temporary comfort they brought.
This day’s already gone to hell, so I might as well catch up on paperwork. Geary called up his message queue and cycled through incoming material as fast as possible, until he came to one that made him pause. “Intelligence exploitation report regarding Syndicate Worlds facilities in the Kaliban System.” I didn’t think the Syndics had left anything worth exploiting.
He began reading, then started skimming as it became apparent the Syndics had indeed left little of interest behind, and what there was of interest was decades old and therefore of doubtful use.
Wait a minute. Geary stopped scrolling and paged back to find whatever had caught his attention. There it is. The security vault at the headquarters facility had been breached at some point long after the departure of the Syndicate Worlds authorities. This assessment was reached after examining damage done to the vault by its physical breaching via the use of power tools. Analysis of the stress fracturing of the metal cut through indicates it was at ambient environmental temperature when the power tools were employed, which could only have been the case after the facility had been mothballed and abandoned for some time. As far as could be determined, the vault was empty when sealed, so the reasons for the breach are undetermined. Since attempted intelligence collection by Alliance assets could not account for the damage, it was most likely caused by criminal elements, though their reasons for trying to access a security vault in an abandoned facility cannot be understood. It is also impossible to know why those breaching the vault made use of drill bits whose diameters match none of those used within the Syndicate Worlds or the Alliance. We can only assume the nonstandard drill bits were employed to prevent their source from being identified.”
Geary read through that section of the report several times, trying to figure out what bothered him. The fact that the security vault had been breached long before the Alliance fleet had arrived at Kaliban made no sense at all, of course. Someone must’ve believed something valuable would be in there, but the Syndics were fanatical about following standard procedure, and surely anyone associated with the Syndics would know that standard procedure presumably included removing everything from the security vault before the star system was abandoned.
The speculation about using nonstandard drill bits to avoid being traced. That was it. The conclusion stood logic on its head. It’d be far easier to trace nonstandard drill bits than it would standard bits, since uncounted millions of such standard bits existed in both the Syndicate Worlds and the Alliance.
But that left the question begging. Why go to the immense trouble of using nonstandard drill bits?
Unless those were the only drill bits you had. Because you didn’t belong to the Syndicate Worlds or any worlds known to the Alliance.
That’s quite a leap, Geary. You wouldn’t have even thought of that if the Marines hadn’t raised the possibility that the Syndics were worried about some nonhuman intelligences. But even the Marines didn’t want to stand by that conclusion. They just felt they had to bring it up. Wiped operating systems and nonstandard drill bits aren’t exactly strong proof that there’s alien intelligences wandering around Syndic space.
But I have to wonder. This report about the nonstandard drill bits made them fit a predictable scenario even though it didn’t really make sense. How many other small things like that have been filed away and forgotten because someone came up with an alternate explanation? An explanation that didn’t involve making an assertion, that alien intelligences might be involved, which would’ve gotten people laughed at? I’ve gone through the classified files on Dauntless and found nothing about evidence of nonhuman intelligences. But even in my time the overriding assumption was that we were alone out here, and facts tend to be bent until they corroborate overriding assumptions.
The chime on his hatch announced the presence of a visitor. He didn’t really feel like talking to anyone, but couldn’t justify turning away what might be important business. “Come in.”
Victoria Rione entered, her face composed, as usual giving no clue to her inner thoughts. “Captain Geary, may we speak?”
He stood up, suddenly uncomfortably aware of how rumpled his uniform was. “Sure. I hope it’s nothing too serious.” Like accusing me of being a dictator in training again. “Is there something I can ask you first?”
“Certainly.”
He waved her to a seat, then took his own again. “Madam Co-President, I assume you’d be willing to share any classified information with me if I asked.”
She gave him a questioning look. “You have access to every classified piece of information on this ship, Captain Geary.”
Geary lowered his head so she couldn’t see his grimace. “There may be things too sensitive to be in the databases of even a fleet flagship. Information kept within governing channels.”
Rione shook her head slowly. “I don’t know which information you might be referring to.”
“Is there anything known to the Alliance, that you are aware of, regarding any nonhuman intelligences?”
Her head froze in midshake. “Why are you asking this?”
“Because something at Kaliban led some of my officers to speculate about it.”
“I’d like to hear what it was. In response to your question, I’m not aware of anything like that. I’ve certainly never seen anything along those lines.” She looked upward as if expecting to see signs of an alien intelligence somehow visible there. “Encountering a nonhuman intelligence would be a very significant event in human history. They might be able to tell us a great deal. Perhaps help explain things we don’t understand. Maybe even explain things about ourselves we don’t understand.” She gave a brief, humorless laugh. “Such as why we’ve spent a hundred standard years fighting a war. Or even why it started in the first place.”
Geary had been about to say more, but he stopped at her last words. “We never learned why the Syndics launched their first attacks?”
Rione gave him a speculative look. “No. Not the timing, anyway. As I think you can confirm, the first attacks were a total surprise because there’d been no indications that tensions had risen to such a level.”
He brooded on her statement, remembering so clearly the shock he’d felt at Grendel when it became clear that a Syndic attack was underway. Total surprise, just as she said. “I’d assumed the reasons had become clear by now.”
“No. Our best assessments provide complex answers, Captain Geary. There’s no clarity. There appear to have been many factors.”
“‘Appear to have been.’” He chewed his lower lip for a moment. “Then we still don’t know exactly why they did it? Why they attacked when they did? Why they attacked at all?”
“No,” Rione repeated. “Not for certain. Their Executive Council doesn’t share its deliberations with anyone. The answer is surely buried in the secret records of the Syndicate Worlds’ leadership.”
Geary nodded at her words, but his mind had generated a question he couldn’t ignore. “Then we don’t know of any…external factors that might’ve influenced the Syndics’ actions?”
She spread her hands in a gesture of incomprehension. “I don’t know what you could be speaking of. External factors?” Her eyes widened. “You’re not talking about nonhuman intelligences, are you? Is that why you asked about them? You’re not suggesting they were somehow involved or caused the war, are you?”
“No. No, of course not.” I’m a long way from wanting to openly suggest such a thing. But I’m wondering. If the Syndics did encounter nonhuman intelligences, how long ago was it? More than forty-two years ago, certainly, if what the Syndics did when they shut down Kaliban means what it might mean.
Did the Syndics encounter alien intelligences? When did they find them? What
