The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian Read online

  “Colonel Malin,” the man said, more formally, his attitude more reserved, deferential as a subordinate should sound but also conveying a sense that no task would be too difficult. He didn’t seem nearly as dangerous as Morgan. And yet Geary’s instincts warned him that Malin should not be discounted.

  He had formed a broad opinion of General Drakon from the official conversations they had engaged in. There had been no unofficial conversations, of course. A professional, Geary had thought. Perhaps not too different from a senior officer in the Alliance.

  But Drakon kept these two beside him as close aides. Was that because of the ways in which people operated in the Syndicate Worlds, or was it because Drakon personally was comfortable with such lethally competent individuals close at hand?

  Trying not to let his expression reveal his thoughts, Geary nodded in reply to the two colonels’ introductions. They surely knew who he was, so he simply gestured toward Tanya. “Captain Desjani.”

  He would have had to have been blind not to have seen the way Desjani, Malin, and Morgan wordlessly sized each other up after the very brief introductions. Tanya eyed the two like she would a force of enemy ships. She obviously also saw the threat in them.

  The walk to the secure conference room was brief and silent. The Marines said nothing, and the passageways had been cleared, as Tanya had ordered.

  Once inside the room, Geary waited while Tanya sealed the hatch, leaving the Marines outside against his better judgment, then he sat down and nodded to the two colonels without offering them a seat. “What is so important your general had to send two personal representatives? What couldn’t be transmitted by even the most secure message?”

  Instead of immediately answering, their eyes went to Desjani, Malin’s look subtly questioning and Morgan’s challenging. “The matter is for your attention only,” Morgan said.

  “Those are our orders,” Malin added, with what might have been an annoyed glance at Morgan. “I hope you understand, Admiral.”

  Geary leaned back, deliberately emphasizing that he felt unthreatened and secure in his authority. “I hope you understand that I won’t be dictated to on my own flagship. Captain Desjani is the commanding officer of this ship and my most trusted advisor. She will be present for any discussion.”

  Malin’s pause was barely apparent, then he nodded in agreement.

  Morgan’s look this time was almost amused as it went from Geary to Desjani. “We understand . . . special relationships,” she said in a way that made Tanya’s jaw visibly tighten.

  The implication didn’t please Geary either, but he wasn’t about to defensively explain his relationship with Desjani to these two. “Then get on with it.”

  Colonel Malin spoke with respectful formality again. “President Iceni asked us to forward her personal request for a meeting with the Dancers.”

  Geary shrugged. “We’ve already told President Iceni that the Dancers have turned down direct contact with her or anyone else from Midway. We don’t know why. The Dancers haven’t explained their reasons. I’ll have them asked again, but I don’t expect the Dancers to change their answer.”

  “Your president,” Desjani added dryly, “might not want to the meet the Dancers personally.”

  “We have seen the pictures you provided,” Colonel Malin said with a hint of a smile. “We know the Dancers are . . .”

  “Hideous,” Colonel Morgan said.

  “They saved your butts,” Desjani replied in a deceptively pleasant voice.

  “We do wish to thank the Dancers for diverting the enigma bombardment aimed at our planet,” Malin interjected before Morgan could speak again. “Ideally, we’d like to thank them in person, if you could tell them that.”

  “I’ll pass that on,” Geary said in noncommittal tones.

  “General Drakon also sends his personal request that we be given access to the ship you call Invincible, Admiral. We understand that any access would be strictly limited—”

  “No,” Geary said. “There’s too much we don’t know about that ship. I’ve been told by your general that you are still very concerned about deep-cover Syndicate Worlds agents operating in this star system. I cannot risk what little we do know about Invincible ending up in the hands of the Syndicate Worlds. Colonel, I’ll be blunt. Neither of the requests you have made justify the extreme concern for the security of your visit here. What’s this really about?”

  Malin nodded, with the look of a man admiring an adversary who has refused to be distracted or diverted. “An opportunity has presented itself, Admiral. An opportunity to resolve a matter which is of concern to you as well as to General Drakon and President Iceni. As long as CEO Boyens commands a Syndicate Worlds flotilla which is here and is stronger than our own mobile forces, we will not be secure. From your previous actions and discussions with our superiors, General Drakon and President Iceni believe that you would also like to see CEO Boyens and his flotilla depart this star system before you leave.”

  “Or, if you’re in the mood for that, an opportunity to destroy that flotilla,” Colonel Morgan added, this time with a slight smile, as if they were sharing a mutually understood joke.

  “What is this opportunity?” Geary asked, not replying directly to Morgan. The more he was around her, the more she unsettled him. It wasn’t just her attractiveness; it was the casual, pantherlike attitude of deadliness combined with allure. This was a very dangerous woman, in ways very different from Tanya, and it annoyed Geary that part of him found that danger fascinating.

  It was hard to tell how much Tanya could sense of that. She was keeping her eyes on Malin, apparently not watching Morgan, but Geary had seen that sort of misdirection in Desjani before. Morgan probably sensed Tanya’s attitude, too, and was reacting with thinly veiled amusement, which was simply provoking Tanya all the more.

  But then Geary noticed Desjani visibly relaxing, a quiet smile appearing. A tactic. She had analyzed what Morgan was doing and altered her own approach.

  Malin, pretending like Geary to be unaware of the byplay between Desjani and Morgan, continued speaking. “The opportunity involves the heavy cruiser that recently arrived in this star system. C-712 has declined our offer to remain here. We have offered one of our own heavy cruisers as an escort for C-712 to ensure they reach their home star safely.”

  “How kind of you,” Desjani commented in a flat, insincere voice.

  “Doing an important favor for someone is a way to gain a friend, and Midway needs all the friends we can get,” Malin replied. “Friends with heavy cruisers could be particularly important once you leave here, Admiral. Those friends can, in fact, do us a service now without even realizing it. General Drakon and President Iceni are proposing a course of action involving our escort that would serve your interests as well as ours, Admiral. If we work together, we can deal with Boyens, as long as we make every effort to ensure he does not even suspect the trap we are laying for him.”

  Geary had no trouble assessing Desjani’s unspoken reaction. No. No deals with Syndics. No “working together” with Syndics. But there was no harm in finding out exactly what was being proposed. “Tell me what you’re suggesting,” he ordered Malin.

  —

  THEY had escorted the two colonels back to the shuttle and seen it depart before Geary looked a question at Desjani.

  “No.”

  “Because . . . ?” he prompted.

  “They can’t be trusted.” She waved toward where the shuttle had been. “What kind of sick, twisted mind comes up with a plan like that?”

  “But it might well work and resolve our problem with Boyens.”

  Desjani frowned, then shrugged. “It might. What are you going to do?”

  “We need at least one of the Alliance government emissaries to sign off on the idea, or it won’t work. I’ll show them the pitch Colonel Malin made and see what they say.”

  “That should be interesting. I’ll want to know how they react to the suggestion that you use this plot as an excuse to
actually destroy Boyens’s battleship.” Desjani gave him a wry look. “Speaking of which, you didn’t seem to enjoy the attention Colonel Morgan was giving you.”

  “She wasn’t—”

  “Oh, yeah. Not at all. Hey, Mr. Admiral. Want a bite of the apple? Just give me a wink.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “No, you didn’t. You have more sense than that.”

  “Tanya, I’m sure she didn’t know I was married.”

  “Ancestors preserve us! Do you really think she would have cared?” Desjani paused as she was about to head back to the bridge, her attitude that of someone fighting an internal struggle. “Before you make a decision on this, you need to come with me.” She didn’t say anything more as he followed, puzzled, until they reached her stateroom. “We’ll risk gossip for a few minutes of privacy because we need that.”

  “Why?” He had rarely been inside her stateroom, maintaining that distance for the sake of discipline.

  “Inside.” Tanya waited until Geary had entered, then closed and sealed the hatch. She stood for a moment before speaking, running one hand through her hair. “Look, I know a lot of the things we’ve done, and by we I mean the people of this time, violate your sense of honor.”

  “You stopped—”

  “Wait.” She dropped her hand and looked at him with a frank expression. “If you want that Syndic battleship gone, there’s a way to do it without leaving any fingerprints or cooperating with people who say they aren’t Syndics anymore but still think like Syndics.”

  “And by gone you mean . . . ?”

  “Destroyed.” Tanya walked a few paces, turned, and walked back. “You know what it’s like. Sometimes you have to do things. Things you’ve been ordered not to do. And you have to know how to do those things anyway, without leaving any records or traces of what was done.”

  Geary watched her, baffled. “Are you saying that, with all of the records automatically created and maintained on every single detail of what every ship in the Alliance fleet does for every moment of its existence, that there is a way to conduct an operation as major as destroying a Syndic battleship without leaving any indications of what was done?”

  She gave an apologetic shrug. “Yes.”

  “But even if you could subvert fleet systems that much, so many people would know—”

  “No one talks. No one.” Tanya’s gaze challenged him now. “It doesn’t happen very often. But sometimes we had to. And because we had to, we figured out how to. If you need this badly enough, we can do it, and there will be no evidence.”

  “The systems belonging to the occupants of this star system will see everything!” he protested, still only half-believing her words.

  “Oh, please, Admiral. If official records on the ships of the Alliance fleet say one thing and some systems belonging to people who were recently Syndics claim something else happened, what is going to be believed?”

  Geary turned away from her, trying to think. If the people of this fleet had been comfortable with acts like bombarding civilians from orbit and killing prisoners, what sort of actions would have required total concealment from official records? I can’t even imagine—

  Desjani’s voice cut through his increasingly dark thoughts. “It wasn’t about atrocities, Admiral. We could do those above the board.”

  Her tone was scathing, bitter, but when he looked back at her, Geary could tell that Tanya was aiming those emotions at herself.

  “It was about evading orders,” she continued in a quieter voice. “Doing what needed to be done. Or not doing something stupid, and you know almost as well as I do how stupid things on the record could be, so just imagine what sort of orders motivated us to develop a way of acting invisibly to every official record.”

  “Tanya, I can’t even picture something like that.”

  “Count your blessings.” She said it even more harshly this time, then looked away. “You can’t picture it. You didn’t live it. Be glad for that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me! For anyone in this fleet! We did what we had to do with what we were given!”

  He stared at the deck, biting his lip hard enough to taste the tang of fresh blood. “All right. How do you make happen something of which there’s no record?”

  “I spread the word. Don’t ask how. The groundwork gets laid. When it’s ready, I tell you, and you order the op. After the last shot is fired, fleet records will say every ship involved was just engaging in routine operations, and no sailor or officer will contradict those records.” She shook her head. “Don’t look shocked. People have been doing that kind of thing ever since the first ones were sent out to kill other people. It takes more work now to keep the official record clean, but it’s an old, old practice. You know that as well as I do.”

  His eyes went to the plaque by her hatch, the one listing a long line of names. Absent friends. The many dead companions whom Desjani had served with and wanted to be sure she never forgot. “Yes. I do know that. Tanya, here’s the thing. If I go with your suggestion, we fight another battle and more die, quite possibly including some of our own. Battleships are damned hard to kill. If shots start flying, Boyens might even target the hypernet gate as a last bit of defiance. But if I go with the plan proposed by those colonels, I may not need to fight, and I’ll still have your option available if necessary.”

  She took a while to respond. “Boyens might not react the way they hope.”

  “But his track record, what we know of him, makes it likely he will. And they know him better than we do.”

  “I . . . can’t deny that,” Tanya said with obvious reluctance.

  “Tanya, if we start shooting, I don’t care what the fleet’s records show. The Syndics could take it as an excuse to go hot war again. And you know what the reaction in this fleet and in the Alliance would be if that war started once more.”

  “Yes.” Desjani turned toward her desk and leaned on it with both arms, her body slumping. “By my ancestors, I am so tired, Jack. Tired of having to do things like this. But I will, if that’s what needs to be. If you don’t think we should, I’ll accept your judgment. You’ve been right a lot more than I have.”

  “No, I haven’t.” He reached out, very carefully, and barely touched her arm. He ached to hold her, to wrap his arms tightly about Tanya and give all the comfort he could, but that could not happen. Not between an admiral and the commanding officer of his flagship. Aboard Dauntless they were always on duty. “Tanya, I’ll keep your option in mind. But I don’t want to do it.”

  “You and your damned honor.” But she said it with a self-mocking tone this time and turned a rueful smile Geary’s way. “As long as we’re being honest, did you really not notice how that Colonel Morgan was looking at you?”

  “I noticed.” Geary rubbed the back of neck and grimaced. “And I thought she was one of the most dangerous things I’d ever seen.”

  “Right again.” Tanya smiled a little more. “I guess I have taught you something.” Her hand went to the hatch controls. “Let’s get out of here before any rumors start, Admiral.”

  —

  GEARY called both of the Alliance government emissaries into the same secure conference room where he had listened to Colonel Morgan and Colonel Malin, then played the record of the meeting, images of the two Midway officers appearing where they had stood.

  After the recording ended, Victoria Rione canted a look toward Geary that was disturbingly like the one Tanya had given him. “She’s a real piece of work, isn’t she?”

  “Colonel Morgan, you mean.” He frowned at Rione. “If she so clearly provokes you and . . . other people, I have to wonder why she was sent along with Colonel Malin.”

  “Oh, that’s easy.” Rione smiled in amusement. “First of all, you might have been, shall we say, intrigued by what Colonel Morgan was offering. You wouldn’t be the first powerful man to fall for that sort of bait, and if you did, it could open all sorts of possibilities for them to
exploit. Including the possibility that you would accept their proposal in hopes of, how shall I put it, working closer with Colonel Morgan.”

  His anger at her words, Geary realized guiltily, was generated at least partly by the realization that some small part of him might well have pondered that idea. “I would not—”

  “I didn’t say you would, Admiral. But I suspect two other reasons also played a role in her presence. Did you notice how you and your captain reacted more positively toward Colonel Malin as you reacted negatively toward Colonel Morgan? She made you more accepting of him.”

  “Damn.” Geary wanted to argue that point as well, but he realized it held a great deal of truth.

  “That’s not all. If I know anything about body language, those two trust each other about as much as we trust them. I believe it is safe to say that Colonel Morgan and Colonel Malin were keeping an eye on each other.”

  Emissary Charban was watching Rione with the expression of a man who was realizing how much he had to learn. “They’re still operating like Syndics, aren’t they?” Charban said. “There are a dozen different things going on at once, layers and layers and intertwining plots.”

  “It’s what they know,” Rione said. “And they are good at it, if ‘good’ is the right term to use.” She tapped some controls. “Did you see this? The room’s sensors picked it up.”

  On the recorded images of the two colonels, a bright object now glowed on one of Morgan’s wrists, something so carefully matched to her skin that it was invisible to the naked eye. “What is it?” Geary asked.

  Rione tapped a few more times, then glanced at him and Charban. “Not a threat, or you would have been alerted to it as soon as she entered here. It’s a very sophisticated recording device. Unless I’m wrong, it’s also sealed. Neither Morgan nor Malin could change anything on it.”

  “They’re not trusted, either,” Charban said.

  “Maybe. It would certainly provide someone like President Iceni with a record of what was actually said and done here. That could be why she allowed two of Drakon’s people to bring the proposal to you.” Rione lowered her head into one palm, thinking. “Their plan could work.”