He shook his head. These days, human prisoners were either treated under the laws of war or rated as terrorists, depending on when and where they were captured. The Third World War had left massive scars on the human psyche, sweeping away much of the idealism that had marked the previous century. POWs could expect to be held until the end of the war — unless someone arranged a prisoner exchange — or to be interrogated and then shot. Aliens, on the other hand… even if they’d merely captured the alien version of junior crewmen, they still needed to be treated carefully.
“I’ll discuss it with the Captain,” he said. “Have they managed to master their cell?”
The Marine smiled. “They didn't have any problems with the knobs,” he said. “Turns out they like the cell warm, but moist. Feels like Kuala Lumpur in there, sir. I think they would put it even higher if they could.”
“We’ll have to build them a better cell, when we get them home,” Charles said. He looked up as Doctor Hastings stepped into the observation sector. “Doctor.”
“Major,” the doctor responded.
Charles looked at her, thoughtfully. She looked as tired as everyone else felt, but there was a curious excitement pushing her onwards. “What have you discovered?”
“I’ve been trying to work out a baseline for this race,” the doctor said. She smiled as she pushed past him to look at the aliens. “Of our nine captives, I believe that four of them are actually female.”
“Oh,” Charles said. He looked back at the aliens, puzzled. As far as he could tell, there were no physical differences beyond skin colour. There were no breasts or penises. “How do you tell the difference?”
“There are none, on the surface,” the doctor said. “But internally there are some quite significant differences. That one there” — she pointed to a green-skinned alien who looked identical to the others — “is female, with an organ that seems to produce eggs for expulsion into the water. Males” — she nodded to another alien — “produce sperm, which is also expelled into the water.”
“Tadpoles,” Charles said, in sudden understanding.
“Indeed,” the doctor said, giving him a smile that made her tired face look strikingly pretty. “My best guess, Major, is that they reproduce by ejaculating into warm water, rather than direct sexual contact. It’s quite likely that they don’t have any real concept of physical love as we understand the term, or bastardry for that matter. Their society might well be very different from ours.”
Charles had a sudden vision of the aliens leaving sperm and eggs everywhere they went, hoping that they would match up and produce children. Once conceived, what would happen to the child? Instead of one parent… who would take the children in? Their society must have people trained to serve as mothers and fathers, even if they weren't biologically related to the child’s parents. Hell, the child’s parents might never even have met!
“There are no other major differences between the sexes,” the doctor added. “I think that they won’t have invented any form of sexual discrimination, not when females are fully as strong as males.”
“But they miss out on a lot,” Charles mused. “No sex.”
“It would seem perfectly normal to them,” the doctor pointed out, tartly. “And besides, do you know how much time is wasting having and rearing children?”
Charles shrugged. “It used to be that the best years of a woman’s life were the ones where she was expected to have children and bear the burden of raising them,” the doctor explained. “By the time the children were old enough to flee the nest, their mother couldn't really do anything else. It was only since the development of technology that the women could go back to work — and now, with life-extension treatments, the women have more years to play with. How many female geniuses were lost to the ages because of the demands of childbirth?”
The alarms howled before Charles could reply. He glanced at his terminal, then swore.
“They’re back,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ted jerked back to full awareness as the alarms sounded.
Shit, he swore, inwardly. He'd committed the cardinal sin of almost falling asleep on the bridge. A young midshipman who dozed off while on watch would be lucky if he wasn't demoted all the way back to cadet by his outraged CO. Ted forced himself to put the thought aside, then stared at the display. A single red icon was emerging from the tramline they’d taken to reach Alien-Two.
“The battlecruiser, sir,” Farley said. If he’d noted Ted’s near-collapse, he said nothing. “They must have assumed that we were planning an ambush.”
Ted nodded, silently giving thanks for the alien commander’s paranoia. He’d taken the time to enter the tramline at a different point, thwarting any planned ambush… but, incidentally, giving Ark Royal some time to put distance between the two ships. He watched, coldly, as the alien ship started after them, without waiting for any sensor reports. It took his tired mind a long moment to realise that the aliens already knew their destination. There was literally nowhere else the human ship could go.
“They’re keeping their distance too,” Farley added. “They could overrun us well before we reached the tramline, if they pleased.”
“True,” Ted agreed.
He ran his hand though his hair, considering the possibilities. Maybe the aliens weren't as confident of their predictions as they acted. Or maybe they thought the human ship was powerful enough to best the battlecruiser, even though her starfighter squadrons had been shot to ribbons. Or maybe they were still herding her towards a final ambush. He silently cursed the alien FTL drive under his breath. With a bit of luck, the aliens could muster an ambush while Ark Royal followed a predictable path.
“Continue on course towards the tramline,” he ordered. There was no point in trying to hide, not now. The aliens knew roughly where they were. “And draw up a strike pattern for targeting the alien facilities in orbit around the planet.”
It was risky, he knew; if the aliens had a major colony on the surface there was a very definite possibility that one of the human projectiles would strike the planet’s surface and carry out an atrocity. But there was no time to target their weapons more precisely — and he had no intention of wasting irreplaceable missiles on targets that couldn't shoot back. He simply didn't have enough to spare.
“They didn't bring any starfighters,” Fitzwilliam said. He sounded disgustingly alert after half an hour in the sleep machine. He’d pay for that later, but for the moment he could carry out his duties without tiredness blunting his edge. “What happened to them?”
Ted shrugged. Maybe the alien pilots had made it back to Alien-One, maybe they’d been picked up by the battlecruiser… or maybe they’d expired in the merciless reaches of outer space. There was no way to know.
“Take command,” he ordered, surrendering to the inevitable. “I’m going to take some rest in the sleep machine. Alert me if the aliens start to run us down.”
Kurt cracked open the lid and sat up, feeling his head spinning slightly. It wasn't quite a headache, but it was bad enough to blunt him. His chronometer stated that he’d been in the sleep machine for barely an hour, nowhere near enough to replenish his reserves. But there was no more time to rest, not now. A quick look at the status display showed the alien battlecruiser, tracking Ark Royal with murderous intent.
He sighed as the other sleep machines opened, revealing two-thirds of his remaining pilots. The remainder, waiting in the launch tubes, were even more tired than the rest of them. Kurt forced his head to start working, thinking hard. The squadrons needed to be reorganised — Delta Squadron was effectively out of service, having one surviving pilot — but he was too tired to do it properly.