Gate Crashers

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  “It’s frozen solid, Captain. Snowballed. CO2 is pretty high, though, almost two thousand parts per million.”

  “That’s weird. Where did the carbon come from, volcanoes?”

  “No recent volcanic activity. The albedo is too uniform.”

  “Any methane?”

  “Only in parts per trillion.”

  That wasn’t surprising. Without a geologic or biologic source to replenish it, atmospheric methane broke down faster than a person afraid of public speaking forced to give a commencement speech, naked, while juggling chainsaws.

  “Maggie, would this planet be in the liquid water zone without the lily pads?”

  “Yes, Captain. It would be largely tropical, with a fourteen-hundred-kilometer supertropical equatorial band.”

  “And how long have the lily pads been here?”

  “Insufficient data. I would need to know more about their rate of reproduction to estimate—”

  “Captain, look!” Wheeler shouted from the navigator’s station.

  Allison’s eyes snapped to the main display. A hole formed dead ahead, the black dot growing against the stark white surface of the planet like spilled ink.

  “What the hell?”

  “It’s a hyperspace window, ma’am.”

  “From Bucephalus? What’s that cowboy doing now?”

  * * *

  Felix had to shout above the confused din permeating Bucephalus’s bridge. “It’s not us, Captain. The capacitors are still cooling off from the last transition. I couldn’t open a window right now if I wanted to.”

  “Then who is it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the anomaly following Magellan around?”

  “Tactical, anything on the other side of the window?” Maximus asked.

  “I don’t have a good angle on it yet, sir. Should I launch a probe?”

  “Save it.” Maximus spun to face the com station. “Call Magellan. See if they have a better view of what’s coming up the rabbit hole. And tell them to go radio black; QER coms only from this point on. Helm, scoot us over to get a better look.”

  * * *

  “Bucephalus is on the line, ma’am. They say it’s not them and that they have no sensor coverage into the window. Captain Tiberius is requesting a QER data link to our sensors and a radio blackout between us.”

  “Do it. Then raise Earth and apprise them of our situation.”

  The radio blackout made sense—no use risking an eavesdropper—but the sensor feed would eat up most of the bandwidth of even their advanced QERs. Communication between the two ships would be limited to text.

  “Contact!” Wheeler erupted. “We’ve got a contact forty-five clicks inside the window. It just moved into line of sight.”

  “How big?”

  “Tiny, less than a hundred meters, provided our sensors aren’t being tricked by stealth systems.”

  “They aren’t stealthed,” Commander Gruber said. “They can become the next best thing to invisible. Why go halfway?”

  “You think it’s the fuzzy anomaly, then, Marcel?”

  Gruber shrugged. “I think it’s a safe assumption. We know we’re being followed. They probably decided to make the first move.”

  “Captain,” Wheeler said, “Bucephalus is maneuvering toward the window. We need to match them to maintain safe clearance.”

  “Why are they crowding us?”

  “Probably trying to get a better view,” Gruber said.

  “Very well. Mr. Wheeler, match Bucephalus’s movements. Prescott, put me through to the alien vessel.”

  * * *

  “Magellan has a contact. It’s not very big.”

  “Neither were PT boats.” Maximus smirked. “Designate contact as Bogey One on the plot. Set Condition Two.”

  “Captain,” the helmsman said, “the window has closed. Bogey One is matching our movement. It’s keeping behind the Magellan, relative to our position.”

  “Our blind spot.” Maximus laced his fingers together and theatrically cracked his knuckles. “Which is exactly what I would do, if I were preparing to attack. Tactical, got to active scans. Bring the CIWS up to ready status, and warm up my birds. I want a firing solution on Bogey One. We may have to swat a bug.”

  “Sir,” the com officer injected, “Magellan is hailing Bogey One.”

  “Oh, this should be good. Call the mess and have Cookie send up some popcorn.”

  * * *

  A soft blue light pulsed in the upper left corner of D’armic’s vision. The humans were sending a signal, doubtless stalling for time. Truth be told, they weren’t alone. He’d managed to get his cutter ahead of the intruders, but the ship’s power reservoirs had been emptied to do it.

  It would take the reactor several fractions more to replenish them. Until then, his cutter’s EM cannon, its singular weapon, was little better than ballast. D’armic needed to do some stalling of his own.

  Human video encryption was well known; they’d been squawking away to anyone with a receiver for hundreds of cycles now. It was a simple matter for the cutter’s signal filters to clean up the transmission. An image of the human ship’s command cave formed in his mind. It was angular and hard-edged, with holographic interfaces flickering at every seat. At the center of the light storm was a familiar face; the same light-haired woman whose image had been captured on Culpus-Alam.

  “Unidentified vessel,” she said, “my name is Allison Ridgeway, captain of the AEUS Magellan. We are on a peaceful expedition of exploration and discovery. We request that you identify yourself and state your intentions. Please respond.”

  Her voice was calm and friendly, hardly what one would expect of a mass murderer. You never can tell, D’armic thought.

  “Allison Ridgeway Captain. My name is D’armic Ytol ev Shamel, a frontier manager of the Bureau of Frontier Resources. It is my intention to bring you and your crew into custody, to await judgment for the geocide of Culpus-Alam.”

  * * *

  Allison and the rest of her bridge crew sat dumbstruck as the mottled gray alien continued to speak in even, measured English.

  “I will allow you five of your minutes to explain the situation to your crew and make the necessary preparations. If you do not surrender into custody at the end of this period, I will have no recourse but to fire on your vessels to force compliance. Your time begins now.”

  Allison’s wits were not prepared for this turn of events. All she could think to say was, “Please hold.” She looked at Prescott and made a cutting gesture at her throat.

  “Channel closed, ma’am.”

  “Well, at least he was polite about it.” Allison looked at the solemn faces surrounding her chair. Scared as they were, her people held their composure. “All right, any guesses what he’s on about?”

  * * *

  The Bucephalus’s bridge sat in grim shock as the eerily familiar alien face issued its ultimatum. Everyone, that is, except Maximus. He clapped his hands together and grinned, causing everyone to wonder if he had been watching a different video.

  “Finally, some excitement.” Maximus rubbed his hands greedily. “Set Condition One.” Red strobes flashed to life, while a klaxon bleated like an amorous sheep.

  “Tactical, unlock missiles one through ten, and start feeding them telemetry on Bogey One.”

  “You’re firing on him?” Felix called out.

  “Not just yet, Mr. Fletcher. I intend to give him just enough rope to dig his own grave.”

  “Don’t you mean enough rope to hang himself?”

  “I don’t know. Do I look like an undertaker?”

  * * *

  “Time to deadline?”

  “Three minutes, fourteen seconds, ma’am.”

  Allison straightened her tunic, then ran her hands over the fabric to smooth out any wrinkles. “Maggie?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Prepare yourself for enemy fire. Seal all airtight doors, prime all backup systems, and decompress all unoccupied compartments.”
<
br />   “I have made the necessary preparations, Captain.”

  Allison smirked. “Forgive me for doubting you. Com, open the channel, please.”

  Prescott activated a virtual dial and nodded to her captain.

  “Frontier Manager D’armic. As I have already said, we are on a peaceful expedition. We have not harmed anyone, as our sensor logs can show. I offer to transmit our full, unedited data logs so that you may—” The screen split, moving the alien’s image to the side to accommodate a new face.

  “This is Captain Tiberius of the Bucephalus, and I’m going to cut to the chase. We will not be surrendering to you in three minutes, three days, or three years. Furthermore, your threat against our vessels will not be tolerated. You are ordered to stand down and withdraw, or I will be forced to give that cute little yacht of yours more holes than a chain-link fence. You have two minutes to comply.”

  A full second passed before Allison realized her mouth was hanging open like a barn door torn off its hinges. She gestured for Prescott to cut the channel.

  “Channel closed, ma’am.”

  “Get Tiberius on the line, now.”

  “What about the blackout, Captain?” Gruber asked quietly from behind her right shoulder.

  “Use the laser com. We can risk that.”

  Prescott pulled up a new menu on the com interface. “Laser link established. Bucephalus com is challenging … codes sent … codes accepted. Q5 encryption active.”

  Allison had to work not to grind her teeth together as Maximus’s face appeared.

  “Captain Ridgeway, how may I help you?”

  “Drop the act, Tiberius. This isn’t the time to start a pissing contest with that ship. Our sensor records will straighten this out peacefully. The last thing we need is for first contact to end with explosions, on either side.”

  “Oh, please. That ship has been following you around like an obsessed ex-boyfriend for years. The only planet we’ve visited was Solonis B, and he was there. Don’t you see? He’s setting us up, probably to cover his own tracks.”

  Allison’s mind ground to a halt. Maximus’s theory fit the evidence like a pair of skinny jeans. All right, he’s got some cunning hiding in there. “I admit that’s possible, but we can’t be the ones to take the first shot. Let me try to sort this out.”

  “I’ll remind you that military decisions are mine to make on this expedition, Captain. And I doubt you can do much talking in a minute.”

  “Not much, but I can do twice as much in two minutes.” Allison looked at her com officer. “Ensign Prescott, cut our sensor feed to Bucephalus.”

  Prescott pushed a virtual button and smiled. “Feed cut, ma’am.”

  “What are you doing?” Maximus fumed. “You’re the one in line of sight. We can’t get target locks without that feed.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You’ll be shot to pieces without cover fire!”

  “Perhaps, but it’s my ship to risk, isn’t it? If you’ll excuse me.” On cue, Prescott cut the laser link and reopened the channel to the small cutter.

  Allison put on her best hostess face. “I’m sorry for the delay, Mr. Darmic, was it?”

  “D’armic, actually. The inflection is of some significance. Without it, my name changes meanings from ‘Gazes at stars’ to ‘Inappropriate self-touch while looking at pictures of celebrities,’” the small gray alien said with the utmost seriousness.

  “Ah, D’armic it is, then,” Allison said, very precisely.

  “I should remind you there is one minute and thirty seconds remaining, Allison Captain.”

  “That gives us some time to talk. I have … temporarily inconvenienced Captain Tiberius. He will be unable to fire on your vessel before your deadline expires. But I should warn you, should you attack Maggie—I mean the Magellan—he will do whatever he can to destroy you.”

  “It will not matter in one minute, fifteen seconds. Speak quickly, if you wish, but I must tell you that I am disinclined to believe the claims of someone suspected of geocide.”

  “You’re talking about Solonis B, the planet six light-years from here covered in human tribes?”

  “Yes. We call it Culpus-Alam.”

  “We did not destroy it, and I think you know that. We saw your ship, Mr. D’armic, sitting deeper in the system, covered by some kind of stealth system. So, tell me, why are you trying to frame us for killing our own people?”

  “Another vessel was present?”

  “Yes, hiding three light-minutes closer to the system primary. Do you deny it was yours?”

  “I do deny it. I arrived in the aftermath.”

  Allison put a hand on each side of her chair and sat down with a calm grace she most certainly was not feeling. “Then we are both being played.”

  Silence hung in the air like a thick fog. D’armic’s features would be familiar to anyone who had seen a low-budget alien abduction movie in the last four hundred years: gray skin, dark eye slits, small mouth and nose. Allison tried to read his expression, but his countenance remained sedate.

  Finally, D’armic broke the quiet. “Perhaps, but we will have time to sort this out afterward. Your deadline expires in, three.”

  “No, wait! We can—”

  “Two.”

  “You don’t nee—”

  “One.”

  Allison hit the button for the ship-wide intercom. “Brace for impact!”

  “Do not worry. This should be painless.”

  D’armic fired.

  CHAPTER 33

  The EM pulse cannon was one of the most feared and effective weapons yet devised, which in its case didn’t refer to electromagnetic, but emotional maturity. It worked by manipulating the bioelectrical fields present in any carbon-based species with a centralized nervous system. Anyone caught in its area of effect immediately recognized any common ground they shared with their foes, threw down their weapons, and found a more constructive way to solve their problems. This usually involved a lot of hugging and off-key singing. It was devastating to troop morale, and its use was outlawed in much of known space.

  The Lividites invented the EM pulse cannon after their intervention and subsequent rehabilitation. Most of their neighboring systems had spent a staggering amount of money and manpower building their military capacity to protect themselves against yet another Lividite invasion. After their racial about-face, the threat of war abated, yet the stockpiles remained.

  It is an established sociological constant that a peoples’ capacity to mind their own business is inversely proportional to the number of weapons they have lying around. So inevitably, neighbor systems with their idle militaries went about starting trouble with each other over centuries-old grievances. Given that the Lividites had eschewed violence since their renaissance, the EM pulse cannon was a uniquely Lividite solution to the problem of their neighbors. No one knew more about manipulating emotions than the Lividites.

  Unfortunately for D’armic, but fortunately for those who make their living in the defense industry, the wellspring of human aggression was so strong and buried so deep inside the lizard brain that the only effect the crews of Magellan and Bucephalus felt was—

  “Does anyone else feel like watching a musical?” Allison asked. “Hamilton, maybe?”

  “Meh,” Gruber said. “So long as it’s not Rocky Horror. I never understood the appeal.”

  “Tiberius, how about your people?”

  Inexplicably, Maximus was already eating popcorn. “We’re game, but Mr. Fletcher says Grease is right out.” Some hoots and grunting could be heard from out of frame. “Mr. Buttercup says he’s partial to My Fair Lady.”

  “We’ll sort it out later.” Allison’s attention returned to the matter at hand. “Mr. D’armic, shall I presume that was your best shot?”

  “Yes, it would appear so. Before you destroy my vessel, may I request that a short personal note be forwarded to my family?”

  If the prospect of an imminent, violent death caused him any fear, Alliso
n couldn’t spot it. These people must be hell at poker, she thought. “It doesn’t have to come to that. You’ve tried it your way. Maybe we can try my way this time?”

  The gray face regarded her curiously for several heartbeats.

  “Agreed, Allison Captain.”

  * * *

  The wrangling went on for over an hour. Not between the humans and the alien, but between Allison and Maximus. Allison argued for extending him full diplomatic courtesies. She wanted an honor guard to receive their guest. Maximus wanted guards of a different kind to escort him to the Bucephalus’s brig. Lieutenant Harris broke the logjam by volunteering to lead the honor guard and then to follow D’armic around “to make sure he doesn’t get lost.”

  Then came the row over which ship would play host to their visitor. Allison thought a warship would send the wrong message, while Maximus was adamant his warship sent exactly the right message. Allison eventually won the argument when she explained Magellan posed a smaller security risk because she was six decades old and asked if Maximus really wanted “some nosy alien getting a peek at all your new toys.”

  While all this was being sorted out, D’armic sat patiently in his command cave and wondered if it took humans this long to make a decision, how they’d ever gotten so deep into space in the first place.

  Eventually, Jacqueline was sent on a round-trip shuttle ride to pick up Maximus, Felix, Harris, three other marines, and Mr. Buttercup. Everyone assembled outside of Shuttle Bay Two to await their visitor.

  Despite its small size, D’armic’s cutter was much too large to fit inside the bay. Instead, he floated across the void in a vacuum suit. As soon as he was inside, Chief Billings slowly turned up the gravity plating until the alien’s feet gently touched the deck. Then Billings shut the clamshell doors and repressurized the bay. To everyone’s surprise, D’armic wiped his feet on the dachshund shoe brush.

  Several minutes passed until the little man in the safety screen turned from red to green, and everyone filed into the bay to stand at parade ground attention. Their visitor’s helmet unlatched with a hiss. The members of the review snapped D’armic a crisp salute as his face was revealed. Except Mr. Buttercup; he was busy fidgeting with a holo-camera.