Warstrider 04 - Symbionts

by William H. Keith

  “In other words, we’ll have to grow our starships the way they do,” a woman, a brigadier general, suggested, “and crew them with Achievers?”

  “Exactly,” Ortiz said. “We don’t know how to do it yet, and it might take years to figure it out. But before we can even begin we have to be able to talk with the DalRiss. As long as the Imperials are there, we won’t have that chance.”

  “I bring all of this up,” Sinclair said, “to stress again the importance of Operation Farstar, to the Rebellion, to the future of the human species. We’ll be dealing with a technic culture that has evolved—in its social systems, its logic, and its tech­nology—along a completely different path than we did. No, Dev, you probably won’t be able to zip home in the blink of an eye, but even the faintest possibility that you’ll learn how makes the gamble worthwhile.”

  “It won’t help if we make it back,” Katya said, “and find out that the Imperium invaded Herakles the month before.”

  “We’d kind of like to know that we’ll have a Confederation to come back to,” Dev added.

  “Of course.” Sinclair nodded. “The truth is, we, the Confed­eration government, I mean, won’t be able to stay here much longer in any case. As I said, intelligence thinks another five months or so before the blow lands. Me, I’ll be surprised if it takes that long.”

  “They could have scouts snooping around the edge of the system now,” one of Sinclair’s aides pointed out. “If they dropped out of K-T space far enough out, then came in slow, low-powered, and in stealth mode, we’d never know they were there.”

  “My point exactly, Paul. For the time being they’re being cautious, but they can’t just let us squat here and thumb our noses at them. They’ll be back, and with numbers enough to overwhelm even your rock-throwing trick, Dev.”

  Dev nodded. “They might also try coming in on the other side of the planet, where a rock thrower wouldn’t see them and couldn’t get at them. If they sent fighters in low and fast, coming in over the horizon…”

  “Or they could bombard the surface from a distance,” Sinclair said. “Or try to board the Rogue with marines while it was on the other side of Herakles from New Argos. One way or another, they’ll get us. They must be devoting considerable AI program time right now to the problem of which way to try it.”

  “So what can we do?” Katya asked. “What will you do, I mean, since we’re obviously not going to be here.”

  “Leave,” Sinclair said. He gave Katya a hard glance, as though he expected her to say something. When she didn’t, he went on. “Right now, the Confederation delegates who make up our Congress number some five hundred people from various Frontier worlds, and there are as many more staff personnel, aides, programming technicians, and the like. With some crowding, they could fit aboard the Transluxus and a few of our merchantmen, if they were converted to handle passengers. I intend to give the Confederation a migratory capital, one always on the move from system to system.”

  “Nomads,” Ortiz said, surprised.

  “Well, there’s no law that says your capital has to stay in one place, is there? We’ll avoid Imperial fleet concentrations, try to move to wherever they’re not.”

  “Even the Imperium can’t be everywhere at once,” Dev said thoughtfully. He was impressed by this idea, a new twist to an old, old problem. “Not with seventy-some star systems scattered across a hundred-light-year volume of space.”

  “And in each system we visit,” Sinclair continued, “we can counter Hegemony propaganda, recruit new personnel, arrange for maintenance for our ships, buy supplies… and in general let the people know what we’re fighting for.”

  “Well, sooner or later you will run into the enemy,” Katya pointed out. “The Imperials pose the most serious threat, but every system has Hegemony system defense craft, orbital monitors, that sort of thing. And sooner or later you’re going to drop out of K-T space and find an Imperial Ryu there waiting for you.”

  “In which case,” General Chabra said, “we drop back into K-T space as quickly as we can and go someplace else. As you say, they can’t be everywhere.”

  Sinclair spread his hands. “I’m damned if I can see another way to manage this. We came to Herakles in the first place hoping we could find a place to set up shop that the Empire would overlook. Unfortunately, they found us despite our pre­cautions, so they know we’re here and they know we’re a threat. They will come after us because they can’t afford to let us grow strong, and they can’t afford to have the Hegemony see them acting with weakness.

  “If we stay put on any one world, whether it’s Herakles or New America or some world far outside the Shichiju, the Empire’s going to find us and they’re going to squash us like a bug. If we stay on the move, well, we have a chance, at least, of staying ahead of the Empire, hidden by the sheer enormity of space… and we keep the Rebellion alive.”

  “I still wonder how you’ll be able to carry on the business of running a government,” Katya said. “I mean, how eager will a world be to see this migratory fleet suddenly appear on its doorstep. ‘Hi, there. We need to tank up on slush hydrogen, and, by the way, how would your young men and women like to join the Confederation army?’ I’d imagine the local popula­tions would be reluctant to help us, especially if they know that helping the Confederation fleet is going to bring an Imperial squadron in to exact some kind of retribution. The Imperials will have observers everywhere, remember, taking notes.”

  “A very good point, and one we’ve given considerable thought to,” Sinclair said. “For the most part, I doubt that we’ll be that obvious about it. The fleet could take up a distant orbit, for example, out in the fringes of the star system and send ascraft and fuel shuttles in to the planet itself. Every world that has sent us delegates has a local Network, an anti-Imperial underground. We’ll be able to make the necessary arrangements secretly, maybe set up a trade deal with the corporations for what we need, have them handle recruiting covertly. We could be in and out before the Empire knew we were there. In some systems—Liberty, for instance—we could be more open in our activities, simply because the Imperials seem to have given up trying to control the locals. We’ll have to rely on those worlds for ship maintenance and overhauls, of course.”

  “Payment?” General Smith said.

  “We could keep using the yen, like we have been. More likely, though, we’ll end up forming an independent monetary standard before this is over. Maybe terbium, to get away from Tokyo’s control of platinum stocks.”

  And that, Dev reflected, would lead to a whole, jam-packed cluster of problems he was glad he didn’t have to deal with. Nearly all transactions were handled electronically, but some sort of standard was necessary to back the symbolic yen that held commerce throughout the Shichiju together. The Imperial yen was currently backed by platinum.

  “You know,” Dev said, “it occurs to me that we still have a problem so far as Farstar is concerned. When we get back, eight or ten months from now, where should we go? The government could be hiding out anywhere in the Frontier, and it might be kind of dangerous for us to keep jumping from system to system looking for you. Especially since the Imperials are likely to be a bit upset over what we were doing at Alya.”

  “We’ll have to work out the details, of course,” Sinclair said. “But that shouldn’t pose any real difficulty. We’ll arrange a communications protocol through each system’s Network. We’ll leave word at certain key systems, with code words or blind message drops so we don’t leave clues to Imperial Intelligence.”

  “You’ll need something of the sort just to operate on an interstellar scale,” Dev said. “You’ll need ways for delegates from member worlds to find you, ways for our agents to pass intelligence back to CONMILCOM in the shortest poss­ible time, ways to agree on rendezvous points for our naval squadrons.”

  “Exactly. There’ll be a certain vulnerability in the system, just because so many people will have to be trusted with the information, but we can keep a handle
on things by moving often and by compartmentalizing our activities. The Networks already utilize the classic revolutionary cell structure, and we’ll continue to build on that. Don’t worry, Captain. We’ll make sure there’s a way for you to find us when you get back!

  “In any case,” Sinclair continued, “the important question’s been settled now, and Farstar is a go. The only real problem remaining is how to actually carry it off.”

  Sinclair brought the palm of his left hand down on the inter­face screen in front of him. The desktop projector switched on in response, and a holograph glowed to life in the air just above it.

  Dev studied the display with keen interest. It showed a base, a fairly standard one as Imperial bases went, with six small domes surrounding a single large structure like a trun­cated pyramid in the center. Communications towers rose from the main facility’s corners, while ascraft rested on its flat upper surface, which was as broad as a football field and ringed by walkways, barricades, and the stubby turrets of high-power laser batteries. The entire facility was surrounded by a ten-meter electrified fence, complete with gate houses, guard stations, and overwatch towers. The base squatted on a circle of ground blasted of all plant life, then scraped level by constructor tracks and striders bearing shovel blades. Inside the fence, the ground had been covered over by RoPro ferrocrete, an artificial material nanotechnically grown in and spread by mobile vats.

  “Professor Ortiz?” Sinclair prompted.

  “This,” the woman said, “is Dojinko. So far as we know, it’s the only Imperial base on the surface of ShraRish. It’s located on the largest of the three southern continents, directly adjacent to one of the biggest DalRiss cities. Some four months ago, according to the data from the Kasuga Maru’s AI memory, the base was attacked, for reasons unknown. The Imperial records are unclear about the exact nature of the attack.…” She hesitated.

  “Professor?” Sinclair said. “If I may?”

  “Of course.”

  Sinclair’s hand was still on the interface. He closed his eyes, concentrating, and a moment later a three-dimensional image of a Japanese officer appeared in the air next to the display of the base. He looked scared, and his face was blackened with smoke.

  “They came through the perimeter fence twenty minutes ago!” he was shouting in panic-ragged Nihongo. “Our defenses killed hundreds of them, but they kept coming… they’re still coming, and we can’t stop them! We need immediate assis­tance! Hello… are you there? Does anyone—”

  The image winked out.

  “We think a laser communications tower was knocked over at that point,” Ortiz said a moment later, speaking in the death-still silence of the briefing room. “Other fragments of communications we’ve found in the Kasuga Maru files talk about the city attacking the base. We don’t really know what that means. The DalRiss have a fairly well-defined military structure. They were forced to create one when they were fighting the Naga. Are these communications saying the local civilians rioted and overran the base? Or that the military forces camped there launched an attack? Why did they attack? Was there some incident that angered the DalRiss, maybe a violation of some taboo or custom? We really don’t know. From the sound of things, the Imperials don’t know what happened either.”

  “Sounds like they don’t know what hit them,” an aide said.

  Dev glanced at Ortiz. “Professor? You called the place… Dojinko?” Ko was the Japanese suffix that meant “port,” but the only dojin he knew was a harsh, deroga­tory term.

  “On Earth a few centuries ago,” Ortiz explained, “on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, there was an aboriginal people called the Ainu. A couple of thousand years ago they occupied most of the home islands, but the Japanese emigrations from the mainland gradually wiped them out, pressing them farther and farther back into a corner of Hokkaido, forbidding them by law to hunt or fish or even use their native language. By, oh, I guess the middle of the twenty-first century, the Ainu were extinct as a culture, as a people.”

  “Genocide,” Katya said. The word was hard and cold.

  “I suppose it was, though I doubt that genocide was ever the conscious purpose of the Nihonjin. In any case, the ethnic Japanese called the Ainu Dojin. Later they applied the word to any primitive aborigines. It’s… not a very nice word. The connotation is of something dirty, slow-witted, and morally repugnant. I’m not sure, but it may be related to the Nihongo word for a kind of mudfish. I gather they use the term now to describe the DalRiss.”

  “That figures,” Dev said. “They have trouble with anyone who thinks too differently from the way they do.”

  “The Japanese aren’t alone in that, Dev,” Sinclair said. “I’d have to say that intolerance is a human trait.”

  “Some cultures incorporate it more than others,” Katya said. “Just by seeing different as wrong.”

  “I’m wondering if that might be what caused the problems out there,” Dev said. “The Imperials can be a bit heavy-handed, sometimes. If the DalRiss took offense…”

  “That,” Sinclair said, “will be one of the first things you’ll have to determine. Why did the DalRiss attack?”

  “And are they mad at all humans, or just the Imperials?” Smith suggested. “Can we use their anger as an opening to get them on our side?”

  “The biggest problem,” Ortiz pointed out, “will be to find out if concepts like anger mean the same to the DalRiss as they do to us.”

  “Is the base even still standing?” Dev wondered. “Maybe the Imperials don’t have anything left on the ground.”

  “That could be good for us, or bad,” Katya said thought­fully. “If the Imperials have abandoned the surface, it might be harder to approach the DalRiss. They could have some sort of quarantine up, something that would make getting in difficult.”

  “I didn’t claim this mission was going to be easy,” Sinclair said. The others laughed.

  “Can we get a closer look at that base?” Dev asked.

  “No problem,” Sinclair told him. “Hang on.”

  The domes swelled in the observers’ perceptions, rotating in space as their walls became transparent. The display now showed the interior structure, color-coded to indicate sleeping and living facilities, storage areas, power plants, environmental systems, control centers, and the other minutiae of a self-contained base in an alien environment.

  The largest structure, the topless pyramid in the center, included a hangar with elevators for shuttling air- and space­craft up to the top-level flight deck, where three Kamome-class ascraft rested in holding areas separated by protective revetments. Inside the hangar, another four shuttles rested in maintenance cradles. The building’s lower level housed thirty-two warstriders, a full company standing in motionless ranks, their torsos encased in wirework service gantries. The schematics showed them as scarcely more than outlines. KY-1180 Tachis, Dev thought.

  “I take it the Kamomes and the Tachis are educated guess­work,” he said.

  “Guesswork,” Sinclair added, “and at least four months out of date. Still, it should give you an idea of what they could have in a base that size. And there are heavier machines there. The intelligence data that you brought back mentions at least one Katana.”

  “And any word on what they have in orbit?”

  “Nothing positive, and again, by the time you get to Alya the intelligence will be almost eight months out of date. However, we can assume that they will have the equivalent of an escort squadron there, at least, plus transports and stores ships.”

  “I’m more concerned with how we’re going to convince them that we’re different from the Japanese,” Katya said. “They can’t be all that aware of the differences between individual humans, and they probably won’t understand our motives.”

  “This sounds familiar,” Dev said. Contact with the Naga had encountered similar difficulties. How does one communicate in any meaningful way with a being that possesses an entirely alien structure of logic and thought?

  Sinclair
laughed. “Well, Dev, why else do you think that we’ve given this assignment to the two of you? We have com­plete faith in your ability to communicate with these… peo­ple.”

  “Have you considered the possibility of trying to commu­nicate with the Japanese instead?” he suggested. “It would be a hell of a lot easier.”

  But then they began discussing the details of the mission.

  Chapter 8

  First contact was made with the DalRiss in 2540, when one of their living starships materialized near Altair, a star chosen by their Perceivers because of its similar­ity to their own sun. Communications, facilitated by the DalRiss constructs known as cornels, led Hegemony authorities to the conclusion that the DalRiss had been fighting for some time against their own Xenophobe invasion. Friendly relations were soon established, pri­marily as a direct result of human intervention in the Alyans’ struggle against a common foe.

  Despite this alliance, however, to date human and DalRiss remain strangers to one another. Mutual­ly alien to a degree not easily grasped even by xenosophontologists, the two civilizations seem to have remarkably little in common save for their respective drives for survival.

  —Alien Perspectives

  Dr. Hector Ferrar

  C.E. 2542

  They walked together in strangeness, Dev and Katya, Sinclair and Brenda Ortiz. The light was harsh, blue-tinged and heavily laced with ultraviolet, the sun shrunken but so dazzling that it seemed to fill the sky. The plants—could they be classified as plants?—the red and purple growths around them, then, were flat sheets of flexible, spongy material, continually twist­ing and writhing in a slow-motion dance designed to keep a maximum of surface area in direct sunlight, and animating the landscape with an unsettling life of their own.

  Despite the fact that Dev had been in an environment like this one before, he was having trouble understanding what he was seeing. The setting was one where even comfortable and easily grasped referents like scale and the sense of perspective generated by a gentler sun had been altered. A sulfur haze in the air made things look more distant than they actually were, and in all that landscape there was nothing as recognizable as a tree or a building against which he could compare the stranger aspects of his surroundings.