The New Space Opera 2

by Gardner Dozois

  In the holotank, the antimissiles with their labels went streaking toward the missile. It dodged them, shot at them, dodged them. Then, one of them found its mark and the missile detonated, a silent fireball that collapsed in on itself, lensing the gravity around it and bending space.

  “All right then,” Tsubishi said. “Hail the yufo, Lieutenant.”

  “That wasn’t very friendly,” he said. “I get the feeling we got off to a bad start. Shall we start over again?”

  “I’ve already issued you my challenge, Captain. Personal combat, on-world, first one to the top of the highest peak claims the planet, the loser surrenders it. I’ll give you the whole system if you want.”

  “I see. And if I refuse?”

  The klaxon’s sound was louder than before. In the tank, dozens of photon torpedoes had just blinked into existence, relentlessly plowing through the depths of space, aimed directly at the ship.

  Helpfully, the tank tagged them with countdown labels. The ship was not going to make it.

  Tsubishi allowed himself three seconds—————and then he cleared his throat.

  “We accept your challenge.”

  The torpedoes vanished, leaving behind their labels. An instant later, the tank helpfully removed the labels, too.

  “Sir, with all due respect, you can’t beam down to the surface.”! Mota was visibly agitated, and writhed uncomfortably under Tsubishi’s calm stare.

  “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, Commander.” He plucked at his baggies and wished for the comforting tautness of his ship-wrapped uniform. Such was the price of leadership. “The alien was very clear on this in any event. It’s calling the shots.”

  “Captain, you are being driven by the alien. You need to get inside its decision-loop and start setting the agenda. It’s suicide otherwise. You saw how much power—”

  “I saw, Commander. It’s well and good to talk about getting inside decision-loops, but sometimes you’re outgunned and all you’ve got is your own bravery and instincts. It’s not like we can outrun that thing.”

  “We could back off—”

  “We don’t know what its transporter beam range is, but it’s clearly far in excess of anything we’ve ever seen. I’m betting that I have a better chance of getting to some kind of resolution on the surface than I do of being able to pull back to warping distance ahead of its ability to turn us into shrapnel.”

  “Some kind of resolution, sir?”

  “Well, yes. We’re intelligent species. We can talk. There’s probably something we have that they want. And we’re pretty sure that there’s something they have that we want—their transporter technology, for starters. That decision-loop stuff is applicable to fighting. We already know we can’t do that. We need negotiation.”

  The Wobbly relaxed visibly. “I see, sir.”

  “What, did you think I was going on a suicide mission?”

  “Sir, of course not, but—”

  “Besides, I’m curious to see this thing face to face. That yufo’s barely big enough to hold my breakfast. Those ugly bastards must be about three millimeters tall—how do they accomplish the neuronal density to pack a functional intelligence into something that small?”

  “Good question, sir,”! Mota said. Tsubishi could tell that he’d won the argument.

  “Commander, I’m de-tasking you from the bridge for now.”

  “Me, sir? Who will have the conn?”

  “Oh, leave it to Varma,” he said. The C-string commander was always complaining that she never got to run the bridge when important things were happening.

  “Varma.” The hurt was palpable, even through the thick Wobbly accent.

  “Of course Varma.” He gave forth with one of his ironic head-tilts. “You can’t possibly be in charge.” He waited for one beat, leaving! Mota trembling on zer hook. “You’re coming down to the surface with me.”

  Emotions chased each other across the Wobbly’s face. Pride. Worry. “Sir? Fleet procedure prohibits having two or more senior officers in a single landing party—”

  “Unless the crewmembers in question possess specific talents or capabilities that are likely to be of necessity during the on-planet mission. Don’t quote regs at me, Commander. I eat regs for breakfast.” Another head-tilt. The Wobbly’s exo gave an all-over shudder that Tsubishi recognized as a wriggle of pure delight. Tsubishi smiled at zer. Command wasn’t so hard, sometimes.

  When he was a kay-det, he’d hated the transporter drills. Yes, they were safe, overengineered to a million nines. But at the end of the day, Tsubishi just didn’t like being annihilated to a quantum level and reassembled at a great distance by a flaky, incomprehensible entanglement effect. Deep down in his cells, annihilation equaled dread.

  Command meant that you had to like transporters. Love them. So he’d gotten over his dread. He’d found a pliant transporter technician—an older career woman, the backbone of the fleet—and struck up an arrangement. For an entire month, he’d paged her whenever he needed to go anywhere in the Academy, and she’d beamed him there. A dozen transports a day. Two dozen. The fresher, quarters, classes, the simulators, the mess-hall. Her room, after hours, where she’d met him wearing a slinky film of machine-wrapped gauze and a smile.

  A month of that and he’d changed the equation: annihilation equaled yawn.

  “Status, Commander! Mota?”

  The Wobbly’s salute ticked off zer forelobe. “Sir, crew ready for transport.”

  “Landing coordinates?”

  “Here,”! Mota said, gesturing at the holotank, which transitioned to a view of the planet below them and quickly zoomed to a prairie at the foot of an impressive mountain range that unevenly split the smaller of the planet’s two landmasses.

  “And our objective?”

  ! Mota gestured and the holotank skipped forward, superimposing a glowing field over one of the mountaintops. Tsubishi realized that this was another slide presentation.! Mota really loved slide presentations. It was a Wobbly thing.

  “Commander! Mota.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “If that mountaintop is our objective, why aren’t we just beaming down onto it?”

  ! Mota jumped to the next slide, which zoomed to the mountain range with a bluish bubble superimposed over most of it. “No-go zone, sir. Test transports of enzymatically representative samples proved…unreliable.”

  “Unreliable?”

  “The enzymes we retrieved had been denatured sir, as with extensive heat.”

  “They were barbecued, Cap,” said Second Lieutenant! Rena, the mission science officer, a Wobbly who had made a hobby out of twen-cen Earth in a brownnosing effort to ascend through the ranks faster than Wobblies usually managed. It was an open secret on the Colossus II that the two Wobblies loathed each other. Tsubishi approved of this, and approved even more of! Mota’s forbearance in selecting! Rena for the landing party.

  “I see.”

  ! Mota flicked to the next slide, a 3-D flythrough of a trail up the mountains. “This appears to be the optimal route to the peak, sir. The seven-leagues have a millimeter-accurate picture of the landscape and they’re projecting a 195-minute journey time, assuming no trouble en route.” Tsubishi rocked back and forth in his seven-league boots, whose harness ran all the way up to his mid-thigh. Running on these things was fun—the kind of thing that made serving on away-teams such a treat.

  “I assume we can count on trouble, Commander! Mota. I certainly am.”

  “Yes, sir,”! Mota said, clicking forward one slide. “These are alternate routes through the mountains, and in the worst case, the seven-leagues have a bounce-and-ditch they’ll deploy to get us onto the face.” That sounded like less fun: the boots would discharge their entire power-packs in one bone-jarring bounce on a near-straight vertical that would launch him like a missile into the mountain face, with only a couple of monosilk drogue chutes to slow him before impact.

  “How many more slides, Commander?”

  “No mor
e,”! Mota said. Tsubishi knew ze was lying, and could tell that ze was disappointed. Make it up later. Time to beam down! His palms were sweating, his heart thudding. Outwardly, he was cool.

  “Everyone ready?” All six in the party chorused “Aye, sir,” in unison. “Do it,” he said to the transporter operator. She smiled at him and engaged the system that would annihilate him and reassemble him millions of klicks away on the surface of a virgin planet. He smiled back in the instant before the machine annihilated him. Horniness was a hazard of his transporter conditioning regime at the Academy, but he could deal with it.

  The transporter technician deserved a commendation. Not many of the techs on the bridge were thoughtful enough to land a steaming cappuccino on the planet along with Tsubishi. He liked the attention to detail. He made a mental note and had a sip.

  “Report, Commander?”

  ! Mota had zer comm out and had been busily verifying from the surface all the readings they’d got from orbit, establishing multiple redundant links with the ship, querying the health readouts from the gutbots in the landing parties’ bodies. “Nominal, Captain.”

  “Let’s have a little reccy before we kick off, shall we? I was expecting company when we landed. Seems like our friend’s style.”

  “Yes, sir,”! Mota said. He unclipped an instrument gun from his exo’s thigh and fired it straight into the air. A billion dandelion seeds caught the wind and blew in every direction, settling slowly to the ground or lofting higher and higher. The little sensors on them started to measure things as soon as they were out of the muzzle, while the networking subsystems knit them together into a unified ubiquitous surveillance mesh that spread out for ten kilometers in all directions (though it grew patchier around the edges). “Sir, I have no sign of the alien or its artifacts. Nothing on this planet bigger than a bacterium, and the gutbots have already got their genomes solved and phaged. I recommend beginning the mission.”

  Tsubishi looked around and finished his cappuccino. The terrain was as depicted in the holotank—sere, rocky, stained in coral colors that swirled together like organic oil-slicks. The temperature was a little chilly, but nothing the baggies couldn’t cut, and the wind made an eerie sound as it howled through the rugged mountains that towered all around them.

  “All right then, form up, two by two, and then go full auto. Keep your eyes peeled and your guard up.” He thought for a moment. “Be on the lookout for very small hostiles—possibly as small as a centimeter.” The away-team, six crewmembers with robotic feet, baggies, and looks of grim determination, exchanged glances. “I know. But that is one tiny damned yufo, gang.”

  They smiled. He finished his cappuccino and set the cup down, then put a rock on top of it to keep it from blowing away. He’d pick it up and return to the ship with it.

  “On my mark then. Do it.”

  And they were off.

  The seven-leagues took great pains to establish a regular rhythm, even though it meant capping the max speed at about 70 percent of what the body mechanics of the crew could sustain. But the rhythm was necessary if their brains were going to converge binocular vision—otherwise the landscape blurred into a nauseous smear. Tsubishi’s command-channel, set deep in his cochlea, counted down the time to the mountaintop.

  It was a marvelous way to travel. Your legs took on a life of their own, moving with precise, quick, tireless steps that propelled you like a dream of flying. The most savage terrain became a rolling pasture, and the steady rhythm lent itself to musical humming, as though you were waltzing with the planet itself.

  At the halfway mark, Tsubishi called a break and they broke out hot meals and drinks—he switched to decaf, as three was his limit in any twenty-four-hour period: more just made him grumpy. They picnicked on a plateau, their seven-leagues locked and extended into stools. As they ate, Tsubishi and! Mota circulated among the crewmembers, checking in with them, keeping morale up, checking the medical diagnostics from their gutbots. The landing party were in fine form, excited to be off the ship and on an adventure, keen to meet the foe when and if ze chose to appear.

  That was the devil of it, Tsubishi and! Mota agreed, privately, over their subvocal command-channel. Where was the yufo? The ship confirmed that ze hadn’t simply transported to the mountain peak, but neither could it locate zer anywhere on the planet.

  “What sort of game is ze playing?” Tsubishi subvocalized, keeping his face composed in a practiced expression of easy confidence.

  “Captain, permission to speak freely?”

  “Of course.”

  “The yufo’s demonstrated capabilities are unseen in known space. We have no idea what it might be planning. This may be a suicide mission.”

  “Commander! Mota, I realize that. But as you say, the yufo has prodigious capabilities and ze made it clear that it was this or be blown out of the sky. When all you have is a least-worst option, there’s nothing for it but to make the best of it.” This was the kind of can-do thinking that defined command in the fleet, and it was the Wobblies’ general incapacity to embrace it that kept them from making the A-squads.

  ! Mota turned away and pitched in on the clean-up effort.

  “You took a lunch break?” The voice came from the center of their little circle, and there was something deeply disturbing about it. It took Tsubishi a moment to realize what had made his balls crawl up into his abdomen: it was his voice. And there was the yufo, speaking in it: “A lunch break? When I made it clear that the stakes were the planet and your lives?” It wasn’t two centimeters tall. It was more like three meters, a kind of pyramidal mountain of flesh topped with a head the size of a large pumpkin. The medusa-wreath of tentacles fluttered in the wind, twisting and coiling.

  Tsubishi’s hand was on his blaster, and he noted with satisfaction that the rest of his crew were ready to draw. Via the command-channel, Varma was whispering that the ship was watching, prepared to give support.

  Deliberately, he took his hand off his blaster. “Greetings,” he said. “You have an amazing facility for language.”

  “Flattery? Please.” The yufo whacked its tail on the rock. “Not interested. And I distinctly said one-on-one. What are these things doing here?” It waved a flipper derisively at the crew, who stood firm.

  “I hoped that we could dispense with challenges and move on to some kind of negotiation. A planet isn’t nearly as interesting to the Alliance as a new species. Once again, I bid you greetings in the name of—”

  “You don’t learn fast, do you?” The flipper twitched again and the crew—vanished.

  Tsubishi drew his blaster. “What have you done with my crew?” But he knew, he knew from the telltale shimmer as they went. They’d been beamed somewhere—into deep space, to the landing spot, back onto the ship. “You have three seconds. Three—”

  The yufo twitched again and the blaster vanished too, tingling in his hands as it went. He looked down at his palm and saw that some of the skin had gone with it. It oozed red blood.

  The yufo extended a tentacle in his direction and twitched. “Sorry about that. I’m usually more accurate. As to your crew, I annihilated them. I removed their tokens from the play area. You’re a game-player, you should be able to grasp this.”

  “Game-player?” Tsubishi’s mind reeled.

  “What do you think we’re doing here, Captain?” The last word dripped with perfectly executed sarcasm. The yufo really did have an impressive language module. With creeping hopelessness, Tsubishi realized that ze couldn’t possibly have trained it from their meager conversation to date; ze must have been snaffling up titanic amounts of communication from the Colossus II’s internal comms. Ze was thoroughly inside his decision-loop. “Competing. Gaming. You’re clearly familiar with the idea, Mr. Role-Player.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?”

  “You’re starting to bore me, Captain. Look, it’s clear you’re outmatched here. You’ve got a lovely little play area up there in orbit, but I’m afraid you’re about to forfe
it it.”

  “No!” Tsubishi’s veneer of calm control blistered and burst. “There are hundreds of people on that ship! It would be murder!”

  The yufo inflated zer throat-bladder and exhaled it a couple times. “Murder?” ze said. “Come now, Captain, let’s be not overly dramatic.”

  This was the first time that the yufo appeared the least bit off-balance. Tsubishi saw a small initiative and seized it. “Murder! Of course it’s murder! We are not at war. It would be an act of sheer murder.”

  “Act of war? Captain, I’m not playing your game. I’m playing—” Its tentacles whipped around its head. Tsubishi got the impression that it was fishing for a word. “I compete to put my flag on a pattern of planets. It is a different game from your little space-marines dramatics.”

  On that plateau, on that remote world near that unregarded star, Captain Reynold J. Tsubishi experienced satori.

  “We are not playing a game. We are ‘space marines.’ Space navy, actually. We are not playing soldiers. We are soldiers. Those were real people and you’ve really, really killed them.”

  The alien’s tentacles went slack and twitched against its upper slopes. It inflated and deflated its bladder several times. The wind howled.

  “You mean that you haven’t got a recent stored copy of them—”

  “Stored copy? Of them?”

  The tentacles twitched again. Then they went rigid and stood around zer head like a mane. The bladder expanded and the yufo let out a keening moan the like of which Tsubishi had not heard anywhere in the galaxy.

  “You don’t make backups? What is wrong with you?”

  The yufo vanished. Instantly, Tsubishi tried to raise the Colossus II on the command-channel. Either his comm was dead or—or—He choked down a sob of his own.

  The yufo returned to him as he sat on the mountainpeak. He hadn’t had anywhere else to go, and the seven-leagues had been programmed for it. From his high vantage, he looked down on wispy clouds, distant, lower mountaintops, the sea. He shivered. The command-channel was dead. He had been there for hours, pacing and doing the occassional calisthenics to stay warm. To take his mind off things.