“I have no idea,” Geary said.
“Something that looks like that made ships and formations that look like that.”
“Yeah.” He looked down, breathing deeply to regain his composure. “Forward this to the civilian experts and see what they think it is doing.”
Rione finally spoke up, her voice the closest to normal of all those on the bridge. “It is talking to us. Whatever they are, they initiated contact. The enigmas have only spoken to us after a long period of hiding, and even then, very reluctantly. The bear-cows have never exchanged any communication with us.”
“Maybe it’s just asking us how we taste,” Desjani muttered, then laughed. “I wonder how you say ‘tastes like chicken’ in their language?”
Geary found himself laughing, too, the dark humor a welcome release from the shock of seeing the creature.
“Captain?” The communications watch had managed to control his own half-hysterical laughter at Desjani’s joke. “There’s something attached to this communication. A program of some kind.”
Desjani gave Geary a bitter glance. “A Trojan horse or a virus or what?” she asked the watch-stander.
“It doesn’t seem to be any of those things, Captain. It’s not concealed in any way. The attachment is very obvious. Either these, um . . . whatevers are incredibly unsophisticated about computer security issues, or they wanted to be sure we spotted that program.”
“Run it by security,” Desjani ordered. “I want our code people to analyze it and give me their assessment before we do anything with it. Wait a minute. That message could have been picked up by every ship in the fleet.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Without taking his eyes off the alien message, Geary hit his comm controls. “All units are to refrain from recording, running, or otherwise activating the software attached to the alien message. It will only be tested and activated under controlled conditions and as authorized by me.”
In the comm window before Geary, the creature had ended its speech. Its four upper limbs folded back against its body, crossing over in front of it, then two rose again just enough to frame its head before the message ended.
“Now what?” Desjani asked.
“I don’t know,” Geary said. “Maybe it’s easier to decide what to do when they don’t talk to us.”
“We’ve got the bear-cows on our tails. We can’t just hang around waiting to figure out what these . . . spider-wolves want or need or whatever.”
“You should send a reply,” Rione said.
“A reply?” Geary questioned. “To what? I don’t know what that thing just said.” The idea of sending a message in the blind had made sense a couple of hours ago. But now, after viewing the spider-wolves’ message, the gap between him and the creatures in those beautiful ships seemed vaster than the distances between stars. “They won’t know what my gestures mean, they won’t understand my words, and I may look as ugly to them as they do to me.”
“Nonetheless, you should reply,” Rione insisted. “Let them know we want to talk. Perhaps they know something about humans. They are neighbors of a sort to the enigmas.”
Geary gave Rione a cross look. “I smiled at the bear-cows, and by showing my incisors seemed to them to be preparing to eat them.”
“That is only a guess, Admiral,” she reminded him. “A good guess, I admit. But I heard you earlier speaking of engineering issues, which apply also to living creatures. An attack posture is different from a defense posture, isn’t it? Doesn’t it have to be?”
Charban answered her. “It depends. There are a number of combat methods in which an individual balances, ready to attack or defend as necessary. However, those are fairly sophisticated as such things go.” He paused, his expression thoughtful. “In human terms, we would indicate aggression by leaning forward, arms close to the body, ready to strike. Defense might look the same. But projecting peaceful intent is done by humans by standing erect, arms spread out, hands open. That posture does not suit either attack or defense.”
“The way the, uh, spider-wolf stood,” Geary agreed. “Arms out, claws open.”
“Ready to grab us,” Desjani said. “How do they do fine motor manipulation with claws, anyway?”
“Another good question.” Geary scowled, knowing that Rione was right but wondering if he could talk openly and calmly when he now knew what his audience looked like. “Can we send a reply in the same format in which we received that one?”
“Of course Dauntless can do that,” Desjani replied, looking offended by the suggestion that her ship might not be able to do something.
“We can use the same conversion program, Admiral,” the comm watch explained. “Only instead of converting their stuff to our format, we’ll do it backwards and convert our format to theirs.”
He nodded but sat silently, trying to get himself in the right state of mind to speak to those things without showing revulsion.
Charban spoke, his voice meditative. “You can partly judge someone by what they do, by what they create, and by what they surround themselves with. We did that with the bear-cows, looking at what they had done with their world and deciding from that they must be ruthless. Here we can’t see the home world of these new creatures, but we can see what they created. We can see how they like to do things. That offers us some grounds for empathy.”
“Empathy.” Geary heard his skepticism clearly in this single word.
“Yes. Just as you could see aspects of humans in what we create and how we do things.” Charban waved around. “We made this fleet. A mighty instrument of war. That tells you something about us, but it doesn’t stop with the obvious. Not everything in this fleet reflects pure science or physics or engineering. Many things reflect how we want things to be done because that is how we like them. Not because they’re most efficient but because we like doing things that way. It matters to us, though we might not be able to say why.”
“The Golden Mean,” Rione said. “It’s a ratio between numbers. Human use it in many things because we like seeing things with that proportion.”
“A ratio?” Geary asked.
“It’s an irrational mathematical constant,” Lieutenant Castries reported, squinting at the results of the query she had run. “Derived from the ratio of a larger quantity to a smaller one. It’s about one to one point six. Found in architecture, sculpture, the proportions of hard-copy books, paper, playing cards, music, and virtual windows among other things.”
“Exactly.” Rione gestured toward her display. “These displays probably default to such a ratio of sides because we like seeing things in those proportions. It is somehow part of us. Now look upon these creatures and what they have created. Somewhere within them is beauty.”
“Somewhere very deep within them perhaps,” Geary said.
“Look upon their works, think about those works, as you speak to them.”
“Or maybe get drunk first,” Desjani suggested. “That always makes ugly easier to accept.”
“I won’t ask how you know that,” Geary replied. He sighed, then stood up, trying to maintain a nonaggressive stance. But then he stopped. “Images. We can try imagery. How do I get my display to show along with me?”
“We want to show them one of our displays?” Desjani questioned.
“Yes.”
“Wait, Admiral,” the comm watch said, his hands flying over controls. “All right. It’s visible beside you if you transmit. Here’s a secondary window that shows what you look like.”
The secondary window popped up, so that Geary could see himself standing next to a display image. He considered how to do things, then tapped his comm controls. “Thank you for communicating with us. We want to pass through this star system peacefully.” He pointed to the jump exit they had arrived at, then swung his finger to point to one of the jump points on the other side of this star system. “There are enemies who have pursued us.” Now he held out an open palm in a shielding gesture against the representation of the bear-cow arma
da, his other hand poised to strike. “We will not fight you.” Now he dropped both hands as he faced the representation of the spider-wolf alien force, his palms outward and empty. “To the honor of our ancestors, this is Admiral Geary, out.”
“Captain?” Desjani looked over as the image of a lieutenant commander appeared before her. Geary recognized him as Dauntless’s systems security officer. “We isolated the attachment to that alien message and ran it on a physically quarantined system so there was no way it could infect anything. It took a fair amount of work, but we figured out how to run it since it contained its own operating system that seemed to adapt to our hardware.”
“It adapted to our hardware?”
“Yes, Captain, but don’t worry. It can’t get to any other systems. There’s no physical or electronic connection, and the unit is in an isolation box.”
Desjani took a deep breath. “What is it?” she asked.
“I think . . .” The systems security officer scratched his head. “It’s got pictures, and some kind of interactive routine. It kind of reminded me of a kid’s book. You know, something for real young kids to teach words and stuff.”
“Words?” Charban cried. “A pictorial means of establishing communication!”
“Yes, sir,” the systems security officer agreed. “That’s what it feels like to me.”
“Keep it quarantined for now,” Desjani ordered, “and—”
“We need access to that,” Charban insisted.
“This is my ship, and I decide what gets access to its systems.”
“Captain Desjani,” Geary said formally, “I agree it should be quarantined, kept isolated, but we need to get access to it as soon as possible for both General Charban and Emissary Rione as well as the civilian experts.”
“We can put together a quarantined network,” the systems security officer suggested. “It will take some work, and they’ll have to access it in one compartment because we’ll run short, physical connections between the workstations, but that way they can all play with it at the same time.”
“Use one of the big conference rooms,” Desjani ordered. “Assume a dozen users at one time. How long until it’s up?”
“Half an hour, Captain.”
“Do it, and make sure if you need more time to do it right you ask for it. I don’t want that software having any access to the rest of the systems.”
The lieutenant commander nodded. “Yes, Captain. I don’t want something like that loose, either. If we can figure out how it adapted to our hardware, we’ll get some really cool ideas from it, though.”
Desjani twisted her mouth as she watched her security officer. “Their software does things our software can’t?”
“Yes, Captain.” The lieutenant commander grinned with almost childlike enthusiasm. “We don’t know how yet, but it was amazing to watch. The software is really . . . cool.”
“Thank you. Get on that network,” Desjani said. After the image of the systems security officer vanished, she looked at Geary. “Some software that makes my code monkeys drool with delight, and those things just gave it to us.”
“Maybe they don’t think it’s anything special,” Geary suggested.
“Maybe not, but if that’s so, I’d hate to see their special software.” Desjani turned to Charban. “General, you’ll have access to that program as soon as I get that isolated network safely set up.”
Geary faced Charban and Rione. “They must intend for us to use that program to develop a means of communication. Here’s what I most need to be able to communicate to them. I need them to know we don’t want to fight them. Can we transit their territory in peace? I need to know their attitude toward the bear-cows. Are they enemies? Neutral? Or allies? Will they stand by if we engage the bear-cow armada, or will they take an active role?”
Charban nodded, his eyes intent. “Those will be our priorities. But aside from the time we must spend learning how to ask those things, there is the time involved in exchanging messages. We are still more than fifty light-minutes from the spider-wolf ships.”
“I know we need time.” Geary tapped another control. “All units, accelerate to point one five light speed at time five zero.” That would buy some more hours before the bear-cows caught up, more hours to find out what the spider-wolves intended.
“How the hell are we going to take those things down?” Desjani wondered, looking at her display, where the bear-cow superbattleships were thundering in the wake of the human fleet.
“HAS anyone here not seen the images sent to us by the beings in the ships ahead of us?” Geary asked, looking around the conference table. Since the message had been broadcast to the fleet, he expected that everyone had seen them.
The expressions on his ship captains answered the question without words.
“We still don’t know what the intent of the spider-wolves is,” Geary said. “Our experts and our emissaries are working to establish meaningful communications, but, at best, such communications will be primitive and very limited for some time.”
“Are they going to aid the Kicks?” Captain Badaya demanded. “That’s what we need to know.”
“The Kicks?” Geary looked around, seeing some of the officers nodding in recognition of the term and others looking as puzzled as he felt.
“It’s a term the sailors came up with,” Captain Duellos explained. “They started calling the bear-cows Killer Cows or Crazy Cows, which got condensed to KCs and CCs, which are both pronounced as Kicks.”
“Works for me,” Desjani muttered.
Geary couldn’t really object to either name when it came to the bear-cows, and Kicks wasn’t either obscene or a word that sounded like it might be obscene, so the term would work for him as well. But the byplay had distracted him. Geary took a second to recall Badaya’s question, then activated a copy of the latest message received from the spider-wolves so that it played before everyone present, virtually or in person. The animation of spider-wolf ships attacking bear-cow ships could not be mistaken. “It looks like they are enemies. Watch the next scene.”
Now the animation shifted, incorporating pasted-in images of human warships in this fleet. The animated human warships and the spider-wolf ships moved together, jointly firing on bear-cow combatants, which exploded in some nicely done computer graphics.
“They want to ally with us?” Captain Duellos said. “The ugliest creatures in the universe, and they want to be friends.”
Captain Bradamont, who rarely spoke in these meetings, did so now. “As the admiral mentioned earlier, they’re probably thinking the same thing about us.”
Laughter erupted, born as much from release of tension as from the humor of the statement.
“If they think we’re ugly,” Captain Badaya added, “wait until they see some of the Marines!”
More laughter, accompanied by looks at General Carabali, who waved away the comment. “It’s a well-known fact that when we hit planet-side, the Marines get all the available girls and boys while the fleet officers and sailors are left standing around alone.”
“Taking the local populace prisoner is not a measure of social success by most definitions,” Duellos observed.
Geary quieted the next burst of laughter. The relief that had given rise to the light mood could easily shift quickly to renewed realization that they faced a serious challenge here. “The important thing is, we have allies. Unfortunately, there’s no way to coordinate our attacks. We’ll have to operate independently, attacking the bear-cows while also avoiding interfering with the spider-wolves.”
“And keeping an eye on the spider-wolves?” Tulev asked. “We have only their word that they are enemies of the bear-cows.”
“We’ll keep a close eye on our new allies and best friends forever,” Desjani confirmed.
Geary hesitated as he saw how everyone accepted what Desjani said as a definitive answer, just as if he had given it. Were they accepting that she had already consulted with him on that subject, or did they assume tha
t she could call the shots not only on the bridge of Dauntless but also in her professional relationship with him? “Yes,” he finally said, hoping that didn’t sound like a weak agreement. “We’ll take nothing for granted.”
He brought up the display showing this star system. Ahead loomed the spider-wolf formation, smoothly perfect ships in gorgeous intertwining loops, now only ten light-minutes away. “We’re still in the middle, but not for long.” Behind, the bear-cow armada had stabilized into an oblong that bore a disquieting resemblance to the head of a sledgehammer, especially since the face of the formation closest to the human fleet included the superbattleships. Since Geary had held the velocity of the human fleet to point one five light speed, the bear-cows had been steadily getting closer and now were less than two light-minutes behind the human fleet.
On the display, the human formation of interlinked triangles finally broke, individual ships streaming off on different vectors that gradually coalesced into three subformations of roughly equal size, each heading in a different direction. “We’ve been giving the bear-cows a single target to charge at. Now we’re going to make them choose, and whichever one they choose, the other two subformations will be able to hit them while the targeted subformation evades.”
“Or if those spider-wolves are indeed the enemies of the bear-cows,” Duellos said, eyeing the display, “then when we pull away in different directions, the bear-cows may simply keep charging straight ahead at the spider-wolves. I’m not certain I would be pleased about that if I were the spider-wolves.”
Geary paused again. He hadn’t considered that, thinking that the bear-cows would continue their single-minded pursuit of the humans. But with the spider-wolves right in front of them, the bear-cows might shift targets.
He looked down and over at Desjani, who had helped develop the plan and was unsuccessfully trying to look like she was surprised by Duellos’s suggestion. Tanya, you obviously figured out that might happen and didn’t tell me. We’re going to have words about that.
Badaya was frowning mightily as he thought. “If that happens, if the Kicks go straight for the spiders, it will be an excellent opportunity for us to observe whether or not these two sets of aliens are indeed enemies and how the spider creatures engage their foes in space combat. That’s a clever approach, Admiral.”
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible Page 12