It would take at least fourteen hours for any replies to come in, and he had no intention of waiting around the hypernet gate until that happened. “All units in First Fleet, come starboard—” He stopped abruptly. “Wait one.”
“What’s the matter?” Desjani asked.
“Starboard. Port,” Geary said. “Toward the star or away from the star. Which star?”
“Oh. It’s a close binary.” She smiled ruefully. “We haven’t had that problem in systems with one star, have we?”
Geary tapped his fingers impatiently as he thought. “It’s all arbitrary anyway. We say one way is up and the other down.” He activated his comms again. “This is Admiral Geary. The brighter star in this system is designated Alpha and the other star is designated Beta. All maneuvering commands and fleet navigational settings will treat Alpha as the reference star. All units in First Fleet, come starboard zero seven degrees, down one zero degrees at time two five. Accelerate to point two light speed.” He was not going to waste time getting this job done.
The ships of the Alliance formation pivoted around Dauntless, the cylinder shape reorienting along the long-curving path that would bring the fleet near the orbiting facilities.
“Thirty-eight hours until we reach the orbiting facilities,” Lieutenant Castries said.
“We might as well relax.” Geary activated comms again. “All units in First Fleet, stand down from battle alert.”
Desjani glanced at him. “You’re not relaxing, I notice. Is it for the same reason I’m not?”
“What’s your reason?” Geary asked.
“This situation stinks. We have never encountered the entire force of dark ships at once. They have always apparently left some of their ships here at their base. If nothing else, some of the dark ships we damaged at Bhavan should still be here, and even if they were concealed in the docks, we would be able to pick up indications that repair work was being conducted inside some of those docks.”
“Yeah,” Geary agreed. “That’s my reason, too. I thought we would at least encounter a guard force of some kind.”
“If they are still thinking like you, if the AIs haven’t modified their thinking and rationalized things enough to deviate a lot from what Black Jack would do, are there any conditions under which you would leave your base totally undefended like this?”
Geary considered that question, then shook his head. “No. We did take the entire First Fleet here, but Varandal isn’t defenseless. They’ve got some of their own ships. Nothing big, but something, and they have all of the fixed star system defenses. Plus, Varandal isn’t our only base. Losing it would be a tragedy, but it wouldn’t cripple us.”
“So, where are the dark ships?”
“I don’t know. All we can do is what we set out to do,” Geary said. “Then get back to Varandal and find out what the dark ships are doing right now.”
After forcing himself to leave the bridge so he wouldn’t exhaust himself and look nervous to everyone on watch, which would both be bad things, Geary walked through the passageways of Dauntless for a while, talking to crew members and judging their moods. Before the fight at Bhavan, most had been confident, almost cheerful, certain of another victory. Since Bhavan, a grimness had settled on them, a determination to win tempered by knowledge that victory might be dearly bought. As Geary talked to the sailors, though, he saw that for the moment worries about the dark ships had been overridden by fascination with being in a close binary star system. For all the star systems many of these sailors had visited, this was the first time they had seen two stars so close together.
The exercise had the desired effect of wearing him out, and Geary was able to sleep for a few hours until rudely awakened by a call from Tanya. “There is something you should take a look at,” she said. “Not urgent, but serious.”
“Show me.” The star display in Geary’s stateroom came to life. He got off his bunk and walked over to gaze at the images of this star system.
Desjani’s voice was somber. “Here. I’m highlighting it.”
He sat down as an area of the display brightened to emphasize details there. “Debris?”
“Yes. It took a while to spot it and analyze it because of how much junk is drifting around between those two stars. The interacting gravity fields must keep causing collisions between rocks jarred out of what would otherwise be stable orbits.”
Geary tapped the debris symbol and studied the information that popped up. “It wasn’t a warship?”
“No. Based on the composition of the debris, it wasn’t a freighter, either. There’s no sign of cargo or the remains of cargo.”
That left only one chilling possibility. “A passenger ship.”
“Yes.” Desjani made a face. “Maybe a regular shift change by the people who worked here. Maybe an attempt to get out of here when the dark ships slipped their leashes. From the dispersion of the debris, it happened about a month ago.”
“Is this the only debris field we’ve detected?”
“So far,” she said. “It’s still a few hours before we could expect any answer from anyone on the facilities and find out whether there is anyone left, and whether they’re scared to death, or whether they are so fixated on following orders that they are still prepared to fight to the death.”
“At the moment, I’m unhappy enough to let the Marines accommodate anyone here who wants to fight to the death,” Geary said. “Is there anything else new?”
“Not really new. I’ve been noticing something odd about the Dancers,” Desjani said.
“You mean something odd that we haven’t seen already?” Geary asked.
“All right, yes, something new that’s odd.” She indicated her display. “Normally, we get into a star system, and the Dancers start flying around, going wherever they want and flying rings around each other and any other ships. But ever since we arrived here, the Dancers have stayed in that formation and stayed close to us.”
“That is odd.” Geary looked at the Dancer ships on his display. They were still in their smaller cylindrical formation, and they were indeed maintaining the same position relative to the Alliance formation. He called down to the compartment holding the special comm equipment, patching in Desjani to the call. “Hello, General. We’ve got another question for you.”
“Thank you,” Charban said, sounding almost sincere.
“The Dancers have been staying close to us since arriving at Unity Alternate instead of running off and, well, dancing around the star system. Can you find out if they are nervous or something?”
“That’s interesting. The Dancers haven’t volunteered any such feelings, but that is unusual behavior for them,” Charban agreed. “I’ll ask. They did just offer something that I think refers to Invincible. The lieutenants and I were discussing it before sending it on.”
“They aren’t staking a claim to Invincible, are they?” Geary asked. “When we captured it, the Dancers agreed that the Kick warship would be our property.”
“No, it’s not a claim. Here’s what they sent—
“Herd creatures build big,
“Make ship the herd always there,
“To be not alone,” Charban recited.