"Yeah." Geary thought a moment. "Tell the same people who know about the hypernet gates. I've been so afraid of what might happen if the wrong people hear that I forgot to make sure more of the right people know what's going on. Just in case something happens to me."

Duellos frowned again. "Bad as we've become, a.s.sa.s.sination of superior officers has never been a path to advancement in the Alliance fleet."

Geary couldn't help laughing. "Sorry. I didn't mean that. But, you know, there's a war on. People get hurt."

"So I've heard." Duellos stood slowly, his face thoughtful. "The stakes keep rising, and the responsibility ultimately rests on you. How are you doing?"

"Lousy."

Duellos nodded. "If worse comes to worst, and you are lost in combat, I'll do my best. With everything. You have my word on the honor of my ancestors."

Geary stood as well, reaching to grasp the shoulder of the image and remembering in time to just mimic the gesture. "I never doubted that. Thank you, my friend."

Duellos saluted, Geary returned the gesture, and the image vanished, leaving Geary truly alone again.

FOUR.

NO matter how bad it got, no matter how lonely and isolated he felt in command of this fleet, there were always his ancestors.

When the fleet finally reached the right point around the sun of Baldur and entered jump s.p.a.ce en route to Sendai, Geary watched the external display change from endless star-spangled black to endless dull gray shot through with occasional lights that bloomed and faded. No one had known what the lights were in Geary's time, since it had been impossible to explore jump s.p.a.ce, and with the advent of the hypernet, interest in jump s.p.a.ce had faded. Or maybe the lines of research that might have explained the lights in jump s.p.a.ce had been forestalled by the need to support the war with all the scientific, technical, and monetary means available.

Captain Desjani caught Geary gazing at the lights, realized that Geary had noticed her noticing him, and looked away quickly. She'd told him soon after he a.s.sumed command that many sailors believed that Geary had been one of those lights, his spirit resting in the otherwise unchanging expanse of jump s.p.a.ce until the Alliance's need was so desperate that the legendary Black Jack Geary would return to save his people. Did they still believe that, after learning that Geary had actually been drifting in a damaged survival pod orbiting the star named Grendel at the edge of Alliance s.p.a.ce for all those years, the beacon inoperative, the survival sleep equipment barely keeping him alive until this fleet stumbled across him?

Would he ever see Grendel again? He didn't particularly want to. It was pretty much a useless star, the sort of place ships and convoys had once pa.s.sed through on their ways to important places. Geary had been told the system had been abandoned because it was too close to the border with the Syndicate Worlds, and there wasn't anything really worth defending in it, the wreckage of dozens of battles...o...b..ting the star the only remaining signs of humanity's former presence. But some of that wreckage had belonged to his old ship, the ship destroyed while covering the retreat of the rest of the convoy. A lot of his crew had died at Grendel. He owed them a respectful visit to the place where they had fought and died under his command.

Unfortunately, a lot more people had already died under his new command, including almost certainly his own grandnephew, whose ship Repulse had been destroyed covering the fleet's retreat from the Syndic home system. Michael Geary probably rested with Geary's ancestors now, ancestors he hadn't paid respect to for too long. "Captain Desjani, please hold everything but emergency calls for me for the next hour or so."

She nodded, her own face weary from time spent on the bridge while in enemy s.p.a.ce. "There's not much chance of an emergency while we're in jump. Jump s.p.a.ce might be boring, but at the moment boring sounds pretty nice."

Geary turned to leave the bridge of the Dauntless, his eyes resting for a moment on the empty observer's chair. Co-President Rione had normally occupied that chair even for something as routine as entering jump s.p.a.ce. I need to find out what's going on with her. I've needed to do that for a while, but I could find excuses not to while we were in Baldur Star System.

He left the bridge, but instead of heading for his stateroom went deeper into the ship, toward a set of compartments buried as deeply within the battle cruiser as possible, protected as well as anything on the ship from enemy fire or accident. With all else that had changed since Geary's time, finding those compartments still on ships had been a major relief.

Sailors and officers in the pa.s.sageways made shows of saluting Geary as he pa.s.sed, smiling at him with looks of admiration and hero worship. He smiled back, even though inside Geary wanted to shake all of them and ask why they couldn't see that he was as human and as p.r.o.ne to error as each of them. He returned the endless salutes, his arm tiring rapidly from constant use and causing Geary to wonder if maybe he shouldn't have reintroduced saluting to the fleet after all.

There were a few sailors standing near the worship s.p.a.ces, but they all cleared a way for Geary when he arrived. After he'd pa.s.sed them, he heard the murmur of whispered conversations. The crew liked knowing that he talked to his ancestors, liked knowing that he sought their advice and comfort just like anyone else.

Geary entered a small room, pulled shut the privacy door, then sat down on the wooden bench facing a small shelf on which a candle rested. Picking up the nearby lighter, he set the candle's wick ablaze, then sat a little while, relaxing his mind as he waited for his ancestors' spirits to gather.

Finally, he started talking. "Thank you, my ancestors, for bringing this fleet safely through another enemy star system. Thank you for guiding me in my decisions and for your help in ensuring we lost no people at Baldur." Geary paused, his thoughts straying to places he hadn't let them go for a while. "I hope Baldur hasn't changed. I'd still like to see that world someday, see if it's really what everyone used to say. But n.o.body in this fleet but me remembers that. n.o.body else in this fleet remembers Baldur as anything but another enemy star system."

Another pause while Geary let his thoughts drift. "I hope I'm making the right decision by going to Sendai and the stars beyond. If I'm wrong, please find a way to show me. These people trust me. Well, most of them do. Some of them thinkah.e.l.l, I don't know what they think. It's not like I want this job."

He looked beyond the candle at the bulkhead, mentally seeing the emptiness outside of Dauntless's hull. "It's a great temptation. You know what whispers to me. Just be Black Jack Geary. Just do whatever I think is right. It'd be so much easier. Don't try to convince people. Just show them how it should be done. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not who they think Black Jack is, some perfect hero. If I start acting like someone I'm not, it could be a disaster for not just the Alliance but for all humanity.

"Is that okay? I can't believe I'm asking, but is it okay to see the Syndic people as people? Their leaders are horrible, and their warships and other armed forces have to be stopped, but if I start thinking all Syndics are monsters whose deaths don't matter, wouldn't I be wrong? If there truly is a nonhuman intelligent race on the other side of Syndic s.p.a.ce, one that's tricked humanity into planting unbelievably destructive mines in every important human-occupied star system, don't we need to remember the good things that tie humanity together? We might have a common enemy now."

Might have. Those two words hung in the air for a moment. "I wish I knew. I can't even be certain the aliens exist. What do they want? What are their plans? Can I bring this fleet home safely without triggering truly genocidal fighting between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds?"

He spent a long while just sitting, not trying to think, letting his mind wander so he'd be open to any messages.

Nothing appeared in a burst of inspiration, though. Geary sighed and prepared to stand up, then spoke one more time. "I don't know what's bothering Victoria Rione, but something is, something she won't share with me or anyone else. I know she's not family, but if there's anything I can do for her, show me how, if that's permitted. I honestly don't know how I feel about the woman, but she's given a lot to others."

Reaching to snuff out the candle, Geary recited the old, old words. "Give me peace, give me guidance, give me wisdom."

Leaving, he felt considerably better.

"THERE'S some interesting material among the records recovered by the Marines at the Syndic mining facility at Baldur."

The message from Lieutenant Iger in intelligence didn't reveal much, but then intelligence types enjoyed sounding cryptic and mysterious, as if they always knew a little more than they'd actually ever tell you. In this case, the message succeeded in getting Geary down to the intelligence section. "What have you got?"

Lieutenant Iger and one of his petty officers offered a portable reader to Geary. "It's on here, sir," Iger explained.

Geary read the first doc.u.ment. "Dear Asira"aIt's a personal letter. He started skimming, then slowed down. "We can't get the parts we need to keep everything running and have had to cannibalize some of the mining equipment to keep the rest goingarations ran short again last weekathere's rumors of another draft call, please tell me they aren't trueawhen will this war end?"

He looked up. "Is this from the files of the security police on that facility? I a.s.sume whoever wrote this was under arrest."

Iger shook his head. "It was queued for transmission, sir. The security reviewers had already pa.s.sed it."

"You're kidding." Geary frowned down at the letter. "I a.s.sume you didn't ask me down here to tell me that the Syndicate Worlds are a lot freer than I've been led to believe."

The lieutenant and the petty officer both grinned. "No, sir," Iger replied. "They're still a police state. But this is just one letter. There's a whole bunch in there, all pulled off the Syndic transmitter queue, and most of them contain the same sort of sentiments. We bounced the names on the letters against the files the Marines lifted from the security offices, and aside from routine entries, there's nothing on these people."

"Why not?" Geary held up the reader. "Isn't this the sort of thing that gets people sent to labor camps in the Syndicate Worlds?"

"It is, sir." Iger was serious now. "Or it should be. But to all appearances, open complaints were being tolerated to an unprecedented degree at that facility. Either the security force was extremely lax, or unhappiness with the state of affairs is bad enough that these kinds of sentiments are too common to be suppressed." He indicated the reader. "The files at the installation also included some mail from the habitable world not yet delivered to miners and other workers at the facility. Many of them say pretty much the same thing. Not enough of anything and worries about more people or resources being demanded to meet war requirements."

"Do any of them directly criticize the government?" The few Syndics who Geary had met since a.s.suming command had all been thoroughly frightened of saying anything wrong or against their leaders.

"Only one, sir. The others carefully tiptoe around criticism of the Syndicate Worlds' leaders." Iger reached to push a couple of commands. "Here's the exception."

Geary read carefully. "What are our leaders thinking? Somebody must be making serious mistakes. But n.o.body pays except you and me. This can't go on." "Was this one flagged by security at the installation? It must have been."

"No, sir." Iger barely suppressed another smile. "The person who wrote it is the chief of security at the installation."

"You're joking." Geary looked down at it again. "It's not fake? Some sort of trick designed to mislead us?"

"As far as we can tell, it's the real deal, sir."

"I've talked to Syndics we've captured. You've interrogated them. None of them have said this sort of thing."

"Not to us, sir," Iger agreed. "It's one thing to discuss this sort of thing among themselves, but saying it to us would be suicidal for any Syndic who ever got home again and was debriefed. *Did you tell the Alliance anything?' *What did you say to Alliance personnel?' That sort of thing. They'd pop positive for deception and be subjected to, um, harsher methods of interrogation and then find themselves charged with treasonous statements to the enemy."

That sounded reasonable. "What do you think the fact that Syndic civilians are saying this among themselves means, Lieutenant?"

Iger paused, getting solemn again. "We ran it by our expert-based social a.n.a.lysis systems. They said if these messages were authentic and accurately reflected the state of public sentiment in Baldur System and were not resulting in punitive actions or arrests, then the Syndic political leadership is on shaky ground. The stresses of the war must be making it harder and harder to keep a lid on dissent and dissatisfaction with the leadership. Some of the other letters discuss official announcements of Syndic victories over the Alliance, almost always in dismissive terms. Granted, this is just one hypernet-bypa.s.sed system, and sentiment in other Syndic star systems may well vary in intensity and degree of expression, but there's no reason to think Baldur is completely unique."

"We didn't find anything in Sancere like this," Geary observed.

"No, sir, but then Sancere isaor rather was a wealthy system packed with military shipyards before we hammered the h.e.l.l out of the place. Lots of government contracts, good jobs, priority on resources, linked to the hypernet, and the great majority of the people probably in critical war-related jobs that exempt them from drafts. Not many grounds for complaint in a place like that." Lieutenant Iger made an apologetic face. "I come from a star system like that in the Alliance, sir. Marduk. Life is pretty good in that kind of star system. Better than anywhere else during this war, anyway."

Geary regarded the lieutenant. "But you joined the fleet anyway instead of taking one of those good, draftexempted jobs?"

"Umayes, sir." Iger glanced at the petty officer, who was grinning again. "People like to joke that's why I ended up in intelligence, because I demonstrated I didn't have much."

Jokes about intelligence officers obviously hadn't changed in a century. Geary focused back on the letters from Baldur. It seemed too good to be true, enemy morale finally cracking. "What do they say about the Alliance?" n.o.body answered for a moment, and Geary looked up at the lieutenant and the petty officer. "Do they say anything about the Alliance?"

Iger nodded, unhappiness obvious. "It's mostly repeating Syndic propaganda, sir. One of the last messages in the queue was after our fleet had been sighted, and it's almost a last testament. There are a few other partially finished but unsent messages like that, all a.s.suming our fleet would wipe out everything within Baldur System, that we wouldn't distinguish between civilian and military targets, expressing worries about the safety of their families. One individual talked about a relative who'd been captured by us and expressed the belief that they'd been killed. That sort of thing."

"Propaganda?" Geary repeated. "Lieutenant, I know that Alliance military forces have been bombarding civilian targets for some time. I know that prisoners were being executed."

Iger appeared shocked. "But that was situational, sir! Driven by necessity. It was never Alliance policy like those actions are Syndic policy."

"The Syndic population doesn't seem to have recognized the distinction, Lieutenant." Geary pointed to the reader. "They may be unhappy with their leaders, but they are afraid of us. Is that a fair a.s.sessment?"

"IaYes, sir, it may be."

"Which would mean the main thing keeping the Syndic population supporting their leaders and the war is fear of the Alliance, fear our own actions have created."

The petty officer finally spoke. "But, sir, we only did those things because we had to."

Geary tried not to sigh. "a.s.sume that's one hundred percent true, and I have no doubt that Alliance personnel sincerely believe that. Do the Syndics know that? Or are the people on Syndic worlds judging us by our actions and not our justifications for them?"

Lieutenant Iger was staring at Geary. "Sir, you stopped bombarding civilian targets and allowing prisoners to be killed as soon as you took over. Every Syndic star system we've been through knows that under your command this fleet isn't a threat to their homes and families. How did you know how they felt? How did you know what to do?"

Remember that the lieutenant and the petty officer and every man and woman in this fleet have spent their entire lives at war with the Syndics. Remember that their parents spent their entire lives at war. Remember the atrocities, the revenge attacks, the endless rounds of provocation and retaliation. Remember that I didn't have to endure that and have no right to condemn them for thinking differently. "I did what I did," Geary stated softly, "because it was right. The sort of thing I'd been taught was right, what our ancestors demanded of us, what our honor demanded of us. I know what you've been through, what the Alliance has endured in the course of this war. Under that kind of pressure, it's possible to forget why you're fighting in the first place."

The petty officer nodded, looking stricken. "Like you told us in Corvus, sir. Like you reminded us. Our ancestors had to tell us we'd taken the wrong path, and they sent you, because they knew we'd listen to you."

Oh, great. He couldn't simply be reminding them of what they had been; he also had to be a messenger from their ancestors.

Though in a way he actually was, bringing with him from a hundred years ago the ways their ancestors had thought.

Because he was one of their ancestors. He didn't like remembering that, recalling that his world had vanished into the past, but it was true.

Lieutenant Iger planted a fist on the table, staring down at it. "We need to convince the Syndics it's different now, that we're no longer a greater threat to them than their own leaders. We can do that if we keep demonstrating it. Right, sir?"

"Right," Geary agreed.

"And if their morale is starting to break, and they decide they have less to fear from us than from their own leaders, it could finally break the Syndicate Worlds."

"That'd be an outcome to be hoped for." Geary turned the reader in his hands, thinking. "Let's keep our eyes out for anything else like this, and if your expert-based systems have any recommendations for how we can exploit the sort of Syndic morale problems we see in these letters, I want to know them."

Maybe, just maybe, there really was a light at the end of the tunnel. The Alliance had no hope of defeating the Syndicate Worlds as long as the Syndic leaders could keep drawing on the resources of all the worlds under their sway. But if even a good percentage of those worlds began to rebel, to hold back their people and their resources from the Syndic war effort, it would finally provide the advantage the Alliance had needed and had been unable to achieve for a century.

VICTORIA Rione successfully avoided Geary during the six days needed to reach Sendai. Geary spent the time going over possible battle scenarios, trying to figure out how to avoid losing his battle cruisers and their commanding officers and coming up with nothing. There simply wasn't a good excuse for holding those ships out of battle.

He sat on the bridge of Dauntless again as the fleet left jump s.p.a.ce. The odds the Syndics had been able to plant mines here or even guessed that the Alliance fleet was headed to Sendai were very small, but Geary wanted to be ready to react, just in case the Syndic leaders had been able to make a very lucky guess.

His guts wrenched as the transition to normal s.p.a.ce occurred, and the dull gray of jump s.p.a.ce disappeared as the infinite stars became visible.

Geary couldn't waste time admiring the view; his eyes locked on the star system display, watching for any sign of Syndic ships or mines.

"Looks completely empty," Desjani remarked. "Not even picket ships. You were right, sir. The Syndics had no idea we'd head for Sendai." She gave him an admiring smile.

"Thanks," Geary muttered, feeling uncomfortable. "There's not even any satellites monitoring the system?"

"No, sir," a watch-stander reported. "Because of that." He pointed to the center of the display, seeming nervous.

Normally the display would be centered on a star, the object with enough ma.s.s to warp s.p.a.ce around it and create the conditions necessary for jump points. Sendai had been such a star, once. A very large star. It had certainly had many planets back then, unknown millions of years ago.

Until it ran out of fuel, exploded in a supernova that turned its planets into burnt fragments, then collapsed into itself, the matter making up Sendai crushing tighter and tighter together, denser and denser, until all the ma.s.s of a huge sun was compressed into a ball of matter the size of a small planet so dense that the gravity from it kept even light from escaping.

Captain Desjani nodded, then swallowed in apparent nervousness as well. "The black hole."

Nothing was visible to the naked eye where the remnants of Sendai still existed. But on full-spectrum displays, a riot of radiation shot out from the black hole in two tight beams from the north and south poles of the dead star, the death screams of matter being sucked into the black hole at incredible velocities.

Geary looked around and saw every man and woman on the bridge staring at their displays in the same edgy way. Veterans of unnumbered battles, they seemed unnerved by the black hole. "Do ships ever visit black holes anymore?"

Desjani shook her head. "Why would they?"

Good question. When using the jump drives, ships had to go to every star intervening between themselves and their destination. But the hypernet let a ship go from any gate to any other gate. Black hole star systems, which weren't really star systems anymore because the holes ravenously sucked down all of the matter that had once orbited them, offered nothing for ships and held peril from the radiation being pumped out into s.p.a.ce. Even modern shields wouldn't stand up indefinitely to that sort of radiation barrage.

But still, it was just a black hole. They weren't going to linger here but just transit quickly to the next jump point, while avoiding those jets of radiation at the black hole's poles. Geary leaned close to Desjani. "What's the matter?"

She looked down, then spoke reluctantly. "It'saunnatural."

"No, it's not. Black holes are perfectly natural."

"That's not what I mean." Desjani took a deep breath.

"They say if you look at a black hole too long youayou develop an overwhelming urge to dive in, to take your ship below the event horizon and see what's on the other side. That which was once the star calls to you, seeking to consume human ships just as it does everything else."

He'd never heard such stories, and the sailors Geary had served with as a junior officer had enjoyed regaling him with all manner of ghost stories and tales of mysterious threats that devoured ships and people in the cold reaches of s.p.a.ce. But then a hundred years was plenty long enough to develop new stories. "I haven't been around a lot of them, but a few. I've never felt that."

"I'd wager that no one in this fleet but you has ever been around a black hole," Desjani replied.

The unknown. Still the most fertile ground for human fears. And as Geary took another look at the display, now aware of the beliefs of those around him, he could almost feel a tug from the invisible ma.s.s at the heart of Sendai. Something more than simply gravity so great it held light itself hostage.

"That's why the Syndics aren't here," Desjani announced suddenly. "They knew if they tried to order ships to be pickets here that the crews would revolt rather than stay around a black hole for a long time."