“No.” His reply came out without thinking. Geary paused to order his words. “You’ve dishonored no one. Tell me the truth. If he showed up at a labor camp in the next star system we visit, would you go with him or stay with me?”
“Go with him,” she answered without hesitating. “I’m sorry, John Geary, but that is the truth, and it will not change. I’ve told you where my heart would forever lie.” Rione breathed deeply again, trying to control her emotions. “Desjani knows that, too. She found my husband’s name on the list and came to tell me out of a sense of duty. Your Captain Desjani is very dedicated in her sense of duty. She was also hurt for me, though I didn’t give her enough credit for that at the time, and shocked when I revealed that I already had seen the same thing and not told you.” Rione locked eyes with Geary. “She didn’t think I should keep it from you. She didn’t want you hurt when you found out.”
There wasn’t any reason to doubt Rione. It sounded just like what Desjani would do. “And when you refused to tell me…”
“She wouldn’t divulge my secret. Not the noble, honorable Captain Desjani.” Rione grimaced and shook her head. “She doesn’t deserve to be spoken of by me that way. She was just trying to protect you. Tanya Desjani has honor. If anyone deserves you, she does.”
“What?” The conversation had shifted too suddenly. “Deserves me? She’s one of my subordinates. She’s never given the slightest sign of—”
“Nor will she,” Rione interrupted. “As I said, she has honor. Even if she was willing to compromise her own honor, she’d never compromise yours. I, on the other hand, am a politician. I use people. I used you.”
“You gave me no promises,” Geary repeated. “Damn, Victoria, am I supposed to feel abused here? When you’re the one who’s been torn apart?”
“You were enticed into publicly sharing your bed with a woman whose husband might still live!” Rione yelled, losing control again. “I have stained your honor and left openings for your enemies to exploit! Why can’t you get angry about that?”
“Who else knows about this?” Geary asked, startled.
“I…” Rione flung one hand out angrily. “You, me, and the noble Captain Desjani. For certain. Others may have found the same information and be waiting to employ it when it will harm you the most. You have to assume that’s the case. You have to assume your honor will be questioned sooner or later because of me.”
“I seem to recall you once telling me that you could look out for your own honor. I can do the same.”
“Can you?” Rione took a long, deep breath. “If I’m supposed to be your example, you’re not very convincing. Why are you trying to defend me?”
“Because any man worth anything wouldn’t fault you for an honest mistake—”
“Any man? Will you speak for my husband now, John Geary?” Rione glared at him. “What would I tell him? What should I tell my ancestors? I haven’t spoken with them since I learned of this. How can I?”
Geary looked silently back at her for a moment. “Do you want me to speak honestly?”
“Oh, why not? One of us should be honest,” Rione answered bitterly.
“Then I’ll tell you a few things.” Geary kept his voice firm, speaking as if giving commands on the bridge. “First, my honor isn’t stained. Neither is your honor. A stain requires knowingly doing a dishonorable thing.”
“That is not—”
“I don’t care how people see things now! A hundred years ago people understood that! Aren’t your lives hard enough after a century of war? Do you need to make them even harder by holding yourselves to impossible standards?” Rione stared at him. “I don’t have the right to tell you how to feel, but I’m telling you that’s how I feel. Secondly,” Geary continued, “you’re not helping anyone by flaying yourself this way. Yes, in a perfect, ideal universe you could be held to some impossible standard of loyalty. Not here.”
She shook her head. “That’s unlikely to bring comfort to my husband or to my ancestors.”
“What would you have wanted to happen if the situation were reversed?” Geary demanded. “If you’d been badly hurt, taken for dead, and perhaps forever separated from your husband? What would you have wanted?”
Rione spent a long time with her eyes lowered, saying nothing. Finally, she raised her gaze again and spoke calmly. “I would want him to be happy.”
“Even if that meant finding someone else if he thought you were dead?”
“Yes.”
“And if he then learned you could still be alive but still possibly forever lost to him? Would you want him to blame himself?”
“Do not use my husband against me, John Geary,” Rione spat. “You don’t have the right.”
He sat back and nodded, trying to stay calm. “That’s so. Why not talk to your ancestors? Maybe they’ll give you some sign of how they feel.”
“Such as the word adulteress appearing on my forehead?” Rione asked, still angry.
“Since you already think it’s there, why not?” Geary shot back. “But maybe they won’t condemn you. They’re your ancestors, Victoria. They were human, too. They lived imperfect lives. That’s why we talk to them, because they can remember and understand and maybe, just maybe, they can show us some wisdom that we’ve not yet learned.”
She shook her head, looking away again. “I can’t.”
“Even the most dishonorable can talk to their ancestors! No one can take that from you!”
“That’s not what I mean.” Rione stared stubbornly toward the opposite bulkhead.
He studied her profile, the set of her jaw, and slowly began to understand. “You’re afraid to talk to them? Afraid of how they might react?”
“Does that surprise you, John Geary? Of course I’m afraid. I’ve done many things I’m not particularly proud of, but I’ve never done anything that I thought would shame my ancestors.”
He considered that for a while. “You don’t have to face them alone. There are—”
“I will not share my shame with another!”
“You’ve already shared it with Desjani and now me!” Geary yelled back.
“And that is where it will end,” Rione muttered, her face grim and stubborn.
“I could—”
“No!” Rione visibly tried to calm herself again. “That would have been my husband’s role. I won’t have you beside me when I face my ancestors.”
That left only one option. “How about Desjani? Could you ask her to accompany you?”
Rione stared at him, plainly shocked.
“She already knows.”
“And she detests me.”
“Because you wouldn’t tell me. Now you have.” Rione’s eyes wavered. “You said it yourself. Desjani has honor. Your ancestors can’t object to her.”
Rione shook her head, avoiding Geary’s gaze again. “Why would she do that for me?”
“I could ask her.” Wrong answer, as Rione’s eyes blazed. “Or you could. Do you think Desjani would deny you that?”
She finally sighed. “Oh, no. Not the noble Captain Desjani. She’d even stand beside a politician if that person needed her, wouldn’t she? Especially if she thought the great Captain Geary wanted her to do it.”
“I think so, but you can leave the ‘great Captain Geary’ crap out of it. I’m trying to help you here, and Captain Desjani will help you if you ask, so you don’t need to keep throwing verbal missiles at either of us.”
Rione stood up, gazing down at Geary with a searching expression. “You won’t be in command of this fleet forever. Someday you’ll get it home. The living stars alone know how, but somehow you’ll do it. You can retire the day after that if you want. No one in the Alliance would deny you that. On that day, when you no longer have the responsibilities of command, when regulations and honor no longer keep you from personal relationships with any other officers, would you want to be tied to someone like me, or would you like the freedom to learn the heart of someone like Tanya Desjani?”
“I’ve never—”
“No. And you won’t. Damn you.” Rione spun around and left.
GEARY started awake as his stateroom door opened, then closed. He slapped the light control, bringing the dim night lighting to life, and saw Victoria Rione standing there, watching him silently.
“Hello, John Geary.” She walked a bit unsteadily toward him, then sat down on the end of the bed, staring at him. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
He could easily smell the wine on her breath even across the distance still separating them. “About what?”
“How it went.” Rione waved one hand grandly. “Me, my ancestors, and Captain Desjani. Surely you want to know.”
“Victoria—”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, slightly wobbly, her voice thick. “I explained what had happened. I expressed my remorse. I asked for guidance. Nothing. I felt nothing. They sent me nothing. My ancestors don’t even want to acknowledge me anymore, John Geary.”
He sat up finally. “That can’t be true.”
“Ask the noble Captain Desjani! Damn her and damn you.” Rione shoved herself to her feet and started pulling off her clothes.
Geary got up, too. “What are you doing?”
“Being what I am.” She dropped the last garment and half fell onto the bed, gazing up at him. “Go ahead.”
“You must be crazy if you think I’d take advantage of you right now.”
“Too honorable? Don’t fool yourself. Just be Black Jack for a while. Do whatever you want.”
He stared down at her, trying to find words.
Rione spoke again, her eyes looking past Geary now as if seeing other things. “I’ll kill him if I have to, you know. If Black Jack tries to harm the Alliance and there’s no other way to stop him, I’ll kill him. Too many others have died to let their sacrifices be lost. Maybe that’s when my honor disappeared, when I vowed to do anything it took to stop Black Jack.” Her eyes focused back on him with some difficulty. “Anything.”
It wasn’t easy to say, but he had to speak the thought that came to him. “Is that why you started sleeping with me in the first place?”
Her mouth worked; then she shook her head slightly. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t think even I would do that.”
“Even you? At one point you spoke of things even I wouldn’t do, and now you’re being just as hard on yourself.” Geary reached down to pull the sheet over her while she watched, unmoving. “I will not treat you badly, Victoria. You deserve much better, whether you believe that or not.”
He sat down nearby, his eyes on the starscape glowing softly on one wall. “You’re a hard person, a tough person, but you’re just as hard on yourself as you are on others. Maybe harder. I don’t think it’s possible for your ancestors to forgive you when you refuse to forgive yourself.”
A long time went by in silence, then he looked over and saw that Rione had passed out. Even now, dead to the world, her face was lined with distress.
When Geary had first been awakened on Dauntless, he’d been too stunned to really pay attention to the people in the fleet, the descendants of the people he’d once known and lived among. After assuming command, he’d quickly learned about some of the changes that a century of time and ugly warfare had wrought, and he had been left believing that he was among strangers who no longer felt or thought like he did. As the weeks went by and he learned more about them, Geary had decided he’d too harshly judged these people and had begun to feel as if he and they shared fundamental things. But now he felt doubt again. Honor could be a burden and a sword. It could be too easily misused. And it seemed the people of the Alliance in this time a hundred years from his own used honor as a weapon against themselves, making honor so unyielding and unreasonable that it could just as easily harm them as their enemies, just as easily endorse injustice as integrity.
Geary sighed, stood up carefully to avoid making noise, then dressed silently. At the door he paused to look back at her. I’ve felt so much pain from knowing everyone I once knew and loved was dead. But how many people in the Alliance are like Victoria Rione, not knowing if their loved ones are dead or alive, wondering how to live with their souls torn by uncertainty? How many in the Syndicate Worlds feel the same? For the first time, he realized there was an advantage to even the cruel certainty he had been forced to deal with. At least it was a certainty.
He roamed the quiet passageways and compartments of Dauntless, greeting those members of the crew standing watches in the depths of the ship’s night, trying to find comfort in living the rituals of command.
Rounding a corner, he found Captain Desjani doing the same.
“Captain Geary?” Desjani didn’t hide her surprise. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
His tone, his attitude, obviously conveyed otherwise. Desjani grimaced. “You’ve talked with Co-President Rione?”
Geary nodded.
“I had thought…” Desjani paused and tried again. “I’d been very angry with her. As you could tell. I thought she’d refused to tell you because she lacked honor. I didn’t realize her sense of honor was in fact tearing her apart.”
“How did it really go? Did her ancestors really reject her?”
Desjani lowered her head and thought some more. “I felt something. I don’t know what. They were there. But she wouldn’t accept that, I think.”
“That was my impression, too.”
“She…um…” Desjani seemed embarrassed and angry. “I saw her again a little while ago. She’d been drinking, and she said a few things.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Sir, I hope nothing I have done or said has in any way led you to think that I would ever—”
He held up a hand to forestall her. “You’ve been completely professional. I couldn’t ask for a better officer.”
Desjani still seemed distressed. “Even if you didn’t have a great mission to fulfill, even if the living stars hadn’t sent you to us at our hour of greatest need, it would still be wrong for me to—”
“Captain, please.” Geary hoped his own voice didn’t sound too distraught. “I understand. We don’t need to talk about it again.”
“There are rumors, Captain Geary,” Desjani got out between clenched teeth. “About you and me. I’ve been made aware of them.”
“Groundless rumors, Captain Desjani. Created and passed on by officers who themselves lack understanding of honor. I’ll do everything I can to act only professionally around you, as I’m sure you will continue to do with me.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I knew you’d understand.” She nodded gratefully, then saluted and walked on. Geary watched her go, realizing that regardless of whether they ever talked about it again, it would still be looming over them constantly.
Eventually he ended up back at his stateroom. Rione was still unconscious, so Geary sat down and called up the simulations again. Three more days of passing through Daiquon Star System, and then the Alliance fleet would be at the jump point for Ixion.
Should he still take the fleet to Ixion? The Syndics had obviously guessed enough about his route to plant mines here. What might be at Ixion?
But then the alternative destinations weren’t that attractive. And they definitely had surprised the Syndics by how fast they’d arrived in Daiquon. If the Alliance fleet could keep moving faster than the Syndics could react, they might clear Ixion before the Syndics could get a blocking force in place.
Or not. According to the newest Syndic records they’d been able to steal at Sancere, Ixion boasted a decent inhabited world and a number of off-planet colonies and facilities that could well still be active. It wasn’t an empty or abandoned star system.
He’d have to be ready, really ready, when they arrived in Ixion. Assume the jump point they arrived at was mined, assume the Syndics were waiting in ambush. Make sure the Alliance fleet was ready to cope with that.
Put that way, it sounded simple. He wished he knew how to actually do tho
se things.
Geary finally fell asleep in the chair, wishing Rione would get out of her funk and offer him advice again.
WHEN he awoke, stiff from sleeping in the chair, Geary saw Rione still lying in his bed, but she was awake and gazing at the overhead. Without a word, he stood up and went over to the stateroom’s sink, pulling out some pain-killers and some water, then bringing them over to her.
She accepted the offering, still not looking at him. Only after he had sat back down did she speak. “I don’t recall everything I said last night.”
“That’s probably just as well,” Geary noted in a neutral tone.
“I also don’t recall everything I did last night.”
“We didn’t do anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Rione nodded, then sighed, then winced as the gestures apparently brought stabs of pain. “Thank you. Now, if you’ll do me the favor of turning your back, I’ll gather my clothes and whatever shreds of dignity remain to me and spare you having to deal with my presence any longer.”
“Suppose I don’t want to turn my back on you?”
“Spare me the chivalry, John Geary. Unless you simply want to revel in my nakedness. I’ve no right to deny you that small pleasure.” She looked and sounded defeated.
Geary felt himself getting angry with her, started to tamp it down, then realized sympathy hadn’t produced any results so far. “Okay, Madam Co-President. Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear.” Rione frowned at his harsh tone. “I frankly don’t care what you think of yourself right now. I am disappointed that someone of your intelligence and abilities is choosing to wallow in self-pity when I am in desperate need of her advice and good counsel in order to keep this fleet alive and keep my own head on straight. In less than three days we’ll be jumping for Ixion, and I have no idea what will be awaiting us there. Have you decided that Black Jack doesn’t need you to help him make the right choices?”
Rione’s frown deepened, though Geary also spotted a flash of fear in her. Was she wondering what she’d said last night? Whether she’d actually told him straight out just how far she’d go to protect the Alliance from Black Jack?