Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  “I thought we had a deal!” shouted Smith furiously.

  “We have every intention of honoring it,” said Brand. “You have the sole right to establish trade with the worlds you named, and once the war is over and you are released from active duty, we wish you good luck in your enterprise. But until then, Mr. Smith,” he concluded with a nasty smile, “your ass is ours.”

  Omera smiled to himself as he went back into his office. Somehow he just knew Salimander Smith would find a way to turn his time in the Fleet to good use. He sat down at his desk again and wondered for a moment if ancient Egyptian administrators had ever had to worry about traveling salesmen. Probably they did. That hadn’t changed much down through the centuries.

  He sighed and got back to work.

  BATTLESTATION

  One of the most important lessons the Fleet learned in its war against the Syndicate of Families was the near impossibility of supporting a fleet parsecs from its normal bases. The Fleet’s first solution was to stockpile materials for up to a hundred major bases and repair centers, to be transported and set up behind the advancing Fleet units. This concept was discarded after one such modular base was assembled, when the cost was calculated. The immensity of the Alliance was so great that it was becoming impossibly expensive just to guard all of its borders, much less prepare for offensive operations beyond them. Yet it was inevitable that someday such a war would have to be fought.

  This next solution was to create a mobile unit capable of supporting a large fleet. Fewer of these would be needed, and they could be kept secure within the heart of the Alliance serving a useful purpose from completion. Kilometers across, the station would contain the most massive warp drives ever attempted. Only recent breakthroughs resulting from the combination of Family and Alliance science even allowed for their construction.

  Unfortunately the cost of one of these mobile stations was immense. The construction of the first had been proposed over thirty years earlier, and similar proposals by the Fleet had been rejected by the Alliance Senate eleven times in the next twenty years. Eventually all the designs were filed away, but not forgotten. The necessity of sending a fleet halfway across the galaxy reopened the opportunity for the creation of the mobile base. A series of seven were proposed by the Quartermasters Corps on Port, Tau Ceti. The funding for just one was approved by a very close vote.

  To the dismay of the refugees, the mobile base would take almost three years to complete. Construction of this mobile base began around Tau Ceti when someone finally realized that the base would need to defend itself. It would be operating ahead of the Fleet lines, not behind them. This would add to its cost, but give it needed “survivability.” The Senate balked at this added cost. The release to the Trivid stations raised enough public support that another compromise was finally reached. The station would be armed, but almost half its space would now be set aside for private interests. In return the corporations and a consortium of Indies would contribute a portion of the cost and provide a number of construction crews. Production continued and the mobile base became the first Fleet battlestation.

  GLOBLIN’S CHILDREN

  by Christopher Stasheff

  Globin had been the human leader of a band of Khalian pirates on Barataria, leading his Weasel crews against humans of any political stripe.

  Globin had become the head of a vast trading combine and the architect of Khalian integration into the human-dominated Alliance—not because he wanted to, but because it was the only route to survival for the one-time outlaws who depended on him.

  Now Globin was old and tired. Well, not really old, considering that he was only eighty, and humans of his day regularly lived to the age of 130, remaining in full vigor past their centennials—but he felt old. And weary. And, most especially, bored.

  He was satisfied that he had established a stable government on Barataria that would continue to be viable and democratic without him, and he was certain that he was no longer necessary to anyone, least of all himself.

  Then the voice of Plasma, his secretary, sounded from the desktop speaker. “Globin.”

  Globin gave the grille a jaundiced glance, then sighed as he felt the weight of his office settle again. “Yes, Plasma?”

  “A new ship has appeared at the Galactic West frontier, Globin—a ship of a type that has never been seen before. To demands that it identify itself, it responds with unintelligible gibberish.”

  Globin frowned. “Interesting, but scarcely vital to the welfare of Barataria.”

  “True, Globin. I thought it might be of interest to you personally.”

  Globin smiled; Plasma had been his aide for most of his adult years, and knew that inside the statesman’s hide lurked the scholar that had never quite been buried under the avalanche of bureaucracy. “You thought correctly. From which direction does it come?”

  “From the interior of the galaxy, Globin.”

  “The interior! This could be interesting! Is there any video feed yet?”

  “None for the public.” Plasma’s voice hid amusement.

  It was well founded; so far as they knew, the Alliance was still blissfully unaware the Baratarians had long since gained access to their sentry system’s scramble code.

  “Relay it to my screen.” Globin swiveled about to the wall in which his view-screen was embedded, a meter high and two wide.

  The screen darkened, showing night pierced with the sparks that were stars. One glowed much brighter than all the rest, and Globin reached for his controls, keying in the code for expansion. The brightest spark loomed larger and larger until it filled the screen—a collection of cylinders bound together with a coil, looking like nothing so much as a collection of ancient tin cans tied together with baling wire. And they did seem ancient—scarred and pitted by collisions with countless meteorites, splotched by mysterious burns. That spaceship had come a long, long way—and at a guess, the aliens hadn’t wanted to spend much energy on force-field screens.

  Either that, or they didn’t know how to make them.

  Voices accompanied the picture, the voices of the sentry who had spotted the ship and his senior officer.

  “You’re getting what?”

  “An outrageous radiation reading, Captain. I’d guess their shielding broke down.”

  Or, thought Globin, they hadn’t had any to begin with—like the early torch-ships, which had shielding only between the engines and the ship itself. Why shield empty space from radiation?

  “Could be they’re using really raw fuel,” a more mature voice answered.

  Globin nodded slowly. If this species hadn’t bothered developing more advanced engines, they might even be using U-235. Why go after higher elements, when the lower would do?

  Had they even thought of fusion?

  But surely they had to, if they had come so far.

  Something else bothered him. Why five separate cylinders? Perhaps one for the engines, but why the other four?

  A niggling suspicion joggled his brain. Could there be more than one life-form aboard? Could they need separate environments for separate species? Or perhaps . . .

  He felt the compulsion seize him, the hunger for knowledge, and knew it wouldn’t go away until it was fulfilled. He would study everything he could about these aliens, at every odd moment, until he was satiated. It was the old, old hunger that had driven him into scholarship, and was akin to the lust for revenge that had driven him to find the Merchant worlds. It was the same driving appetite that had led him to learn as much as he could about the commerce of the Alliance, and had allowed him to hew out a niche for Barataria.

  He hoped this hunger would work for the good of his adopted people, too.

  An hour later Plasma came in with some papers needing signatures and found Globin still staring at the screen, listening to the voices, ideas whirling in his head.

  The conference was over; the delegation from Khalia filed out, their leader pausing to chat a little longer with Globin before they left. As soon
as he was ont the door, Plasma was in. “The aliens have docked at a western sentry station, Globin! I have been recording it for two hours! They are attempting to communicate!”

  Globin stared, changing frames of reference in his mind. Then he frowned. “Alien! With so many races in the Alliance, how can you speak the word ‘alien’?”

  “Truly alien, Globin! Like no creatures we have ever seen before!” The secretary turned to the wall screen, keyed it in, and selected a channel.

  Globin turned back to his desk. “Let us see it as it is now, Plastna! I will view the beginning later!”

  He dropped into his chair to see the collection of cylinders, scarred and pitted. It was held to the dock by magnetic grapples only—of course; there was no guarantee that an oxygen atmosphere would not hurt its occupants, so there could be no boarding tube yet.

  Behind him, Plasma said, “Fighters came out to inspect, and found an alien floating at the end of a tether with his arms up and hands spread open. They took that as the sign of peace, and towed the ship back to the station. I am sure there are a triad of blast cannon focused on it even now.”

  And a projectile rifle aimed at each alien, Globin guessed for the top of one of the giant tin cans had opened downward, and four spacesuited figures stood on it. One was more or less anthropoid, standing on two limbs and having two others just below the sphere of the helmet—but it was broad and swollen, so much so that Globin had a fleeting notion that its suit was inflated, with nothing inside. Another stood on four legs with two more limbs extended for grasping, and a long extension behind that was probably a tail.

  A tail? On a sentient being? How could its race not have evolved past the need for one?

  Another alien stood on six, and one on none. All had extensions that looked like arms, though it was hard to tell in a spacesuit—but only the bearlike one had anything resembling shoulders. The one without legs was smallest, scarcely a meter long—and long it was, for its suit stretched out horizontally, floating in midair by some kind of field effect that was presumably built into the suit.

  “Detail!” Globin pressed a ruby square on his desktop, and the picture enlarged. He maneuvered a joystick set next to the ruby square, and one single helmet filled the meter-wide screen. It was heavily frosted on the outside, but one square area was kept clear, presumably by heating. Reflection made the face within difficult to see, but Globin could make out a muzzle and large warm eyes. The face looked like that of a bear, but a very warmhearted bear. Globin knew it was completely illogical, but he felt himself warming to the alien.

  He pushed the joystick to the right, and the bear-face slid out of the screen as the helmet of the centauroid slid in. Globin could make out sleek, streamlined jaws, and atop them eyes that were only dim glints, but enough to make Globin shiver—the creature might be sentient, but it was far from human.

  He pushed the joystick once more, and shuddered again. The six-legged creature’s helmet was in front of its body, not on top, and the face within bore clear convex lenses for eyes four inches across, fangs and hair shrouding everything else—at least, Globin thought it was hair; it was hard to tell through the frost.

  All this time, he’d been absorbing the audio. A commentator, carefully neutral, was saying, “The ursine creature has presented a diagram of an oxygen atom; the centauroid and arachnid have presented similar diagrams of methane molecules. All have made sounds as they pointed to the diagrams, and the computer has associated those sounds with the names of the compounds. From this, we surmise that the ursine is an oxygen breather, though judging from the frost on its suit, it is accustomed to a much warmer median temperature than any Alliance species.”

  Globin pushed the joystick down and over—and received a shock. The horizontal alien had no helmet—only two clear bulbs, within which were antennas. They did not move; the creature might have been an inert lump. But one of the “arms” held a diagram of a molecule—no, two diagrams, Globin saw. He frowned and expanded the view, and recognized the second diagram—it was a silicon atom.

  Globin stared.

  “The meaning of the second diagram held by the fourth alien is unclear,” the commentator said.

  But it was very clear, to Globin. The creature lived in an oxygen atmosphere, but was made of silicon. He felt a prickling creep up across his back as he stared at it—a living, organic computer.

  Then he remembered that that was what he himself was, that and considerably more, and the prickling went away. Still, how much he could learn from the study of such a creature!

  The bearish alien touched its own chest and chuckled something that sounded, to human ears, like “Gerson. Gerson.”

  “The alien seems to be naming itself,” murmured the commentator. “But is ‘Gerson’ its name, or the name of its species?”

  The centauroid was touching its chest now, fluting “Silber.” The six-legged alien gestured toward itself and said, in tones like metal scraping, “Itszxlksh.” Then another voice, rich and resonant, thrummed, “Ekchartok.”

  Globin frowned, and peered more closely. The arm of the horizontal alien had begun to move toward itself—but slowly, very slowly. He wondered what means it had employed to generate the sound.

  He was still watching its movement as the picture disappeared, and the commentator himself came onto the screen. “Since this scene was recorded, the aliens have been in constant contact with a growing team of Alliance scientists. They have established a very basic vocabulary . . .”

  The picture dissolved back into the first.

  “ . . . by associating sounds with pictures of basic objects,” said the commentator’s voice, “then with sketches of simple action verbs. With a thousand such words entered, the translation computer has been able to enter into dialogue with the aliens, exchanging descriptions and explanations of more complex terms. With five thousand words learned by both teams, meaningful dialogue has begun to take place.”

  Globin nodded, so intent that he scarcely saw his secretary. The procedure was correct—in fact, it was classical. But what had they learned from their communication?

  “The four aliens are representatives of four different species,” the commentator explained, “and our computers have learned four different languages, plus a fifth that is apparently a lingua franca. According to the visitors’ report, they are only four of a score or more of races that inhabit the stars near the galactic core.”

  Globin stared. Just how far had those visitors come, anyway?

  Thirty thousand light-years. Of course. He knew that. Approximately. Give or take a thousand light-years.

  A spacesuited human stepped into the picture, asking, “Why have you come here?” The translation computer issued a combination of growls and whistles that Globin presumed constituted the same idea in the aliens’ lingua franca.

  In answer, the bearish alien growled and barked. The computer translated, “We were attacked by alien beings.” He pressed the top of his card, and the diagram of the oxygen atom disappeared. The card flickered and darkened into a picture of ships in space—a vast flotilla, without any apparent organization, though Globin felt instinctively that the pattern was there, if he could only take the time to seek it out. He keyed his controls to expand that picture on the “card” and found that the ships were of a design not even remotely familiar, with a strangeness about it that somehow grated, arousing apprehension and dread in equal measure.

  “They came from the northwest spiral arm,” the computer stated to the accompaniment of the bearish one’s growls. “All efforts to communicate with them have failed; they make no response at all. We call them ‘Ichtons’; in our communal language, it means ‘the destroyers.’ ”

  The picture faded away and returned—but now it showed the strange ships descending toward a tawny planet. “At first,” said the computer, “they settled on several uninhabited worlds. They had tenuous oxygen atmospheres and some primitive plant life, but had never evolved sentient forms. Accordingly, we left them alo
ne, but set probes to keep watch on them. Within a decade, we saw that their planets had become overcrowded with billions of Ichton workers. The soil had been torn away to bedrock, refuse had been piled high, and all forms of life had been exterminated.

  “Then they left these used-up planets and attacked worlds inhabited by sentient races.”

  The picture dissolved into a scene of battle, showing a horde of insectoid creatures engulfing a band of desperate reptilian creatures who bore weapons that looked like muskets modified to fit an allosaur, but that fired blasts of light. The view narrowed, one single attacker swelling in the screen even as its image froze. Globin shuddered; the creature looked like the result of an unnatural coupling between a locust and an iguana, The trunk of the body was covered by a hard exoskeleton made up of sliding sheets. This carapace extended over the top of its head. It stood on four legs and used a third pair in front to hold a weapon that seemed to be little but a tube with a squeeze bulb on the end—but the chitinous claw rested on a button, not the bulb. There were three of those claws on each “hand.” The head looked like a locust’s, except for the eyes, which were much smaller than those of the terrestrial insect.

  It was not so much that the creature looked fearsome, as that it was utterly, totally in contradiction of everything he had ever thought of as a sentient being—and from the silent ferocity with which it had attacked, it seemed completely soulless and mechanical.

  The creature shrank back into the middle of its swarm; the tableau thawed, motion restored, and Globin watched the pocket of reptilians being engulfed by the horde. They streamed by, chitinous thoraxes and threshing legs and whipping tails, and when they had passed, there was not a trace of the reptilians.

  “These are only a very few of a relatively small band of Ichtons,” the Gerson explained, “but even so, they were enough to overwhelm the reptilian colony on what was once a lovely and fertile planet. The same has since happened to the home planet, and to those of three other species. On any world they conquer, the Ichtons exterminate all higher forms of life, especially sentient species, then begin exploiting the planet’s resources.”