“Damned if I know. They don’t want us to get home. Is it because they want the Alliance to lose? I don’t think so. If they wanted to help the Syndics defeat us, they could provide the Syndics with more of their technology, but as best we can tell, they secretly gave the hypernet technology to both the Alliance and Syndicate Worlds at about the same time several decades ago.”
“What are they?” Desjani demanded. “What do we know of them?”
This time Geary shrugged. “Shadows and scientific wild-ass guesses. We see signs of them, apparent proof they’re out there and intervening in this war, but nothing about them directly. If they did redirect that Syndic flotilla, it not only means they can mess with a hypernet in ways we don’t understand, it also means they can covertly monitor where this fleet is and where it’s going, and get that information somewhere at something close to real time over interstellar distances.” The others stared at him as the implications of that struck home, but none of them denied his logic.
“The Syndics certainly know more about the aliens,” Rione added to the group. “But that knowledge has apparently been kept very close, and even the existence of the aliens kept secret from most Syndic citizens. Only the Syndicate Worlds’ highest leaders may know everything there is to be known. We’ve found nothing in captured records.”
“Are they human?” Tulev wondered.
“I don’t think so,” Geary answered. “If they were human, why would the Syndics have kept them secret? And how could another human power strong enough to hold the Syndics on a border exist without us knowing something? They would have had to come from somewhere.”
“Not human.” Tulev shook his head. “How do they think? Not like us.”
“Surely we can still figure out their intent,” Desjani insisted.
Duellos was frowning in thought. “My grandmother taught me an ancient riddle when I was quite young. That riddle might help us understand what we’re dealing with.”
“Really? What is it?”
Duellos paused dramatically. “Feathers or lead?”
Geary waited, but nothing else came. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Feathers or lead?”
“What kind of riddle just asks you to chose between two things?” Cresida asked, then shrugged. “I give. What’s the answer?”
“It depends.” Duellos smiled as everyone looked aggravated. “The one asking the riddle is a demon, you see. The demon chooses which answer is right. In order to guess the right answer, you have to know what the demon thinks it should be that particular time.”
“How are you supposed to know what a demon thinks?” As soon as Geary said the words, he got Duellos’s point. “Like the aliens.”
“Exactly. How do we answer a question posed by something that isn’t human, when we have no idea what the question means or what the ones asking it want the answer to be?”
“And what do they expect from us? Honor or lies?” Captain Cresida asked. Everyone turned to look at her. “Who have these aliens been in contact with? The Syndics.”
Rione nodded. “Whose leaders have broken every agreement made with us, even when abiding by those agreements would have been in the long-term interests of the Syndicate Worlds.”
“The Syndic leaders don’t think long-term,” Duellos pointed out. “Short-term gain is all that matters to them.”
Geary shook his head. “Would they have been stupid enough to use those kinds of tactics against an alien species that clearly has technological superiority over the human race?” He saw the answer on every other face in the room. “Yeah. Maybe they would have.” After all, those same leaders had repeatedly broken agreements with this fleet, even knowing that the fleet could easily retaliate by wiping out entire worlds.
“The superior technology would have been irresistible bait for them,” Rione observed bitterly. “They would have been willing to try to acquire it by any possible means, leaving the aliens to conclude that the human race could not be trusted. Anything the aliens have done could have been seen by them as defensive, a means to neutralize humanity.”
“But if the Syndics were dealing with aliens,” Cresida argued, “and unsuccessfully dealing with them apparently because they’ve never surfaced with any technology far in advance of the Alliance except the same hypernet we got, why would they turn around and attack us? We know from the disposition of Syndic hypernet gates on the far border that the Syndics fear the aliens. Why start a war with us?”
“Because they were surrounded?” Duellos offered. “The Alliance on one side and these aliens on the other side. That leaves the Syndicate Worlds pinned between two powers. They must have feared being crushed between us once we learned of the existence of the creatures.”
“Then why start a war with us?” Cresida demanded. “Why make their nightmare come true?”
Geary shook his head. “During peacetime, Alliance ships traveled through Syndicate Worlds’ space. Only occasional warships carrying out diplomatic missions, but more frequent freighters. Alliance citizens also traveled through the Syndicate Worlds on business or pleasure. Any of those might have found clues to the existence of the aliens or been contacted by them directly.”
“Well enough, sir, but starting a war to prevent occasional Alliance traffic through their territory seems like massive overkill. It’s not like the Syndics ever invited much Alliance shipping into their areas of control. They could have choked it off completely using any number of excuses, and what could the Alliance have done? Besides, how could they know the aliens wouldn’t attack them while they were involved in fighting the Alliance?”
Duellos shrugged. “Maybe the Syndic leaders thought they could defeat us quickly.”
“That’s irrational!” Cresida objected. “Even the Syndic leaders couldn’t have been so stupid as to believe they could do that!”
“They thought the Alliance would crack under the first blows,” Desjani cut in. “That we wouldn’t have the spirit to rebound from the initial losses and hit back.”
“We don’t know that,” Rione replied with a slightly but unmistakably dismissive tone. “That was the argument used to rally the Alliance after the first attacks. That was why the Alliance made the most of whatever heroic examples existed, as proof that any such Syndic belief was wrong.”
Which was where the legend of Black Jack Geary began. Fighting to the last against overwhelming odds. A heroic example to inspire everyone else. Geary tried not to notice everyone not looking at him.
Tulev shrugged. “It may have been a useful rallying argument for the Alliance, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true,” he suggested with a glance at Desjani, whose eyes had narrowed in response to Rione’s tone. “What other explanation exists?”
“Perhaps they reached some sort of agreement with the aliens,” Rione suggested. “Doubtless planning to go back on it as soon as they’d dealt with us.”
“What kind of agreement?” Geary wondered, his mind going back to a time that was the recent past for him but a century old for the others here. “A nonaggression pact might temporarily secure their border with the aliens, but the Syndics couldn’t have decisively beaten the Alliance. They didn’t have military forces large enough to overcome the sheer size of the Alliance, any more than the Alliance could muster enough force to defeat the expanse of the Syndicate Worlds. We knew that as well as they did. That’s why the surprise attacks, including the one in Grendel, came as such a shock.”
“Maybe there’s the answer,” Desjani declared, her expression shadowed with an emerging idea. “What everyone’s been saying made me think of something.” She tapped some controls and an area of space that Geary found heartbreakingly familiar was displayed above the table. “Alliance space along the frontier with the Syndicate Worlds,” Desjani explained to Rione as if she couldn’t be expected to recognize a display of the area, causing Rione’s expression to harden slightly this time. “I’ve spent some time recently studying the start of the war. This shows the initial Synd
ic attacks a century ago. Shukra, Thabas, Diomede, Baldur, Grendel. Why did they hit Diomede instead of Varandal? Why Shukra instead of Ulani?”
Geary frowned. He didn’t know this, hadn’t ever known it, because he had been lost in survival sleep since that first Syndic surprise attack at Grendel. In the months after his awakening, he’d avoided studying the early Syndic attacks closely since he still felt the pain of knowing his crew from those days had all died in either that battle or later battles or, if lucky, from old age, while Geary’s survival pod drifted among the other debris of battle at Grendel. “Good question. I just skimmed those events and assumed they must have hit the Alliance base at Varandal.”
“They didn’t,” Duellos confirmed, studying the display. “Varandal was a major base back then as well?”
Desjani nodded. “The primary command, repair, supply, and docking facility for the Alliance fleet in that entire sector of space.”
“That seems a far-more-critical target than some of those that were hit. Does anyone know why they didn’t strike Varandal? ”
Once again Desjani answered. “Our histories all say that it was assumed Varandal, Ulani, and other high-value star systems were intended for a follow-up wave of attacks that didn’t happen because of Syndic losses suffered in the first wave. Assumed,” Desjani emphasized. “It’s obvious they made that assumption because everyone on the Alliance side agreed the Syndics shouldn’t have had any expectation that their first wave of surprise attacks to start this war could have inflicted enough damage on the Alliance to be decisive. The Syndics didn’t have enough forces on hand, as Captain Geary says, to hit everything they needed to hit all at once.”
“What’s your point?” Rione demanded.
Desjani gave her a cold look in return, but her voice stayed professionally calm. “Perhaps the Syndics expected to have more forces than we knew of. Suppose the Syndics had reached an agreement and expected to have help? Suppose they expected an ally, a very powerful ally, to hit places like Varandal while they hit Diomede?”
This time the silence was longer. Rione’s face hardened again, but now her feelings weren’t directed at Desjani. “The aliens double-crossed the Syndics.”
“By promising to help attack the Alliance.”
“And then didn’t show up, leaving the Syndics to fight alone. They suckered the Syndic leaders, who thought themselves the masters of cunning behavior, into an unwinnable war with the Alliance. But the Syndic leaders couldn’t admit they’d been fooled on such a huge issue, and they’d enraged the Alliance, and so couldn’t get out of the war they’d started.”
Cresida was nodding now. “The aliens don’t want either side winning. That’s why they intervened at Lakota. Captain Geary was doing too well, inflicting enough losses to, perhaps, eventually decisively tip the balance against the Syndics, and getting closer and closer to getting the Syndic hypernet key back to Alliance space. The aliens want humanity at war, and they want us to remain totally absorbed in this war. But is that purely defensive? Or are they waiting to see how much we can weaken ourselves before they move in?”
“We think that they can wipe us out at any time using the hypernet gates,” Geary noted.
“But they haven’t yet,” Cresida argued. “If they’re watching us as the events here at Lakota seem to prove, they must know from the collapse of the Syndic hypernet gate at Sancere that we’re at least learning about the destructive potential of the gates. If they want to use the gates to wipe us out, why haven’t they triggered them already?”
“Feathers or lead?” Duellos asked, studying his fingernails.
Frustrating as it was, Geary had to admit Duellos had a point. “We can speculate endlessly and not reach conclusions because we don’t know anything about what we’re dealing with.”
“We know they’ve figured out how to trick us,” Desjani insisted. “Sir, look at the pattern. They intervene in hidden ways, and they know how to get us to do things that either hurt or have the potential to hurt ourselves.”
“Good point,” Duellos conceded. “Which means they very likely adopt such tactics among themselves. They seem to favor causing an enemy to make mistakes that result in self-inflicted injury.”
Rione nodded. “By figuring out what that enemy wants, then offering it to them. They must have formidable political skills.”
“And the Syndics tried to mess with them,” Geary noted angrily. “They poked a hornet’s nest with a stick, and all of humanity got stung.”
“Why haven’t the Syndics come clean?” Cresida wondered. “They don’t have any hope of winning this war and haven’t for a long time. Why not say they were tricked by the aliens, claim the aliens told them we were going to attack, whatever. Get us on their side against whatever these things are.”
Rione shook her head. “The Syndicate Worlds’ leaders can’t afford to admit they made that kind of mistake. Heads would roll, possibly in a very literal way. Even though the predecessors of the current Syndic leaders actually made the errors, the current leaders derive their legitimacy by claiming to be the chosen successors of past leaders. And all Syndic leaders are supposedly chosen for their competence and abilities. Admit to horrible errors by one generation of leaders and it calls into question the legitimacy of their chosen successors and the entire system. It is much easier and safer for them to continue on a ruinous course of action than it would be to admit to serious errors and try to change the situation.”
“They’re that stupid?” Cresida asked.
“No. It’s not stupid. If they admit to mistakes made by leaders of the Syndicate Worlds, mistakes so serious they have trapped the Syndicate Worlds in an apparently endless war, then it is certain they will lose power, and if they lose power, they will at worst die either quickly or slowly, and at best lose every bit of their status and wealth. But as long as they continue the current policies, they can hope something will change. It’s not about what’s best for the Syndicate Worlds or the Alliance or humanity as a whole. It’s about what’s best for them as individuals. They’ll fight to the last warship and ground soldier, because that’s someone else paying the price for their mistakes and putting off the day when they’ll personally be called to account.”
Geary noticed the other officers were trying not to stare at Rione. He knew what was bothering them. Not just the rationale the Syndic leaders were probably using, but also that Rione understood it and could explain it, which meant she could think the same way.
Clearly seeing the same thing, Rione glared around at the others. “I forgot. You’re all so noble and honorable. No senior military officer would ever allow people to die rather than admit a mistake, or cling to a foolish course of action in order to maintain their position.”
This time a lot of faces reddened. Geary spoke before anyone else could. “Point taken. But no one here engages in that kind of thing. And, yes, I include Co-President Rione in that. She came along on this mission, risking her own life along with the sailors of this fleet. Now, let’s redirect our anger at our enemies, not each other.”
“Which enemies?” Duellos wondered. “We’ve spent all of our lives knowing that ‘enemy’ meant the Syndics. They were the ones attacking us, bombarding our worlds, killing our friends and family members. And all that time we had another enemy, one none of us knew about.”
“Is that true, though? Do our leaders know about them?” Desjani asked.
Every eye turned again to Rione, who flushed slightly but gazed back defiantly. “I don’t. As far as I know, no senator knows of the aliens.”
“What about the Governing Council?” Duellos questioned.
“I don’t know.” Rione looked at the others and obviously saw doubt there. “I don’t have any reason to lie,” she snapped. “I know there are extremely sensitive matters of which only members of the Governing Council are apprised. Supposedly some of those matters are passed verbally to new members and never written down, but I don’t know that’s true. Only the members of the Governing
Council know, and they don’t discuss their secrets.”
Geary nodded. “I can easily believe that. What would be your guess, though, Madam Senator?” He used the title deliberately, wanting to emphasize for the others the political rank that Rione held. “If you had to make a guess, is there anything you know or have heard about the Governing Council that would lead you to think they might know?”
She frowned, bending her head in thought. “Maybe. It would depend upon how you interpreted things.”
“Things?”
Rione’s frown deepened. “Questions that you’re told to stop asking for Alliance security reasons, private statements regarding plans or budgets, that sort of thing. But there are plenty of other explanations for any of that. Listen, I’m as suspicious as any politician. I parse everything I hear for possible interpretations. If the Governing Council has any clue as to the existence of these aliens, they’ve done a very good job of keeping it quiet. I certainly never suspected it until Captain Geary showed me what he’d figured out.”
“But then we’d all stopped asking that question,” Cresida observed. “Hadn’t we? No nonhuman intelligent species had ever been discovered or contacted us, that we knew of, and the war had us all focused on other matters. Captain Geary had a fresh perspective.”
“More like a fresh-frozen perspective,” Geary replied, and everyone smiled at the reference to his long period in survival sleep. He hadn’t thought that he’d ever be able to joke about that. “Here’s the question: Do we keep them secret? Or do we start telling lots of other people?”
This time the silence stretched, then Rione spoke in a world-weary voice. “We fear that humanity will use the power in the hypernet gates to wipe itself out because of the hatreds generated by this war. If humanity learned that the war had been caused by a trick from another intelligent species, and that the same species had fooled us into planting the means for humanity’s extinction throughout the star systems we control, what would the mass of people do? What would they demand?”
“Revenge,” Tulev answered.