by Ian Douglas
System Outskirts
Aquila Space
2315 hrs GMT
The Xul sentry probe had waited, silent, unrecognized, for a long time…ever since the vicious series of actions resulting in the extermination of Species 3119.
The ancient Hunters of the Dawn knew this star system as 1901–002, the second system of Galactic Sector 1901, and it possessed an inherent importance simply by being one of those rare and far-scattered suns possessing a Gateway.
But System 1901–002 was important also because, once, it had been part of Species 3119’s small but troublesome collective. The extermination of Species 3119 had not been as serious a problem as the genocidal war against the Associative, half a million years ago, but it had still given We Who Are cause for serious concern. Somehow, despite all of the Xul’s technological resources, Species 3119 had evolved an extremely advanced and deadly technological base, one capable of exploding stars.
Even the largest hunterships of the Xul could not withstand the flood of energy loosed by the destruction of a sun.
Long debate had followed the final destruction of Species 3119. How had they managed to evolve such an advanced technology without alerting those elements of the Xul galactic collective tasked with identifying threats to Xul survival? The question had become academic, of course, with the destruction of the last stronghold of the bitterly suicidal 3119s…but there had remained a genuine concern that other hold-outs might have escaped the notice of the giant hunterships, might have survived to rebuild their culture, their numbers, and their star-annihilating technologies.
And so Xul scout-probes had been seeded within each of the star systems scattered across Sector 1901. Carefully disguised as solitary lumps of carbonaceous rock and ices a few kilometers across, orbiting in the cold, dark, outer reaches of each system, these probes used almost no energy and therefore were essentially undetectable. The sentient mechanisms within each slept through the millennia, until passive sensors on their surfaces registered activity within certain narrow parameters.
Such activity was evident now in the probe orbiting two light-hours from the local star.
A fleet, a very large fleet, was coming through the 1901–002 Gateway.
As yet, the Xul sentience didn’t have enough data to be able to identify the operators of that fleet. Possibly, the fleet’s arrival represented the reemergence of Species 3119, after thousands of years of quiescence. Equally possibly, the fleet was that of another alien technic species, quite possibly of Species 2824, which had also caused unexpected difficulties for We Who Are in the recent past.
If it was Species 2824, their fleet’s arrival was of particularly serious import, for that species originated in Sector 2420, ten to fifteen hundred light-years distant. They must be learning to use the gateway network, and that could have unfortunate repercussions for We Who Are.
Even more ominous was their presence here, in one of the ancient systems of Species 3119. The alien fleet’s arrival suggested that they knew about the war with 3119, knew how close 3119 had come to stopping We Who Are…and might be looking for clues to the Weapon 3119 had employed.
Such…curiosity could not be permitted.
After recording the event, now two hours old, the Xul probe powered up, made a final internal check of all systems, then shimmered in a roil of twisting space/time, and was gone.
This time there could be no delay. An immediate and overwhelming response was absolutely necessary.
The supremacy, no, the very survival of We Who Are was at stake.
22
1012.1102
UCS Hermes
Stargate
Aquila Space
0945 hrs GMT
General Alexander hadn’t gotten much sleep that night.
Not that abstract terms like night and day had much to do with the operation of a starship on deployment. By convenience and by tradition, 1MIEF operated on Greenwich Mean Time, but, in fact, all ship stations had to be fully manned at all times. Besides, ship captains, to say nothing of the MIEF commanders, Lieutenant General Alexander and Vice Admiral Taggart, were by definition always on duty, no matter what their actual state of consciousness.
He’d spent much of the night, so-called, monitoring the incoming tide of data transmitted first by Recon Sword, then by Marines of the 55th MARS off the Samar who had arrived some hours later. Currently, forty-five Marines of First Platoon, Alpha Company, were in the large subsurface chamber Recon Sword had discovered. The Marines, guided by intelligence and xenosophontologist personnel on board the Hermes, had spread out through the chamber, trying to gain an understanding of just what it was for.
The best guess so far was that each of those curious cylinders contained an alien held in suspended animation—an analogue of the old cybe-hibe capsules once used by the Corps on long, speed-of-light deployments between the stars centuries before. The conduits appeared to carry life-support fluids and power. While the alien technology was still difficult to understand, certain things—electrical pumps and fiber-optic cables, for example—were recognizable as such no matter how strange their outward appearance or form.
“I’m not sure,” Alexander was telling one of the MIEF intelligence officers, “that poking holes in their equipment is the right way to get started with them. Especially if those cylinders represent some sort of suspended-animation canister. What if we kill someone inside?”
“That, General,” Colonel Jen Willis replied, “won’t happen. Nano microprobes are perfectly safe. And the data we get will tell us a great deal about alien physiology.”
The technique was simple enough, Alexander knew. A tiny amount of specially programmed nano, consisting of nano-D and the raw materials for the probe itself, was placed on the surface of the device or container being sampled. The disassemblers ate a literally microscopic hole through the material. As soon as they detected a change in the material, the probe nano would insinuate itself through the hole, growing itself into a variety of submicroscopic probes. If there was air or liquid inside the container, the probes would identify it and radio the results to the Marines outside. If there were electronics inside, the probes would trace and sample them, transmitting information on what types of signals, at what voltages, were being encountered. The whole probe process occurred at such a tiny scale, however, that even living organisms could be sampled without harming them. Doctors used similar means to diagnose illness, with patients who lacked their own internal nanosystems for some reason.
Still, Alexander was concerned. They as yet had no idea what they were dealing with, and the MIEF certainly could not afford to turn potential allies into enemies by a careless or clumsy misstep.
At the same time, they had to learn what they were dealing with. Continued probes of the alien computer network had amassed huge amounts of data, including more of the enigmatic cels that might be landscapes or portraits, but most of it was still unintelligible. If the xenosophontology department could come up with some clues to the nature of the aliens, the AIs might be able to work out clues to the language.
A few clues had been gleaned already.
“So…what was it you’ve named the aliens?” he asked Willis.
“‘Eulers,’” she said, giving the name its Germanic pronunciation which sounded like “Oilers.”
“And that was the name of…what did you say? A mathematician?”
“Yes, sir. Leonhard Euler. Eighteenth century…one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.”
“Okay. But I still don’t understand—”
“Whoever these people are,” Willis explained, “they seem to incorporate a lot of pretty sophisticated mathematics into what they’re doing. Our AI analyses were able to pick out basic number theory from their computer net pretty quickly, and give us an understanding of some of what they’re saying. We were able to determine the electrical signals they use for a lot of their communications that way…zero, one, pi, e…”
“You told me earlier they use Fibonacci
numbers as a means of encoding their computer data.”
“Well…it’s not that simple, but, essentially, yes sir. In fact, that gave us our first clue, when we figured out they were using the Fibonacci series and its relationship to phi as a means of encoding data. And one of the things we’ve picked up since is what appears to be a mathematical equation that they use to refer to themselves.”
“Yes, e to the i times pi, plus one equals zero,” Alexander said, reading the equation off of an open memory window. Math had never been his forte. “You told me. But I don’t understand what that means.”
Willis sighed. She’d explained all of this before. “Sir, the equation is significant because it very succinctly relates five of the most important, most basic of mathematical constants—e, the square root of minus one, pi, one, and zero—in a single brief, elegant statement. It also employs the mathematical notions of addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and equality. Are you with me, sir?”
“I think so….”
“It’s important to understand that these are not human concepts. The relationship of the radius of a circle to its circumference, the base of the natural logarithm, these are very special numbers that simply appear, all by themselves, in a whole host of mathematical operations. It’s as though numbers like pi and e are built into the nature of the universe itself. In fact, some mathematical philosophers have used that equation to attempt to prove the existence of God.”
“I see. And Euler?…”
“Came up with the equation, yes, sir. It’s an identity derived from the Euler Formula. Or, I should say, he was the first human to derive it. Any mathematically competent species would do the same, sooner or later, because things like e are the same whether you’re human or Xul or An or N’mah or whatever.”
“So how do you know the aliens are using this as their name for themselves?”
“Guesswork, sir. But educated guesswork. The identity appears again and again within the data streams we’ve been receiving, and it appears to be a placeholder, a way of identifying something else. So maybe it’s what they call their home planet…or maybe it’s something else entirely, but the likeliest explanation is that they’ve adopted the term to mean themselves.”
Alexander remembered having downloaded an e-pedia history, once, that had described how Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion had first deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphics and Demotic script found on the Rosetta Stone, a thousand years before. Champollion, in particular, had noticed that certain repeating collections of hieroglyphic symbols on the stone were enclosed in ovals, called cartouches, and that these seemed to correspond to certain names, like Ptolemy and Cleopatra, that appeared in the stone’s parallel text in classical Greek. The names of rulers mentioned in the text had proven to be the key to unlocking the writing of ancient Egypt. Perhaps the AIs working on translating the alien data streams were employing a similar strategy.
Of course, translating the Rosetta Stone would have been child’s play compared to this, working out the linguistic and conceptual symbolisms of the completely unknown language of a completely unknown alien species.
“An equation is a little hard to pronounce,” he said, bemused.
“For us,” Willis said. “But we don’t yet know how they speak to one another. Maybe the mathematical term sounds to them like a single, short word would to us. Or their language might be nothing but equations and numerical relationships. And they might very well not have speech as we know it, with audible sounds. Maybe they use organic radio. Or fluctuating magnetic fields. Or changing colors or skin patterns. Or, hell, as a particular smell, if they communicate by means of odors.
“The fact is, sir, we don’t know enough about their biology to even guess at what we’re working with here. That’s why we need to probe one of those capsules, very gently, very subtly. Until we do, we simply won’t have enough information to go on, and all of the data we’ve recorded so far is just, for the most part, noise.”
Alexander thought about it a moment more. “Okay,” he said, but reluctantly. “But only one, and I want you to use the absolute least amount of intrusion possible. We’re the guests, here, and uninvited guests at that. I don’t want to blunder in and break up the furniture.”
“Of course, General,” Willis said. “That goes without saying.”
When it came to understanding the alien, Alexander thought, nothing went without saying. “Just be damned careful,” he said. “We’re already fighting the Xul…and maybe the PanEuropeans as well, if the negotiations back on Earth break down. Let’s not make these guys mad at us, too!”
“Nothing,” Willis said, “can possibly go wrong.”
But Alexander wasn’t so sure. Beings that thought in terms of higher mathematics—for him that seemed to define the very term “alien.”
And the more alien these beings were, the more opportunity there would be for something to go horribly wrong.
* * * *
First Platoon, Alpha Company
RFS Alpha
Aquila Space
1010 hrs GMT
“Wait a second,” Garroway said. “They want us to fucking what?”
Gunnery Sergeant Ramsey turned, looking at the array of cylinders gleaming, rank upon rank, into the surrounding darkness. “We’re supposed to poke a hole in one of those things? I don’t like it.”
Sandre Kenyon held up the probe pack she’d just brought down from the surface. “They said the hole would be too small to cause any problem, Gunny.”
“Yeah, but I don’t like the idea of poking at stuff we don’t understand.”
“It’s fucking crazy,” Sergeant Chu said. “What if there’s, I don’t know, radiation inside those things? Or antimatter power plants?”
“That’s a hell of a lot of antimatter generators,” Garroway said, still looking at the rows of silently waiting cylinders. He could see several small, black shapes—platoon remote sensor drones—were patrolling among the cylinders, searching for anything out of the ordinary. “But that doesn’t really make sense, power plants that small, and so many of them. They look more like the old cybe-hibe capsules, y‘know?”
“That’s what Master Sergeant Barrett said,” Kenyon said. “That’s why the whiz-boys want a sample of what’s inside.”
PFC Sandre Kenyon had arrived from the outside moments ago, bringing with her the sampling kit. Radio communication with the outside was still blocked, so the Marines had fallen back on the ancient expedient of using runners—or, in this case, fliers—to maintain communications with the ships of the MIEF.
“Do you know how to use that stuff, Private?” Ramsey asked her.
“Sure, Gunny. They gave me a download.”
Ramsey hesitated. It felt to Garroway like he wasn’t at all happy with this. “Okay. Do you want to do it, or do you want to uplink the data to one of us?”
“I can do it, Gunny.” She tapped the side of her helmet. “They loaded some special software just now, to record what happens on a molecular level. The Master Sergeant wants me to hot-foot it back up there to upload the results as soon as the probe is complete.”
Another long hesitation. “Very well, Marine. Go ahead.” As she started to move toward the nearest of the cylinders, he stopped her with a gauntlet on her shoulder. “Wait one, Kenyon. The rest of you! Move back. Set up a globe perimeter, interlocking fields of fire. Chu, Takamura, Delgado, Doc…you four at the tunnel entrance. Put the remotes out at least 20 meters beyond the globe. We’re going to do this by the book.”
It took only a few moments for the Marines in the chamber to take up new positions, with Ramsey and Kenyon at the center. When each Marine signified that he or she was in position, Ramsey gave Kenyon the word. “Okay. Do it.”
Garroway was floating behind one of the cylinders about 4 meters away. Though he was facing away from the two Marines, he was able to use his helmet optics to zoom in close, in effect looking over Sandre’s shoulder as she approached the selected cylinder. The kit
she’d brought down from the surface contained four probe units, each the size and shape of a bottle cap. Selecting one, she placed it against the cylinder, then touched its upper surface with the hardwire e-contacts in the palm of her left glove. The device was activated by a mental trigger command, transmitted through the suit’s electronics.
“Okay,” Sandre said, removing her hand and maneuvering closer so that she could better see. “Probe activated. It looks like it’s—”
Something like a bright, silver shaft, needle-thin but meters long, speared from the back of Sandre’s helmet. There was no sound, of course, in the vacuum of the chamber, but the effect was like that of a gunshot. The back of Sandre’s helmet exploded outward in hurtling shards of metal, ceramic, and bone mingled with a shocking scarlet mist that swiftly froze into glittering pinpoints of ruby ice.
“Sandre!” Garroway screamed, turning sharply. Sandre’s body tumbled backward, arms flung wide, her helmet a gory tangle of shredded composites and blood-ice.
“Belay that!” Ramsey snapped. “Hold your positions!”
But Sandre’s body was tumbling past Garroway only a couple of meters away. Reaching out, he grabbed one of her combat harness straps and dragged her toward him. Gobbets of red and gray ice continued spinning across the chamber, disconcertingly, and Garroway struggled not to be sick.
As he pulled her close, he saw the circular, two-centimeter hole leaking freezing red mist that now punctured her helmet visor dead center. Most of the back of her helmet was gone.
“Corpsman!” he yelled over the company frequency. “Corpsman front!”
Doc Thorne was already on his way, however, jetting across from the tunnel mouth in a long, flat trajectory.
“Where the hell’d the fire come from?” Corporal Allison cried. He was pivoting nearby, the muzzle of the field-pulse rifle mounted on his right forearm seeking a target. Most of the Marines on the perimeter were turning now to face the dark corners of the chamber behind Sandre, a rough, curving surface of rock all but lost in the shadows 30 meters from the nearest side of the cylinder array. A dozen suit lights began searching the walls of the cavern in that direction, as remote drones closed in from every side, piercing the shadows with beams of glaring white light.