If anyone on board Magellan could see it, the unknown ship trailing them would’ve resembled the most malicious, violent, nightmarish predator dredged from the coldest depths of the darkest ocean. The sort of seemingly impossible carnivore that’s all teeth and jaws, with a body thrown in as an afterthought.
But they couldn’t see it.
The reason they couldn’t see it was because the ship was so evil and menacing in appearance that if a photon of light approached the ship on a sidewalk, it would cross the street, just to be safe.
It took a few microseconds for Magellan’s hail to travel out on the right frequency across the twenty-seven kilometers of space that separated the vessels. But once it did, a very different crewman on a very different bridge picked up the signal. The being gazed at the sensor display through metallic eyes. A tiny muscular motor in the glowing red iris whirred as he leaned closer.
“Vel Noric, apologies,” the creature hissed. “The human vessel is signaling us.”
“Impossible,” answered the ship’s commander. “We’re sheathed; they can’t know we’re observing them.”
“Of course, Vel. I hadn’t considered that. Forgive my incompetence,” said the sensor operator.
Noric hadn’t bothered to learn this one’s name yet.
Even among his crew, the Vel was an imposing figure. That was saying something for a species that resembled the end result of a drunken hookup between a Gila monster and a hyena.
Noric stood nearly an entire crest above anyone else on board, and out-massed his closest competitor by 20 percent. This was not pure chance. Noric had cultivated many favors among the hierarchy tasked with personnel assignments. They were gracious enough to see that his first crew was on the small side.
Noric figured it was a good survival strategy for an untested Vel in the Turemok military, and it had proven true. There had been one Pal’kuar dominance rite since he’d been appointed Vel, only one. The … finality of the outcome served as insurance that there would not be another on this tour.
“Vel, would it please you to judge an observation?” asked his Hedfer-Vel, J’quol.
Noric hesitated. He’d picked the youth as his Hedfer-Vel because he was deferential, lacked ambition, and was too slight of build to act on his ambition should he inadvertently come across any. These were time-honored criteria for picking one’s subordinate in a system that had little need of retirement benefits for former commanders, on account of all of them being dead.
But several things had planted the seeds of doubt in Vel Noric’s mind about his Hedfer-Vel. He was different from the others. J’quol was not quick to anger, but neither was he quick to cower. He could be very methodical, thinking things through from many directions. He always stood by his ideas, even if he phrased objections in a properly subservient manner. And he could be manipulative, exploiting weaknesses or disagreements among the crew to further the Vel’s orders.
Noric realized J’quol’s eyes were still looking at him, while new eyes had turned to investigate.
“What was that you said, Hedfer-Vel? I was … contemplating something.”
“I apologize for intruding on your thoughts, Vel. I asked would it please you to judge an observation?”
“Proceed.”
“Only moments before sensor interpreter Kotal detected the … emissions from the human vessel, it had made a series of small course alterations.”
“Yes.” Noric exuded boredom. “Probably dodging pebbles too big for their excuses for energy weapons to destroy.”
“That was my initial conclusion as well, Vel. However, by chance, I had been looking at our navigational sensor readings at the same time. There was no such debris for them to avoid.”
This was obviously a fiction, as the two different data sets were not displayed simultaneously. He couldn’t have been viewing them both “by chance.” He would have needed to call them up separately and deliberately. J’quol was taking care to present his argument in a way that wouldn’t make the Vel look stupid in front of the rest of the command crew.
Normally, this would be a very good quality in a subordinate. In this case, however, Noric wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t shake the feeling that J’quol was putting on a performance. There was something entirely too calm about J’quol. Almost … Lividite.
Noric grew impatient. “Come to the tip of the tooth, Hedfer-Vel.”
“With haste, Vel. I believe the human commander suspected our presence, perhaps a faint sensor reading, but had reason to doubt his conclusion. So he altered course to see if we followed in unison. Any delay in our course adjustment would prove that we were not a trick of his sensors.”
“Continue,” Noric said, interested.
“Almost immediately after the course alteration, their commander sent out the signal we detected. I believe the human vessel has detected us faintly and is attempting to initiate communication.”
Vel Noric rolled back on his heels and leaned on a handrail. His synthetic irises shrank to pinpoints as he mulled over the theory. They’d been shadowing the human thieves since intercepting the buoy’s requisition for repair. As best as his crew could deduce, the humans had stumbled onto the buoy purely by luck. In accordance to their foul nature, the first thing they did was hope no one was looking, tuck the buoy under their coats, and run for home.
Normally, that would’ve been justification enough for Vel Noric to capture or destroy the vessel on charges of piracy. Unfortunately, after reporting the matter, the Assembly of Sentient Species, in its unassailable wisdom, had ordered Noric and his ship to remain hidden and report on the Earth vessel’s actions. Apparently, hijacking wasn’t a sufficient crime to perturb the centuries-old noninterference policy regarding humanity and similar lower species.
The Vel wondered precisely what it would take for the Assembly to take the threat of Earth’s rapid advancement seriously. Would the humans need to invade a member world? Collapse a star perhaps?
He reached a decision. “Your observation is sound, Hedfer-Vel. That … complicates things.” He found his chair and sat down. “For reasons beyond my understanding, the noninterference dictum remains in place. We were to remain hidden and observe. Somehow, they have seen through our sheath. By itself, that has compromised our assignment. Now I must decide how to salvage the situation.”
“You have ideas on that facing, Vel?” asked J’quol.
“Yes, what we should have done from the beginning: destroy the vessel. If they do not get back to Earth, they cannot alert them of their discovery or deliver the technology in that buoy to their scientists. The last thing we need is their engineers digging around inside of it and leaping forward a century.”
“Would that not violate noninterference?”
“That was already violated when they detected us. It’s just a matter of degree.”
“True. Would it please you to judge another—”
“Just throw it out, Hedfer-Vel,” Noric said testily.
“Yes, Vel. Analysis of the buoy will confirm for them that it was not built by other humans. So detecting our vessel would not be their first evidence of another sentient species. The humans have a saying—‘That dog is already out of the sack.’” J’quol folded his arms. “Besides, destroying the vessel may be seen as an overreaction. You know how … squeamish the Assembly can be about such things.”
That was certainly true. Noric could hear the objections coming from the review members now. “They were unarmed and defenseless,” they would say, completely missing the point that that’s when you want to attack the enemy. The clawless cowards certainly didn’t voice such qualms millennia ago when the Turemok military was the only thing preventing the Lividite war machine from overwhelming the entire sector.
The Assembly’s idea of long-term military strategy seemed to be to allow every planet full of savages to frolic about space giddily until they were technologically advanced enough to pose a real threat. It made as much sense as hand-rearing Gomeltic hatchlings until they were big enough to eat you.
But that was someone else’s problem. If Noric ordered the human ship destroyed and the Assembly disapproved, that would be his problem.
“Your observation is persuasive, Hedfer-Vel. Tiller, open a portal and move us to one-third Dar-Penyog from the human vessel. That should put us well outside their sensors. Once in position, continue observation until we receive updated orders. And find out what went wrong with our sheath to cause this mess in the first place!”
Without delay, the (nearly) invisible ship came about, flexed its muscles as if to pounce, and then leaped headlong into a hole in space.
* * *
“They’ve disappeared, ma’am!” Wheeler shouted from his nav station, bewildered.
“They left?” asked Allison.
“No, well, yes. Sort of. They didn’t leave, exactly. There was a strange energy spike. Now they aren’t appearing on our scopes.”
Allison queried the last ten seconds of sensor data and watched the playback. It was exactly as Wheeler described. A bizarre blip, then the fuzzy anomaly simply vanished.
“What the hell was that all about?” she asked no one in particular.
“I don’t know,” replied Prescott, “but I’ll feel a bit better with one less mystery hanging over our heads.”
“Amen to that.” Allison sank into her chair. Whatever it had been, Allison was relieved it had decided to bug out instead of start shooting.
“Helm, resume course for Earth.”
“Aye, ma’am.”