The Lost Fleet – Dauntless

“I dare not believe that completely, but if we should make Alliance space once more, I’ll buy you every drink you can handle.” Duellos looked tired. “You must realize the officers you command are not used to firm hands. It’s fortunate you’re not a strict disciplinarian. I’ve read of such. A commander like that would’ve already lost command of the fleet. These officers truly need to be led, but they will not accept the whip.”

“I’m not a whip-employing kind of officer, but I need to show them the old ways work,” Geary stated.

“Yes. But it’ll take time, as I said. Time to forget one set of habits and acquire a new set. Time to gather victories that reinforce the new habits.” Duellos stood, preparing to leave. “Do not despair, I beg you. We all need you, even those who don’t think they need you. Perhaps I should say, especially those who don’t think they need you.”

Geary gave Duellos a tight-lipped smile. “I can’t afford to give up.”

“No. You can’t.” Duellos saluted, then his image vanished.

Geary pushed himself up from his seat, glaring at the now empty compartment. I need to hold fewer meetings. No. As much as I hate them, I have to keep holding meetings. It’s my only chance to see all of these officers, even though I’m not liking what I’m seeing.

He walked back to his stateroom, so lost in thought that he was surprised to find himself at the hatch. Rubbing his eyes, he considered a med-patch but decided against it. The meds were guaranteed not to cause physical addiction, but the last thing he needed was psychological addiction to the 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.