by Ian Douglas
Damn it, what was the Sumerian–Ahannu word for “human”?
Adamu, that was it. Just like Adam, the mythical first man in Genesis. The word, he’d been told, was actually a kind of Sumerian slang, a name meaning “blackhead.” The hairless Ahannu had evidently named their human slaves for their most distinguishing characteristic, at least in their alien eyes—the dark thatch of hair sprouting from the tops of their heads. Only much later did a play on words connect the name “Adam” with the Hebrew adhamah, the word for “ground,” and the belief that the God of Genesis had fashioned the first man from dust or dirt.
Touching his own chest, he said “Adamu.” And, to drive home the point, he added, “Ki. Adamu. Ki.”
He wished he could remember more or that he had an electronic connection with the linguistic database. He could remember fragments. There was a Sumerian word, something like lu-u or lu-lu, that was also supposed to mean “human,” but he didn’t want to try using that. It literally meant something like “worker” or “slave” and derived from the long period of time when the colonizing An had used the local human population as slaves.
Telling the being before him that he was a slave was not, Garroway thought, the best way to impress him.
Damn it, how did you impress someone who didn’t speak your language or share any part of your cultural background?
“N’mah,” the being rumbled once again, indicating itself. It then pointed at Garroway. “Ki-a-d’hammu. Sugah ni-gal-lu.”
Well, that was a start, of sorts. Garroway remembered another phrase…the name bestowed upon the Marines on Ishtar after the fighting there was over. He touched his chest. “Nir-gál-mè-a,” he said, hoping he had the pronunciation right. According to what he’d heard, the phrase meant the same both in the An dialect and in ancient Sumerian—“respected in battle.” No harm in negotiating from a position of strength….
But suddenly the being was no longer alone. Other armored forms, three of them, emerged from the shadows, holding weapons, all of them aimed directly at Garroway.
“Was it something I said?” he asked…and released his weapons mount lock, letting the PG-90 drop back to the horizontal.
It looked to him like a Mexican standoff. How many could he get, he wondered, before they flamed him?
“Dagah ni-mir-gala!” the first Nommo said, and then it rumbled something halfway between a gargle and a choke. The three newcomers stopped their advance, weapons wavering uncertainly, and they began gargling as well.
It took Garroway a moment to realize they were speaking a language very different in intonation and character from the Sumerian-sounding speech. This one sounded like it didn’t rely on words at all; if there were words in that mess, Garroway couldn’t recognize them as such.
At least no one was aiming a weapon at him for the moment. He chanced a look around, wondering if he could slip away. The argument was growing heated.
Not that way. One of the big aquatic beings was in the deeper water at his back, unmoving, its dark eyes glittering in the light from Garroway’s armor. It appeared to simply be…watching.
Abruptly, the gargling ceased. The first Nommo turned to face Garroway, holding out its left hand. “Gah nam-edah!” it said and Garroway heard the sharpness in its voice. Anger? Impatience? How could you tell? The sharp waggling gesture with its six fingers, however, was unmistakable. It was telling him to come along and quickly.
Garroway hesitated. Was it ordering him to surrender? Or was something else going on? Once again, the aliens didn’t need to ask. They could have burned him down where he stood or overpowered him easily enough. Hell, they could have shot him from the shadows before he’d even known they were there.
The being reached up with both hands and touched some sort of pressure plate or button at the base of its helmet. With a sharp hiss and a small cloud of vapor, the large helmet split longitudinally, separating from the rest of the armor. The Nommo lifted the helmet off of its shoulders, exposing its naked head.
The face, Garroway saw, was much like the long, double-decker face of the aquatic beings. It didn’t have the fist-sized goggle-eyes of a fish on top, however. Instead, all four eyes were small, deep-set, and jet black. Clearly, these guys were closely related to the aquatic beings who’d grabbed him in the first place, but whether the resemblance was that of an adult to a juvenile…or of a chimpanzee to a human, he simply couldn’t tell.
“Gah nam-edah!” it said again.
“Okay,” Garroway said. It was a nasty choice. He could refuse to be taken prisoner and open fire. If that happened, he would almost certainly be killed…or knocked down and captured anyway. Or he could trust these weird and alien beings—the one that had removed its helmet, anyway—and go along.
Very slowly, careful to make no sudden moves, he reached down and unlocked the mounting for his PG-90, keeping the muzzle pointed away from the Nommo. With a click, the weapon disengaged. He lowered it to the black metal at his feet, stood up straight, and raised his hands, palms out, fingers spread…just as he’d seen the first Nommo do.
“I’m all yours,” he said. Marines, he thought, never surrender.
But sometimes it paid to stay flexible.
20
2 APRIL 2170
Corporal Kat Vinton
Alpha Company, First Platoon
Upper Tunnels, Sirius Stargate
1523 hours, Shipboard time
Kat was completely familiar with the idea of a chain of command. Corporals did not go straight to battalion commanders with crazy ideas, nor did they inform them what they had to do.
In fact, she wasn’t thinking of chains of command at the moment. Major Warhurst was there, the man she’d served under at Ishtar, a Marine officer whom she respected completely, and whose orders she would willingly follow no matter where they led. Semper fi.
“Major Warhurst! Sir!”
“What is it, Corporal?”
A century or two before, Kat wouldn’t even have been able to get close to the battalion CO, nor would she have had access to his command communications channel. But the MIEU was wired top to bottom and back to the top again for complete communications interface at all levels.
And better yet, Major Warhurst was approachable. It wasn’t something to abuse, but it was there when you needed it. And, damn it, she needed it.
“Sir, if there’s a chance we can get Gare back by turning the alien loose, well, I say we should do it, sir!”
“Corporal!” Gansen snapped. “You’re out of line!”
“It’s okay, Lieutenant,” Warhurst said. “I was thinking pretty much the same thing myself.”
“They want a prisoner pretty bad back in the fleet, sir.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
The alien appeared alert and unharmed. It waited quietly in the water, gill slits pulsing with its breathing, its strange eyes, unblinking, watching every move the Marines around it made. Four Marines held it in place with tethers pulled taut and two more stood close by, their LR-2120s trained on it.
“Gunny?” Warhurst asked. “What do you think?”
“Can’t say, Major. Hell, chances are, we let it go and it goes back and tells its friends what patsies the Marines are. Still, we seem to be in this thing deeper than we expected. If there’s a chance to stop hostilities and talk to these…people, then we ought to take it. Sir.”
Kat heard Warhurst’s sigh over the channel. “I agree. Unfortunately, this is one that has to be bucked up the ladder. Wait one, everybody.”
She found herself holding her breath as he took up the question with his superiors.
General T. J. Ramsey
Command Control Center
UFR/USS Chapultepec
1525 hours, Shipboard time
“No fucking way, General Ramsey! Absolutely not!”
“Watch your noumenal language, General,” Ramsey told Dominick pleasantly. “There are ladies present.”
“What’s wrong with his language?” Dr. Fran
z asked.
Despite her anger, Lymon laughed, a harsh splash of emotion. “Obscenity, Doctor. The freaming Marines are old-fashioned that way. Zakking milslabs.”
Ramsey considered this statement with a part of his mind. Until now, the civilians with the MIEU had shown little evidence of the linguistic and cultural rifts that had been developing over the years between time-lagged Marines and the rest of Humankind. In her anger, however, Cynthia Lymon appeared to be reverting to type, and a distinctly hostile them-against-us mind-set. Fascinating…
But not germane. “General, this may be a God-given opportunity to establish peaceful relations with the Nommo. I agree with Major Warhurst’s assessment. We should let the prisoner go and see what happens.”
The statement elicited another barrage of protest and Ramsey sighed. His skull was feeling very crowded just now. The conference was being held noumenally, of course, and it included all four of the civilian advisors, General Dominick and his staff, Admiral Harris and his staff, as well as Ramsey’s own command constellation. Damn it, it hurt when everyone shouted at once.
Cassius was providing the visual feed. In his mind’s eye, they were seated at a large circular conference table, surrounded by star-dusted space. The Wheel, seen from an oblique aspect, hung overhead. Ramsey wondered if that was a deliberate bit of very human psychology on the part of Cassius. The enormity, the sheer mass of that huge and alien device suspended in space just above them seemed calculated to focus the discussion, a Damoclean sword twenty kilometers across.
“People, people, please!” Admiral Harris put in. “This is getting us nowhere! General Ramsey, I have to agree with General Dominick. So long as we keep him in the tunnels, the prisoner is not secure. We could lose him if the Nommo attack again.”
Ramsey thought about the old joke about the differences in how the various military arms defined the word secure and suppressed a smile.
“Must I remind you, General,” Dominick asked Ramsey evenly, “that this is a military operation and that gathering intelligence, through POWs and other means, is absolutely vital in that regard?”
“No, General. You needn’t remind me. I’m very much aware of the fact. I’m also aware that our intelligence on this operation so far has been zip—hell, it’s been in the negative numbers. We came out here with seven ships and twelve hundred Marines. We were told that there might be a crew resident on this thing, but that the Marines were primarily along to secure this facility…as if it were nothing more than a large spacecraft or orbital base!
“We get here and find the place apparently inhabited—and quite well defended. From the data feeds I’ve seen so far, there’s a world inside that thing, though, admittedly, we haven’t seen much of it yet except for the sewers.”
“General Ramsey!” Dominick said, trying to regain control of the discussion. “Possible failures of intelligence here are not the point! And I am most disappointed in your attempt to shift the blame for your military setback to poor intelligence. We have before us now the chance to rectify any gaps in the overall intel picture…a prisoner to interrogate. I suggest that we take advantage of the opportunity that’s been given to us.”
Ramsey bit down on what he’d been about to say. He was angry, but venting at these people would accomplish nothing. He took a deep breath. “And I suggest, General, that a reality check is in order here. Twelve hundred Marines is not sufficient to conquer a world. They’re not sufficient to conquer a city when absolutely nothing is known about that city’s layout, population, or technological resources!”
“It’s not a world, General,” Lymon put in. “Or a city. It’s a large structure, yes, but calling it a city is a freaming exaggeration…and a diversion from your failure to take the thing as ordered.”
“I repeat, General,” Dominick said. “We can fill in the gaps in our intelligence picture simply by interrogating our prisoner.”
“Dr. Franz?” Ramsey said. “You’re on record as saying that you can learn to talk to these people. But how likely is that if we have to learn how from one POW…and one who may not feel like cooperating.”
“Well, that’s hard to say—”
“Cassius!”
“Yes, General?” The AI’s evenly modulated voice seemed to come out of the air above the virtual conference table.
“Have you made any progress interfacing with the prisoner’s communications hardware?”
“No, General. Not beyond purely superficial scans of the hardware in question. The prisoner is wearing a sophisticated communications device of some kind and there is evidence that it may have implanted technology within its brain as well, technology similar in concept, at least, to that used by humans. But any such resemblance is purely superficial. I cannot interface with alien software and will not be able to do so, not, at least, within a reasonable amount of time.”
“And there you have it, gentlemen and ladies,” Ramsey told the human members of the group. “We can attempt to interrogate our prisoner, an alien with whom we have no shared language or technology. In the meantime, we attempt to maintain our toehold on the Wheel, against unknown numbers and unknown technical potential. We have already suffered over fifty casualties, most of those KIA, and we’ve been on the beach for just three and a half hours. How much higher is the butcher’s bill supposed to get before we realize we’ve made a terrible mistake, here?”
“General—” Admiral Harris began.
“Or we can take advantage of this opportunity and make a kind of spontaneous, free-will offering, to see if we can enlist the Nommos’ cooperation.”
“Now I’ve heard everything,” Lymon said. “A Marine who doesn’t want to fight.”
“That’s not the point and you know it, Ms. Lymon. The point isn’t to fight, but to gain access to the Wheel. And if the Marines have to fight, we’re going to do it intelligently!”
“General, I appreciate your position,” Dominick said. “Completely. But this is a matter for consultation with the appropriate civilian government authorities, not a decision that can be made by the military alone.”
“Civilian government authorities?” Ramsey asked. “What civilian government authorities? Earth is eight light-years away!”
“Which, I remind you, is why we are here as representatives of that authority, General,” Lymon said. He could hear the acid in her noumenal voice. “The military carries out policy. The civilian authority sets it. That is the way things have to be.”
“Agreed. For policy. But the government does not tell the Marines how to carry out a landing. They set policy, not strategy and not tactics.”
“General, be reasonable,” Lymon said. “That prisoner represents undreamed-of advances in technology for Earth.”
A side window opened in Ramsey’s mind. It startled him, for he’d not ordered it. It was, he saw, a private channel linking him with Lymon. “We need that prisoner, General Ramsey!” her voice said. “You could find cooperation extremely profitable for yourself. We’re talking about, quite literally, billions of newdollars, if you play this right—”
“Get the fuck out of my head, lady!” He slammed the noumenal window shut. Damn it, how had she been able to hijack his implant protocols that way?
“I don’t want to make this an order, General Ramsey,” Dominick was saying on the main conference channel. He’d not heard the brief exchange with Lymon. “But I am in overall command of this expedition, which means it’s my responsibility to determine overall strategy. You will order your men to pull back out of the tunnel, and have them bring the prisoner with them.”
There it was…an order. If he refused, he was guilty of mutiny. He could be relieved, arrested, and court-martialed. Dominick, likely, would take over direct command of the Marines.
Ramsey, however, knew he had one thing going for him. In combat, nothing is static, and the situation is constantly changing. What he needed here was time. Enough time, and the situation would resolve itself, one way or another.
“Very we
ll, General,” he said. “I will give the necessary orders. But I do so under strong protest.”
“Your protest is noted, General.”
“The units currently in the tunnels are still engaged with the enemy,” he added. Technically, that was quite true, even though the last Nommo attack appeared to have broken off. “They will need time to regroup and fall back to the entryway.”
“He’s stalling!” Lymon snapped.
“No, ma’am,” Colonel Maitland, the Battalion Executive Officer, said. “General Ramsey is quite right. Withdrawing in the face of the enemy is one of the trickiest military maneuvers there is, and by far the most dangerous.”
Ramsey relaxed slightly. Howard Maitland was a quiet man who rarely spoke, but when he did he always seemed to know exactly the right words to say.
“We will do this by the book,” Ramsey added. “I will not lose more men and women needlessly out there.”
This, he thought, is not over….
Major Martin Warhurst
Alpha Company, First Platoon
Upper Tunnels, Sirius Stargate
1532 hours, Shipboard time
Evacuate the prisoner back to the fleet…and fall back to the entrance to the tunnels—taking all appropriate precautions to preserve the unit’s security—and prepare to evacuate to the surface. Warhurst had his orders, but he didn’t like them. He still had one man missing, and he’d already deployed some twenty Marines forward, probing the tunnels from which that last attack had been launched.
“Damn it to hell,” he snapped.
It was the micromanagement that grated more than anything else. He didn’t blame Ramsey; the general knew the score, and was doing the best for the Marines he could. But Warhurst had the feeling that Dominick and the civilians were calling the shots now.
And that spelled trouble, big time.