Battlespace

by Ian Douglas

  And there was something else to think about. The Nommo who’d visited Earth and possibly given birth to the ancient Sumerian civilization had been starfarers who’d crossed light-years to teach primitive humans such things as agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, metalworking, and writing. How the hell did a fish develop metal working? You needed fire, first of all, and you needed to learn that heating certain rocks yielded a hot liquid that could be poured into molds to create tools. While Garroway was prepared to accept that an undersea civilization might learn to use the heat from volcanic vents or undersea lava flows for various purposes and even develop a fairly advanced knowledge of chemistry that way, he had trouble imagining something like a terrestrial dolphin—even one with hands—learning about fire or the smelting of metals.

  Or astronomy, for that matter. Was someone who lived underwater even aware of the stars or able to dream of somehow reaching them?

  This being standing a few meters in front of him was certainly advanced technologically, judging from its armor. If its kind had built the Wheel, that was more impressive yet.

  Still moving slowly, he pointed at the being. “Nommo?” he asked.

  And the creature jumped as though prodded by a stick.

  Major Martin Warhurst

  Alpha Company, First Platoon

  Upper Tunnels, Sirius Stargate

  1504 hours, Shipboard time

  Warhurst watched as the Marines completed tying the captured Nommo, securing its arms to its sides and creating a kind of harness with the monofilament-woven tether material with four leads. A Marine held the end of each lead, so if the being woke up they could keep it immobilized between them.

  He hoped.

  He opened a private channel. “General Ramsey? Warhurst.”

  “Yes, Martin?”

  Warhurst blinked. That was, he thought, the first time Ramsey had ever called him by his first name—an indicator, perhaps, of the strain the man was under back onboard the Chapultepec. “Sir, are you getting all of this?”

  “Yes, I am. Clear feed.”

  “Do you think we should bring Franz and his people in on this? They’re the experts, and when this thing wakes up—”

  “I’m ahead of you, son. They’re already linked in.”

  “Indeed, Major,” Franz’s voice added. “You cut us off, so we went to General Dominick. He put us through to General Ramsey with the express order that we be consulted!”

  Warhurst blinked. With his full attention on the landing and the fight for the beachhead, he’d actually forgotten about the mission’s senior staff: Major General Dominick and his people. So far, this had been purely a Marine operation, as it originally had been designed.

  But with a prisoner, that would change.

  “So, are you bringing the captured Nommo back to the Chapultepec?” Franz demanded. “Or are we coming down there?”

  “One step at a time, Doctor,” Ramsey cautioned. “Our mission directives include the very clear order that you and your staff be kept safe. The Wheel beachhead is not yet secure. Until that time, you’ll have to work from the command center onboard the Pecker.”

  “Officious nonsense! I need to be there!”

  “Tell me, Doctor,” Ramsey said in an evident attempt to head him off before pique became a full-blown tantrum. “Will you be able to talk with the Nommo?”

  “Eh? Oh…that. I hope so. I suspect so. You see, I’ve downloaded both the Sumerian language and the principal An dialect, which turns out to be very closely related. Sumerian shows no linguistic relationship with other ancient languages in the Fertile Crescent, you see, and we now suspect that it was the language of the An who colonized the area nine or ten thousand years ago. If the Nommo arrived later—say, at the beginning of the Sumerian era, oh, seven to eight thousand years ago—they may well have communicated with the locals in that language, either because they already had trade relations with the An or because they were able to learn the principal human language and—”

  “Yes, yes,” Ramsey said. “The important thing is that we can question our prisoner when he revives. If he revives.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, General,” Warhurst told him. He took a step back. The Nommo had evidently just become aware of its surroundings. That magnificent, rainbow-flashing tail suddenly coiled tight, then flashed out and around, knocking two Marines down and forcing the others back a few steps. Water exploded as the creature writhed and struggled, its upper torso rising until it was a head taller than the tallest Marine there.

  “Watch it!” Dunne cried. “Damn it! Get him under control!”

  The two Marines still holding the ends of tethers securing the Nommo leaned back and pulled them taut. The two Marines who’d been knocked down waded back in, recovering the ends of their tethers and adding their strength to the others until, gradually, the creature’s struggles eased somewhat. After a few more thrashes, it slipped back into the water then and lay there, gill slits pulsing rapidly, regarding them with its unwinking and alien quartet of eyes.

  “Cassius?” Warhurst said. “Can you talk with it?”

  “I have been attempting to access the Nommo through what appears to be a communications network link accessed via the device affixed to its head,” Cassius replied. “Communication may be possible, but it will take some time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Unknown, Major. Working.”

  Warhurst glared at the being. Right now, the welfare of one of his men might well depend on how quickly the Marines could learn to speak with it.

  So too might the success of the mission.

  He did not like delays caused by factors utterly beyond his control.

  “Major?” It was Gansen.

  “What?”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Dunne suggests that we fan out through this part of the tunnel complex. We’re sitting ducks here, out in the open. He thinks we should try to find the tunnels the Nommo were coming out of and set up secure fields of fire or ambush points.”

  “And what do you think, Lieutenant?”

  “Uh, yessir. I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Do it. But maintain a secure perimeter here until we know what to do with our, ah, guest.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  He watched Gansen begin giving the necessary orders. The man had a way to go, but he appeared to be learning, seemed to be shaping up. The best thing a company commander had going for him was his willingness to listen to his senior NCOs.

  After a moment, he began giving orders of his own. He wanted Bravo Company down here and more heavy weapons and he wanted to ring in General Ramsey. The Marines were through with this passive defense nonsense.

  It was time to take the fight to the enemy.

  Major General Cornell Dominick Command Center

  CVS Ranger

  1504 hours, Shipboard time

  “And just who, General,” the woman asked sweetly, “is in command of this expedition?”

  Dominick groaned. He’d had this debate—or others like it—before, especially during the past few days since their emergence from cybehibe as they entered the Sirius system.

  Deliberately, he opened his eyes. He was lying on his link couch, set up in one corner of the Operations Center onboard the UFR/USS carrier Ranger. Colonel Helen Albo was watching him with concern in her eyes. “General? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “You groaned and looked like you were in pain. Do you want a Corpsman?”

  “Negative.” He bit off the word.

  He looked around. Except for Helen, the other four members of his command constellation were on their couches as well, linked in to the far-flung communications network uniting the ships and personnel of the expedition.

  “Sir…”

  “I said I’m okay,” he snapped. “I just have some…issues to work out.” He closed his eyes, shutting out Albo and the members of his staff, forcing himself to relax once again into the noumenon of his pri
vate command link.

  Half a dozen channels were open, each a separate data feed from Admiral Harris’s command center, from Ramsey’s CC, from the surface of the Wheel. In his mind’s eye, he was seated within a circular arena, surrounded by data screens and communications links, computer feeds and data access stations. He’d designed this noumenal place himself, with the help of some very sophisticated AI software, and it was both efficient and comfortable…at least, usually.

  Unfortunately, Cynthia Lymon, PanTerra’s representative on this mission, was still there, waiting, her icon hovering beside his chair.

  He did not like this woman.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked him. Lymon had the unpleasant ability to put a grating, cloying sweetness into her voice and mannerisms. People tended to read that as fluff…and underestimate the woman.

  Dominick was determined never to do that. “I heard. And you know the command chain as well as I do. I am in overall command of Operation Battlespace. I am directly answerable to the Interstellar Operations Initiative Team back on Earth and to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admiral Harris is in command of all fleet operations in Sirius space, while General Ramsey commands the Marine element. It is Ramsey who runs the show on the Wheel and in the space immediately around it, at least until the beachhead is formally declared secure. All tactical decisions are in his hands until that time.

  “And until that time, you and I, Ms. Lymon, are here in little more than an advisory capacity. If I’m not mistaken, you signed a document to that effect before embarking on this expedition.”

  “Cornell, be reasonable,” Lymon said. “I can read an org chart as well as you. And, yes, I did promise to be a good girl and not to stick my nose into the military’s business. But there are certain realities here that transcend military considerations. And one of them is General Order One.”

  “General Order One does not apply to the current situation.”

  “No?” she asked sweetly. “And when does it apply? After we’ve killed every Nommo over there? After we’ve reduced the Wheel to a cloud of radioactive debris? What then?”

  General Order One described, in exacting detail, what military forces operating outside of Earth’s atmosphere were expected to do in the event that they encountered either intelligent aliens or their AI representatives. It had happened with the An on Ishtar. It had happened before that with the discovery of the Singer, the intelligent Hunter spacecraft lost in the depths of the Europan world-ocean. In both cases, the outcome of first contact had been less than optimal. The An had attacked and wiped out the first human trade mission established on their world, while the Singer had turned out to be hopelessly insane after half a million years trapped beneath the Europan ice.

  The document was a part of every AI database in the MIEU and had been downloaded to every officer by order of the JCS itself. It was supposed to be the bible that would direct any first contact with any new intelligent civilization among the stars.

  And in Dominick’s opinion, the document was also seriously flawed…even though he’d had a hand in drafting the thing. It attempted to simultaneously ensure that any first contact would be peaceful, to protect Earth from the expected consequences of stumbling into the Hunters of the Dawn, and to secure for Earth—and PanTerra in particular—access to advanced alien technologies.

  “General Order One,” he told Lymon, “is a guide to establishing peaceful relations with an XT civilization. In this case, the XTs started shooting at us, remember?”

  “Article Five,” she told him primly, “specifically states that every effort will be made to establish peaceful relations, even in the event that hostilities have already broken out. Article Seven states that, at all costs, the technological infrastructure of any alien civilization—and that specifically includes cities, bases, and spacecraft—are to be preserved intact for study by competent authorities.”

  “Actually, it says ‘where feasible,’” he reminded her. “Not ‘at all costs.’ Furthermore, the military commander at the scene has the final responsibility of determining just what the word feasible means.” He didn’t add that his orders included provisions for destroying the Sirius stargate with a nuclear device, should he deem that necessary in order to keep the Hunters of the Dawn away from Earth.

  It couldn’t be any other way. Earth was ten years away by starship, seventeen years away for a two-way exchange of lasercom or radio messages. He had the final say when it came to whether Earth would study the Wheel—or destroy it.

  It was an awesome responsibility, one that he took very seriously.

  “Cornell,” she said. Damn it, he hated it when she used his first name, as though they were friends or intimates. “Just remember who’s paying for all of this and just what we have riding on this mission. FTL, instantaneous interstellar communication, gravity control, the gods alone know what else. We could have it all if we play things right.”

  “Yes, and if we screw up, Ms. Lymon,” he told her, “we could have the Hunters of the Dawn a mere eight light-years from Earth and looking for blood! I would very happily exchange my chance at some stock options for the security of my home!”

  Lymon sighed. “Why did you volunteer for this? For the command of this expedition? It’s not as though you were making a smart career move.”

  “That,” he told her angrily, “is not your business.”

  “But that’s where you’re wrong, Cornell. Everything concerned with this expedition is my business.” Her icon cocked its head to one side and smiled. “I gather your wife divorced you.”

  Damn the woman! Cornell Dominick had been a member of one of the older and more well-connected of Washington’s line marriages—the Cabot Line, eighteen men and fifteen women, at last count, and all of them well-connected politically, financially, and socially. They’d voted him out a year before Operation Battlespace had been conceived, largely because he’d become a political liability to the family. It seemed the Cabot family favored United Federalism and Mexican Annexation, while he, personally, had been leaning toward the Free Social Isolationists—which meant hands off Mexico and tariff restrictions on the global corps…like PanTerra. When his views had become known in a Triple-N interview, he’d become an embarrassment to the family and been eased out. The separation package had been generous, but the embarrassment, the public humiliation, had been unbearable….

  “So?” he snapped. “That’s not your business either.”

  “General Dominick,” she said. “You quite literally stand at the crossroads of history. If you successfully negotiate a workable peace with the Nommo, one which gives PanTerra access to the technologies we know to be implicit within this stargate, you will return to Earth richer and more powerful than you could possibly imagine. The shame of your divorce would be expunged. You will be able to write your own ticket with the Cabots and every other old-money family you can think of. You will have the money, the name, and the connections to pursue whatever political or social goals you might have for yourself.

  “If, God forbid, this mission fails—if, in particular, you end up destroying this asset—you will be remembered as the Social Isolationist who panicked and cut Earth off from the stars.”

  “Or I might be remembered as the man who saved Earth,” he pointed out. “Have you thought of that? Humankind can’t stand up to the Hunters of the Dawn.”

  “If they even exist.”

  “Maybe they don’t. But someone destroyed the Wings of Isis, remember. They were hostile and they wielded unimaginable power. I will destroy the stargate if I believe that to be the only way to ensure Earth’s safety. I would be Earth’s savior.”

  “Not after PanTerra’s publicity department is done with you,” she told him.

  “Damn you and your threats—”

  “Now, now, Cornell. I’m not making threats. I’m just reminding you where the power really lies. On Earth, it’s the global corps, of course, but out here it lies with us. You and me, working together. On our shoulders rests the
future of Humankind! I simply want to be sure you’re keeping that in mind.”

  “Believe me,” he told her. “I think of very little else.”

  With deliberate rudeness, he broke off the noumenal link and returned to the real-world environment of his control deck.

  In any case, events weren’t in his hands at the moment—or even in hers. They lay in the armored hands of the men and women of the Marines onboard the Wheel.

  CPL John Garroway

  Sirius Stargate,

  Lower Tunnels

  1504 hours, Shipboard time

  “Nommo?” Garroway asked again, pointing.

  The being in front of him touched its chest with one hand. “N’mah!” it replied, the voice a deep rumble crisp with static.

  Nommo, N’mah. Close enough. And there was something about the alien’s language that was…not familiar, exactly, but it was as if he’d heard the language—or one much like it, before. The cadence, the sharply distinguished syllables, sounded much like the language of the An.

  Garroway wasn’t much of a linguist. On Ishtar the Marines had been linked through their implants to a language database that let them translate what the An were saying, and to make themselves understood, and the word was that the Marines had access to the same database here, just in case the Wheel’s inhabitants spoke either An or ancient Sumerian, which was supposed to be related.

  As he understood it, though, the word nommo was supposed to be from the Dogon language, the speech of the primitive tribes people in sub-Saharan Africa who’d retained the myth of the Nommo’s arrival in their stories and lore. According to Franz’s information, it was supposed to mean something like “guardian” or “monitor.”

  Or…had the star-beings who’d landed somewhere in the Fertile Crescent called themselves “N’mah,” and the humans later assigned the meaning to the name?

  Without his database link, Garroway couldn’t try speaking to the creature in the Sumerian-An pidgin developed on Ishtar. But he did remember a few words. Ki was one, the Sumerian word for “Earth.” He remembered that one because he’d been told that the word geos, as in “geology,” had been derived from the Greek ge, pronounced with a hard g, and that that had derived originally from the Sumerian ki.