The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian Read Online Free PDF

fresh blood. “All right. How do you make happen something of which there’s no record?”
    “I spread the word. Don’t ask how. The groundwork gets laid. When it’s ready, I tell you, and you order the op. After the last shot is fired, fleet records will say every ship involved was just engaging in routine operations, and no sailor or officer will contradict those records.” She shook her head. “Don’t look shocked. People have been doing that kind of thing ever since the first ones were sent out to kill other people. It takes more work now to keep the official record clean, but it’s an old, old practice. You know that as well as I do.”
    His eyes went to the plaque by her hatch, the one listing a long line of names. Absent friends. The many dead companions whom Desjani had served with and wanted to be sure she never forgot. “Yes. I do know that. Tanya, here’s the thing. If I go with your suggestion, we fight another battle and more die, quite possibly including some of our own. Battleships are damned hard to kill. If shots start flying, Boyens might even target the hypernet gate as a last bit of defiance. But if I go with the plan proposed by those colonels, I may not need to fight, and I’ll still have your option available if necessary.”
    She took a while to respond. “Boyens might not react the way they hope.”
    “But his track record, what we know of him, makes it likely he will. And they know him better than we do.”
    “I . . . can’t deny that,” Tanya said with obvious reluctance.
    “Tanya, if we start shooting, I don’t care what the fleet’s records show. The Syndics could take it as an excuse to go hot war again. And you know what the reaction in this fleet and in the Alliance would be if that war started once more.”
    “Yes.” Desjani turned toward her desk and leaned on it with both arms, her body slumping. “By my ancestors, I am so tired, Jack. Tired of having to do things like this. But I will, if that’s what needs to be. If you don’t think we should, I’ll accept your judgment. You’ve been right a lot more than I have.”
    “No, I haven’t.” He reached out, very carefully, and barely touched her arm. He ached to hold her, to wrap his arms tightly about Tanya and give all the comfort he could, but that could not happen. Not between an admiral and the commanding officer of his flagship. Aboard
Dauntless
they were always on duty. “Tanya, I’ll keep your option in mind. But I don’t want to do it.”
    “You and your damned honor.” But she said it with a self-mocking tone this time and turned a rueful smile Geary’s way. “As long as we’re being honest, did you really not notice how that Colonel Morgan was looking at you?”
    “I noticed.” Geary rubbed the back of neck and grimaced. “And I thought she was one of the most dangerous things I’d ever seen.”
    “Right again.” Tanya smiled a little more. “I guess I have taught you something.” Her hand went to the hatch controls. “Let’s get out of here before any rumors start, Admiral.”
    —
    GEARY called both of the Alliance government emissaries into the same secure conference room where he had listened to Colonel Morgan and Colonel Malin, then played the record of the meeting, images of the two Midway officers appearing where they had stood.
    After the recording ended, Victoria Rione canted a look toward Geary that was disturbingly like the one Tanya had given him. “She’s a real piece of work, isn’t she?”
    “Colonel Morgan, you mean.” He frowned at Rione. “If she so clearly provokes you and . . . other people, I have to wonder why she was sent along with Colonel Malin.”
    “Oh, that’s easy.” Rione smiled in amusement. “First of all, you might have been, shall we say,
intrigued
by what Colonel Morgan was offering. You wouldn’t be the first powerful man to fall for that sort of bait, and if you did, it could open all sorts of possibilities for them to exploit.