by B. V. Larson
“Okay,” said Straker. “Send out our standard ID codes and hails. No point in recording a vid until we know who we’re talking to. They might be aliens, we’re so far out. How long ’til we get there?”
Engels drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “Eleven or twelve hours until we can have a real conversation and get good readings. No rush.”
“Damn, I hate this waiting part. Space is too big.” Straker crossed his arms and glared at the holo-table as if it were the culprit. “Can’t we jump over to them? Speed things up?”
“Yes, but why? Why burn the fuel? Why not take our time, collect data, see if they hail us? What if they are aliens, jumping near them might startle them into hostility?”
“All right, all right.” Straker turned to War Male Kraxor. “What do you think?”
“I think prudence is in order. I did not attain my victories by being impetuous. An Archer commander must be patient and wait for the proper moment to destroy his enemies. Without data, we have no idea what our force ratio is. And, they are alien.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“They must be. If our SAI cannot easily identify them, then they must not match anything in the database—and whatever Zaxby’s faults, his data is quite thorough, synthesized from every source he could find. Therefore, these—bogeys, did you call them?—are alien, and thus could be anything. All we really know is that they have interstellar travel. But what is their technological level? Are they peaceful or warlike? How do they think?”
“Lots of questions…” Straker agreed. “Okay, prudence is in order. Captain Engels, please send a message to Tanglefoot and ask them what they know. Page me when you get an answer.” He knew it would take hours for messages to return from this far away. “Kraxor, let’s get out of our captain and crew’s hair. We can do some more sparring in the gym space. I need to improve my squid spear technique.”
“As you wish.”
Straker sparred with Kraxor using blunt alloy replicas of squid spears, and then took a leisurely shower, changed into fresh uniform and made a tour around Wolverine, chatting with the crew. Academy had called it LBWA, “leadership by wandering around.” It made the crew feel like he knew them, and also gave him an opportunity to see them at work when they weren’t inspection-ready.
Not that he made many inspections, except of marines and other troops. He left the naval personnel to Captain Engels and Chief Gurung. The latter appeared out of nowhere as soon as he departed officer country.
“Any chance of a fight, sir?” Gurung asked with his ever-present grin, unconsciously caressing the hilt of his Kukri knife.
“If there is, you’ll be the first to know, Chief.”
“Oh, yes sir, of that you can be assured.”
Not for the first time Straker wondered if the man had a comlink bug on the bridge. More likely, one or more of the enlisted watchstanders kept him updated off their consoles. Half the time Straker couldn’t follow all their rapid keystrokes and hand movements through their holo-sensors—not to mention that a couple of them had functioning brainlinks.
Ping. “Captain’s compliments, Commodore Straker to the bridge. I say again, Commodore Straker to the bridge, please.”
Finally, Straker thought. Killing time didn’t come naturally to him. He slapped Gurung on his shoulder, told him to carry on, and jogged to the ship’s nerve center.
On the screen he saw a worried man wearing a civilian suit in the plain Mutuality style. As soon as Straker came alongside Engels in her chair, she tapped a button and the vid-message began.
“Welcome, Liberator. I’m Umbeki Dubchek, Governor of Tanglefoot. We’ve heard about what you’re doing and we’re ready to join your Liberation. Our commissars are locked up and the people are celebrating. There’s no need to do any more here. As you can see, the Opters are here in force with a Nest Ship, and you’ll only provoke them with your presence. Please go away and leave us alone.”
The vid ended abruptly.
“He seems frightened by these Opters, and evasive,” said Straker. “Maybe he’s lying, just to get rid of us? I wonder why?”
Engels spoke up. “He’s more afraid of them than us, that’s why.”
“Nest Ship, he called it? Do we have more info on these bogeys?” Straker turned his attention to the holo-table.
“Yes, Commodore. Sensors have been collecting, collating and processing data,” said Tixban.
The hologram expanded, becoming blurry, but showing a distinct globular central ship surrounded by a cloud of tiny craft, much smaller than attack ships, which were the smallest manned war-craft humans used.
“Are those drones?”
“Of a sort. The data file from Tanglefoot—a very shallow and limited data file, may I add—indicates these Opters use a very different shipbuilding strategy from ours. While human and Ruxins long ago moved away from the aerospace carrier concept as the mainstay of a fleet, these aliens apparently use it almost exclusively. They build survivable motherships, and launch a variety of fighting craft, which are, in essence, expendable.”
“How big is that mothership?” Straker asked.
“It conforms closely to our superdreadnought classes. By this, I deduce that it, plus its complement of craft, mass near the upper limit for sidespace transit.”
“Any reply from the, uh, Opters?”
“Nope,” Engels said, standing and sipping from a squeeze bottle. “And here’s what’s interesting. The data file says they were on Tanglefoot at least ten years before humans arrived. When human pioneers landed and started settling, they didn’t know the Opters were sentient. They thought they were animals.”
She gestured, and the main screen switched to a still shot of an insect resembling a bee, lying on a dissecting table. The woman in the picture made the scale clear. The creature looked to be about the size of a small dog, perhaps forty centimeters from nose to tail.
Engels went on. “They only figured out they weren’t animals when they started burning out hives and started a war. When the Mutuality arrived in response to a plea for help, they were holed up and under attack by tens of thousands of these bugs—and other kinds of bugs, too. Out of over a thousand settlers, two hundred survived. Hok battlesuiters and armed landers drove the bugs off.”
“That doesn’t explain how they knew the Opters were intelligent,” said Straker.
“No, but when one of these super-sized nest ships showed up and communicated, they made it clear. Apparently they scared the living shit out of the Mutuality light cruiser that came to the rescue. Lucky for them, the Opters didn’t attack. They spent some time learning Earthan and negotiated a division of territory on Tanglefoot, along with a treaty not to develop space facilities in the Vespida system.”
Straker’s eyes widened. “So these Opters didn’t attack when they had the upper hand? They could have beaten the cruiser and wiped out the settlers. Or, they could have demanded the humans all leave and never come back—but they didn’t. That’s interesting.”
“That they’re not warmongers, you mean?” said Engels.
“Most human empires would’ve used the fact that they arrived first, and that they got attacked, as a reason to claim the planet. These aliens seem generous. Or maybe they’re cowards.” Straker held up a hand before Engels voiced her objection. “Okay, that might be humanizing them too much. Maybe they’re… accommodating. Nice guys.”
“Your dead settlers might disagree,” Kraxor said.
“Why else would they give up half the planet without a fight?”
“You’ve studied your own history,” replied Kraxor. “Were none of your various nations and empires wise enough to think beyond the obvious and the short-term?”
Straker rubbed the back of his neck. “Not many. Wisdom and war don’t often go together—and I say this as a warrior. Wars waged for nothing but gain inevitably fail, even if they’re won in the short term. You have to have an underlying, unifying cause to win permanently. Defense of the nation,
liberation of the oppressed, destruction of an evil regime, things like that.”
“So perhaps these Opters have an underlying cause. Or perhaps they’re simply more clever than you give them credit for.”
“Clever how?”
Kraxor lazily waved his spear. “There is a solitary lizard on Ruxin that deposits its eggs in the nests of a different species of pack-forming lizard. The pack lizard incubates and hatches all the eggs, unknowingly helping a competitor. When the solitary young hatch, they’re raised by the pack mother until they outstrip her own young in size, at which point they turn as one and eat them. The only reason the solitary lizards do not exterminate the smaller pack lizards is that, whenever this happens, the pack lizard males form hunter-killer groups and make war on the solitaries for a generation. But eventually they forget, the solitaries return, and the cycle repeats itself.”
Straker shook his head in puzzlement. “I don’t understand your point.”
“Ponder, and you shall.” After a moment, Kraxor relented. “One lesson is this: not everything that nests alongside you is your friend. Another is that, without seeing a process from start to finish, your understanding may be incomplete.”
“So you think these Opters are like the solitaries? They nest alongside humans in order to eat them later?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps we are the solitaries, and the Opters are the pack lizards, who will only hunt us when they’re provoked beyond toleration.”
Straker threw up his hand in exasperation. “We can speculate all day, but that won’t get us any answers.” He turned to Engels. “What’s our force ratio look like?”
“By ship tonnage, we’re about even. Hard to say more without knowing their weaponry or how they fight.”
“Take an educated guess.”
Engels approached the hologram hovering above the table. “Okay, my guess is that a lot of their combat power is tied up in these drones, so we’d have an asymmetrical engagement. In ground terms, it would be like a mass of battlesuiters taking on a few mechsuits. We’ll be short of close-in weaponry. They’ll get inside our defensive suites and may even land on our hulls to plant charges, cut holes, release boarders and chemical weapons—I’m just spit-balling here. But if someone forced me to use their kind of strategy, that’s what I’d do. They’ll make us wish we had drone carriers of our own.”
“And why don’t we?” Straker asked. “Sounds like they have a winning method. Why don’t we make masses of drones on carriers?”
“It’s about control. If the carrier stays close enough to control the drones, it’s vulnerable to enemy capital weaponry. If it stays back, telecom delays make only generalized commands possible, so the drones have to rely on SAI to fight. The smarter you make the SAIs, the more unstable they are. The more capable you make the drones, the more expensive they are. At a certain point, you figure out that missiles are far cheaper, less complex, and can do more damage.”
“So why do the Opters do it? Or how?”
Engels shrugged. “Something’s different from us, some way they solve a problem or change the cost-benefit ratio. For them, this makes sense. We don’t have enough info to know why right now.”
Straker rubbed his jaw in thought. “But we should be able to beat their mothership—the nest ship, the locals called it—aside from the drones.”
“Probably. But since we’re out here in flatspace, the nest ship could flee at any time if they’re willing to leave their drones.”
A flash of insight flared in Straker’s military mind. “That’s the key. The drones are expendable, but somehow they’re smart enough to fight on their own. Maybe they have better AIs, or maybe each one of those dog-sized bees is a pilot and they don’t care as much about their individual lives as we do. I mean, that’s why our smallest manned ship is an attack ship, right? Because pilots aren’t expendable. But if they were, we might have smaller ships too.”
“That is all well and good,” said Kraxor. “The key question is, can we beat them if we must?”
“We have a lot of extra infantry aboard,” said Straker. “They can seal breaches and repel boarders. Now I’m wishing I hadn’t sent my mechsuit back with Zaxby to be repaired.”
“Maybe you should keep more than one ’suit with you,” said Engels.
“Good idea, if I had an extra.”
“We don’t even know we’ll have to fight them. We ought to be hearing from them soon.” She turned toward the comtech. “Anything?”
“No, ma’am.”
Engels sighed. “I’m beat, and we’re hours from combat range. I’ll be in our quarters. Call me if anything happens.”
“No problem,” said Straker. Once Engels left, he waved Kraxor over to the holo-table. “Let’s input some guesses and run some scenarios.”
Hours later, as the task force approached the Opters and the watch had changed, the new comtech spoke, her finger to her earpiece. “Commodore, I have an incoming hail from the Opters. Synthesized Earthan, it sounds like, along with standard text code.”
“What’s our distance?”
“Less than one light-minute.”
Straker knew most combat between fleets in open space took place at less than ten light-seconds distance, usually much closer, and Sensors would have warned of any threat, so…
“Tell them to stand by and we’ll communicate with them soon. Page the captain to the bridge. Helm, begin deceleration to come to a relative stop at five light-seconds distance, and tell the same to the rest of the task force.”
When Engels came in minutes later, she looked fresh and eager. “Pass the word, alert level two. Give me the best picture you can.”
The main screen showed the mothership, floating in the void like a metal moonlet. Hexagons covered its surface, and all the easily identifiable fittings or devices—sensor arrays, laser blisters, missiles tubes, the guide-barrels of turreted guns—occupied a hex, a cluster of three, or a circle of seven or nineteen. Interspersed among the various items were flat, featureless hexes, as if they waited for something to be placed upon them.
“Looks very standardized and modular,” Engels said. “Easy to replace pieces. A sphere maximizes surface area, which means it’s easier to hit—but they can fit more weaponry and gear. Harder to defend with reinforcement fields, though. That seems like an offensive mindset.”
Kraxor said, “Or perhaps one that, as Commodore Straker said, indicates they place less value on individual survival.”
Engels shrugged. “Same result—they’ll close and attack hard if the time comes, and we have to be ready to keep the range open. Helm, invert and present our sterns. I want to be ready to haul ass if they attack. Stop relative to them as soon as you can.”
“Won’t we get raked?” asked Straker.
“Judging by what I see, their capital weaponry is inferior to ours. That means we want to fight at long range, and they’d want to get those drones onto us. I’d rather risk a few shots up our asses than let them swarm us to death. We can flip and fire, flip and run, over and over. That reminds me. Comms, pass to the task force: if you’re in bad shape and have to flee, transit out and rally at Ruxin. Sidespace should peel most of them off any hull. After that, they’ll have to clear them on their own. And tell Revenge and Liberator to be ready to insert into underspace at a moment’s notice.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
Within minutes, Wolverine came to relative rest five light-seconds from the Opter hive ship. According to the holo-table display, around it hovered over 10,000 drones.
Chapter 25
Vespida System, Battlecruiser Wolverine, Edge of Flatspace
When the numbers in the holo-table finally resolved, Engels saw Straker’s jaw going slack. He forced his mouth to close. “Ten thousand drones! We’d never get them all.”
“Not if we fight their type of fight,” said Engels, wondering why Straker was so fixated on beating these aliens. “In fact, it’s a great reason not to fight at all. Commodore Straker, it doesn’t get
us anything.”
“The people of Tanglefoot might not agree. They seem to be afraid of them.”
Engels walked around to confront Straker yet again. “The Opters made no move against the planet. Their people have shared it with humans for years. They addressed you as ‘Liberator,’ so they know something about what’s going on in human space—which is the edge of their space. And they’re waiting for an answer.”
She watched him take a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s see what they say. At least it’ll only take a few seconds to get an answer now.” Straker moved to stand in the field of the vid pickup and signaled for a start.
“Opter commander, I am the one called the Liberator. I am ready to open a dialogue. Why have you come here now?”
Even though she knew it would take some time, waiting seemed agony. Engels wasn’t a pacer, so she took a seat at the holo-table, facing across it at Straker, and studied the Opter ships.
The main holoscreen flickered and swirled, and then showed a picture that was difficult to interpret. Orange and black shapes and lines shifted, split and intersected in patterns like nothing Straker had ever seen. Synthesized, translated words emanated from the speaker.
“Greetings to the humans. Our peace is your peace. The Opter Hive speaks. Why do you threaten the separation of nests?”
“I am unaware of any, um, separation of nests. I am not part of the human polity called the Mutuality.”
Engels again had to wait, along with Straker, who paced in and out of the vid pickup. As the conversation proceeded, she began to get used to the odd pauses.
“Your ship was constructed by the Mutuality, and you are the apostate known as Liberator. We have sensed dissonance.”
Straker rubbed his jaw. “Dissonance, yes... Do you know humans have more than one political entity?”
“We know of your reputation. You seek to split your hive. You seek to form your own nest.”
“Close enough. What is your relationship with the Mutuality?”
