“I’ve no intention of doing that. I assume the software in the fleet conference room can handle a virtual visit by me to Falco’s stateroom. Give me the link and any necessary access codes.”
That generated more frowns and warnings about medical procedures and privacy, but the doctor eventually coughed up the information that Geary needed. He broke the connection with a sense of relief and headed for the conference room, trying to fight off a sense of gloom.
He didn’t like contemplating what had happened to Falco. Part of him wanted to hate Falco for causing the needless deaths of ships and their crews. Part of him just felt pity for the man. Part of him was afraid of how much more damage Falco might cause if he were brought back to reality, or at least the version of reality to which Falco had long subscribed.
Geary made sure he sealed the hatch to the conference room under his own access code, activated the meeting software and its highest level of security, then entered the data to access Falco.
A moment later the image of Captain Falco stood before him, impeccably attired in his uniform, looking as if he’d just been engaged in something important. Falco gazed around, then focused on Geary. “Yes?” After a moment, Falco’s expression shifted from annoyed to the practiced, automatic smile of camaraderie that Geary remembered.
“Captain Falco, I was wondering if you had time to discuss a few things,” Geary began carefully.
“Time? A fleet commander like myself has many responsibilities, you know,” Falco lectured, then flashed the smile again. “But I can always spare time for a fellow officer. I’ve instructed the Marine honor guard sentries outside my stateroom to ensure any officer who wants to see me has access.”
As the doctor had said, Falco still believed he was in command of the fleet, even rationalizing the presence of the Marine guards outside his door as sentries in keeping with his status. Did he even recognize Geary? “It’s an operational question, about movements of the fleet.”
“Yes. Of course. I’ve been reviewing the situation. I haven’t yet reached a decision on where we’ll go from here.”
That was close enough to what Geary had told Rione to make him want to flinch, but he managed to avoid showing it. “May I?” he asked Falco, then activated the star display showing the surrounding region. Falco gave the display a confident look as if he were already intimately familiar with it. “The fleet’s at Ixion.”
“Of course. The latest offensive is going well,” Falco declared.
“Uh…yes. But we’re heading back to Alliance space now.”
“Hmmm.” Falco studied the display, then appeared briefly confused for a moment. “Hypernet. The Syndic hypernet.”
“We can use it,” Geary stated. “But the Syndics will try to destroy any gate before we can reach it.”
“Yes. Naturally.” Falco pointed. “The most direct route to Alliance space is T’negu. But we’re not going there.”
Geary had expected Falco to say T’negu was the only reasonable choice. “We’re not?”
“Of course not.” Falco upped the brightness on his companionable smile. “It’s a trap! Obvious, you see?” Geary nodded, not seeing at all. “Mines. The system will be carpeted with them.” Falco’s expression faltered again. “Mines.” Geary wondered if Falco was remembering the damage a Syndic minefield had wreaked at Vidha.
Geary hadn’t considered the possibility of the Syndics planting a huge number of mines at T’negu, yet it made perfect sense. The approach to Alliance space necked down here. To keep going in that direction, T’negu was the only option. The system had no habitable worlds and only a small Syndic presence left inside underground cities on one planet with too little heat from the sun and too little atmosphere. Every jump point in the star system could be provided not with just a single minefield but turned into a maze of minefields subject only to the limits of the Syndic mine inventory.
Falco was still staring toward the star display but not saying anything. “Where should we go instead?” Geary prompted.
“Where?” Falco blinked, his eyes returning to Geary, and then going back to the display. “Lakota.”
“Lakota? There’s a hypernet gate at Lakota. The Syndics will be easily able to reinforce the star system.”
“Exactly! They know that we know that! Which means they don’t need to reinforce it, because they think we’ll be afraid to go there!” Falco grinned triumphantly. “We’ll surprise them.”
Geary tried to get his mind around Falco’s rationale. It made sense, in a way. And it certainly wasn’t what Geary would have thought of doing. Was Falco right? The Syndics were clearly feeling the effects of the losses the Alliance fleet had inflicted on them in the last few months. They’d lost a lot of ships. Would they risk leaving Lakota lightly defended believing that the Alliance fleet wouldn’t dare go there?
Falco didn’t know about the destruction of the hypernet gate at Sancere, didn’t know that the Syndics had demonstrated the will to destroy a hypernet gate rather than let the Alliance fleet use it. But the Syndics knew that the Alliance fleet was aware of that.
“There will be a Syndic force guarding the hypernet gate,” Geary pointed out. “They can’t afford not to have a decent-sized flotilla in the system.”
“Of course,” Falco said again with a dismissive wave. “Nothing we can’t handle. We’ll be able to wipe out those defenders, bombard the inhabited world into rubble, then leave as we choose.”
That could be so, though Geary had no intention of bombarding civilian targets. The materials from Baldur that Lieutenant Iger had shown him had merely confirmed his own beliefs that an Alliance strategy of unconditional warfare had seriously backfired. Average Syndicate Worlds citizens feared the Alliance, feared to have their home worlds devastated, and so fought all the harder to defeat the Alliance. But did the rest of Falco’s argument make sense? Was Falco crazy like a fox in this case?
Geary studied the display. Using jump drives, Lakota did have access to three stars besides Ixion.
It might work.
“Thank you, Captain Falco. I’m sorry I disturbed you.” Falco smiled again, and Geary felt a stab of guilt at deceiving a man who was mentally ill. “Are you doing all right?”
Falco frowned slightly. “All right? Yes, of course. Aside from the stresses of command. You know how that is. But I’m honored to be able to serve the Alliance in any way I can. It’s my duty.” The smile returned.
“Do you need anything?”
“We should have a fleet conference soon. Set it up, will you, Captain…?”
“Geary.”
“Really? Some relation of the great hero?”
Geary nodded. “Some relation. Yes.”
“Marvelous. Now if you’ll excuse me, duty calls.” Falco stood and looked around uncertainly.
Geary broke the connection, and Falco’s image vanished. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.
“LAKOTA!? ” Victoria Rione wasn’t quite screaming. “Where did you get that idea?” Her face lit with horrified realization. “You spoke with Captain Falco this afternoon. Did he suggest that? And you listened to him?”
“I—” Geary stared at her. “You know I talked to Falco? I put that conference under my tightest security seal.”
“I don’t know what you said, if that makes you feel better.” Rione turned away, shaking her head. “Please tell me you didn’t ask his advice.”
“Not in so many words.” Geary felt defensive and knew that Rione had every reason to be incredulous with him. “I wanted to know what he would do.”
“Something stupid! I could have told you that!”
“He didn’t want to go to T’negu.”
Rione spun back to face Geary and watched him with narrowed eyes.
“Falco thought T’negu would be a trap.”
Rione threw her hands up. “And now I find that I agree with Captain Falco about something. I never thought that would happen.”
Geary checked to make sure the hatch into his stateroom was sea
led. He didn’t want anyone overhearing any part of this debate. “Look, I wouldn’t go to Lakota.”
“Then don’t.”
“The Syndics probably know I wouldn’t go there,” Geary explained with all the patience he could muster. “They know where I’m likely to go, one of the other stars within reach of Ixion. They know where this fleet will go if it keeps on the straightest possible course toward home. Lakota doesn’t match either of those.”
“Because going there is stupid!”
“The Syndics know it’d be stupid for us to go there, and we know it’d be stupid for us to go there, so maybe that’s the last thing they’d expect us to do!”
Rione stared at him. “You’re serious.”
“Yes!” Geary paced, then paused to turn on the star display in his stateroom and center it on Ixion. “T’negu is too clearly a possible objective for us. We can’t go there without assuming every jump point is laced with far more mines than we found waiting for us here. Going back to Daiquon wouldn’t achieve anything except hurting morale in this fleet and might land us in the lap of a Syndic force pursuing us through systems we’ve visited. Vosta takes us up and back into Syndic territory, and there are only two stars reachable using jump drives from Vosta. Kopara takes us off to one side, neither gaining nor losing much ground toward the Alliance, and has only one star accessible using jump drives. Dansik, according to our intelligence and the records we’ve captured, is a regional military headquarters and certain to be heavily defended. That leaves Lakota.”
Rione looked from the display to Geary, her expression guarded, then back to the display. “Where would Captain Geary go?”
“Vosta.” Geary scowled at the display. “To throw off pursuit.”
“But the Syndics have already seen you backtrack that way more than once.”
“Yeah.”
“Would they think you’d go to Kopara?”
“Doubtful. They’d only have to place strong forces in two star systems to trap us. It’d be nice if they thought I was that dumb, but I can’t count on it.”
Her expression hardened. “You managed to get us to Ixion, where you don’t like any of the options.”
He almost snarled in reply but realized the truth of her statement. “I didn’t think we’d make it to Ixion. I thought the Syndics would react faster, and we’d divert at Daiquon from the dash toward the Alliance.”
“And you’re basing your plan now on the hope that the Syndics won’t think you’re stupid? Listen to yourself, taking advice from Falco! Falco has always been an idiot, and now he’s an insane idiot.” Rione walked around the star display, burying her face in both hands. “John, don’t do it. Don’t take the fleet to Lakota.”
She’d never called him by just his first name before. “The other options aren’t that good. If Lakota works—”
The hands came down, and Rione glared at him. “If! What if it doesn’t? What will your options be then?”
“We can avoid combat, proceed across the system, and jump to another objective.”
Rione’s head sagged. “Do you honestly believe that this fleet will allow you to refuse battle? Yes, it did so after the losses suffered in the Syndic home system, when everyone was so shocked their instinctive urge to suicidal charges was temporarily thrown off. But if you try to avoid battle at Lakota, some of your ships will turn to engage, and then what will you do?”
That was something he hadn’t considered. Geary stared past her, thinking. “You really believe some of them would do that? The ones who work against me, people like Casia, don’t seem the sort to risk themselves in heroic charges against huge odds.”
“They’re not the ones you have to worry about! What did the living stars give you for brains, John Geary?” Rione stepped closer and grabbed his arms. “The ones most dangerous to you are the ones who believe in you enough to offer you a dictatorship but not enough to accept changing their own ways of thinking! Ask the officers you trust most. Roberto Duellos. He’ll tell you. Even Tanya Desjani will tell you. If you don’t believe me, then ask them!”
It made a great deal of sense. “I guess there are advantages at times to thinking like a politician.”
“Thank you. I think,” Rione flung at him as she stomped off and pointed at the display again. “If they’d never believe you’d go to Kopara—”
“No! If we get trapped at Kopara, there’s no way out! Lakota leaves us options.” He glared at the display, then shifted his gaze to Rione. “Why haven’t you said it?”
She glared back. “What?”
“Threaten to tell the ships from the Callas Republic and the Rift Federation not to follow my orders anymore. Why haven’t you warned me that you’d do that?”
“Because I don’t make threats I can no longer back up,” Rione replied angrily. “Please don’t pretend that you don’t know the loyalties of my own commanders are now split. No matter what I said, many would still follow you.”
“Really?” His surprise must have showed. “I haven’t tried to subvert their loyalty to—”
“Aiyee!” Rione yelled in rage, stepped close again, and thumped a fist onto Geary’s chest. “Stop pretending that you’re that big a fool! They believe in you, John Geary! Because you’ve brought the fleet this far and won some notable victories along the way! They believe that you are Black Jack and that you’ll save them and the Alliance! They believe that you’re not a politician, and in that they are certainly correct. But you’ve earned their trust.” She thrust an angry forefinger at the display. “Don’t repay that trust by taking them to Lakota!”
“Hell.” Geary let himself drop into a nearby seat, feeling suddenly weary. “Do you think I don’t spend every minute of every day trying to do the best I can by the people who’ve placed their trust in me?”
Her rage visibly faded, leaving Rione eyeing Geary with apparent helplessness. “What are you going to do?”
“Call a fleet conference. See how they react to Lakota.”
“They’ll love it. Just the sort of bold stroke that Black Jack Geary would do.” Rione sagged into a seat as well.
After a minute of silence, Geary looked over at her. “Madam Co-President, have you ever heard of something called a Geary Complex?”
Rione raised her head and bent one eyebrow upward. “Yes. It was first mentioned to me years ago when a fellow senator was telling me about Captain Falco. You finally heard about it?”
“I’m curious as to why you never accused me of having one.”
“You could scarcely be accused of imagining you were Captain John Geary.”
“I think there’s at least one fleet doctor who suspects that,” Geary replied dryly. “I don’t get it. You’re different this time.”
“Why, thank you,” Rione ground out. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Among other things, that you haven’t given me any warnings about the dangers posed by Black Jack, about what might happen if I start believing I really am him.”
Rione shrugged. “I’ve stated those warnings many times, and you seem well aware of them. Saying them again would probably be overkill.”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
“Perhaps it’s time I warned you about that misplaced sense of humor you have,” Rione stated in a dangerous voice. “Is there some point you’re trying to make?”
“Yes.” Geary studied her before answering. “You’re strongly opposed to the idea of this fleet going to Lakota. You think I’m mistaken; you think I may be trying to live up to the reputation of Black Jack. But you haven’t exploded at me. You haven’t stormed out of this stateroom or uttered barely veiled warnings about what might happen to me personally if I really start acting like Black Jack would act. Why haven’t you done any of that?”
She shrugged, looking away. “Maybe I’m trying to be unpredictable. You think I’ll do that, and I know you think I’ll do that, so I’m doing something else. Though in my case what I’m doing isn’t stupid.”
“
You’ve got quite a sense of humor yourself.” Geary dropped any pretense or mockery from his voice. “Seriously. What’s changed?”
It took Rione a little while to reply; then she finally looked back at him. “To put it bluntly, I have issued dire warnings before about the actions you planned to take. Every single time I was certain that I was right, and every single time it turned out that I was wrong and you were right. Sancere is only the largest of those misjudgments I’ve made. There’s no way of knowing where this fleet would be if you’d listened to me, but I find it hard to believe that it would be in a better state or that our enemies would have suffered anything like the losses they have endured.”
“You trust me?” His surprise must have been obvious.
Rione smiled wryly. “I’m afraid so. I think going to Lakota is a mistake. I’ve told you that, and I’ve told you my reasons. You’ve listened. Yes, I noticed that you did. Now, given our respective track records, I don’t feel I have the right to work against your instincts. They’ve been right too many times.” She paused, searching his eyes. “Yes, I know you’re wondering if your instincts are right about me. You aren’t sure why I returned to you, why I chose to share your bed in the first place, or why I came back to it.”
He nodded. “That’s true.”
“And you won’t ask me, because you don’t know if you’d believe whatever I’d tell you. Don’t deny it. I see the hesitation within you. I deserve it.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You don’t have to.” Rione spread her hands. “Do you want me to say I love you? I won’t. You know where my heart is.”
“Then why?” Geary demanded. “Why are you sleeping with me?”
“You’re irresistible to women. Didn’t you know that?” Rione laughed. “You should have seen the look on your face.”
He smiled back at her, realizing that Rione would never actually answer the question but just provide more words, the sincerity of which he could never prove. “I’ll think some more about it.”
“About Lakota? Will you?” Rione’s laughter faded, and she nodded. “Maybe that’s why I came to you, John Geary. Maybe that’s why I’ll be with you tonight.”