“That is almost too monstrous to contemplate. The complete elimination of another sentient species from the universe. Has it ever been done?”
“The short answer is, yes, we’re pretty sure that it has, and right here in the Orion-Cygnus arm too. But you know that our knowledge of the galaxy is very, very incomplete, even in terms of astrocartography, much less the histories of the sentient races. We hardly know anything of what took place before we came onto the galactic stage.
“Other races are very close-mouthed not just about their own history but the history of other races too. Of course, they particularly don’t trust us with that kind of information because we have a way of taking information and using it in unexpected ways—like the way we took the jump drive technology we got from the Ning-Braha and made the intuitive leap to metaspacial radio, something that no one else in this part of the galaxy had except for the Vaaach.
“Speaking of the Vaaach, we’ve gotten some sketchy information on this subject from the Tri-Nin, who have been engaging in interstellar travel since about the time Columbus sailed for the New World. According to them, there used to be a race called the Bhandka-Hamp-Her that they say that the Vaaach wiped out.”
“The Vaaach wiped out an entire race? When did this happen?”
“Sometime around the time of the American Revolution—late eighteenth century. Interesting story, though, what little we know of it. The Tri-Nin are saying very little, and the Vaaach are saying less, but from what we’ve heard, they had it coming.”
“How can an entire race have earned extinction?”
“By wiping out hundreds, maybe thousands, of other races.”
The doctor took several breaths before he could speak again. “Hundreds? Thousands?”
“That’s right. Haven’t you ever wondered why every race in this part of the Orion-Cygnus arm of our galaxy is at about the same technological level, with the exception of the Sarthan and the Vaaach, who aren’t from around here but come from the Sagittarius arm?”
“Actually, I have wondered about it and thought it a peculiar coincidence.”
“It’s no coincidence. The tall trees in the forest are all the same height because all the taller ones got cut down. This race—let’s call them the Bhandka for short—had got their society just the way they wanted it—no wars, no strife, no upheaval—and wanted to preserve it. Exactly as it was. I mean exactly—no cultural change, no technical innovation, nothing. So, they made cultural stability their overriding social priority.
“As you can imagine, you can’t have that kind of cultural stability when you are in contact with alien races. If you have friendly contact with them, they introduce new ideas, art, music, fashion, literature, products, and who knows what else. If you aren’t friendly with them, you have to keep your technology up to par and your military forces to match theirs, or one day they might decide to enslave or kill you. And even if you win the war, we all know wars bring cultural upheaval.
“There never would have been a Russian Revolution without World War I, an American Civil Rights Movement without World War II, a Revolt of the Estates without the Lamoni Conflict. Or if those things happened, they would have happened years later and probably more gradually.
“The Bhandka decided that perfect stability required perfect isolation, which in turn required that they be alone in this part of the galaxy. That’s just what they achieved. They periodically surveyed all the habitable worlds for about five thousand light years in every direction, and whenever they found an industrial civilization on one, they would simply wipe it out, usually by smacking the planet with a big rock or two from its own asteroid belt, rendering just about every large animal on the planet, as well as a lot of the rest of its life, extinct. A lot like what happened to the dinosaurs on Earth.
“The only local race they spared were the Tri-Nin and only because they’ve got all those advanced nonviolent defensive technologies that render them impervious to attack. That hive mind thing that all their females have with each other let them progress a lot further from one survey to the next than the Bhandka figured they could—so by the time they checked back, the Tri-Nin were too advanced for them to wipe out.
“Bhandka civilization endured without meaningful change or advancement for a hundred million years, maybe even longer. Could be billions of years. They even used genetic engineering to keep themselves from evolving further. Who knows how many civilizations they wiped out? For all we know, it might be thousands, even tens of thousands. It’s impossible to get your brain around.
“Anyway, when the Vaaach arrived in the vicinity and figured out what happened, they went practically insane with rage, swept the Bhandka fleet out of their way like a formation of paper airplanes, and threw the largest forty-five or fifty asteroids from the Bhandka system at their planet, giving them more than a taste of their own medicine. Their planet looks like an overgrown version of the Earth’s moon now. Supposedly it doesn’t even have an atmosphere anymore. And the Bhandka, destroyers of more cultures than we will encounter if we explore the galaxy for a thousand years, are gone forever. May they roast slowly in hell.
“On the other hand, the Bhandka did us a favor. Until about the year 1780, every industrial civilization that arose in this part of the galaxy was destroyed, which is why there are so many races now stepping out into interstellar space at roughly the same technological level—these are the races that were on the verge of industrialization when the Vaaach took down the Bhandka. There isn’t anyone who was more than fifty to a hundred years ahead of us technologically when the Bhandka were sent into oblivion.”
“So then, the Bhandka are the explanation for the Fermi Paradox,” the doctor said.
“The Fermi Paradox?”
“Yes. It’s named after Enrico Fermi, the famous physicist who helped build the first fission reactor, the first fission weapon, and many other seminal contributions to physics that are far beyond my limited understanding of the field. It is said that after discussing alien visitation during a walk with a few colleagues, he sat down to lunch with them and suddenly asked, ‘Where are they?’ One of the other diners responded, ‘Who, Doctor Fermi? Where are who?’ He replied, ‘The extraterrestrials. Where are they? They should be here by now.’ He then proceeded to do some calculations showing that, given the age of the galaxy and the number of stars in it, the Earth should have been visited many times over. And as I understand the time line of such things, it was a good point.”
“You bet it was a good point,” said Max. “The thin disk of the galaxy, the part where the core and the spiral arms are, is something like eight billion years old. The Earth’s age is 4.2 billion, and has evolved intelligent life that is now exploring the stars. Assuming that the evolution of intelligent life and the period for that life to develop interstellar travel is roughly the same from race to race, that leaves nearly four billion years for some star faring race to do what the Western Europeans did on Earth: spread their culture and technology throughout this part of the galaxy, if not the whole thing.
“So, Fermi was right in wondering where they were, because by all rights they should have come. There should have been some highly advanced race that had come to Earth and brought us primitives under its sway or at least had its version of anthropologists in pith helmets and khakis studying us.”
The doctor nodded his understanding. “But the Bhandka never let that happen—they created a five-thousand-light-year-wide ‘nature preserve’ where we and the Tri-Nin and the Pfelung and the rest could develop without interference, and then, when we were about to reach the point where we were to be destroyed, the destroyers were themselves wiped out. That explains another thing too.”
“What’s that.”
“The Vaaach. Most of the time they are the embodiment of the superior attitude that comes from being truly superior, as well as showing their instinctive territoriality derived from their heritage as pred
ators, and their highly developed ethical sensibilities; but sometimes you get a whiff of paternal concern. I think it’s because they know they saved our culture from extinction. Every time we impress them or show some promise, they look at us and think, ‘But for us, these people would be gone.’ They are a very emotional race you know. That is likely why they bind themselves so strictly to act by their rules and code of honor, because without them they would be killing each other right and left.”
“I’d never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Bram, sometimes, I wish we could sit down and talk, really talk to the Vaaach. Leave all of this ‘puny pink monkey’ and ‘Warrior of Honor’ crap in the hall and just carry on a conversation like sentient beings. The things we could learn from them!”
“Indeed. As extensive as their explorations have been, they must have made contact with hundreds of other races. The genetic and biological information they have collected over the course of their travels would be enough to revolutionize our understanding of exobiology, comparative anatomy, comparative biochemistry, the similarities and differences between the evolutionary paths taken on different worlds.” He hastened to add, “And I’m sure that there would be a few interesting things to learn in other fields as well. Perhaps even a little physics or maybe a smattering of engineering, if you place value on such things.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
* * *
CHAPTER 14
* * *
04:04Z Hours, 03 April 2315
During his years of naval service, Max had seen orders that struck him as odd. He had seen orders that had struck him as crazy. He had, in fact, seen orders that were insane—and not just a little bit insane either, but totally screaming wack job, “someone should be taken out of the Fleet Operations Center and then put in a rubber room and shot up with half a gallon of happy juice”–type insane.
But in virtually every case, he understood what was going on behind the orders—what the person who wrote them was thinking and what he was trying to accomplish. In this case, however, he didn’t have a clue.
He followed them regardless. In this case, his orders, sent Flash Z priority, directed him to take his ship, at the highest speed consistent with the importance of the cargo, to a set of coordinates located in deep space 3.72 light years from the nearest star system, to rendezvous with some Union naval vessel to be identified later, with which he was to initiate contact by sending the challenge code “Glorious First of June” and receiving the response “Trafalgar” in addition to the standard IFF recognition protocols. Someone, somewhere, was really into the British Royal Navy of Admiral Nelson’s era.
What perplexed Max was that the capture of the main data core from a Krag warship was a contingency for which every Union warship, and indeed people with ranks running up to Task Force commander, had titanium-clad standing orders from none other than the most high and exalted Chief of Naval Operations in Norfolk. The vessel obtaining the core was to transmit the code word “ENIGMA” and then race at top speed to rendezvous with the nearest Comprehensive Technical Intelligence Unit, which, in Max’s case, was on board the Halsey.
This business of rendezvousing in deep space with an undisclosed vessel was a deviation from the standard protocol. When Max himself broke the rules in order to win a battle it was one thing, but when flag officers started violating rules pertaining to super-high-priority intelligence objectives, Max started to get an unsettled feeling in his stomach and an annoying tingling sensation between his shoulder blades. They told him something odd was afoot. Or at least, something very, very different.
Max didn’t like “different.”
The Cumberland arrived at the designated coordinates, literally in the middle of nowhere, with her passive sensors tuned to the highest pitch of alertness.
And detected nothing.
Three hours passed, the watch changed, and still Cumberland’s exquisitely sensitive sensors detected nothing but the distant stars and the vanishingly tenuous gases of interstellar space. The senior officers had long ago left CIC to the attentions of the regular watch standers and the Officer of the Deck.
It was Ensign Menachem Levy’s second turn in the Big Chair, and his first with the ship at Condition Amber, a heightened state of alertness in which missiles rode in launch tubes with fully energized launch coils, their drives enabled and their warheads armed; the pulse cannons stood on Ready; and half of the crew was either at stations or awake and dressed, ready to dash to stations at a moment’s notice. When the ship was at Amber, there were reports to CIC every half-hour confirming the readiness of every battle station, which reports it was Levy’s responsibility to log, there being no XO in CIC at the moment.
Accordingly, he regarded himself as pleasantly busy for the first two hours and nineteen minutes he sat in the genuinely comfortable seat provided for the destroyer’s CO, drank coffee fetched for him by Midshipman George, and pondered the notion of considering OOD to be a pleasant duty.
The twentieth minute of the hour changed his mind. He noticed Hobbs, standing watch at Sensors, turn quickly to look to the ATTN SSR display, punch up a few different displays, and exchange a few terse words with his back room.
The process took all of three seconds before he announced, “Contact! Unidentified contact approaching under compression drive, gravity wave detection only at this time, approximate bearing two-five-two mark one-one-eight. No bearing change, no target motion analysis possible. Designating contact as Uniform One. Strength of reading increasing, still no change in bearing detected. Contact is likely at constant bearing decreasing range.”
No tricky command decision here. The book was clear on that one. “Mister Laputa, sound general quarters.”
The klaxons were still braying when, less than a minute later, the skipper cycled through the hatch along with the XO and Kasparov. After the con had been transferred, Max decided, instead of uttering the seemingly obligatory “status” or “report” inquiry, to throw Levy a curve ball. The place to train combat officers was in combat, or at least under the reasonable threat of possible combat, and they don’t learn anything by always being confronted with the expected.
“Well, Mr. Levy,” the skipper asked breezily, “what formal justification for sounding general quarters do you intend to enter in the log?”
It took Levy no more than a second and a half to realize he was getting a curve instead of the fast ball he had been expecting. He swung. “Sir, Sensors reported a gravity wave detection of a likely compression drive source evaluated to be at a constant bearing and decreasing range. An unidentified intercepting contact is a mandatory GC condition for any unescorted destroyer.”
Line drive deep into right field, a stand up triple. “Outstanding, Mr. Levy. Exactly correct. You may take your station.” Max pretended not to notice the young man’s sigh of relief when he stepped off the command island in the direction of the Intel Station.
“All stations report secure at general quarters,” reported Petty Officer Laputa at Alerts.
“Very well. Maneuvering, turn to face the contact, both axes. Attitude change only. Do not translate the ship.” Max was ordering that the Cumberland reorient herself so that her most powerful weapons and her most acute sensors were pointing at the target, without changing the ship’s location. Max was turning the ship in the direction best calculated to learn about the target or to fight it.
“Target has gone subluminal,” said Kasparov. “I have mass detection of a subluminal target, congruent with the prior compression detection. Bearing is two-five-five mark one-one-seven. Range forty-eight thousand kills. Speed, very slow sir, five thousand meters per second. Mass is…it’s big, sir, 87,900 tons. We’ve got an optical scanner on it, and my people say it looks…looks like one of our fleet tankers, one of the big ones, Sevastopol class maybe. That would be consistent with the mass reading.”
Max turned to Chin. “IFF?”
; “None yet, sir. Our box has sent the interrogation pulse. Nothing back yet.”
“Reinterrogate.”
“But sir, if we receive no response, the box will automatically—”
“I’m aware of that, Mr. Chin, but I don’t want to wait another sixty-five seconds.”
“Aye, sir. Manual instruction for reinterrogation sent.”
“Those tankers are fifty or sixty years old. Their old IFF boxes can be a bit balky. I think some of them work on transistors.” Max wondered how many people on board actually knew what a transistor was.
“IFF received, identity checks out. Union Naval deuterium tanker, USS Singapore, registry TMG 0088.”
“Target posident as friendly and redesignated as Charlie One,” said Kasparov who had relieved Hobbs at Sensors.
“Something tells me we’re not here to rendezvous with that.”
“Pretty safe bet, XO,” said Max. “But you never know. We’ll follow the protocol. Mr. Chin, signal the tanker by lights. Send ‘Glorious First of June.’ ”
“Aye, sir. ‘Glorious First of June.’ ” He ordered the computer to slew the forward signal lamp to point at the tanker, checked its aim manually, input the message, and instructed the computer to send the string of short and long flashes, using Morse code. By the time he had sent the message, his back room had already slewed an optical pickup around to focus on the tanker’s signal lights and routed its feed to Chin’s SSR ATTN display. A few seconds later, one of the tanker’s lights began to flash. Chin took down the message the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper, in case it was something longer than a sentence or two that he could easily remember. It wasn’t.
For Honor We Stand (Man of War Book 2) Page 40