Jack Campbell: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

“Something about here.” She turned her gaze from the landscape and caught his eyes. “Tomorrow, we leave Old Earth, return to Dauntless , and head for home. You need to know what people will be thinking.”

“I can guess,” Geary said.

“No, you can’t. You spent a hundred years frozen in survival sleep. You’ve been among us for a while, but you still don’t understand us as well as you should. But I know the people of the Alliance right now because I’m one of them.” Tanya’s eyes had darkened, taken on a hardness and a fierceness he remembered from their first meeting. “I was born during a war that had started long before I arrived, and I grew up expecting that war to continue long after I was gone. I was named for an aunt who died in the war, saw my brother die in it, and fully expected that any child of mine might die in it. We could not win, we would not lose, and the deaths would go on and on. Everyone in the Alliance, everyone but you, grew up the same. And while we were growing up, we were taught that Captain Black Jack Geary had saved the Alliance when he died blunting one of the first surprise attacks by the Syndicate Worlds that started that war.”

“Tanya,” he said resignedly, “I know—”

“Let me finish. We were also taught that Black Jack epitomized everything good about the Alliance. He was everything a citizen of the Alliance should be and everything a defender of the Alliance should aspire to. Quiet! I know you don’t like hearing that, but to many billions of people in the Alliance, that’s who Black Jack was. And we all heard the rest of the legend, too, that Black Jack was among our ancestors under the light of the living stars, but he would return from the dead someday when he was most needed, and he would save the Alliance. And you did that.”

“I wasn’t really dead,” Geary pointed out gruffly.

“Irrelevant. We found you only weeks before power on that damaged escape pod would have been exhausted. We thawed you out, then you saved the fleet, you beat the Syndics, and you finally brought an end to the endless war.” She ran one hand slowly across the rough stone of the wall, her touch gentle despite the force of her words. “Now, despite a victory that is causing the Syndicate Worlds to fall to pieces, the Alliance is also threatening to come apart at the seams because of the costs and strains of a century of war. In that time, you’ve come to Old Earth.”

“Tanya.” She knew he would be unhappy with this conversation, with being reminded yet again of the beliefs that he was some sort of mythical hero. For a moment, he wondered if an ancestor of his had stood here, very long ago, peering into that same wind for approaching enemies, burdened with the responsibility of protecting everyone else. “We came to Old Earth to escort the Dancers. If the aliens hadn’t insisted, we wouldn’t have come here.”

“You and I know that, and some members of the Alliance Grand Council know that,” Desjani said. “But I guarantee you that everyone else in the Alliance believes that you chose to come here, to Old Earth, the Home of us all, the place our oldest ancestors once lived, to consult with those ancestors. To learn what you should do to save an Alliance that more and more citizens of the Alliance fear may be beyond saving.”

He stared at her, hoping that Tanya’s security measures really were keeping the nearby observers from seeing his expression. “They can’t believe that.”

“They do.” Her eyes on him were unyielding. “You need to know that.”

“Great.” He faced the remnants of the wall, staring north to where the wall’s enemies had long ago been. “Why me?”

“Ask our ancestors. Though if you asked me,” she added, standing right next to him as she also gazed outward, “I’d say it was because you can do the job.”

“I’m just a man. Just one man.”

“I didn’t say you would do it alone,” Tanya pointed out.

“And our ancestors haven’t been talking to me.”

“You know,” she added in the very reasonable voice of someone repeating common knowledge, “that our ancestors rarely come out and tell us anything. They offer hints, suggestions, inspirations, and hunches for those who are willing to pay attention. And if they care about us at all, they will offer those things to you if you are listening.”

“The ancestors here on Old Earth,” Geary said as patiently as he could, “didn’t get raised in an Alliance at war and indoctrinated about how awesome I am. Why should they be impressed by Black Jack?”

“Because they are our ancestors, too! And they know what Black Jack is! Remember that other wall they took us to? The, uh, Grand Wall?”

“The Great Wall?”

“Yeah, that one.” She gestured to the north. “Now, this wall, the one that Hadrian built, was a real fortification. It kept out enemies. But that Great Wall over in Asia never could do that. The people there told us it was so damned big, so long, that it was impossible for the guys who built it to support a large enough army to actually garrison it. They sank a huge amount of money, time, and human labor into building that Great Wall, and whenever an enemy wanted to get through it, all they had to do was find a spot where there weren’t any soldiers and put up a ladder, so one of their own could climb up and over, then open the nearest gate.”

“Yeah.” Geary nodded. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”

“Not as a fortification, no.” She waved again, this time vaguely to the east. “Those pyramids. Remember those? Think of the time and money and labor that went into those. And then those big faces on the mountain a ways north of where we first stopped in Kansas. The four ancestors whose images were carved into a mountain. How much sense did that make?”

He turned a questioning look on her. “This has something to do with me?”

“Yes, sir, Admiral.” Desjani smiled, but the eyes that held his were intent. “That Great Wall said something about the people who built it. It told the world, we can do this. It told the world, we’re on this side of the Great Wall, and all the rest of you are on the other. Those pyramids must have really impressed people a long time ago, too. And the four ancestors on the mountain? It didn’t just honor them, it also honored their people, and their homes, and what they believed in. All of those things were symbols. Symbols that helped define the people who built them.”

He nodded slowly. “All right. And?”

“What’s the symbol of the Alliance?”

“There isn’t one. Not like that. There are too many different societies, governments, beliefs—”

“Wrong.” She pointed at him.

Geary felt that vast sinking sensation that sometimes threatened to overwhelm him. “Tanya, that’s—”

“True. I told you. You still don’t understand us.” Her face saddened. “We stopped believing in our politicians a long time ago, and that meant we lost belief in our governments, and what is the Alliance but a collection of those governments? It can’t be stronger than they are. We tried putting faith in honor, but you reminded us how that caused us to warp the meaning of ‘honor.’ We tried putting faith in our fleet and our ground forces, but they failed, you know they did. We were fighting like hell and dying and killing and not getting anywhere. Until you came along. The man who we had been told all of our lives was everything the Alliance was supposed to be.”

Tanya tapped the wall next to them. “Black Jack isn’t just this wall, the guy who physically protected the Alliance from external enemies, he’s also that Great Wall and those pyramids and those four ancestors. He’s the image of the Alliance, the thing citizens think of that means the Alliance. That’s why he is the only one who can save it.”