Battleship Indomitable (Galactic Liberation Book 2)

by B. V. Larson

  “Close enough. What is your relationship with the Mutuality?”

  “We decline to answer.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “One predator does not dishonor another.”

  Straker exchanged glances with Engels. “Opter Hive, I seek an agreement between you and my political entity, called ‘the Liberation.’ Is this possible?”

  “Many things are possible. Few things are probable.”

  “What might you want from us?” asked Straker.

  “We cannot say via this narrow channel. You must come to us.”

  “Come to you?” Straker asked. “In what sense?”

  “You, the Liberator, must board our nest ship so that we may understand one another.”

  “You’ll give me safe passage and return me unharmed when I want to leave?”

  “We shall.”

  Engels stood again, immediately concerned. She knew how Straker was, and—

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.” He signaled to cut the vidcom.

  “Derek!” she hissed, taking three long strides that placed her in front of him. “That’s insane! You’re the heart of this whole movement. You said your mission is to liberate humanity, and now you’re wandering off to talk with aliens in person? What if they kill you? What if they transit out with you as a hostage?”

  “It’s worth the risk to make allies. These Opters are obviously powerful and technologically advanced. Probably not as powerful as either human empire, but look at them! Would you want to fight them?”

  “No, I wouldn’t!”

  “So I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. They made a deal with the Mutuality, so they’ll make a deal with me. That’s why they’re here.”

  Engels put her hands on her slim hips. “Yes, they’re here... How’d they know you’d be here to talk to?”

  Straker rubbed his palms together and walked around the holo-table, deliberately avoiding her eyes by looking at the display, it seemed to her. “They must have sidespace-capable spy ships lurking in the outer reaches of the human systems along their border with the Mutuality. It only makes sense. They saw what was happening, picked up our transmissions and the newsvid broadcasts from the various planets… Perhaps they made an educated guess as to where I’d go next and waited for me here. There may be several nest ships waiting in different places...”

  Engels mulled that over. “Okay, maybe. But remember, they’re aliens. They don’t think like we do, and they might have unknown tech we don’t—just like the Ruxins came up with Archers and underspace.”

  “Got it. Now I have to go.”

  She touched his arm, suddenly afraid she’d never see him again. “I applaud you for trying to make peace instead of fighting, but…”

  “I’ll be fine. Any beings this smart have to know kidnapping or harming me won’t benefit them.”

  “Unless they think they can end the Liberation right here and now, and go back to the status quo with the Mutuality. Maybe they value stability so much they’ll sell us out.”

  Straker shook his head. “I don’t get the sense they’re the backstabbing type.”

  “You have no idea!” Engels chewed her lip. “I wish Loco were here. He’s more intuitive about people than either of us.”

  Straker scowled. “I had to send him off to get rid of Tachina—because you wanted to.”

  “Hey, don’t put this on me. I wanted her gone, not him. You gave Loco the orders, not me.”

  “Guess I’m starting to miss the little jerk.” He leaned in to give her a gentle kiss on the lips. “So I’m off to see the Opters. Wish me luck.”

  “I’ll wish you sanity—not that it’ll do any good.”

  ***

  Straker took the fastest shuttle in Wolverine’s bay, piloting it himself. He didn’t want to risk anyone else’s life in addition to his own. His flying skills had improved a lot with plenty of simulation time during the sidespace trips between the stars.

  He’d donned a battlesuit for the trip, but took no weapon except his Ruxin squid spear, which he grabbed on a whim. The suit itself could be a weapon, however: two hundred kilos of powered armor with full life support for half a day. If things went terribly wrong, it might give these aliens something to remember him by.

  The screen of drones parted slightly as his shuttle flew toward the nest ship, but otherwise ignored him. The mother vessel seemed larger than an equivalent human vessel because of its spherical shape. The hexagonal plates and fittings on its outside, each perhaps ten meters across, reminded him of a beehive’s interior.

  That would make sense, if the picture Governor Dubchek sent were representative of an Opter. It had looked like an overgrown bee. He tried to remember if other insects like ants and wasps made hexagonal structures, and then shrugged to himself. At Academy, the professor of exobiology had pointed out that although form followed function, it was dangerous to think similar-appearing creatures from different worlds would actually act the same, even if they occupied the same biological niches.

  Still, a hive was a hive, and there were only so many basic patterns for life to manifest. Flying, communal, with exoskeletons, builders of nests…he had to make some guesses if he wanted to get ahead of the game and figure out how to handle these creatures.

  The nest ship rotated as he approached, and one hexagon opened like a flower with six triangular petals, revealing a brightly lit interior. That seemed an obvious enough invitation, so he lined up and piloted carefully in on impellers and cold thrusters.

  Once inside, his shuttle seemed to stabilize on its own, so he shut down all propulsion. It was drawn swiftly down a short shaft—apparently by invisible magnetics—through an airlock, and into an interior space with a wall of open hexagonal niches. His craft was reversed and backed up inside one of them, nose outward. Other niches contained various machines, possibly utility drones, in no apparent order. About half were empty.

  Straker sealed his battlesuit, hefted his spear, and exited carefully from the front hatch, as the larger rear door looked to be blocked. There appeared to be little gravity, perhaps one-tenth of a G or less.

  His external sensors showed the atmosphere to be breathable for humans, so he cracked his helmet slightly and sniffed. The air smelled sweet, like flowers, so he opened it up fully, his faceplate sliding up and into a recess above his head.

  There seemed to be no obvious way down to the floor thirty meters below except by climbing from niche to niche—or jumping. Given the low gravity, that wasn’t a problem, so he stepped off the ledge and let himself fall. His suit had jets too, but there was no need. He landed lightly.

  Straker saw a hexagon open on the wall high above and three flying creatures exited. They flew straight toward him and came to a stop three meters in front of him, their transparent wings beating lazily to keep them airborne.

  They resembled the bees in the Tanglefoot picture, though they had streaks of blue and green on their bodies as well as yellows and oranges. They emitted no sound other than the soft susurration of their flight. Somehow, he expected them to buzz, though logically that sound would be generated by wings, wings that now waved more like sea-creature fins than true instruments of flight. Probably, the low gravity made their movements effortless, and in higher gravity they would be working much harder.

  The three rotated and danced for a moment, and then turned as one toward a floor-level hex-door, which opened as they approached. They twirled in front of it as if telling him to come along, so he did, walking carefully in the low gravity. His stabilization jets hissed from time to time, compensating for his tendency to push off too hard, and he concentrated on minimizing his movements.

  Everything he saw other than the bees themselves—the floors, the walls, the fittings—were made of manufactured materials. Somehow he’d thought the ship might be one organic hive inside, with biological secretions and bizarre organic machinery, but other than the hexagonal patterns it seemed surprisingly conventional. These Opte
rs were obviously not dominated by complex instinct like the hive insects Straker knew. As with humans and Ruxins, they were highly capable, intelligent tool users. He resolved not to underestimate them just because they looked like bugs the size of dogs.

  Side corridors branched off the passage he trod. None of them were perpendicular and none were level. All described 60- or 120-degree angles to the walls and floor, in three dimensions. Down the 60-degree tunnels—the ones to his front as he walked—he occasionally saw bees flying, usually in threes but sometimes in clusters of seven or more.

  But Straker couldn’t see down the 120-degree tunnels, the ones that angled acutely back from his direction of travel. He closed his faceplate and activated his wraparound optics, tiny sensors all over his helmet giving him a 360-degree view on his HUD… and with those sensors, he found something interesting.

  Far back within darkened passages, much larger things lurked, things with triangular heads the size of the dog-sized bees, sporting compound eyes, antennae and mandibles. He couldn’t see their bodies, but they must be man-sized at least. They clearly believed they were hidden, or at least shadowed, but Straker’s suit sensors saw far outside the human visible spectrum.

  As smart as these Opters were, he had to wonder if they’d made a mistake—or if they were letting themselves be seen, much as humans might post heavily armed guards discreetly out of a foreign diplomat’s ordinary view. Quite possibly they wanted him to know he was being watched—but by what?

  Warriors, he guessed. Ants had their workers and warriors and drones and queens. Presumably these hive insectoids had their specialized types as well. No matter. He knew going in that he was putting himself in their clutches.

  The dog-bee triad led him up and down branching corridors that reminded him of technological ant tunnels in one of those glassed-in displays at a zoo. He let his HUD map them, and when he finally debouched into a cleared spherical space, he was sure he’d reached the center of the enormous nest-ship.

  Call it the bridge.

  Within, groups of dog-bees flew here and there, alighting and departing with busy, unknown purpose. Perhaps they were messengers. Larger, antlike bugs with no wings, massing perhaps fifty kilos each, crewed stations stuck to the inner surface of the globe. Their colors tended toward red and black.

  Now he saw the warriors, if such they were. If the messengers were shaped like bees and worker-techs resembled ants, the warriors appeared as giant yellow-orange wasps, with complex wings folded on their backs. These clung rather than flew, four legs for walking and two forelegs or arms holding rifle-like weapons. Harnesses held small devices, and perhaps ammunition.

  But what really caught his attention, the creature the warriors guarded, was one he presumed to be the queen. She was ten times the size of the largest dog-bee, white with purple stripes, reminding him of an insectoid zebra. The impression he had was of a praying mantis, with oversized limbs folded in front of her, sitting comfortably on a dais.

  Straker raised his spear and open palm. “I greet you, Opter queen.” He figured if they could translate to Earthan on the comlink, they should be able to understand him here.

  Loud, machine-generated words emanated from all around him. “I greet you, Liberator. We are the Voice of the Hive in this place, the Nest-Master. We would taste your scent. Please place your sting on the ground and open your shell.”

  Straker put his spear on the floor and opened his faceplate, but set it for quick-close in case of any emergency. “Is this sufficient?”

  The queen leaned in and waved her antennae near his face. “It is. You smell different from other humans. Why?”

  “I don’t know. We live on many planets, eat different things. We’ve probably adapted to various environments over the last thousand years.” Straker decided not to explain about his genetic engineering, or the Hok biotech that had permanently changed him.

  “We have a received memory of some of these scent-markers, but they are associated with the human warrior genotype. Are you a hybrid, or a different class?”

  Straker’s mind went into overdrive. So it seemed the Opters considered themselves all of one race, with different classes or genotypes. Until now, he hadn’t been certain they weren’t some kind of multi-species symbiosis. Perhaps they had been in the past and had adapted—or had been adapted—to their current synthesis.

  Because his suit was recording everything, it also made sense to get as much information as he could for the brainiacs to pore over. That meant asking questions. “How do you classify humans? Telling me will help me answer.”

  “Our exobiologists classify you as male and female, with adult subclasses of warrior and worker. Other probable subclasses include ruler, researcher and machine-controller. Our scientists are in disagreement about the possibility of many further sub-classes, as your impure methods of crossbreeding result in an infinite variety of hybrids.”

  Straker was amused by the queen describing human crossbreeding as impure. “Does our mixing of types bother you?”

  “It does not perturb us. We are not primitives, unable to understand or empathize with those different from ourselves.”

  “Empathize… Is that why you agreed to share the planet we call Tanglefoot?”

  “We saw no reason to risk Hive War with your species. The Nest War on the planet demonstrated our local superiority, but we acknowledge the greater reach of humanity across the stars. We have not yet run out of room to expand in other directions.”

  Straker tensed. “And when you do?”

  The queen shifted and settled herself. “That is a question for our descendants. We estimate at least twelve thousand years before this spiral arm is filled with sapients. Technological progress may delay our conflict, or perhaps biological adaptation will make it moot.”

  “Biological adaptation?” Straker asked, his curiosity piqued.

  “Certainly. Right now, both the Hive and humanity crave the same kind of green worlds, worlds that nurture carbon-based, water-dependent, oxygen-using life. However, designed adaptations, what you call genetic engineering, could expand the possibilities greatly, thus delaying or even eliminating the need for conflict.”

  Straker stopped himself from pacing to think. It simply wouldn’t work with a battlesuit in low gravity. These Opters thought a long way ahead, much further than he cared to. Were they simply being prudent, setting things up for the next few centuries or millennia? Or was there something they wanted right now?

  He didn’t believe he could play information games with such deep-thinking beings, so… only one way to find out. To ask. “Why have you brought me here?”

  “To taste you in the flesh.”

  “The way your translator puts it, that sounds like you wish to eat me.”

  The queen waved her forearms. “Forgive us. Your Earthan idioms are at fault. More exactly, we wish to use our sensory organs to noninvasively examine you in person.”

  “Me particularly.”

  “Yes, you, the Liberator.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “We understand your hierarchy is different from our own. You are the human in which authority for your sub-polity is concentrated, so it behooves us to know you particularly. Only then can we have Hive-dealings with you, instead of mere Nest-dealings. To this end, we still await your answer.”

  “Sorry, which answer?”

  “Of what class or subclass are you?”

  Straker crossed his arms as well as he could in the bulky suit. “I guess I’m a male warrior-ruler.”

  “You guess?”

  “We don’t make distinctions like you do. That’s a guess, trying to conform to your system.”

  “That is most kind of you. With that established, we must agree on how to proceed.”

  “Proceed? How?”

  The queen bent her antennae toward Straker and fixed him with her wide-set multiple eyes. “Yes. That is what we must discuss.”

  “How about you stay in your territory and we stay in
ours? That seems simple.”

  “You are in Hive War with the Mutuality. Your respective territories change quickly. Our arrangement is with them. We must have an arrangement with you, otherwise there may be misunderstandings.”

  “Sure, I get it. So, like I said, you don’t move into any systems already settled by humanity, any humanity, and my people won’t move into systems settled by you Opters. Tanglefoot can remain divided as it is. The only difference is that the human part is now under my rule instead of the Mutuality’s.”

  “We agree, and will honor this arrangement. You and we will now share nectar.”

  A group of three dog-bees settled near a large bowl that sat upon a flat surface near the queen. Each in turn spat out, or vomited, perhaps a liter of liquid into it. The queen picked up the bowl with both of her four-fingered “hands,” and added a large drop of her own effluvium from her mouth, and then held out the bowl to Straker.

  He took it and spat into it, hoping the Opters knew what they were doing. “Do I drink?”

  “Yes…” she sighed. “Or, if you wish, I shall drink first.”

  “No, no, it’s fine.” If they wanted to kill him, they could have swarmed him a long time ago, and he had the gut feeling that this queen meant him no harm. So, he lifted the bowl to his lips and let a tiny taste meet his lips.

  The flavor exploded in his mouth like the finest of liqueurs. So wonderful was it that he swayed on his feet, nearly overwhelmed. He couldn’t keep himself from drinking half the bowl, each mouthful a sensorium of taste and smell and the suggestion of a lover’s touch. Something in the back of his head shot a rush of orgasmic pleasure throughout his body.

  Gently, the queen took the bowl from him and lapped with her curling tongue. “The nectar is sweet, yes?”

  “Yes,” he gasped. “Cosmos! That’s good.”

  “We can supply you with all you need for yourself and those close to you.”

  He should have been suspicious, but at that moment all he could think about was the experience that nearly locked his muscles with ecstasy. “Yes. I need a lot.”