Rione raised an eyebrow at him. “That may be the only thing that keeps you from destroying the Alliance. Maybe that’s why you were chosen.”

“Don’t tell me that you’re starting to believe that, too!” Geary made a frustrated gesture. “I get too much of that as it is.”

“I thought you liked it when your special captain gazed at you with those worshipful eyes,” Rione observed.

“No, I don’t, and no, she doesn’t. And why the hell are we talking about Captain Desjani all of a sudden?”

Instead of answering, Rione simply stood up. “I have some other business to attend to. You’re still going to jump the fleet to Branwyn as scheduled?”

“Yes,” Geary snapped, still aggravated with her. “We’ll be at the jump point in four days, barring any more ‘accidents. ’ ”

She was heading for the hatch but paused to look back at him. “I would have tried to stop it if I’d known someone was going to sabotage that shuttle. Yes, I thought Casia and Yin should die because of their actions and because I saw them as a threat to the Alliance, but I wouldn’t have let a number of innocent people be killed.”

He stared at her. “It never occurred to me to think you would have.”

“Sooner or later, it would’ve occurred to you.”

Geary kept looking at the hatch after she had left, realizing that she was right, and wondering why sometimes his allies scared him as much as his enemies.

THE transmission from what had once been the habitable world in Lakota Star System was streaked with interference, the sound portion garbled by static. Geary tapped the control to apply enhancement filters, and the image cleared, the sound now audible, though with occasional odd gaps as attempts by the software to guess which word to use came up blank.

A man stood in the front of the image, behind him a table at which a half dozen other men and women sat. All of them looked as if they’d been wearing the same clothing for days, and as if those days had been arduous ones. They were in some room without visible windows, whose construction and fittings conveyed a feeling of being an underground shelter.

The man spoke with weary desperation, blinking with fatigue. “We are appealing to any ships in this star system to carry news of our disaster to authorities who can provide aid. Lakota Three is undergoing intense storm activity. Estimates are that between ten and twenty percent of the atmosphere is gone. Lakota star’s output may be fluctuating, causing more havoc on this world. Most electrical systems on the planet were destroyed by the energy pulse that struck us. We’re incapable of estimating the number of dead but it surely runs into many millions. We’ve been unable to establish contact with anyone in the hemisphere that faced the energy pulse. The survivors in this hemisphere are in desperate need of food, shelter, and other necessities. Please notify anyone who can help.”

The image stuttered, then the message began repeating.

Geary shut it off, letting out a long, despairing breath. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Desjani nodded gloomily. “We can’t even run shuttles down into that atmosphere right now without risking their loss.”

“Did you find any signs of Alliance prisoners of war on the planet?”

She shook her head, looking depressed now. “A few marginal indications. But even if they were there, we couldn’t get to them. The planet is going to be a hellhole until the atmosphere stabilizes again.”

Geary tapped his communications controls. “Authorities on Lakota Three, this is Captain John Geary, commanding officer of the Alliance fleet. We deeply regret our inability to offer immediate assistance, but have no capability for disaster relief. We will notify any and all Syndicate Worlds’ entities encountered of your need.” It occurred to him that with so many electronic systems destroyed, the authorities on Lakota Three might have no idea what was going on above the world’s atmosphere. “Be advised that a few Syndicate Worlds’ civilian ships survived the energy pulse and are heading for jump points out of this star system. I have given orders that they not be engaged by my units and have provided them with clear records of the disaster here to assist authorities in other Syndicate Worlds’ star systems in responding to your need. May the living stars provide for you and may your ancestors offer you what comfort they can.”

He ended the transmission, then looked to the communications watch. “Try to punch that through to the origin of the distress message, and set it to repeat until we leave this star system. Also forward that distress message to the Syndic merchant ships heading out of the star system.” With a fleet configured for war, there wasn’t much else he could do. “Captain Desjani, I’m going to hold a small meeting in one hour. I’d like you to be there.”

“Of course, sir,” Desjani acknowledged. “Is there anything I should do to prepare for the meeting?”

“Just bring your brains and your common sense.”

ONE hour later, Geary looked around the conference room, where he, Captain Desjani, and Co-President Rione were physically present and Captains Duellos, Cresida, and Tulev were virtually present. To the naked eye, all six figures appeared identical, but the occasional extra couple of seconds’ delay in reactions from the three who were attending via conferencing software betrayed their virtual nature. “I wanted to talk to you because you’ve all been told about our belief that there’s a nonhuman sentient species on the other side of Syndic space.”

“Belief?” Captain Cresida questioned. “From the evidence I’ve seen, it’s a lot stronger than a belief.”

“And there’s more evidence that I haven’t had a chance to share before this.” Geary paused, uncertain how to say it. “You know we were on our way to defeating one of the Syndic flotillas in Lakota when a much larger Syndic force arrived via the hypernet gate. This fleet was almost trapped and destroyed as a result.” Rione knew what he was talking about, but none of the other officers did, and they were all watching him, plainly trying to figure out the connection to the aliens. “Intelligence on Dauntless intercepted a number of signals from the Syndic ships that had arrived via the hypernet gate, messages that clearly revealed that the Syndics were shocked to be in Lakota. They’d entered their hypernet system with a destination of Andvari Star System.”

He let them absorb that for a moment. Cresida, perhaps the fleet’s best expert on the hypernet, responded first. “They made that big a mistake? No, it’s impossible to make that kind of mistake. There’s no way to set one destination on the hypernet and end up in another.”

Geary nodded. “So I was told. No way that we know of.”

Desjani got it first, her face reddening with rage. “They did it. Whatever they are. They changed the destination of those Syndic ships so we’d be confronted by an overwhelming force.”

“That’s the only conclusion that makes sense,” Geary agreed. “They intervened in an attempt to destroy this fleet.”

“Why?” Tulev, not surprisingly, had been the first to look past the outrage of the aliens’ actions and search for a reason.

“Damned if I know. They don’t want us to get home. Is it because they want the Alliance to lose? I don’t think so. If they wanted to help the Syndics defeat us, they could provide the Syndics with more of their technology, but as best we can tell, they secretly gave the hypernet technology to both the Alliance and Syndicate Worlds at about the same time several decades ago.”

“What are they?” Desjani demanded. “What do we know of them?”

This time Geary shrugged. “Shadows and scientific wild-ass guesses. We see signs of them, apparent proof they’re out there and intervening in this war, but nothing about them directly. If they did redirect that Syndic flotilla, it not only means they can mess with a hypernet in ways we don’t understand, it also means they can covertly monitor where this fleet is and where it’s going, and get that information somewhere at something close to real time over interstellar distances.” The others stared at him as the implications of that struck home, but none of them denied his logic.