Valiant

She stayed silent for a moment after his outburst. “I know you looked at records from Falco’s past, before he was captured by the Syndics. You saw his speeches. Triumphantly celebrating so-called victories in which dozens of major Alliance warships were destroyed in exchange for at best equal numbers of Syndics. Do you think he would spend a single moment worrying about the loss of a few battleships?”

“That’s not the point,” Geary objected bitterly.

“No, of course not. You don’t judge yourself in relation to people like Falco.” Rione exhaled slowly. “As far as I can tell, all three of those officers did indeed die on their ships.”

The idea that they might not have hadn’t even occurred to Geary. “Is there some reason to think they didn’t?”

Her smile held no humor. “A suspicious mind. Had Captain Faresa had time, I think her sympathizers among the crew would’ve helped her get off Majestic. But no one had such an opportunity. Those seeking to use Falco might have tried to get him off of Warrior, but…” She paused. “A fool and insane, but his last act was to refuse the chance to be evacuated from Warrior. You hadn’t heard? A few witnesses survived. Falco declared it his duty to remain with Warrior, though it’s hard to say if he truly realized what was happening. I suppose we can be charitable to the dead and assume he did.”

Geary had no trouble believing it. He could see in his imagination Captain Falco moving dramatically through the shattered passageways of Warrior, Falco’s practiced expression of confident camaraderie being turned to the officers and sailors with him awaiting their doom. The perfect theatrical role, and if Falco had recovered any of his sanity long enough to realize the fate that awaited him in Alliance space, perhaps a welcome chance to find his end as a dead hero rather than in disgrace at a court-martial. But, knowingly or not, he had chosen to die well and given his space in an escape pod to someone else who had lived as a result. “No one living knows what his last thoughts were like, so I don’t see any reason not to grant him that.” Geary frowned slightly as a thought occurred to him. “Is that right? There’s no one alive who saw enough of him to tell?”

Rione frowned back. “How would I know?”

“You’ve obviously heard from eyewitnesses. You must have had some of your spies on those ships, too.”

Her expression twitched, then settled back in emotionless lines. “Had. Past tense. One got off Warrior. Nobody got off Majestic, as you already noted.”

Hell. “I should have realized that your spies on those ships died along with everyone else that didn’t get off. I’m sorry.”

She nodded once, still revealing no feelings. “They ran the same risks as everyone else in this fleet.”

Geary glared at her, his nerves stretched to their limit. “Sometimes you act like a cold-blooded bitch.”

Rione returned an impassive glance. “And you prefer your bitches warm-blooded?”

“Dammit, Victoria-”

She held up one hand. “We all deal with our pain in our own ways, John Geary. You and I handle that very differently. ”

“Yeah, we do.” He looked down at the deck, knowing he was still frowning. Something else was bothering him, something he hadn’t connected yet. Something about the Alliance fleet’s losses. Majestic, Warrior, Utap, Vambrace… Vambrace?

He must have reacted as realization hit, because Rione spoke in a gentler tone. “What’s the matter now?”

“I just remembered something.” The heavy cruiser Vambrace, the ship to which Lieutenant Casell Riva had been transferred from Furious. A Syndic prisoner for almost ten years, liberated from a Syndic labor camp by this fleet and brought to Lakota, perhaps dead now. He tried to recall how many crew had gotten off Vambrace before she blew up. Had Riva been among them? Desjani hadn’t said anything, even though she’d surely realized much sooner than he had.

“Something?” Rione pressed.

“It’s a personal personnel issue.” He had to pronounce the words carefully so they made sense to her. “I’m sorry for blowing up at you.” Rione stayed quiet for so long that Geary looked up finally, seeing her watching him. “What?”

“Can you keep going?” she asked.

“Of course I can.”

“Of course?” Rione shook her head. “We took significant losses again, and I know the havoc created on the inhabited world in this star system by the destruction of the hypernet gate weighs heavily on you. For a long time after assuming command of this fleet, you were balanced on a knife-edge, ready to fall off if the pressure grew too great. You weren’t used to the sort of combat losses the Alliance has become accustomed to, so each ship lost weighed very heavily on you. You needed someone to prop you up, to keep you going, and for a while I filled that role, both as an ally to turn to and as an adversary to be bested. I don’t anymore.”

“Excuse me?” He studied her, trying to figure out what Rione was saying.