“No, sir.” Iger barely suppressed another smile. “The person who wrote it is the chief of security at the installation.”
“You’re joking.” Geary looked down at it again. “It’s not fake? Some sort of trick designed to mislead us?”
“As far as we can tell, it’s the real deal, sir.”
“I’ve talked to Syndics we’ve captured. You’ve interrogated them. None of them have said this sort of thing.”
“Not to us, sir,” Iger agreed. “It’s one thing to discuss this sort of thing among themselves, but saying it to us would be suicidal for any Syndic who ever got home again and was debriefed. ‘Did you tell the Alliance anything?’ ‘What did you say to Alliance personnel?’ That sort of thing. They’d pop positive for deception and be subjected to, um, harsher methods of interrogation and then find themselves charged with treasonous statements to the enemy.”
That sounded reasonable. “What do you think the fact that Syndic civilians are saying this among themselves means, Lieutenant?”
Iger paused, getting solemn again. “We ran it by our expert-based social analysis systems. They said if these messages were authentic and accurately reflected the state of public sentiment in Baldur System and were not resulting in punitive actions or arrests, then the Syndic political leadership is on shaky ground. The stresses of the war must be making it harder and harder to keep a lid on dissent and dissatisfaction with the leadership. Some of the other letters discuss official announcements of Syndic victories over the Alliance, almost always in dismissive terms. Granted, this is just one hypernet-bypassed system, and sentiment in other Syndic star systems may well vary in intensity and degree of expression, but there’s no reason to think Baldur is completely unique.”
“We didn’t find anything in Sancere like this,” Geary observed.
“No, sir, but then Sancere is…or rather was a wealthy system packed with military shipyards before we hammered the hell out of the place. Lots of government contracts, good jobs, priority on resources, linked to the hypernet, and the great majority of the people probably in critical war-related jobs that exempt them from drafts. Not many grounds for complaint in a place like that.” Lieutenant Iger made an apologetic face. “I come from a star system like that in the Alliance, sir. Marduk. Life is pretty good in that kind of star system. Better than anywhere else during this war, anyway.”
Geary regarded the lieutenant. “But you joined the fleet anyway instead of taking one of those good, draftexempted jobs?”
“Um…yes, sir.” Iger glanced at the petty officer, who was grinning again. “People like to joke that’s why I ended up in intelligence, because I demonstrated I didn’t have much.”
Jokes about intelligence officers obviously hadn’t changed in a century. Geary focused back on the letters from Baldur. It seemed too good to be true, enemy morale finally cracking. “What do they say about the Alliance?” Nobody answered for a moment, and Geary looked up at the lieutenant and the petty officer. “Do they say anything about the Alliance?”
Iger nodded, unhappiness obvious. “It’s mostly repeating Syndic propaganda, sir. One of the last messages in the queue was after our fleet had been sighted, and it’s almost a last testament. There are a few other partially finished but unsent messages like that, all assuming our fleet would wipe out everything within Baldur System, that we wouldn’t distinguish between civilian and military targets, expressing worries about the safety of their families. One individual talked about a relative who’d been captured by us and expressed the belief that they’d been killed. That sort of thing.”
“Propaganda?” Geary repeated. “Lieutenant, I know that Alliance military forces have been bombarding civilian targets for some time. I know that prisoners were being executed.”
Iger appeared shocked. “But that was situational, sir! Driven by necessity. It was never Alliance policy like those actions are Syndic policy.”
“The Syndic population doesn’t seem to have recognized the distinction, Lieutenant.” Geary pointed to the reader. “They may be unhappy with their leaders, but they are afraid of us. Is that a fair assessment?”
“I…Yes, sir, it may be.”
“Which would mean the main thing keeping the Syndic population supporting their leaders and the war is fear of the Alliance, fear our own actions have created.”
The petty officer finally spoke. “But, sir, we only did those things because we had to.”
Geary tried not to sigh. “Assume that’s one hundred percent true, and I have no doubt that Alliance personnel sincerely believe that. Do the Syndics know that? Or are the people on Syndic worlds judging us by our actions and not our justifications for them?”
Lieutenant Iger was staring at Geary. “Sir, you stopped bombarding civilian targets and allowing prisoners to be killed as soon as you took over. Every Syndic star system we’ve been through knows that under your command this fleet isn’t a threat to their homes and families. How did you know how they felt? How did you know what to do?”
Remember that the lieutenant and the petty officer and every man and woman in this fleet have spent their entire lives at war with the Syndics. Remember that their parents spent their entire lives at war. Remember the atrocities, the revenge attacks, the endless rounds of provocation and retaliation. Remember that I didn’t have to endure that and have no right to condemn them for thinking differently. “I did what I did,” Geary stated softly, “because it was right. The sort of thing I’d been taught was right, what our ancestors demanded of us, what our honor demanded of us. I know what you’ve been through, what the Alliance has endured in the course of this war. Under that kind of pressure, it’s possible to forget why you’re fighting in the first place.”
The petty officer nodded, looking stricken. “Like you told us in Corvus, sir. Like you reminded us. Our ancestors had to tell us we’d taken the wrong path, and they sent you, because they knew we’d listen to you.”
Oh, great. He couldn’t simply be reminding them of what they had been; he also had to be a messenger from their ancestors.
Though in a way he actually was, bringing with him from a hundred years ago the ways their ancestors had thought.
Because he was one of their ancestors. He didn’t like remembering that, recalling that his world had vanished into the past, but it was true.
Lieutenant Iger planted a fist on the table, staring down at it. “We need to convince the Syndics it’s different now, that we’re no longer a greater threat to them than their own leaders. We can do that if we keep demonstrating it. Right, sir?”
“Right,” Geary agreed.
“And if their morale is starting to break, and they decide they have less to fear from us than from their own leaders, it could finally break the Syndicate Worlds.”
“That’d be an outcome to be hoped for.” Geary turned the reader in his hands, thinking. “Let’s keep our eyes out for anything else like this, and if your expert-based systems have any recommendations for how we can exploit the sort of Syndic morale problems we see in these letters, I want to know them.”
Maybe, just maybe, there really was a light at the end of the tunnel. The Alliance had no hope of defeating the Syndicate Worlds as long as the Syndic leaders could keep drawing on the resources of all the worlds under their sway. But if even a good percentage of those worlds began to rebel, to hold back their people and their resources from the Syndic war effort, it would finally provide the advantage the Alliance had needed and had been unable to achieve for a century.
VICTORIA Rione successfully avoided Geary during the six days needed to reach Sendai. Geary spent the time going over possible battle scenarios, trying to figure out how to avoid losing his battle cruisers and their commanding officers and coming up with nothing. There simply wasn’t a good excuse for holding those ships out of battle.
He sat on the bridge of Dauntless again as the fleet left jump space. The odds the Syndics had been able to plant mines here or even guessed that the Alliance fleet was headed to Sendai were very small, but Geary wanted to be ready to react, just in case the Syndic leaders had been able to make a very lucky guess.
His guts wrenched as the transition to normal space occurred, and the dull gray of jump space disappeared as the infinite stars became visible.
Geary couldn’t waste time admiring the view; his eyes locked on the star system display, watching for any sign of Syndic ships or mines.
