Commander Harrelson was making the rounds, shaking hands and joking with people. Promptly on time, he turned to face the group and said, “OK everyone let’s sit down and get this bull session under way.” There were a few chuckles but the general tone was serious.
The chairs had been arranged into a circle, a format I favored, as it put us all on the same footing. Once everyone was settled, commander Harrelson said, “First thing we need to do is start putting together everything we know about our enemy, then I want to start a list of things we need to know that we don’t know. I’d like Lieutenant Blumenthal to go over our sensor readings. Lieutenant?”
A senior lieutenant stood and walked over to stand next to a blank wall. She made some entries on her pad and a lengthy list appeared on a bulkhead reader, and on our individual pads. I began reading and saw that she had put together a list of all the electronic data we had gathered from the encounters.
She grouped the data by the type of vessel, starting with their fighters. We had seen four separate fighter types. They seemed to have a common energy source that was extremely powerful for its size, but also comparatively crude. As an example, they radiated visibly in the infrared band if they accelerated at anything near full power.
Three of them possessed a primary laser weapon whose effective power fit approximately between our thirty and thirty five centimeter laser. Its effective range seemed to be shorter than ours, most probably due to an inferior ‘barrel’ material, which they made up for partially by having more power. It was believed that our lens was better, due to fewer impurities. Our lens could place nearly one hundred percent of the lasing energy in a five centimeter circle at twenty thousand kilometers.
One of their fighters possessed the ability to mount missiles – that had been a surprise to our Hawk – and the second seemed to be something like an Elint craft, designed to gather electronic data from a distance. It was observably faster than their other small craft, about as fast as our own Dash 6, but we hadn’t seen very many, which could just mean that we hadn’t seen them. We did not have information on weapons it might carry. The other two were thought to be older, general-purpose fighter designs, as they were slower and less capable, but far more numerous than the second type mentioned.
Their destroyers comprised three different designs. One carried that slow but powerful missile; one seemed to be crammed with lasers and probably served as a defensive platform for the mother ships. The third type was relatively fast, but had fewer offensive and defensive weapons. None of them used a gravity generator to defend against missiles, but as they didn’t seem to have many missiles that wasn’t particularly surprising. It also didn’t mean they couldn’t develop one fairly rapidly, now that they knew it could be done.
The cruiser type was the least known, but the information acquired by our last mission caused several groans. It was far more powerful than any single ship currently in the federal navy, and probably just as deadly as the old battle ship class that we had mothballed over thirty years ago. Its ability to take damage was shocking, and if it had managed to get in close to us we would have been hurt.
Single ship combat between that bug cruiser and any Fleet ship would prove to be short and deadly. Its missiles would overwhelm our ship at long range and its energy weapons at shorter distances. In the recent battle, only the fact that we had twelve Hawks which were far more stealthy, much faster and collectively had the ability to launch far more missiles within a short period of time gave us an advantage, but if we’d entered its energy weapons range, we would have been badly mauled at least, probably destroyed.
The last entries covered what we knew and didn’t know about the mother ships.
After giving everyone a chance to read over the information, the lieutenant said, “First, are there any questions about the data just presented?” Several questions were asked, and answered, mostly by saying, ‘we don’t know’.
When the questions were exhausted, she said, “OK, now I would like to compile a list of all the things we absolutely must know about this race.” There was a forest of hands, and she went methodically around the room, building up a lengthy list. When she ran out of hands, she said, “Next, we rank them in order of importance, starting with the most important.” I was very impressed by her methodical approach to a problem. Within a half hour of spirited discussion that completely ignored rank, she had winnowed the list of nearly one hundred ‘need to knows’ down to fourteen.
With that task completed, she said, “I want to formulate a list of methods that are required to learn the answers to these questions.” She never volunteered information, didn’t lead anyone in a certain direction, kept firm control of the discussion, but at the same time allowed it to be relaxed and open.
The atmosphere in the room at the beginning of the session had been grim, but during the course of the discussion it changed noticeably. The participants became animated to the extent that there was frequent laughter. We were all emotionally relaxed yet mentally charged up.
In the next half hour we compiled a list that, interestingly, featured the Hawk as an important piece of hardware. Some of the questions would require nothing more than putting a group of brainiacs into a space and closing the hatch for a few days, but most involved sending a ship out to glean the information, one way or one place or another.
During this phase of the discussion, Carolyn raised her hand and was acknowledged. She said, “I’m passing some data to your pads. Please look at it before I continue.” I looked at my pad and saw that she must have occupied several hours of computer time backtracking the bugs in their zig zag course towards our homes. Carolyn waited a few moments and then resumed speaking, “Based on earlier assessments of bug attributes, there are about forty solar systems that seemed to be capable of being the bug home system. To be included in this list a sun has to be of the same general type as we believe bugs evolved from, and it has to be in a generally straight line leading back along their track. The foundation for this conclusion was arrived at by revisiting recent to very old sensor readings of the region of space we believed the bugs had passed through to arrive in our corner of the universe. We are fortunate that the Essex has been in the exploration business for so long, it has very good sensor archives.”
She paused to take a sip of her drink and continued, “These sensor readings are striking in what they can tell us. The mother ships would accelerate up to or above .5C and travel for from several years to as many as ten or twelve before decelerating and parking in a solar system for various periods of time. Since there is no technical reason for the bugs not to continue accelerating to higher velocities, it is thought that the bug drive systems cannot protect the ship at higher fractions of the speed of light. Additionally, it is believed that these stops were required to repair systems and fuel up with whatever liquid – probably water- these beings use to power their fusion systems. It is probable that the fighters remain inside and the larger ships dock or latch to the exterior of the ship during these long crossings. That would explain the absence of freighters – the mother ship serves that function. The colony ships, if that is what they are, have not traveled together and have not stopped at the same solar systems, at least as far as we could ascertain. This would be consistent with an effort to ensure that at least one mother ship managed to arrive at whatever destination they had decided upon. It would also be consistent with an effort to avoid being destroyed by a pursuer.”
“The differences we’d noted between the two bug colonies we engaged in battle with could easily be explained by the unknown but probably huge number of years of separation they’d experienced during their voyage. Now that we have tracked them as far back as our Essex sensor readings could take us – some two hundred plus years and over one hundred light years - we have enough information on the average length of their voyages, the types of stars they stopped at and the direction they had been traveling in to attempt to track them even further back in time and space. It is important, perhaps v
ital that we discover where they came from and why they left, or fled. Unfortunately, we can’t just ask.” Light laughter greeted her joke.
I knew that Carolyn hadn’t pulled all this information on her own, but I was nonetheless deeply impressed at her ability to ask the right people the right questions, and then put their answer together in a sensible form.
She took another sip and resumed, “The coming together of four of the mother ships in one region of space is a possible indicator that they may have arrived in the vicinity of their destination. Our effort to determine where they came from is based on the premise that the bugs have not deviated from their standard operational procedures. The probability that they haven’t falls somewhere between an educated guess and a dart thrown at a board.” There was more general laughter at that.
She continued, “The systems we’ve chosen as possibilities range from a few hundred light years to over ten thousand light years distant, and there is actually no practical outer limit to this voyage. Consider, if they’ve come ten thousand light years, they have been traveling for over twenty thousand years.” This comment caused a certain amount of side talk that stopped at a raised hand from Lt. Blumenthal.
Carolyn resumed, ”However, I sent this information to an Etech up in Intelligence and she promised to search in our data base here on the Essex for any evidence that would either eliminate a solar system that lay along the projected track, or provide an indication that it might possess an intelligent species. She gave me a preliminary list of systems that we can scratch off this list, leaving us with seven.”
She put up a two dimensional diagram of a straight line path, with our region of space at one end and going off the edge of the diagram at the other end. She said, “These seven systems all have a stable star with planets. When I gave her another parameter, that of the makeup of light these beings seem to be comfortable with, based on the type of stars they stopped at, she was able to eliminate five of the seven.”
Five blinking lights disappeared from her diagram, leaving just two. One was fifty two hundred light years distant; the other was over seventy five hundred. I tried to understand a race of beings that would undertake a voyage that would last thousands of years, tried to understand the forces that would force such a voyage, and the only conclusion that I could come up with was survival. Survival of the race.
She gave us a moment to digest this information, then continued, “I have arbitrarily limited our search to ten thousand light years. It is possible that they have come from a system even more distant than that, but we would have no easy way to travel further than ten thousand light years, so for the purposes of this study, we haven’t looked beyond that limit.”
I was once again deeply impressed at how Carolyn had gone about performing a study that I would have thought impossibly complex. Apparently, so were most of the others in attendance. An officer I had not yet met raised his hand and asked, “How would we go about investigating these systems?” Carolyn smiled and shrugged her shoulders, “I am not the person to ask that question, but we have with us an officer who can answer it.”
She seated herself and a middle aged officer stood up and took her place at the side of the diagram, which now showed only two blinking lights. He introduced himself, “I am Captain Hussein. After Etech4 Kwan reached this point in the search for the bug’s home system, she conducted a quiet search of the personnel on board the Essex who might be able to answer the question of how best to answer that question. Via Commodore Harrelson she sent me an inquiry yesterday and today asked me to attend this, um, bull session.” There was another round of laughter.
He continued, “A great deal is known about both systems, all of it gathered over the last couple of centuries. Fortunately for us, the Essex has been used for a fairly large number of exploratory missions and as a result she has a great deal of stellar data that most navy vessels would not have. Based on that data, the nearer system cannot be ruled out, but is far less likely to have been their home world. Both systems have a sun that emits light in the wave lengths these people seem to have been adapted to, but we know that the second has a complete set of planets, one of which is situated at approximately the right distance from the sun to have given birth to this race, and there is nothing known that could rule it out. In either case, I believe we would have seen clear evidence of a technologically advanced race, and we haven’t. That doesn’t eliminate them, in fact, I would recommend to any scouting expedition that they proceed very cautiously. These beings seem to be suffering from a severe hangover.”
There was more laughter from the group, and one hand was raised. An Etech from one of my Hawks stood up and asked, “Sir, how would the navy go about scouting those systems?” Captain Hussein nodded his head and said, “We – the navy - have in our inventory a very small number of incredibly expensive vessels that are capable of making the requisite number of jumps to that system in approximately three weeks, not taking into account the obvious requirement for secrecy. If we were to send one or, preferably, three of these vessels and they proceeded in the same manner our own Essex utilized when approaching the bugs here in the void, it would take approximately four weeks to reach that more distant system. If they were to do that, I would imagine they would jump to within four or five light hours of the system and proceed very slowly solward. As we are currently cut off from communication from Lubya, I have no knowledge of any such possible missions.”
He returned to his seat and Lieutenant Blumenthal took his place. She said, “Now, I would like to proceed to what I consider to be a crucial question: 'What does this incursion into our space represent?'” She didn’t add anything to the question, simply stood waiting for a hand.
Commodore Harrelson was acknowledged and said, “We, that is, other bull sessions, have come up with several possible scenarios for these interstellar visitors. The first, and I’m sorry to say, we haven’t been able to scientifically estimate the probability, not having had Carolyn to assist us, and perhaps having had too much beer, implies that the bugs have exhausted the resources of their home system and been forced to search for a new home. Another, somewhat darker possibility is that our bugs are fleeing from yet another race, more militarily advanced and basically very, very pissed off.” He waited for the laughter to die down before continuing.
“We listed a possibility that this is an expedition, a colonizing effort on the part of a race of beings that has a rather high birth rate. Now, all joking aside, what we do know is that this race possesses a great deal of weaponry and isn’t shy about using it. The existence of the immense mother ships along with the seemingly complete lack of freighters or cargo haulers is, I believe, a strong indication that this is an expedition designed to move the race outward to either additional solar systems, or to another solar system. The fact that virtually every ship in the expedition is an armed military vessel leads me to the conclusion that this race is highly, um, familiar with war, either with its own species, or with that other race we hope doesn’t exist.”
Commodore Harrelson sat down and Lieutenant Blumenthal took her place again. She said, “Does anyone have any additional scenarios that the evidence to date doesn’t clearly rule out?” There was a lot of craning of necks, but no hands, so she continued, “OK, I would like to open the floor to questions.”
This was my cue and I stood up after being acknowledged. I said, “My name is Lieutenant J.G. Padilla and I was a Dash 6 pilot and later part of the crew of a Hawk. On the first Hawk raid, Etech4 Carolyn developed the first data on bug communication. I’ve gotten no feedback on any developments in cracking their language, or languages, and I would like to know if anyone present has any information on the subject.”
I sat down and Lieutenant Blumenthal looked around the room inquiringly. She nodded to a female lieutenant who stood up a little tentatively. She introduced herself, “I am Lieutenant Bjorn-Kornbluth, and I’m in Signals. We were assigned the task of cracking their communications. We now believe that they possess e
ither one common language, or just one language. They use both binary and octal number sets. Binary is a natural for computational devices, and octal suggest a race of beings with four digits rather than the five some pilots possess.”
She paused for a smattering of laughter, then continued, “We have gleaned quite a bit of information from the data recorded by the Hawks, although we do not yet have the ability to actually translate that data into meaningful conversation. That said, they do not encrypt their communications, which could be simply because they’ve been alone for a very long time. Despite our inability to translate their communications, we have been able to learn a surprising amount about the thought processes underlying the structure of their communications, and I believe that with enough time we can begin to translate more and more of their words and put them together into meaningful sentences, but that is going to take a long time, inasmuch as there is simply no commonality between our race and theirs.”
“On earth, the several hundred languages that have evolved can be grouped into two types. In the first, the logic structure starts at the top and works down. Romance languages are good examples of this structure. In the second, the logic works up from the bottom. English and Japanese are good examples. If two people, speaking, say, English and French, were to be presented with a situation in which a decision had to be made, the French person would tend to ask, ‘What is the problem?’, whereas the English speaking person would probably ask, ‘What do I have to do?’ The differences arise out of the structure of the languages: either person could reason either way, but the tendency is as stated, and the results of the reasoning patterns of those two individuals will produce two different responses, out of which have developed a lot of dead people. Earth’s history is full of totalitarian nation-states, and most, although not all, have a common denominator – a ‘top down’ language. Examples would include Napoleon, uh, both of them, and Mussolini, and many others, too numerous to mention. This is not to say that cultures whose language does not conform to a universal structure could not go a little crazy; Hitler in Germany and Mao Tse Tsung in China being examples. However, in general, a language such as possessed by the bugs is one in which it is relatively easy for a totalitarian regime to emerge. As you may have noted, all my examples came from the twentieth century. After that disastrous period, our race has seemed to have developed a certain juvenile maturity lacking in earlier ages.”
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 21