We moved over to a gas giant orbiting around a red dwarf. At first, I didn’t want to go through the fuss of setting up cables and molecular tunnels between the three ships, but it was simpler than using the shuttles—for everyone else, at least. I stayed on the Lythion. I refused to pull myself out into a cold vacuum. I didn’t care how old the tech was.
“It entrenches us,” I’d pointed out. “We can’t break away and run if we need to.”
“They’re fast detach cables,” Sauli pointed out. “Controlled by Lyssa and the two AIs, who follow her lead, now.” For Lyssa had sorted out the other two non-sentient shipminds within a few hours of meeting them. “At the first sign of alert, cables can be loosed, and the exterior hatches battened down in seconds. You’re just being ornery, Danny.”
I glared at him but didn’t protest after that.
We settled into waiting, in relative comfort. Well, the Lythion was comfortable. The Omia was a palace with jets, so no one was hurting, over there. I’d never stepped aboard Juliyana’s ship, so I didn’t know what the level of comfort was like over there. As a converted crescent ship, she was probably cramped, but that was Juliyana’s morale problem to deal with.
While we waited, I had Lyssa run scenarios, based upon analyses of the footage we’d taken of the Blue guys, their ship’s performance and any hint it gave us of their battle strategies.
“We don’t have nearly enough data for this,” Lyssa pointed out as we moved about the map room display, watching the scenarios play out. “The way they reacted to us could be an anomaly. They could normally react in ways we’ve never seen.”
“It’s all we have,” I told her. “But once we’ve extracted what we can from the footage, we start dreaming up wild possibilities and running them through the simulator, too.”
It was something to pass the time, at least. Jai came over some days to see what we’d come up with. Sometimes, Lyth leaned against a wall and watched. He didn’t talk much and I left him alone.
Five days later, I called everyone over to the board room for a quick face-to-face. I sweetened the inconvenience by mentioning we would also be eating. The Lythion’s printer files were unedited originals, massively oversized for a normal ship’s data storage, but the Lythion had plenty of room for data. When Lyth had still been the shipmind and first emerged from his isolation in the bowels of Badelt City, he had refused to swap the printer files for the minimized spacer versions which printed food “indistinguishable” from full files. He’d remained stubborn about it, despite every station we called in on assuring us it was the best thing we could do for our shipmind, and for ourselves, and that everyone was doing it.
But there was a difference in the food the edited files produced. It was hard to pin down why they were not the same, for the taste seemed right. They just failed to satisfy in some way, although they were nutritionally sound, and spacers did live on the stuff without long term consequences. So far.
Ships who had only the edited, miniature files mostly put up with food that wasn’t quite right. They could get original files from the nearest station…at a price. Bootleg copies were as bad as the miniaturized files, if not worse. These days, most ships didn’t have the cash to spare for the originals.
So the offer of a meal from the Lythion’s stores was enough incentive to get everyone around the picnic table, their heads down as they concentrated on their plates, while the mild Alpine sun shone.
Over where the pine trees were not shading the ground, a shallow sandy depression had been formed and all five parawolves lay in the sun, well fed and half-asleep. They strongly contrasted each other—silvery black against golden brown, beside white and grey, and pure white.
I let everyone around the picnic table concentrate on their meals until they slowed. Then I said, “It’s been five days. How long do we sit here before we declare that the blue guys aren’t interested in us?”
“Or haven’t noticed us, yet?” Juliyana replied. Her tone wasn’t challenging. She was merely raising a possibility. For the last five days she had been polite but distant with everyone. The air between her and Lyth was strained, but not nearly as much as Juliyana’s relationship with her second. Calpurnia was at the table but had not spoken a word.
“It might be that we’re not doing anything that rouses their curiosity,” Jai pointed out. He pushed his curry away from him and sat back, the green tea he liked in a porcelain cup in one hand. “We just don’t know what will bring them running.”
“Last time, they staked out the Ige Ibas, and waited for us to arrive,” I pointed out. “Maybe they’re doing that with some other ship, in some other section of the galaxy.”
These were all possibilities that Lyssa had come up with only a couple of hours ago. I was playing devil’s advocate, because sometimes a human mind could reach for weird associations that a more literal shipmind wouldn’t consider. Creativity was one of the Turing flags for that reason.
“Or they didn’t like the way we responded to them last time, and won’t be back,” Lyth said. “Bullies usually fold when they meet someone with backbone.”
Kristiana shook her small head. “These guys aren’t bullies. They don’t get pleasure out of pounding on the little guys.”
“Then what are they?” I asked, for she was a politician and understood how power worked.
Her forkful of lasagna hung in midair, dripping tomato sauce and cheese, while she considered. “They were strictly business. They gave up after you proved to be too much trouble and left. They didn’t crumble at the first resistance the way a bully would. And they didn’t hang in there until the bitter end the way a patriot would.”
“They cut their losses,” Dalton murmured and reached for the shepherd’s pie.
Kristiana nodded, then remembered her lasagna and went back to eating.
Jai tilted his head a little, considering me. “We have no choice but to wait and see if they come to us once more. We have no idea what attracts their attention, or what makes a target look promising to them.”
“We only know that they have learned to take humans,” Fiori added. She always looked tired and today was no different. “We don’t know what they want with them.”
I nodded. It was wearing her down, not knowing what had happened to Mace. Dalton seemed to be bearing up better than her, but I knew that he had been spending long hours exercising and putting himself through all the old Ranger drills he’d learned in basic training, that kept the body flexible and ready for battle. He looked sleek and fit, and was likely sleeping better at night than Fiori, who didn’t have a surgery or patients to keep her occupied.
“Kristiana says we must wait. Does anyone disagree with her? And if you do disagree, what do you propose we do, instead?” I asked.
“I think we should take the fight to them,” Calpurnia said.
“We don’t know where they are,” Yoan countered.
“Or where they’re from,” Anderson Marlow added. “It could be that this one ship Danny encountered is some sort of rogue outfit. Pirates that leave their peace-loving race ashamed of them for their ways. We can’t judge their whole species based upon the action of the one ship and crew we’ve seen.”
“Four ships taken, that we know of, so far,” I pointed out.
“Among the millions that ply the known worlds,” Marlow shot back. “My argument still stands.”
I nodded. “So, we should stay?”
Silence.
Jai said, “That is why you brought us here, isn’t it? You wanted us to re-examine why we are here and commit to it once more.”
I smiled at him. “It helps stop us going crazy, if we remember why we’re here. And here is another question for you. At what point do we say this isn’t working, and go home?”
“Go home and do what?” Juliyana asked in a reasonable tone. “I have a contract to complete and a lot of money rides on it. I stay out here until I find the bastards.”
Calpurnia didn’t look happy about that, but she said nothing.
“It’s our son out there somewhere,” Dalton said. “I stay out here until I get him back.”
“Me, too,” Fiori added.
Sauli waved his steak knife at me. “As long as you’re putting on dinner parties, I’m in.” Which was sweet of him to say because I knew the Omia would have the luxury food files.
“You might need me,” Lyth said. “I’m staying.”
I looked at Jai and Marlow. “You two came along because you wanted to know what was going on, but you have lives and commitments—”
“We all do,” Kristiana interjected.
“Granted, but Jai isn’t saying anything, and Marlow just looks thoughtful.” I stared at them. “We can take you back whenever you want.”
Jai was still cradling his teacup in his hands. He sipped, not at all bothered by having everyone stare at him.
Marlow glanced at Jai. Their gazes met and Marlow nodded the smallest amount and sat back.
“The thing is, this shouldn’t have happened,” Jai said.
“What? Pirates stealing people?” Yoan asked, puzzled.
“I mean, an alien species that appears to be bipedal, about our height, our level of intelligence and with a degree of technology that nearly matches, if not out-strips our own, but not so much that they’re unstoppable.”
“The odds against that are so remote, it’s nigh impossible to compute,” Marlow added, his voice low and soft. “I’ve sat through more meetings with scientists than any of you could possibly withstand, so I know a bit about this, because they had the same arguments about the array, and how impossible it was that the thing should exist.”
“Despite the fact that it existed?” Lyth shook his head. “Scientists…”
Marlow just grinned. “Same situation here. We have come across aliens who rightfully shouldn’t exist…at least, not in this time and place.”
“The section of the Carina arm that humans have settled,” Jai said, “what we used to call the Empire, but now just call the known worlds…it is an infinitesimally small portion of the galaxy. Humans developed on Terra so long ago its location is lost to us, but we do know that we are an anomaly. The conditions on Terra were just right for man to survive. Those conditions are a sliver on the very wide spectrum of conditions available in the galaxy. The chances of another intelligent lifeform developing anywhere else is just as slim. And the chances that second intelligent lifeform should reach the same level of development and technology as humans at the very same time, and in the same small section of this single galaxy, of all the millions of galaxies out there, are so small I’m sure even Lyssa could not calculate it.”
“It would take a while to compute,” Lyssa admitted, for she sat beside Lyth, wearing sunglasses and “eating” chicken pot pie.
“I want to know what these creatures are,” Jai said. “I want to know why they are here, in this time and place. And I want to know if humanity should brace itself for the fight of its life.”
“Again,” Kristiana said, with a sigh.
“And again and again,” Marlow told her. “We’ve got very good at it. You should read more history.”
Kristiana stuck her tongue out at him and went back to her lasagna.
But Jai wasn’t finished yet. “If these blue people are a threat, if we really are sliding on the short slope into an inter-species war, then Marlow and I might be the best placed of all of us here to alert the known worlds.”
“If you’re still alive to tell anyone,” Juliyana said darkly.
“That’s optimistic,” Fiori shot back.
“It’s realistic,” Juliyana replied, glaring at her.
Tensions were still spiking here and there. I stood up. “Dessert,” I declared.
Three days later, the blue ones descended upon us.