"And are you lucky?" he asked.

"Me?" Rione sighed. "I wonder if my husband is one of those lights. I wonder what my ancestors think of me. I wonder what Lakota holds, and what will happen to the Alliance. Is that luck, to live in such times and face such issues?"

"Not good luck."

"No. Definitely not."

AT least there was always paperwork to fill the time, to distract him from worries about whatever waited at Lakota, though so very little paperwork actually got printed on paper that he wondered where the name had come from. Geary frowned down at a message from Furious. Routine administrative personnel transfers between ships shouldn't be sent to him even as an information copy. He'd be buried in paperwork if that started happening.

Then he read the name on the transfer and called Captain Desjani. "I've got a transfer order from Furious and-"

"Yes, sir. I'll be right down to discuss it, sir."

Geary waited, wondering what was going on now, until Captain Desjani arrived. He waved her to a seat, where she sat at attention as usual. Since the rumors of something between them had started, Geary had stopped asking her to relax. He wondered if the transfer order was somehow related to those rumors. "This is an order to transfer Lieutenant Casell Riva from Furious to the Vambrace."

Desjani's expression didn't change as she nodded. "A heavy cruiser may suit him better, but the needs of the fleet take priority in any event."

"I see." No, I don't. "Were you aware of this?"

"Captain Cresida had informed me that she intended transferring Lieutenant Riva, sir."

"And you're fine with that?"

"Sir, I can't concern myself with the fates of junior officers on other ships."

Geary tried not to let his surprise show. "Normally that would be true. I shouldn't be worried about it, either, except that the last I heard, you had hopes that you and Lieutenant Riva would be able to reestablish a personal relationship." How long had it been since he'd talked to Desjani about that? He wasn't sure. So much time devoted to his own relationship with Rione and all the emotional fallout from that, plus the rumors of involvement with Desjani. It had obviously been too long since he'd expressed any interest in how Desjani's own life was going.

Desjani shrugged. "Co-President Rione and I do have some things in common, sir."

That came as a surprise to Geary.

She must have read his expression, because Desjani spoke carefully. "Ghosts from our pasts, churning up old emotions and leaving personal wreckage in their wake."

"I don't understand. I thought you and Lieutenant Riva-"

Desjani shook her head. "Lieutenant Riva developed a strong interest in a fellow officer on Furious, and he chose to act on that interest."

"But that's-"

"Yes, sir. Captain Cresida had to come down hard on him for violating good order and discipline. Which is how I heard of it. Lieutenant Riva had not seen fit to inform me of his new interest."

Lieutenant Casell Riva obviously wasn't "Casell" to Desjani anymore, not that Geary could blame her. h.e.l.l. And I'm the one who suggested to Desjani that she send Riva to a ship like Furious. "I'm sorry."

She shrugged again as if unconcerned. "It's his loss, sir."

"d.a.m.n straight."

"It's odd, though," Desjani continued, her eyes looking past Geary. "At times I felt it was as if Lieutenant Riva had been in survival sleep the entire time he was imprisoned. He had stayed the same, his career and his life on hold, locked in the places where they had been when he was captured, just as he was physically locked inside the Syndic labor camp. Everything about him except his age was the same as I remembered." She paused, thinking. "Once he got over the shock of being rescued, of finding me alive, I think it began to bother him that I had changed. I wasn't the lieutenant he'd last seen, the lieutenant he'd remembered during his captivity."

"If he spent that much time thinking about you in camp, I'm surprised he didn't stay faithful once he got out."

Desjani grinned without humor. "I didn't say he was faithful to my memory, sir. There were a lot of women in that camp. Lieutenant Riva availed himself of temporary relationships. He admitted that to me, and I didn't blame him, though I should have wondered why all of the relationships were temporary."

"Was he jealous, do you think?" Geary asked. "Of you being a captain, and having your own ship?"

"I began to sense that, too. It frustrated Lieutenant Riva to see so many officers younger than him who outranked him. I told him promotion would likely come rapidly, but he seemed to feel it should be now, that he should somehow fast-forward until he caught up with the world that had moved on without him." Desjani's mouth twisted. "The officer he took up with on Furious was an ensign not much more than half his age."

"That's usually not a smart way for a man to boost his ego," Geary observed. "Well, I'm still sorry."

Desjani really did smile slightly this time. "I think I deserve better than him, sir."

"There's no doubt of that at all. Thank you, Tanya. Sorry I bothered you with this."

"I appreciate your concern, sir." Desjani's smile turned rueful. "I should know better than to expect room in my life for a relationship. I already have a full-time commitment with a lady named Dauntless who demands all of my attention."

"I know that feeling," Geary agreed. "Being a commanding officer doesn't leave much room for a life. You're a good captain, though."

"Thank you, sir." Desjani stood and turned to go, then faced him again. "Sir, may I ask a personal question?"

"You've earned the right to that," Geary observed. "We've been talking about your personal life. What is it?"

"How are you and Co-President Rione?"

Geary wasn't sure which expression was appropriate and thought he ended up sort of smiling and lightly frowning simultaneously. "We're doing all right, I think."

"Iawas surprised, sir. I didn't expect her to go back to you."

He nodded this time. "Me, too."

Desjani hesitated. "Do you care for her, sir?"

"I think so." Geary laughed shortly. "h.e.l.l, I don't know. I think so."

"And does she care for you?"

"I'm not sure." If there was anyone who Geary could be open with about that, it was surely Desjani. "I don't know. She doesn't give a lot of clues to what she's feeling."

"She did once, sir," Desjani stated quietly. "I can't tell you what Co-President Rione is feeling right now, but I don't think discovering that her husband might be alive would have struck her so hard if she had felt nothing for you. That's just my opinion, of course."

It wasn't something that Geary had considered before. "Thanks for mentioning that. I can't alwaysawella"

"Can't always know if she's telling the truth?" Desjani asked with a slight smile.

Geary smiled back at her. "Yeah. Rione's a politician, but then I knew that going in."

"Some politicians are worse than others, which means some must be better than others. And bad as politicians may be, there are worse professions."

"Are there? Well, sure, like lawyers."

"Yes, sir," Desjani agreed. "Or literary agents. I might have become one."

"You're kidding." Geary stared at her, trying to imagine the captain of Dauntless sitting at a desk somewhere on a planet, reading and selling tales of adventure instead of living them.

"My uncle offered me a job with his agency before I joined the fleet," Desjani explained. "But aside from everything else, taking that job would have meant I had to work with writers, and you know what they're like."

"I've heard stories." Geary couldn't suppress a grin. "Is that one you just told me true?"

Desjani smiled back. "Perhaps, sir."

She left, but Geary sat watching the closed hatch for a while. It was nice to be able to relax a bit with Desjani. She shared experiences with him, some of those born of separate careers in the fleet, which, though one hundred years apart, still had the common elements every officer and sailor had dealt with from the beginnings of the human race. Others sprang from their time on this ship together, dealing with the strains of command, of fighting alongside each other. It was, Geary realized, easy to talk to Desjani.

I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't been in command of Desjani and still been on this ship, if we hadn't been constrained by duty and honora Don't even go there. Don't even start to consider that. That's not how it happened, and that's not how it can ever happen.

HE woke up knowing it was not long after midnight of the ship's day. Ideally, the fleet would arrive at Lakota at some reasonable hour when everyone had the benefit of a good night's sleep and a leisurely breakfast. a.s.suming anyone could get a good night's sleep the night before arriving in an enemy system holding an unknown number of enemy warships, or stomach breakfast when their nerves were knotted over the thought of impending combat. Still, the opportunity to do those things would have been nice.

But even though humanity had figured out how to break some rules of the universe under certain circ.u.mstances, like using the jump drives to travel faster than light between stars, the ways to break rules had their own rules. Traveling in jump s.p.a.ce between Ixion and Lakota took a certain amount of time, no more and no less. The Alliance fleet would emerge into normal s.p.a.ce again at the jump exit in Lakota at about zero four hundred in the morning on the day/night schedules the ships maintained to keep human biorhythms happy.

Four hours was a long time to lie awake next to Victoria Rione, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully. That alone was unusual enough that Geary didn't want to disturb her. Whatever her thoughts and feelings actually were, at night they caused inner turmoil obvious to someone sharing his bed with her.

He got out of the bed carefully, dressed silently, then left, pausing in the entry to gaze back at Rione for a moment before starting to close the stateroom's hatch, only to hear her call out, fully awake, "I'll see you on the bridge."

"Okay." d.a.m.n. He couldn't even tell when she was really asleep. Or know why she'd faked sleep until he was leaving, only to let him know at the last minute that he'd been fooled.

Captain Desjani was clearly awake, sitting in her command seat on the bridge and going over her ship's preparations for battle. She flashed him a look filled with confidence. "You're a little early, sir."

"It's kind of hard to sleep." He spent a few moments going over the same fleet status readouts that he'd been studying for days, then stood up again. "I'm going to walk around the ship."

As he had guessed, just about everyone else in the crew seemed to be awake already as well. Even those who had come off the watches that ended at midnight had stayed up to mingle restlessly with others in mess areas or at duty stations. Geary fixed a hopefully calm and confident look on his face and walked among them, exchanging greetings and making small talk about homes and how they'd surely beat the Syndics again in Lakota System. Whenever conversations veered to when the fleet would get home, Geary tried to be honest. He didn't know when the fleet would once again reach Alliance s.p.a.ce, but he was doing all he could to make it happen.

And they trusted him. They trusted him when he said that. They trusted him with their lives. In a very real way, they trusted him to save the Alliance, though saving the Alliance didn't always mean the same thing, depending on who they were.

He paid a little more attention to how the crew members of Dauntless talked about home, about the Alliance, trying to see if they expressed the same frustrations with politicians, the same feelings that the blame for the state of the war rested there. Perhaps he was hypersensitive to the issue now, but Geary thought he heard more of that sort of thing than he'd ever realized was being said. Like Rione told me that time, it doesn't matter what you say as much as what people think they hear. I haven't been hearing this stuff.

No wonder they welcomed the "miraculous" return of Black Jack Geary so much. They weren't looking for just a military leader but for someone to lead the Alliance itself. Ancestors, help me.

He returned to the bridge with about an hour to go, finding that Rione was now there in the observer's seat, she and Desjani being outwardly polite when dealing with each other.

The only option left for killing time was calling up the local star systems display and trying to figure out where to go if the fleet couldn't employ the Syndic hypernet gate at Lakota, which was the most likely outcome. As usual, the lack of current intelligence on surrounding star systems ranged from being annoying to infuriating. Branwyn seemed relatively safe as stars went, but had its small human presence and a.s.sociated mining facilities been abandoned in the decades since the latest reports available to Geary, or were the Syndics still there to complicate any attempt to get more materials for the auxiliaries? Going to Branwyn would also continue toward Alliance s.p.a.ce. Had its jump points already been mined? Were Syndic blocking forces already moving into position?

Of the other options, T'negu was actually reachable from Lakota just as it had been from Ixion. Would the jump exit from Lakota be mined or left un.o.bstructed, since the Alliance fleet wasn't supposed to enter T'negu from that direction? Seruta seemed average, bypa.s.sed by the hypernet system, with a single harsh but habitable world holding a population measured in tens of millions and a scattering of off-planet facilities. No special threat there, but going to Seruta angled away from Alliance s.p.a.ce again. And of course Ixion, the place they'd left.

He didn't like the options, but they were better than in any other place he could have taken the fleet.

"Five minutes to jump exit," a watch-stander called, startling Geary out of his thoughts.

Captain Desjani tapped an intercom control. "All hands prepare for battle upon exit. Remember that the eyes of Captain Geary are upon us."

He tried not to flinch, but something made Geary look back to see Rione's reaction. She gazed back at him with an unreadable expression, but her eyes betrayed nervousness.

"One minute to jump exit."

Geary tried to calm his breathing, focusing on the display where a portrayal of Lakota Star System now hung before him, showing what the old records knew of that star and the Syndic presence there. In moments that display would begin frantically updating as the fleet entered normal s.p.a.ce again and the fleet's sensors began spotting everything that wasn't in those old records.

"Stand by. Exit."

Grayness turned to blackness, then Geary felt himself being pushed to one side as Dauntless swung through the tight turn preprogrammed into the maneuvering systems. All around Dauntless, the rest of the ships of the main body swung together in the same turn. Up ahead, the vanguard was already well into the turn, and to either side the flanking formations were turning along with the main body. Moments later, the trailing formation flashed into existence, then began the same swing to port.

"Where are the mines?" Desjani demanded, then smiled grimly as warning markers sprang to life on the displays. Sure enough, a dense minefield floated along the straight path out of the jump point. The Alliance fleet had now turned so that the coin-shaped formations were moving in the directions of one of the thin sides, as if five coins were standing and sliding across a smooth surface edge first. Off to the starboard of the Alliance formations, the minefield drifted past impotently.

His gaze swinging away from the most immediate threat, Geary searched for enemy warships. None just outside the jump exit. None nearby. His eyes went farther and farther across the display, scarcely able to believe the lack of enemy warships, until they reached the hypernet gate.

The expected Syndic flotilla waited there, cruising slowly past the hypernet gate on what must be a fixed patrol path. "Syndic Flotilla Alpha consists of six battleships, four battle cruisers, nine heavy cruisers, thirteen light cruisers, and twenty HuKs," the combat systems watch reported at the same time as the displays portrayed the identical information.

"We've got them," Desjani exulted. "We can take that force easily." She turned a fierce grin on Geary, the smile of a fellow teammate when the other side has made a fatal error and victory seems a.s.sured.

Geary tried to relax himself, scanning the displays for any more Syndic warships in Lakota. But except for a couple of HuKs moving down near the inhabited world five light-hours from the Alliance fleet's current position, everything seemed to be in the flotilla moving past the looming presence of the hypernet gate.

"That would be more than enough Syndic firepower to destroy that gate before we reach it," Rione noted flatly.

"Yeah." Geary nodded. But such a possible opportunity shouldn't be thrown away. Couldn't be thrown away. Desjani wouldn't be the only officer in the fleet convinced that the Syndics were easy prey. "A straight charge at the gate would cause the Syndics to stay there and destroy it. We need to try to lure them out of position, then get to the gate before they can return."

"If we destroy them-" Desjani began.

"I know. But our overriding priority is getting to that gate while it's intact."

Desjani nodded reluctantly.

"How will you lure them?" Rione asked.

"What would you suggest?" Geary replied.

Rione spent a moment thinking. "Offer them something? An irresistible target?"

"Yes," Desjani agreed. "Make them think we're not interested in the gate and present a target they'll have to go after."

Unfortunately, there was only one Alliance target that satisfied that need. "Formation Echo Five Five. The auxiliaries and the badly damaged warships." Like sick animals at the rear of the herd. But he didn't want to lose any of those ships. The auxiliaries remained crucial to the fleet's continued survival, and the damaged warships with them were not only important for the combat capability they retained but for what their presence told the fleet: that Geary wouldn't abandon ships or crews. Using them as bait didn't exactly keep faith with that concept.

He took a long look at the entire situation again. Lakota Star System seemed wealthy after the spa.r.s.ely populated stars the Alliance fleet had visited lately. The primary inhabited planet, nine light-hours distant on the other side of the star Lakota right now, showed every sign of being a growing and dynamic world. Substantial colonies existed on a couple of other planets, and facilities of various kinds dotted the system on stars, moons, and in fixed orbits. Between all of that a fair amount of civilian traffic moved, merchant ships plying within the system and heading outward from within it or inbound after arriving from other stars, and big ore carriers hauling resources from the mines on rich but uninhabitable outer worlds and asteroids. Fixed antiorbital defenses surrounded a few off-planet locations, but Geary paid them little attention. Those, and the military stations...o...b..ting the inhabited world, were sitting ducks for long-range bombardment by his fleet.

If only they could linger here to haul some of the cargo from those ore carriers onto the Alliance auxiliaries.

The maneuvering systems had no trouble running the actions that Geary wanted. "Second and Seventh Destroyer Squadrons, you are to detach from the formation and intercept the Syndic ore carriers located near the gas giant one point two light-hours to starboard of the fleet. Take possession of the ore carriers and escort them to join the fleet so we can transfer their cargoes to our auxiliaries."

He paused to decide if that was all he needed to order now, then decided to simplify his problems in this system. Geary told Dauntless's combat systems what he wanted destroyed by highlighting targets and how to achieve it by choosing a weapon, and the combat systems presented a reply after thinking about it for a tiny fraction of a second. Geary studied the plan for a few moments himself, then forwarded it to Reprisal. "Eighth Battleship Squadron, conduct kinetic bombardment of Syndic military installations as laid out in attached plan of action."

As Geary ran his next course calculations, the four battleships were already spitting out the solid chunks of metal that would gain energy all the way to hitting their targets. At the velocities the metal projectiles would be traveling when they struck their targets, not only the projectiles but also a fair amount of surrounding real estate would be vaporized. Ships could easily see kinetic projectiles coming and make the tiny alterations in course necessary to dodge something coming from millions of kilometers away, but installations on objects in fixed orbits were stuck on predictable paths, which had made them easy targets ever since mankind had weaponized s.p.a.ce.

"All units," Geary ordered, "turn starboard seven two degrees, down zero three degrees, at time one six." The orders would cause every ship to pivot in place, the formations aligned the same way but now heading in a different direction so that the broad sides of the coins once again faced forward.