The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible (12 page)

He didn’t answer, staring at the depiction of the force awaiting them here. About one light-hour from the jump exit, a grand array of ships hung in a complex formation that looked like multiple formations interwoven into a single grand scheme. It looked less like a formation than a work of art. “Damn,” Lieutenant Castries blurted out admiringly.

“It is beautiful,” Desjani agreed. “Now tell me what kind of ships make up that lovely little arrangement.”

Geary waited as sensors studied the distant ships, combining readings taken from every ship in the fleet to produce composite images, which finally flashed before him on his display. “What?” If the presence of these aliens hadn’t shocked him, the shapes of their ships did.

Desjani had a bewildered expression. “That’s what I thought. What the hell?”

The ships varied in size from something half the mass of an Alliance destroyer to much larger ones about the dimensions of the late and unlamented scout battleships that the Alliance had tried as an unsuccessful experiment. But that was the only aspect of them that seemed familiar.

“Perfectly smooth ovoids,” Lieutenant Yuon confirmed. “No protruding sensors, weapons hard points, launchers, shield generators, thrusters . . . nothing. Just smooth shells.”

“What about propulsion?” Desjani demanded. “They’ve got to have visible propulsion systems.”

“None we can spot from this angle, Captain. If those ships are all bow on toward this jump point, their main propulsion systems might all be facing away from us.”

Desjani spread her hands in bafflement. “What’s the point of having a ship that can’t do anything?”

“They must have something we haven’t spotted yet,” Geary replied, grateful that these ships were a light-hour away. It would take an hour for that force to see the light from the arrival of the human fleet, and longer to react. That gave him a crucial margin of time in which to try to learn more about whatever crewed those ships. “What kind of creatures created such beautiful ships?”

Desjani shook her head. “They’re not bear-cows, that’s for sure. Admiral, would you please stop finding new, intelligent alien species?”

“I’m not trying to find new ones, Captain Desjani.”

Her reply was interrupted by an incoming message. Captain Smythe had a look of bliss as his image appeared. “By my ancestors, Admiral, these creatures are engineers!”

“Why do you say that?”

“Look at what they did! Have you spotted the systems on the exteriors of the hulls yet?”

As Smythe spoke, the fleet combat systems began updating the images of the alien spacecraft, highlighting subtle features that were tentatively identified as the weaponry, sensors, shields, generators, and thrusters, which had been unseen earlier. “Look at them!” Smythe said. “They’ve faired everything into the hulls. It’s all smooth, as unbroken as possible. The engineering required to do that and retain functionality for those features is . . . it’s awesome, Admiral.”

Geary tried to see it from Smythe’s point of view. “You think the creatures here are excellent engineers?”

“Excellent and perhaps intuitive,” Smythe agreed. “This work—the design, the construction—is simply elegant. There’s no other word for it.”

Geary turned to Desjani. “Captain Smythe thinks the creatures here are all born engineers.”

“Oh, great,” Desjani said. “Just what we need. Another species lacking in social skills.”

“What do you think of their formation?”

She spread her hands. “It’s gorgeous. The individual subformations and the interlinking patterns of those into the overall formation. But in terms of function? Assuming their weapons are roughly equivalent to our own, that formation will certainly work. Is it better than our cruder arrangements? I wouldn’t say that. We achieve interlocking fire zones and concentration of fire without the same . . .”

“Elegance?” Geary asked.

“Yeah. That’s a good word for it.” Desjani pondered the images for a moment, then shook her head. “I’d be willing to bet that maintaining that beautiful arrangement would complicate maneuvering so much that it would create significant difficulty for them. We could do that. We could tell the maneuvering systems to generate formations based on fractals like a Mandelbrot set or by replicating Fourier series and stuff like that, but it would involve a lot of extra work when we maneuvered. I can’t see any benefit from that to compensate for the complications.”

“So they’re doing it that way because they want to, not because it’s superior in any absolute or physical way.”

“That’s my assessment,” Desjani agreed.

“Captain Smythe, from an engineer’s perspective, do you think the design of those ships produces better results?”

Smythe tilted his head slightly as he thought. “How do you define better results? In terms of pure functionality, they may perform less well. They probably perform less well. I mean, clearly, a hull as smooth as possible offers no angles or weak points where any force striking them can concentrate. Any force or object the ship encounters will more likely be deflected. But our own hulls are curved over the great majority of their surfaces to get the same results. Making everything else as flush with the hull as possible would create some major challenges in terms of effectiveness. I would think, and this is only from what I know as an engineer and not taking into account whatever the creatures who built those ships can do, I would say they’ve probably lost some functionality and added some complexity by fairing in everything so smoothly.”

It added up to a consistent picture. Whatever these creatures were, engineering and perhaps mathematical aesthetics mattered a great deal to them. “They like beautiful things, the same sort of beauty we can appreciate.”

“In terms of their ships, yes, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Captain Smythe.”

Geary looked over at Desjani. “Maybe that’s a good sign, that they produce things we also find beautiful.”

She raised one eyebrow at him. “May I remind the Admiral that we got chased to this star system by a horde of cute little teddy bear-cows who exterminate just about everything else they encounter?”

Geary pulled out the scale a little more on his display, studying the star system at which they had arrived. A white dwarf star, bright but unwelcoming to life. Only two planets, one a bare ball of rock orbiting rapidly less than two light-minutes from the star, the other a bloated gas giant, large enough to qualify as a brown dwarf. Based on the few minutes of tracking they had, the fleet sensors were estimating that the brown dwarf had a highly eccentric orbit. Right now it was ten light-minutes from the star, but according to system estimates, it would swing out perhaps as far as two light-hours before looping in again. “Unless they’re a very exotic life-form, this isn’t their home star system.”

“They didn’t evolve on that rock,” Desjani agreed. “And that brown dwarf looks like a capture. If that orbit estimate is right, it got caught in the star’s gravity field not too long ago. A couple of million years, maybe.”

In terms of the life of stars, that was a very short time. Geary considered the implications. “They’re out here, in a star system with no visible merits aside from providing jump points, facing a jump point that goes to the bear-cow star.”

“The jump point might also be accessible from enigma space,” Desjani pointed out. “I’m curious as to why they’re positioned where they are inside this star system, though. Aha. So that’s why.”

The fleet’s systems had finally identified the other jump points in this star system. There were three, one off to the left and ahead of the human fleet, a second to the right and above, and a third nearly on the opposite side of the star from humans. Desjani ran some maneuvers, smiling with satisfaction. “Yes, indeed. See? From where they are, they can intercept anyone coming in here no matter which of those other three jump points they head for.”

“And they’d have time to see what the other force was doing instead of having to react on the fly,” Geary said. “All right. They’re good at engineering, and they’re smart tactically. Let’s hope they’re not hostile.”

“We don’t have a great track record in that respect,” Desjani noted.

“Third time’s the charm.” Geary issued new orders to the fleet, bringing it around at a steady point one light speed to head for the jump point that should lead to another star on the way back to human space. As he did so, his eyes went from the human formation, a crude box disrupted by the final maneuvers and the fight at Pandora, to the gorgeous loops and spirals of the alien formation. “Let’s try not to look too much like barbarians.”

He searched among available formation choices in the maneuvering database before settling on one intended for a pass in review ceremony in which the individual divisions and squadrons formed into diamonds, those diamonds in turn congregating into larger diamonds to produce what he had once considered an impressive display. Against the alien formation here it would still look awkward, but at least it wouldn’t be grossly primitive.

“All units, immediate execute, assume Formation Diamond Diamond Ceremonial.”

Rione was standing beside his chair, her attitude tense. “Communicate with them, Admiral. Something short to assure them we come in peace.”

“We come in peace,” Desjani murmured sarcastically, “with a fleet of warships.”

“Who are they guarding this star system against?” Rione demanded, ignoring Desjani. “They are facing this jump point, from which the bear-cows would come. Tell them we are not here to fight.”

Maybe, for once, such a plea would have some success. As he thought about the bear-cows who would be arriving in this star system soon in pursuit of his fleet, Geary hoped that he had found allies, not more enemies. “Am I set up to send a broad-spectrum message?” he asked Desjani.

Desjani glanced at her comm watch, who nodded back immediately. “Whenever you want, Admiral.”

Sitting straight and speaking slowly and calmly, Geary tried to convey strength and nonthreat at the same time. “Greetings to the people in the ships here. We are representatives of humanity on a peaceful mission of exploration.” Hopefully, the weaponry and combat damage visible on the exteriors of many of the human ships wouldn’t call that “peaceful mission” assertion into question. “We wish to establish friendly contact with you and pass through this star system on our way back to the regions of space controlled by our species. This is Admiral John Geary, to the honor of our ancestors, out.”

He sat back as the transmission ended, unable to resist a laugh. “How could they possibly understand a word of that?”

“Hopefully, they will read attitudes,” Rione said, but it didn’t sound as if even she believed that.

Desjani had been running some data on her display, one hand moving rapidly to direct the calculations, and she now pointed to the representation of the new alien force. “We’ve got them in front, able to move to block us no matter which jump point we go for. According to our maneuvering system’s best estimate, the bear-cow armada would have required anywhere from half an hour to an hour to get turned and come through the jump point at Pandora after us.”

“Half an hour to an hour?” Geary checked the time. “We’ve been in this star system about twenty minutes now.”

“Should we accelerate to get farther from that jump exit faster?” Desjani pressed.

“That would have us accelerating toward this other group of alien ships,” Geary said. “That might look aggressive.”

“If they want to fight us, they’ll do it no matter what we do or don’t do.”

He shook his head firmly. “I won’t push things toward the worst case because it might happen. The possibility of being caught between those things ahead of us and the bear-cows behind us is bad. Making sure we were caught between them would be worse.”

She paused, decided that Geary wouldn’t budge, and turned back to her display. “I’m going to stand down my crew then. We won’t even see the reaction from those aliens ahead of us for close to another two hours, and if the bear-cows come out chasing us, they’re going to have a long haul while we decide where to let them catch us.”

He nodded this time, not wanting to face the necessity of a major fight with the bear-cows but knowing he would have to. He couldn’t simply lead a force like that back toward human-controlled space, not knowing how long the bear-cows could continue in pursuit. If they were lucky, the bear-cows would have been content with chasing the humans out of the Pandora Star System.

Though he must have made the leader of that armada extremely angry with all of the maneuvers that had set up the human escape. Not to mention how angry that leader might be at the escape itself.

It took another twenty-five minutes, with the fleet about six light-minutes from the jump exit as it continued on at a steady point one light speed, before the answer to what the bear-cows would do became clear. Alerts sounded on the displays as the fleet’s sensors spotted the bear-cow warships arriving at the jump exit six minutes ago, still in pursuit of the human fleet.

“I sure hope those guys ahead of us are friendly,” Desjani said.

SIX

THIS
was one of those times when the huge distances in space could only feed frustration. With one force of unknown aliens before them, and another force of too-well-known and hostile aliens behind them, Geary wanted to do something. Anything. But he could only wait, not knowing how the unknown aliens would react to the appearance of the human fleet and aware that anything he did might be misinterpreted by the unknown aliens. Meanwhile, the bear-cow armada had begun accelerating again, slowly overhauling the human fleet. At least there the distances involved were helping Geary. Even if the bear-cows took their velocity up past point two light speed, it would take them hours to catch the humans.

“Captain, we’ve got something coming in from ahead,” the communications watch announced. “Broadcast signal repeating across a wide band of frequencies.”

Rione laughed with sudden relief. “They want to talk to us.”

“Maybe just to tell us they’re going to kill us,” Desjani muttered. “Is it just audio or also video?” she asked her comm watch.

“Definitely video, Captain. It roughly resembles one of the old formats used by humans, so we can convert the signal into something we can view as soon as the system generates the right conversion protocol. The image might get jerky at times, but it should be clear, and audio should be fine.”

“Give us a look as soon as you can,” Desjani ordered.

“It should be less than a minute, Captain.”

In fact, it only took a couple more seconds before virtual windows popped into existence beside Geary and others on the bridge, a sharp image visible in them. He gaped at what he saw, only gradually realizing that the entire bridge had gone silent.

“How big is that thing?” Desjani finally asked in a choked voice. “Lieutenant Yuon?”

“We . . . we can’t tell, Captain,” Yuon stuttered. “There’s nothing to scale it against.”

Geary forced himself to look closely at the image. If a very large spider had somehow mated with a wolf, the result might have been something like that. At least six appendages that might work equally well as arms or legs, a skin that appeared shiny and hard yet also sprouted patches of hair or fur, a head adorned with six eyes spread across the center, a flap above the eyes that might be for breathing, and beneath the eyes, a multijawed bear trap of a mouth. Two flaps on either side of the head made up of very thin skin rippled with veins might represent ears.

It was as if someone had searched for all of the most horrible-looking elements of living creatures and combined them into one.

“At least it doesn’t have tentacles,” Charban said.

Geary’s gaze slid away from the hideous appearance to focus on the clothing the creature wore. Brilliantly colored bands of cloth that shone like silk were woven about the body in an intricate pattern, the colors never clashing as they wound about each other. Odd, yet beautiful in its own way.

The creature was speaking, a high-pitched, wavering sound, as it spread out four limbs to their full extent on either side of its body. Impressive claws tipping the ends of the limbs also spread out, the creature holding the pose as it kept talking, the sounds occasionally interspersed with clacking as jaws struck together.

“Ancestors preserve us,” Desjani whispered, then swallowed and spoke in a nearly normal voice. “Is it threatening us?”

“I have no idea,” Geary said.

“Something that looks like
that
made ships and formations that look like
that
.”

“Yeah.” He looked down, breathing deeply to regain his composure. “Forward this to the civilian experts and see what they think it is doing.”

Rione finally spoke up, her voice the closest to normal of all those on the bridge. “It
is
talking to us. Whatever they are, they initiated contact. The enigmas have only spoken to us after a long period of hiding, and even then, very reluctantly. The bear-cows have never exchanged any communication with us.”

“Maybe it’s just asking us how we taste,” Desjani muttered, then laughed. “I wonder how you say ‘tastes like chicken’ in their language?”

Geary found himself laughing, too, the dark humor a welcome release from the shock of seeing the creature.

“Captain?” The communications watch had managed to control his own half-hysterical laughter at Desjani’s joke. “There’s something attached to this communication. A program of some kind.”

Desjani gave Geary a bitter glance. “A Trojan horse or a virus or what?” she asked the watch-stander.

“It doesn’t seem to be any of those things, Captain. It’s not concealed in any way. The attachment is very obvious. Either these, um . . . whatevers are incredibly unsophisticated about computer security issues, or they wanted to be sure we spotted that program.”

“Run it by security,” Desjani ordered. “I want our code people to analyze it and give me their assessment before we do anything with it. Wait a minute. That message could have been picked up by every ship in the fleet.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Without taking his eyes off the alien message, Geary hit his comm controls. “All units are to refrain from recording, running, or otherwise activating the software attached to the alien message. It will only be tested and activated under controlled conditions and as authorized by me.”

In the comm window before Geary, the creature had ended its speech. Its four upper limbs folded back against its body, crossing over in front of it, then two rose again just enough to frame its head before the message ended.

“Now what?” Desjani asked.

“I don’t know,” Geary said. “Maybe it’s easier to decide what to do when they
don’t
talk to us.”

“We’ve got the bear-cows on our tails. We can’t just hang around waiting to figure out what these . . . spider-wolves want or need or whatever.”

“You should send a reply,” Rione said.

“A reply?” Geary questioned. “To what? I don’t know what that thing just said.” The idea of sending a message in the blind had made sense a couple of hours ago. But now, after viewing the spider-wolves’ message, the gap between him and the creatures in those beautiful ships seemed vaster than the distances between stars. “They won’t know what my gestures mean, they won’t understand my words, and I may look as ugly to them as they do to me.”

“Nonetheless, you should reply,” Rione insisted. “Let them know we want to talk. Perhaps they know something about humans. They are neighbors of a sort to the enigmas.”

Geary gave Rione a cross look. “I smiled at the bear-cows, and by showing my incisors seemed to them to be preparing to eat them.”

“That is only a guess, Admiral,” she reminded him. “A good guess, I admit. But I heard you earlier speaking of engineering issues, which apply also to living creatures. An attack posture is different from a defense posture, isn’t it? Doesn’t it have to be?”

Charban answered her. “It depends. There are a number of combat methods in which an individual balances, ready to attack or defend as necessary. However, those are fairly sophisticated as such things go.” He paused, his expression thoughtful. “In human terms, we would indicate aggression by leaning forward, arms close to the body, ready to strike. Defense might look the same. But projecting peaceful intent is done by humans by standing erect, arms spread out, hands open. That posture does not suit either attack or defense.”

“The way the, uh, spider-wolf stood,” Geary agreed. “Arms out, claws open.”

“Ready to grab us,” Desjani said. “How do they do fine motor manipulation with claws, anyway?”

“Another good question.” Geary scowled, knowing that Rione was right but wondering if he could talk openly and calmly when he now knew what his audience looked like. “Can we send a reply in the same format in which we received that one?”

“Of course
Dauntless
can do that,” Desjani replied, looking offended by the suggestion that her ship might not be able to do something.

“We can use the same conversion program, Admiral,” the comm watch explained. “Only instead of converting their stuff to our format, we’ll do it backwards and convert our format to theirs.”

He nodded but sat silently, trying to get himself in the right state of mind to speak to those things without showing revulsion.

Charban spoke, his voice meditative. “You can partly judge someone by what they do, by what they create, and by what they surround themselves with. We did that with the bear-cows, looking at what they had done with their world and deciding from that they must be ruthless. Here we can’t see the home world of these new creatures, but we can see what they created. We can see how they like to do things. That offers us some grounds for empathy.”

“Empathy.” Geary heard his skepticism clearly in this single word.

“Yes. Just as you could see aspects of humans in what we create and how we do things.” Charban waved around. “We made this fleet. A mighty instrument of war. That tells you something about us, but it doesn’t stop with the obvious. Not everything in this fleet reflects pure science or physics or engineering. Many things reflect how we want things to be done because that is how we like them. Not because they’re most efficient but because we like doing things that way. It matters to us, though we might not be able to say why.”

“The Golden Mean,” Rione said. “It’s a ratio between numbers. Human use it in many things because we like seeing things with that proportion.”

“A ratio?” Geary asked.

“It’s an irrational mathematical constant,” Lieutenant Castries reported, squinting at the results of the query she had run. “Derived from the ratio of a larger quantity to a smaller one. It’s about one to one point six. Found in architecture, sculpture, the proportions of hard-copy books, paper, playing cards, music, and virtual windows among other things.”

“Exactly.” Rione gestured toward her display. “These displays probably default to such a ratio of sides because we like seeing things in those proportions. It is somehow part of us. Now look upon these creatures and what they have created. Somewhere within them is beauty.”

“Somewhere very
deep
within them perhaps,” Geary said.

“Look upon their works, think about those works, as you speak to them.”

“Or maybe get drunk first,” Desjani suggested. “That always makes ugly easier to accept.”

“I won’t ask how you know that,” Geary replied. He sighed, then stood up, trying to maintain a nonaggressive stance. But then he stopped. “Images. We can try imagery. How do I get my display to show along with me?”

“We want to show them one of our displays?” Desjani questioned.

“Yes.”

“Wait, Admiral,” the comm watch said, his hands flying over controls. “All right. It’s visible beside you if you transmit. Here’s a secondary window that shows what you look like.”

The secondary window popped up, so that Geary could see himself standing next to a display image. He considered how to do things, then tapped his comm controls. “Thank you for communicating with us. We want to pass through this star system peacefully.” He pointed to the jump exit they had arrived at, then swung his finger to point to one of the jump points on the other side of this star system. “There are enemies who have pursued us.” Now he held out an open palm in a shielding gesture against the representation of the bear-cow armada, his other hand poised to strike. “We will not fight you.” Now he dropped both hands as he faced the representation of the spider-wolf alien force, his palms outward and empty. “To the honor of our ancestors, this is Admiral Geary, out.”

“Captain?” Desjani looked over as the image of a lieutenant commander appeared before her. Geary recognized him as
Dauntless
’s systems security officer. “We isolated the attachment to that alien message and ran it on a physically quarantined system so there was no way it could infect anything. It took a fair amount of work, but we figured out how to run it since it contained its own operating system that seemed to adapt to our hardware.”

“It adapted to our hardware?”

“Yes, Captain, but don’t worry. It can’t get to any other systems. There’s no physical or electronic connection, and the unit is in an isolation box.”

Desjani took a deep breath. “What is it?” she asked.

“I think . . .” The systems security officer scratched his head. “It’s got pictures, and some kind of interactive routine. It kind of reminded me of a kid’s book. You know, something for real young kids to teach words and stuff.”

“Words?” Charban cried. “A pictorial means of establishing communication!”

“Yes, sir,” the systems security officer agreed. “That’s what it feels like to me.”

“Keep it quarantined for now,” Desjani ordered, “and—”

“We need access to that,” Charban insisted.

“This is my ship, and I decide what gets access to its systems.”

“Captain Desjani,” Geary said formally, “I agree it should be quarantined, kept isolated, but we need to get access to it as soon as possible for both General Charban and Emissary Rione as well as the civilian experts.”

“We can put together a quarantined network,” the systems security officer suggested. “It will take some work, and they’ll have to access it in one compartment because we’ll run short, physical connections between the workstations, but that way they can all play with it at the same time.”