Dreadnaught

DAYS of repairing battle damage passed quickly enough. Geary noticed that now when members of the crew spoke of the aliens, they were angry, and that watch-standers viewing alien activity had the aspect of someone aiming weapons at a target they wished killed. Did the enigmas understand how their actions were impacting human feelings about them? Kalixa had been horrible, but the deaths here had been personal ones, men and women who had been friends and comrades, and increasingly the human crews appeared ready to reply to enigma intransigence with firepower rather than futile attempts to communicate.

“We received another message from the enigma race,” Rione told him. “Do you wish to view it?”

“Anything new in it?” Geary asked.

“No. Same avatar, same false bridge, and same dialogue. If we took the words ‘die’ and ‘go’ away from the enigmas, most of their ability to converse would vanish.”

Charban grimaced. “They’re not acknowledging what we said, and they’re not acknowledging events here. It’s like talking to a wall.”

Unable to help a grim smile, Geary pointed to his display, where the tracks from the bombardment projectiles fired days ago were finally curving down into the planet’s atmosphere. “We’re about to knock on that wall. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I think it’ll make us all feel better. Maybe, maybe, the enigmas will realize how much damage their actions are doing to them.”

“If they are anything like humans, that may be a vain hope. Do you think they evacuated the targeted sites?” Rione asked.

“We have no idea. That blurring is blocking too much detail.”

“Are you certain this isn’t due to more enigma worms?” Charban asked.

Desjani shook her head. “If it is, the worms are using a totally different principle. We have people examining every possibility, especially the ones that seem impossible, but our code monkeys haven’t found anything. Our technicians all believe that this is some form of real interference near the things we’re trying to observe.”

Charban nodded, his eyes downcast. “I’d be surprised if it was worms this time, since the enigmas couldn’t hide their own ships when they attacked us here.” He stood to go.

“Don’t you want to watch the bombardment hit?” Desjani asked.

General Charban shook his head, not looking at her. “I’ve already seen too many towns die, Captain Desjani.”

She closed her eyes as Charban left, then opened them and shook her head at Geary. “We’re back to bombarding towns.”

“They had plenty of time to evacuate,” Geary said.

“I know. This time they had plenty of time. What about next time?”

“I won’t let them drive us to that.”

“May our ancestors forgive us all if we sink to that level again, no matter what these things do to provoke us,” Desjani replied in a low voice.

The mood on the bridge was somber rather than celebratory as they watched the time-late images. When the bombardment arrived there, the alien-controlled planet had been five and half light hours from where the Alliance fleet hovered near the jump point. The light from that event had taken five and half hours to arrive, and they were finally seeing what had happened as the kinetic projectiles dove into atmosphere, plummeting from the heavens to tear apart the . . . what? Homes? Businesses? Factories? Did the enigmas have such things as humans understood them?

Lieutenant Iger reported in, his own tones subdued. “Whatever they use to blur sight of their towns survived the bombardment. We can tell we tore up the targets, but that’s about all.”

“Fine.” Geary made a final check of the status of repairs. Even badly damaged Daring had patched up the last systems and was ready to go. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

TWELVE

LAKA Star System was empty, almost literally so. White dwarf stars didn’t tend to have much in the way of planets, and Laka had only a tiny, tormented rock in a looping, close-in orbit that made it likely the minor planet had sailed in from space and been captured by the star sometime within the last million years or so. No alien presence could be detected, but after Pele, no one was sure if that meant there was actually nothing here. “Not a lot to hide among,” Desjani commented.

Geary took the fleet quickly across the star system to a jump point offering a long jump deeper into alien space. The star they were aiming for this time hadn’t ever officially been given a name by the Syndics, a fact that marked this as the true limits of human expansion in this part of the galaxy. “This is likely to be one of the enigmas’ long-settled star systems,” Geary cautioned the fleet. “They may expect us there. All ships should set weapons to fire upon any threats automatically upon our arrival.” It was a dangerous policy, because even ships’ combat systems could sometimes be rattled by jump exit and mistakenly identify a friendly ship as an enemy, but hopefully the radically different designs of the alien craft would minimize any chances of that.