Manxome Foe

by John Ringo

  She opened up a screen and coded rapidly, her fingers flashing across the keyboard. The small program compiled quickly, then she opened up a freeware open-source video program.

  "Now to see what this does with the signal," she said, dropping a portion of the signal data into the program.

  The screen changed to a gray pattern of images while a series of squeals came out of the speaker. There was nothing to truly see, though; it was worse than any surrealist painting. There were some angles and a few moving shapes, but nothing that could be parsed out.

  "Not quite," Miriam said, opening up the code again. She considered her equations for a moment, jotted down a long series of cryptic notations then added some code, removing others.

  "There we go," she said as if to a child. The screen now showed the interior of what was clearly a spaceship. Portions were strangely distorted, cubistic in many ways, with screens taking prominence, positions of some of the beings very odd, translucency to others and one central figure in the room apparently huge. But the aliens on the screen looked, somewhat, like the aliens in isolation.

  "Can you change our signals to look more like theirs?" Dr. Chet asked.

  "Maybe," Miriam said. "But I'm not sure what they'll actually get. We can try."

  "And we still don't have language," the M.D. pointed out.

  "But this actually helps," Miriam replied. "It almost automatically subtracts the sonar portion of their sounds. But that makes it harder in a way as well. They seem to use their sonar the way we used body language. It might be one of the things that makes them seem so flat. Communicating with them will always be hard. I don't think we think exactly the same. Not even as close as we and the Adar. I'm going to see if we can change our transmissions to match theirs, use another frequency to substitute for the neutrinos which were acting as a third dimension modulator. It should work, if they can change their system to figure it out."

  » » »

  "Their transmissions have changed," Elav said. He cupped his headpiece for a moment, then pinged excitedly. "I think I can now parse their transmission. It will take me a few kleg."

  "Very good," Kond replied. "Change your own transmission to a series of short pulses. Perhaps they will get the point that we're having to work on our own end."

  "Conn, Commo. Miss Moon modified our transmissions. She thinks she's cracked the sonar to video code. We sent them the modified video and we're now getting a single band EM series of pulses. No neutrino, just EM. Simple pattern, just about a quarter send pulse, pause for a second, quarter second pulse at 4.2 gigahertz. No clue what that means."

  "It means: Hold Please," Commander Weaver said.

  "Agreed," Spectre replied. "So now we wait. Commo, hook in Miss Moon's changes to the main viewer and run that program as soon as you get something else from them."

  "Aye, aye."

  "Ship Master, it is a very strange signal," Elav said. "But I think I have it parsed. Do you wish to see?"

  "Immediately," Kond said, rising from his couch.

  The image was very strange, two dimensional, the beings pictured moving only side to side and having no depth. Walking through the sonar image, Kond saw that they appeared the same from the other side. The actual figures of the crew of the alien ship were hard to separate from their controls but they appeared to be bipedal. So were some Blin units, but these assuredly were not Blin. They could be a Blin subject race, like the haired ones or the multi-legs, but so far they had not acted hostile at all.

  "Is there any way to get depth?" Kond asked.

  "I am trying, Ship Master," the commo specialist replied. "But there is no signal for depth. I think that it is somehow interpreted by their sensory organs. They appear to be EM detectors in a limited range."

  "Send an image of our interior," Kond ordered. "Let them sense us as well."

  "Here we go," the commo officer said over the intercom. "Sending through the sonar to vid processed signal."

  "Ouch," Spectre said, shaking his head at the weird view on the forward screen. It was a bit stomach wrenching in its weird distortions, more like a bad acid trip than a video. But he nonetheless stood up and nodded at the image. "Greetings. I am Captain Blankemeier, commander of the Alliance Space Ship Vorpal Blade. We greet you in peace and friendship."

  "I think that the audio is clear," Elav said, wincing. The tonality caused sonar harmonics that were stomach wrenching, spinning the sensory interior of the control compartment wildly.

  "Can you filter out those harmonics?" Kond asked, wriggling his tentacles.

  "I'm trying, Ship Master," Elav said. "But I'm not sure what we're losing."

  "I'm willing to lose some information to avoid having my weapons fired accidentally," the ship master replied. "Greetings," he continued, raising his tentacles. "We come in peace."

  "Ow!" Spectre snapped, sticking a finger in his ear and wriggling it around. "Was that feedback? I think that squeal would bend metal! Commo, can we put some sort of filter on that? The guys we've got in isolation don't sound that bad."

  "I'll try, Conn," Commo replied. "Miss Moon said that she was having to bring out some high-frequency tonalities. I think that might be what's causing that squeal. I've set the system to drop all the frequencies another octave."

  "We're starting to get a translation," Elav said, looking at his computers. "There are assumptions involved but I think we're making headway, finally. We are picking up not only the words of the apparent commander, but of others in the compartment. The computer has used all of that and is assimilating their language."

  "Adjust my transmission to use their language," Kond said. "Can you translate a standard greeting protocol?"

  "I should be able to," Elav said. "Go ahead, Ship Master."

  "Yo, again," the main figure on the viewscreen said. "Our chips are changing my thoughts to those of dudes. I be Kond, Boss Dude of the big ship. Greetings and sweeties we are."

  "Whoa," Weaver said. "I hope like hell that their computers are capable of retasking for language. Because I seriously don't want them to sound like that when they meet major players."

  "I just hope I don't sound that strange to them," Spectre muttered. "Greeting, Kond. I am Spectre, Boss Dude of the Vorpal Blade."

  16

  "Dreen," Kond said, about an hour later. "Yes, we are fighting those ones. We are fleeing those ones. Our home world was lost. Fleet is finding safe world. We are last guards."

  "We have three survivors from the last battle on-board," Spectre said. "We picked them up along with some wreckage for study. How can we transfer them over?"

  "Lost are they," Kond replied, waggling tentacles again. "Space is their home."

  "No, we picked them up," the CO said, confused. "We can get them over to you easily enough."

  "Lost are they," Kond repeated. "Source is not. Behind they are. Understanding?"

  "Sir," Miriam said, quietly. "I think what he's saying is that the resources of their ships are so minimal that they can't take them on. If they lost their ship, they have to be left behind."

  "Lost are they," Kond agreed. "Is sorrow. Is must."

  "We can carry them," Spectre said, his jaw firming. "Is that permitted? Is that okay?"

  "Very okay," Kond said. "But not for us. Little air, water, food we have. Food very little. Damages we carry from battle. Unable to squee!"

  "I think that squeal was important," Weaver interjected. "Unable to fly? Unable to warp? Unable to go faster than light?"

  "Unable to be unreal," Kond replied. "Unable to run."

  "They can't get their FTL drive to work," Spectre said, nodding. "Can we help?"

  "Part is broken," Kond said. "Squee! Is damaged before, damaged again. May not be fix."

  "Can you show us the part?" Spectre asked. "We have a way to get some parts from home. It's possible we could get something that will work. If it's not complicated."

  "Is only squee!" Kond said.

  "He's exasperated," Miriam said. She had an earbud in and was
apparently picking up the raw sounds from the alien. "I've heard that tone before. It goes very high, super ultrasonic. Frustration. I think it's something simple but for some reason they can't fix it."

  "And since he's a sitting duck until they do . . ." Weaver said. "Kond, can you show us the part?"

  "Wait," Kond said.

  "Elav, in my cabin, the model of the ship. Get it."

  "Yes, Ship Master."

  "This part," Kond said, holding up a model of the ship. It was detailed but small. He might have been pointing at one of the pods or the nacelle-wing leading to it.

  "The engine or the wing?" Spectre asked.

  "The squee!" Kond replied, holding it up and pointing to it again. With the tip of one tentacle he lightly caressed the wing.

  "Commander Weaver, what's the size of one of those things?"

  "Kond, we must send an active thing at your ship," Weaver said. "Light. It is not dangerous."

  "Send," Kond replied.

  Weaver went over to his controls and brought up the laser rangefinding system used for inshore maneuvers. Sending a pulse at the distant ship, and finally getting a hard range return, he was able to determine sizes. The wing was thirty-seven feet long, the pod on the end about twenty long and ten wide at the widest point. Looking at the design he knew exactly what would fit, if there were no special requirements. And if they could somehow attach it.

  "Kond," he said, getting back up and walking over to the center of the conn. "Does it have to be special materials?"

  "Not understood," Kond said. "It can be any squee . . . It can be squee or squee or even squee. Anything. Must be strong."

  "If we can get back to Gamma and if we can convince the Prez, and if we can get one down to Antarctica fast, he should be able to use a wing off a transport plane," Weaver said. "Figure they have to fly C-17s in to the area anyway to bring the gates. There's an airfield. Fly in a C-17, cut off the win—" He stopped at the CO's expression. "Or not. But I figured out a way to pick it up and attach it using the Wyverns and space ta— Or not."

  "Here's an alternative thought," Spectre said carefully. "Did we see any of those things floating around back at the battlefield? I seem to recall your last brainstorm involved high pressure hydrogen throughout my ship."

  "Yeah, heh," Weaver said ruefully. "I'm glad nobody pointed out to you that it was explosive."

  "What?"

  "I kept expecting us to blow sky high," Weaver said. "Oxygen and hydrogen are not a good mix. One spark and . . . But, yeah, there are probably some parts back at the battlefield. Now if we can just explain that we want to take some of their people back there to check it out."

  "How about the three space cases in isolation?" the XO asked.

  "Well, what we need are their version of machinist mates and for all we know we've got cooks," the CO said, still trying to assimilate that the ship had nearly gone sky-h— Been blown to smithereens. "But if we can get it across to the Kond fellow, maybe it will work. It's no worse than any of our other plans. Except the one that involved cutting off the wing of a billion dollar airplane."

  "They could repair it," Weaver pointed out. "I mean, it would be pricey but we're talking about high level diplomacy here. Seriously, they shove it through the gate fast and then we use the Marines to—" He looked at the CO's face again and paused. "Or not."

  "Could you go over that for me again, sir?" the COB asked.

  He got that they'd encountered another alien race. He got that they were friendly. He even got that their ship needed to be repaired and, hey, you did that for friends. He was just having a hard time with . . .

  "We gotta go pick up the wing of a C-17 that's floating around in space?"

  "Forget the C-17," Spectre said patiently. "We're warping back to the scene of the space battle. We're hoping to find a part that sort of looks like a part of a C-17 wing that got cut off and cut short. We need to pick it up and bring it back here so the aliens can fix their ship and get out of here before the Dreen catch them. Are we clear on all of that?"

  "Yes, sir," the COB said, taking another sip of coffee. "How big is this thing? How are we going to bring it back, sir?"

  "That, COB, is up to you," the CO replied. "I'll send Commander Weaver out with the party. He will be in nominal charge. But as we both know—"

  "The commander don't know his butt from a hole in the water about anything nautical, sir," the COB said, sighing. "I been trying—"

  "We're all trying, COB," the CO said. "On the other hand, what he doesn't know about space hasn't been learned, yet."

  "Got it, sir," the COB replied. "I'll need a couple of machinists, three bosuns and we'd probably better get a couple of the Marines. They're the only ones in armor. If this thing is dangerous . . ."

  "Understood," the CO said. "Get to it."

  "And a lot of space tape . . ." the COB muttered as he left the conn.

  "Have we gotten our passengers in touch with the ship?" the CO asked. "I don't suppose they can be of any help?"

  "They're talking," Miriam said, leaning into her earbud. "I'm listening. The high frequency compression is making some of it hard to understand, but I'm getting most of it. But the 'passengers' don't appear to be of much use to us in this. If I'm getting it right, one of them is something like a cook, there might be a supply person and I think the third is something to do with navigation."

  "So no lost princesses?" Weaver asked. "Captain of the destroyed ship? Their chief engineer?"

  "No engineers at all," Miriam said.

  "Do they know you're listening in?" the CO asked.

  "Yes, sir," Miriam replied. "Doing otherwise wouldn't be . . . nice."

  "That was actually my point," the CO said. "Okay, then it's up to us. Commander Weaver, you're going to be in charge of the recovery detail. Ideas?"

  "Move to about a hundred thousand meters from center," Bill said. "Do a visual and radar sweep for the shape we're looking for. Close to it. Determine if it's attached to something or not. Connect to it, probably by using suits carrying lines to the piece, pull it onto the hull, secure it and then we head back."

  "On the sweep," Miriam said, still looking at the deck. "I can write some code to do automatic shape matching. It might speed things up."

  "Thank you, Miss Moon," Bill said. "But, we already have auto-target recognition code for targeting and navigation based on matched filtering, FFTs, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms that work just fine and can be used just as readily. After all, how do you think the navigation computer recognizes the star patterns or the targeting systems recognize, uh, targets?"

  "Oh." Miriam wasn't sure if Weaver was being flippant or arrogant, so she dropped it.

  "I suspect the genius is going to be in the details," the CO said.

  "So do I, sir," Bill admitted. "So do I. But it can't be worse than catching a comet."

  "Commander, let me give you a piece of advice from my many years in the Navy," the CO said. "Never ever say: It couldn't be worse."

  By integrating the lidar system and the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems on the Blade to get a range, they could determine roughly how big the debris field was. But at a light-second out the size and a shape of the individual pieces were beyond the limits of even the big twelve-meter aperture of the main sparse array telescope system. Running SAR and lidar image enhancement codes they were able to increase their resolution a few percent and started picking up potential large pieces of more than fifteen meters in length while still a light-second out. Smaller pieces were still unresolvable. They were approaching under normal space drive so they had nearly thirty minutes until they reached their pause point.

  "Too bent," Bill said, looking at the first match. "I think it's one of the things we're looking for but it's bent. You can see it."

  "I see it," Miriam said, declicking the first match. "There's another."

  "I think that's a section of hull," Bill replied. "It's not the thing Kond was pointing at."

  "Might work," Miriam po
inted out.

  "Better than a wing from a C-17," Spectre said dryly. The matches were displaying on the main conn screens for size and resolution, so he didn't even have to look over their shoulders. "Highlight it as a possible, though."

  "Broken," Bill said on the next. "Bent again . . ."

  "We're scavengers," Spectre interjected sadly. "Scavengers of a battle fought not so long ago. And . . . Tactical?"

  "Conn, Tactical."

  "Don't get caught up in this search," the CO said. "The Dreen are probably going to be checking out this battle site, too."

  "Aye, aye, Conn."

  "Be a bit ugly if they showed up while we're doing this, sir," Bill said. "Not a wing. Something else."

  "Hull?"

  "I think it's part of a passageway. What's that, though?"

  The system was highlighting the piece as a low-priority. That was because the "wing" was still attached to one of the pods on the end.

  "I forgot to add the pods," Miriam admitted. "Sorry. But that looks—"

  "Good," Bill said, zooming the camera in. The "wing" had what looked like a bit of the hull still attached and still had its pod. He very much wanted to get his hands on one of the pods. The aliens had as much as said that they were part of their FTL system, one that humans might be able to replicate. "That looks very good. CO, I think we have a winner."

  "The COB has assembled a recovery crew," Spectre replied. "Best go get your armor on. Pilot, bring us in close to that piece of debris."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "More alien space junk," Smith muttered, thrusting over to the tumbling "wing."

  "Just get it stabilized, relative to the ship," Berg replied. "I'll take left, you take right. Just stand by to stabilize, I'm going to try something."

  "Is that anything like, 'Hey, y'all, watch this?' " Himes asked.

  "Probably," Berg said, flying "over" the spinning wing. It was mostly tumbling end to end, pretty fast all things considered, with a slight skew and "down" being towards the boat. And it was moving "away" from the site of the battle very fast, having apparently been imparted with quite a bit of velocity from an internal explosion. But the ship was matching that to within a few meters per minute. He could "follow" it with his thrusters easily enough. But they had to stop the tumbling.