“Who does she think we are?” Desjani demanded. “This fleet does not withdraw.”
Actually, it had, at least under Geary’s command, run from the initial trap in the Syndic home star system and many times afterward. But he knew what Desjani meant, and it heartened him that her attitude probably would match that of other fleet personnel when they heard that the Syndics had given the fleet an opportunity to withdraw honorably. They might not be thrilled about defending Syndics, but if the alternative was fleeing battle, they would rather fight.
Rione was frowning at Desjani in surprise and calculation, then speaking quietly to the other senators.
Geary gave Desjani a grim smile. “No. We’re not going to run.” It didn’t make any sense, of course. The aliens grossly outnumbered them, and the alien capabilities were unknown but likely to be superior to those of the humans as just demonstrated with their maneuvers. But it was unlikely that a stand anywhere else would face different odds. Instead, the odds would get worse as the aliens seized more and more human star systems, gaining strength as they weakened humanity. Might as well see if we can hurt them bad enough here to make them stop here. How bad will that have to be, though?
He called the Syndic CEO back first. “Your concerns for the welfare of our personnel are noted and welcome, but we have made a commitment to repel aggression against this star system and will not waver from that commitment. We intend to fight if necessary, and we intend to win. I do have some experience with seemingly hopeless situations, and assure you that they are not always so hopeless as they seem. I repeat, the Alliance fleet will fight here if that is required of us. To the honor of our ancestors. Geary out.”
Now the aliens. “The fleet will not leave this star system until your ships have left. You will deal with us, or you will fight us. We will not yield this star system. Your ships will not be allowed to proceed past this fleet. We wish to talk, but we will fight if we must.”
Geary paused then, thinking, before tapping his controls again. “All units in the Alliance fleet, our communications with the ships of the alien race have so far produced no results. All units are to prepare for combat. Whatever these beings are, they’re going to be sorry if they tangle with the Alliance fleet.”
The senators were arguing, speaking in whispers but obviously agitated, as they debated, drawing annoyed glances from Desjani and the bridge watch-standers. “Do you wish to carry out your discussion in another location?” Geary suggested to the politicians.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rione replied with a sour look at the other two senators. “We have no better ideas of how to deal with this than you do.”
“Must we fight?” Sakai asked.
“Senator,” Geary answered, “I don’t want to fight these beings, not facing these odds. But I don’t know what else to do if they keep coming. They have to learn that humanity will fight to prevent further atrocities like that at Kalixa.”
“Having our fleet wiped out here won’t advance the interests of the Alliance,” Sakai said, as Costa nodded in emphatic agreement. “It appears this enigma race won’t be deterred.”
Geary was searching for the right reply when Desjani lowered her brow in thought. “Reserve flotilla.”
He stared at her, trying to figure out Desjani’s meaning, then it hit him. “The aliens didn’t attack, didn’t try to claim this star system, when the Syndics had the reserve flotilla defending this region. The border region was stable for decades while the reserve flotilla was here.”
“And,” Desjani added, “that reserve flotilla was weaker than this fleet.”
Costa and Sakai were glaring at Desjani, but Rione nodded slowly. “They could be deterred, it seems. Why was that if they had this number of ships on hand to attack?”
Alerts sounded, and Geary stared again, this time at his display, as more alien ships suddenly appeared, not at the jump point but with the armada. Three more subformations were abruptly there with the first six, forming another v, this time above and slightly ahead of the first two v’s.
Just like that, the odds against the Alliance fleet changed from two to one, to three to one.
ELEVEN
GEARY turned on Boyens’s virtual presence. “Explain how the aliens did that.”
The Syndic CEO avoided Geary’s eyes. “It’s happened. Not in my personnel experience, but I reviewed the records of earlier encounters. I told you, sometimes you can’t see the alien ships at all until they reveal themselves. Syndic ships didn’t even see the alien ships, not even those vague blobs, until they suddenly appeared nearby and opened fire.”
“When were you planning on telling us about that alien tactic?” Geary demanded.
Boyens met his gaze. “The records from our destroyed ships were fragmentary and could have been inaccurate. But I wanted you to come here and fight them. If I’d told you they could do that, would you have come?”
“I need to know such things if I’m going to fight them!” Turning his back on the Syndic, Geary looked to Desjani. “Okay. It’s worse.”
She nodded, outwardly unmoved by the multiplication of the threat. “We can hit those subformations, the ones on the top edges, wear the aliens down.”
“We can try.” Left unsaid was that the aliens appeared significantly more maneuverable than human warships, which would immensely complicate that tactic. He called up a simulator window and started working on formations to counter the alien numbers and confuse their reactions to him, settling on five subformations of his own. By maneuvering them against the flanks of the aliens, he might be able to—
“Another message from the enigma-race ships.”
More time had obviously passed than he had realized. The human avatars of the aliens seemed smug by then as well as stern. “Warning is final. Leave. Dealings will be only with Syndicate Worlds. Destruction awaits Alliance fleet if it remains. You do not have this star. Leave. Warning is final.”
Senator Sakai threw up his hands. “How can we negotiate if they just keep repeating their demands?”
“They don’t want to negotiate,” Costa snapped. “Admiral Geary, the situation clearly calls for this fleet to . . . to . . . reposition. Its destruction defending a Syndic star system would be a betrayal of the Alliance people.”
Geary could sense that everyone else on the bridge had suddenly held their breath, but he felt only a sense of ironic amusement at Costa’s words. “Senator, are you accusing me of treason?”
“I did not say that, but—”
“I have been entrusted by the entire grand council with command of this fleet, and I intend living up to that trust,” Geary continued, his voice hardening. “Now, I have an engagement to plan, and I would appreciate no further interruptions unless they are of a constructive nature.”
Behind Costa, and out of her sight, Rione twisted her mouth in a half smile.
Sakai just kept staring wordlessly at the displays.
Costa reddened but stayed silent, as neither of the other two senators sprang to her defense.
Everyone else started breathing again, and Geary turned to focus back on the approaching armada. They were down to a single light-hour’s distance. “Let’s get our speed up.” He ordered the fleet to accelerate to point one light speed onto a vector aimed at intercepting the alien armada. “About five hours to contact.”
“About that,” Desjani agreed cheerfully. Geary’s put-down of Costa seemed to have put Desjani into particularly high spirits. “There are a lot of them,” she added, as if commenting on the weather.
“Yeah.”
“Why are they bothering warning us off?”
Geary looked at her. “What?”
“Why didn’t they just attack? They outnumber us three to one, if there aren’t more of them hidden, and if the hypernet gates and worms are any indication of their technology, their weapons must be at least as good as ours. They could have kept their numbers hidden until they hit us. But they’re trying to get us to leave instead of fighting.”
> Geary frowned at the question. “We’re back to Duellos’s riddle. Feathers or lead? The unsolvable riddle where the answer changes whenever the demon wants it to change. How can we come up with the right answer when we don’t understand the aliens asking the question and don’t even know what the question really means to them?”
She shrugged in reply. “They’re giving us a chance to leave without fighting,” Desjani repeated. “They’re trying to get us to leave without fighting. But they proved they can be totally ruthless when they collapsed the hypernet gate at Kalixa. So why are they being nice now? It looks like their ships can be totally undetectable by us. If I was them, I’d be charging in and making sure the other side learned not to mess with me again. I would have kept my numbers hidden, my arrival hidden, until I was in among the enemy ships, then opened fire without any warning, just like they’ve done in the past to the Syndics.”
He leaned forward, frowning more heavily, letting Desjani’s statements run through his mind. It was odd. Yes, they were dealing with something that didn’t think like humans did, but still seemed to be plenty merciless when it wanted. They didn’t know the aliens’ motivations, but nothing the aliens had done so far seemed outright irrational to humans even though examples like Kalixa showed that the aliens were definitely not merciful when it came to dealing with humans. The aliens seemed pragmatic, in the most cold-blooded sense of the word. Which didn’t make them demonic, it just made them self-interested, and humanity didn’t have a lot of room to criticize any other intelligent race in that regard. But Desjani had put her finger on the big question and focused Geary’s attention there as well instead of just on the looming threat of the alien armada. Why would a pragmatic race of aliens capable of ruthless acts show mercy to a human fleet they might have to face again someday?
If they were human, and offering the Alliance fleet this kind of escape, he would wonder why. What possible reasons could he consider? “If they want us to leave instead of destroying us, why?”
“I asked first,” Desjani replied. “I think we can assume they don’t have any moral qualms about destroying this fleet.”
“Not after they tricked us into building the hypernet gates, destroyed Kalixa, and tried to destroy the Syndic home star system while we were there, no.”
“And, they didn’t attack when the Syndics had the reserve flotilla here,” Desjani repeated.
True enough. “Meaning that flotilla was probably strong enough to concern them even though an alien fleet of the size we’re looking at could have easily overwhelmed the Syndic reserve flotilla. Which means we’re strong enough to concern them even if it doesn’t look that way to us.”
“Then,” Desjani concluded, “maybe they’re not as strong as they look, maybe they’re more concerned about being able to win than the odds indicate.”
That made sense, but why would the aliens be concerned when they had that many ships? Fear of casualties? But the aliens had fought the Syndics more than once. Maybe it was like the hypernet gate at the Syndic home star system. They were seeing something but not knowing what it meant. Like a Trojan horse of some kind. For some reason Geary didn’t understand, his mind kept fixing on the phrases he and Desjani had been using. It doesn’t look that way . . . maybe they’re not as strong as they look . . . “Look.” Why was his mind telling him that word was important?
It shouldn’t be. No one was actually looking directly at the aliens. Every observation came through the fleet’s sensors, and those sensors were very good, able to see much, much farther and much, much more clearly than any human eye could. Syndic sensors differed in small ways but were basically the same, and the Syndics had been trying to find out more about the aliens for decades, with no success to show for it.
Desjani must have been thinking along the same lines. She was frowning heavily at her display as she raised one hand and pointed her finger at it. “It looks like we’re badly outnumbered.”
“That’s what our sensors are telling us.”
“But what our sensors are telling us doesn’t make sense given everything else we know, given how the aliens have acted in the past, given how they’re acting now. If this picture is right, then everything else we know has to be wrong.”
He knew where she was going, toward the same conclusions Geary’s mind had been developing. “The Syndics think they know some things about the aliens, and what they think they know has driven their conclusions about what the aliens can do.” Like Boyens, certain that the aliens couldn’t have been responsible for collapsing the hypernet gate at Kalixa. Like the Syndics at the home star system, who had been unaware that their warships carried alien worms. “But we didn’t start our analysis of the aliens thinking we knew some things about them. Everything we think we know came from new observations, from learning and watching events, and I’d swear on the honor of my ancestors that our conclusions about the aliens and their actions, what we believe we know, isn’t wrong. So if those are all correct . . .”
“The picture we’re seeing has to be wrong,” Desjani concluded.
A Trojan horse. An unseen threat hidden within. And his attention, along with that of every other officer, was focused externally, on the alien armada. “We’ve scrubbed every one of our warships’ systems of those alien worms, right?”
Desjani nodded. “It’s part of the normal system security routines now.”
“Have we scrubbed our systems since we arrived here?”
She gave him a grim smile, then turned. “Lieutenant Castries, find out the last time the ship’s systems were scrubbed for quantum-probability worms.”
A startled Lieutenant Castries hastily checked. “Two days ago, Captain.”
“Before we first saw the aliens,” Geary commented.
Desjani nodded, her lips drawing back to expose her teeth in what wasn’t really a smile anymore. “Lieutenant, order the ship’s security personnel to run another detection routine, in all ship’s systems.”
“All ship’s systems? Now, Captain?”
“Half an hour ago, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
As the lieutenant raced to notify the systems-security officer and run the system scrub, Desjani gave Geary a sidelong glance. “They activated new worms.”
“I’ll lay you odds.”
“In the sensor systems. And the analysis systems. And the display systems.”
“Yup.”
“Because we have no idea how they create those worms. They could be somehow dormant and undetectable until an alien ship arrives and sends an activation signal. And if their ability to track the fleet was any clue, that activation signal moves faster than light, so those worms would have been activated before we even knew the aliens had arrived. All we would have ever seen was what they wanted us to see.”
Geary nodded. “It’s like you said, why aren’t they attacking when the odds favor them so much?”
“Because the odds aren’t what we think.” She looked into his eyes, grinning, and he felt it, too, the unparalleled feeling when someone else is totally in sync with you, filling in some parts of a puzzle while you fill in the rest, two minds working perfectly together. Her smile turned rueful. “We’re one hell of a team.”
“That we are.” He left it at that, and they both waited until a window popped up between them and a startled systems-security officer reported in.
“Captain, Admiral, we found a bunch of quantum-probability worms in the systems. Combat, sensors, maneuvering, analysis. Just ugly as all hell. I have no idea where they came from or what they’re doing, but we’re getting rid of them.”
Geary’s display flickered, then updated, wavered again, updated once more, each time large numbers of alien ships simply vanishing, the alien fleet dwindling as fast as the worms were wiped from Dauntless’s systems. The alien ships that had recently appeared from nowhere vanished completely, while the great majority of the alien ships in the lower two v’s also disappeared.
Desjani’s fierce grin was
now definitely a ferocious snarl. “We can see them.”
The blurring that had kept even the shapes of the alien spacecraft hidden had vanished, revealing that every alien ship, regardless of size, had roughly the same shape, blunter and more rounded than the human warships. If the human ships were sharklike, the alien craft more closely resembled spiny tortoises. “I’ll be damned. No wonder the alien stealth system always fooled the Syndics so well. It wasn’t anything on the alien ships. It was alien worms altering the picture the Syndics’ own sensors were seeing.”
“Good work, Admiral Geary.”
“I never would have seen it if you hadn’t pointed me in that direction.” He grinned back at her. “One hell of a team, Captain Desjani.”