Jack Campbell: Dreadnaught

To my uncle Oliver Holmes “Rick” Ulrickson, who sailed for his last home port in May 2010. The youngest in my mother’s family, with six older sisters, he somehow survived childhood to serve in the Navy, work in aerospace (including NASA’s Johnson Space Center Mission Control tracking system), and mentor many students at Texas Christian University. He was an amateur historian, he read a lot, he sang, and he was active in the civil rights movement in the sixties and seventies, but his proudest achievement in life was undoubtedly his family. You’ll be missed, Uncle Oliver.

For S., as always.

Innumerable stars like brilliant diamonds carelessly flung across endless space shone upon the hull of the civilian passenger ship. Bright, but cold, their light far too distant to give any warmth, the stars formed constellations in which humans tried to find meaning. Admiral John “Black Jack” Geary, watching those stars, thought about the fact that the constellations changed depending on where you were, but the meaning of it all somehow didn’t change.

He just wished he knew what that meaning of it all was. He had lost one battle, long ago, and discovered much later that the loss had meant something much different than he had imagined. Lately, he had won much bigger battles; but what those meant, what his future would be from this day forward, remained as uncertain as whatever messages the stars wrote across the sky.

The passenger ship had exited the hypernet gate at the particular star known to humans as Varandal. Over the dozen decades since it had been built, the ship had traveled between many stars, and while the stars themselves had burned on unchanging to the naked eye, the ship had felt those years. Men and women had worked to keep its systems functioning and its hull strong, but where the life of stars was measured in billions of years, the life spans of human creations were often less than a century.

This ship was old, moving almost as deftly as ever, but feeling the accumulated stress of years in the materials from which it had been built. It should have been replaced long ago. However, a civilization caught in a seemingly endless war couldn’t afford such luxuries; instead, it diverted those resources to warships to replace countless other warships lost in countless battles.

But on this voyage, now that peace had come a month ago, the crew had spoken of rumors of new ships. No one knew for sure. So far, peace hadn’t brought any major improvements, hadn’t brought money or lives to replace what had been lost in the long war with the Syndicate Worlds. No one even knew exactly what “peace” was. No one living had been alive the last time humanity knew peace, before the Syndics attacked the Alliance a century ago.

No, that wasn’t right. One man still living had been alive then, miraculously surviving a century in survival sleep to lead the fleet to victory, to bring this peace, which somehow felt not all that different from the once-endless war that had finally come to an end. And now he looked at the stars and wondered what new turns awaited his life.

Alliance government warns of threat to all humanity from alien race.

Geary lowered his gaze back to the news headlines scrolling under the star display. “When we left Varandal a few weeks ago, the existence of intelligent aliens was still supposed to be secret.”

Sitting on the bed nearby, Captain Tanya Desjani glanced over at the headline before resuming her scrutiny of a ration bar. “We fought a battle with them. The whole fleet knows they’re out there.” She waved at another display set on one bulkhead, the new ring on one of her fingers flashing a moment as the star sapphire set within it caught the light.

A virtual window, the display showed another view outside their passenger ship; but on this one, the countless stars and the planets illuminated by the radiance of Varandal were dimmed by symbols revealing things invisible to human eyes from that distance. Hundreds of glowing images, representing the warships in the main Alliance fleet, hung apparently unmoving against the backdrop of space even though those warships were in fixed orbits about the star. The scene conveyed two very different sensations, one of them awe at the scale of humanity’s achievements. But against that awe was the reality that, as massive as the fleet’s battleships, battle cruisers, and lesser warships were in human terms, they were tiny when measured against the expanse of the star system and completely insignificant compared to even a small region of the galaxy.

Geary let his eyes linger on the view, realizing how much he had missed those still-unseen, utilitarian, and battle-scarred ships. His own home world had become foreign to him, but for all the changes a harsh century had wrought, the fleet had remained a place in which he felt he belonged. The men and women who had grown up with war and seen all of its terrors, who had been shaped in part by those bloody experiences, still remained sailors like him. Also, the formal end of hostilities with the Syndics should have brought rest from their labors, but this version of peace seemed unlikely to offer that. “I thought we were trying to figure out how to keep from fighting any more battles with the aliens. Why is the government now broadcasting all over the place their existence and the danger they pose?”

“Read some of the other headlines,” Desjani suggested before biting off a piece of the bar. “These Yanika Babiya ration bars aren’t bad. For ration bars, that is.”

Geary focused back on the news, trying to catch up after resolutely ignoring events for much of the past month. Ruling parties swept from power in special elections called in ninety-two star systems.

The Rift Federation has voted to renegotiate its ties to the Alliance.

Fingal becomes the thirty-sixth star system to demand reduction of its defense commitments and taxes to the Alliance central government.

Black Jack Geary, in comments made on Kosatka, offers only qualified support for the current government. “What? Qualified support? What the hell are they talking about? When that guy asked if I’d follow orders from the government, I said yes, I would.”

Desjani swallowed her bite of ration bar and raised an eyebrow at him. “You said that you’d follow all lawful orders.”

“So?” Geary demanded.

“ ‘Lawful’ is a qualifier. Even a dumb sailor like me knows that.”

“When did saying something that should be a given turn into something subversive?” Geary grumbled.

“When a majority of the population considers the elected government to be corrupt and full of crooks,” Desjani replied. “To many citizens of the Alliance, ‘lawful’ implies sweeping out the criminals.”

“I shouldn’t have answered that guy.”

She shook her head. “And leave the question unanswered? ‘Black Jack Geary refuses to say he supports the government.’ That wouldn’t have produced a better outcome, darling.”

Her use of the endearment calmed him. “Was it only four weeks ago that we got married?”

“Twenty-six days. Even though we won’t be able to act as a married couple aboard my ship, you’re still expected to remember all anniversaries and significant dates, you know.” Desjani coolly took another bite.

“Yes, ma’am.” He liked seeing the annoyed look she usually gave him when he responded like her subordinate, but this time all Tanya did was shake her head at him. Geary eyed her, wondering at how composed she had been since their arrival in Varandal Star System, then finally realizing that Desjani always got calmer when she sensed combat approaching. “Do you expect something to happen when we dock at Ambaru station?”