Captain Tulev paused, then spoke with his usual careful, emotionless precision. “You all know that my home star system was destroyed during the war, and that the survivors occupied defenses there afterwards, awaiting the return of the Syndics. I know that there have been many, many detections of incoming Syndic attacks in that star system since then. The great majority of them were illusions. Men and women swore they saw the indications, saw the detections of the enemy arriving, but data recordings showed no such reports from sensors. The defenders, fortified amidst the ruins of all they once knew, often see the enemy coming once more. They honestly believe they see those enemies. It is not a tactic or an attempt to mislead.”
After a long moment of silence, Badaya laughed again, this time briefly and harshly. “Maybe that’s us. We need enemies, too, don’t we? To justify the continued size of this fleet?”
“We didn’t imagine the Syndic attacks on the way back from Midway!” Desjani shot back at him.
“Granted.” Badaya furrowed his brow in an almost comical display of deep thought. “But let’s imagine we’re average citizens of an average Alliance star system. They hear all about what the Syndics did, and they wonder why they should worry. That was in Syndic territory! Are the Syndics coming here to do such things? What about the enigmas and the Kicks? Immensely far away! Why the need for such a large fleet? Because the officers of that fleet see danger?”
“That’s—” Desjani waged an obvious struggle to control herself before continuing. “All right. You have a point. We need to convince those citizens that the enemies we’re worried about are real.”
“And that some dangers are real as well,” Duellos agreed. “Especially when the force assigned the task of dealing with dangers outside the borders of the Alliance, this fleet, is at about sixty percent readiness instead of the one hundred percent the data feeds claim.”
“Hopefully, fleet headquarters and the government realize that,” Geary said. “No other orders have come in since Jane Geary was sent off?”
“Not yet,” Duellos said. “But they could come soon. You may not have noticed in the rush of your arrival, but three ships departed via the hypernet gate within a few minutes after Dauntless’s return. One was an official courier ship, while the other two claimed to be civilian ships with no government ties even though both were high-speed craft and, along with the courier ship, had been loitering near the gate for weeks. A lot of people wanted to know when Black Jack got back. Now some wheels are going to start turning. But what wheels and to what purpose?”
No one had the answers to those questions.
As the others left the stateroom for Dauntless’s shuttle dock, Captain Smythe lingered, waiting until Geary had shut the hatch again before speaking.
“I need to update you on funding,” Smythe said, scratching his beard with one hand. “We’re running into some problems.”
Geary nodded, trying not to look grim. “People are catching on?”
“Catching on?” Smythe asked, surprised. “No. It’s not that. The only one with a big enough view of what we’re physically doing is Admiral Timbale, and he has made it clear to me that as long as the payment vouchers for work on our ships continue to clear, he has no interest in knowing anything about how we’re getting all of those payments authorized.”
Smythe wandered over to Geary’s table and tapped in a few commands, producing an image of serried ranks of organizational codes and program codes connected by a rat’s-nest of tangled lines and dotted lines. “This is a simplified summary of the sort of sources we’re tapping for funds.”
“Simplified? You’re joking,” Geary said, staring at the mess.
“Now, Admiral, this isn’t a bad thing. From our perspective, it’s a good thing. It’s so complex and confusing that it gives us a lot of room to work.” Smythe adopted a virtuous expression. “Within the system, of course.”
“Of course,” Geary agreed. “So what is the problem?”
“We can only tap money that’s there. If the wells start to run dry, it doesn’t matter what tricks we use to turn the spigots. We get less and less out.”
“All of these accounts and programs are running out of money?”
“They are. There’s major underfunding going on all over.” Smythe waved a finger up and down. “To the extent that we’re seeing money being bounced from place to place to hide the shortfalls.”
“Bounced? You mean they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul?”
“Oh, no, nothing that innocent.” Smythe grinned, looking piratical now instead of angelic. “They’re bouncing the money from place to place in such ways that they can double-count it as being in two or more places at once. There are little tricks that keep the money that remains moving so fast that it appears to be in multiple locations, and it gets counted as being in all of them. It looks like they have enough money to pay Peter, Paul, and Mary, but they don’t actually let the money sit still long enough for checks to clear.”
Geary sat down heavily, his eyes fixed on the mess. “I don’t believe it. How are we getting money, then?”
“Because it’s bouncing! That means it has to sit somewhere for just a very tiny moment before it jumps somewhere else. And, if you have the right software and the right green-haired talent to spot the patterns they’re using, you can time your withdrawals to hit during that very tiny moment.” Smythe frowned meditatively, looking into the distance. “Sort of like shooting skeet, I suppose. No. Like that old Whack-a-mole thing. With the help of the invaluable Lieutenant Shamrock, we are ready to hit the moles the instant they pop up, and taking a bit off the top each time.”
Something about that phrasing made Geary give Smythe a stern, inquisitive look. “Is anything else coming off the top?”
Smythe managed to express simultaneous shock, piety, and sincerity. “No, sir! Some people might be tempted in such circumstances, but those people wouldn’t be looking ahead. This can only last so long, Admiral. No matter how fast they bounce the balls, the point is going to come where the government either pays all of its bills or it defaults. If the Alliance government defaults, it would make current circumstances look downright idyllic. I think they’ll find the money somehow.
“But when the government finally pays up, it can only do so by cleaning up the mess in its accounting, which will expose what was done. That is the point, sir, at which all of those accountants doing their best to carry out their orders to bounce the money will find themselves hauled up on charges for bouncing the money, while their superiors, the men and women who gave the orders to them, express surprise and shock at the whole thing before collecting another medal and promotion.”
Geary snorted a cynical laugh and nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“I know I am, Admiral.” Smythe spread his hands. “I have no intention of being one of those made a scapegoat in this. Nor would I position anyone working for me to be snared. Everything we are doing is proper and legal. If anyone catches on, they’ll tell us to stop, not because it’s illegal but because they don’t want to spend that much money on us. But as long as they don’t say we have to stop, we can do it, and justify it all by letter of rules and regulations.”
Geary grinned. “We’re all right, then?”
“Not entirely, Admiral. As I said at the start, we can’t grab as much as we would like to. It’s not there to grab. As a result, repair work on your ships has slowed down. It can’t be helped.”