”

  Everyone sat silent, looking angry or distressed.

  The room security system chimed, announcing someone who wanted to enter. Geary checked. “Co-President Rione is here. Did anyone tell her?” The other officers all shook their heads. Desjani seemed ready to say something, then subsided. “Are there any objections to letting her in here and telling her about this? If none of us have good ideas for nailing our saboteurs, maybe she will.” Once again Desjani appeared on the verge of speaking, but finally shook her head again along with the others.

  Geary told the hatch to allow Rione’s entrance, then watched as she came in, swept the small group with her eyes, and sat down in an empty seat. “What’s happened?” Rione asked quietly, even as her eyes focused on Geary with another unstated question—and why wasn’t I told and made part of this group?

  No one else spoke, so Geary filled Rione in, watching as the news hit her. Rione’s eyes widened only slightly, but her skin also flushed a bit. Geary wondered if the others, not nearly as used to judging Rione’s reactions, would even notice those things or if they would believe that Rione hadn’t responded at all to the information.

  When he was done, Rione inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. “Tell everyone.”

  “What?” The incredulous question popped out of Cresida but could have come from any of the officers present.

  Rione’s eyes flew open, and she looked at each captain in turn. “I know the military mind-set. This is a secret so far, you think secrets must be kept secret, and you believe the best way to keep a secret, to keep people from trying to find out more, is for no one to know the secret exists. That’s not what you want here.”

  “You want us to tip off the people who did this that we know they did it?” Cresida demanded.

  “They’re going to find out anyway in eight hours when this fleet’s next jump is scheduled! Either you delay the jump without explanation, which will tip them off and create problems with everyone else, or you deal with that malware in every ship so you can make the jump safely.” Rione looked around at the others. “Tell everyone what was done. In politics and in the military we keep secrets because we don’t want people digging for more information. In this case we need more information. Once people know or suspect wrongdoing, many eyes and minds focus on the issue of learning more, of finding out who’s involved.”

  Her expression hardened. “Tell everyone. You’ll have thousands of sailors and officers trying to find out anything they can, and racking their memories for anything they might have seen or heard that could have been related to this. They’ll be searching for more sabotage, and for all we know, there’s more out there. Our enemies in this fleet have made a serious error by doing something that will arouse outrage in nearly everyone and alert everyone to the threat they pose.”

  Duellos frowned. “What if our enemies in this fleet claim that what we’re saying isn’t real, that we somehow set this up ourselves?”

  “The longer you try to hide it, the more people might suspect that.” Rione slammed a palm onto the surface of the table. “Tell them now! Let your initial reactions show, your own shock and horror and outrage. Do exactly what you’d do if the Syndics had planted these worms.”

  Tulev nodded. “Send out a high-priority alert to all ships. Order a full system scrub to ensure that there’s nothing else lurking inside any of our automated systems.”

  “And,” Rione added, “bring up the loss of the shuttle in Lakota. The rare accident which killed two officers who might have named co-conspirators. Few now will question that the fate of the shuttle wasn’t the work of the same ones who tried to destroy entire warships.”

  One by one, Duellos, Cresida, and Desjani nodded in agreement as well. Geary turned to Desjani. “Please have your systems-security officer draft an alert, along with what we know of the worms. Dauntless and Furious may not be the only ships in the fleet with a worm designed to cause the loss of the ship. Run it by me when it’s ready, and we’ll get it out at highest priority.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The rest of you, thank you for your inputs and for keeping this quiet until we decided what to do. See if you can discover any leads on your ships to who did this and how they did it.”

  The shapes of the other officers winked out as they broke the software connection, leaving only Rione, Desjani, and Geary present. Rione stood up, her eyes focused only on Geary, as
if no one else were there. “I can help you if you let me.” Then she left almost as quickly as those whose virtual presences had simply vanished.

  Geary frowned at Desjani, who very uncharacteristically hadn’t leaped up to carry out her orders as fast as possible. “What?”

  Desjani hesitated, then spoke in low tones, looking toward another part of the room. “My systems-security officer found something else.”

  “Another worm?” Geary asked, wondering why Desjani hadn’t brought this up earlier.

  “No. Unauthorized modifications to security settings.” Desjani took a deep breath. “The hatch to my stateroom. The security settings had been recently modified to allow free access for Co-President Victoria Rione.”

  Geary just stared for a moment, trying to grasp the implications. “Why would she do that? She can’t get in my stateroom anymore—”

  “Can’t she?”

  He hesitated, then called up a remote readout. “My settings have been recently changed, too. To allow Victoria Rione free access again.” He remembered Rione’s comments, admissions that she would kill Geary if necessary to protect the Alliance. But why now? “She did it? She caused those modifications?”

  “We can’t prove that,” Desjani admitted reluctantly. “But why would anyone else do it?”

  “Why would she want to get access to your stateroom?”

  Desjani bit her lip, her face reddening with what might be anger or embarrassment, or maybe a mix of those, then spoke with forced calm. “We both know that she sees me as a rival.”

  “Surely you don’t believe that she’d—”

  “I have no idea what actions Co-President Rione is capable of, sir.”

  What could he say to that? When Rione had frankly told him that she was willing to kill for the right reasons? But those had been very big reasons, having to do with the fate of the Alliance, and if she still intended such a thing, why had she demanded he change his security settings to deny her access? Geary thought hard, trying to separate out his feelings from everything he had seen of Rione, everything he had learned about her in both public and private. “I know she suffered that meltdown at one point, but I find it very hard to believe that Co-President Rione would plot your murder as a romantic rival. She was willing to walk away from me, Tanya.”