Fear God and Dread Naught (28 page)

And yet, we can't land either
, she thought. 
We dropped most of our marines on Unity
.

She checked the records, just to be sure. 
Vanguard
had two platoons of marines - twenty men - and none of the other ships were in much better shape.  Collectively, they had around two hundred marines.  There was no way they could hope to secure the enemy population, not without massive use of KEWs.  And that would just make it harder to work out a more permanent peace agreement.

Unless they want to be punched in the snout before they actually bother to talk to us
, she thought.  She’d met a few men like that, but she found it hard to believe that an entire race would have such an odd society. 
But slaughtering aliens who cannot fight back is dishonourable
.

“Signal from the flag, Captain,” Parkinson reported.  “Admiral Harper is ordering us to take the L2 position, then wait.”

Susan lifted her eyebrows.  “
Wait
?”

“He also requests that you join a holoconference,” Parkinson added.  “He’s calling the other commanders now.”

A holoconference in the middle of a battle
, Susan thought.  She was surprised.  Harper had never struck her as
indecisive
.  But then, they
were
looking down on a helpless alien world instead of confronting a raiding fleet. 
He may want cover for whatever he wants to do
.

She glanced at Mason.  “You have the conn,” she said.  “I’ll be in my ready room.”

“Aye, Captain,” Mason said.  “I have the conn.”

Susan nodded and rose, taking one last look at the tactical display before striding into her ready room.  The holoconference was already underway, four of her fellow commanders striding around in holographic form.  It was, technically, bad form to start a conference before everyone had linked into the network, but under the circumstances it was hard to blame Harper.  All the theoretical questions about what they’d do with an alien population had suddenly become frighteningly real.

“Greetings,” Harper said, when the last of the commanding officers had joined the discussion.  “As you know, we have effectively taken an alien-settled world ...”

“It belongs to the Tadpoles,” Captain Stewart injected.

“If they still have a colony here, it’s deep below the waves,” Yegorovich growled.  “I think we can safely say they’re not important here.”

“As I was saying,” Harper snapped, “we have taken one of their worlds.  We have to decide what to do about it.”

“Blow the place into rubble,” Yegorovich said, flatly.  “That’s an invasion force, not a settlement.”

“That’s a group of civilians,” Susan snapped back.  “Do we
want
to start setting precedents for mass slaughter?”

“They might well have killed everyone on Unity,” Yegorovich stated, bluntly.  “Do we want to set a precedent for
not
retaliating?”

“We don’t
know
what’s happening at Unity,” Glass said.  “For all we know, the aliens are keeping their distance from the human population.”

“They need the land, same as us,” Yegorovich reminded him.  “They’ll want to kick our settlers off the planet if they don’t want to kill them.”

Harper clapped his hands, once.  “I will not condone mass slaughter,” he said, firmly.  “This world does not pose a threat to us.  They are completely incapable of hitting our ships from the ground.”

“Unless they have some strange superweapon,” Yegorovich grumbled.

“Surely we would have seen evidence of it by now,” Jeanette said.  She looked doubtful.  “With all due respect, Admiral, what do you expect us to do?”

“We can move on now,” Harper said.  “Or we can attempt to make contact with them.”

“We could also kidnap a few dozen of the bastards from the surface,” Yegorovich pointed out.  “Wouldn't
that
be a good way to get samples for the researchers?”

Susan shuddered.  The thought of being scooped up because a group of aliens wanted samples was chilling.  From a cold-blooded point of view, Yegorovich was right; from the point of view of common humanity, he was very wrong.  Besides, an alien farmer might not know anything of use.

“We can certainly
try
to open communications,” she said, softly.  “If nothing else, we have a chance to study one of their settlements from a distance.”

“You appear to have forgotten that the enemy is hunting us,” Yegorovich sneered.  “We need to keep moving.  Blow the planet up or leave it alone, Admiral.  We don’t have time to do anything else.”

“There is enough time to
try
to open communications,” Harper said.  “And we would have ample warning of a new attack force entering the system ...”

“We couldn't rely on that,” Captain Garret said.  “They have cloaking devices too, Admiral.”

Harper nodded, slowly.

“We compromise,” he said.  “We remain here for an hour.  The xenospecialists can use that time to attempt to open contact.  If they succeed ... well and good.  If they fail ... well, we’re no worse off than we are already.  And then we head onwards to the next system.”

“We could bait a trap for the aliens,” Susan offered.  “We do have a whole series of tactics we were planning to use.”

“Which we were intending to deploy when we return to Unity,” Yegorovich said.  “Using them early will make them useless.”

“They will also be useless if we don't
survive
to return to Unity,” Susan snapped, sharply.  Yegorovich was alarmingly good at getting under her skin.  “If we have a chance to scatter or destroy another small alien force, Captain, we should take advantage of it.”

Harper leaned forward.  “We will do what we can to take advantage of whatever opportunities fate dumps in our path,” he said.  “But right now our priority is leading the enemy away from Unity so we can slip back and recover the world.  If they can be tempted into trying to trap us here ...”

Susan had her doubts - everything they’d learned about their new foes suggested they were remarkably pragmatic when they
knew
they’d lost - but she kept them to herself.  Harper was right about one thing, at least.  This
was
an opportunity to attempt to open communications with the aliens ...

... And if they succeeded, the war might come to an end before more youngsters had to die.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“They’re not answering,” Doctor Song said.  “Your Excellency,
why
aren’t they answering?”

Henry shrugged.  He had no answer, save for the obvious.  The communications techs had picked up enough alien transmissions to be fairly sure which frequencies they used.  They certainly shouldn't have had any trouble picking up the signals, nor adapting their receivers and computers to
read
them.  God knew their technology wasn't
that
different from humanity’s.  But neither
Vanguard
nor any of the other ships had picked up a reply.

Doctor Song lowered her voice as she nodded towards the communications specialists at the far end of the compartment.  “Are they ... are they sending the messages?”

It took Henry a couple of seconds to realise what she meant.  “Yes,” he said, flatly.  Anyone who thought the military didn't want peace was an idiot.  It was military personnel who did the fighting and dying, if peace came to an end.  “They’re sending the messages.  The aliens are just not bothering to reply.”

He understood her frustration, though.  The techs had worked hard to put the contact package together, making it as simple as possible.  Given a few weeks of open communications, the two races should have been able to establish a common understanding.  But the aliens hadn't bothered to reply and all the careful procedures remained unused.  There was certainly no hope of establishing a dialogue.  It was frustrating as hell.

“We should go down to the surface,” Doctor Song said.  “If we tried to talk to them in person ...”

“Out of the question,” Henry said.  He’d asked the captain, but she’d told him that the admiral had flatly vetoed any missions to the surface.  Given the number of handheld weapons the aliens were carrying, clearly visible to the orbiting sensors, he had to agree that any attempt to land would be risky.  “We have to rely on our radios.”

“But they're not replying,” Doctor Song snapped.

Henry shrugged.  There
was
a great deal of data flowing into the ship - it would keep the analysts happy for months - but almost none of it was immediately useful.  They knew next to nothing about the alien chain of command, their leadership structure or anything else that might help them work out who could answer their calls.  The only really useful piece of information was some recordings of the alien language, giving the computers more to work on as they struggled to devise a translation program.

He didn't blame Doctor Song and her team for being frustrated.  In all honesty, he didn't feel any better.  He’d built his career around talking to seemingly-inscrutable aliens.  But Admiral Harper was right.  Quite apart from the risk of being killed or captured, the task force might have to leave the system in a hurry.  Anyone down on the surface when the shit hit the fan might be left behind, trapped amidst the aliens.  It was not to be borne.

“Keep studying their transmissions,” he said, softly.  “You might manage to crack their language.”

Doctor Song looked doubtful, but did as she was told.

***

“The aliens didn't reply,” Prince Henry said, twenty minutes before Admiral Harper’s deadline.  “There's no way to know if they heard our signals or not, Captain, but they certainly didn't reply.”

“They
should
be able to hear our signals,” Mason pointed out.  “We’re using their frequencies.”

Susan held up a hand.  “And there’s no way to provoke an answer?”

“Not from what we have on hand,” Prince Henry said.  “Given time, we might learn enough from their transmissions to have a valid chance at sending them a message in their own language, but that may take some time.”

“It always does,” Susan mused.  She sipped her coffee thoughtfully.  “How long did it take to crack the Tadpole language?”

“It took us under a year, with their help, to establish a way to share information,” Prince Henry said, bluntly.  “Captain, it is
important
that you understand some of the problems we encountered along the way.  In all honesty, there are ... aspects ... of the Tadpole language that we don’t understand and may
never
understand.  Their culture includes a number of assertions about the universe that we simply don’t share.”

He leaned forward.  “To us, family is important.  Knowing where you came from is important.  We are intimately connected to our parents and siblings even if we hate the ground they walk on.  To them, family is utterly unimportant.  They don’t have families, they don’t have siblings; they only have faction-mates, which can be changed at the slightest provocation.  The concepts of
treason
and even
loyalty
are largely alien to them.”

Susan frowned.  She was immensely loyal to her father, to the point where she’d been threatened with expulsion or jail several times for bloodying the nose of anyone who insulted him.  And why
shouldn't
she be loyal?  Her father had brought her up on his own, raised her to be a good and decent citizen ... she was damned if she was abandoning him, now she was an adult.  He’d certainly not abandoned her like so many fathers tried to abandon their children. 

“You can imagine what this does to their society,” Prince Henry added.  “How much of our culture is based around family, around love and romance and finding your place?  They don’t have
any
of it.”

“No romantic chick-flicks,” Mason said.

“No
Romeo and Juliet
either,” Prince Henry countered.  “And no Trojan War.”

“You make it sound like a bad thing,” Susan groused.  Her studies suggested that the
real
cause of the Trojan War had more to do with trade routes than a runaway wife, but the latter made a better story.  “What do you know about our new enemies?”

Prince Henry smiled.  “First, we still don’t know which of the two races is actually in charge,” he said.  “They
do
seem to be intermingled on the ground, but we’ve observed members of both races giving orders to members of the other race.  The cow-like aliens, by the way,
do
seem to have both male and female genders.”

He shrugged.  “Or at least that’s how we’ve accounted for differences between them,” he added, after a moment.  “We may still be wrong.”

Susan frowned.  “They’re truly intermingled?”

“It’s starting to look that way,” Prince Henry said.  “As far as we can tell, most groupings include representatives from both races.  Any group larger than three or four is almost certain, based on our observations, to include at least one representative from both races.  I think we only ever saw one exception, a gaggle of ten fox-like aliens on the prowl.”

“It makes no sense,” Susan said.

“Perhaps it does,” Mason said.  “Britain had ... problems ... accepting and absorbing large numbers of immigrants, but America generally did a better job breaking down the old cultures and assimilating the newcomers.  This could be the same problem on a bigger scale.”

“They can't biologically integrate,” Susan pointed out, again.

“They might not
want
to,” Mason countered.  “And that might work
better
for them.”

Susan wondered, absently, if he had a point.  The easiest way to get in trouble in a foreign country, according to her father, involved women.  Social mores were different from place to place.  A woman could wear a bikini in public in Britain and no one would bat an eyelid, but she’d be stoned to death in a Middle Eastern hellhole; a man could sleep with a woman in Britain and no one would care, but he could be tortured or killed if he did it somewhere rather less civilised.  Contact between the different human societies might have been less unpleasant if they hadn't been able to interbreed ...

And if interbreeding was impossible
, she told herself sternly,
you would not exist
.

“We probably won’t find out until we manage to convince them to talk to us,” Prince Henry said.  “But unless we find a way to force them to answer ...”

Susan frowned.  “Do you think we should reconsider snatching a couple of aliens from the surface?”

“I’d advise against it,” Prince Henry said.  “The Tadpoles might not care if a handful of their people get kidnapped, but our new friends might think differently.”

“Probably,” Susan agreed.  The Vesy had practically lined up to
beg
to be allowed to join the training courses to improve their technological base, but they had good reason to want to learn.  “Did you learn anything else?”

“Well, their family groups seem to include both races,” Prince Henry said.  “If it wasn't clear that they
were
two different races, I would have wondered if we were looking at a single race.”

“Oh,” Susan said.  “And how does that work?”

“Unknown,” Prince Henry said.  “But their mating rites do seem to involve a struggle for dominance.  It may be that two partners fight and the loser is the one who has to carry the children.”

“Or the other way around,” Susan mused.  “Or they might
both
get pregnant.”

“It’s a possibility,” Henry agreed.  “But again, we may never find out until we ask them.”

Mason cleared his throat.  “Could one of them be a domesticated animal?”

Susan looked up, interested.  There had been all sorts of plans to uplift animals to sentience, but most of them had been buried after the Age of Unrest.  Perhaps they’d be dusted off again, now that humanity had encountered other intelligent races ... she honestly wasn't sure how she should feel about that.  Would intelligent dogs and cats be humanity’s allies or deadly new threats?

Perhaps not the dogs
, she thought.  She’d had a dog as a little girl and there were days when she still missed the mongrel puppy terribly. 
But the cats might wage war on us
.

“I don't think so,” Henry said.  He looked doubtful.  “It is
possible
, I suppose, but genetic analysis of their DNA - their DNA-analogue, I should say - suggests they come from different worlds.  They simply don’t have anything in common.  If they are advanced enough to take a sub-sentient creature and uplift it into intelligence ... it says worrying things about their capabilities.”

“Yeah,” Mason agreed.  “I watched the Draka movies too.”

Susan shuddered.  Anyone capable of reengineering a chimpanzee or a dolphin into something intelligent would be capable of crafting the most savage biological warfare weapon in living history.  Hell, if something that unpleasant got loose, there wouldn't
be
any living history.  Humanity had enough experience with the - thankfully limited - viruses that
had
been released to know that it was one particular genie that should remain firmly sealed away in the bottle.  It might not be possible to put it back in, after it escaped.

A chill ran through her.  They didn't have to craft a virus that would exterminate humanity, not if they were
that
advanced.  She’d read reports - most of them classified - suggesting that various parties had designed viruses intended to make their victims more obedient or merely too stupid to know what was happening to them.  And if there were two races intermingled on the planet’s surface, was it possible that one of them had been warped and twisted to make it possible?

Or was she just being paranoid?  She hoped so.  God, she hoped so.

“The most likely theory is that one of them discovered the other and integrated it into their society,” Prince Henry said.  “And given how successful they seem to have been, it must have taken place thousands of years ago.”

Susan nodded, pushing her dark thoughts out of her head.  Her father would never have countenanced talk of going back to Jamaica - as if she’d ever
lived
there - and he would certainly not have tolerated her attempting to rediscover her roots, but her father had been an unusual man.  She’d met a couple of Americans who’d talked about going back to Africa, even though it had been over four hundred years since their ancestors had left the dark continent.  Given the nightmares sweeping over most of Africa, Susan had honestly wondered if they were out of their minds.