Dreadnaught

Dr. Setin didn’t try to hide his frustration. “We can only guess at the population here, but based purely on the number of towns, we think it is higher than at Hina. Can’t we get closer to that planet? We’ve finally found another intelligent species, and we can’t learn anything about them!”

There didn’t seem to be much reason to stay at Alihi.

“THE hypernet gate here is only two light hours from this jump point,” Geary said, his voice heavy. The images of the fleet’s commanding officers focused on the star display over the conference table. “There’s no way to reach another jump point without risking certain destruction. But, this jump point accesses both Hina and another star, angling deeper into enigma territory. The Syndics named it Laka, but two survey missions they sent there over a century ago both vanished without a trace. We can assume Laka is also occupied by the enigmas. As soon as our four damaged battle cruisers are ready, we’ll jump for Laka.”

“I take it our formation will be modified next time,” Armus said.

“Yes. We’ll be ready for anything coming from any angle when we exit jump.”

“Why not stay here,” Captain Vitali of Daring suggested in a hard voice, “and bombard the hell out of everything until there’s nothing but ruins, then go out and explore what’s left?”

General Charban, looking uncomfortable, responded. “Our mission is to try to establish peaceful relations—”

“Those things have attacked us every time we’ve encountered them! They don’t talk to us, they won’t talk to us. They just want to kill us. Fine! Let’s give it back to them!”

A low murmur of approval sounded around the table.

Duellos sighed loudly enough to be heard by everyone. “The problem we face is that damnable hypernet gate. Even if we destroyed everything, that wouldn’t guarantee that there wasn’t some dead-man mechanism on the gate designed to collapse it and catch this fleet in the resulting blast.”

“Why not hit the gate, too?” Vitali demanded.

Commander Neeson shook his head. “If we start taking out gate tethers, we lose control over the collapse process. Once it started going, the aliens could easily have it set to go into a catastrophic collapse sequence.”

“Enough rocks fired at the right tethers—” Vitali continued stubbornly.

“There are defenses around the gate. All they have to do is divert one rock slightly to throw off any collapse sequence we planned on.”

“Perhaps,” Charban suggested, “if we launched a limited bombardment at a few places, a demonstration of what we could do—”

“That didn’t work with the Syndics,” Badaya interrupted. “I never thought I’d be saying this, but the Syndics seem to be downright reasonable compared to these enigmas. Anything that didn’t convince the Syndics won’t convince the aliens.”

“I have to agree,” Duellos said.

“That doesn’t prevent us from striking back,” Desjani said. “Bombard some of those towns. They’ve given us more than adequate grounds to retaliate. We can show them that when they attack us, they can’t just run away and avoid any more hurt.”

Charban hesitated. “They’d see a bombardment launched from here early enough to easily allow evacuation of their populace. It will demonstrate our capabilities in a way impossible for them to ignore but shouldn’t create any motives for vengeance based on civilian deaths.”

Dr. Shwartz and Dr. Setin had been invited to listen in, and now Shwartz spoke reluctantly. “We don’t even know whether they understand the distinction between military and civilian. The enigmas may be as blind to such a concept as the average human male is to the difference between taupe and beige.”

“According to the Syndic records,” Duellos said, “they lost quite a few ships in this region before even realizing that the enigmas existed. Many of those ships were lightly armed or unarmed. If the aliens do recognize the distinction between military and civilian, they seem more than capable of disregarding it.”

Everyone looked at Geary, who bent his head in thought for a moment before nodding. “Yes. We’ll send them another message saying that we want peaceful coexistence, but that if they persist in seeking war, they’ll have to deal with war. I don’t see any other option.”

The moment of silence that followed was broken by the captain of Victorious. “Do we bury our dead here? Send them toward this star?”

“No,” Vitali insisted immediately.

Geary nodded once more. “I agree with Captain Vitali. There’s too great a chance that the journey of our honored dead to the star would be halted by the aliens. There are compartments on the assault transports for storage of casualties. We’ll transfer our dead there and hold them until we reach a star system where their burials can be conducted safely. Captain Smythe, how long until all four damaged battle cruisers are back in battle-ready condition?”