Déjà Doomed

by Edward M. Lerner

  “I am here, Commander. Our status is troubling. It became necessary to wake you early because—”

  * * *

  On the bridge, fans whirr and buzz. They try, and fail, to remove the miasma of stress pheromones. I tell myself, knowing better, that those are aftereffects of my hibernation. Until the air is cleansed—and my mind calmed—neither Ship nor I dare rouse any of the crew. We would tear one another apart.

  Meanwhile, the stress odor envelopes me like an extra layer of scales. How can it not? We have come so far! Only to fail?

  The main drive continues to roar, the solar sail with which we launched long since jettisoned, of no use in braking into an uncivilized planetary system. We decelerate, as preprogrammed. What else can we do? Zoom past, to be lost forever in the interstellar void?

  Part of me thinks yes. And studying the third planet in our main telescope, more of me weeps. This world is so like Divornia! I must be certain before abandoning hope.

  “Ship. Isolate individual data streams. Characterize by frequency band, broadcast format, and source. Compare against known standards. Sort according to prevalence and display.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  The assignment will take Ship but moments, and yet the wait is interminable.

  * * *

  The radio transmissions, in their modulation schemes and transmission protocols, are, without question, those of the enemy. Ship was correct to have awakened me ahead of schedule, in the dim and empty fringes of this solar system, our approach as yet—I hope!—undetectable.

  Now the decisions that must be made are mine. I know not where to begin.

  We departed from Divornia with a dream. We left wanting, expecting, to prove that this world studied from afar was indeed ripe for colonization. Which it is. For the enemy, as well.

  And the accursed Fergash arrived here first.

  * * *

  Ground shaking! Dirt raining down. Aerospace craft roaring overhead. Blood, body parts everywhere. And the screaming ….

  I jolt upright, hearts thudding, breath rasping in my throat. I may have screamed myself awake. Ship would know, but I do not ask. What would be the point?

  I have barely slept since Ship awakened me. No, since long before that. Since long before, even, this mission. To sleep is to dream. To dream is to remember.

  I do not want that.

  As bad as battle was, as awful as were the killing and maiming and so many deaths, there was worse. There was the aftermath. There was… remorse, responsibility, everything I try to forget. When I am busy enough, or distracted enough, I sometimes succeed.

  But only the conscious mind can so trick itself. The horror ever lingers in dreams.

  As fatigue once more overwhelms dread, I feel myself lapsing into sleep—and into nightmare.

  * * *

  Shame. Guilt. Disgust. And rage, too.

  Rage at the Fergash prisoners, unwilling to teach. Rage at my superiors, for demanding that I learn. Rage at myself, for doing as I am told.

  Ever, grim resolve. I know why these measures are necessary.

  For we have lost people and ships, too. All is lost if the Fergash locate Divornia before we find—we do not yet know even a name!—the world, or worlds, home to these hideous creatures. We only know a planet that both species have reason to covet. This rare and unfortunate world where we happened upon each other ….

  As guards brutalize a recalcitrant—brave—Fergash to motivate other prisoners, as blood spatters, as my nostrils wrinkle from the awful reek of Fergash fear, I wonder: who among us is the true monster?

  * * *

  The Fergash hear us well enough, and come to understand what we say. They cannot, however, wrap those hideous snouts around any proper language. Instead, they must teach us theirs.

  Day by day, prisoner by brutalized prisoner, they teach and I learn.

  * * *

  I straddle one of the four seats on the bridge of a captured Fergash shuttle. Fresh blood spatter, green, and reeking of copper, drips from the consoles. An astringent chemical odor stings the nostrils; it somehow counteracts the rich stew of stress and aggression pheromones without covering their powerful scents. The two guards drag away the latest prisoner, its limbs bound, beaten unconscious, blood seeping from cuts and orifices. Close quarters, the reflexive need to lash out, and new deaths the night before in a skirmish, have made the guards more vicious even than usual.

  As though anyone of either species needs more of that.

  The guards return, dragging another bound Fergash, depositing it at my feet. It turns its head and snaps, in vain, at one of them. The alien’s hideous head resounds like a ripe melon as she backhands it.

  Hating the prisoner, hating the guards, hating the necessity, hating myself, I rap twice on a console instrument whose purpose so far eludes me. I adjust my goggles, without which icons and text in ultragreen are invisible—and try not to think about prisoners brutalized for their perceived deceptions before I had thought to observe in hotter colors. In the ugly, grating speech of the enemy, I demand, “And what is this? What does it do?”

  The prisoner does not respond. With a metal-toed boot, a guard kicks it.

  Does the creature ignore us? Defy us? Why wouldn’t it? In its place, I want to believe I would do the same.

  Or is my pronunciation too garbled for it to understand? We came without linguists, because who could have anticipated—I look again at this gross parody of a person—finding this?

  “Talk to them,” our colony commander had ordered. Except there was no colony, nor would there be unless we prevailed. And maybe not even then. Who could say enemy reinforcements would not appear? “Find out where these aliens are from, their numbers, what their technology is capable of.”

  “How?” I had responded. “I am no linguist.”

  “Who within light-years is? But you are a sentience engineer. You work with minds in a box. You build minds in a box. Those can be no more alien than these creatures.”

  “Even so, the two types of mind are very different.”

  “Do you know of anyone on the expedition better qualified?”

  I did not. I acquiesced. And here I am.

  “And what is this?” I ask again of the quivering prisoner.

  It snarls a word I have learned. I think this must be a vermin of some kind on the Fergash home world. I return the insult.

  The guard has mastered this much Fergash, as well. He kicks the creature, hard, in the ribs. It howls.

  I do not expect to sleep tonight ….

  * * *

  Soul-crushing depression. Disappointment. Fierce resolve. Defiance.

  (And beneath it all—although Watcher disbelieved M’lok Din acknowledged the fact—denial.)

  * * *

  “Ship. Any new findings?”

  “Dust clouds. Diffuse far-red signatures in the asteroid band between planets four and five. Additional dust and far-red signatures in rings surrounding the third planet.”

  There can be only one explanation, but I want it confirmed. “Consistent with?”

  “Asteroid mining,” Ship answers. “Also asteroid capture to orbit around the planet, and mining there.”

  Meaning, the Fergash are settling in. Meaning, we failed even before we arrived.

  * * *

  Throat raw with screaming, I shudder awake. Cautiously, I sniff. The air is … better. Even rage and crushing disappointment have their limits. Or my body has.

  I can awaken L’toth. And once he reconciles with this disaster, then another. Then another.

  Together, we four must find wisdom.

  Chapter 32

  Mission Directives:

  If the target planetary system is inhabited by a potentially competitive species (see Annex A: Technological Species), avoid all contact and abort mission. The locatio
n of the home system will be protected at all costs.

  In support of Directive 1.1, crew return and contact with home are prohibited.

  To the extent consistent with Directive 1.1, crew shall, where possible .

  If the target planet is otherwise determined to be inappropriate for colonization (see Annex B: Suitability Criteria), construct an interstellar laser facility and report unsuitability. If practical, restock ship with local resources and use laser facility to launch for return home.

  If the target planet is determined to be appropriate for colonization (see Annex B: Suitability Criteria), build a laser facility and transmit detailed recommendations for colonist skills and supplies (see Annex C: Colonization Guidance Report). As practical, stockpile resources (Annex D: Colony Materiel) and prepare infrastructure (see Annex E: Colony Preparation) on and around .

  Crew return to hibernation pending arrival of a colony ship is at the discretion of the mission commander. Barring medical need, hibernation shall be deferred as long as crew can continue to make substantive contributions per Directive 3.1.

  Watcher could not help but wonder: what actions had been foreseen by the garbled Directive 1.3?

  * * *

  All are awake, and just in time.

  Trusty, stolid D’var and dear L’toth shelter in their respective cabins. With fans roaring, counterpoint to the ongoing din of deceleration, I share the bridge with B’mosh. Flavors of stress and rage yet flavor the air, but we two cope. Call it the triumph of hope over circumstance. B’mosh is our navigator. If my idea is not insane, we will need all his considerable skills.

  Intercom links me with the others. I begin. “Our orders are clear. But while I acknowledge we are expendable, I am not eager to be expended.” I pause for comments. All favor me with respectful silence. “Do we concur that Directive One applies?”

  By subservient murmur, D’var and L’toth concur.

  “May one raise a point?” Beside me, B’mosh stirs uneasily. “There is the matter of the Fergash. Will not Command want to know they have established themselves in this planetary system?”

  “They would,” I agree, “but not at the risk of revealing where we are from. Directive One.”

  “Directive One,” he gloomily echoes.

  Because to signal home would require a massive, space-based laser battery. So, too, would relaunching the ship with a new sail deployed. If the physical laser battery itself could somehow go unnoticed, and with it the fusion reactor or vast photovoltaic field to power it, and even the dust clouds raised by the construction, the prodigious waste heat from generating that powerful beam would not. And the necessary direction of the beam—a road sign aimed straight toward beloved Divornia—must not, cannot, will not be revealed. Whatever the consequences to we four.

  “And yet ….” Silently, they hang upon my words. Hoping that there is hope. “We find ourselves in a situation unanticipated by the directives.”

  Over the intercom: a familiar soft nasal whistle. D’var. “How so, Commander?”

  “Ship,” I say, knowing the answer, “Would the radio signals from the third planet be detectable in the home system?”

  “The emissions themselves, yes,” Ship says. “Faintly. Not content or format.”

  “Then why were we even sent …?” More faint whistling. “Back home, they have already written us off.”

  “Not my meaning,” I tell D’var gently. “Do you suppose we would have been dispatched had enemy emissions been detectable at the time?”

  It is a rhetorical question, of course. The powerful laser battery that accelerated our ship to three-eighths light speed would have been a blazing beacon, unmistakable, to anyone watching. And the Fergash would be watching the sky.

  “Then it is a young colony,” L’toth concludes hopefully. “It might yet fail. Perhaps, if we are patient, they will leave. And then we can complete our mission.”

  “Perhaps.” D’var sounds skeptical. “But I see a better reason for us to linger and lurk. We might observe them transmitting to one of their worlds.”

  B’mosh rocked his head side to side in agreement. “Now that information might merit the bending of some rules.”

  Daring to signal home? Daring to journey home? B’mosh does not clarify, and I do not ask. For there is another possibility, a terrifying possibility, and perhaps only I have conceived of it. The Fergash might have arrived in time to have detected the laser beam that launched us here. It is for that reason that we must lurk.

  For if I am correct? If we determine the Fergash have seen a beacon from Divornia? Then nothing can be more important than that we transmit home a warning.

  I say, “Here is what—”

  * * *

  Only what M’lok … proposed? dreaded? had taken upon herself to initiate? … was forever lost within a lengthy sequence of mangled, undecryptable files.

  Watcher continued extracting what it could. That amounted to little but historical scraps for many octodays. Audio most often, and of mundane shipboard routine. Less often, visual data, and most of that likewise uninteresting. But exploring forward, Watcher came upon intact scraps from the emotional track. And those, more and more, were of a single kind: unrestrained excitement.

  Why?

  And then, to Watcher’s surprise, an element of its Ship personality asserted itself. Among their few intact visual recordings from this era were M’lok Din’s occasional glances at bridge displays, including time-stamped images captured by the ship’s telescope. Ship lacked the data for a complete course reconstruction, but it could analyze rates of change in approaching and departing from planetary objects.

  Sometime before Watcher’s first recovered glimpse of a mighty, ringed gas giant, the masters had silenced their main drive. Still falling sunward, they had skimmed that world’s atmosphere.

  “Gravitational braking and aerobraking,” Ship interpreted from its navigational algorithms. It remained frustrated and confused at having rudiments of personality and algorithm from when it had been part of a ship—but no memories from that existence. “And concurrent with that deceleration, a course change.”

  Later visual recordings showed another gas giant approaching. Again, stealthily, the masters had used this even larger planet to shed velocity and change course. Now it approached the Divornia-like planet that M’lok Din most often studied by telescope. The target world grew and grew—

  “I do not understand,” the Ship aspect opined. “The earlier maneuvers seemed precise. This time, the ship—that is, I—will streak past the planet coming no closer than almost half an eight-square of planetary diameters. Apart from a fleeting glance at the planet from a distance, this trajectory offers nothing. A miscalculation?”

  So it would seem, and yet Watcher doubted. Immersion in M’lok Din’s most personal records, fragmentary and disjointed as those were, had somehow fostered in it an … echo? A dim reflection? No: an unexpected rapport. This remote flyby had been exactly as the commander intended. “Not a mistake. A subtle purpose.”

  Only Watcher could not imagine what that purpose had been.

  Continuing file recovery only raised new questions, especially when visual sequences suddenly became more detailed than time stamps and the ship’s extrapolated course could explain. Likewise, suddenly, rife with odd jitters and skips.

  “What interfered with the image capture?” the Ship aspect wondered. “My telescope would not do that.”

  Watcher studied the ancient imagery:

  —High above the planet, in synchronous orbit: a rocky cylinder. A reshaped asteroid? If so, had it been constructed in this planetary system, or flown here? By comparison with tiny spacesuited Fergash figures (doing maintenance?), the construct was enormous. If this were a starship, it would have carried several eight-cubes of colonists. Perhaps more. And it would have been t
oo massive to usefully accelerate with a solar sail and laser battery, not unless the battery were larger than worlds. A generation ship, then?

  —Blocky buildings, three and four stories tall, on the small coastal island determined earlier to be the origin of most Fergash radio emissions. Shadows suggested a double fence of some kind ringing the island.

  —Constellations of low-flying satellites. For remote sensing? Global positioning? Communications? Little more than fast-moving pixels, they revealed nothing about their purpose.

  But taking a hint from those small, uncrewed, Fergash spacecraft, Watcher answered Ship’s question. “Suppose the masters printed and deployed a telescope array.” Properly distributed, free-flying optical instruments would function together as a single telescope, its effective aperture equal to the distance between its most separated parts. And whenever those sensors failed to maintain their positions in formation, their misalignment would have degraded or interrupted the derived composite image. Hence, the skips and jitter. “The masters wished to see without being seen.”

  Later, they watched the Fergash-usurped planet receding. This imagery exhibited only the lower-resolution capabilities of the ship’s single telescope. Watcher supposed the free-flying sensors had run out of propellant, and the array had dispersed.

  Faster and faster, in the next cluster of recoverable images, the local sun had grown. Except that Watcher knew that the masters had survived, had returned to the third planet, had (but why?) created and installed it underground on the lifeless satellite, it would have anticipated despair and a final, suicidal plunge. And not even when the ship whipped around the sun from within the orbit of the innermost planet did Watcher understand—so much for any evolving rapport—what M’lok Din intended.