The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible (21 page)

And had then forgotten about it. Thank goodness he had remembered to delegate that task. “What did you conclude?”

“A stab in the back.” Lagemann grinned lopsidedly. “Big surprise, huh?” He highlighted one star. “We jumped from here to the bear-cow star, Pandora. The enigmas were following us there with a fair-sized force, but they didn’t chase us to Pandora, doubtless knowing exactly what awaited us there. Now, since they knew what defenses the bear-cows had, the enigmas would have been justified in concluding that our chances of getting out of Pandora in one piece were pretty damned small.”

“It wasn’t a situation I’d want to be caught in again,” Geary agreed.

“So, if we fought our way back to this enigma star, going back the way we came, what remnants of our force reached them would be chewed up. A reasonable conclusion for the enigmas to make. They could leave a blocking force there to deal with whatever made it back to them. But that wouldn’t prevent another human fleet from showing up and driving through their space in the future.”

Lagemann shifted the star display back toward human space. “No. If they are going to ensure that no more humans come knocking, they need to lock the front door.”

“Pele?” Geary asked. “There’s nothing there.”

“No. But for us to get to Pele we had to go through—”

“Midway.” He stared at the star display, appalled. “The enigmas will try to eliminate our ability to use Midway as a stepping-stone into their territory.”

“That’s our assessment. At the least, they could move in and collapse the hypernet gate there the old-fashioned way, by shooting out all of the tethers. Are you sure the Syndics have systems on their gates that ensure a collapse doesn’t devastate the whole star system?”

“I’m certain of it,” Geary said. “We spotted the equipment on the hypernet gate at Midway when we came through there last.”

Lagemann chewed his lip, looking morose now. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out how much damage a collapsing hypernet gate could do. Nova-scale energy bursts. And we built those damned things in all of our most valuable star systems.”

“That’s what the enigmas wanted when they secretly leaked the technology to us,” Geary said. “They wanted the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds to build huge bombs in our own star systems. Either we and the Syndics would figure out they were weapons as well as transportation devices and use them to cripple or even exterminate humanity, or the enigmas would use them that way if we humans were too smart or moral to engage in self-genocide.”

“I wouldn’t have placed a lot of bets on us being too smart to do that,” Lagemann said. “But that plan fell through. Now the enigmas have to stop us one star system at a time. And the way to stop us is to take out Midway as a place we can use to stage new incursions into enigma territory. They could well have started that retaliation force on its way almost as soon as we jumped for Pandora.”

Midway couldn’t repel a strong attack by the enigmas. The Syndics there, if the authorities at Midway still answered to the Syndicate Worlds’ government, had only a small flotilla of cruisers and Hunter-Killers to protect the star system. Nor would reinforcements likely be coming, not with the Syndicate Worlds’ mobile forces crushed by Geary during the last stages of the war and the remnants of its military overstretched as the Syndicate Worlds’ government tried desperately to hold on to star systems breaking away from it everywhere.

The only other thing that Midway had to muster in its defense was a promise that he, Admiral Geary, had made to defend them against the enigmas.

But he was very far away from Midway now, with either spider-wolf or enigma territory blocking his way back.

TEN

ADMIRAL
Lagemann spread his hands in apology. “I know that’s not a welcome assessment.”

“It’s an incredibly valuable assessment,” Geary replied. “I don’t know whether I can do what I need to do in time for it to make a difference, but at least I know I need to do it.” He measured with his eyes the distance back to Midway, knowing it was much too far given how little time he might have. “It may be impossible. Especially with that superbattleship we have to haul along with us.”

“We can’t risk losing that,” Lagemann agreed. “Have you been aboard it?”

“Only virtually. I’ve seen a few compartments, some passageways, and during the capture of the ship, of course.”

“Hell of an operation,” Lagemann said. “The colonels and generals with me on
Mistral
all agree that your General Carabali did a fine job. But, anyway, I’ve been on that ship in person. While the other members of my assessment group were finalizing their conclusions, I volunteered for some of the cleanup duty because I wanted a chance to see an alien ship. Besides, it never hurts for sailors and Marines to see an admiral doing real work, does it?” Lagemann paused in memory. “Being on that alien ship was like a dream. Literally like that. Familiar, and yet strange. I’d be walking down a passageway, everything feeling right about this ship I was in, normal, then I would encounter something utterly weird but which belonged in that place. You never really appreciate how many things we do in certain standard ways because everyone does them that way until you get around a totally alien creation built by someone who doesn’t share any of our understandings of how things should be done.”

Geary nodded. “It’s got the engineers alternately thrilled at the new approaches and pulling their hair out at things they can’t figure out.”

“If we’re taking it back, who’s going to ride it, act as commanding officer?”

He hadn’t even considered that yet.

“You’ll need at least a captain,” Lagemann suggested. “Maybe even an admiral if one volunteered.”

“Where would I find an admiral dumb enough to volunteer for that?” Geary asked, smiling. “It’s going to be hardship duty. The bear-cow life support is erratic after all the damage we inflicted taking that ship, the only food will be battle rations, and the furnishings are all sized wrong for us.”

“Sounds like a little slice of heaven,” Lagemann said.

“Can anyone on
Mistral
keep an eye on things if you’re on the superbattleship?” Lagemann had been a reliable source of information and a steady presence among the former prisoners, some of whom had reacted very badly to discovering that they no longer had any role to play in the destiny of the fleet or the Alliance.

“Admiral Meloch. Angela has a steady hand and a steady head. Or General Ezeigwe. He’s aerospace defense forces, but don’t hold that against him.”

“I won’t.” Geary thought only for a moment, feeling the prod of having to get moving on the assessment that Lagemann had brought. “All right. Consider yourself assigned to command of the prize crew on the superbattleship. Coordinate with the Marine on-scene commander and the officer in charge of the engineers aboard it. I’ll notify General Carabali and Captain Smythe.”

Lagemann stood up, smiling with enthusiasm. “It’ll be nice to be really responsible for something again! Any idea when the next shuttle from here to the superbattleship will fly?”

“I’m sure we can arrange something fairly soon.”

“Is there an official designation for the superbattleship yet? Some name a little less cumbersome than ‘the Captured Kick Superbattleship’?”

“I hadn’t thought about that, either. I’ll get back to you.”

“Great. With all due respect, Admiral, I’ve learned that one of the officers aboard
Dauntless
is the daughter of a man I served with. Before I take the shuttle back to the CKSB, I’d like to see her and let her know—” Lagemann’s smile wavered, then vanished. “I’d like to let her know how her father died. It was something I wanted to do in person.”

After Lagemann left, Geary sat, trying to think what he could do. One thing overrode everything else. He couldn’t possibly get to Pele or Midway in time unless the spider-wolves agreed to let him pass through their territory, which hopefully extended a fair way back toward human space. Which meant he had to talk to those who had been trying to talk to the spider-wolves.

He called Rione, finding her in her cabin going over pictograms. “You’re supposed to be resting, Madam Emissary.”

“So are you. And since when did you expect me to follow your orders?” She still looked tired and obviously wasn’t in the mood for banter.

“I know you’ve been talking to the spider-wolves about getting us clearance to head back toward human-controlled space through spider-wolf territory,” Geary said without further preamble. “That has now become an urgent priority. We need to be able to get back to the vicinity of Pele or Midway as quickly as possible.”

Rione eyed him, then nodded. “The enigmas?”

“Very likely, yes.”

“I understand. I should have thought of that. General Charban and I will make that our highest priority now. Oh, you or someone else had asked how the spider-wolves manipulate small objects with those claws. It turns out they have small . . . wormlike tentacles inside each claw that they can extrude for fine-motor tasks.”

“Small wormlike tentacles? Inside each claw?”

His reaction must have been showing because Rione smiled crookedly. “I know. Could they possibly be any more physically repulsive to us? That’s something we have to overcome. Speaking of which, I recommend you call Dr. Setin and Dr. Shwartz. They have an intriguing theory about the spider-wolves that I think you want to hear.”

“All right. Thanks.” He punched in the call to
Mistral
, quickly getting a reply from a guilty-looking Dr. Setin.

“Admiral! Is there something?”

“Yes.” Geary studied the expert on nonhuman intelligent aliens, trying to figure out why he had the appearance of an undergraduate caught cheating on an exam. Cheating . . . “Are you working, Doctor?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Setin blurted out. “But it is so important, we didn’t think we could afford to pause. I knew that you would understand.”

Which is why you didn’t tell me?
“Emissary Rione said that you and Dr. Shwartz have a theory about the spider-wolves?”

“Oh, yes. It’s not really at the stage where—”

Dr. Shwartz expanded the view of the comm screen on their end so that she was in it, too, looking haggard but gleeful. “I think we should tell the admiral. This is more of a gut instinct, a belief, than something scientifically provable at this point. We can puzzle over exact words and phrases the spider-wolves seem to be employing until new stars replace the old and not find any certainty. What I feel to be true of these beings, and Dr. Setin agrees this is a real possibility, is that they think in patterns.”

“Patterns?”

“Yes. General Charban and Emissary Rione and all of the rest of us keep trying to talk in terms of specific things. It took me a while to understand that the aliens were always talking about
connections
between things. You and I are seeing a forest made up of individual trees. They are seeing the forest as the primary thing.” She paused, grimacing unhappily. “Maybe that is not the right analogy because they use terms that seem to refer to balancing of forces. Like spiderwebs. That’s what made me think of this. Our academic bias is to assume that something that looks like a spider can’t actually be a spider. It needs to be deconstructed and broken down to learn what it really is. But what if the spider-wolves are indeed descended from the thing they resemble to us? Something spiderlike. Something that makes webs, in which everything is tied together, all the tensions and forces in equilibrium, a picture of beauty and stability. Imagine a race of beings that sees everything in those terms.”

Geary frowned in thought, leaning back. “Like their ship formations. Not just functional, but also beautiful to our eyes. And if they come from something that could build webs like spiders, that would imply natural instincts for the sort of engineering that humans look at in awe.”

“Yes! Something that thinks differently from us but in a way we can still touch, still grasp in our way.”

“Humans can see patterns,” Geary objected. “That’s not alien to us.”

“We can,” Dr. Setin broke in, “but that’s not our bias. This was what led me to consider Dr. Shwartz’s ideas to be intriguing because humans don’t instinctively think in terms of patterns. We think in terms of opposites. Black and white, good and bad, yin and yang, thesis and antithesis, yes and no, right and left, friend and enemy. What matters to us are opposites, and everything that isn’t a clear opposite is evaluated on a scale of where it lies between opposites. Lukewarm. Maybe. Gray. When we stretch our minds, we can see patterns, but that’s not our natural way of seeing things.”

He had to think about that some more, the implications gradually growing apparent, while the doctors waited. “Then to these aliens, we’re neither allies nor enemies. We’re part of some pattern.”

“We think so,” Dr. Shwartz said. “There was one sentence they sent that I kept puzzling over. It seemed to say, ‘The picture is changed but remains.’ And then I thought, what if they mean not picture, but pattern? Our arrival changed the pattern, but the pattern isn’t gone, it has just altered. And then the spider-wolves said, ‘Together we hold the picture.’ Well, if that really means ‘together we hold the pattern,’ then that explains what they expect from us. Our part in this pattern, I think we can speculate, is in their eyes to provide another anchor so that the pattern through which they view the universe can retain stability.”

“You think these creatures see humanity as a force for stability?” Geary asked.

The two doctors both hesitated, then exchanged glances. “That does sound odd, doesn’t it?” Dr. Shwartz said. “We don’t see ourselves that way. But then how many outside observers have ever evaluated humanity? Perhaps, compared to the likes of the paranoid enigmas and the rapacious bear-cows, we look pretty good to the spider-wolves.”

“There’s a term, a pictogram,” Dr. Setin added, “that they keep using. The software they gave us interprets it in various ways. Anchor or foundation or bond or keel or buttress. Those are all things that lend stability to something. It keeps coming up when they talk to us. This concept of having firm anchors appears to be critically important to them.”

He understood then. “Because without anchors, any pattern is going to unravel, come apart.”

“Exactly.”

“I think,” Dr. Shwartz continued in a cautious voice, “that their idea of an anchor may include intangibles as well as physical objects. Ideas. Theories. Philosophies. Mathematics. All of these things contribute to the pattern, all of these things help keep it in place.”

If only they weren’t so ugly . . . “It sounds like the spider-wolves and we can understand each other. Or at least understand enough to coexist in peace and maybe exchange ideas.”

“I think so, Admiral, yes.” She made an uncomfortable gesture. “Of course, this remains a theory. It’s not always clear at all how they react to something we try to say. Reading emotion on them is . . . challenging.”

“There are subtle color shifts,” Dr. Setin explained. “We’ve spotted those on the spider-wolf people, changes in hue on the head and body, but we don’t know which color means what. It is possible there are other cues to feelings, like scents or hormonal emissions, but since we’re carrying on all of this by remote communications and are not physically in the same room with them, we can’t know that.”

“I . . . understand.” What did the spider-wolves smell like? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Have they said anything about the ship we captured?”

“The ship?” Both doctors appeared uncomfortable now. “We haven’t talked much about that . . .” Dr. Setin said.

“Why? Are the spider-wolves upset about that?”

“No. It’s . . .” Setin looked downward. “The . . . attack. We’ve seen . . . the aftermath. So many . . . so very many . . .”

Geary got it then. “The bear-cows we had to kill. I know that’s not easy to contemplate. It wasn’t something we did by choice. They chased us here, they attacked us here, and they refused to surrender.”

“But, to meet a new species, and then to . . . to . . .”

“Have you given the same amount of anguish to the men and women who died because the bear-cows wouldn’t even talk to us?” That had come out harshly, more angry than he had intended. “I’m sorry. But the ugly truth is that the bear-cows cared less for the lives of their fellow bear-cows than you and I did. That’s a difference in the view of the universe between our species that left us no alternatives. If you think I am happy about that, you’re mistaken.”

“We know that, Admiral,” Dr. Shwartz said. “We regret that it had to be so. It’s not a criticism of your actions.”

Dr. Setin didn’t look as if he entirely agreed with that, but if so, he had the good sense to remain silent.

“What about the six living bear-cows, Admiral?” Dr. Shwartz asked. “We keep being told the matter is classified.”

“They’re recovering, as far as we can tell, but remain comatose,” Geary said. “They’re totally isolated from human contact to try to keep them from panicking if they wake up. That’s all I know right now.”