The Lost Fleet: Courageous

Geary sat back, thinking, while Lieutenant Iger waited, looking unhappy. He probably expects me to start tearing him and his analysis apart. So why would he brief it to me unless he believes it must be true? “Assume your analysis is correct,” Geary began, drawing a clear look of relief from Iger. “How could the destination of those ships have been different from what they keyed in?”

Iger shook his head. “According to our experts, there isn’t any way.”

“Did you talk to Captain Cresida?”

This time Iger looked surprised that Geary knew Cresida was one of the fleet’s experts on the hypernet system. “No, sir, we couldn’t get that long and complex a message to her ship while the fleet was in jump space. But we did call up a learning simulation based on the teachings of several of the Alliance’s leading experts on hypernet, presented it as a theoretical situation, and asked if it were possible. The avatars of the experts in the simulation were all positive that it couldn’t happen.”

“There’s no way to change a destination in midjourney on the hypernet? None at all?”

“No, sir,” Iger stated firmly. “But there’s only one alternative to that having happened. That’s if the Syndics were trying to deceive us and deliberately broadcast a lot of misleading messages knowing we’d pick up some of them and eventually break some of those we intercepted.”

“Why don’t you think they did that?”

Iger grimaced this time. “Occam’s razor mostly, sir. A deliberate deception in this case would be a very complex and uncertain operation. The simplest explanation, that the messages are real, is the best. And the messages feel real, sir. Nothing about them seems deceptive. Everything about them matches our experience with valid Syndic communications. And we can’t think of any explanation why the Syndics would try to fool us that way.”

“To keep us from using their own hypernet? Sow doubt that it was reliable?”

“But they couldn’t know we would pick those signals, sir. Some of them were flying as soon as the Syndics arrived at Lakota, before they even could have absorbed the news that our fleet was there as well.”

Geary nodded. “How confident are you of your assessment that the Syndic fleet that came out of the hypernet gate at Lakota didn’t intend going to Lakota?”

“It’s the only assessment that matches the message traffic, sir,” Iger stated miserably. “We wanted to find something else to explain it. But nothing else matches.”

“Fair enough.” Geary stood up. “Good job on the analysis and good job on telling me the truth as you think it is. But you did miss something.”

Iger looked even more worried. “What was that, sir?”

“You told me that there’s no way to change the destination of ships in a hypernet in midjourney. If the intelligence you collected is right, and I know of no reason to doubt it, then there must be such a way. We just don’t know what it is.”

Iger looked startled, then nodded, then appeared puzzled. “But if the Syndics know a way to do that, why were they so surprised to arrive in a different star system?”

“Maybe the Syndics don’t know how to do it, either, Lieutenant.” Geary paused to give Iger time to absorb the implications of that. “Is there anything you have that I don’t have access to? Any information deemed too sensitive for me to see?”

“No, sir,” Iger stated immediately. “As fleet commander you have access to everything. I can’t speak for files off of this ship, but anything on this ship is available to you, regardless of classification and other restrictions.”

There was a star display floating near one bulkhead. Geary went over to it and gazed into its depths. “Lieutenant, are you aware of any information that indicates or speculates that another intelligent species exists on the far side of Syndic space from the Alliance?”

He turned back to see Iger staring at him. “No, sir,” Lieutenant Iger stated in a surprised voice. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Geary nodded again. “Do me a favor, Lieutenant. Pull up the data that we’ve captured that provides information on the far side of Syndic space. Plot in occupied star systems, abandoned star systems, and hypernet gate placements. Then tell me what you think.”

Iger was staring at the star display now. “Have you already done that, sir?”

“I have. I want to see if you reach the same conclusion I did.”

RIONE was in his stateroom when Geary returned. She stood and gave him a searching look. “It didn’t quite feel the same in here without you slouched in a chair radiating gloom. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“So Captain Desjani was able to give you something I couldn’t.”

“That’s…she helped. You and she both helped.”

“Uh-huh.” Rione sat back down, looking tired. “Good, anyway. Whatever did it. I was about to the point of standing over you and slapping you until you moved.”

“I might have started to like it,” Geary replied.

“A joke? You’ve gone from immobility to jokes?”