by Rolf Nelson
The wide net of ships were mostly decelerating, or at least dramatically slowing their acceleration inwards, and none of them appeared to want to talk to them. With the liner next to them, the drive fields were extended out, wrapping around the old hulk and beyond. Cranking up the power, Tajemnica started her dive deeper into the gravity well. Apparently it was not what the Niven Navy expected, because they finally started hailing them, telling the halt, stop, return, and quit shooting at civilians.
“Should we reply?” Allonia wondered aloud.
Helton shook his head, and Lag agreed. “Let’s not give them any more video than they already have. And video of us they could edit to make it say anything they want.”
“They can CGI anything they want anyway,” said Quiritis cynically. “Could we just talk to the enlisted men, maybe? Get into their heads?”
“Hmmm… Maybe, maybe… On screen,” said Helton. After a few moments, one of the cruiser captains appeared. “Greetings, Captain.”
“You are ordered to return to the scene of your crime immediately, Mr. Strom!” the man on the screen, Captain Rattan, told him pointedly.
“How’s it feel to be an expendable patsy in a setup?”
“We know you set up the innocents to be killed, you murderer!”
“No, no, you have it backwards. And you do realize you all are being set up just like we were, and by the same people, right?”
“You will not be able to trick your way out of this, Mr. Strom!”
“No tricks. Well, no tricks by us. We came in help people get a new start. Most-
“And you killed them!”
Helton sighed patiently, before speaking in a tone a Socratic seminar leader would use to draw out understanding from a student. “And how would you know that?”
“We have the videos they beamed to us.”
“Very convenient, that. You ignored them for a week, then suddenly they start beaming out high resolution video from all angles of each other and us starting before we launched a probe to look at them closer, and just then they blow up? Really? You find nothing suspicious or coincidental about that? What could we possibly gain by destroying those ships?”
“I can’t possibly understand the mind of a psychopath!” Rattan yelled, a sudden hint of nervousness showing though his anger.
Helton looked back at him, calm and collected. “And your political masters, being psychopaths, depend on that. They put a bunch of old, mostly empty ships with a few criminals on them, and mined them.”
“You destroyed them!”
“No. They were mined before we got here. I think they were hoping that they’d manage to kill a few of your men, maybe even take a ship with it. They wouldn’t want to leave any evidence, so they planted nukes. We looked, but couldn’t safely defuse them. I’d approach them very carefully, no matter what sort of recorded distress signals they are sending out.”
“You must have mined them!”
“Right, sure,” Helton replied sarcastically. “And they brought a few hundred medical tanks with them, filled with cold conscripts and gutter trash, all male, because they were be great colonists? Hardly. Research the people that are claimed on the manifest and it won’t hold up.”
“You are lying!”
“And I’m sure it’s a total coincidence that the Navy told them to congregate here, right next to where you have a portable bunker well-hidden on an asteroid heavily hooked up with cameras?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Then you won’t mind being first to board one of the ships while close alongside, right?”
“We’ll send our best men to investigate the-”
“Not much of a captain if you don’t think your men are the best, now, are you?”
“My men are very highly trained. Don’t you dare-”
“Yes, your men are. But isn’t in convenient that we were number one on your target list, considered an existential threat, and you lose every time you face us, then suddenly you are ordered to totally ignore us even when we buzz your ships, then just as suddenly the second any shooting starts the cameras are rolling and you all magically appear on a perfectly coordinated encirclement pattern, but far too wide to concentrate your forces against us? It makes no sense at all…”
“We always have contingency plans.”
“It makes no sense unless it’s nothing but a propaganda ploy for the pictures. I gain nothing from destroying civilian ships, but for your media it helps keep the scare going, keeps people from trying to leave your planet, helps panic people. It lets the pols use your military failure to pass laws and raise taxes for ships.”
“You’re just trying to save your own ass, now. It won’t work.”
“We buzzed your ships. Could have had a dozen of them, easily. We didn’t shoot. We don’t want you to die any more than we want you to kill us. I’m sure when you search those ships and ID the bodies, you’ll find very few supplies and a lot of criminals. They were sent to die, and you were sent to die with them”
The civilian ships all blew up in six perfectly spherical balls of nuclear light, and the com stream cut out.
Helton relaxed back into his command seat a little bit. “Nothing more we can do now, other than run. Hope it gets people thinking.” He knew radio com would be scrambled for a bit, so there was nothing for it but dive in toward the star, see if they could get anything useful from the salvaged equipment from the base, and see how it developed. And try to think of ways the not get into traps like that in the future.
Tajemnica cruised quietly through subspace, her crew subdued and a little depressed at their first nearly unmitigated failure. The only saving grace, and it was slim consolation, was that they had escaped the system, leaving no physical evidence to parade before the camera, only some suspiciously perfect video. The last ship was successfully ditched into the sun in spite of two cruisers attempting to chase it down and snatch it, and the slingshot around the star had worked to redirect them away from any ships in the system that might have seriously challenged them. The prisoners were seriously miserable, but at least they were mostly cooperative.
Quiritis was getting snippy with just about everyone, Helton couldn’t sleep, Lag’s continued his hard workouts while reading everything he could about history that Taj could dredge up for him, Kwon and his family phlegmatically served up whatever seemed appropriate at the moment (though Allonia’s experiments with spicy food seemed to only be edible by her and Bipasha), most of the engineering team were surly over their continued failures to find a viable approach to hauling multiple ships with them, and even Taj sounded like she was in a funk. The only two that acted their normal selves were Harbin and Quinn.
“We appear to have a follower, again,” Taj quietly informed Helton as he paced moodily along on the command station treadmill. Helton looked up to see the armored woman avatar using a spyglass as she stood, looking from the pop-deck of the privateer’s sailing ship, off into a fictional watery distance on the screen.
“You’re mixing your metaphors again.”
The avatar shrugged her shoulders slightly. “Meh.”
“Same one as before, you think?”
“Not sure. Similar sails, but different rigging. Should be pulling alongside shortly.”
“Keep going, or drop into realspace, you think?”
“Realspace when it’s close enough. You may want to sound general quarters.”
Helton reached for the button, then hesitated. “Why?”
“Something is not right. Not sure what. It can’t hurt to be prepared.”
After another pause for thought, Helton hit the button. The alarm echoed through the ship, rapidly sending people to their posts, closing airtight doors as they went, and bringing the normal bridge crew piling into their places full of questions less than a minute later. Quiritis was only partially awake and half-dressed, Allonia fully awake, less dressed, and rather sweaty.
Kaushik, at weapons, was the only one who looked a
s though he were ready for a duty shift. “Weapons charged, loaded, and ready,” he reported. “Not that we can do much until we transition.”
Looking over the readouts, they alternately seemed to be reassured that the normal things were normal, and bothered that the external data seemed so unusual.
“You’re right, Taj,” Quiritis agreed. “Similar, but different. Approaching rapidly. Looks massive.”
On the navigation display they watched the ship approaching though subspace, its much greater mass warping and flexing the multidimensional fabric of spacetime with its powerful drive fields, as it pulled up parallel with them. It slowly moved closer, making Tajemnica vibrate and shudder before she poured more power into her own fields, and flexed them and shoved the unknown ship away, hard. Like titanic hockey players, the two translight ships elbowed and shoved at each other, changing course and speed, each trying to break the other’s drive field or shove them back into realspace. Tajemnica’s greater drive field flux density was effectively countered by the other ship’s greater mass and wider field, and neither could gain enough of an upper hand to leave the contest if the other tried to persist.
Without warning, Taj transitioned into realspace. Shimmering like a zeppelin-sized opal, a ship well over five times Tajemnica’s length appeared beside them, its appearance clear in the afterglow of transition, then slowly darkening into the blackness of deep space. The stranger was obviously a warship, bristling with launch tubes, gun turrets, stubby beam bumps, sensors, weapons pods, and hangar doors, but it didn’t look like any human warship they had ever seen before.
“Should we open fire?” asked Kaushik tensely, eying the ship floating only a hundred meters away.
Helton rubbed his chin, and shook his head slightly. “They haven’t, yet. Taj? What do you think?”
“I think,” drawled the tanker avatar, “that this would be one ugly brawl if it goes that way. It may be more a job for tact than firepower.” The avatar morphed into the armored woman.
“Speaking of diplomacy, they want to talk.” Allonia tapped a console icon, putting an image on the screen. “You’re on, oh master diplomat.”
It’s obviously another avatar-person, a severe looking man with sharp features and short hair in front of a blank gray background. “Impressive performance for such a tiny human ship. You must be the one I have heard about.”
“We might be. Seems a lot of people have heard of us. And you are…?”
“You may call me Klaatu Barada. You are… Helton Strom, I believe? And Irony, of course.”
Helton smiled, realizing who he was talking to. Or at least, they had a mutual acquaintance. “Yes, indeed. The same. Not here to destroy us again, I hope.”
Klaatu smiled ruefully. “No, not this time. I am here to investigate an unexpected solar event, one that might signal a significant change in sector status.”
“Good change, or bad?” Helton asked, concerned. “For us, or you, or…?”
The Planet Mover paused as if thinking over what to say. “Many variables. Hence the investigation, bringing a bit more firepower than was sent to eliminate your species.”
“Yes, your ship is rather larger than the last one we saw. Not sure how comfortable that makes me.”
“Perhaps you should be worried, but not about us.”
“Oh? Who else is there?”
There was another long pause. “Life has arisen on more than a million planets that we know of in this galaxy. Of those, thousands have evolved multicellular life. Of those, hundreds begat higher order life forms. Scores of intelligent species have climbed out of the primordial ooze far enough to achieve atomic power and basic space flight. Most of those manage to kill themselves off fairly quickly, through war, overly optimistic bioengineering, tech addiction or bureaucratic over-reach followed by collapse, AI take-over, or the terminal ennui of excess comfort and safety. Only fourteen have developed faster than light technology. Four are currently paired off in genocidal wars of extermination, but neither of those are nearby. Two have faded away, disappeared to parts unknown or dead long ago. Four have been all but annihilated by another species. One is a powerful and expanding empire that destroyed the four I just mentioned. There are ourselves and our one open ally. Last of course, Humans, the least numerous and least significant of the currently known deep space peoples, mostly lost and alone in this relatively small and quiet corner of the galaxy. You are by far the newest arrival on the faster-than-light scene.”
The bridge crew listened intently. They are learning more about life in the galaxy than any other human knew for sure. A very informative first, or rather second, contact.
“Except for Species Eleven, which live in a particular type of gas giant, all space-faring life forms evolved on fairly similar planets in the water-zone around modest stars. It makes the competition for real estate high-stakes. Most have learned the gravitational manipulations necessary to move planets, and that makes the competition somewhat less fierce. But that is a very long range plan, far longer than any organic life form’s natural span. I must pause to congratulate you on two accounts: humans are on a remarkable and record-setting pace for terraforming new planets for a species so new to space-flight, especially considering the pause that the supernova forced upon you.”
“And the other account?”
“It is extremely rare to find four generations aboard a ship, particularly one so small, and a nominal warship no less. It is a good sign for your future. Far too many sub-species self-limit, even when new frontiers and resources are wide open.”
“Uh, four? Kwon’s a grandparent, sure, and Quinn’s young enough to be his grandkid. But that’s only three.”
Taj’s avatar spoke for the first time. “I believe the expression you are looking for is don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.” The Planet Mover avatar looked slightly puzzled for a moment as he listened to her off-channel translation and explanation.
“Ah, I see. Yes, I guess it does make a difference how you count. But you can count eggs, I believe?”
Now it’s Helton’s turn to be confused. “Why is it you guys make my head hurt, even when you use words I thought I understood? Short sentences, simple words, please?”
“The next generation. Offspring. Hatchlings.”
“Maybe a few more words.”
“Dear?” Quiritis said, an apologetic look on her face. “Not exactly the way I‘d planned on telling you, but I think what he means is the unborn life currently aboard the mother-ship.” She placed a hand upon her belly.
While Helton looked at her in surprise and more than a little wonderment, Allonia looked at her. “You, too?” Quiritis nodded.
Kaushik ahem’s and stutters a moment. “I’m sure Bipasha would have wanted to say something first, but under the circumstances…”
The next few minutes are spent in heartfelt but not particularly articulate congratulations and exclamations of joy and support, which Klaatu’s avatar on the screen seemed to find amusing. At length, he continued. “You are a young species. It’s good to see one that takes joy in new life even in the face of great dangers and uncertainty. You might be few in number as yet, but your vitality will be appreciated should you continue your tremendous progress.”
“Why would you appreciate it?” asked Allonia, all aglow.
Another long pause greeted them. “I’m not sure how much I should say, but as you seem to be doing your best, however unsuccessfully you appear to be at the moment, to help get humans on the right track, perhaps a general outline might be helpful.”
“More information is usually better,” Taj replied.
“So why didn’t you tell us earlier about-” Helton started to ask Tajemnica’s avatar, waving toward his wife.
“And how long have you known?” Quiritis finished.
“Since shortly after conception.” Taj’s schoolmarm avatar replied kindly. “The changes in female physiology during pregnancy are well understood and readily apparent, given that meatspac
e health monitoring is a primary duty of any good spaceship. It’s not the first time it has happened aboard, though it is rare among my friends and crew.”
“You should have told us.”
“It’s not my place to say. Trusting me requires that I am good at keeping secrets.”
“OK, we can argue about that later. I’d hate to keep an investigation waiting.” Helton faced the Planet Mover’s avatar. “So, you were about to say?”
“Have you considered why there are four criteria in the carved messages, for us revealing ourselves, are what they are?”
“Endlessly. Hundreds of ideas, really,” Helton replied earnestly. “But with only one partial translation guide, that’s one of the biggest questions. And why leave only one guide?”
“We leave at least one on every planet we move. And you’ve only found a single copy?”
“The only one I know of. There are always rumors of ancient artifacts, but it’s usually surrounded by tinfoil hat conspiracy theory stuff.”
“Knowing what I do of most human governments, it is why you were almost destroyed, I’d not surprised if they were often found, then covered up. They are inconvenient to a powerful central government.”
“To put it mildly. We’re on the most wanted list right now.”
“To be expected. But like many things adults do to educate children and keep them safe, it isn’t fully understood or appreciated by the recipients.”
“No doubt,” Allonia agreed, thinking of Quinn and glaring at Helton good-naturedly.
“The conquering empire I mentioned… its normal strategy is to wait for a species to do all the hard and long-term work of terraforming and technological advancement, then kill off the leadership and enslave the general population which has become accustomed to following orders and not thinking for themselves. They hope that each species will spend its youthful energy creating something new and interesting that they can then take. Humanity was headed down that path, toward being easy pickings for them at some future point, strengthening them. They try to ignore independent and decentralized species such as ourselves as being more trouble than they are worth; they’ll kill us if they can when they meet us, but otherwise they simply avoid us. They are not particularly creative, but their empire is vast. We need allies to oppose them. You may be one of our best options, but only if you take the path of independence with the creative enthusiasm of youth. We are old, and tired of war, but see no other path. Your creativity and energy is unusual strong even for a newcomer, and would be very dangerous if aimed toward us.”