Jack Campbell - Guardian

“Admiral?” Dr. Nasr spoke with unusual abruptness. “The officer in charge here wants to know if it is all right for these nonassigned people to be present.”

“The looky-loos?” Geary asked. “Why not?”

“That was my opinion as well, but the operational officers here required another opinion.”

“I see. Tell them the admiral authorizes and approves the presence of nonassigned personnel to witness the event.”

As unusual as this event was, the officious attempt to chase away unauthorized personnel felt reassuringly routine to Geary. But when he looked at Desjani, he saw worry riding her brow. “What’s the matter?”

“What are they doing?”

“The specialists from Midway? They’re getting all the information they can about the people they’re taking. Dr. Nasr told me the data handover was coordinated well in advance of this meeting. Medical records, any treatments since we picked them up, records of the tests we ran on them to ensure they didn’t have enigma poisons or plagues implanted in them. That sort of thing.”

“It looks,” Desjani said in a wondering voice, “like any other handoff of people.”

“Of course it—” Geary stopped speaking as he realized that Desjani had never seen this sort of thing happen. No one living had, except for him. Before the war, there had been peaceful encounters between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds. He had viewed some of them firsthand when official delegations had met. But there had been no such meetings for a long time. As part of the degeneration of the conduct of the century-long war, the two sides had stopped talking to each other at all. If they met, it was in combat, or as prisoner and captor. “That’s how it’s supposed to work,” he finished.

Desjani didn’t answer, pointing to draw his attention as one of the Midway shuttle pilots abruptly turned toward the Alliance fleet officers and Marines watching the process and walked toward them, her face determined. Even from a wide-angle image, Geary had no trouble spotting the way tension ramped up inside the loading area at the pilot’s movement, the Alliance Marines visibly clicking off safeties on their weapons though still holding them at port arms.

But the shuttle pilot stopped a few meters short of the Alliance officers and looked at them as if baffled. “I— My pardon. How do I say? Can you… will you… tell me something?”

“Maybe,” one of the fleet officers replied in noncommittal tones. “What is it?”

“Were you,” the shuttle pilot continued, her words halting, “were any of you at Lakota? When this fleet fought there?”

After a pause, one of the Alliance fleet officers nodded. “Not on this ship. Haboob wasn’t with the fleet then. But I was there.”

“My brother died at Lakota,” the shuttle pilot said, each word now blunt and abrupt. “I don’t know anything about it. I was hoping… you might know how he died.”

The stiff postures and expressions of the Alliance officers relaxed slightly. “There were several different engagements,” the one who admitted being at Lakota said.

“He was on a light cruiser. CL-901.”

“I’m sorry.” The officer sounded as if he meant it, and he probably did. This was the sort of thing anyone who had served in the war could empathize with. “We didn’t know the designations of the ships we fought.”

The pilot bit her lip, looking downward, then back at the Alliance officers. “I heard you took prisoners. Under Black Jack’s command. There were rumors.”

“We did. We do . But not at Lakota. We didn’t get a chance.” The Alliance officer hesitated, then asked his own question. “Do you know anything about what happened there?”

“No. Security. We never heard anything official except the usual lies. Even the news that my brother had died there came to me by back channels.”

“The hypernet gate at Lakota collapsed. There was a Syndic flotilla guarding it, and I guess they had orders to destroy it if we beat the rest of the Syndic forces at Lakota. They fired on the tethers.”

The shuttle pilot twitched, her eyes shutting tightly, before she regained control and opened them again. “They didn’t know. We didn’t hear until after we killed the snakes. Then we found out what happens when gates collapse. They didn’t know,” she repeated.

“We already guessed they couldn’t have known. It was suicide. Those ships probably never knew what hit them. The shock wave spread through Lakota and wiped out escape pods, merchant ships, anything that didn’t have decent shields. We were lucky. We were far enough from the gate that the shock wave that hit us had spread out and couldn’t do much damage to us. It tore up that star system, though. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you what happened to your brother.”

The shuttle pilot nodded, her face working as emotions came and went. “That’s all right. I know how it is.”

“You a warship shuttle driver?”

“No.” She jerked a thumb at the shoulder patch on her uniform. “Ground forces. Aerospace.”

“Regular flights in atmosphere? Storms and wind and fog? Better you than me.”

The shuttle pilot smiled very briefly. “It gets hairy sometimes, but nothing we can’t handle. I work for General Drakon. He doesn’t send workers anywhere he wouldn’t go himself.”

“What do you do for General Drakon?” a Marine officer asked.

“Planetary defense actions and ground forces support, usually. I was at Taroa for that op, where we helped kick the Syndicate out of that star system, too. General Drakon tapped us for this run because the Midway mobile forces—I mean, the Midway warship flotilla—doesn’t have many shuttles.”

The Alliance officers exchanged glances. “What was that about snakes?” another fleet officer asked. “You said you killed snakes?”

“Snakes. Internal Security Service agents. Syndicate secret police.” The shuttle pilot looked like she wanted to spit but refrained from the action. “They used to run everything. Always watching, looking over your shoulder, hauling people away to labor camps if you did anything wrong, or if they suspected you, or if they just wanted to. We killed them. Wiped them out in this star system.” She straightened, her gaze fierce now. “We’re free of them. We’ll die before we let them back in control here. Nobody owns us. Not any corporation. Not any CEO. Not anymore.”

“You’re not Syndics?” another of the fleet officers asked with obvious skepticism.

“Syndicate? No! Never again. We are free. We’ll die free before we become slaves of the Syndicate again.” She turned to go, then looked back at the Alliance officers, uncertain once more. “You… have my thanks.”

“Sorry we couldn’t tell you what happened to your brother.”

“You told me what you knew, and that’s a lot more than I knew.” She paused, then came to attention and saluted in the Syndic fashion, right arm coming across so her fist rapped her left breast. Turning again before the Alliance officers could decide whether or not to return the salute, she walked back toward the other shuttle pilots.

“Hey,” one of the Alliance officers called sharply.

The shuttle pilot jerked as if she had expected a bullet instead of a shout, then turned back to face them.

“Tell me one thing.” The voice of the Alliance officer was openly hostile, angry but also puzzled. “One thing I never understood. Why? Why the hell did you attack the Alliance?”

“Us? Attack? We did not—”

“Not now. A century ago. Why did the Syndicate Worlds start that damned war in the first place?”

This time the shuttle pilot just stared for a long moment, her face working. When her voice finally came out, it was half-strangled by emotion. “They told us you started it. The Syndicate. They taught us that we’d been attacked.”