Chapter One
Of course we don’t like to make
war. If we had a guarantee that all other sentient species in the Galaxy would
rid themselves of their weapons, we would do the same. Until then, we will
continue to study war. And continue to be the best at it.
Emperor Constance the Great.
JUNE 14
TH
, 1000.
D-386.
First Councilman
Rizzit Contena looked up at the attractive female who stood in front of his
desk, her primary eyes glaring down at him, while her secondary orbs were in
constant movement, scanning the room.
And she had not bred yet
, thought
the powerful male, who had already bred on a dozen females, and from them had
over a hundred children.
But this one might not see the advantages of
becoming another of my females
, he thought.
She will probably save
herself for one male.
That was the way
with most females, since they could only become pregnant once in their lives,
and most preferred a permanent partnership to a liaison that might bring a
litter, and detract from their attractive potential for a new mate.
“Surely you can
see the danger, First Councilman?” asked the female, Scientist Sharrann
Lestacor, a rising star in the scientific community of the Nation of Tsarzor.
“When that star blows, we all die.”
“Half of our
population believes that star is one of our gods,” replied Contena with a
politician’s smile, his teeth hidden by curled lips. “The other half are
afraid to offend the first. And the Honish will raise hell if they hear we are
discussing their Demon Lord in such a manner.”
“I am a
scientist,” said the woman, four of her tentacles crossed over her chest, the
top pair waving in the air. “I don’t believe in that superstitious nonsense.
Those beliefs are going to end us as a species. Hrrottha is going to explode,
in the near future, and when it does the surface of our world will be scoured
clean by the particle radiation that will arrive less than a year after, if the
thermal wave doesn’t take us out first.”
The first
councilman gave her a disapproving look. Hrrottha was both the name of the
star, according to the Honish, and the name of their god. And the Honish took
great offense when the name was used for one while also not meaning the other.
One reason his people preferred to call the star Gromor.
“And what do you
want to do about it?” asked the First Councilman, looking at the picture on his
wall that showed one of the twelve structures of the gods that occupied
equidistant points on the globe. No one knew how they had been built, or by
whom. They only knew that the things were indestructible, as far as they could
tell. Diamond drills, lasers, nothing scratched the surface. And any energy
that was used to try and probe them just disappeared.
More God stuff?
thought the leader of the nation, who was only religious in public, and wasn’t
sure what he believed in private.
“Build
underground shelters, deep,” she said, leaning over the desk, supporting her
body on her four lower tentacles. “Get as many of our people into protected
enclaves as possible.”
“Not send them
into space, like Scientist Kiristo suggested?”
“That male could
not find his solid waste orifice with all of his tentacles,” growled Lestacor,
standing up straight again, all of her tentacles waving in the air in
exasperation. “We don’t have the means to get anyone out of the system, and
anyone we have in space is going to be fried just as surely as if they stay on
the planet. And digging shelters on one of the moons or rocky planets is just
a waste of effort, since we can do the same thing here on Klassek.”
“Look,” said
Contena, glancing at the watch attached to one of his tentacles. “I have a
meeting to attend to. Why don’t you get with some engineers and work out what
we need to build these shelters. Now, I’m not promising you anything, but get
me some figures, and I’ll see what I can do.”
The female did
not look like she was very happy with that answer, but she gave a head motion
of acceptance and turned away. Contena watched her wide hips, the sign of a
good birthing female, and wondered again what she would be like during sex.
Forget
about that
, he thought.
Just be glad that you’ve gotten rid of her for
some weeks.
“Councilman,”
came a voice over the intercom. “There’s something happening in the outer
system that you need to be aware of.”
What in all
the hells now? Little gray beings coming out of interstellar space?
The
Councilman got to his feet and gliding from the room in the graceful gait of
his people, contacting his siblings through their entanglement and letting them
know he would be late for the meeting with the other Counselors.
* * *
“You sure you
want to send both of them, ma’am?” asked the Senior Master Chief of the Ship.
“It might be nice to have one of them handy, in case something comes up.”
“I know, Chief,”
said Albright, listening to the wisdom of the senior enlisted man on the
vessel, but still making the decision she thought was best. “This is too
important a find though, and I want one of them to get through, no matter
what.”
Space was full
of hostile races, pirates and aggressive cultures. Both of the ten thousand
ton couriers, one carried by each cruiser, were hyper VII vessels, and so
should have been able to outrun anything that tracked on them. She would be
sending them back to the Exploration Command sector base by separate routes.
Already this was looking like more than her two ships could handle, especially
if they were faced with evacuating a sizable percentage of an entire world’s
population.
“Very well,
ma’am,” said the Chief from the viewer. “Our courier will be launching in five
minutes.
Lewis’
will go fifteen minutes after.”
And ours will
be on the shortest route, and get there some hours ahead of the other one. And
surely they’ll send us some hyper VII ships.
In fact, Exploration Command
was supposed to have been outfitted solely with VII ships by now, but the war
had come, and with it, a greater demand for scout ships with the battle fleets.
“We’ve completed
preliminary scans of the system, ma’am,” said the Ensign da Conti. The central
holo showed the entire system, from the G class star on out, and the eleven
planets and forty-two major moons that made up the system. There were two
asteroid belts in the mix as well, slightly less massive than most by
themselves, but sufficient to run a major space based civilization when added
together. The only problem was that such a civilization didn’t exist in this
system.
“They are in the
early stages of space exploration,” said Commander Nord Sekumbe, the Exec, and
the head of the anthropology department aboard the ship. “Lots of satellites
in orbit around the planet, some artifacts on the two moons that point to
recent visits. I would say they are a class six space based civilization, on
the verge of leaving the environs of their own planetary system.”
“So, no hope of
them escaping the supernova?”
“Not a one,
ma’am. Their bad luck that their star drifted so close to one.”
“And what do you
make of their species?”
The Exec thought
for a moment before speaking. “At least as intelligent as we are. And, more
importantly, at least as innovative. They’ve gone from prop driven aircraft to
manned space flight in about the same time as humanity did on the homeworld.”
Albright
grunted. That last was important. There were any number of intelligent
species in the Galaxy, but among those known, very few had the innovative drive
of the human race. If they had found another such as they, it could really
help the war effort. And if they were even more innovative?
“I have some
people working on signal analysis,” continued the Anthropologist, “along with
the people from the
Lewis.
We have a good working vocabulary of
fourteen of their languages, those of the most advanced nations. One problem
with contact is the number of different political divisions on the planet. We
have no guarantee that the one we establish first contact with will even
cooperate with the others. And we’ve picked up some disturbing sociological
data from the transmissions.”
“Such as?”
“There seem to
be a number of very rabid religious groups on the planet, and evidence that
several religious wars are going on at this time. I’m not sure how this will
affect contact, but it could be very detrimental to any efforts we make toward
communicating as a rational species.”
Another image
came up on the main holo viewer, a smooth curving object rising up into space,
the curve of the planet in the background. “We’ve found twelve of these
objects rising from the surface. We’re not sure what they are, but they’re
well beyond the capabilities of these people.”
“Could they be a
threat to us?” asked the Captain, looking at the megastructures. Not that her
Empire didn’t have larger structures. The
Donut
, ship docks and
others. But unknown meant unknown capabilities.
“Unknown,” said
another voice on the holo, the ship’s Weapon’s Officer, who was also one of
their astrophysicists. “It doesn’t seem to interfere with the indigenous
population, but we have no way of knowing how they will react to a spaceship
coming in from the outer system. Or even if they’ll react at all.”
“Understood.”
Albright sat
there for a moment, then looked over at the Helmsman. “Put us on a least time
transit to just five hundred thousand kilometers outside of their orbit.” She
looked over at Nagakami. “Inform Captain
Lewis
of my intentions. They
are to wait out here and observe, as per standard operating procedure.”
“Sure you don’t
want them along, ma’am?” asked the Exec over the side holo. “From the looks of
things, there really isn’t anything to worry about in this system.”
The Captain
looked once again at the structure, one of the twelve that had been left on
this world by, something. Another intelligent species? The ancestors of the
current inhabitants, before their civilization fell?
“Let’s do it by
the book, Exec,” said Albright with a nod at the holo. “These procedures are
in place for a reason, so we’ll follow them.
Lewis
will wait out here
and watch, and if anything happens to us, we’ll have them to get the word out
to the next ship.” She looked at the holo that showed one of the huge
structures that poked out of the atmosphere of the planet, something well beyond
the capabilities of these people. A mystery, and not one that a ship’s captain
was really all that eager to push her nose into.
“And I want us
at full alert status when we get within ten light minutes of that world,” she
told her Tactical Officer. “Cold plasma fields at full strength, weapons
hot.”
And, hopefully, we won’t have to use them against something a
thousand times more massive than this ship, or a dozen of them.
* * *
“As you can see,
sir, these two heat sources appeared on our deep space telescope scan less than
an hour ago,” said the scientist, two of his tentacles working over the
keyboard while two more pointed at the screen that showed the objects in
questions as pinpoints. “Even at highest resolution we cannot determine what
they are. But ten minutes ago one of the objects started moving away from the
other by a small margin. We’ve parsed the data, and it appears the heat
signature is getting stronger.”
“Which means?”
asked the First Councilman, pretty sure he knew exactly what it meant.
“A visitor from
beyond our system,” said the scientist, his lips turned and hiding his teeth in
a smile. “Do you realize what this means, First Councilman? We are not
alone.”
“But are they
hostile? And are those two all there are?”
And could we successfully fight
them off? There are only two of them, but they have the technology needed to
cross the space between the stars, something we can only speculate about.
“I have no way
of knowing their intentions,” said the Scientist, his lips scrunching into a
teeth showing frown. “They could be peaceful, but I have no way of knowing.
The one thing I do know is one of those ships is coming here.”
But not both
of them
, thought the First Councilman, allowing his thoughts to link with
those of his four surviving brothers.
Why are they leaving one of their
ships out so far. Two light hours?
He looked at the figures on the
screen, and his brothers looked through his eyes by way of their entangled
brains.
I think they
are leaving the one ship out there as a precaution,
thought his brother,
General Mazzat Contena.
If we do anything to the ship coming toward us,
they will be able to leave with the news.
To what
purpose?
asked engineer Lazzit Contena.
To bring back
reinforcements to crush us, if we don’t acquiesce to their demands and attack
this first probe
, said Mazzat.
Why else would they be here, but to
conquer us.
I don’t think
that is their purpose
, thought Mizzit Contena, the artist of the group.
As
advanced as they are, they must be peaceful.
Like we’re
peaceful
, thought the General.
The more advanced we’ve become, the
deadlier has been our military.
The First
Councilman closed off his thoughts for a moment, wondering what course to take
with so many dissenting viewpoints. He and his siblings were not a group
mind. They, as the members of a single litter, could communicate mind to mind,
no matter the distance or the circumstances. They could look through each
other’s eyes, hear through the other’s ears, even feel physical sensations if
they opened their minds to such. But they were still individuals, with their
own minds and thoughts.