The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian (38 page)

Tanya, called to his stateroom, gave him a puzzled look. “What line?”

“
The
line.”

“That helps. Not.”

“The boundary of Sol Star System,” Geary explained patiently.

“Star systems don’t have boundaries.” She tapped in some queries, then waited for the results to pop up. “Oh. You mean the heliosphere.
The region around the star that defines the boundaries of a star system.
I never heard of that before.”

That news should have been astounding coming from a battle cruiser commander whose career had taken her across hundreds of light-years and scores of stars. But it wasn’t. “That’s because the heliosphere of any star is well beyond the places where jump points are found or hypernet gates are constructed,” Geary explained. “The heliosphere of any star is well out in the dark between stars, in the places where human ships never go. Or rather, where they long since stopped going.”

“All right. Why does it matter now?”

“The heliosphere of Sol sets the limit for Sol Star System,” Geary said. “That’s the region where Sol’s solar wind predominates.”

“Yes,” Desjani said with exaggerated patience as she read the results of her query. “In the case of Sol, the heliosphere extends out about twelve light-hours,” she quoted. “Or about one hundred astronomical units. What the hell is an astronomical unit?”

“A very old way of measuring distance. You know, like a parsec.”

“A what?”

“Never
mind
,” Geary said.

“Fine,” she replied. “This is the line you were talking about? The edge of the bubble that defines the heliosphere for Sol? But it’s way past
anything
. Nobody goes that far from a star in real space. Why would they? There’s nothing there but dead, wandering rocks.”

“Tanya, once upon a time, people couldn’t use hypernet gates or jump points to travel to other stars. The missions to the first stars reached by our ancestors had to cross that line, physically cross it in real space. It meant something very important. It meant humanity had left the star that had given birth to us and humanity was now reaching into the universe.”

“It was important to our ancestors?” Tanya regarded the display over Geary’s desk with new respect. “Yes. Of course it was. That marked the point where a ship and the people on it left Sol.”

“Exactly. They had a celebration. And even after we discovered jump technology and no longer had to physically leave and enter the heliosphere, ships still used to mark when they crossed that line. Any other star’s heliosphere didn’t matter. But Sol’s did. It was a very big deal to say you’re a Voyager.”

“A . . . Voyager?”

“Once you’ve crossed the line, you can call yourself a Voyager,” Geary said. “That’s the tradition.”

“Our ancestors did this?”

“Yes.”

Desjani nodded. “Then we should. How did you happen to remember this? I can’t recall anyone ever saying anything about it.”

“The fleet used to send a ship back to Sol every ten years,” Geary said. “To commemorate the anniversary of the launch of the first interstellar mission from Old Earth’s orbit. We only sent a ship at decade intervals because it was a long haul without hypernet capability. I never went, but I talked to some people who did, and at that time the whole crossing-the-line ceremony was still a big deal.”

“But during the war, we couldn’t afford to send any ships,” Desjani said. “I get it. Those early years were desperate. We couldn’t have spared a ship for that long in those days.”

Geary nodded. “The next ship was supposed to be sent less than a year after the initial Syndic attacks hit. I remember that everyone was wondering who would be selected. It seems strange to think about it now, but wondering which ship would get to make the trip was one of the biggest topics of conversation in the fleet before the fight at Grendel.”

Tanya looked back at him blankly. “
That
was your biggest concern?”

He felt a flush of shame. Tanya, like all of the officers and crew in the fleet, had spent her career, had spent her entire life, worried about the war with the Syndics, worried about life and death and the lives and deaths of those she knew and loved.
How can she imagine a universe where the biggest concern in the fleet was which ship would get to go on a joyride to Sol? How can I ever feel superior to those whose lives have been consumed by issues far more grave than the little things I once had the luxury of being concerned with?

“Yes,” Geary finally said.

“I . . . guess that was important back then,” Tanya said in a way that made it clear she was trying to grasp the concept and failing. “I can understand the crossing-the-line thing,” she added. “And commemorating the first mission to another star. That was so big. They actually traveled at sublight speed across the dark between stars. I read about that when I was a little girl.”

Her eyes went distant with memory, and she smiled. “
The Ship to the Stars.
I remember the book because I read it so many times. It was about a girl and a boy on the ship. They had been born on the ship because it was a generation ship. The trip would take so long that the crew who had left Old Earth would all die of old age on the way. Their children were brought up to run the ship and continue the journey, and
their
children would actually reach the other star.”

Geary smiled, too, recalling the story. “I read the same book. I wanted to be that little boy. Anyone could travel to another star, but only people like him ever crossed the dark between stars. Ever since we discovered how to use jump drives, no one has gone into the Great Dark.”

“I talked to Jaylen Cresida about that once,” Tanya said in a low voice, her expression saddened at these memories of their dead comrade. “The observations those people and their instruments recorded are still used. Jaylen had studied some of them. We still depend on that data about the nature of space far from any star because no one else has ever gone out there to collect it.”

“Really?” Geary looked toward a bulkhead as if he could see through it to the space beyond the bubble of nothing in which
Dauntless
was heading for Sol. “Instruments must have gotten a lot better since then. You would think someone would propose an automated mission to get new data.”

Desjani shrugged. “We’ve been busy,” she said.

He wanted to slap his forehead over his boneheaded statement. Busy. With a century of desperate warfare. “I know. Um . . . there was a ceremony when you crossed the line. This is your ship, so it’s up to you, but it is a tradition.”

“What sort of ceremony?” She started reading. “Are you serious? That’s— All right, we can— No. Not that part. But the rest looks doable. Absurd, but doable. I guess our ancestors had more of a sense of humor than I’ve given them credit for. Are our Very Important Senators and Not So Important Envoys going to participate in this?”

“It’s voluntary,” Geary said.

“Meaning I have to invite them?”

“Yeah. You have to invite them.”

—

“LET
me make one thing very clear,” Desjani had announced to her officers and senior enlisted, her voice taking on all the depth and force of command. “This must remain in fun. We have all been through hard and long years in which fun usually meant short, hectic times on a strange planet or orbital facility between campaigns and battles, the sort of fun that often ended up producing as many injuries to the crew as a battle would have. This is different. You all must ensure that it remains enjoyable. If there is any hint of its becoming something else, any hint of real hazing or real hurt of any kind, you are to step in and stop it before it happens. I will be walking the passageways of
Dauntless
throughout this entertainment, and I expect the same of all of you who are not part of the ceremony. Are there any questions? No? Then go out, have a good time, and ensure everyone else has a good time.” Desjani finally relaxed her stern expression, smiling at the assembled officers and senior enlisted. “That’s an order.”

A number of main passageways had been converted into gauntlets designed to inflict mock injury and real, though slight, humiliation. In one passageway, the deck sailors responsible for much of the routine maintenance aboard
Dauntless
had rigged up devices to spray fake tattoos using dyes that faded within minutes. As Geary walked through it, getting a large and elaborate
WHAT WOULD BLACK JACK DO?
design emblazoned on the front of his uniform, he noted that the tattoos near him were considerably tamer and less suggestive than those he had spotted emerging from that passageway earlier.

In another passageway, the code monkeys had set up a maze from which you could only escape after figuring out the right pattern.

In a third place,
Dauntless
’s food-service specialists were handing out ancient Syndic ration bars the fleet had picked up off an abandoned facility during the fighting retreat from the Syndic home star system. Those who in the past had complained the loudest about the food aboard the ship were forced to gag down a few bites before being allowed to proceed.

Another gauntlet lined the passageway leading to the shuttle dock. The weapons wielded by the sailors and Marines lining that passageway ranged from stuffed bunnies to balloons, with the occasional rubber chicken or a fluffy, fake stobor. Geary walked down the passageway, grinning, as the veterans of countless battles laughed and pelted him with silly, harmless weapons.

The main show was in the shuttle dock, the largest single compartment on the ship, where the unworthies seeking entry into the fellowship of the Voyagers were forced to pass muster before the “rulers” of Sol Star System.

Master Chief Gioninni, playing the role of King Jove, sat on an impressive throne created by modifying a high-g survival seat. His face boasted a long, bushy, fake beard, and Gioninni had somehow acquired an actual trident, an ancient weapon with a two-meter-long shaft and three wickedly barbed points. He wore a crown fashioned in one of
Dauntless
’s machine shops, gleaming with gold plating that should have been used in electronics repair. Geary resolved to make sure that gold ended up back in the ship’s repair stockpiles and didn’t get diverted for any personal uses, then realized that Desjani had surely already seen to that.

The crown had nine points, each bearing a representation of one of the planets in Sol Star System, the largest, in the center, Jove itself. There had been some debate about how many planets should be on the crown, as the ancestors had apparently been unable to decide how many planets there were in Sol’s orbit. Throughout history the numbers had fluctuated from nine to eight to twelve, then six, before returning to eight, then nine in the latest official records. Geary had finally chosen the latest number, and nine it was.

On the right side of King Jove sat Queen Callisto (usually known as Senior Chief Tarrini), wearing a crown identical to King Jove’s. But instead of a trident, Callisto bore a bow of ancient design. The arrows in her quiver appeared to be just as real and dangerous as the trident Gioninni waved about with a carelessness that was most likely false, but from the way Senior Chief Tarrini held her bow, she looked prepared to use it as a club on the king and anyone else she thought required a little extra discipline.

On Jove’s left sat Davy Jones, in the form of Gunnery Sergeant Orvis, the commander of
Dauntless
’s Marine detachment. Orvis held a gavel of judgment as if it, too, were a weapon.

“I understand Jove,” Charban said from where he stood near Geary, a
GROUND APE
tattoo with appropriate illustration fading on his chest. “That’s the largest planet in Sol Star System. And Callisto is one of the largest moons of Jove and at one time was the largest human colony in the outer star system. They make sense. But who or what is Davy Jones supposed to represent? I looked into it, and there were no early spaceship commanders by that name.”

“Davy Jones was a mythical figure,” Geary explained, “that sailors on Earth thought ruled over the bottom of the ocean, caused disasters at sea, and took the spirits of dead sailors.”

“I see.” Charban glanced at the three senators, who had cautiously entered the shuttle dock and were looking about with varying expressions. “That makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Senator Suva complained. “What do the oceans of Earth have to do with space?”

“We’re still sailors, Senator,” Geary said. “We sail a much vaster ocean, one lacking in water and all else, but the job is the same.”

Senator Costa snorted. “From what little I remember of my ancient history, sailors on the seas of Earth spent most of their time drunk, which probably explains all this. It must have made sense to someone who was three sheets to the wind.”

Senator Sakai did not comment. He appeared to be busy studying the Sirens standing to either side of the two monarchs and the judge. The Sirens, one female and one male, had been chosen from among the enlisted sailors and Marines by popular vote. In accordance with the old traditions, the Sirens wore uniforms modified to be alluring. Geary had heard of celebrations in the past in which this had sometimes led to overly enthusiastic modifications that ended up requiring remarkably small amounts of uniform fabric, but Captain Desjani had made it clear that the outfits of any Sirens on her ship had better fit an official definition of alluring and not go one millimeter less than that.

On their left hips, both Sirens wore one of the multipurpose tools known as a Swiz knife. On their right hips, each carried a roll of duct tape. That symbolism, Geary thought, even the Dancers could easily grasp if they saw it. But the aliens probably wouldn’t be able to tell that the Sirens not only represented a chance of help when other aid was too far distant, but also the sort of temptations far from home that could create problems in the first place.

An unfortunate sailor had just fumbled his explanation of how the mythical devices called mail buoys were supposedly positioned to relay transmissions between stars. At a brusque gesture from King Jove and an imperious sweep of her bow by Queen Callisto, Davy Jones directed the sailor to stand in a far corner and loudly recite a long, satirical, and risqué song called “The Laws of the Fleet” for the benefit of his fellows before returning for another try.