Valiant

“Thank you, Captain,” that woman stated. “May this war end before my children have to face your fleet in battle.”

Desjani nodded wordlessly again, then watched with Geary as the last of the Syndic civilians walked quickly into the shuttles. As the last hatch sealed, she spoke so quietly only Geary could hear. “It’s easier when they don’t have faces.”

It took him a moment to realize what she meant. “You mean the enemy.”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever met a Syndic before?”

“Only prisoners of war,” Desjani replied in a dismissive tone. “Syndics who’d been trying to kill me and other Alliance citizens a short time before.” Her eyes closed for a moment. “I don’t know what happened to most of them. I do know what happened to some of them.”

Geary hesitated to ask the obvious question. A short time after assuming command of the fleet, he’d learned to his horror that enemy prisoners of war were sometimes casually killed, the outgrowth of a hundred years of war in which atrocity had fueled atrocity. He’d never asked Desjani if she had participated in such a crime.

But she opened her eyes and looked steadily at him. “I watched it happen. I didn’t pull any triggers, I didn’t issue any orders, but I watched it, and I didn’t stop it.”

He nodded, keeping his own eyes on hers. “You’d been taught that it was acceptable.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Your ancestors-”

“Told me it was wrong,” Desjani interrupted, something she rarely did with Geary. “I knew it, I felt it, I didn’t listen. I take responsibility for my actions. I know I’ll pay the price for that. Perhaps that’s why we lost so many ships in the Syndic home system. Perhaps that’s why the war has kept going all of these years. We’re being punished, for straying from what was right because we believed wrong to be necessary. ”

He wasn’t about to reject her, or condemn someone who’d already accepted a full measure of blame. But he could stand alongside her. “Yeah, maybe we are being punished.”

Desjani frowned. “Sir? Why would you be punished for things done while you weren’t with us?”

“I’m with you now, aren’t I? I’m part of this fleet and loyal to the Alliance. If you’re being punished, then so am I. I didn’t suffer through all the years of war that you have, but all I knew was taken from me.”

She shook her head, frowning deeper. “You just said this is your fleet, and the Alliance has your loyalty. Those things weren’t taken from you.”

Geary frowned back at her, surprised to realize he’d never thought of it that way.

Desjani gave him an intent look. “They sent you when we needed you. They gave us a second chance. They gave you a second chance, instead of letting you die in the battle at Grendel or afterward, when your escape pod’s systems would have eventually given out. We’re being offered mercy if we can prove ourselves worthy of it.”

She had startled him again, with a point of view he’d never considered, and by including him as part of them all. Not a separate hero out of myth but one of them. “Maybe you’re right,” Geary stated. “We can’t win this war by destruction unless we go all out with the hypernet gates and commit species suicide. If this war is ever to end, we’ll not only have to beat them on the battlefield but also be willing to forgive the Syndics if they’re willing to express real remorse. Maybe we’re being given an example to follow.”

She was silent for a few moments, and he stayed quiet as well. The shuttle dock internal doors sealed between them and the shuttle, then the external ones opened, and the bird lifted off, carrying its passengers to the Syndic facility. Finally, Desjani looked back at him. “I’ve spent a long time wanting to punish the Syndics, to hurt them as they’ve hurt us.”

“I can understand why,” Geary said. “Thanks for going along with me on helping those civilians. I know it went against a lot of what you believe.”

“What I believed,” Desjani amended. She was quiet for a moment longer, but Geary waited, sensing that she had something else to say. “But that cycle of vengeance never ends. I realized something. I don’t want to have to kill that boy someday, when he’s old enough to fight.”

“Me, neither. Or his father or his mother. And I don’t want that boy trying to kill Alliance citizens. How can we end this, Tanya?”

“You’ll think of a way, sir.”

“Thanks.”

He meant it sarcastically, and was sure it sounded sarcastic, but Desjani smiled slightly at him. “Did you see how they looked at us? They were afraid, then they were disbelieving, and finally they were grateful.” She stopped smiling and looked outward. “I like fighting. I like going head-to-head with the best the Syndics have. But I’ve had enough of killing people like those. Can we convince the Syndics to stop bombarding civilian targets?”

“We can try. Our bombardment weapons are accurate enough that we can certainly continue to keep taking out industrial targets while minimizing civilian losses.”

Her face was grim now. “They kill ours, and we don’t kill theirs?”