The Lost Fleet: Courageous

He looked up. “Is this from the files of the security police on that facility? I assume whoever wrote this was under arrest.”

Iger shook his head. “It was queued for transmission, sir. The security reviewers had already passed it.”

“You’re kidding.” Geary frowned down at the letter. “I assume you didn’t ask me down here to tell me that the Syndicate Worlds are a lot freer than I’ve been led to believe.”

The lieutenant and the petty officer both grinned. “No, sir,” Iger replied. “They’re still a police state. But this is just one letter. There’s a whole bunch in there, all pulled off the Syndic transmitter queue, and most of them contain the same sort of sentiments. We bounced the names on the letters against the files the Marines lifted from the security offices, and aside from routine entries, there’s nothing on these people.”

“Why not?” Geary held up the reader. “Isn’t this the sort of thing that gets people sent to labor camps in the Syndicate Worlds?”

“It is, sir.” Iger was serious now. “Or it should be. But to all appearances, open complaints were being tolerated to an unprecedented degree at that facility. Either the security force was extremely lax, or unhappiness with the state of affairs is bad enough that these kinds of sentiments are too common to be suppressed.” He indicated the reader. “The files at the installation also included some mail from the habitable world not yet delivered to miners and other workers at the facility. Many of them say pretty much the same thing. Not enough of anything and worries about more people or resources being demanded to meet war requirements.”

“Do any of them directly criticize the government?” The few Syndics who Geary had met since assuming command had all been thoroughly frightened of saying anything wrong or against their leaders.

“Only one, sir. The others carefully tiptoe around criticism of the Syndicate Worlds’ leaders.” Iger reached to push a couple of commands. “Here’s the exception.”

Geary read carefully. “What are our leaders thinking? Somebody must be making serious mistakes. But nobody pays except you and me. This can’t go on.” “Was this one flagged by security at the installation? It must have been.”

“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.”