Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (28 page)

"So if they never had a simple fission weapon they'd have not a clue how we progressed to
explosive
fusion or use it to pump an x-ray laser?" Lee asked.

"No, neither would gamma enhanced weapons for area EMP or neutron bombs get developed."

"Have you told them we can run on tritium if we wish too?" Gordon wondered.

"It didn't seem necessary to inform them, no," Prosperity said.

"Well, it's amazing how different minds arrive at different solutions," Thor said.

"The Derf didn't have nuclear power either did they," Lee asked Thor.

"No, but we did have an atomic theory of matter. And we had x-rays, but never used them to the extent Humans did. We had some of the elements of relativity, but quantum theory was just way out there to us. We weren't sure you weren't pulling a joke on us to see if we'd believe it at first."

"The Hinth didn't either," Gordon said. Perhaps a little defensively.

"A lot of Humans still can't bend their heads around quantum theory," Lee pointed out.

"And yet these new races, well at least one of them, developed jump ships," Thor said.

"The Biters also, independently, because they came in their own ships," Gordon added.

"They are also behind in electronics," Prosperity revealed. "They have the multi-component chip, but they require a whole board of them to do what one smaller device does for us. When they saw me using my pad to do what is high end machine functions to them they freaked. I suspect their superior memory and lightening fast calculation retarded their development, because they didn't need them as badly as us. But it also means they
still
don't need them as much as we do. They seemed more impressed with the better graphics that more computing power allowed, than the math and analysis."

"When we spoke with Talker and Trader they were incredulous that we'd start a project to Terraform a world, knowing it wouldn't be finished for generations," Lee told Prosperity.

"Quite a contrast with the Bunnies, isn't it? Who have been single mindedly digging at those mountains for thousands of years." Gordon said. "They'd drop a single ship on a world, put a few clumps of crab grass and kudzu out to start a biosphere, and come back in a few millennia."

"Yes, but I'd count them fanatics," Thor said.

"It'll be interesting to see how that shook out, if we can stop there again," Lee agreed.

"We should introduce the Bunnies and the Biters," Thor said, with an evil smile. "They deserve each other."

"Do you have anything to say for yourselves foul grass eaters?" Lee said in her best deep voice. "Yes, lean over and take the Teen's collar slave!" She sat and laughed at her own humor.

* * *

The
Sharp Claws
and
Roadrunner
popped into existence together in the next major system shown on the Badgers chart. It had their numerical designation of 78. The Badger ship appeared simultaneously.  Or at least close enough to it that they could have jumped in formation. The Captain of the Badger vessel invited them to call him Fussy. That strange a name should qualify him to be an honorary Fargoer. The vessel he translated as 
Dart
, which when they asked, did indeed turn out to be a small finned projectile with a pointy nose but an ancient weapon of war. He supplied a picture from his files and was amused to get a picture back of Humans playing darts at a bar.

The world ahead of them was another Badger world, but they were told with a heavy Bills presence. When asked why, they said the climate was more to the Bills liking, hot and humid, it being a sterile water world. They still had to wear a mask for oxygen, but otherwise it didn't require suits. They had mining operations on the surface as well as out-system.  This star system had been populated long enough to have a space station around the water world, as well as one of the gas giants.

The numbers matched the chart, which made the Little Fleet crews happy. There was a bit more traffic than the world they'd left, but nothing like say, Earth.

"Do you wish to go examine the station or orbit the world?" Fussy asked.

"No, just hail them for us as we pass through and let us swing around the star and go to the your system number 76," Chance Ochocinco requested. "Since it is uninhabited let us plan on proceeding then to System 69. I'm sending you course information. We should cross this system and exit in a bit more than eleven hours."

"76 is not permanently inhabited, but we might see cross traffic," Fussy warned him.

"Yes, the
Sharp Claws
saw some of your cross traffic transiting the system we now know you have labeled as 71 on your chart. We didn't see any facilities there either."

"Ah, so you didn't come straight in, hmm? You poked around us a bit and sized us up before popping in?" Fussy said.

"Certainly, wouldn't you?" Chance asked.

"Perhaps, or just quietly withdraw and go tell my superiors," Fussy admitted. "But then we run unarmed vessels."

"Would you go armed if you had the choice?" Chance asked, very interested.

"It isn't my decision," Fussy informed him, then... "Before the Biters I would have said no."

Despite the disclaimer that seemed pretty clear to Chance.

"I can imagine
much
worse than the Biters," Fat Ortega, lurking on the conversation, told them. Fussy didn't comment on that.

* * *

Prosperity and the third Mother were back at the
High Hopes
after another day of negotiations with the Badgers. They came back earlier today, deciding to eat supper on the ship and foregoing a social hour after their formal talks.

"The translation software is
much
better," Madonna, the Third Mother reported. "It structures the grammar much more naturally and gets uncommon tenses correctly."

"But it still isn't to the point we can speak subtly," Prosperity added.

"Well, I wasn't planning on sweet-talking a Badger for marriage, or attempting to discuss the finer parts of theology," Gordon retorted.

"I believe, that today what they were dancing around asking, was on what terms we'd hire out to them as mercenaries," the Third Mother told Gordon. "I'd have sooner entertained an offer of marriage."

"Did you tell them, I'm not that sort of girl?" Lee asked, through bared teeth.

"Honestly, I have to say it might have been our fault," Madonna allowed. "Perhaps we should not have offered protection to the
Dart
accompanying our vessels. It may have given them the idea."

Lee considered that, head cocked over, lips set hard. "Crud..."

"I think they might have been more outspoken, but they don't really understand
how
we defeated the Biters ship. They dropped a few hints about that too."

"It happened right out in the open, in line of sight from the station. They knew they were coming at us aggressively, so
something
might happen. How could they not see?" Lee asked the Third Mum.

"That's what I asked a couple of the instrument techs and the scan officer. They expressed no surprise that the Badgers, or others, would fail to have sensors looking at us with the right settings to capture what was happening.
We
have sensors for nuclear explosions, because we know for what to watch and have an interest. But what if you've never seen a nuke go off? We know for what
sort
of flash to watch. They'd have no expectation of such a brief, bright light. Their sensors are likely set to see and analyze a plasma drive or chemical detonations."

"Wouldn't a nuke going off emit light on the frequencies they'd be watching too?" Lee asked.

"Yes, but all they'd record is an intense light of much shorter than their usual scanning interval and more intense than the highest level of their metering range. It really wouldn't give them the detailed information we know to look for, to compute the actual energy release of the device, the sort of kernel it used and if it had a fusion boost. We can often get enough of a spectrum to know what sort of housing it was in or if it was used as an x-ray pump. It might take a number of tries before they could get the parameters down just right to really figure out what is happening."

"Let's hope they don't see a whole bunch of them going off to refine it," Lee said.

"They will just know we have something totally different than they know how to make." Thor said.

"For a little while," Prosperity reminded them. "If they are going to visit our worlds and have free access to our public data nets and libraries they'll know about nuclear weapons very quickly. There is enough public information to
build
simple weapons. And do you want to be the one to tell the Fargoers they can't sell them any?"

"Good point," Gordon allowed. "It will take them awhile to make more sophisticated devices, like x-heads for missiles, but they will in time."

"Having all the support tech such as battle software, electronic countermeasures and interception systems will take a long time," Madonna said. "Even among our worlds, some are always just a little ahead of others. A small advantage means life or death in such weaponry."

"Nobody seemed concerned to keep the Hinth or Derf from learning about nukes, or other exotic Earth weapons when we met," Thor pointed out.

"Again, it's in the public domain so thoroughly you'd have to close off the border and refuse to allow them to visit our spaces. You'd have to prohibit all trade and cultural exchange, because somebody is going to refer to them if only in an off-hand historical way. I mean, the First Atomic War on Earth was before Humans even attained Earth orbit. You'd have to refuse them all our video and history books. And all for nothing if they keep seeing us use them. They'll start altering their instrumentation and figure it out eventually," Prosperity said. "I'm sure bright people figured that out how futile that would be quickly when they met the Hinth and Derf too, just like we are now."

"I don't have a deep gut feeling that the Badgers are war-like and skillfully covering it up to us. The others...probably not either. But the Biters are not folk I want to see have nukes," Gordon said. "Not even simple ones. I can see where the Badgers would want to hire us for protection against them, but I don't want to arm them as an alternative either."

"But, you don't need to sell them nukes to arm them against the Biters," Lee said. "Just sell them some stuff with better range and penetration aids than the Biters have, but conventional explosives."

"That's...brilliant," Gordon admitted. "What made you think of that?"

"It was obvious," Lee shrugged.

* * *

The Little Fleet ships jumped together as a matter of course. The
Dart
doing so from a safe distance. Star system 69 was lightly inhabited, with mining operations and a small station orbiting a gas giant and another going around a marginal world. The small world with a very thin atmosphere of noble gases was as close as anything in the system came to being hospitable on its surface. It still required pressure suits to walk the surface however. It was very similar to Mars, except it was creamy white instead of red. The Bills were the predominant race in the system.

The
Dart
hailed the station, explaining who they were and their mission.

"What is your pleasure?" Fussy asked, surprising Chance Ochocinco with that usage of English.

"There isn't anything worth stopping here. I'd like to proceed to one more system, perhaps 68 and then loop back to our fleet at number 80 another way."

"We can do that," Fussy agreed, "but beyond 68 any loop that takes us back will require going through two stars that have no fuel available. If I might fuel up here we'll have enough to carry us. We have fuel scooping systems too but that would delay us more than just buying it."

"Fine, how long will it take you to top off?" Chance asked.

"Only about seven or eight thousand seconds, but decelerating and docking is what takes most of the time we'd delay," Fussy explained. "The station by the world is easier."

"In that case we'll take the opportunity to allow two crew on the station. We'll do a walk around and take some pix if it isn't anything private. Would you double check and make sure we'd be welcome?"

"I will as a formality, but these folks are already aware we are in contact with new races, the news of it spreads ahead faster than a manned ship by drone. You'll be a curiosity actually."

"Too bad we're all Humans, it would be nice to show them some Derf, but they won't fit in a courier class vessel like this."

"You don't intend to bring the
Sharp Claws
to dock?"

"No, I wouldn't want our best armed ship tied up at dock anyway. Don't forget, we don't have a docking collar adaptor. We'll have to moor on the station, or hold position close and two of us will go across in suits."

"I'll be happy to meet you," Fussy said.

"I'd like that too, but I'm responsible and don't feel I can leave my command. Hand communicators are not sufficiently reliable to have board data forwarded and to communicate command decisions. My second, Fat Ortega and one of our second shift crew, will attend you and see the station."

"I understand, this is unfamiliar territory to you, I've been here many times, so I looked at it differently. I respect your diligence. Do you have some sort of grapple if the station puts a mooring mast out for you? They always have one for the mining vessel or such that rarely comes in to dock."

"Yes, we have a claw," Chance demonstrated with a hand in front of the camera, "for grabbing into an asteroid or shifting cargo to a larger vessel."

"I'll tell them to run one out. It will have a strobe near the end."

"Thank you. We'll follow you in when we get close and watch how you connect for fuel. That's of interest to us and then we'll moor."

* * *

"I suggested to Talker that we might be willing to help them gain an significant edge on the Biters with superior weapons tech," Prosperity reported when they came back to the ship the next evening. "I think he was interested, but when I said I must in all fairness disclose we are not ready to just hand over our most advanced designs he was disappointed. However after he thought on it awhile he acknowledged it would be foolish to arm people so newly met with your very best."