The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian (34 page)

“We don’t know. It’s obviously something our hypernet experts should be looking into.”

Senator Unruh shook her head. “Government-funded hypernet research has been drastically scaled back in order to save money.” She turned a long, slow look at her fellow senators. “How fortunate that Admiral Geary also brought back a Syndic-designed system to prevent gates from being collapsed by remote signals. How fortunate that the Syndics continue to invest in research that we have decided is beyond the proper scope of the Alliance government.”

“We’ve been over this,” Suva complained. “We have to set priorities.”

“Our fleet was almost trapped
again
deep in enemy territory,” Unruh said. “I wonder at the priorities that produce such great benefits and advantages to our enemies.”

Suva’s face flushed with anger. “Are you implying that I—”

“I’m certain that Senator Unruh is not implying anything about anyone,” Senator Navarro said.

“If I were, I certainly wouldn’t be limiting the implications to one senator,” Unruh said.

“From what we could learn,” Geary said to fill the awkward silence that followed Unruh’s statement, “our best estimate is that the Syndics can’t tell who is trying to use a gate. All they can do is block a gate to access, which will only benefit them if they know where we are and where we need to go. They had that advantage at Midway. Even if we face that situation again, we now know that we can use jumps to reach other gates and zigzag our way through their space without following a path they want us to take.”

“A path littered with traps,” Costa growled.

“Are we at peace with the Syndicate Worlds or not?” Suva asked, sounding almost plaintive.

“We’re at peace,” Navarro replied. “I don’t think the Syndics are.”

“We brought back two prisoners taken aboard
Invincible
,” Geary pointed out.

“Who can tell us nothing,” Navarro said with obvious distaste. “They’ve been mentally conditioned so severely that one has gone catatonic on us, and the second is barely functional. We can’t prove any official Syndic involvement in that or the other attacks.”

“Screw proof! We know the truth! They need to be destroyed. We need to finish them,” Costa insisted.

“We can’t break the peace agreement!” Senator Suva cried. “The people would not stand for it!”

A babble of voices sounded as senators broke in from all sides.

“What peace?”

“Ask the people of the Alliance!”

“We can’t restart the war! The government would collapse!”

“Fellow Senators,” Sakai said in a calm voice that somehow carried over that of his colleagues. “As has been noted, we must at a minimum pursue the liberation of those Alliance citizens still held within Syndic and formerly Syndic space before we give the Syndics legal grounds to discard the peace agreement. Perhaps we should move on to another topic.”

Geary waited while the senators considered Sakai’s advice. He wondered if any of the senators could tell that he was nervous, that he was worried that someone would ask what the rulers of Midway had asked of him in exchange for the Syndic device that would prevent a gate collapse by remote signal.

But the grand council lacked any desire to keep talking about the hypernet.

“Well,” Navarro said, “there is some good news. We need to talk about that. We have a vast amount of, um, Kick technology in that captured warship. We should be able to learn a lot about them.”

“We would have learned much more if we could talk to
living
individuals of that race,” Senator Suva muttered loudly.

Rione forestalled Geary’s reflexive response with a hand gesture. “We tried,” she told Suva and the others. “We tried in every way we could.”

“The specialists you had with you,” Suva said pointedly, “are saying you failed to try several methods that might have worked.”

“Some of them may be saying that now, but they certainly didn’t propose any such methods at the time,” Rione said. “I personally asked more than once. If some of our academic experts now claim to have known of other methods to communicate with the Kicks, they must have deliberately withheld their suggestions. You might ask them why they did that.”

Navarro grimaced, tapping his hand lightly against the table. “I suspect those experts had no more ideas than you did. I can’t think of anything you didn’t try. Maybe we’ll figure out how to wake up the two living Kicks we do have.”

“I strongly advise against that,” Geary said. “They’ll suicide.”

“The decision may not be ours, Admiral. What’s this I heard about ghosts on that captured ship?”

“There’s something strange on
Invincible
,” Geary said. “It manifests as if Kick ghosts were crowding around you. I don’t recommend going anywhere on that ship alone. The sensation gets overwhelming very fast.”

“They had a device,” Unruh said softly, “that would protect planets from space bombardment. Is there anything aboard that ship that will show us how to do the same?”

Geary could feel the wave of hope that radiated from the entire grand council. How many billions had died in orbital bombardments since humanity had learned how to go into space and use that ability to drop rocks on the surface of worlds? He shook his head, hating to crush the hopes of the senators. “I don’t know. Their technology, the way they build equipment, is very different from ours in many ways. I do know even the largest Kick ships, like
Invincible
, did not have that defense against kinetic projectiles. The fleet’s engineers speculate that the defense may require an immense amount of power, or a very large mass like a planet or minor planet. But the bottom line is that we just don’t know. For obvious reasons, we didn’t want to fiddle with the Kick equipment on
Invincible
to see what it could do.”

“Do we have to use the insulting name ‘Kicks’?” asked Senator Suva. “And why do you keep referring to the ship we took from them using a fleet name?”

“I can call them bear-cows if that’s more acceptable,” Geary said, not wanting to get into useless debate over that issue. “We don’t know what they call themselves. As for why I call the ship
Invincible
, it’s because it was as
Invincible
that she came through the voyage back here, and more than one Marine died defending her as
Invincible
.”

“Learning more about the technology used aboard the ship will surely be a
priority
for the Alliance,” Senator Unruh noted in a pleasant voice that still drove her point home. “And for the enigmas, you believe there may be hope for peace?”

“I believe that Emissary Charban is right in his guess that such a privacy-obsessed species regards a curiosity-driven species such as ourselves as a major threat. Promising not to seek any further knowledge of them, or enter space controlled by them again, might serve as a basis for halting hostilities. But,” Geary conceded, “so far the enigmas have not responded to our proposals in that direction.”

“And lastly,” Unruh continued, “the Dancers.” She smiled. “I have seen their ships move. It is an apt name.”

“They saved a human-occupied planet,” Senator Suva said eagerly. “Can they show us how to do that?”

“Again,” Geary said, “I don’t know. They are talking to us, they seem helpful and friendly, but they also have an instinctive grasp of maneuvering in space that exceeds the capabilities of human senses or human equipment.”

“But can we trust something that looks like . . . that?” Wilkes said distastefully.

Rione smiled as she replied. “We can be certain that we aren’t being mesmerized by their beauty.”

“Negotiations are going well?” Navarro asked.

“We’re still learning to communicate. We’re not at a formal negotiation stage, yet.” Rione’s smile went away, replaced by an expression that was impossible to read. “They have communicated something to us since we arrived at Varandal that was unexpected. Emissary Charban and I just managed to work all of this out definitively late last night, so this is the first report of it. I wanted the grand council to be the first to hear.” Even the senators hostile to Rione puffed up slightly at her implied acknowledgment of their importance. “The Dancers have told us they need to go somewhere. They will not open further negotiations until they go there. That’s not being presented as an ultimatum, rather as sort of an if-then set of conditions. If we take them there, then they will talk about other things.”

“They told us?” Costa asked skeptically. “How? I thought our communications with the Dancers were still very basic.”

“They said there was a place they had to go. They used the pictograms for
must
and
travel
, so there’s no other interpretation possible,” Rione said. “They did the same, repeatedly, regarding the if-then condition for further negotiations.”

She held out her data pad, tapped a control, and an image of angular characters appeared in the air over the table. “And then they showed us this. It’s a word formed from letters from one of the ancient common languages of humanity, so our systems were easily able to translate it. Even one of us can almost make out the word from its ancestry of our current language.”

“What does it say?” Senator Navarro asked in amazement.

“Kansas.”

“What?”

“The ancient word is Kansas,” Rione explained. “We asked in every way we could, and the Dancers insisted in every way that they could that they must go to Kansas.”

“Where the hell is that?” Costa demanded. “I’ve never heard of a star named Kansas.”

“We located Kansas,” Rione said. “It’s not a star, or a planet. It’s a place on a planet, an old name for a province or region on that planet.”

“What planet and what star?” Senator Navarro said.

“Old Earth,” Rione replied. “Sol Star System.”

The resulting silence was so deep and complete that a falling pin would have resounded like an explosion.

When Navarro broke the silence, he almost whispered, but his voice still sounded unnaturally loud. “Old Earth? They want to go to Old Earth?”

“They are insistent upon that,” Rione replied.

“Why?”

“They cannot, or will not, explain. Not until we take them there.”

“Impossible,” Senator Costa declared. “Take aliens to Sol Star System? To Old Earth itself, the Home of our ancestors? We can’t do that.”

Instantly, Senator Suva turned on her ideological foe Costa. “These are representatives of the first nonhuman intelligent species that has ever sought to communicate with us. It is critically important that we do not offend them!”

“It is critically important that we don’t let a bunch of alien warships drop a stellar destabilizer into Sol itself!”

“These aliens have helped us. Helped people,” Senator Unruh pointed out. “There is no evidence that they are hostile.”

“But
look
at them!” Wilkes insisted. “We’re supposed to take them to the most sacred spot in the galaxy? Those
things
?”

“Judge them by their actions,” Geary urged.

“But you can’t tell us why they want to go to Old Earth! How did they even hear of this Kansas place?”

“I don’t know,” Rione conceded.

“Wait,” Senator Sakai said, as another babble of argument began. “Tell me this, Admiral Geary. You have seen the ships of these Dancers. Could they reach Old Earth on their own?”

“Of course,” Geary said, wondering as always what angle Sakai was pursuing. “They have the equivalent of our jump drives, which appear to have at least the same range as our equipment.”

“They would have been seen and stopped,” Costa said derisively.

“The Dancers have excellent stealth capability,” Geary replied. “Better than our own for objects as large as their ships. Even if they were detected, they could easily outmaneuver any human attempt at intercept. And we don’t know how long they’ve had spaceflight and jump drives and stealth capabilities for their spacecraft, which means we don’t know when they might have first gone to Old Earth.”

Sakai nodded slowly. “Then the Dancers could go anywhere in human space? On their own, they might already have explored human space?”

“Yes, Senator,” Geary agreed. “In my report, I speculate that they might have already penetrated human space at least as far as the outer edge of Alliance territory. They recognized the symbol of the Alliance.”

“Yet they ask our permission. They ask to be taken to Old Earth even though they could go without asking.” Sakai looked around, having made his point. “How can we learn what they want there? By taking them there.”

“And if they are secretly hostile?” Costa asked grimly. “Then what happens? Sol has no defenses. Our Home has been neutral and demilitarized for centuries.”

“We would escort the Dancer ships,” Sakai said. “That escort would defend the Dancers, and, if necessary, defend
against
the Dancers.”

“We can’t send a fleet of warships to Sol,” Suva objected. “That’s politically impossible. The uproar would toss all of us out of office and turn every human star system not in the Alliance against the Alliance.”

“What could we get away with?” Navarro asked, looking up and down the table. “Politically, what would be acceptable?”

Sakai addressed Geary again. “Admiral, did the Alliance ever send warships to Sol Star System before the war?”

Geary nodded. “Yes, Senator.” Increasingly, he had been able to put aside the loss of all he had known a century ago, to live in this time, but questions like Sakai’s drove home to him how long ago his life had once been, that he had lived in a time that was the distant past for the people around him. “Every ten years, the Alliance would send one warship for anniversary commemorations.”

“One warship?” Suva asked, eyeing Geary suspiciously.

“Yes, Senator. One. Of course, the fleet was much smaller then, but it was usually a capital ship to show due respect for Home. A battleship or battle cruiser.”

“A battle cruiser?” Navarro nodded, smiling. “
Dauntless
is a battle cruiser, the flagship of your fleet, and a distinguished ship whose crew has acted heroically and with honor.”

Everyone seemed to be waiting for him to say something, so Geary nodded back. “I would not dispute that characterization of
Dauntless
or her crew.”