“Good.”

  “Yet,” Harbin added.

  “We need them, Harbin. Make this work.”

  “I understand and will comply.” Harbin made a face. “The Alliance Marines are obviously rusty. They’ve been locked up for varying periods in Syndicate prisons. But they’re working hard to learn how our armor works. They’ll be ready when we reach the labor camp. And they’re very eager to kill some guards.” He snorted. “I think that’s helping tensions on this unit a little. Instead of focusing on our workers as possible objects of revenge, those Marines are looking forward to hammering the guards at the labor camp.”

  “What’s special about them?” Sub-Executive Nedele asked. “I understand why the Syndicate wanted to keep Black Jack’s scion under wraps in a hidden prison. Why were these others there?”

  Harbin shook his head. “They don’t seem to be special. Maybe they’re relatives of Alliance officials. Or maybe the Syndicate wanted the prison full for efficiency reasons, so the snakes filled the quota for prisoners by grabbing whoever was handy.”

  “That’s how the snakes usually work to fill their quotas,” Nedele said with disgust.

  “You don’t have to tell me that.” Harbin paused, his jaw tightening. “It’s been a long time since I heard from my family on Anahuac.”

  “We won’t stop fighting the Syndicate when we reach Anahuac,” Aragon said. “We’ll make sure everyone is found, everyone is safe.”

  “Do you still think these Alliance scum will go through with the deal?” Nedele asked.

  “So far they’re playing it as if they intend to,” Aragon said. “I’ve got ears out, listening to what they say in private.”

  “Planning to hit us by surprise?”

  Aragon grinned. “Mostly wondering when we’ll hit them by surprise. And talking about seeing their families again, and doing things they miss doing. You know how that goes.”

  “Sure,” Harbin said. “They’re used to dealing with the Syndicate, aren’t they? Just like us. Of course they expect us to betray them. We expected the Syndicate to betray us, didn’t we?”

  “That’s so,” Nedele conceded.

  “My orders still stand,” Aragon said. “No one fires the first shot at any of the Alliance workers. If I get indications betrayal is imminent, I will act on it. But until we get home to Anahuac we keep this tension short of conflict.”

  “Yes, Executive Aragon,” Nedele said. “And after we get home? Are we really going to let them go with this mobile unit? What if they decide to bombard Anahuac from space?”

  Aragon considered the question for a moment to let Nedele and Harbin see she was taking the question, and the concern, seriously. “Their commander is Black Jack’s scion.”

  “He’s not Black Jack himself, though,” Harbin pointed out.

  “No, he’s not. But he considers himself bound by Black Jack’s orders to the Alliance Fleet. And by his word. That honor thing that’s so important to them. But, also,” Aragon added, “he seems to see sticking to our deal as part of a commitment to his family, to not act in ways that would shame his sister or his ancestors.”

  “I never got their honor thing,” Harbin said. “But I can understand sticking up for family. I’ve tried not to do anything that would harm mine. Until now.”

  Nedele nodded in reluctant agreement. “It’s like they think their ancestors are like the snakes,” she said. “Always watching them and waiting for them to make a mistake.”

  Aragon laughed at the comparison. “In some ways, I think you’re right. But it’s not just that. Listening to the Alliance workers and officers, they talk about their ancestors guiding them and protecting them as well as judging them. I never met a snake who did either of those things.”

  Nedele and Harbin also laughed, with a tinge of bitterness. “It must be nice to have imaginary friends who protect you,” Harbin said. “Oh, speaking of seeing things that aren’t there, I’m designating a few extra-reliable workers to guard the beer that’ll be at the labor camp. We don’t want our own workers getting into it once the garrison is wiped out.”

  “No,” Aragon said. “We don’t. Who’s going to be charge of those workers?”

  “Senior Worker Kat Richardson. No other worker in their right mind will mess with her, and if any lose their minds and try something, they’ll be very sorry.”

  “Good,” Aragon said. “We need to make sure we get our hands on that beer and get it back to this unit. I don’t want to have to listen to those Alliance Marines complaining that we didn’t hold up our end of the deal.”

  “They’re expecting us to stick them with the most hazardous tasks,” Harbin noted.

  “They’ll get briefed on the assault plan at the same time as you are,” Aragon said. “I’m going to give them a tough assignment, but not the toughest. I want Tigres I can trust handling the really rough jobs.”

  Nedele made a face, her unhappiness clear to see. “Executive Aragon, I would like to participate in the assault rather than remaining on this unit in command of the backup force.”

  Aragon shook her head. “Sub-Executive Nedele, you will be responsible for a critical task. Not just making sure the Alliance workers don’t betray us by trying to abandon us on the labor camp, but also keeping our own workers on this unit calm while the fight is going on. Overreaction, unthinking action, in response to rumors or misunderstanding of what is happening, could doom our chances of getting back to Anahuac. And I need someone I know is up to the task. Someone who is ready to, if necessary, stop any Alliance stab in the back, without provoking a fight. You’re going to have the toughest job in this assault. I am certain you are the best supervisor I have for that job.”

  Nedele straightened, her expression smoothing out. “Thank you, Executive. I swear I will not let you down.”

  After Harbin and Nedele had left, Aragon sat, looking at the diagram of the orbital labor camp. But in her mind she saw a six-year-old boy. Was he still alive? Where? What did he look like now? She hadn’t seen him for more than four years, had last heard about him three years ago.

  She would get home. She would find him. She didn’t care if she never saw her former husband again. But there was a six-year-old boy who needed her. Too many times she had not been able to protect those who depended on her. This time, she would succeed. Even if it meant working with the Alliance.

  Focus. Aragon concentrated on finalizing the assault plan. Because her road home went through Ravana.

  * * *

  Tomorrow. Sub-Executive Harbin sat at one of the tables in the mess, shoveling down his food without tasting it, a habit born of long experience with Syndicate rations. Someday he’d be able to eat decent food again and would have to retrain himself to enjoy it. For now, it was enough to get the energy the food provided, and to have the act of eating distracting his thoughts from worries about the assault on the labor camp the next day.

  There were clusters of Tigres at some of the other tables, and clusters of Alliance officers and workers at other tables. The groups didn’t mix.

  “Excuse me.”

  Harbin looked over to see the green-haired Alliance officer he’d noticed before. “What is it?” he asked, cautious.

  “May I share your table? You’re…Sub…Executive Harbin, right?”

  “I am.” Aragon had told him to always exploit any opportunity to learn what the Alliance officers were thinking. “Have a seat.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Bailey,” she said, sitting down opposite him. “Fire Control.”

  It wouldn’t hurt to praise her a little, perhaps get her talking freely. “Fire Control? Your shots did a number on that Syndicate heavy cruiser.”

  She grinned for a moment. “May I ask you something?”

  “I can’t stop you from asking, Lieutenant Bailey.”

  “That metal plate on the side of your face. It’s a temporary fix. Why haven’t you had a full reconstruct?”

  Harbin eyed her, seeing that the question was a genuine one. “The expected life span of a sub-executive in ground combat is two weeks.”

  “So?” Bailey asked.

  “So the Syndicate didn’t see any sense in wasting time and money on reconstruction work when I’d probably die pretty soon,” Harbin said, his voice sounding as matter of fact as he felt. “That’s just the way the Syndicate thinks.”

  She stared at him, obviously shocked by his casual reply. “Why the hell did you fight for people like that?”

  He might as well be candid with her and see how she reacted. “Some of us believed the lies,” Harbin said. “Some of us didn’t want our families punished if we failed…and all of us believed the Alliance was just like the Syndicate.”

  Lieutenant Bailey paused, not eating. “I…it’s not. I swear it. The Alliance isn’t perfect. No one thinks that. Our government…But…I lost half my face when the Shigure was destroyed. I can’t imagine being told to live with that because my life expectancy didn’t make it cost-effective.”

  “Half your face?” Harbin studied her. “The Alliance fixed you up nice. The Alliance also bombarded any Syndicate planet their ships could reach. We had to defend our worlds from that.”

  Bailey hesitated again, looking distressed. “When Black Jack came back, he couldn’t believe we were doing that. We told him everyone thought we had to, in order to win the war. He asked us, if that was true, why hadn’t we won yet?”

  Harbin surprised himself with a laugh. “He said that? Bosses hate it when workers ask questions like that. That’s the first time I ever heard of a boss thinking that way. That’s why Black Jack ordered the bombardments to stop? Because he thought they weren’t working?”

  “No,” Lieutenant Bailey said. “He told us such actions shamed our ancestors. It wasn’t just that they hadn’t worked, it was that we never should have started doing something so contrary to our ideals, to what our ancestors expected of us.”

  “Like your Marines said about not killing prisoners?” Harbin said. “No one questioned Black Jack about that?”

  Bailey hesitated again. “There was some…argument, but no one disobeyed the orders. He’s Black Jack. All of our lives we’ve been told he embodied everything that was right about the Alliance.”

  “And does he?” Harbin asked.

  “From what I saw, yes.”

  “What about this Captain Michael Geary, Black Jack’s scion? Is he the same?”

  Bailey laughed. “That’s not disrespect toward Captain Geary. He’s good, from what I’ve seen. A Geary. But Black Jack is a category all to himself.”

  Harbin looked at her, thinking about having to follow in the footsteps of someone who was “in a category all to himself.” It matched what Aragon had told him about Michael Geary. Capable, but with a chip on his shoulder, trying to live up to the Black Jack family name while pretending not to care about it. “Have there been arguments among you? About the wisdom of Captain Geary’s actions regarding my unit?”

  She didn’t pause before replying. “Of course there have been. Especially at first. You’re…you were…Syndics. Can I be honest? I doubt any of us trust you even now. But Captain Geary pointed out that we needed each other. We needed you to break us out of that prison, and you needed us to take you home. And, honestly, you don’t seem to be monsters.”

  “There are monsters in the Syndicate,” Harbin said. “We killed a bunch of them at the prison, and when we were capturing this unit.”

  “I’ve noticed you talk that way,” an Alliance senior worker said as she walked up to the table and sat down next to Bailey. “I’m Chief North. I work with Lieutenant Bailey here. I mean, we’ll say we’re citizens of the Alliance. We’re part of the Alliance. And we call you guys Syndics. But you guys talk about ‘the Syndicate’ as if it’s something totally separate from you.”

  “It is,” Harbin said. “It’s what rules us, what controls us, what makes the rules. For anyone except CEOs, we have no say in it. We serve it, whether we want to or not. That’s all.”

  “So we are the good guys,” Bailey said. “Even if we haven’t always acted like it. We were always fighting against something worse.”

  “Do you want me to agree with you?”

  “No. I guess I just want to believe all of the sacrifices for the last century were worth it. That they had meaning.”

  This time, Harbin had to pause before answering. “I can understand why you want that. You can understand how hard it is for us to feel the same way.”

  “It looks like you guys are doing the right thing now,” Chief North said. “How come we’re still fighting Syndics if the war is over?”

  “Because the Syndicate won’t stop, Chief North. It was supposed to release all prisoners of war back to the Alliance. We, my unit, were supposed to go home when the century-long war emergency ended. But, you, us, we all have to fight to get what we were promised by the Syndicate. It never lets go. Not until you pry yourself free from its dead hand.” He grinned. “What a wonderful thing to imagine. The Syndicate finally dead.”

  “I hope you see that happen,” Lieutenant Bailey said.

  Harbin smiled again. “I will not just see it. I will try to contribute to its death in any way I can.” He raised his water cup. “To the death of the Syndicate!” he shouted.

  Every other Tigre present scrambled to their feet, raising their own cups. “To the death of the Syndicate!”

  Lieutenant Bailey and Chief North stood up, too, the rest of the Alliance workers and officers in the compartment doing the same, all of them raising their cups in support of the defiant toast.

  There was, after all, common ground with these people from the Alliance. Even if that ground was only hatred of the Syndicate, that might be enough, Harbin thought.

  * * *

  Michael had taken the primary command seat on the bridge, waiting as the final moments in jump space counted down. “Five minutes until we leave jump at Ravana, Captain,” Lieutenant Kuei reported.

  The five days spent in jump space hadn’t been wasted. The frantic improvisation of the first fight this ship had faced was a thing of the past. The former prisoners of war had been assigned to tasks, been formed into teams, practiced operations together, gained familiarity with the Syndic controls and systems.

  The Tigre soldiers who had once stood watch over the Alliance personnel on the bridge had stood down two days ago in a clear confidence-building measure by Executive Aragon.

  Aragon sat in the secondary command seat, attired in a finely made suit designed for Syndicate Worlds CEOs. Ironically, she had needed the help of one of the Alliance sailors to get the tailoring done to the level of skill expected for CEO suits. Her hair had been rigidly styled to also match something a CEO would display.

  She didn’t look happy, shifting uncomfortably.

  Michael realized he also felt unusually tense. Why? He’d done this so many times before.

  “Leaving jump.”

  The mental jolt hit him and everyone else aboard as Corsair dropped back into normal space, the never-ending, featureless gray of jump space instantly replaced by the infinite stars of the space humans belonged in. For a few seconds, Michael Geary’s mind was filled with fog, his thoughts unable to focus. It happened to everyone, every time they left jump space, and was especially worrisome when arriving at an enemy-controlled star. Those moments of dazed confusion could be critical if an ambush was waiting.

  An ambush. That was why he was on the edge of panicking. The last time he’d arrived in a new star system in command of a ship, it had been the Syndicate Worlds capital star system of Prime, and the Alliance Fleet had run head on into an ambush that had inflicted awful losses before it could fight its way through to temporary safety. His own ship, Repulse, had been so badly damaged she had ended up being sacrificed as the rear guard when Black Jack led the rest of the fleet to hoped-for, temporary safety.

  Small wonder he was having trouble with this.

  Michael’s mind finally cleared, his eyes fixing on his display to see what information the battle cruiser’s sensors would show as they took in everything they could of the situation in Ravana. Nothing was close to this jump point, which wasn’t surprising since it led nowhere but to the star where the prison and nothing else had been. How would the local Syndicate Worlds authorities react when they eventually saw a battle cruiser had arrived from that star? They must have seen this same ship depart for that star some time ago. How much had they known of its mission?

  “No Syndic warships are present,” Lieutenant Law said. “Three freighters are moving through the star system, one outbound heading for the jump point for…Cullen Star System. A second one is inbound to the primary inhabited world from that jump point, and the third freighter looks like it was about to jump for Cullen.”

  “Communications appear to be routine,” Chief Petty Officer Okoro said from the communications station. “What we’re receiving is hours old, but none show any signs of high alert.”

  “What about the labor camp?” Michael asked.

  “Where it should be,” Lieutenant Law said. “And it is definitely occupied.”

  “And the logistics facility?”

  “Also where it should be, orbiting the primary world, Captain.”

  “Get us on a vector to intercept the labor camp in its orbit. Accelerate to point one light speed.”

  “Aye, Captain. Accelerating to point one light speed, adjusting vector. Time to reach the labor camp is forty-one hours.”

  Nearly two days. Michael sat back, trying to relax. “It’s weird. I’ve operated in space for years, but I still have trouble dealing with the distances. We’re about four and a half light hours from where the primary inhabited world is in its orbit, so the Syndic authorities here won’t even know we’ve arrived for another four and a half hours. But I keep expecting them to have immediately seen us.”

  “I need to send my messages now, don’t I?” Aragon asked, sounding abrupt.

  “Yes. That’s routine, to send any necessary messages as soon as you arrive at a star,” Michael said. “Are you okay?”

  She bent a glare his way. “I need to get in character. A Syndicate CEO. The more important they are, the meaner they are to anyone less important. I don’t want anyone asking questions. The Syndicate authorities here know something was at Ravana, but they’re unlikely to know just what it was or who was there. That gives me a chance to pretend to be someone very important. Speaking of that, we need to switch seats. Anyone seeing my transmission might notice I’m not in the primary command seat and wonder why.”