We were ushered into Admiral Lee’s sleeping quarters where we were greeted with a casual wave of the hand that then gave us permission to sit.
Admiral Lee looked at us and raised his eyebrows. I said, “Sir, we have completed our mission successfully, and we’ve brought back our analysis of their fleet as compared to our own capabilities. In short, Elian and I believe that using the Dresdens, Hawks and Kestrels only, we could destroy their fleet with little or no casualties. It would require approximately three full loads of missiles; roughly four thousand Mark 67’s.”
Admiral Lee looked at the two of us for a few moments, his eyes gleaming. He said, “You know, your analysis is exactly one hundred eighty degrees out of phase with every single one of our experts. Tell me how you would achieve their destruction.”
It took Elian just a few minutes to detail our plans, and when he finished the admiral simply looked at us expectantly. I grinned and asked, “Sir, are you expecting another analysis from us?” Admiral Lee said, “Of course. You don’t think I sent you two on a paid vacation just so you wouldn’t have to behave like two tin soldiers, guarding the Brezhnev, did you?”
I looked at Elian and he nodded. I said, “Sir, we, that is, we two along with our execs, several lead technicians and WO Kana spent several hours jointly trying to determine what would happen if we allowed the bug ships to continue their journey. There is too little information for us to come to a definitive conclusion as to how they would behave, what they would do. Perhaps, since our departure, Fleet has obtained new information that we were not privy to, but it is our opinion that these bugs cannot be trusted to go away and leave us alone. We talked about the possibility that through a successful communication attempt with them, we could prove to them that both their home worlds and all the remaining members of their species have died. We could come to no conclusions as to how they might react to this. In fact, they are probably already aware of the destruction of their home worlds. They seem to possess highly sophisticated astronomical equipment, and should have been able to observe what happened after their departure. What is not known is how they would react. Frankly, even if they swore an oath and signed a peace treaty in blood, I wouldn’t feel terribly safe having them in our neighborhood.”
Admiral Lee said, “I concur with your analysis. Unfortunately, neither you two nor I have even the slightest say so in what our government is going to decide. I am very much afraid that it will either simply pass the buck to future generations, who will have to face an overwhelming and unannounced assault, or it will take the equally drastic step and order us to destroy them.”
He looked at us keenly for another few moment, took a sip of coffee and asked, “OK, what would you two do if you were in my position?” Elian looked at me and I shrugged. He said, “I would dragoon ambassador Leung and attempt to communicate with these bugs. Before that, I suppose that I would skulk around the edges of their fleet and attempt to learn how to communicate with them, but I would try to talk to them first. That way, if they attack, the matter would be taken out of our hands – the bugs would in effect sign their own death warrant.”
Admiral Lee asked, no longer grinning, “And, what if they didn’t attack, what if they talked instead?” Elian said, “I don’t know, sir. I just don’t know. With what I know to be true right now I don’t trust them to leave us alone, and I do not envy the person or persons who would have to order our fleet to attack them.”
Admiral Lee nodded his head thoughtfully. He said, “I wish I had a better answer than yours, but I don’t, nor do I know of anyone else who does either. I suppose that we are going to have to pray that God is watching over our shoulders, and over the shoulders of our new interstellar neighbors. Thank you both for coming over. I assume that you would love to return to Lubya for resupply, but that won’t be possible. After you return to your ships I’ll have an FFC dock with you for a resupply with comestibles and reactor mass. After your tanks are topped off, I’m sending you and the same pair of Kestrels out to look at that system the bugs seemed to be heading for. I want you back within thirty days of your departure, which should be within twenty-four hours. I’ll be sending over a couple of civilians who will assist you in your survey. What we most want to know is if that system could be colonized by the bugs, or by us for that matter. You’ll have to go down to the surface of course, thus the Kestrels.”
Over the next several minutes the admiral continued filling us in on our assignment, and ended up by telling us with a tired smile that we would receive ‘sufficient background material’, as he put it, to assist us in our task. I groaned inwardly, knowing that what he thought of as sufficient I considered mountainous overkill.
We stood and saluted after he finished, and departed. No doughnuts this time around. Elian grinned at me as we walked back towards the shuttle dock, “Well, it could be worse – we could be back on station guarding the Brezhnev derriere.” I looked at him and asked, “Yeah, we could be stuck guarding this piece of vacuum, but as we have friends in high places, we get to zip around on detached duty with nobody looking over our shoulders. I’ve got to admit, I like working for this admiral a lot more than, um, that other guy. What do you think is going to happen when the bug sixth fleet catches on that its two thousand year old assignment has been completed?”
He shrugged his shoulders, looking suddenly a little pensive and said, “I don’t think this species has it in it to change its colors. I think these new guys are just going to attack us, same as the first bunch did, no matter what we try to do or say. The very worst thing we could do is try to avoid a battle – they’d just go looking for us. You know, we’ve never considered - at least you and I haven’t – what they’re going to do as they near the region they believe their colony ships are in. Used to be in. What with light speed lag they aren’t going to know anything about our battles until the last month of their deceleration, approximately. You know, that time frame falls within the time we are supposed to be back from our survey. Do you suppose the admiral knew that and wants us around?”
I nodded, “Let’s make certain, absolutely certain, that we finish this little task in time.”
By now we were in an echoing shuttle bay and approaching our transportation. As soon as we boarded, the shuttle was given permission to launch and within an hour we were back aboard our ship.
Within three hours the promised FFC matched course with Elian’s Lee and maneuvered alongside. Moments later he commed me to tell me what he was getting in the way of supplies, including a pair of civilian survey specialists. When we served on the Essex we had several of them on board, but this would be our first time to actually observe them in action, or at least watch them think, or whatever it was that they did, something that I looked forward to.
Now that we knew we were under the gun, we alerted our execs that we needed to get underway as soon as possible. We had very few equipment problems – we hadn’t had anyone actively trying to kill us recently, and our ships were in good shape.
Before the FFC undocked, I asked my exec to quickly make certain that we had everything we needed. Elian was making the same check on his ship.
Four hours later I commed the admiral to tell him we were ready to depart. He smiled at me, evidently expecting that we would be ready ahead of schedule, and gave us permission to depart.
We accelerated away at twelve G’s and jumped as soon as our systems charged up. We reentered normal space, checked our position and jumped a second time, coming out within two days acceleration of the solar system. We ran at ten G’s, our two ships maintaining a very precise separation, allowing our stealth systems to reduce our gravity signature as well as our energy emissions. We had been ordered not to jump directly into the system, as we could not be positive the bugs hadn’t arrived ahead of us.
Elian commed me several times a day and at one point he mentioned that we were now accelerating at a higher percentage of light speed than at any time since we had received command of our ships. I grinned and said,
“Due to time dilation we will have to report in a few seconds early”. He said, “Roberto the Special, did you get someone to help you with that math?” I snorted, “OK shorty, I’m telling Carolyn what really happened that night that, as you put it so elegantly, “France wished to surrender”.
Elian looked startled and protested, “Nothing happened!” I laughed and said, “I know, but imagine the expression on your lovely wife’s face when she learns that, ‘nothing happened’. She’s going to want to know if you suffered equipment failure.”
Elian grinned and said, “Hmm. I think she’s going to know the answer to that.”
As we neared the system we began to get increasingly more detailed scans on the number and makeup of its planets. This solar system had a clutch of four outer gas planets plus three inner satellites. The one we were interested in was the second out from the sun. The innermost planet was well inside the zone of life, but it wouldn’t have been suitable no matter what orbit it maintained – it was a relatively massive planet and our initial estimates were that it’s gravity well would be a good fifty percent higher than earth normal.
The second planet, however, began to look promising. We passed through the Oort cloud and began getting steadily better information. We were coming in roughly along the elliptic plane but none of the outer planets were close enough to our heading to warrant changing course to make a close pass. They could wait for another day.
We had held off our turnover to the last minute so we were still decelerating as we blew past the outer planetary orbits. We changed course slightly to get us above a belt of the detritus of leftover rock and other junk that most systems seemed to accumulate, located well outside the orbit of the second planet. We were still coming in hot so we upped our deceleration to maximum for the last six hours.
We had previously discussed the possibility that one of the three missing bug mother ships may have arrived ahead of us, although we’d been assured that sensor scans of that region of space had not revealed any sign of a bug mother ship. Nevertheless, we went to battle stations four hours out. Sometimes, what one believed to be true was not actually what one found to be true.
The planet massed about earth normal, had ‘gobs of ocean’, as Elian put it, and typical weather patterns. Even from a distance our scanners could see evidence of life. In fact, I knew of no instance where an earth-normal planet, orbiting within the temperate zone of a solar system didn’t have life, usually an overabundance of it, and frequently noxious or even poisonous-to-humans life.
We matched orbits after judiciously using our passive systems to look for bug sign. Elian said, as we slid into a geosynchronous orbit, “You know Robert, if there had been a weakness in our power systems, we’d for certain know about it by now.” I smiled and asked, “Well, what do our passengers have to say?”
He shrugged and said, “I don’t actually know. That doesn’t mean they haven’t been scanning and measuring and such, it’s just that I can’t understand most of what they say, save that they don’t seem to have discovered any reason why it couldn’t be habitable.”
We spent two days mapping the planet, which turned out to have a good mix of oxygen and nitrogen in it, although the percentages were off slightly from earth norm. It had more iron in its core and as a result its gravity was about ten percent higher than humans would like. Our civilian’s noted that the surface would have high concentrations of metals, rendering it poisonously unsuitable for humans, but quite delightful for the approaching aliens.
On the third day after matching orbit, Elian’s Kestrel launched and with the two civilians aboard descended towards the surface.
Elian and I were uncomfortable with having both ships stuck inside the planet’s gravity well where we would be both relatively blind and unable to jump should we get surprised, so after his Kestrel dropped toward the surface I accelerated away from the planet and took up a position a half million kilometers above the north pole, where my own scanners would have a better shot at spotting an incoming ship. Ships.
Elian’s Grant was in continuous communication with the surface, and he relayed all the data to my ship. It was quickly evident that this planet was not at all suitable for humans, due to relatively high metals content and a lack of several proper nutrients in the flourishing plant life. In terms of development, it seemed to be several hundred million years younger than earth. There were no plants that were any more advanced than the level of the ancient fern, nothing that produced seeds or flowers, much less a good cup of coffee.
Animal life was well established on land, but did not seem to have produced anything a human couldn’t get away from by walking just a little faster than normal. All in all, a perfect planet for our bugs. Their physical makeup would probably make them a good fit for this ecology, and in fact it seemed probable that after the bugs introduced their own plant species, said species would quickly overwhelm the primitive life forms now flourishing.
After two more days of research in which the two civilians traveled to the other four continents and one large island, the Kestrel returned to the Lee. They docked inside the shuttle bay and waited inside while several crew sprayed it down to ensure that no life forms could get a free ride, something remotely possible even after exposure to hard vacuum. Afterwards the two crew plus the civilians remained inside the Kestrel while tests were run to verify that they hadn’t brought anything up with them inside the ship, but we didn’t have time to wait in orbit while that went on. We also didn’t believe that there was anything to fear from the life on that planet. It was another life form that had us worried.
We accelerated out of orbit under very high acceleration, this time heading directly north of the elliptic. As soon as we were far enough away from the planet’s gravity well we jumped. We hadn’t jumped into the solar system because we couldn’t be positive we beat the aliens to their supposed destination. Now that we had, or at least arrived while they were out, we could jump without fear that we would be giving away a crucial technology.
We jumped twice and came out within a half million kilometers of our fleet, a very precise jump that didn’t land us so close that we alarmed someone with an itchy trigger finger, but also didn’t mean we would have a long run to reach our impatient admiral.
We had been gone for almost exactly twenty two days, and as I’d predicted, our clocks were almost one entire second off the time measured on the Constitution, our flag ship and official keeper of the time, at least until we returned to Jupiter.
Even before our ships were inside the outer layers of the fleet scouts the admiral ordered both of us to board the two Kestrels and dock on the Constitution. He was in a hurry, and the probable enemy was now within one medium jump of our position.
It was assumed that bug scanners would not yet have determined that a battle took place, although some fleet staff weenie had determined that this was going to occur fairly soon. That piece of information might well confuse the hell out of these beings, who had been on the road for two thousand odd years without ever finding even one single hitch hiker, tourist trap or comfort station.
The admiral convened a large staff meeting and everyone sat in silence as our two civilians went over their findings. Interestingly, they demonstrated more nervousness in front of the admiral than they did on the planet. He had numerous reputations, including one for being both ruthless and pitiless wherever corruption and incompetence cropped up. About five minutes into their description the admiral interrupted them and asked, “Short answer; is it habitable for anyone we know?”
The lead scientist said, “Yes sir, it is quite suitable for the bugs, insofar as we understand their requirements.” Admiral Lee nodded his head and asked, “And, for humans?” The scientist shook her head emphatically, “Not even close, sir. We’d be poisoned inside of a week.”
He nodded his head and asked, “Anyone have a thought as to how these aliens could be heading directly for a planet both singularly habitable and distant?”
Nobody a
nswered and he grinned, “What, no young officer, perhaps a captain of a Dresden, willing to stand up and look like a fool?” He slowly turned his head to look directly at me and I could hear a few poorly muted snorts. I stood up and said, “Sir, as a Dresden captain, I’m willing.” He nodded his head and said, “So I’ve heard.”
This time there was general laughter. I waited until the room was quiet and continued, “Sir, we saw no evidence to indicate that the, um, alien species commonly referred to as ‘bugs’ had been in the system. We saw no evidence that they hadn’t either. If they have not physically visited that system, and were heading for it, it would be logical to assume that they were reasonably certain that it would be suitable to their purposes, which purposes would be assumed to be the new bug residential address. We have two pieces of evidence to work with: first, the fifth bug mother ship had been under way but not under acceleration for nearly a year, an exceptionally long period of time to not be under acceleration. It was on a heading that would take it to within on AU of that system. Second, we have the sixth fleet, which is believed to be from the mother planet, and in pursuit of the five colony fleets that attacked us and were subsequently destroyed. That combined fleet is heading directly for a rendezvous with the four colony mother ships which had reunited after running separately for twenty or so centuries. Twice is no coincidence. They do not possess FTL, leaving one possibility that we, Captain Turner and I, think fits the known evidence: they peeked.”
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 76