That left only one option. “How about Desjani? Could you ask her to accompany you?”
Rione stared at him, plainly shocked.
“She already knows.”
“And she detests me.”
“Because you wouldn’t tell me. Now you have.” Rione’s eyes wavered. “You said it yourself. Desjani has honor. Your ancestors can’t object to her.”
Rione shook her head, avoiding Geary’s gaze again. “Why would she do that for me?”
“I could ask her.” Wrong answer, as Rione’s eyes blazed. “Or you could. Do you think Desjani would deny you that?”
She finally sighed. “Oh, no. Not the noble Captain Desjani. She’d even stand beside a politician if that person needed her, wouldn’t she? Especially if she thought the great Captain Geary wanted her to do it.”
“I think so, but you can leave the ‘great Captain Geary’ crap out of it. I’m trying to help you here, and Captain Desjani will help you if you ask, so you don’t need to keep throwing verbal missiles at either of us.”
Rione stood up, gazing down at Geary with a searching expression. “You won’t be in command of this fleet forever. Someday you’ll get it home. The living stars alone know how, but somehow you’ll do it. You can retire the day after that if you want. No one in the Alliance would deny you that. On that day, when you no longer have the responsibilities of command, when regulations and honor no longer keep you from personal relationships with any other officers, would you want to be tied to someone like me, or would you like the freedom to learn the heart of someone like Tanya Desjani?”
“I’ve never—”
“No. And you won’t. Damn you.” Rione spun around and left.
Geary started awake as his stateroom door opened, then closed. He slapped the light control, bringing the dim night lighting to life, and saw Victoria Rione standing there, watching him silently.
“Hello, John Geary.” She walked a bit unsteadily toward him, then sat down on the end of the bed, staring at him. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
He could easily smell the wine on her breath even across the distance still separating them. “About what?”
“How it went.” Rione waved one hand grandly. “Me, my ancestors, and Captain Desjani. Surely you want to know.”
“Victoria—”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, slightly wobbly, her voice thick. “I explained what had happened. I expressed my remorse. I asked for guidance. Nothing. I felt nothing. They sent me nothing. My ancestors don’t even want to acknowledge me anymore, John Geary.”
He sat up finally. “That can’t be true.”
“Ask the noble Captain Desjani! Damn her and damn you.” Rione shoved herself to her feet and started pulling off her clothes.
Geary got up, too. “What are you doing?”
“Being what I am.” She dropped the last garment and half fell onto the bed, gazing up at him. “Go ahead.”
“You must be crazy if you think I’d take advantage of you right now.”
“Too honorable? Don’t fool yourself. Just be Black Jack for a while. Do whatever you want.”
He stared down at her, trying to find words.
Rione spoke again, her eyes looking past Geary now as if seeing other things. “I’ll kill him if I have to, you know. If Black Jack tries to harm the Alliance and there’s no other way to stop him, I’ll kill him. Too many others have died to let their sacrifices be lost. Maybe that’s when my honor disappeared, when I vowed to do anything it took to stop Black Jack.” Her eyes focused back on him with some difficulty. “Anything.”
It wasn’t easy to say, but he had to speak the thought that came to him. “Is that why you started sleeping with me in the first place?”
Her mouth worked; then she shook her head slightly. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t think even I would do that.”
“Even you? At one point you spoke of things even I wouldn’t do, and now you’re being just as hard on yourself.” Geary reached down to pull the sheet over her while she watched, unmoving. “I will not treat you badly, Victoria. You deserve much better, whether you believe that or not.”
He sat down nearby, his eyes on the starscape glowing softly on one wall. “You’re a hard person, a tough person, but you’re just as hard on yourself as you are on others. Maybe harder. I don’t think it’s possible for your ancestors to forgive you when you refuse to forgive yourself.”
A long time went by in silence, then he looked over and saw that Rione had passed out. Even now, dead to the world, her face was lined with distress.
When Geary had first been awakened on Dauntless, he’d been too stunned to really pay attention to the people in the fleet, the descendants of the people he’d once known and lived among. After assuming command, he’d quickly learned about some of the changes that a century of time and ugly warfare had wrought, and he had been left believing that he was among strangers who no longer felt or thought like he did. As the weeks went by and he learned more about them, Geary had decided he’d too harshly judged these people and had begun to feel as if he and they shared fundamental things. But now he felt doubt again. Honor could be a burden and a sword. It could be too easily misused. And it seemed the people of the Alliance in this time a hundred years from his own used honor as a weapon against themselves, making honor so unyielding and unreasonable that it could just as easily harm them as their enemies, just as easily endorse injustice as integrity.
Geary sighed, stood up carefully to avoid making noise, then dressed silently. At the door he paused to look back at her. I’ve felt so much pain from knowing everyone I once knew and loved was dead. But how many people in the Alliance are like Victoria Rione, not knowing if their loved ones are dead or alive, wondering how to live with their souls torn by uncertainty? How many in the Syndicate Worlds feel the same? For the first time, he realized there was an advantage to even the cruel certainty he had been forced to deal with. At least it was a certainty.
He roamed the quiet passageways and compartments of Dauntless, greeting those members of the crew standing watches in the depths of the ship’s night, trying to find comfort in living the rituals of command.
Rounding a corner, he found Captain Desjani doing the same.
“Captain Geary?” Desjani didn’t hide her surprise. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
His tone, his attitude, obviously conveyed otherwise. Desjani grimaced. “You’ve talked with Co-President Rione?”
Geary nodded.
“I had thought…” Desjani paused and tried again. “I’d been very angry with her. As you could tell. I thought she’d refused to tell you because she lacked honor. I didn’t realize her sense of honor was in fact tearing her apart.”
“How did it really go? Did her ancestors really reject her?”
Desjani lowered her head and thought some more. “I felt something. I don’t know what. They were there. But she wouldn’t accept that, I think.”
“That was my impression, too.”
“She … um…” Desjani seemed embarrassed and angry. “I saw her again a little while ago. She’d been drinking, and she said a few things.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Sir, I hope nothing I have done or said has in any way led you to think that I would ever—”
He held up a hand to forestall her. “You’ve been completely professional. I couldn’t ask for a better officer.”
Desjani still seemed distressed. “Even if you didn’t have a great mission to fulfill, even if the living stars hadn’t sent you to us at our hour of greatest need, it would still be wrong for me to—”