Geary shook his head. “We know they sent some ships ahead to tell them that we were coming, but still I expected some stronger force to be on guard here, even if disguised as an honor guard of some sort. Can you imagine letting a fleet of alien warships just waltz through your territory?”
“Don’t forget those stealthy megamines the spider-wolves had at Honor,” Desjani pointed out. “They might have stuff hidden around here that would make us really unhappy really fast if we did the wrong thing.”
“Your warning is noted and appreciated,” Geary replied. She was right. Just because he couldn’t see spider-wolf precautions didn’t mean there weren’t any. “Emissary Rione, General Charban, please contact our friends the spider-wolves and find out if we’re just supposed to transit directly to the hypernet gate.”
Virtual windows were appearing around Geary. Dr. Setin, Lieutenant Iger, Captain Smythe . . . all begging for an extended opportunity to examine everything that could be learned in this spider-wolf-occupied star system. Geary cut them all off, grateful again for the fleet commander override, then answered everyone at once. “We are contacting the spider-wolves to ask them what path we should follow through this star system. We will have to abide by their wishes. Every sensor in this fleet, every means of collection, is sucking up every bit of data it possibly can, and we will continue to vacuum up information as long as we are in this star system. That’s all I can promise.”
Desjani pointed to her display. “Our escorts are heading for the gate. Do we follow?”
“Yes.” It might take the emissaries a while to reestablish contact, so he had best stick to the safest course until then. Geary brought the fleet around in the wake of the six spider-wolf ships, grateful to see how smoothly even the four battleships linked to the captured bear-cow ship carried out the maneuver.
“They’re watching us, too, you know,” Desjani commented, as the fleet steadied out on a vector following the spider-wolf escort.
“I know.” He was watching the two spider-wolf ships that had met them here. Without warning, both of those ships accelerated into the human formation, gliding and weaving between human ships with the grace and ease of dolphins racing through an underwater obstacle course.
“They’re heading for the LCCO,” Desjani said, her voice tense.
“The LCCO?”
“Large Clumsy Captured Object.”
“The Kick superbattleship,” Geary realized. He hit his comm controls. “All units, this is Admiral Geary, do not interfere with or engage any spider-wolf ships. No weapons use is authorized except by my direct order. Do not lock fire control systems on any spider-wolf craft.”
The two spider-wolf ships slowed, coming almost to a stop relative to the superbattleship and the four Alliance battleships towing it, even though all of those ships were traveling through space at point one light speed. Moving with almost dainty precision, the spider-wolf ships split up, coursing along close above the hull of the former Kick ship in a long and careful examination that was still under way when Rione called Geary.
“The spider-wolves want permission to send someone aboard the captured bear-cow ship.”
THIRTEEN
GEARY glared at Rione. “Are you certain they just want to visit? They don’t want to take control of it, or take things off it?”
“I am certain, Admiral. They want to look around.”
Desjani was looking upward, pretending not to have heard. Well, this was entirely up to him. “All right. Tell them they can send some teams aboard,” Geary told Rione before tapping another control. “Admiral Lagemann, are you prepared for visitors?”
It took another half an hour before one of the spider-wolf ships slipped next to one of the air locks human engineers had installed where the Marines had blasted their way inside the bear-cow superbattleship. By then, a reception committee was waiting, including Admiral Lagemann, the senior Marine aboard the captured ship, and some of the engineers in the prize crew. Even though all of the humans were in survival suits or battle armor, and the spider-wolves were themselves encased in their own armor, the spider-wolves still offered greetings that consisted of cautious “air hugs” that avoided actual physical contact with the humans.
Looking over the human party, Geary saw one of them identified as Lieutenant Jamenson, though, of course, he couldn’t see her bright green hair under her survival-suit helmet.
He called the head engineer on Tanuki. “Captain Smythe, I thought Lieutenant Jamenson was on Orion.”
“She was, Admiral. I directed her to do an individual movement between ships so she could be part of the welcoming committee.”
“Why?”
Smythe grinned. “First of all, to see how the spider-wolves would react to a human whose physical appearance doesn’t fit the, uh, pattern that they are used to. That will only work if they go into an area where Lieutenant Jamenson can remove her helmet, of course. But it also occurred to me that Lieutenant Jamenson’s particular talents might be useful as she watched the spider-wolves in action. Perhaps she’ll see something the rest of us miss.”
“Two inspired ideas, Captain. Thank you.”
Desjani looked skeptical. “That’s the lieutenant who confuses things, right? I mean, on purpose she can confuse things.”
“Right,” Geary confirmed.
“And this helps with the spider-wolves how?”
“It’s the flip side of that which could prove useful,” Geary explained. “Lieutenant Jamenson can also spot information that is related but buried among lots of other data.”
“You mean like patterns?”
“Sort of.”
“Maybe she is a good choice, then.” Desjani settled back in her seat, touching her internal comm controls as she did so. “We have a little more than nineteen hours of travel time to the hypernet gate,” she told her crew. “Let’s get cracking on external hull work.”
THE spider-wolves spent six hours aboard the captured bear-cow warship, focusing attention on areas like the control and engineering spaces while the human fleet focused their attention on what the spider-wolves were examining. Lieutenant Jamenson did get the opportunity to open her helmet at one point, but if her green hair surprised the spider-wolves as much as it did the average human, no one could tell.
Data poured in from fleet sensors examining the inhabited worlds. Grateful that he didn’t have to analyze threat activity, Geary left most of that to the civilian experts and Lieutenant Iger’s intelligence people. Occasionally, he would view areas of the planets that had come into view of the fleet’s full-spectrum sensors, seeing cities and towns that spread widely and seemed thinly occupied by human standards. The spider-wolves had plenty of population here, but they must prefer spreading out rather than concentrating into dense urban centers. Unlike in the bear-cow star system, the planets here had a wide variety of vegetation and a lot of it even within the spider-wolf cities.
Four hours after the spider-wolf team had left the captured bear-cow ship to another round of air hugs and with ten hours remaining before the human fleet reached the hypernet gate, Rione called Geary in his stateroom. “I need to brief you on a few things.”
“All right. Go ahead.”
“In person.”
He sighed. Late at night. Rione in his cabin. Admiral Timbale had warned him that people would be watching for any signs of unprofessional behavior by either him or Desjani. “Madam Emissary—”
“Commander Benan can escort me.” She said it ironically, as if they were sharing a joke.
Naturally Commander Benan, her husband, wouldn’t be thrilled by this, either. “All right,” Geary said.
She showed up in only a few minutes, Commander Benan walking stiffly beside her as she entered. Once inside, he looked around, narrowed-eyed as if searching for dangers, then saluted with a rigid arm before pivoting and walking out of the stateroom to stand by the hatch as it closed.
Geary waited until the hatch had sealed before speaking. “How is he doing?”
/>
“Better since that talk you had with him.”
“At least now we know what the root of his problem is and at least now I know how you’re being blackmailed.”
She didn’t answer for a while. “Without confirming the last part of your statement, it’s unfortunate that neither piece of information offers much in the way of immediate benefit,” Rione finally said.
“Yes. You’re right about that. But you say Commander Benan is more stable now?”
“I said he was better.” Rione walked to a chair and sat down, her gaze now on the star display. “More stable? A little. He’s still dangerous.”
“Be careful.”
“I’m always careful. Let me inform you of things I have learned from conversations with some of the spider-wolves while General Charban and the civilian experts talked with others.”
Geary sat down opposite her. “Were you talking to the one in charge? How senior in rank are the spider-wolves who have been talking to us?” The question had kept occurring to him but never when he was speaking to anyone who could answer it.
“I don’t know. We don’t know.” Rione spread her hands, palms up. “Whatever organizational structure the spider-wolves use is too complicated or too odd for us to grasp as of yet. One of those experts, that Dr. Shwartz, thinks the organizational diagram itself may resemble a web. She could be right. Whatever way they are arranged in rank, we haven’t been able to figure it out even though it seems clear enough to the spider-wolves.
“Now, there are things I have been told that you must know. I do not know how much of this should be known to others in this fleet, which is why I am briefing you in this manner.” Rione spoke briskly but matter-of-factly. “First off, the spider-wolves have informed me in a manner that cannot be misunderstood that when we encounter enigmas, they will not aid in any attack on the enigmas; nor will they help defend us against the enigmas. They will defend themselves, but they will not otherwise engage in hostilities.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Absolutely. We’re on our own when it comes to hostilities with the enigmas.”
“Has General Charban discussed with you his feelings about the spider-wolves and war?”
“Yes.” Rione shook her head. “It’s a possible explanation, but we don’t know it’s true. All I know is that they will not fight the enigmas except to save themselves.”
“At least they told us,” Geary said. “Do you think there might be a nonaggression pact between the enigmas and the spider-wolves?”
She started to reply, stopped as a thought hit her, then gave him a slight smile. “Because if there were such an agreement between the enigmas and another species, it might hold out hope that we could reach such a pact with the enigmas?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I’ll see what I can find out.” Rione tapped the controls on the star display, leaning in as she did so that she was close to Geary.
Even though they didn’t touch, he felt her closeness, memories coming unbidden of times they had been together in this stateroom before he and Tanya had known their own feelings for each other.
He gave Rione no sign that he had felt that, remembered those things, and she also did not react at all, her voice remaining composed and unemotional. “We’re going to come out of the spider-wolf hypernet at this star. It has a human designation but no name. The Syndics didn’t get that far when they were pushing into that region more than a century ago. From that star we will jump a short distance to this star. Again, no name from human sources, but when the spider-wolves spoke of it, they used the same symbol as they used for the star Honor even though this is a different type of star.”
Geary looked steadily at the display as he thought. “A symbol, a label, not for the star type, but for something else? They had a defensive force at Honor, guarding against the bear-cows. Does that star serve a similar purpose against the enigmas? That symbol might mean fortress or stronghold, or something like that.”
“It might.” Rione pointed again. “From that star, we jump to this one, which the Syndics named Hua and may have reached before the enigmas knocked them back to Midway. I don’t think the Syndics got that far, though, because the spider-wolves indicated that Hua is an enigma strongpoint of some kind. They signified some danger there.”
“Hopefully not an enigma hypernet gate,” Geary said. “I don’t want to have to run that kind of gauntlet again.” His own hand went out, tracing a path on the display. “And Hua is within jump range of Pele.”
“And from Pele we get to Midway,” Rione finished.
“Thank you. That’s all very important—”
“There’s one thing more.” She held out her data pad, revealing that it was displaying the symbol used by Syndicate Worlds’ ships to identify themselves. “I showed this to the spider-wolves I was talking to. They recognized it.”
Geary stared at the symbol. “You’re sure?”
“They told me they recognized it.”
“They spider-wolves know about the Syndics? They’ve had contact with the Syndicate Worlds?”
“I don’t think so. I think the Syndics are just as oblivious to the existence of the spider-wolves as we were. But here is the thing, Admiral. I asked them what this symbol represented, and they used the symbols for ‘enemy of your people.’”
“How could they—” Geary’s stare shifted to Rione. “The border with the Alliance is a very long distance from here. There haven’t been any Alliance ships in the region of Syndic space nearest here for at least a century except for our fleet. There certainly haven’t been any battles fought anywhere near that region. How the hell could they know that we were fighting a war with the Syndics?”
“That’s a very good question, Admiral.” Rione rested her chin on one hand, looking pensive. “We have learned that the enigmas had been spying on us long before we knew the enigmas existed. Perhaps . . .”
“The spider-wolves have been in Alliance space?” He forced himself to consider the idea.
“The enigmas planted worms in our sensor systems that hid them from us,” Rione said. “Could the spider-wolves have done the same?”
“If they have, they’re using yet another totally different principle. We’ve scrubbed those systems using everything we could dream up and found nothing else.”
“Have you ever heard of something like a spider-wolf ship being spotted in Alliance space?”
He searched his memory, finding nothing specific. “There are always false sightings. We call them that. Sensors say there’s something there. We take another look, and maybe that next look doesn’t see anything. Or we send a ship to investigate. Sometimes it finds something that was just hard to spot.” That had been how the Alliance fleet had found him, frozen in survival sleep in a damaged escape pod, its beacon inoperative and its power levels failing, so low they barely showed up on the latest fleet sensors. If they hadn’t spotted him then, if they hadn’t recognized that this wasn’t just another piece of lifeless debris, if a destroyer hadn’t taken a good look around and found him . . . Geary tried to banish the memory of the ice that had once filled him. “Usually, most of the time, whatever gets sent to investigate finds nothing. That’s called a false sighting.”
“What causes them?” Rione asked.
“Every system has glitches. Gremlins. Loose electrons. The name varies, but it means that something that isn’t there shows up as being there, or something that isn’t happening shows as happening, or something sticks where nothing should be able to stick. The same sort of tick that impacts everything that uses electronics and coding. That’s why we have human overrides on all of our systems.”
She nodded. “I did a little research before coming down here. There have been examples of such ‘false sightings’ all through human history, dating back to Old Earth. Most were easily explained. The others were dismissed. But if we knew such things happened, then it would too easily explain events that might not all actually be the result of
glitches or gremlins. If the spider-wolves have decent stealth technology—”
“They have excellent stealth technology.” He thought of the mines at Honor.
“Then, Admiral, we must conclude the real possibility that while humanity tended to its own issues and bemoaned a universe empty of other minds like ours, more than one set of such minds may have been snooping around to learn what they could of us.”
He dug his palms into his eyes. “But why wouldn’t the spider-wolves have contacted us? We know why the enigmas didn’t. Why not the spider-wolves?”
“I don’t know.”
“What would they have done if our colonies, our exploration, had reached their boundaries before this?”
“Perhaps just what they did with us,” Rione said. “For whatever reason, they waited for us to get to them. The reason or reasons must have made sense to them. In practice, the enigmas were along the paths that humanity was expanding through in that region, so the enigmas blocked human contact with the spider-wolves.”
Geary sat looking at the display, trying to think. “If the spider-wolves know that the Syndics are our enemies, were our enemies, why do they think that we’re so eager to get to Midway before the enigmas?”
Rione smiled again. “The spider-wolves believe that we are helping our brother-enemies against our not-brother-enemies. They appear to be extremely impressed by that.” She stood up. “I shouldn’t spend too long in here.”
“I understand.” He stood as well, but as Rione turned to go Geary spoke again. “Victoria, I’m going to help him. I know what needs to be done, and I will make sure it is done when we get back to Alliance space.”
She watched him, then slowly nodded once. “Let us hope that he lives that long.”
Rione had barely been gone for a minute before Geary’s comm panel buzzed again with a familiar pattern. “Oh, you’re still up?” Desjani asked.
“As if you didn’t know. Are you calling to find out why Emissary Rione was here?”
“Was she?”
“Yes. Briefing me on items she has learned from the spider-wolves.” Items that Desjani needed to know as well. “Since I’ve already fed the gossip-beast enough tonight, I’ll let you know about it all tomorrow.”
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible Page 26