She reached out and touched controls, bringing the star display to life between them. Unruh moved one finger to indicate the binary star system. “Here.”
Geary nodded. “That was our guess.”
“You found Unity Alternate? I’m impressed. I was anticipating a long and difficult discussion to get you to believe that was where you needed to go.”
“I already had that discussion. Otherwise, you might have had trouble convincing me. To be honest, the Dancers pointed us there.”
“The Dancers.” Senator Unruh looked at Geary for several seconds. “Do you know why?”
“No. How do I get my fleet to Unity Alternate?”
“Through the hypernet.” Unruh extended her other hand, showing that it held a data coin. “This has the code for the gate at Unity Alternate. It will allow the hypernet keys on your warships to access that gate.”
Geary took the coin, studying it. “I’ve been told that once a key was created, it could not be altered. How can this input a new gate?”
“It doesn’t. Ever since the gate was constructed at Unity Alternate, all Alliance hypernet keys have contained the data for that gate. But the data was blocked, concealed from the key controls. The code I’m giving you will simply allow your keys to finally see that gate data and give you the option of going there.” She gestured in the general direction of Syndic space. “It had to be designed that way. If the government had ever retreated to Unity Alternate to keep the war going, any surviving Alliance warships would have had to be able to get there as well. The capability has been built in, to be activated if and when it was needed.”
“And now it is,” Geary said, carefully putting away the coin. “But not because of the Syndics.”
“No.” Unruh made an angry gesture. “Self-inflicted wounds.”
“What can you tell me about Unity Alternate? What exactly is there?”
Unruh made a casting-away gesture this time. “I don’t know. There have been some extremely large construction projects hidden within the covert programs budget. Other work was done before my time and has since been buried in the mass of classified data that threatens to swallow the Alliance whole. There will be some orbiting facilities for a skeleton government to operate. How big are they? It depends upon what was demanded decades ago. It could be an orbiting city. Probably less than that, though, but still substantial. One of your tasks, if you can achieve it given the threat of the dark ships, is to find out everything that orbiting facility has been and is being used for, and what information is available in its databases.”
“It’s that bad?” Geary asked. “The government doesn’t know what’s going on there?”
“We don’t know whether we know, Admiral.” Senator Unruh appeared to be embarrassed to admit that. “It’s a big, big galaxy, and even though the Alliance occupies a pretty small portion of that galaxy, it still is immensely large by any human scale. The Alliance government expanded rapidly under the pressure of the war. With so many people, so many organizations and bureaus and offices and commands, in so many star systems, under constant attack and threat of attack by the Syndics, and the inevitable time lags involved in trying to coordinate and control events across so many light-years, the proverbial bubble broke a long time ago. We’re going to try to put it back together again, but it is a mammoth task.”
“I understand,” Geary said. “I just have to worry about orbiting facilities? There are no habitable planets there or installations on the six planets in that star system?”
“Not according to my information. That is hardly definitive, however.” The senator bent her lips in a sardonic smile. “I actually encountered one individual who refused to confirm or deny the existence of habitable planets at Unity itself.”
Geary stared at her in disbelief. “It’s common knowledge that there are two habitable worlds at Unity. Everyone knows that. It’s in every star guide.”
“Which did not impress that individual in the least, Admiral. Just because everyone knows something that is supposedly classified is no grounds for reconsidering whether it should be classified.” Unruh looked like she wanted to punch someone, then cleared her expression and focused back on Geary. “Ancestors alone know how much else has been classified. Now, back on topic. In the past, the government would have also built support facilities at Unity Alternate for whichever Alliance warships survived to join the government there. Important supplies would have been stockpiled there. We deliberately left you with the portion of your assigned Marines who would be best at storming the facilities at Unity Alternate if that proved necessary, as it has, and believe me, working that out without anyone’s figuring out our intent was not easy. We have no idea what sort of defenses might be at those facilities, but we are fairly certain there is no actual military presence.”
She paused. “We think we have shut off resources and information intended for the Defender Fleet, but we can’t be certain they will not somehow hear of plans against them. I wish I could offer more assurances on that, but I can’t, not until we move at Unity, and there is a strong suspicion that our moves at Unity could trigger a Defender Fleet move against us. We’re hoping you can prevent that.
“Since Unity Alternate is the home base for the Defender Fleet, you can assume the facilities there have been automated to the maximum possible extent. There are strong indications the Defender Fleet was designed to operate totally autonomously for an extended period, without depending on human support at any level.”
Geary bit back his first words, carefully recasting them before speaking. “Do you know whose idea it was to cut humans out of the loop?”
“It seems to have been a group consensus,” Unruh replied. “Various contractors were wildly enthusiastic at the idea, complete with assurances that nothing could go wrong. What those assurances were worth we learned when our auditors discovered fine print in their contracts that, once translated from lawyer-speak, said if anything did go wrong it wouldn’t create any legal liability for the contractors. Your own fleet headquarters was also eager to embrace the idea. As their decision paper put it, totally automated systems would eliminate problems with field commanders who sometimes failed to execute their orders as given.”
“You can’t have field commanders thinking for themselves, now can you?” Geary said.
“Apparently not. But I think the main concern of your fleet headquarters was personnel costs. You have no idea how huge the budget is that the Alliance Senate deals with, and how huge the military personnel costs are within that budget.”
“Why is spending on equipment an investment and spending on people a cost? I’ve always thought that personnel expenses should be considered investments as well, not costs,” Geary said. “Calling them costs creates the image that it is just money being thrown away because we have no choice. But that money is an investment in the people who make all of the difference in effectiveness and efficiency and everything else.”
The senator raised her eyebrows at him. “That’s an interesting word choice. And a worthwhile argument for future budgets. In terms of commitments we already face, retirement hasn’t been that big an expense given that relatively few personnel survived long enough to retire,” Unruh added bitterly, “but existing medical costs are immense. The citizens of the Alliance clamoring for reduced spending don’t realize how much of that spending has to go to helping those who gave pieces of themselves to defending us.”
“Have you told them?” Geary asked. “Has anybody gone to the citizens and said here is why we need this money, here is who it has to go to, this is why we owe it to them?”
Senator Unruh looked at Geary, then shook her head. “I doubt it. Oh, I’ve had senators hitting me up to know where the money is going because they weren’t read into the Defender Fleet program and couldn’t understand how much funds that money-sink has been eating up. Those automated systems have devoured more and more of the budget as costs and complexities mounted. But no one has been beating my door down demanding that we spend more money on people. I promise you I will make that case myself.”