The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian

“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.”