“See? The hole ship was trying to get a reaction from the colonists, to see if anyone was home.” The recording continued behind Axford’s narration. “Clearly, they got no response. For whatever reason, whoever was in there wasn’t paying attention. So the hole ship comes back....” The hole ship appeared again, no longer moving aggressively but jockeying to dock with the station.
“How come they ignored you?” asked Hatzis.
“I was lying low,” explained Axford. Then, seeing their blank expressions, he laughed out loud. “You haven’t even worked that out yet? Ha! I swear, it’s a miracle you lot have survived as long as you have.”
Hatzis was clearly about to respond to this when Axford continued with: “Your hole ship doesn’t have to arrive completely at its destination before you can start looking around. You can be half in, half out of real space, and the sensors will work. When you’re in that state, your profile is reduced to about thirty percent. You can’t move, but it’s handy if you just want to check things out without being seen.”
Alander turned back to the display, more reassured than ever that they stood to learn a lot from Frank the Ax. He watched in fascination as the hole ship’s modified cockpit managed to attach itself to the installation. The point it had chosen to adhere to wasn’t an airlock, however. The coral-like growths surrounding the cockpit seemed to reach out with droplets or tentacles to adhere to the installation’s exterior, anchoring fast to the metal and carbon.
“Looks like they’re getting ready to tow, doesn’t it?” said Axford.
It did, Alander thought. The cockpit retreated until it was close to the larger, central part of the hole ship and stopped rotating. There was a moment of stillness in which he imagined the alien machine muscles flexing in readiness, then—
“Bang,” said Axford softly as the hole ship vanished altogether, taking a sizable chunk of the installation with it. The remains shuddered violently, losing their center of gravity and almost disappearing for a second in a bright gust of frozen air. Then it was tumbling, dead, through its orbit around the planet.
The image froze as Axford spoke again. “It took them six trips to take the lot of it,” he said. “By then, of course, someone had noticed. There was some ground activity; a satellite changed orbit in order to get a better look. But there wasn’t much they could do. Whoever the contact was, they clearly didn’t have time to get into the spindles and explore the gifts. The Roaches timed it perfectly.”
“Roaches?” asked Alander, turning away from the screen to face Axford.
The ex-general shrugged. ‘That’s what I call them, anyway,” he said. “Because they scavenge, just like cockroaches.”
“You think that’s what they were doing?” asked Hatzis. “Scavenging?”
“Absolutely,” said Axford. “When the main installation was gone, the hole ship came back to pick off a few of the larger pieces of junk floating around in orbit. Then they started stripping the gifts themselves. One thing you may have noticed about them is that they’re not terribly reducible. You can’t take them apart; you can only remove their contents—and then only in places. Your Immortality Suits, for example, are transportable, as are some of the safer materials in the Lab. The art in the Gallery is as well, obviously, but then I personally wouldn’t waste my time with such stuff—and from what I’ve seen, I don’t think the Roaches are overly concerned about it, either. They focus on the things that are practical. Things they can use. And to that end, the biggest prize is, of course, the hole ships.”
He indicated the new image display before them. It showed two bright circles moving in tandem across the planet and vanishing at the same time.
“They took it,” said Hatzis, staring at the screen with her eyes wide. “No wonder we didn’t hear from the colony. They would’ve listened to the beacon we left and known—”
“Don’t be so naïve,” Axford cut in quickly. “The beacon was the first thing the Roaches took out. Whether or not your contact on the planet had the time or the brains to listen to it beforehand, we’ll never know. As the Roaches left, they signaled the Starfish.”
“What?”
Axford seemed to be enjoying her reaction. “Within a day, all evidence was gone,” he said, nodding. “Listen to this.” A sound like two bells colliding rang through them. “That’s the transmission I picked up through the hole ship just before they left. Sound familiar?”
“It sounds like a transmission we picked up in Upsilon Aquarius,” said Alander, “when we were testing the communicator for the first time. After a couple of primary transmissions, we received something in reply, but at the time, we just thought it was just noise or some sort of reflection.”
“There have been several such pulses recorded,” said Hatzis. “We ignored them for the same reasons. They don’t seem to contain any information.”
“The Roaches are sending them,” said Axford. “I mean, who else could it be? If they were reflections, we would’ve heard more of them. If it was just noise, the hole ships would have filtered it out. There’s no evidence to suggest that the Spinners or the Starfish use this means of communication. And why would they, when there’s no way of choosing who you talk to? I’m guessing that such a means of communication would be too primitive for intelligences as advanced as they seem to be. No, these transmissions don’t contain any information because they don’t need to. They just need to be heard.”
“And you’re that confident it’s the Roaches?” said Alander.
“Nothing else make sense,” said Axford. “It has to be them.”
“Those sons of bitches,” said Hatzis. Even in conSense, her face was pale. “They’re sending entire colonies to their deaths!”
Alander nodded, although he preferred to defer his moral judgment until he had more information. “This would mean they’ve been active since before Adrasteia was destroyed,” he said. “There must have been other systems they’ve approached for us to have heard their bait signals.”
“Exactly,” put in Axford. “Who knows how many systems these scabs attacked before you started to get your shit together? Now it’s harder for them because you have some vague organization up and running. There are fewer cracks for them to slip through. Even without me to help you, you might eventually have noticed them. And then where would they be? My guess is they don’t like to fight if they can avoid it, otherwise they wouldn’t be skulking around like this, letting the Starfish do their dirty work.”
“Parasites,” Hatzis spat. “They’re nothing more than fucking parasites.”
“Intelligent parasites,” Alander said. “Let’s not forget that. They’ve worked out how to modify the hole ships. They look different, behave differently. It’d be foolish to write them off completely.”
“I agree,” said Axford. “When they came here, I stayed hidden, thinking they’d move elsewhere. But they detected the gifts somehow and came in here to get them. The element of surprise only lasted so long. Before they came, I’d have bet good money that no one would get out of here if I didn’t want them to, but they almost managed. It was too close for my liking.”
“What happened?”
Axford smiled. “Now, now, Dr. Alander,” he chided playfully. “I’d be a fool to let you know exactly what I’m capable of, wouldn’t I? Let’s just say there’s one less Roach ship to worry about, shall we?” He faced Hatzis. “You like the sound of that, Caryl? Does that appeal to your all-for-one moral code?”
She looked uncertain for a moment. “I don’t approve of violence, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Axford rolled his eyes. “I don’t give squat for your approval, Hatzis,” he said. “I did you a favor, narrowed the odds a little. Can’t you be pragmatic enough to at least acknowledge that? Would a small display of gratitude be too much of a stretch for you?”
She glared at him as though thanks was the farthest thing from her mind.
“You two deserve each other, you know,” said Alander wearily. And they did: m
ultiple bodies, long-term agendas for the human race, definite ideas about morality and their place in the universe.
Hatzis turned her glare on him, then returned to Axford. “What about this sample you said you had? Are you ever going to show it to us?”
“That depends on what’s it worth to you.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Hatzis stood. “Do we have to put up with this bullshit?”
Alander indicated that she should sit back down. “What exactly do you want?” he asked Frank the Ax.
“An ally,” was the simple and surprising reply.
“Someone else you can sacrifice when you no longer need them?” Hatzis snapped. “Forget it.”
“Not this time,” Axford returned evenly. To Alander, he explained, “Look, if the Starfish really are going from system to system now, then I’m not safe here anymore. If the Roaches could find my gifts without any problems whatsoever, then I’m guessing that the big players in this game will be able to as well. I need a contingency plan. I need more resources. Ideally I’d like another hole ship— or a whole fleet of them, preferably—but I’m not likely to find one on my own. So I need allies. Specifically, I need someone to help me do something—something I think you might be interested in.”
“And you think we should put our differences aside so we can work out a trade?” said Hatzis.
Axford nodded, ignoring the sarcasm in her tone. “I’ll give you what information I have on the Roaches in exchange for your help.”
Hatzis looked like she was about ready to leave, just to deny him, but Alander couldn’t let that happen.
“Well, we can’t deny that we need that information,” he said. “So unless you’re planning to do something we can’t agree to, then I think you’ve got a deal.”
Hatzis’s face settled into a mask of distaste, and he knew she understood. They did need what Axford had; there could be no denying that. Besides, she must have realized that Alander had saved her from making the decision herself, so if anything went wrong, the option of blaming him would always be open to her.
“I want something more substantial than promises to share information,” she said. “What about this sample you’ve been promising to show us? Is it a piece of one of their hole ships or something?”
“Oh, much better than that, Caryl.” His smile was wide and predatory. “Hole ships don’t blow up, you see. They dissolve like they’re made of nothing but air, piece by piece. When you hit one hard enough, when they die, everything on the inside spills out—and if you’re careful, or lucky like I was, you can time it just right to make sure none of it gets damaged.”
Alander glanced at Hatzis and saw understanding dawn in her eyes, but it was he who managed to speak first. “You caught one of their bodies?”
“Even better than that.” The view of conSense before Alander began to darken as Axford talked. “Remember, they have access to Spinner technology, just like us. They have hole ships and ftl communicators. In fact, they probably use the libraries to locate suitable stars for our colonies and scout them until the Spinners appear. I’m sure they dipped into the library as I have, seeking new ways to modify their hole ships. But more importantly for us at the moment, they have—”
“I-suits,” finished Alander, staring at the figure materializing before them in the darkness.
Axford didn’t try to hide his pleasure. “Caryl Hatzis, Dr. Peter Alander, I’d like you to meet my guest, the first alien I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet in person. I call him Charlie. You’ll have to forgive him if he isn’t very talkative, though; he really hasn’t been himself since he arrived. In fact, I think he might even be dying.”
Alander stared in amazement at the gangly, frail looking alien that appeared on the screen. A long silence ensued as neither he nor Hatzis could speak, and it was only broken when Axford glibly muttered, “I don’t suppose either of you would have any idea what these bastards might like to eat, by any chance?”
* * *
The alien was, to all intents and purposes, right there in front of Alander: living, breathing, solid, but as motionless as a stuffed museum exhibit. He didn’t doubt for a second that it was real. After all, what would it benefit Axford to fake something like that? It was too important, too critical a moment in the evolution of humanity. Not even someone like Frank the Ax would invent something like this—although there was little doubt that he would use it to his advantage.
But that didn’t matter to Alander right then. At last, after many frustrating weeks of dealing with the nebulous Spinners and Starfish, here was a creature he could actually touch.
The image rotated so he could see it from all angles. That Charlie was a biped was immediately obvious, but its proportions were all wrong. Its legs were much longer than a human’s, compared to its trunk; long, tapering shins flared upward past the knees into enormously strong-looking, triangular thighs. The knees were bent so it looked like it was crouching. Its trunk was barrel-shaped, almost literally a cylinder, with strange, pouchlike folds and flaps in waxy, gray green skin. Partially hanging from this was a coarse-looking vest, while covering upper parts of its legs was a kilt fashioned from the same material. Alander assumed that the garments were decorative, as they offered no real protection. Much like his own, beneath the I-suit.
The creature’s forward-mounted arms were folded protectively across its chest, rising and falling with every rapid breath—the only movement Alander could discern. The hands were small and thin, and had several digits sprouting from each, but it was unclear how many there were or how precisely they were jointed. Two flat plates extended from its back. Vestigial wings? Alander wondered. They were more like an insect’s wings than a bird’s, or the sheaths that might once have covered them, at least.
When the image rotated around to the front again, its face captured his full attention. The head was roughly the same shape as a biscuit barrel and seemed smooth all over. There were no obvious protuberances. Instead, it had a marked pattern of pigmentation across its face: stark black lines with a perfect vertical symmetry that reminded Alander of a Rorschach blob. The line of symmetry gave the face a protonose; on either side were blobs that might have been eyes, nostrils, and ears, while a line that stretched from one side to the other could have been a mouth. It was impossible to be certain. For all he knew, the alien could have been wearing a helmet.
“He’s an odd-looking fellow, don’t you think?” said Axford. “I ran him through the gifts when I picked him up, but there’s only so much you can tell without invasive surgery. We’ll have to wait for him to die before we can do that, I guess.”
Alander caught Hatzis’s look of disgust at Axford’s comment, but she didn’t say anything. She was probably as much in awe of what she was seeing as Alander and wouldn’t spoil it by arguing with Axford.
“His biology is very complicated,” Frank the Ax was saying. “Some of it might even be enhanced by nanotech or implants. He has analogs of cells and DNA and blood and stuff, but it’s all slightly skewed. His genes have six bases, for instance, and his blood is sort of yellow.”
“Do the Gifts recognize his species?” Alander asked.
“No, they don’t,” he said, frowning. “And I find that a bit odd, actually. Either the Spinners deliberately kept him and his kind out of the library, or the Roaches themselves wanted to be kept out of it for some reason. For all we know, he could be a renegade Spinner stealing back some of the booty.”
Alander nodded thoughtfully. It was an interesting suggestion. If there were factions within the Spinner race, then maybe they weren’t as all-powerful and mysterious as once thought. In fact, they might be no different than humans.
“Where are you keeping him?” asked Hatzis.
“In the hole ship. The Mercury has set up an isolated environment for him, based on what we picked up in the surgery, and is keeping him relatively safe. It’s not perfect, but the I-suit is doing the rest. For now, anyway. I’m not sure how much longer he’s going to l
ast. I think he might be in a coma.”
“You keep saying ‘he,’ “ interrupted Hatzis. “You’re sure that’s its gender?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
A series of anatomical images flashed against the darkness behind the alien, settling after a few seconds on a close-up of the creature’s genital area.
“Two... ?” Hatzis was clearly as amazed as Alander.
“Like snakes,” said Axford. “Whoever these guys are, they take symmetry to the extreme.”
“What about communicating with him?” Alander asked.
“I tried,” he said, nodding to the image display. “See what you can make of it.”
More footage appeared. In it, the alien was awake and active, restrained in a small room. It was pacing backward and forward, its legs moving with a disturbingly jerky gait that left no doubt in Alander’s mind that it wasn’t human. A person in a suit pretending to be an alien couldn’t move like that, he told himself.
It was clearly agitated. The wing sheaths growing from its back flexed and snapped. This, combined with its long, angular legs and relatively short arms, reminded Alander of a giant grasshopper. But the creature was clearly warm-blooded, and it lacked the carapace, compound eyes, and mandibles of an insect.
Its face was the most startling thing. Transformed from a lifeless biscuit barrel, it was almost unnaturally mobile. Muscles under the skin flexed the patterns of pigmentation into new shapes, breaking the symmetry then re-forming it with unnerving speed. Its eyes, opened, revealed glassy orbs with internal lenses that constantly changed position, like the inside of an antique camera. Its mouth was the slit he’d identified earlier, but it wasn’t that of a lifeless dummy. It was extraordinarily mobile, opening and shutting in shapes that had no parallel on a human face. Behind narrow lips Alander glimpsed a yellowish tongue and two rows of protrusions that might have been teeth. And its voice...
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