Janella looked up. “Ever the optimist.”

“It could be worse.”

The Countess raised an eyebrow. “Yes? How?”

My mouth gaped, but no words emerged. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t answer her question, but that I had too many answers that would suffice.

Knights’ Hall, Santa Fe

North America, Terra

Prefecture X, Republic of the Sphere

7 January 3133

Over the next month things settled into a pattern, though not quite a routine—with a break for the holidays that made the workload bearable. We sifted through reports, which were digests of news reports coming in from everywhere. When an item seemed interesting or important, we’d call up the actual story and all relevant facts surrounding it. We’d pore over that material and prepare our own digests of it all.

Now, with the grid down, the assumption would be that the amount of data we had to go through would be limited. This was true on one level, since it was a fraction of what would have been available to us were the grid working. The problem was that when the grid was working, we would get reports from Republic personnel on the ground, who would already be able to sort fact from fiction, and provide background and nuance to what news there was.

Those reports were not getting through in a timely or reliable basis—for all intents and purposes they did not exist. Instead, what we got was a wealth of material that was similar to the tailings from a mine: there might be some valuable trace elements in there, but getting them out was tough, expensive and time-consuming.

JumpShips were moving information between worlds on a spotty and indirect basis. While they sat at a recharge point, they’d also pull wideband scans of all communications media from the system—they sucked in Tri-Vid channels the way some folks gorge on spaghetti. They pulled in everything, duplicated it, traded it with other ships and distributed it. In a week-long recharging stay they’d pick up an average of 20,000 channel hours per world, so by the time ships got to Terra, they’d be dumping off hundreds of man-years of things to be reviewed. While computers could scan the data and screen for keywords, developing the lexicon took time, and when something significant showed up in one report, new keywords would be added, so more scanning would have to be done.

In some ways a hunt like that was exhilarating. It felt to me as if I was out on some savanna somewhere, crouched down, staring at the tracks of jackals, seeking beneath their steps for the spoor of lions. There were times I was certain I’d seen it, too, and would follow that trail until I had to admit I had nothing. Then I’d go back over the jackal tracks and prepare a report on what was happening there.

All too often those reports amounted to a big fat zero as well.

The core problem was, of course, that we had no way of verifying the information we were looking at. In the most simple terms, how could we evaluate Tri-Vid news reports coming out of Helen that were based on media releases by Commander Reis? Even if the facts were accurate, even if we eliminated all the guesses, the spin put on the facts would lead us to one conclusion or another.

And trying to evaluate the things that weren’t said made it just that much tougher. Were we not getting tales of abuses of citizens’ rights from Helen because Reis had repressed those reports, were there simply no abuses or were we not getting reports because no one had been scanning that week? Were polling numbers that we were seeing accurate, or had they been manufactured to cloak a multitude of sins?

Victor’s sister Katrina had used the manipulation of such data to steal the Federated Suns away from him while he was off fighting the Clans. Victor had left his realm in the hands of his youngest sister, Yvonne. Katrina started changing polling numbers and reports such that, by the time reports arrived on New Avalon, Yvonne believed the people thought she was the incarnation of Satan. She asked Katrina for help, then abdicated in her favor, leaving Victor homeless when he returned in glory from quelling the greatest threat mankind had ever known.

Though we found no lions, jackals did abound in a variety of guises. There were some, like Bannson and Tormark, who were clearly making strong moves, but they were equally subtle. They skirted the edge of treason. We could project countless cases where efforts may have strayed over that line, but we also assumed that the big jackals were smart enough to insulate themselves from true trouble. Mr. Handy had been a layer of protection for whoever was directing the GGF efforts, and someone like Bannson had to have multiple such cutouts.

Other jackals were bolder and more direct. Some were from noble families whose patriarchs had ceded power to The Republic, and the children resented their reduction in status. To be kind to some, they saw the ebbing of The Republic’s influence as a call to again shoulder the responsibility their families had long borne. Others saw The Republic as an aberration that extorted their rightful power from them, and they meant to take it back. They brought local militia troops under their direct control and declared martial law. By hinting at enemies without and within, they were able to rally majorities behind them.

This spawned countermovements, of course, of self-described Republicans, or others harkening back to ethnic and nationalistic ties. Someone of Kurita descent on a majority Davion-populated world could easily gather Combine families to them. By defining themselves as Combine loyalists they could also appeal to Tormark for support, or even go to forces inside the Draconis Combine itself. That wasn’t happening with Combine loyalists alone. All of the nations had their claimants.

We did get reports of open combat, but in some ways I found those reassuring. They were little skirmishes that defined boundaries. They clearly were the precursors of other fights to come, but they bled off pressure and let things quiet down for a bit, even though the desire for revenge would grow and spawn new rounds of combat.

I knew it was time for me to walk away from analysis when I was worrying more about places that only reported peace than places where shots had been fired. Those peaceful worlds defied the madness breaking out around them. While I could have hoped that sanity prevailed somewhere in the Inner Sphere, I saw darker forces at work. Could it be that those worlds have been completely pacified by the lions? If our only window into them was through news reports flowing out, and those reports only told of sweetness and light, how would we know? The lions could be hiding in plain sight, waiting until we had mauled ourselves, before emerging from their peaceful dens.

Worst of all was the fact that even the best sorting, sifting and analysis could not change the fact that all the data was old. The Republic could not function with ancient news. If a reply to a request for help took two months to come back, it was far too long, and the crisis that spawned the request could have easily consumed the world from which it originated during the lag.

And, of course, tomorrow could bring in missing data from a world that would force reevaluation of everything, plunking us back at square one. We’d start over, but always had to be mindful of the fact that we remained in the dark about most of The Republic and even larger chunks of the Inner Sphere beyond our borders. Once I was operating in that mode, that had me swapping black for white on a regular basis, I’d find something else to do for a while. Running down to White Sands and working more with Ghost had a lot of appeal. Watching things blow up is cathartic. I could easily imagine that all the enemy ’Mechs were lions and pride-busting left me exhausted and smiling. My scores shot up significantly when one of the techs dressed the enemy ’Mechs in tawny and brown, with little lion-rampant devices on their chests.