by B. V. Larson
Like a man in quicksand.
“Marvin, make sure you keep any Litho samples tightly sealed, and wipe out all the rest. I don’t want any wild Litho infesting our ships.”
“Does that mean I am authorized to obtain and contain samples?”
Oh, yeah. As I had restricted him from doing anything, any analysis he had been doing must have been passive, through observation only. “Yes, take samples, and make sure everything is contained and is no threat to our ships or crews...or passengers, or any humans or allies,” I added hastily.
“I understand.”
“I know you understand. What I want is compliance. Greyhound, take rendezvous instructions from Valiant. Marvin, I’ll be back soon.”
Marvin didn’t answer. He just hummed and did his work. I stopped by the galley and grabbed two beers—then one more for good measure—and headed back to the autodoc. The procedures it was performing on Adrienne weren’t complete, but the timer showed only twenty minutes remaining. She was still sedated, but she’d be coming around soon. I left a sweating bottle on the table nearest the machine and went back to the bridge.
“Marvin, what have you learned about the alien crews in the approaching squadron?”
In response, Marvin put up an image on the main viewscreen. I saw a furry raccoon face. I tilted my head back and forth, trying to figure out why the black and white seemed so familiar. Then I got it.
“The aliens are Pandas?”
-11-
“There do seem to be similarities between the aliens and Earth Pandas,” Marvin said as I stared at the still image on the main viewscreen.
“Do we have video?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “We’re having trouble synchronizing our protocols. Visual data is limited to this single frame.”
My theory about the Ancients trying out lines of directed or seeded evolution on various planets seemed to be gaining solidity, at least in my mind. What if the interconnected network of interstellar rings, rumored by the Blues to be composed of two hundred links, was the equivalent of a laboratory shuttle system? What if the Ancients were akin to mad scientists who’d built the system in order to skip from place to place, checking up on and tinkering with each set of DNA they planted?
I wasn’t sure how the Blues’ claim that the Ancients brought a terrifying cold with them when constructing rings fit into my theories. Maybe it was a random side effect. Or maybe rapid cooling of the worlds accelerated the pace of natural selection. Maybe they were so hungry for energy they actually reduced the output of each system’s stars, just as a functional expedient. I’d read once that a small percentage reduction in solar energy could trigger a killing ice age upon Earth.
Of course, it was also possible the Blues had lied about the Ancients and their ways for their own devious purposes. The truth was that we had no way of knowing the truth.
“Wait…” I said, “Didn’t someone say these Panda people lived on a hot and wet world?”
“Correct. Assuming the picture actually represents the aliens.”
“Does that seem to make sense to you?”
Marvin seemed to process this for a moment. “Bearlike creatures on Earth often live in wet climates, but seldom in extreme heat.”
“Keep working on the translation, and try to look for any apparent anomalies. You have about…” I looked at the clock. “Fifteen minutes to rendezvous, and Turnbull is going to want some kind of progress toward communication.”
“Then please be silent,” Marvin said. “I require all my neural chains to analyze their transmissions.”
I shut up and then used the touch controls to check on the situation. Valiant floated in the center of the ring, which I thought was a strange place to be, but I guess Sir William liked his drama. I did notice he angled the damaged side of the battlecruiser away from the aliens, concealing his weakness to a certain extent.
Turning our sensors on the incoming squadron, I could see the six ships with their weapons grouped in clusters of six. I glanced over at the picture of the Panda and noticed something so obvious I’d missed it. Six fingers were clearly displayed on the creature’s hand—if you included the opposable thumb. Well, at least they weren’t six-legged spiders.
A few minutes before the agreed time, Turnbull called and asked for a further report, so I gave him a short and downplayed version of what we’d seen of the Lithos and the dead Macros. Then he wanted to know how the translation was progressing. Off screen, Marvin sent a text translation of what he’d worked out, which consisted of the Panda picture and the following:
Greetings, alien life. We enfold you with our embrace and only wish to experience you. Request that you send visual scan to establish trust and words of friendship.
That seemed fairly coherent. I gave Marvin a thumbs-up and said to the captain, “That’s the best we could do so far, sir. If you like, you can record a video and we will quickly translate it and send it back to them in a message.”
“Well done, young Riggs. Perhaps there is some use for you after all. Set it up.” The man chewed at his upper lip and preened his moustache while Marvin did the prep work. Eventually the robot bobbed a camera at me.
“Go ahead, sir,” I said.
“Ahem, yes,” Turnbull said. “Greetings, local indigenous people! We have traveled from far away to explore other star systems. We mean you no harm. It appears we have a common enemy, the machines we call Macros.” He turned his head aside and lowered his voice. “Riggs, send along some pictures of humans and Macros fighting.” Then he sat back up with his oratory voice. I didn’t bother to tell him it would probably not matter to aliens how elegant and round his tones were. He went on for several minutes with diplomatic blather before he ran down.
“All right, sir, we’ll get right on this. Riggs out.” I turned to Marvin. “Go ahead and—”
“Task complete,” he interrupted.
“Did you translate that whole speech?”
“Yes, and I sent it along with image scans.”
Well, I couldn’t fault Marvin for taking the initiative. I’d intended to cut out some of the fluff from Sir William’s speech, but what was done was done. I concentrated on piloting us up to the ring, but instead of floating in the middle of the ring’s span alongside Valiant, I chose to hide behind its massive edge. This was in case the aliens turned out to be hostile after all.
A couple minutes of transmission lag passed before a message came back.
We thank you for your meaty words, bursting with truth and good intentions. Your visual scans infuse us with curiosity and happiness that you fight against the evil Macro machines. We embrace and wish to experience all biotic species. We invite your leaders to a celebration in honor of this momentous meeting.
I thought it interesting that they did not transmit video, though perhaps they still weren’t able to match our transmission protocols. I hoped this was not some sort of trick—showing us a picture of a circus bear when they were actually weird monsters waiting to rip us limb from limb. Maybe they were actually Lithos, some kind of rock people like the nanite-laced mounds we’d encountered on the dead planet.
Turnbull sent us another long-winded speech. I let Marvin translate and relay it to the Pandas. If the first load of blather hadn’t bothered the aliens, I guessed another wouldn’t hurt. Diplomacy was probably pretty much the same everywhere. It amounted to saying lots of nice things you didn't particularly mean while working behind the scenes to get what you really wanted.
The exchanges came faster and faster as the alien six-pack drew closer, with Marvin translating almost instantly now that he had more samples of the Panda speech to work with. I listened to it raw, and it did sound like bears growling and roaring. The upshot of all the negotiation was that we would fly to their planet, Tullax 4, and talk some more.
The travel to their planet took hours. Greyhound trailed along well behind the battlecruiser and her escort. The Pandas didn’t seem to care about us. Maybe it was because we posed
no clear threat.
I let the brainbox fly the ship and used the time to get Adrienne out of the autodoc, lifting her sleeping form out and placing it on her bed after the machine cleared her to leave its care. I figured she’d rather awaken from the sedatives in a familiar place rather than inside a metal-and-glass coffin. The beer I’d left for her hadn’t been touched, so I drank hers as well as mine and caught a few hours’ sleep in my own room. When I woke up, I made my way to the bridge, leaving Adrienne to rest. She still hadn’t awakened.
As we approached Tullax 4, Marvin put an optical close-up of its airless moon on the biggest screen we had. It showed a dark cratered landscape with concentrations of junk lying around, seeming quite familiar. He turned two of his cameras on me.
“What?” I asked.
“You should recognize these structures.”
“Can you magnify them?”
“This is maximum magnification. However, as we approach, they should become easier to distinguish.”
I glared at Marvin, but unless I ordered him to tell me, it seemed as if he was going to play guessing games. A few moments later, I saw what he was getting at. “Those look like Macro installations. Just like on the dead world.”
“Precisely like on the dead world, Tullax 6.”
I moved closer until I almost had my nose on the high-resolution screen. “They’re buried in Litho dirt, too.”
“Yes.”
My mind whirled with the implications. Had the Lithos, if they were truly alive, somehow spread from one planet to the other? I thought they seemed to prefer airless worlds. Maybe they had hitched a ride aboard a Panda or Macro ship. Or maybe the Pandas had spread them deliberately, as I’d theorized before.
Maybe the litho-nanites were a kind of anti-Macro weapon, a nonmetallic machine inimical to metallic machines in the same way that viruses preyed on biotic life.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” I quoted musingly.
Marvin replied with another quote. “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
“Right. Stay near me, Marvin, okay?”
Marvin turned to stare at me with all his cameras for a moment, then spoke when something beeped. “Hail from the Valiant.”
“Riggs,” Turnbull said, “come join us aboard Valiant. The Pandas are going to send over a delegation, and I want all the officers here. Even you.”
I acknowledged his order and told Greyhound to dock with Valiant while I hurried to my stateroom to change into uniform. By the time I had it on, the two ships had connected, so I soon met Turnbull and his officers. They were all down at the large airlock in the hold, waiting for the aliens to arrive.
“Stand in the back, Riggs. You’re a disgrace,” the captain said, staring me up and down. I realized they had all donned their finest dress uniforms, made of real Earth fabric and dripping with braid and medals, while I had only packed the one set of utilities. It seemed I couldn’t catch a break in his eyes. Moving over, I stood behind the group.
Because Earth Pandas weren’t the biggest of bears, I’d expected the aliens to be about three hundred pounds. Instead, they were larger than that. Grizzly bears, that’s what they resembled in size and shape. Only their markings and coloration was reminiscent of pandas. I was certain, however, that for all time Earth people would call them Pandas. Monikers like that tended to stick for generations.
Most of the alien delegation stood eight feet tall and probably weighed as much as an average horse. Six of them came aboard in all. They wore uniforms made of leather straps, more like harnesses than what we thought of as true clothing. They had leafy pennants streaming from these harnesses, probably awards and medals, but they carried no weapons that I could see. I had to give them points for diplomacy and trust. We had a row of armed marines in full battle armor against the wall, showing our relative lack of trust. The Pandas also wore breathing masks, but after a moment they took them off and sniffed the air. It appeared our atmospheres were compatible.
With the additional travel time, Marvin had managed to crack the code on the Pandas’ speech. He then uploaded his interpreter program to the Valiant’s brainbox so we had a running translation. One of the six, who had a fancier uniform, spoke first.
“Welcome to our planet, which we call Hot Swamp,” the leader said. Obviously our new translation program took some things literally.
He then walked over to Turnbull who had placed himself front and center in the fanciest uniform of all of us. The Panda held out his two paws, taking one of the captain’s hands. He ran his claw-tipped furry fingers up and down the Turnbull’s arm and squeezed it in several places rather than shaking his hand.
Turnbull fumbled through the elaborate Panda handshake before letting go. “We thank you and greet you in the name of Earth,” he said. “I’m Sir William Turnbull.” He turned to introduce his five closest officers, snubbing me.
The Panda leader conducted the same ritual with each man or woman. Afterward, he said, “I am called First Provider Long Growl.” Apparently that was the best the rough translation program could do with his name.
“Let me introduce my leaders,” the Panda said. Each had a title, such as “Second Procurer” or “Fifth Collator” and always a name that involved some form of “Growl”.
Once finished, First Provider Long Growl drew himself up. “We’re ready for the feast,” he said.
“The feast?” Captain Turnbull said. “We weren’t aware of that requirement.”
“No feast?” Long Growl asked in surprise. He looked at his comrades, who all exhibited signs of puzzlement. They flicked their ears and muttered in low tones.
“I’m sorry!” Turnbull interjected. He clearly sensed a diplomatic faux pas. “Surely, you can understand we’re new here. How can we make it up to you?”
Long Growl spoke solemnly. “In the name of the Growl people, I would like to invite the six Turnbull leaders to a feast in their honor with our own leaders of sixes.”
Turnbull’s face lit up. “Excellent! We’d be happy to accept.”
“My anticipation surges,” Long Growl said. “Please come aboard our ship.” The Panda turned and led his officers back out the airlock to his vessel, which was docked alongside Valiant.
“All right ladies and gentlemen. Come along.” Turnbull strode after them, looking very much the hero in his fancy uniform. Kwon made to follow with some marines, but the captain waved them back.
I noticed none of our officers were wearing sidearms. This caused me to frown, and I glanced down at my own weapon. I’d strapped a laser pistol to my belt automatically. True, the Pandas had come aboard our ship with nothing but their claws and teeth, but they had a fleet outside to make sure we didn’t try anything unexpected.
“Sir,” I said loudly, “shouldn’t we go armed?”
Turnbull looked at me as if noticing me for the first time.
“Are you daft, man?” he asked with an icy glare. “I find it unsurprising that diplomacy isn’t your strong suit, Riggs, but even a junior officer should be able to see that boarding their ship while armed would be an insult to these people. They asked for a delegation of six in any case, and you would make seven. You can stand watch while we establish relations with these aliens. Please try not to subject my ship to any major cock-ups.”
I could see no point arguing. I was disappointed to be left behind, but then again, I didn’t like the idea of heading off to an alien world unarmed.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Would you confirm my status with Valiant’s brainbox, please?”
Turnbull paused long enough to make me command personnel and then went aboard the Panda ship. By Star Force regs, as long as all the other officers were gone, I was in charge of Valiant. If we hadn’t been deep into alien territory with a damaged ship and no way back, I’d have been delighted with the chance to command a battlecruiser, but unfortunately, right now all I was left with was the sudden weight of responsibility.
“Kwon, come with me,” I said after t
he airlock had closed and the Panda ship had disengaged. We went up to the bridge, now manned by warrant officers and enlisted people. I had no idea how they would react to me taking over, even if it was a lawful order, so having the big man behind me in armor might head off any problems before they got started.
Whether it was good crew discipline or Kwon, the bridge crew took my announcement without protest.
I told myself it wouldn’t have mattered to me if they had complained. I had prepared for this moment all my life—I’d finally been given command of a warship, even if it was only acting, temporary command. I’d studied my father’s campaigns and the battles in the Macro Wars as well as all the other military history I could find. I’d devoured military subjects in any form I could get my hands on—print, digital, audio, video, virtual, games. If it could teach me something about command, I’d hungered to learn about it.
I’d also visited monuments and battlefields from Thermopylae to Andros Island, packing my imagination full of grand dreams. Someday, I knew, humanity would run into a major threat. It might be resurgent Macros, it might be some sneak attack by the Blues, or maybe it would be some new alien menace. When that happened, I had resolved to be ready.
“Give me everything you can on the Panda forces,” I ordered with deliberate confidence.
Soon I was studying the information on the holotank in the center of the bridge. Looking it over, I could see the Pandas had a fleet of at least three hundred cruisers in various orbits or on ground bases, all with some resemblance to the original Nano ships that had arrived on Earth almost thirty years ago. I took that to mean they had been visited too. Combine that with the evidence of Macros on the airless moon and planet, and I had high hopes we could get along with these people.