The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible

by Campbell, Jack

  The difference was that those ships all had the means to leave jump space when they reached their destination. Anyone who lost contact with a ship did not.

  As a result of that, no work was done by humans on the outside of ships in jump space. In emergencies, robots might be employed, but with the expectation that those robots would very likely be lost forever.

  Was that what the mysterious lights of jump space were? Frantic distress flares from someone or something eternally caught in nothing? Geary almost shivered at the thought. The common belief that those lights had some mystical significance was much more comforting and easier to live with.

  Also comforting was the knowledge that no external threat could reach them in jump space. For now, he could truly focus on other issues for a while.

  “I’m going to be down in my stateroom,” he told Desjani. “Do we have any of those VIP wraps left?”

  “Not that I’ve discovered,” she replied.

  “Maybe I’ll eat a meal with the crew and get a feel for morale.”

  “Morale on my ship is fine, Admiral,” Desjani said. “I haven’t had to have anyone flogged to improve their morale for days now.”

  “That’s good to hear, Captain.”

  The walk to a dining compartment did feel almost relaxing, the crew obviously feeling as relieved as Geary to be going away from the bear-cows and toward home. He talked with some of the crew as he ate, asking about their home worlds. Most were from Kosatka, and some had been there during the brief but memorable few days he and Tanya had spent on that planet for what had passed as a honeymoon. “I didn’t buy one drink during those days,” one sailor told Geary. “I’d walk into a bar in uniform, and they’d see Dauntless on my ship badge, and that was all there was to it.”

  “I got two marriage proposals,” another crew member said. “I told both of them I was okay with it but that my husband probably wouldn’t go along.”

  As the laughter from that died down, the questions turned to other matters. Usually with an admiral within reach, sailors would ask about living conditions and food and time off and working conditions, but this time the questions were about bigger issues. The thousands of Marines who had been aboard the bear-cow superbattleship had spread their stories far and wide, so everyone knew a lot about the creatures. But that still left some serious concerns. “Are we going back there, Admiral, to where the Kicks live?”

  Geary shook his head firmly. “No.” He could see the crew members around him relaxing immediately at his unambiguous reply. “Any human ship going there for the foreseeable future would have to be fully automated. I’m not going to risk another human life dealing with the bear-cows.”

  “Why are we bringing that huge ship with us, sir?” another sailor asked. “It’s slowing us down, isn’t it?”

  “A bit,” Geary admitted. “But it’s incredibly valuable. It’s a treasure trove of bear-cow technology. Maybe when we have time to analyze everything back in Alliance space, they won’t find anything amazing on it, just different ways of doing what we can already do. But maybe they’ll find things we never knew we could do.”

  A veteran systems technician nodded. “Something really revolutionary that we never thought of. How do you measure how much that could be worth?”

  “Exactly. And, if nothing there is beyond what we can already do, that at least tells us the limits of what the bear-cows can do.”

  That earned him more nods, then one sailor proffered her data unit where a picture was displayed. “Admiral, is this really what the B—the things that helped us look like?”

  It was a good representation of a spider-wolf, probably taken from one of the messages the spider-wolves had sent to the fleet as a whole when it had arrived at Honor. But although the sailor had shown the sense not to call them Bubs to Geary’s face, the term obviously was still in use. “Yes. That’s what they look like. Unattractive as sin, aren’t they?” Geary asked, trying to disarm the inevitable reactions. “That’s on the outside. On the inside, they seem to have a lot more in common with us than the bear-cows or the enigmas.”

  “Some of them tried to help a pod off of Balestra,” another crewman noted.

  “That makes them better than Syndics, too,” someone else remarked.

  The laughter this time was a bit nervous. “The bottom line,” Geary said as convincingly as he could, “is that they did fight alongside us, and they did attempt to aid us in other ways. They’re letting us use their hypernet to get home a lot faster than we could otherwise. You judge someone by how they act, not by how they look.”

  “Tell that to my chief at the next uniform inspection, Admiral!”

  “Yeah, Admiral, can I quote you on that?”

  Geary laughed, standing up and waving away the eager, joking requests. “I’m only an admiral. I can lead chiefs, but I can’t push them around. Besides, according to Captain Desjani, you’re the best sailors in the fleet. Why would I need to ask for special treatment for you?”

  He left the dining compartment feeling better, but the sailors’ questions had brought to life some of his own concerns. Once Geary reached his stateroom, he put in a call to another officer aboard Dauntless, asking him to drop by as soon as possible.

  “Admiral.” General Charban, at least, was enjoying some rest. With the ships isolated in jump space, he was no longer being called upon to try to communicate with the spider-wolves on a constant basis. “You wanted to see me?” he asked as he entered Geary’s stateroom.

  “Yes.” Geary waved Charban to a seat. “I was afraid you’d already passed out for a while.”

  “After all those days I had to stay awake to deal with negotiations, my metabolism will take a few more hours to slow down again to the point where I can sleep,” Charban said as he sat. “I could slam it down with some different meds, but I prefer to let my body handle getting back to normal a little more naturally.”

  “A wise move,” Geary said. “I wanted a candid appraisal from you, without any pressure from anyone else being present. You’ve had as much contact with the spider-wolves as anyone has so far.”

  “Emissary Rione is actually the only one to have had ‘contact,’” Charban pointed out. “Though that distinction didn’t seem to mean much to the fleet medical personnel who inflicted such a wide array of tests and examinations on both of us. In preparation for that meeting with the spider-wolves, I had read a number of accounts of supposed encounters with alien species in the far past. Those old stories often claimed the aliens used probes and other uncomfortable forms of physical inspection. In fact, the spider-wolves were very courteous. It was our own doctors who probed away with considerable enthusiasm.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” Geary sat down opposite Charban. “General, I want to know any impressions you have of the spider-wolves that have not appeared in formal reporting.”

  “Impressions, Admiral? As to what? I can speak for hours about different matters, but it would help if I knew exactly what you’re interested in.”

  “Can we trust them?” Geary saw Charban taken aback by the question. “Yes, they fought alongside us against the bear-cows. But what about now? Jump space is not a big trust issue. We know where we’re going. I don’t have a gut feeling that we need fear any kind of trap or ambush from the spider-wolves there. But we’ll be entering their hypernet, dependent on them as to where we come out.”

  “I see.” Charban gave Geary a wry look. “Admiral, have you ever met the sorts of people who strike you as dangerous because they’re unpredictable? You know the kind. It’s not just that they’re capable of doing things but that they might strike out at any time at anyone. Or they might do something totally unexpected.”

  He nodded, an image of Jane Geary flashing into his mind, followed by that of Commander Benan. But he wouldn’t say either name aloud.

  “But,” Charban continued, “there are other sorts of people, like General Carabali, who are dangerous because of their capabilities, but in a very targeted way. General
Carabali will only strike after carefully considering options and deciding this target must be hit in this way.”

  “Sure,” Geary agreed. “I’ve met both types.”

  “The spider-wolves strike me as being fundamentally of that second nature. They can be very deadly, but they always calculate their strikes. They always act to support their goals, and those goals and plans are well thought out. This pattern thing that the civilian experts came up with, for example. Just thinking in terms of that, in terms of how one action will impact not only those things around it but also anything that might somehow be tied to it, requires acting in a well-planned way. You or I might act in that fashion because we believe it is smart. The spider-wolves, I am convinced, act that way because they feel they must.”

  Geary sat thinking about that for a while, Charban waiting patiently. “That’s scary, isn’t it?” Geary finally said. “An intelligent species that feels an obligation to think out its actions, to consider consequences. That makes them smarter than us.”

  “Smarter? Perhaps. It depends on how you define ‘smarts.’” Charban shook his head. “Do they take chances? I don’t think so. Not as we would define it. What about leaps of faith? Unlikely, I am guessing. Spontaneous moves? Sudden inspirations driving immediate actions? No. I don’t think so. It’s all planned out carefully, thought out carefully.”

  “Engineers,” Geary said. “Really good engineers. They do the planning before they act. They don’t build something they don’t expect to work. We could probably outreact them.”

  “Or at least confuse them.” Charban hunched forward, his eyes on Geary’s. “But here’s what I think is the most important part of my assessment. Admiral, would a race that always plans ahead, that doesn’t like to deal with unanticipated or uncontrollable events or consequences, a race that wants to be sure of what will happen, would such a species ever begin a war by choice?”

  That one was easy. “No.”

  “No,” Charban repeated. “War is chaos. War is unpredictable. I heard a story once about an ancient king who asked an infallible oracle about what would happen if he invaded a neighboring kingdom, and the oracle answered that if he did that, a mighty kingdom would fall. Assuming that guaranteed victory, he invaded, only to be utterly crushed, his own kingdom destroyed. He hadn’t considered the possibility that the oracle’s answer meant that his kingdom would be the one to fall.”

  “Unforeseen circumstances,” Geary said.

  “Right. If humans were a rational species, we would take heed of such examples from our history, and no one would start a war. But some humans always convince themselves that ‘this time’ it will be different and that they can confidently predict the outcome. Why did the Syndic Executive Council start the war with the Alliance a century ago when they should have realized that even with enigma help they couldn’t have won? Even then it should have been obvious that a bloody stalemate was inevitable. But we humans find ways to fool ourselves. I don’t believe that the spider-wolves think like that. On the contrary, their bias to avoid the unpredictable might prevent them from ever being aggressive against their neighbors.”

  Geary nodded. “But self-defense is another matter. Failure to have sufficient defenses would produce an outcome they don’t want, or introduce uncertainty into whether or not someone would attack.”

  “Yes. Which is all a very convoluted way of answering your initial question. Yes, I believe we can trust the spider-wolves. I am certain that they don’t want to start a war with us. If we started a war with them, they would fight back with all of the cleverness and skill they possess. But they won’t begin a war with us. They don’t know what that would do to the pattern.”

  It all fit together. “Self-interest.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Self-interest,” Geary explained. “How is every nonhuman intelligent species acting? In what they believe to be their own self-interest. The enigmas are convinced that hiding anything about themselves is vitally important, so they’ll do anything to keep us from learning anything. The bear-cows think we want to eat them, so they’ll do anything to stop us from doing that. And the spider-wolves think we can help anchor their pattern if we work together, or seriously disrupt it if we fought. The one thing they all have in common is the pursuit of what they have decided is their own self-interest.”

  General Charban sat back, considering that. “Humans, too. Why are we here? Because we considered it important to know whether the enigmas could be dealt with short of war and to learn how powerful they were. It was in our self-interest to risk this fleet on such a mission.”

  “The self-interest of humanity as a whole, you mean,” Geary said, hearing the acid in his tone.

  “Just so,” Charban agreed. “This mission isn’t the sort of thing that promotes the self-interests of the humans in the crews. Perhaps we’re not so different in that respect from the enigmas or the bear-cows. Humanity is just as willing to sacrifice some of its own number in the name of the greater good. I’m going to pass your idea on to our civilian experts if that’s all right with you. It might offer a place, a concept, where we can make emotional contact with even the most alien of species.”

  “Good.” Geary held out a restraining hand as Charban began to rise. “About the civilian experts . . .”

  “I think we can trust them, Admiral,” Charban joked, then noticed Geary’s reaction. “Are you concerned about that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been picking up some different impressions from them lately. Those I contact regularly I mean. I rarely deal directly with any of them but Dr. Setin and Dr. Shwartz now.”

  “I see.” Charban relaxed in his seat again. “I’ve been working with all of them. You know there have always been three factions among our civilian experts? One small faction was convinced before we met a single alien intelligence that it would be a fight to the death between our species. Remarkably, that faction sees everything we’ve learned as supporting that argument. Another small faction started out believing that the universe would greet us with open arms of peace and friendship. They also remain unshaken in their position, blaming any contact problems on our own blunders.”

  “The blunders of the military, you mean,” Geary said dryly.

  “Of course. Then there’s the biggest faction, who to varying degrees like to wait to see the evidence before they decide what the evidence means. I’ve been frankly surprised to see so many of that sort with us, but that is due, I think, to the efforts of Dr. Setin in influencing who accompanied us.” Charban fell silent for a moment. “That group was badly shaken by the enigmas and the bear-cows. The evidence seemed to support the crowd that claimed the universe hates us. The discovery and interaction with the spider-wolves has been incredibly important in restoring their faith in the universe and in this mission.”

  “You believe everything is all right there, then? There’s nothing I need to worry about?”

  “I didn’t say that, Admiral.” Charban’s smile held no humor. “Soon after we return to Alliance space, academic and popular journals will be full of articles penned by our experts in which they will describe how very badly the military and some of the other civilian experts handled just about everything, and how only the presence of the authors of said articles prevented total and complete disaster.”

  “I see that academia hasn’t changed in the last century,” Geary said.

  “No. Of course not.” Charban thought, his eyes on the star display. “Dr. Setin has been one of your strongest supports among the civilians experts. But he was badly shaken by the slaughter aboard that bear-cow superbattleship. I think he understands that you had no choice but to order such an action, and that we did all we could to get the bear-cow crew to surrender rather than fight to the death, but, emotionally, he has had great difficulty with those events. Still, he’s a good man with a good mind. I believe he will come around.”

  “And Dr. Shwartz?”

  “You have no firmer ally among them, Admiral. Y
ou have given her not one, not two, but three intelligent nonhuman species to study. The circumstances involving some of those meetings haven’t been what we wished, but Dr. Shwartz is that rare sort of academic who realizes the difference between the universe in which theories live and the universe as it really exists.”

  “Thank you, General,” Geary said. “Please go now and let your metabolism wind down so you can rest.”

  The next three and a half days in jump space were quiet. Geary noticed that Desjani kept her crew working but also allowed an unusually large amount of downtime, so everyone could take a break. He did his own best to relax despite gnawing worries about how close the enigmas were to Midway and whether or not the spider-wolves might yet decide that humans were too unpredictable to make worthwhile friends or allies.

  Geary was back on the bridge of Dauntless when the fleet popped out of jump into a star system that humans would have considered prime. Twelve planets orbiting a star whose nuclear furnace appeared as stable as stars got, one of those planets orbiting just under eight light-minutes from the star in the perfect zone for life as humans knew it, while two more planets swung around each other and the star at nine light-minutes out. Those planets were a bit cool and must have some impressive tidal effects, but were otherwise not bad at all. Off to one side and two light-hours away, what could only be a hypernet gate loomed.

  “Nice,” Desjani approved, her eyes still searching for threats. The star system was filled with spider-wolf ships, all of which appeared to use the same beautifully streamlined shape but the vast majority of which were on paths indicating they were taking merchant ship–type tracks between planets.

  Aside from the six spider-wolf warships accompanying the human fleet, only two other spider-wolf ships were at the jump point.