They said they would and I sent a runner down to bring them forward. Minutes later they crowded into the space, pretty much filling it. I had my two best communications technicians handling the equipment. The ambassador asked, in a peremptory tone of voice, “Lieutenant, what are we seeing?” I said, “The shuttle has been equipped with numerous passive sensors, with which we are observing the approaching vessels. We have determined that the large vessel is a cruiser sized armed military ship. We count forty-two fighters as well. They have spread out into a pattern similar to the very first attack launched against the Essex. We have received no communications of any kind. We know that the black box is transmitting. Do you have any information as to the nature of the message it might be sending?”
The ambassador smiled faintly at me, and I could see that it was one of amusement. He said, “It is transmitting mathematics at this time. If the aliens are able to decipher its message, they will transmit on a particular frequency. At that time, the box will begin a new series of messages; these will be of a nature as to allow us to learn how to communicate with each other. You will receive a single tone, one kilohertz, if the aliens choose to engage us in communication.” I noted that he added an ‘if’ to his statement. His theories were rapidly shredding in the face of reality.
It was pretty clear that the ambassador knew quite a bit about his little box, far more than he let on. I had no idea how to proceed with him, but knew enough not to let my guard down. I could see that this man operated on a level where everything he said and did was layered in levels of obfuscation and meaning. I did not like the fact that he was withholding information from me that might allow our mission to succeed. I also did not understand why he might want to, or might think he could gain anything. He seemed to be oblivious to the fact that he was playing with fire. Perhaps that was the crux of my problem with him. He’d spent his life in academic circles, where winning or losing debates had little or no actual cost, other than perhaps a beer or two. They were all games.
I said, “Sir, what we are now seeing will demonstrate how well theories about this alien species match reality. I hope, for the sake of the billions of human beings alive right now that your beliefs are correct, and that we will be able to communicate peacefully with them.”
The ambassador looked at me a trifle condescendingly and asked, “And lieutenant, what is your take? What do you think is going to happen?”
I said, flatly, not taking my eyes off the video feeds, “We’re in a knife fight to the death, and they have far more knives than we do. Sir.”
The alien ships continued to accelerate and the box failed to sound that tone. By now, the fighters were arcing back in toward the shuttle, which would now be unable to evade them had we wanted it to.
Elian was watching the show from the Grant. He said to me on a private comm channel, “Robert, they aren’t decelerating – they’re going in for a kill!” I nodded my head and the ambassador caught it. He asked, “Something to report?” I said, “Captain Turner believes that their formation is hostile in nature. He believes they will attempt to either destroy the shuttle or render it helpless.”
The ambassador continued to watch me and asked, “What do you think?” I said, “Sir, I’ll let the events play out. It should be a matter of just a few moments now, either way.”
He nodded thoughtfully and turned his attention back to the holo image, which showed the tiny green marker of the shuttle surrounded by a host of red icons, still accelerating.
Suddenly, the image went dead. Miss Carnacion asked, “What happened? Why has your equipment stopped working?” I turned to the second technician, who was in communication with a Hawk, less than two hundred thousand kilometers from the shuttle. Extremely close, and very dangerous, but we had to know. A moment later, the Hawk reported, “Sir, multiple fighters fired on the shuttle. It has been destroyed. Do you have any orders for us?” I asked for a relay of the video feed the Hawk had recorded. Moments later, we watched as several brilliant lines of coherent light transferred huge amounts of energy to the shuttle, causing a huge fireball.
For the first time, the ambassador looked really shaken. His pet theory, the one he’d cajoled earth government into accepting, had just gotten shot down, literally. He asked, “You have proof of this? You know for a fact that our transmitter was destroyed?”
I nodded my head, and said, “We have two observers, standing off at a distance of two hundred thousand kilometers, recording the events. I can replay their feed again, showing that several – six – fighters simultaneously fired their energy weapons at the unarmed shuttle containing your black box. Additionally, we know that the box was transmitting properly, now that you have given us the parameters of what it was designed to do.”
He said, sharply, “Why didn’t you tell me about those observers?” I said, “Sir I have been entrusted, not only with carrying out your requests, but with the safekeeping of the lives of my crews as well as the preservation of fleet assets, including our technology. We placed your black box in close proximity to this alien species, as requested, and in addition, we have recorded that species’ reactions to said black box. You did not request that I inform you of any additional measures I might take to carry out your request, and therefore I did not do so.”
I turned back to my technician and said, quietly, “Tell the Hawks to exit the area, extremely carefully. They are not to exceed three G’s acceleration unless their presence is detected. We do not want the bugs to know we’ve been observing them.” The technician nodded and passed on my order.
The ambassador asked what I felt was a not terribly intelligent question, a possible indication of how rattled he was, “Why don’t you want them to know you’ve been monitoring them?” I said, “I do not want to give any technology, strategy or tactics to these beings. They have proven themselves to be extremely warlike and adaptable, and while the level of their technology is nearly equal to ours, their quantity far exceeds what our peacetime Fleet can put into space. Losing a battle here would cost a few hundred lives, but losing a planet would, well, it is not possible for me to describe that adequately, sir. I cannot take any chances, when the stakes are so high.”
He nodded his head and said, as if the words were being dragged out of him, “I agree that the stakes are indeed high. Well, lieutenant, what do you suggest we do now?”
I said, “Sir, with your consent I would like to continue to observe their actions. They have now destroyed a shuttle, and they must know it could not get there on its own. I want to see how they react to that knowledge. We can learn something from observing their reactions and behaviors, despite their failure to communicate in the hoped for method.”
He looked at his feet for a long moment, then nodded his head and said, “I agree.” He stood up and turned to the hatch. He said over his shoulder, “Captain, please keep me informed. We still have one more black box. You never know?”
I looked at the spot he just vacated, thinking that this man ought to get paid twice, once for each personality. Only later did I realize that he’d called me ‘captain’.
Elian and I talked at length about the attack and about the ambassador. At one point he said, “I think that the man is intelligent, very intelligent, and over the years has adopted a method of getting his way by bullying people who are almost always less intelligent. He tried it on us and it didn’t work, so now we are seeing another facet of his character. I would warn you that it might not be his ‘real’ character; it might just be another character that he has adopted. The fact that he failed to give us information that might have been critical to the success of this mission is in keeping with the way an unethical politician would behave, and perhaps he has had to function as one in his line of work. We have no information that would allow us to determine why he is acting thusly, but I propose that from this instant you ensure that every single message or conversation with this man be logged. We need to protect our young asses from this man as much as from the bugs. Frankly, I respe
ct them more – at least they’re straightforward about trying to kill us.”
I sighed in agreement and asked him if he had any ideas, relative to the bugs. He didn’t, other than to say that this bunch of coconuts seemed to look just like the other bunches. I laughed and we ended on that note.
Two days later we began moving slowly to another region of space. We remembered the destruction of the Essex and did not want to get either spotted or potted by these beings.
We were running six Hawks and resting six. As we didn’t know how long our mission would last, we were trying to give our crews as much rest as possible, but the long and now long-drawn out missions were beginning to take a toll on them.
One of the Hawks was beginning to display problems with two of its mag bottles. We didn’t have the ability to make that type of repair, and so we decided to keep it in close. It still had the ability to run flat out, and could keep up with the two destroyers while firing its lasers, but if it suffered any more failures we would have to consider sending it home.
We continued to monitor the flotilla as it drifted along. I pored over every scrap of data our Hawks picked up, trying to find out why this bunch was behaving differently, yet so similarly. Elian’s thought that any differences could be explained by the incredibly long voyage they’d been on made sense. It might be correct as well.
In addition to practically every other issued related to the bug presence in our tiny region of the universe, we were unsure why the bugs failed to backtrack the shuttle’s course to find where it came from. Once again, Elian came up with a possible solution to all these questions. He asked, “What if this flotilla held a sort of queen bee for example? The first priority of her subjects would be to protect her. This flotilla is aware that someone knows where it is, yet they, the bugs, are making no effort to seek out that potential enemy. This behavior could be consistent with a hive mentality that would rather avoid getting entangled in a war it might lose, or at least might prove to be costly or otherwise endanger the queen. It wouldn’t be aware of the destruction of the other mother ships, either.”
I thought about his statement and asked, “How would we go about proving this fancy of yours?” Elian laughed and asked, “Fancy?” I smiled and said, “Well, we have virtually no information to work with, so we can hardly call it a thesis.” He grinned in acknowledgment.
We talked idly for a bit then he said, “You know, we might send the lame Hawk home. In fact, send a couple of others along in case of further engine problems. We could include all the data we have on the ambassador, for the admiral’s eyes only, and the status of our Hawk crews. Tell him that we were given no information on these black boxes, that we believe the ambassador knows quite a bit about how they operate, and ask Admiral Lee if he could send out replacement Hawks with fresh crews.”
I liked his suggestion and decided to go with it. Without telling anyone what I was doing I put together an audio-video file on nearly every conversation we’d had with the ambassador and his assistant. I also didn’t tell the ambassador that I was sending some Hawks back.
I asked the senior Hawk crew to pick two Hawks to escort the lame one and sent them on their way. I selected a new location much further away from the flotilla and gave it to the Hawks so that they would be able to find us on their return. I would place a beacon in that region, which, if we were not there when hit with the proper code, would divulge our current position.
The return trip would take approximately one week, so it might take three weeks for the round trip. In the meantime, I wanted to sit well away from any possible sudden encounter with two or three hundred angry fighters.
I maintained a three ship scouting party close to the flotilla and parked the other six with the two Dresdens. I felt pretty secure out here, made more so by a new toy we hadn’t had access to earlier. We had a small supply of powered drones that had very good endurance, were very stealthy and possessed both good sensors and the ability to communicate with us. Now that the black box experiment had concluded so spectacularly we were using them to monitor the enemy. I maintained the Hawks on station as well, while I played with the drones and evaluated their abilities. I wished to remain both paranoid and alive.
We experimented with them a bit and they proved to be very hard to find, and even harder for unwanted ears to hear when they communicated. I was delighted to have some technology that wasn’t older than I was. In my communications sent via the returning Hawks I asked for more of them, as they could provide us with a priceless advantage if the bugs chose to try to swat the Hawks.
We switched out the three Hawks every three days. By now we had been out for forty days and both the FFC and the Dresdens were nearing the lower limit of their fuel and food. I decided to top off the Hawks and transfer the remainder of the FFC’s remaining reactor fuel into the Dresdens and return the support vessel to Jupiter base.
Not having a large carrier handy greatly constricted our operations. The FFC left the two remaining drones with us. The departure of the cargo vessel did provide us with a little greater flexibility – we would not have to try to protect it and we would not be restricted to its rate of acceleration. Two of the three Hawks crept up to within five million kilometers of the flotilla and dropped off the large drones.
The drones had limited station-keeping ability, but were only able to maintain their position near the bugs as long as the enemy was not accelerating. Since the enemy fleet was merely drifting along, the drones could remain in formation with it. We performed a data dump once every few days, and it meant that our weary Hawks were able to lower their operational tempo a bit.
I didn’t like to take chances – the loss of the Essex was nearly constantly on my mind. I also had a brand new wife who I missed terribly and I knew she would kill me if I were turned into an expanding ball of plasma by the bugs.
The ambassador insisted that we remain in close proximity to the flotilla to observe its actions. As long as I felt the Hawk crews were getting sufficient rest, I told him we would continue the mission, but told him that both the attack craft and their crews were reaching the end of their endurance. He got edited copies of the drone reports as well as all additional information we were able to develop, and he spent hours going over it, looking for God knows what.
He never once shared any insights with me, nor did he seem much inclined to tell me why he wanted to stay out. To say that he was a complex man was an understatement. Elian once said that he was as enigmatic as the bugs. I thought that the ambassador realized that his pet theory had blown up in his face, so to speak, and he was possibly humiliated and looking for something he could take back to earth that would allow him to save face. I had to admit that I might be imputing motives to him that were not real – that he might just be trying to communicate with an alien species. However, with this man, it was possible that all our theories were correct.
Finally our days of leisure came to an end. We received a message that one of the Hawks was limping home on one mag bottle. A major glitch kicked all of the new bottles out of the system. It was pulling back from the flotilla very carefully, even more carefully than was usual as it would be a sitting duck if fighters bounced it. The other two Hawks stayed close, between it and the flotilla. I talked to Elian about any instructions we might have to give should the bugs bounce them.
I decided to move both Dresdens and all six remaining Hawks back towards the Hawks in an effort to place them inside our umbrella of protection, such as it was. It was clear to me that the mission was now over. I checked with the other Hawks, asking for status of their craft and crew. Everything was green and they had enough fuel to reach Lubya on their own, should they have to.
We moved forward at six G’s with three Hawks well outside of us and the other three well to the front. The news from the three retreating Hawks was good. They were still pulling back, although at only a half G and were now outside six million kilometers from the bugs. I spoke to the three crews, who may well have gotten a little spo
oked. I told them not to hurry and not to take any chances, feeling all the while like an anxious parent.
If they got bounced, the lamed Hawk should fire its missiles, transfer its crew to the other two Hawks and then they would run for it. To that end they had suited up for a quick transfer. So far, that wasn’t going to be necessary.
For the first time in over a month, we didn’t have watchers closely observing the flotilla, other than the four drones. My active imagination kept thinking up new ways for disaster to fall upon us. Elian laughed at me when I told him, but I knew for a fact that he worried as much as I. He just hid it better.
We reached the vicinity of the three Hawks without any further problems and I began to breathe a little easier. We matched course with them, staying thirty kilometers distant so as to reduce our gravity drive signature. I talked to the crew on a tight-beam laser, grateful to be close enough not to have to deal with light speed delays.
They said that the ship was now suffering multiple, severe problems including the loss of radar and nav systems, as well as the nearly total loss of their drive. I commed Elian and asked him to put a crew on his shuttle and have it ready to go at an instant’s notice. Typically, he already had a crew aboard it, ready to launch.
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 57
