“Neither do I want Earth reconciled with the Colonial Union, offering it soldiers and colonists again.”
“In which case I’m not sure why you would oppose Earth’s admission into the Conclave,” I said. “That would shut the door to the Colonial Union using it as a recruiting station.”
“And frustrate the Colonial Union even further, making them more dangerous,” Hado said. “And aside from that, how would we ever be able to trust any humans? If one group of humans were at war with us and the other our ally, how many of our so-called allies would feel obliged, by species solidarity, to act against our interests?”
“So we are damned if we admit the humans, and damned if we don’t.”
“There is a third option,” Hado said.
I stiffened at this. “You know the general’s opinion on preemptive war, Representative Hado,” I said. “And on genocide.”
“Please, Councilor,” Hado said. “I am suggesting neither, obviously. I am suggesting, however, that war with the humans is inevitable. Sooner or later they will attack, out of opportunism or out of fear.” He pointed to the data module. “The information here makes that much clear. And when they do, if the general does not have a response, then I fear what happens next for the Conclave.”
“The Conclave is robust,” I said.
“Again, it’s not the physical damage to the Conclave I worry about. The Conclave exists because its members are confident in its leader. The general spared the humans once when he could have crushed them. If he does it twice, there comes the legitimate question of why, and for what purpose. And whether his judgment can be relied upon any further.”
“And if the answer is ‘no,’ then I suppose you have an idea of who might take his place,” I said. “To restore this ‘confidence.’”
“You misunderstand me, Councilor,” Hado said. “You always have. You think I have ambitions beyond my station. I assure you I do not. I never have. What I want is what you want, and what the general wants: the Conclave, whole and secure. He has the power to keep it that way. He has the power to destroy it. It all depends on how he deals with the humans. All of them.”
Hado stood, bowed, took a final niti from his bowl, and left.
* * *
“He thinks this is going to be the thing that destroys the Conclave,” Vnac Oi said, holding the data module Unli Hado had given me. I had traveled to its office, in part to get a change of scenery and in part because as the Conclave’s head of intelligence, its office was substantially more secure than my own.
“I think it’s more the thing Hado plans to use to try to oust Tarsem,” I said.
“It took some nerve to drop it on your desk,” Oi said. “He might as well have put a sign up over his head announcing his plans.”
“Plausible deniability,” I said. “It can never be said he was not the first to alert us to this information and the dangers within. He’s being the perfect example of a helpful and faithful officer of the Conclave.”
Oi gave a whistle of derision. “The Gods should protect us from such faithfulness,” it said.
I pointed to the data module. “What do we know about this?”
“We know Hado wasn’t lying about how he got it,” Oi said. “This information has showed up at several dozen Conclave worlds already and more reports are coming in. The data is consistent across the various planets. It even showed up here.”
“How?”
“Diplomatic courier skip drone. Credentials forged, which we determined right away, but we examined the data anyway. Same data as in every other packet we’ve been offered.”
“Any idea where it came from?”
“No,” Oi said. “The skip drone is Faniu manufacture. They make hundreds of thousands of them a year. The drone’s navigational cache was clear, no skip history on it. The data itself was unencrypted and in standard Conclave format.”
“Have you looked at it?”
“There’s too much to just look at. Reading it manually would take more time than we’d want. We’ve got computers doing semantic and data analysis on it to get the important information and trends. That will still take several sur.”
“I mean did you look at it,” I said.
“Of course,” Oi said. “There was a document that came with it highlighting particular bits of information whoever sent it thought might be relevant to us. I skimmed.”
“What do you think?”
“Officially or personally?”
“Both.”
“Officially, anonymous information that shows up randomly at one’s door should be treated as suspicious until proven otherwise. That said, the documents we’ve done spot analysis on conform strongly to the Colonial Union’s data formatting and known activity. If it’s fake, it’s very cleverly done, at least superficially.”
“And personally?”
“You know we have sources in the Colonial Union, yes?” Oi said. “Ones I don’t go out of my way to let either you or the general know too much about?”