Dreadnaught tlfbtf-1

by Jack Campbell

  “We were just getting to that, Doctor.”

  “The towns the Syndics placed on the second planet are completely gone. There’s no trace that the places they occupied ever had anything built there. The enigma race must have gone to great effort to erase any trace of previous human presence.”

  That was interesting as well as disturbing. Maybe having these experts along would turn out to be a useful thing.

  “Have you examined the images of the alien towns on the visible portions of the planet?” Setin asked. “The images are very blurry, but the towns are not very large given how many years the enigma race has controlled this star system.”

  “Why are the images so blurry?” Geary asked the bridge watch-standers.

  “It doesn’t seem to be normal atmospherics,” the sensor watch answered. “We’re trying to get clearer images, but it’s as if there’s something fogging the imagery.”

  “We’re sure the systems are clear of worms?” Desjani asked.

  “Yes, Captain. This looks like something on the planet itself, maybe something positioned over those towns that lets through light but blocks details for anyone looking down at them.”

  Geary passed that on to Dr. Setin, who excitedly broke the contact to confer with his colleagues, then Geary called Intelligence. “Lieutenant Iger, what do the comms in this star system look like? Any good video transmissions we can exploit?”

  Iger appeared baffled. “There’s no video at all, Admiral. It’s all text, and that’s encoded.”

  Desjani blew out an exasperated breath. “No wonder the Syndics called these things the enigma race. They give paranoia a bad name.”

  “We can’t judge them by our standards,” Charban cautioned.

  “I’m aware of that,” Geary said. “But Captain Desjani has a point. These aren’t countermeasures put into place after our arrival. The light from that planet is five hours old. The messages we’re picking up are at least that old as well. These seem to be normal, routine behaviors for this species. Lieutenant Iger, I want you to look for anything that might indicate humans are still somewhere in this star system.”

  “We haven’t seen anything that indicates that yet, Admiral.”

  Dr. Setin was back. “Very focused on privacy. Remarkable. Have you observed what can be seen of the towns? They are right on the coastline. As hard as it is to make out details, they seem to build right to the water’s edge. What’s that?” Setin seemed to be listening to someone. “Yes. Admiral, it looks like they may build into the water. What we’re seeing continuing into the water might be piers, but it almost looks like the same construction simply continues from dry land right into the water, and those images going into water become even harder to make out before becoming impossible to interpret, which would be consistent with them continuing into deeper water.”

  “What would that mean, Doctor?”

  “Well, one obvious possibility is that the enigma race is amphibious. Clearly, they value being close to water and may need that proximity to water. We heard an alien ship was encountered at the jump exit, Admiral. Will we be able to examine it and meet with its crew?”

  Geary shook his head. “I’m afraid that ship self-destructed.”

  “Oh. Did it evidence antagonistic or disputatious behaviors?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Did it . . . attack . . . us?”

  “Yes, Doctor. It opened fire the moment it saw us.”

  The system techs played with the sensors, trying to get clearer images but having no success. Geary waited with a growing sense of impatience, watching the alien spacecraft reacting to the arrival of the fleet but unable to move his own ships away from the jump point without risking total destruction from the hypernet gate. “Captain?” the combat systems watch said after four futile hours, her voice thoughtful. “I’ve noticed something in the actions of the aliens. I may be wrong, but—”

  “If you’ve noticed anything, I’d like to hear it,” Desjani said.

  “Yes, ma’am. The thing is, if you look at the reactions of the alien ships, the probable freighters are reacting as the light of our arrival reaches them; but then this alien warship one and a half light hours distant also didn’t react until they could see us. And a few minutes ago, we got light back from this second alien warship, about forty-five light minutes from the first warship, which showed it reacting only a few minutes after the first alien warship would have seen light from our arrival.”

  Desjani nodded, studying her own display. “That’s consistent with our belief that they have a faster-than-light communications capability, but it looks like they don’t have any faster-than-light sensors, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, Captain. That first warship needed to see our light get to him before he knew we were here. But it tells us something else,” the lieutenant added, “that their merchant ships don’t have the FTL comms. It wasn’t until one warship saw us that the other warship reacted.”

  “That’s important to know. Excellent job, Lieutenant Castries.”

  Rione and Charban sent out messages, drafted much earlier, regretting past warfare, expressing interest in real dialogue, and offering to negotiate terms for peaceful coexistence.

  Five hours after the fleet’s arrival, a message arrived from the aliens, one definitely sent before the aliens heard the communications from the fleet. Geary saw the same sort of human avatars the aliens had used at Midway, false fronts that concealed the true appearance of the enigmas.

  A “human” sat in the command seat of a virtual ship’s bridge cobbled together digitally from Syndic transmissions. He frowned and made a gesture that was probably meant to be threatening but was subtly wrong to the real humans watching the message. “Go. Go now. Stay, and you will die. This star is ours. Not yours. Go or you will die. This star is ours. Go or die.”

  “Not much room for negotiation,” Desjani commented.

  “No,” Geary agreed. “Route that message to the civilian experts for their input and make sure our emissaries see it.” His eyes came to rest on the depiction of alien warships on his display. All of the enigma warships in this star system were headed toward the Alliance fleet, but the closest ones had veered off to hold positions a light hour distant. They either weren’t planning a hopelessly outnumbered attack on the Alliance fleet or were waiting for every one of their own warships in this star system to join up before launching a still-futile attack.

  “Admiral?”

  He blinked, focusing on Desjani and realizing that he’d been lost in thought. “Sorry.”

  “You’re all right?” Desjani asked. “You were out of comms for quite a while.”

  “I was just thinking,” Geary assured her.

  “Again?”

  “Yes, Captain Desjani.” He nodded toward his display. “I was thinking about the fact that the aliens have superior maneuvering capability; but their weapons, the weapons we’ve seen in use, that is, are no better than ours and may be a little inferior. It’s an odd discrepancy.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Desjani said. “Imagine that you’re armed with a knife. Not a great knife, but it does the job. And you’re invisible, so even though your knife isn’t all that great, you have no trouble at all walking up to people and stabbing them before they even know you’re there.” She spread her hands with a questioning look. “Why worry about getting a new knife?”

  “Because their real weapons were the worms, which allowed the aliens to be invisible on human sensors.”

  “Those and that damned hypernet gate. How do we deal with that?”

  “I’m still thinking.” Geary looked at his display once more. “Have we confirmed the Syndic information as to where the jump points are in this star system?”

  “Just about.” She pointed. “One of the other ones is pretty close.”

  Pretty close. But was it close enough?

  THE fleet had continued to loiter near the jump point, close enough to it to jump out of this star system if they saw the hypernet
gate beginning to collapse. But they couldn’t do that indefinitely, especially when it gave them no means of learning more about the aliens.

  The fleet conference room had an air of uncertainty filling it. Fighting the Syndics, even with a peace treaty in force, was a fairly straightforward thing. Dealing with the enigma race seemed to produce an unending supply of questions and dilemmas.

  “Uncrewed probes sent toward the planets to find out more and get better imagery would be easily intercepted and destroyed by the alien warships,” Badaya grumbled. The images of the other fleet commanders at the conference table nodded in agreement.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any way to learn more here without being incredibly reckless and foolish,” Duellos said. “That hypernet gate pins us near this jump point.”

  “Do we just leave?” Armus asked. “Why waste time just drifting here? Go back to Pele, find another way into alien space.”

  “That would be a long way around,” Geary said. “And might just end up with us stuck the same way at Hua. There’s another option,” he continued, pointing to the display above the table, which currently showed the Hina Star System. “We’ve had time to confirm the Syndic data that there are four jump points in this star system. The one we’re already at, and these two way over on the other side of the star system, and this one.” He highlighted it.

  “Close,” Tulev said. “Close enough to reach?”

  “The alien hypernet gate is eleven light hours from us. The closest alien warships are one light hour away. Even if the aliens can instantaneously send messages and react, that gives us twelve hours.”

  “That jump point is two point four light hours distant,” Badaya observed. “We’ll have to accelerate, but if we sprint up past point two light speed to the best velocity the auxiliaries could manage in that time, we could make it in almost twelve hours. There’d still be, hmm . . .” He ran some numbers. “Even if all ships attain optimal acceleration, there’d be a twenty-minute window in which we could be caught by the explosion of the hypernet gate.”

  “Twenty minutes?” Captain Parr asked. “If we got caught in that blast, we’d be destroyed for certain. It’s a hell of a gamble. What are we waiting for?”

  Geary smiled as the other officers signaled agreement with Parr’s sentiments. The thought of what would happen if the fleet was caught by the explosion of the hypernet gate chilled him, but he hadn’t expected to have much trouble getting them to agree to even a venture as dangerous as this would be. Rione, sitting silently, gave him a knowing look. She knew as well as he how this fleet thought. “Before we go,” Geary added, “our group of experts on nonhuman intelligent species”—he hoped he hadn’t sounded sarcastic—“has been analyzing what we’ve seen here so far and adding it to what was known before about the enigma race. They’d like to present a theory to us.”

  A sort of sigh ran around the table, as if a group of college students had just been told they would have to listen to a boring lecture. “Let’s get it over with,” someone mumbled.

  Geary keyed in the commands that brought several of the civilian experts suddenly to the table, all of them appearing in a small group. Dr. Setin stood up, his expression eager. “We can’t thank you all enough for this opportunity. It’s very dangerous to speculate too much on too little information, but my colleague Dr. Shwartz has come up with an interesting perspective that we think you’ll find very intriguing.”

  Shwartz stood up as Setin sat down. She peered around the table, brushing a wisp of her short, dark hair aside, then she unexpectedly smiled. “Forgive me. Like my coworkers in this field, I’m not used to anyone paying much attention to our theories. This is a very unusual experience.”

  She pointed to the representation of the star Hina, which floated over the table. “I believe that the enigma race differs from humanity in a very significant way. I don’t have to explain to military officers such as yourselves that humans base much of our interactions on open displays of power and aggression. This is built into us, from the way our species evolved and the experiences of our earliest ancestors. When confronting a foe, we try to bulk up our own appearance of threat, standing taller, spreading our shoulders and arms, much like a feline arching its back and erecting its fur to create a larger silhouette. What we build also reflects this way of thinking. Our battleships look deadly. They are designed not just to be mighty machines of war but also to project an image of threat and power.”

  Shwartz paused. “But the enigma race seems to follow a completely opposite manner of dealing with threats. It’s a method not unknown to humans but also not instinctual for us. I propose that the enigmas instinctively project menace to their foes not by blatant, open displays of size and strength but by hiding their presence and their power.”

  “How can someone be impressed, or deterred, or otherwise influenced,” Badaya asked, “by something hidden from them?”

  “Imagine yourself in a dark room,” Dr. Shwartz replied. “Totally dark. Is there something in there with you? What is it? Is it dangerous? Is it dangerous enough to kill you? Do you want to fight it? Or flee? And if you wish to fight, how do you fight the unknown?”

  The fleet officers were listening intently by then, and Desjani nodded. “Your theory matches everything we know about the aliens. They place a premium on hiding. The worms the aliens hid in human operating systems helped keep the aliens hidden from our sensors and let the aliens know where we were; but the worms in the hypernet gates also made them usable as surprise weapons.”

  “Yes,” Shwartz said. “This method of attack is not unknown to us. Humans use ambushes, striking without warning while our foe’s back is turned, but we regard them as unfair and improper. Fighting, our instincts tell us, should involve two combatants standing up to each other, in the open, a ‘fair fight’ as we call it.”

  “Snakes,” Captain Vitali remarked. “Are you saying the enigmas are like snakes?”

  “In some ways, perhaps.”

  “But do snakes fight other snakes by hiding and striking?” Badaya asked. “Do snakes fight other snakes at all? Here’s my main concern with your idea, Doctor. Using the unknown to impress and disconcert a foe requires a foe who is capable of grasping that an unknown threat could exist. It wouldn’t work against something that’s oblivious. It requires an opponent who’s aware.”

  “Why is that a problem?” Duellos asked.

  “Because the suggestion is that these aliens evolved to fight that way. Who was the enemy that led them to that strategy? What kind of opponents did they face who could be successfully unnerved and countered by a phantom enemy?”

  Dr. Shwartz frowned, but slowly nodded. “That is a valid question. Many predators can be spooked by the right kinds of threats. Perhaps the enemy was themselves, with vicious fighting among separate groups from the beginning.”

  “But there don’t appear to be very many of them,” another of the experts said. “After so much time in this star system, their settlements are still fairly small by human standards. That argues for a lower birthrate, a population that expands slower than a comparable human one would. And lower birthrates, smaller populations, should mean less conflict over resources, land, and everything else.”

  Jane Geary had been studying something, and looked up, saying a single word. “Neanderthals.”

  “What?” Badaya asked.

  “Neanderthals. An evolutionary dead end, one of the prehuman species on Old Earth. They became extinct long before recorded human history began.”

  “I’m familiar with what’s known of the Neanderthals,” Dr. Setin said. “How do they factor into this discussion?”

  “We know that as early humans moved into the same areas, the Neanderthals dwindled and eventually disappeared. Extinct,” Jane Geary explained. “What if the Neanderthals had survived into recorded human history? What if they’d been more numerous, more powerful, able to keep fighting with our earliest ancestors longer?”

  Dr. Setin took a quick intake of breath.
“We don’t know that early humans wiped out the Neanderthals. There was some interbreeding, but because all prehuman species died out long before recorded history, leaving only scattered remains, we don’t know why they died out.”

  Tulev answered. “Humans have a stark enough history of struggles based on things such as specific religious beliefs, cultural differences, and ethnic variations. It is not hard to imagine the conflict that would have resulted from coexisting with a slightly different variant of ourselves. And as you say, all of those variants died out. Perhaps that was a coincidence.”

  Dr. Shwartz was nodding. “We have no way of knowing how the competition with variants of the human race impacted our own development as a species, but surely it had some impact. That could have been the same type of intelligent competition that the enigmas faced to develop this way of fighting.”

  “All of this is plausible,” Dr. Setin said, “but we lack proof, or even sufficient substantiating detail. We need more information, Admiral Geary.”

  “If these aliens are so opposed to us,” Captain Armus asked, “if there’s no chance of getting along with them, then why not return to Alliance space now and prepare for an actual military campaign? We retake this star system, then start working our way inward until we break these bastards.”

  The civilians were staring at Armus, not so much shocked at his proposal as seeming to be unable to comprehend such a thing.

  Badaya shook his head. “We need to know more about their strength before we plan such a campaign. Whether or not these enigmas agree to speak with us, we need to conduct more reconnaissance of their territory. Capturing some ships intact, or launching some raids, might net us some of their technology.”

  “We’ll penetrate far enough to learn as much as we can, without getting so deep into their space that we might face problems getting back out,” Geary said. “Once we get to the next star, one the Syndics named Alihi, we’ll aim for long jumps, getting as far into alien space as we can as fast as we can before heading out again.”