Dreadnaught

Navarro wouldn’t have set that up. I don’t think Sakai would have. Who hoped for it, though? Who in the government and who in fleet headquarters, who surely don’t want to deal with lots of resurrected senior officers any more than the government does?

Rione knew that was part of it. That’s why she looked that way when she realized her own husband had been caught in it. But as far as I know, she’s done nothing to further it happening. She isn’t helping much, but she’s not sabotaging us either.

The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to form partial pictures, and he didn’t like the image at all.

THIS jump required tweaking the jump drives a bit to get some extra range out of them. The fleet jumped while the two groups of enigma warships were still joining up a light hour distant.

“May I speak with you, Admiral?” General Charban sat down in the offered seat in Geary’s stateroom, looking around with a wry smile before speaking. “Not much, but it’s home, eh? Strange how we can attach ourselves to even a utilitarian stateroom or headquarters complex, isn’t it? Humans find home wherever they are. I have an idea, Admiral Geary,” he added, switching the subject abruptly. “A possible means for finally getting some agreement with the enigma race on the basis of mutual self-interest.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Geary replied.

“I was considering a few things, including what Dr. Shwartz said at our last fleet conference about the inconsistency between what the enigmas said at Midway and their actions since then. It may be that we made a fundamental mistake in assuming those words represented the actual motivations of the enigmas.”

Geary rested his chin on one hand, regarding Charban. “Why would they have lied to us about what they wanted, about what was motivating them?”

Charban smiled slightly. “When you speak to men and women serving in the fleet, do you talk about cost-benefit ratios and the need to enhance stockholder benefits and reduce costs to the government? Or do you talk about what you believe matters to them?”

He followed where that question led. “You think the enigmas at Midway were giving us an explanation for their actions they thought we would understand or accept.”

“Yes. Any exterior agent watching the war would have focused on our struggles for control of star systems. For control of territory. And property does matter to us even though it is not the most important thing for most humans. What I think the enigmas were doing at Midway, and have done since, was giving us the justifications they thought we would find plausible. Instead of giving their real reasons, they gave us reasons they expected us to expect.”

Charban hunched forward, speaking more intensely. “Consider how private they are, how they give away nothing about themselves. Why would they offer their true reasons at Midway? Why would they tell us what they really wanted?”

“Good question.”

“I was led to this while thinking about the humans held prisoner by the enigma race,” Charban continued. “From a human perspective, there wasn’t anything surprising about the aliens wishing to know more about us. But was that really the alien motivation? Were they researching how humans acted because they were curious, or simply because they saw us as a threat?”

Geary nodded as he thought about that. “For humans, it would be both. Even if they weren’t a threat, we’d want to know more about another intelligent species.”

“Because we’re curious!” Charban leaned forward a little further. “There was discussion some time ago about the human obsession with sex, and that is indeed a major aspect of us. And, of course, we fight wars over property as well as other causes. But there’s another characteristic that defines us, perhaps even more so. We are curious. We want to know things. What’s at the next star? How does this thing work? Why does the universe act the way it does? No matter what we learn, there’s always more we want to know. We confront anything from the perspective of wanting to know more about it. Now, what is the primary characteristic of the enigma race as far as we have been able to determine?”

“An obsession with staying private, hidden.” Geary took a sudden deep breath. “We want to know more, and they don’t want anyone knowing anything. Matter and antimatter. We’re the neighbors from hell as far as they’re concerned. Is that why they attacked us?”