by Ian Douglas
Powerful words, McFarlane thought.
And judging by the intelligence reports flooding in, those words appeared to be falling on fertile ground.
USNA CVS America
Naval Dockyard, SupraQuito
0708 hours, TFT
The star carrier America was leaving port.
Nudged clear of the SupraQuito dockyard by tugs and out into open space, she drifted free for a long moment, illuminated first by work lights, then by the hard, bright glare of the sun emerging slowly from behind the bulk of the orbital docking complex. Her hull was largely resurfaced and repainted in blocks of gray and black. Her shield cap drank the sunlight, though the newly painted leading surface now once again bore the legend USNA CVS America and her hull number. The two asteroids, now towed well clear of the dockyard area, had each contributed several tens of tons of material to nanoresurface the star carrier’s hull after its brutal scouring by the rings of Saturn.
Other ships gathered about her, gleaming in the sun: the star carriers Saratoga and Constitution, plus the smaller Marine carrier Inchon. The Russian light carrier Slava and the North Indian light carrier Shiva had joined the formation as well, together with the line-of-battle ships Long Island and California, the heavy cruisers Calgary and Maine, plus a swarm of light cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and a pair of railgun cruisers, the Porter and the Decatur. Four warships of the Chinese Hegemony had joined the group earlier that morning, led by the carrier Shi Lang. Altogether, Task Force Eridani was composed of twenty-four ships. Together, in close formation, they began accelerating out-system.
Accelerating at 1 gravity, they fell out-system, plunging toward the constellation of Eridanus, just 14 degrees west of the blue-white diamond of Rigel.
“Coded message coming through, marked personal and confidential, Admiral,” Lieutenant Kepner said over a private channel. “From the EPCP.”
Emergency Presidential Commmand Post might mean President Koenig himself, or, just possibly, either his chief of staff or someone on the Joint Chiefs. “Decode it and put it through.”
A moment later, the window opened and Admiral Armitage’s face appeared in Gray’s mind. So . . . something from the Joint chiefs of staff.
“Good morning, Sandy.”
Gray checked a time readout. They were already five light minutes from Earth, so this would be a monologue rather than a true conversation.
“Sorry I missed boost-time, but this has only just come through from Crisium, and I thought you should see it.” An icon winked in Gray’s consciousness, showing an attached file. “The upshot is that between the records grabbed by Operation Luther and what you snagged for us out at Enceladus, we now have working translation software for the Grdoch language. That should make things a bit easier for you out at Vulcan.”
Gray nodded to himself. That was good. Figuring out a completely alien language from scratch was a damned tough prospect even on Earth, where researchers had the full power of Konstantin and other advanced AIs on which they could draw.
Most breakthroughs with alien languages so far had been possible only because the Agletsch had been doing this sort of thing for centuries, developing a number of interstellar pidgins to facilitate their trade of information among wildly diverse species. The problem became all but insurmountable when an alien language involved things like changes in color, movements of various body parts, skin patterns, electrical fields, or even odor. Worse by far, however, when it came to interspecies communications, was the fact that alien mind-sets and attitudes, worldviews, and ways of thinking could be so different that two species might be mutually and forever incomprehensible to one another.
With a working translation program, though, that shouldn’t be a problem. Gray wondered how the Confederation xenolinguists had managed the job in such a relatively short time.
“However, we have some other information developed from the files garnered by Operation Luther,” Armitage continued. “Very . . . disturbing information. It substantially changes the scope of your orders.”
Gods! that was all Gray needed right now . . . a last-second rewrite of task-force orders to reflect HQMILCOM’s penchant for micromanagement.
Armitage looked uncomfortable. He might be thinking the same thing.
“We heard at the briefing session the other day,” Armitage said, “about how Grdoch biochemistry is the same as ours. That’s . . . unusual, of course, given the remarkable diversity of life and life chemistries across the galaxy, but not at all impossible. RNA arises fairly easily from precursors like TNA—threose nucleic acid—and DNA is an almost inevitable evolutionary product of RNA. DNA-based life will involve proteins and amino acids similar to terrestrial life, with a one-in-four chance that that life will be made up of left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars.”
Gray scowled. Why the damned lesson in elementary exobiology?
“What this means, of course, is that the Grdoch can eat our kind of food . . . could derive nourishment from terrestrial life.
“And according to the reports we’ve seen from Vulcan, in particular Le Rapport d’Gouverneur Delgado de Vulcan, and another called La Massacrer, the Grdoch think of us, of humans as—as food animals. . . .”
In fact, Gray had already suspected as much. After watching the Grdoch feed on those huge prey animals on board their ship at Enceladus, he’d become convinced that the aliens possessed a cultural imperative—perhaps even an evolutionary imperative—toward both the hunt and devouring their prey.
Humans had a tendency to add ritual to basic, biological functions—sex, elimination, feeding. Although sex was far freer now that it was no longer bound up with reproduction or with the possibility of disease, there remained age-old conventions regarding where and when couples could indulge in it. Not even the cultural tension between monogamy and polyamory could completely change that . . . or the ritual of marriage. Eliminating bodily wastes was still done in private, at least for the most part, and mealtimes could still become special occasions for celebration, for socializing, or for courtship.
Those were human rituals, of course. The Agletsch had a cultural taboo against eating in public, even with their own kind, while the primitive Habu of Psi Cancri III defecated in public in order to mark territory for any type of transaction or conversation.
The Grdoch, with their numerous multiple mouths—those tooth-rimmed sucker-snouts located all over their bodies—seemed designed for feeding literally from the inside out, and the attack on the prey animal he’d witnessed appeared to be highly stylized—a ritual of attack, burrow, and feed. A human, Gray thought, wouldn’t make much of a meal, but as with many behavioral rituals, it might not be the details that mattered, but the simple fact.
Yes, if they could feed on humans without being poisoned by them, the only thing preventing them from indulging their gastronomic enthusiasm might be the knowledge that the prey in question was rational—an intelligent star-faring species like themselves.
Given that humans had such a poor record in that regard just with various species on Earth, from ritualized cannibalism to the wholesale slaughter of the now-extinct cetaceans, intelligence might not provide that much of a disincentive for the Grdoch.
“With this in mind,” Armitage continued, “your operational orders have been changed.”
Here it comes, Gray thought.
“Your primary directive, investigating the disappearance of the Intrepid, remains as before. The emphasis of your mission now, however, will be a show of force designed to establish peaceful relations with the local Vulcan government. To that end, you will not employ a preliminary bombardment. In particular, you will avoid using relativistic bombardment. There is the possibility that USNA prisoners of war are on Vulcan . . . and, quite apart from that, it would be good to work out a separate peace with the local government without destroying the planet.
“As for the Grdoch, you a
re to use your own discretion there. If you can use the language software we got at Enceladus to make friends, well and good . . . but I must emphasize one thing: Don’t trust them! Our XT people at Crisium report that the Grdoch seem to use the truth only as a tool to get what they want. It’s possible that they don’t even understand the concept of binding agreements.
“At the same time, the USNA Senate has decided that we’re stretched too thin to involve ourselves in another war. You can protect yourselves if you’re fired upon . . . but don’t go looking for trouble.
“I’m sorry this has to be so vague, Sandy. Discretionary orders are a bitch. But I know we can count on you to do what’s best out there.”
Just fucking wonderful. Gray thought about his crews . . . and the problems of making friends with the bloody-minded Grdoch. They’re going to just love this. . . .
Holding Area
Himmel-Paradisio
Neubavaria
Vulcan, 40 Eridani A II
1725 hours local time/0943 hours, TFT
The governor, together with most of his people, had long since given up all hope.
Immanuel Vicente Delgado had been the governor of Vulcan for four years, now. With a world population of some 87 million, Vulcan wasn’t exactly a bustling planetary megalopolis. With the colony all but independent from Earth, the post of governor was more ceremonial than anything else.
Vulcan’s government alternated between Spanish and German governors, each serving five years, and he was the constitutionally elected representative of his world. It might be a ceremonial post, but someone had to speak for the population. It was a matter of sovereign propriety . . . and of dignity. Human dignity.
Los demonios didn’t care about constitutions or elected government or propriety, and they certainly didn’t care about human dignity.
What they cared about was feeding time.
The monsters were entering the enclosure now. Delgado couldn’t see them—the gate was a hundred meters from where he was sitting within the 200-hectare pen, but he could hear the shrieks and screams, could see the tide of naked people spilling across the uneven ground.
The Grdoch, it turned out, preferred to hunt their food.
“Not again!” a woman seated next to him said. “How long has this been going on?”
“I’m not sure,” Delgado told her. “A couple of weeks or so . . .”
Maria Fuentes was a relative newcomer to the camp. She’d been first officer of the USNA star carrier Intrepid, captured when her ship was badly damaged in the skirmish in-system, perhaps two weeks ago. She’d been rescued by Confederation SAR vehicles and held as a POW in Himmel-Paradisio . . . but when the Grdoch had shown their true colors and occupied the capital—the monsters were supposed to be allies, damn it!—she’d been held at their ground base, and only brought here with the other Intrepid survivors a couple of days ago. Now, the Inrepid crew were prisoners of war, along with almost a thousand civilians from the twin cities of Himmel and Paradisio.
“Heaven” in German . . . “Paradise” in Spanish. But in the past week the place had become hell incarnate.
The fleeing mob parted, scattering across the fenced-in compound, and Delgado could see los demonios . . . a dozen bloated, saggy, scarlet things covered with those obscenely questing trunks or snouts with their tooth-lined sucking mouths, sprouting the three clawed and splay-footed legs moving those rubbery bulks along with surprising speed. Fuentes drew back, shaking, and Delgado felt a sick wrenching in his gut. One of the Grdoch, less than ten meters away, now, reached out with one clawed foot and dragged down a fleeing, screaming woman. Delgado desperately wanted to help, but the deepest horror was in his complete helplessness. There was nothing he could do.
Pinning the struggling woman down, the monster rolled on top of her, completely covering her except for her thrashing legs and one wildly waving arm. At least . . . at least her heart-rending shrieks as she was devoured alive were muffled by the monster’s flabby bulk.
When the Grdoch lifted itself from her mangled corpse, what was left was bloody scraps, severed limbs, a shockingly faceless head, and a torn and broken torso hideously slashed and eviscerated.
“Ay, Dios y Santa Maria!” Fuentes said, a strangled whimper.
Delgado grappled with a bizarre, horrid thought—that Fuentes shouldn’t be invoking religion . . . but recognized that his overstressed mind was groping for something else, anything else, to avoid thinking about what he was seeing. The White Covenant was meaningless here. Faced with such horror, such helplessness, people were going to invoke their gods no matter what the impropriety, no matter what the law might have to say about it.
Sated, the monster rolled off the woman’s body and began its slow and obscene roll back toward the compound gate. Other Grdoch were rising from their victims as well. One small band of men and women off to the right had tried attacking one as it fed horribly, with predictable results. The Grdoch were far stronger than humans, their outer integument as tough as rubbery plastic. With no weapons but sticks, stones, and bare hands, there was no way even a dozen people could harm one of the beasts. The monster completed its meal, casually swiped at its attackers with one foot, leaving two of them writhing in the dirt as it rolled off with its fellows.
The horror was over for the moment . . . but Delgado knew the nightmare would continue. Small bands of Grdoch entered the compound to feed every few hours. The citizens penned here had been stripped before being locked up here, presumably for the gastronomic convenience of their keepers. Other humans—under the watchful gaze of heavily armed Grdoch—brought food in for the inmates each day . . . some dried, nanoprocessed emergency rations and—mostly—bloody chunks of raw meat.
It was best not to think too hard about where that meat might have come from, from what kind of animal. . . .
In any case, Delgado and other civic leaders in the group had taken on the responsibility for seeing to it that the meager rations were fairly distributed. Water was hauled in by the tankerfull and emptied into a long, muddy ditch near the gate; the Grdoch evidently intended to keep their food animals alive for as long as possible, though the comfort of their herds, obviously, was not one of their priorities. People slept on the bare ground, huddled together for mutual warmth.
As for waste disposal . . . well, Delgado and the other community leaders had designated the southwestern corner of the pen as the sewage pit. It was the best they could manage, and even with the rule, some of the inmates refused to follow this most basic of sanitation regulations. That’s where they took the sad remains of the Grdochs’ meals after feeding time as well. There was no room, no tools, no will for proper burials.
Delgado feared that what little camp discipline there was would break down completely before very long. The people were utterly broken, utterly without hope. Attempts to fight back, like the one he’d just witnessed, were driven by desperation, or, just possibly, by a suicidal urge to end the horror and the uncertainty of who would be hunted down next.
“They’ll be . . . they’ll be sending . . . a fleet . . .” Fuentes said with some difficulty. She was sobbing as she spoke. He’d seen several of her shipmates devoured over the last week, had even been in a gang that had tried to fight back. That had been when one of the monsters had taken Michael Glover, Intrepid’s captain. A brave, brave effort, but completely futile.
“I’m not so sure, Commander,” Delgado replied. “The ships we had here left with a Grdoch ship last week. Our naval people thought the demons were the best of friends.”
“I mean my people,” Fuentes told him. “The USNA. They’ll know Intrepid is overdue. They might even get the message drone we launched. They’ll send a stronger fleet. . . .”
“Assuming, Delgado replied slowly, “that the Grdoch haven’t just attacked the Sol System as well. They could be there by now. That might have been what they wanted all along, you know
—to learn the location of our homeworld.” He shuddered, and almost added, A well-stocked larder. He stopped himself. Fuentes couldn’t stand much more stress, he thought, and his attempt at black humor might well have backfired. The woman was clinging to the ragged edge of sanity as it was.
“I still can’t fathom how they . . . how they think of us as just food,” Fuentes said, shaking her head as if in denial of what she knew to be true. The sobs had ended, and she appeared—again—to be grappling with the larger problems of who and what the aliens were, and how they might be stopped. “They know we’re intelligent, that we’re a space-faring civilization. You said they were talking with the commanders of your naval squadron.”
Delgado nodded. “When they first arrived in-system, they attacked us, the planet, did terrible damage to several cities. We thought they were a Sh’daar client race and tried to tell them that we wanted peace with the collective. We had no planetary defenses, and only a few ships in the Vulcan Legion to protect the system . . . from you.”
She nodded, and Delgado thought about how strange it was talking with her like this . . . a USNA naval officer, the enemy. The arrival of the truly alien made any and all human political differences completely insignificant. For the two of them, naked, emotionally broken, sprawled in the dirt as they helplessly awaited the next Grdoch feeding onslaught . . . mere politics meant nothing, less than nothing.
He reached out and touched her shoulder. She covered his hand with hers.
“The aliens,” he said, continuing the story, “brushed the Legion aside. They landed and established a base on Las Pampas. That’s the other continent, the smaller one. They massacred—I’m not sure—several million colonists there, maybe. Most of the populations of Nova Argentina and Buena del Mar. A fleet arrived from Earth under the command of Commodore Becker, on the Emden. What was left of the Legion joined with them, and they launched an attack on the aliens . . . a fairly successful one. At least the alien fleet was pushed back from the planet, isolating their base, and Commodore Becker opened a planetary bombardment of Nova Argentina. It was at this time that I was able to send several reports to the Emden, and they, in turn, dispatched it back to Earth on board a message drone.”