“They were extremely selective about the information they sent us,” she said. “Their histories and cultural information are pure propaganda, though whether that’s intended for our consumption or theirs I can’t tell. That might just be how they are, I guess. They’ve lived under military rule for all of their history, if you believe what they sent us. I don’t.” Snapping the file shut with the flick of a switch, she added, “They’re paranoiac, aggressively so, and determined to defend themselves and their people to the last man. Their homeworld is sacred to them, which only makes their actions even more baffling. It’s as though they scrawled graffiti on a cathedral.”
“They have the right to make their choice,” Belinsky replied. “If they want to wipe themselves out, then the decision is theirs to make, no matter what we might think about it. I don’t like this any more than you do, but I don’t see what we can do about it. Unless you advocate launching a war of conquest, destroying their ships and taking their planet, imposing our will upon them by force. I suppose we could do it, theoretically…”
“One day, we might have to,” Silva said, walking into the room, a datapad in her hand. “The shuttle’s in final maintenance now, Commander. It’ll be ready by the time we reach the next system. Nine more after that one, and we’re at the end of the run. Maybe a week.”
“What exactly do you mean, Lieutenant?” Belinsky asked.
Locking eyes for a second with Silva, Novak said, “She means that our temporary friends back there are the sort of people who might consider attack as the best form of defense, and that they probably already consider humanity almost as great a threat to the perfection of their homeworld as the Exterminators. Especially as we represent a threat that they might be able to deal with, in the near future.”
“They’ve never even left their system,” Bendix protested, turning from the wall. “How can you say that?”
“When their whole culture is based around the idea of defending themselves from aliens, when they won’t even accept technology that will save their biosphere, potentially their civilization, from total and final destruction, I can see them launching some sort of holy war against humanity. Maybe within the next couple of decades. Now that we’ve shown them the wormhole network, they’ll use it. Count on it. We ought to move first, before they can. Before half a dozen of our colonies pay the price of delay.”
“You can’t be seriously talking about launching a war of aggression against an alien race,” Bendix said.
“Sure I can,” Silva said. “I swore an oath to defend humanity from all threats external and internal. Those fanatics look like a pretty substantial threat to me, and I suspect that Fleet Intelligence will feel the same way as soon as they get a good look at them.” Shaking her head, she added, “The threat potential is enormous. They’re already engaged in total war, and despite being behind on the technological curve, their orbital production is pretty close to ours. Give them a few years, and they’ll be outproducing us, each ship crewed with dangerous fanatics ready to wipe us off the map. Not an enemy I’d like to face after we beat the Exterminators.” She paused, smiled, then added, “Assuming this isn’t completely academic in a few weeks, of course. Or they don’t choke themselves to death first.”
“Regrettably, that seems highly likely,” Belinsky said. “They’re already past the point of no return without technological assistance, on their way to a runaway greenhouse effect. Their world is already dead. It just doesn’t know it yet. They’ve spread themselves out across the inner system, but I doubt their technology is up to the task of supporting their off-world colonies without help from home.”
“Great,” Silva said. “That means we’re going to be dealing with a group of fanatic refugees who will probably find some way of blaming all of their problems on humanity.” She looked around the room, and added, “We’ve got more threats out here than just the Exterminators. We’ve got to plan for the next twenty years, fifty, and if there is another war coming, we’ve got to be ready for it.”
“Is that how it will always be, Lieutenant?” Scott asked, walking into the room. “I don’t necessary disagree with your analysis, mind, but I abhor what it might represent.”
“Nobody wants a war, Admiral,” Silva said. “I just can’t see the alternative. We saved their sorry souls just so they could turn around and attack us. The best we can hope for is that our involvement gets written out of their history books.”
“Let’s fight one enemy at a time, Lieutenant. Never mind the threat we’ve left behind us. Unless there’s something that might be relevant to the matter at hand.”
“Actually, sir, I think I might have something,” Bendix said. “I’ve completed a linguistic analysis of the alien language, comparing it to what we know of the Folk, and it triggers far less than a million years ago. Around the same time as the destruction of the second sentient species in the system, actually. My guess is that we’re looking at some sort of aftermath from that war.” She paused, then added, “It’s far from impossible that there was only one sentient species in the system, and that we could have met the descendants of the Folk.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Belinsky replied. “They were a peace-loving people…”
“Who had their homeworld destroyed three times.” Scott paused, then said, “Doctor Bendix, have you got anything else to back this up? Anything at all?”
“No Stone Age culture could even attempt to understand an alien language. I suppose it’s possible that they could have been taught it.” She stepped forward, and said, “Sir, you realize what this could mean. That the Exterminators left a seed colony, a part of the race that might have a chance to live again, start from scratch. Such an act would have to be deliberate given the methodical destruction they’ve demonstrated elsewhere.”
“Or, just as likely,” Belinsky replied, “a few survivors from the original colony brought some records with them after it was destroyed, deciding to warn the primitive race what they might be facing once they attained spaceflight. The reality is that we’re working in a vacuum, Admiral. We can play around with theories as much as we want, but I agree with Commander Novak. We can’t trust anything they sent us to be accurate. Even if they meant it to be, they’re hardly unbiased observers, and as such, their data is suspect.”
“Just because we can’t trust the data doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make use of it, Professor,” Novak said. “Especially if we don’t have anything to work with. It seems perfectly clear to me that they learned of the potential threat they faced extremely early in their existence. Don’t forget that the biosphere of their homeworld, before they wrecked it, wouldn’t have been that suitable for the Folk anyway.”
“The other planet was,” Belinsky said. “Based on our projections, gravity, temperature and pressure would have been about right.” Looking at Scott, he said, “The Exterminators did give them a second chance. Evidently, they failed to make use of it.” Shaking his head, he added, “Though there’s something else I don’t understand. If they’d headed out to the stars, even if there had been some sort of dark age, one lasting hundreds of thousands of years, surely they’d have tried to recover their old caches.” He paused, then said, “And thinking about it, forget a dark age. Not if they kept their language intact for that long. That could only happen if they’d managed to freeze their culture.”
“Professor,” Bendix said, frowning at a piece of text, “there’s something here. Something interesting. A passage about a spear racing through the stars. It’s one of the earliest legends of the aliens.” She magnified the text, and read, “When a new star shines in the heavens, it will herald the coming of the Spear of Time, a weapon that will destroy those who would burn your world as it burned ours.” Shaking her head, she said, “A star shining in the heavens?”
“There’s nothing about that in any of the records we have,” Belinsky replied. “You’re right. Interesting. Is there anything more? Any connections to constellations, or anything like that?”
/> Shaking her head, Bendix said, “It just goes on to talk about some folk-hero who rode a chariot across the endless sea. Probably a metaphor for space travel, at a guess. I wish we could get a proper look at their archives, examine them for ourselves. This is one of the first large-scale examples of a culture influenced totally by another that we’ve ever seen.”
“Aside from the ones we created, you mean?” Novak replied. “To be fair, most of those are long since gone. I suspect that the aliens back there got off lightly by comparison.” Turning to Scott, she said, “I presume you didn’t come down here for a lecture in comparative socio-linguistics, Admiral?”
“I didn’t even know there was such a discipline, Commander,” Scott replied with a smile.
“Actually, there’s a chair at the University of Montevideo…,” Bendix began, drawing glares from everyone else in the room. “Sorry.”
“I wish we had the holder here,” Belinsky replied. “We couldn’t bring even a tenth of the experts we wanted. I presume you want our first analysis of the enemy ship, Admiral?”
“That’s the basic idea, Professor. Back during my conversation with the Warleader, you suggested that your team had come up with something interesting?”
Nodding, the old scientist replied, “It’s not really my field, but then, I don’t think there are a dozen people living today who might be able to truly come to grips with it. The theory’s surprisingly old, though, goes back to Hawking, but I don’t think anyone’s made any serious progress on the idea for centuries. Given what it involves…”
“Professor,” Novak said, “I hate to rush you, but we’re scheduled to return to normal space in four hours.”
He smiled, nodded, and said, “We think the ship is using a black hole as a power supply.”
Wide-eyed, Scott replied, “You’ve got to be joking, right? That level of technology…”
“Is about the only way we can think of for them to have pulled off some of the tricks they’ve managed. They probably fed the damn thing while they were hiding in that moon, which is why we could detect the Hawking radiation. It must have grown a lot over the centuries. I know the core idea suggested that they needed refreshing every few years, but they may have solved that problem.” At Scott’s expression, Belinsky smiled, and replied, “There’s nothing impossible about any of this, Admiral. Given a thousand years or so, we will probably be doing this ourselves.”
“Powering a starship with a black hole,” Silva said. “God, we’re arrogant, aren’t we, to think that we can beat back a culture that advanced forever.” She paused, then added, “Wait a minute, if that’s true…”
“Then our friends back there have a small black hole in their system,” Belinsky said. “Our calculations suggest that it is highly unlikely to be a problem. It won’t linger for long, and shouldn’t have any appreciable affect on the other planets in the system. Unless someone actually runs into it, they might not even know it’s there, and given the nature of their culture, I’m rather hoping they leave it alone.”
“What does that do for us?” Scott asked.
“Nothing good, I’m afraid. It means they have a power source that is effectively infinite, or as near to it as we’re ever likely to get. Mind you, the amount of power they use is prodigious in the extreme, and that suggests that the bulk of their ship is for power storage.”
“We can also suspect that the basic design of the Exterminator warships hasn’t changed in a very long time. Aside from the size of the black hole, there wasn’t much different about that ship compared with the others we’ve encounter up to now,” Novak said. She frowned, and added, “In fact, that might be why we were able to defeat it. All that extra mass must have slowed it down considerably, even if they were able to harness more power from the black hole.”
“Then why use a ship like that?” Silva asked. “It isn’t as though they don’t have smaller ships, probes, something designed to conduct long-term recon. Why bury one of their warships when they knew that it wouldn’t be at top combat readiness as soon as it emerged. It’s not as though they don’t have plenty of ships flying around, and they must be on the shadow wormhole network somewhere.” She looked at Scott, and added, “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Not if they were hiding out in ambush, but if they did have some sort of plan to wipe out the aliens, it makes a lot more sense. They wouldn’t wait until the enemy reached tactical parity. They’d strike first. Or at least, go and call for help if it turned out the situation had developed beyond their expectations. Our arrival was probably the last thing they actually wanted.” Looking at the engineering specifications rotating on a wall display, he added, “They couldn’t have beaten them without our help. They wouldn’t have the knowledge to do it, and it wouldn’t be in their character. That fleet was intended to launch a berserker charge, a kamikaze mission. There wasn’t much tactical or strategic skill in evidence.” Glancing at Silva, he added, “That’s just one reason I’m rather less concerned about them than you are. Space is big, and quality will beat quantity every damned time.”
“Though the Exterminators are proving that having both is even more effective,” Novak said. “There’s something else, sir. The voice I heard on the surface…”
“I read the report, Commander, but your suit recorders don’t show any sign of any voice in your helmet.” Raising his hand, Scott said, “Not that I can take that as conclusive given the technology at their disposal, of course. From what you said, it didn’t seem to have any message for us. It was just asking questions.”
“It wanted me to call it ‘friend’, Admiral, and I don’t think that was an interrogator’s ploy. They had me hypnotized. What would be the point in word games? Something down there made contact…”
“And is dead and gone,” Silva replied, “assuming it ever existed in the first place.”
“Is it?” Belinsky asked. “I wish I was as certain as you, Lieutenant. There’s something missing, somewhere. A piece of the puzzle we don’t have. Hopefully we’ll find the answer at the co-ordinates given by the Folk.”
“And this mystical spear?” Silva asked with a smile.
“Maybe we’ll find that as well,” the scientist replied. “Then we can try jousting with starships. Won’t that be fun.”
Chapter 9
Scott had his favorite places on the ship, just as any commanding officer did. Places where few of the crew ever ventured, either because they had no reason to go there or because the word had got around that it was a favored hiding spot for their commander. He hadn’t met a shipmaster yet who didn’t need a bolthole to hide in at some point, just to snatch a few moments of quiet thinking time, undisturbed. His ship was traversing a wormhole, their nineteenth since leaving Proxima, and for the next couple of hours, there was nothing he was needed for in any case.
His usual choice was the lower observation room, well away from the crew quarters. At one time it had been huge, large enough to hold dozens of crewmen, designed as one of the key off-shift areas, but over the course of refit after refit the space had been whittled away, a piece at a time, until now it was barely large enough to hold a handful of people. None of which would be there while they were in transit, not with nothing to see.
He stepped into the room, the smell of growth, of life, hitting him from the hydroponic pods attached to the wall, rich ferns waving in the artificial breeze, spreading far beyond their design restrictions. One more job that was being overlooked, left undone while more critical tasks were completed. He made a mental note to speak to one of the maintenance technicians, but for now, he settled down into a chair, staring into the void. Triggering from his presence, the computers threw an image of Earth onto the monitor, replacing the emptiness beyond, but Scott shook his head, the sensors instantly registering his disapproval and switching to a simple starfield, computer-generated to match their current projected location.
His eyes ranged over the slowly-moving constellations, trying and failing to find any patterns he re
cognized. They’d already gone far further than any human ship had ever travelled before, and they had still further to go yet, out into the endless void beyond the frontier. All his life, he’d wanted to command an expedition like this, though he’d hoped to spend more time actually exploring, rather than racing from star to star in the desperate hope that they might outmaneuver the Exterminators. Every time Leonidas emerged in a new system, he was certain that there was something out there watching every move he made, ready to strike, but every time, with the exception of the alien system, they’d managed a clean run.
A part of him found that suspicious. Somehow, he’d expected that he’d have to fight his way through unknown space in order to reach his objective, his goal. He’d assumed that the Exterminators would at least be monitoring the shadow wormhole, watching and waiting. Perhaps they were following him even now, ready to spring an ambush when Leonidas reached its objective, distant days away. Maybe they just didn’t care about the actions of a small fleet like his, lightly armed, speeding into the unknown.
Especially if they were already launching their attack on Earth, had already wiped out humanity.
They’d been out of signal range shortly after they’d left, had no way of knowing what might be happening back home, or even if their home still existed. For all he knew humanity was already close to extinct, the thousand or so people under his command the only survivors. He shook his head, then settled back into his chair, watching the stars slowly crawl past. He couldn’t think that way. He couldn’t afford to, didn’t have the luxury to indulge despair. He had a job to do, even if that job seemed increasingly ill-defined. There was an answer, somewhere. A way to win the war, to defeat the Exterminators forever, and he had to find it, or die in the attempt.
There was a light knock on the door, and he turned to see Rochford at the threshold, two mugs of coffee in his hand. He gestured for his friend to come in, then turned his attention back to the starfield, a faint smile on his hand.
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