“That’s all officially classified,” General Shwartz cautioned.
“Everyone here is cleared, aren’t they?” Geary asked. “You have as much need to know as anyone.”
“Can you tell us more about them?” President Astrida asked eagerly.
It was a nice opening to break the ice before the meeting. He owed Colonel Galland for offering it.
Especially since they were going to be getting some pretty bad news at the meeting.
• • •
“GENERAL Sissons was unavoidably detained—” the colonel began.
“What?” Geary interrupted. He hadn’t thought he had given the word any particular force, but the colonel paled and had trouble speaking again.
“The general will attend via conferencing software,” the colonel got out this time, his words falling over themselves in haste.
Geary found the seat with the elaborate placard saying “Commander, Alliance Fleet Forces, Adriana Star System” and refrained from pointing out that it should have identified him as commander of the First Fleet. He stood, waiting, as the others took their seats, and the virtual presence of General Sissons appeared in his seat.
President Astrida looked around the table, clenched her jaw in a way that stood out clearly on her aged face, then gestured to Geary. “Admiral. You said this meeting was urgent.”
He paused only to bring up the star display over the table around which everyone sat, momentarily startled when no less than four aides, military and civilian, rushed to do the job for him. Waving them off, Geary pointed to the region around Adriana. “We’ve got a serious problem.”
“Your orders, as I understand it,” an officious man in a suit worthy of a Syndic CEO noted, “are to return the refugees here to Syndic space. Why is that our problem?”
Enough other people around the table seemed to share in the sentiment that Geary decided to go straight to the heart of the matter. “Because if a battleship belonging to a hostile power arrives at Adriana, you’re all going to get your butts blown off.”
He gestured again in the sudden silence. “The battleship is owned by Tiyannak. That star system,” he said, pointing to the display. “Tiyannak has indicated an intention to conquer Batara, where the refugees came from. That will make Tiyannak your next-door neighbors.”
Someone finally found their voice. “The Syndics signed a peace treaty!”
“Tiyannak is in revolt. They’re not a Syndic star system anymore.”
“How did you learn all this?” President Astrida asked as she cast accusing looks at some of her own officials. “I have heard nothing of this.”
“The refugees told me,” Geary said.
“They’ve told us nothing!” one of those subject to the president’s glower insisted. “I’ve been up to some of those freighters myself. All they would talk about is finding jobs.”
“Is that what they said?”
“They said . . . they said they could work. They were looking for somewhere they could work. They wouldn’t tell us anything else! I asked for military assistance in interrogations, but we couldn’t get any because I was told the refugees were a civil problem! I threatened the Syndics, I told them what we would do, and they didn’t say anything else.” The woman focused on Geary. “What did you do? What interrogation tricks did you use? What finally scared them into cooperating?”
“I talked to them,” Geary said. Those around the table stared back, uncomprehending. “That’s all. I talked to them. It is possible to talk to Syndics. And these aren’t even Syndics any longer. But we have to talk to them. Not interrogate them, not threaten them, just talk to them. Those people have spent their lives being threatened by their own leaders,” Geary added, “and by an internal security service that had almost unchecked power. Our threats seem like child’s play to them. They’ve learned how to avoid answering questions, how to avoid saying things, how to avoid any truth that might focus attention on them or get them into trouble. They would only talk to you about the work they could do because they thought that was the only safe topic—because they think that we are just like their own leaders.”
“So, they’re stupid,” someone said scornfully.
Geary felt his face flush with anger. “No. They’re survivors. They’re operating according to the rules they know. They don’t trust anyone. But when I put the discussion in terms of self-interest, both ours and theirs, then they understood. My fleet database had enough information about Tiyannak and the Syndic-controlled star system at Yael to confirm part of what the refugees told me. Tiyannak is a resource-poor star system that was positioned well for a big Syndic ship refit and repair base just behind Syndic front lines. Now they’re not under Syndic control, and they’re still resource-poor, but they’ve got the warships the Syndics had at that base. The refugees didn’t understand the significance to us of the battleship that Tiyannak has. They just saw it as a threat to Batara. But if the battleship is at Batara, it’s a threat to Adriana.”
President Astrida glared at the star display. “The defenses at Yokai cannot stop it? Why not?”
“Because there are no defenses at Yokai. They’ve all been shut down. The star system has been totally abandoned by the Alliance.”
General Sissons spoke loudly. “That information is classified. It should not—”
“Everyone here should be authorized to see it,” Geary broke in. “I’m releasing it to them on my authority.”
“But . . . for a hundred years we have been on the front lines . . . all right, near the front lines,” a government official complained plaintively. “Right behind them. And the Alliance has been here to defend us.”
“The Alliance government has been cutting expenditures right and left as the amount of revenue flowing in has dwindled,” Geary said. “I shouldn’t have to explain that. I know that some senators in other star systems who argued for the need for maintaining more revenue to the central government for Alliance-wide priorities were defeated in elections. I also know that everyone is tired of war, tired of the endless fighting and deaths and destruction. Ending the war has reduced the scale of the threat to us. But it didn’t make it go away, and it has created some new threats.”
He paused to look around the table, catching the eyes of each person in turn, except for General Sissons, who kept his gaze fixed firmly on the table before him. “You know my fleet was sent out far beyond the frontiers of the Alliance. You must have heard that we took losses. Ships. Sailors and Marines. Men and women.”
President Astrida held up her hands in a gesture of half surrender. “You don’t need to lecture us on the sacrifices demanded of the armed forces, Admiral. Too many of us have lost people close to us. Have you looked at the economies of the star systems in the Alliance? Very few are doing well right now. We are willing to pay . . . what is necessary to the common good, to the common defense. But it is very hard to know what is necessary when so much is kept secret from us. Colonel Galland told us when her wing was threatened with removal, and we moved to save them. We were not told of these other reductions. We were not given a voice in the decision.”
“Why weren’t we told?” someone else demanded.
Colonel Galland shook her head. “Your president already said why. Secrecy.”
“Did you know?” the president demanded of General Shwartz.
“No, Madam President,” Shwartz denied, her eyes on General Sissons revealing anger and betrayal.
“It had nothing to do with defenses in this star system!” Sissons snarled.
“What about the status of your forces in this star system?” Geary asked. “Has that been shared with those responsible for local defense?”
Sissons didn’t answer, glaring down the table in such a way that he avoided eye contact with everyone.
“General Shwartz?” President Astrida asked.
“All I know is that a couple o
f joint training exercises have been canceled in the last few months,” Shwartz said. “Lack of funding was given as the reason.”
“There have been persistent rumors that ground forces units were leaving the star system,” a short, thin man said. “We were told they were rotating into Yokai.”
“They weren’t,” Geary said. “My best information is that Alliance ground forces in Adriana now measure about two brigades. Total.”
President Astrida slammed her fist onto the table hard enough to make the stars themselves vibrate inside the display for a moment. “Why weren’t we told? Why weren’t we told? What excuse does the Alliance have for leaving us exposed this way?”
Geary spoke with slow clarity, driving home his point. “I understand that Adriana is one of the many star systems in the Alliance petitioning to have their payments to the Alliance reduced. Who did you think was going to pay for the defense of your own star system if you wouldn’t?”
A long silence was broken by the president, who glared at Geary. “Adriana contributed a tremendous amount to the defense of the Alliance during the war.”
“With all due respect, Madam President, I know what was at Adriana before the war, and I can see what’s here now. Other star systems, a lot of them, must have contributed a lot of money that was used to defend this star system.”
She smiled back at him, a thin-lipped expression without much humor to it. “I forgot who I was dealing with. You passed through Adriana in those days? Before the war?”
Everyone got that look as they stared at him, the one he hated.
Geary nodded, gazing steadily back at the president. “Star systems complained about their taxes to the Alliance back then, too. They paid a lot less, but they still complained.”
“Why do we need to discuss money?” a woman demanded. “You are here, Admiral, with three battle cruisers. Surely you can defeat a single battleship with that force.”
Geary made an uncertain gesture with one hand. “Probably. But even with three battle cruisers it won’t be easy. And I am not authorized to stay here any longer than necessary to get those refugees back to Batara. Fleet accounts have been hit by serious funding reductions. I’m scrambling to keep as much of my fleet operational as possible.”
“Surely there is still enough money for the most important purposes!”
“I can’t swear that what money is left is being spent wisely,” Geary said. “I can only say that any money being spent on my fleet is being used as carefully as possible, and there isn’t enough. More to the point, I’ve got orders to take care of the refugee problem here, then leave. If we don’t figure out how to not only neutralize the refugee problem but also that battleship, you are very likely to be facing it alone when it finally comes here.”
He gestured to the nameplate at his seat, proclaiming him commander of fleet forces in this star system. “Adriana is used to having fleet forces committed to its defense. That has changed. I’m not happy to be the one who has to tell you that. I’m going to work to get some fleet units positioned near here again full-time, but I don’t know when that will happen or how strong they will be.”
“Colonel Galland,” one of the government men spoke in pleading tones, “your craft can stop a Syndic battleship, right?”
Galland laughed briefly, as if she were genuinely amused. “Under ideal conditions, if the battleship came into low orbit, and if I have every single craft under my command available to me, there would be about a twenty-five percent chance that we could cripple or destroy a battleship. Our losses under those conditions would run between seventy and ninety percent.”
“And, if conditions are not ideal?” the man pressed. “What are your chances of success under other situations?”
“How many ways can you say zero?” Galland replied. “My FACs are not designed to engage something like a battleship. That’s not their function. We’ll do it. Do not mistake me on that.” She looked somberly around the table. “If a hostile battleship shows up here, my people will go out to engage it to the best of their ability. They’ll do that knowing that the odds of success are tiny and the chances of death are very high. But their sacrifices will not guarantee victory. Far from it. They can buy time, they can harass, they can disrupt attempts by the battleship to bombard targets on this planet from low orbit. But they can’t win. Not under almost every possible scenario.”
“Ground forces can’t make any difference at all against that kind of threat,” General Sissons broke in. “That does not fall under my responsibilities. It is the duty of the fleet to stop major enemy warships from ever reaching this star system.”
President Astrida sighed, shaking her head. “Admiral, you’ve given us a lot of bad news. But, if even a small part of your reputation is true, you must have some ideas, some plans for defending us.”
Almost everyone cheered up at those words, looking to Geary with the sort of hope he remembered seeing too many times before. That faith in him, that hope centered on him, had often threatened to unnerve him, but this time he just met it. His growing sense of confidence, of purpose, was crystallizing. This is just like commanding a ship, or the fleet. They need to see confidence, they need to see competence. And it’s my job to give them those things. I’ve been lucky so far. I haven’t let anyone down. Someday, I’m going to fail. It has to happen. But not this day.
“The fleet will stop this threat,” Geary said, seeing the immediate elation his words generated. “But I need the help of Adriana to do it. As far as the refugee problem, Adriana can help with that, too. Otherwise, I can take those people back to Batara, but they’ll just show up here again.”
“What can Adriana do?” the thin man asked.
“I need three things. I need some ground forces in enough numbers to board all of the refugee ships, maintain order aboard them, and ensure that they all come along when we go back to Batara. I also need ground forces to back up our demands to Batara’s current government that they stop shoving people toward Adriana and provide security on the ground while we’re dropping off the refugees. Those ground forces will need transport.” They were already adding that up, some looking unhappy once more, but Geary plowed ahead. “And we need something at Yokai to stop threats coming this way before they get here.”
“And you have no extra funding,” President Astrida said.
“I have no extra funding. You can request reimbursement from the Alliance government, but I cannot promise that you will be repaid.”
“What exactly do you need from us?” the old woman asked. “How many ground forces?”
“I need two regiments of ground forces, fully combat outfitted, and I need shipping sufficient to carry those ground forces.”
“You said one regiment would be dispersed among the refugee ships to keep them under control while you take the Syndic refugees back to Batara,” the very well dressed officer protested. “They won’t need separate shipping.”
“They will if you want me to bring that regiment home once we drop off the refugees and let those beat-up ships the refugees are on go about their business,” Geary said.
“The request is impossible,” General Sissons said. “I don’t have the available assets to spare. My soldiers are committed to defense of this star system.”
“General,” the president said in something very close to a growl, “if the Alliance ground forces in Adriana are incapable of offering any support to an Alliance military operation in defense of this star system, I can promise you that information will be widely reported and discussed on the floor of the Alliance Senate at Unity. Are you prepared to answer the questions that will be asked by the Senate if that happens?”
Sissons got the look of a deer in the headlights as he saw his career being threatened. “That isn’t needed. We’re on the same team. What you were told isn’t entirely accurate. That’s all I was trying to say.”
“What was inaccura
te?” President Astrida pressed him.
“I still have personnel equivalent to two brigades. I don’t have two combat brigades,” Sissons explained hastily. “There are support personnel, my headquarters, intelligence, military police—”
“What can you provide?”
“A regiment. One regiment. I can provide that.” Sissons smiled as if expecting praise.
Astrida turned to General Shwartz. “Do we have a regiment from the self-defense forces that can go on this mission?”
Shwartz pursed her lips and looked unhappy. “As you know, Madam President, our self-defense forces have also suffered from significant spending reductions in the last several months.”
“I know we still have an entire division on the books, General Shwartz.”
“Yes. But self-defense, and deployment on an offensive mission, are two different things,” Shwartz explained. She took a deep breath, then nodded. “We can provide a regiment. I’ll build it out of smaller units with the necessary training. But, Madam President, I must advise you that there may be political costs involved with deploying so many of our forces.”
“I’ll take those costs,” the president said. “At least we know that the men and women we send on this mission will be under the command of Black Jack and not at the mercy of one of the clumsy, dim-witted butchers who never seemed to care how many died.”
No one looked at General Sissons, and he once again avoided looking at anyone else.
But one of the female officials spoke up. “The Admiral is a fleet officer, not a ground forces commander. How do we know—?”
“We know,” another official broke in. “A couple of the Marines who accompanied Admiral Geary’s fleet have families in this star system. When I learned that Admiral Geary was here, I talked to those families. I asked them what they had heard, and they told me it sounded like every Marine in the Admiral’s fleet would go through hell for him.”
“It’s not easy to impress Marines,” Colonel Galland said. “I know I’ve never managed to do it.”