“Those and that damned hypernet gate. How do we deal with that?”
“I’m still thinking.” Geary looked at his display once more. “Have we confirmed the Syndic information as to where the jump points are in this star system?”
“Just about.” She pointed. “One of the other ones is pretty close.”
Pretty close. But was it close enough?
THE fleet had continued to loiter near the jump point, close enough to it to jump out of this star system if they saw the hypernet gate beginning to collapse. But they couldn’t do that indefinitely, especially when it gave them no means of learning more about the aliens.
The fleet conference room had an air of uncertainty filling it. Fighting the Syndics, even with a peace treaty in force, was a fairly straightforward thing. Dealing with the enigma race seemed to produce an unending supply of questions and dilemmas.
“Uncrewed probes sent toward the planets to find out more and get better imagery would be easily intercepted and destroyed by the alien warships,” Badaya grumbled. The images of the other fleet commanders at the conference table nodded in agreement.
“There doesn’t seem to be any way to learn more here without being incredibly reckless and foolish,” Duellos said. “That hypernet gate pins us near this jump point.”
“Do we just leave?” Armus asked. “Why waste time just drifting here? Go back to Pele, find another way into alien space.”
“That would be a long way around,” Geary said. “And might just end up with us stuck the same way at Hua. There’s another option,” he continued, pointing to the display above the table, which currently showed the Hina Star System. “We’ve had time to confirm the Syndic data that there are four jump points in this star system. The one we’re already at, and these two way over on the other side of the star system, and this one.” He highlighted it.
“Close,” Tulev said. “Close enough to reach?”
“The alien hypernet gate is eleven light hours from us. The closest alien warships are one light hour away. Even if the aliens can instantaneously send messages and react, that gives us twelve hours.”
“That jump point is two point four light hours distant,” Badaya observed. “We’ll have to accelerate, but if we sprint up past point two light speed to the best velocity the auxiliaries could manage in that time, we could make it in almost twelve hours. There’d still be, hmm . . .” He ran some numbers. “Even if all ships attain optimal acceleration, there’d be a twenty-minute window in which we could be caught by the explosion of the hypernet gate.”
“Twenty minutes?” Captain Parr asked. “If we got caught in that blast, we’d be destroyed for certain. It’s a hell of a gamble. What are we waiting for?”
Geary smiled as the other officers signaled agreement with Parr’s sentiments. The thought of what would happen if the fleet was caught by the explosion of the hypernet gate chilled him, but he hadn’t expected to have much trouble getting them to agree to even a venture as dangerous as this would be. Rione, sitting silently, gave him a knowing look. She knew as well as he how this fleet thought. “Before we go,” Geary added, “our group of experts on nonhuman intelligent species”—he hoped he hadn’t sounded sarcastic—“has been analyzing what we’ve seen here so far and adding it to what was known before about the enigma race. They’d like to present a theory to us.”
A sort of sigh ran around the table, as if a group of college students had just been told they would have to listen to a boring lecture. “Let’s get it over with,” someone mumbled.
Geary keyed in the commands that brought several of the civilian experts suddenly to the table, all of them appearing in a small group. Dr. Setin stood up, his expression eager. “We can’t thank you all enough for this opportunity. It’s very dangerous to speculate too much on too little information, but my colleague Dr. Shwartz has come up with an interesting perspective that we think you’ll find very intriguing.”
Shwartz stood up as Setin sat down. She peered around the table, brushing a wisp of her short, dark hair aside, then she unexpectedly smiled. “Forgive me. Like my coworkers in this field, I’m not used to anyone paying much attention to our theories. This is a very unusual experience.”
She pointed to the representation of the star Hina, which floated over the table. “I believe that the enigma race differs from humanity in a very significant way. I don’t have to explain to military officers such as yourselves that humans base much of our interactions on open displays of power and aggression. This is built into us, from the way our species evolved and the experiences of our earliest ancestors. When confronting a foe, we try to bulk up our own appearance of threat, standing taller, spreading our shoulders and arms, much like a feline arching its back and erecting its fur to create a larger silhouette. What we build also reflects this way of thinking. Our battleships look deadly. They are designed not just to be mighty machines of war but also to project an image of threat and power.”
Shwartz paused. “But the enigma race seems to follow a completely opposite manner of dealing with threats. It’s a method not unknown to humans but also not instinctual for us. I propose that the enigmas instinctively project menace to their foes not by blatant, open displays of size and strength but by hiding their presence and their power.”
“How can someone be impressed, or deterred, or otherwise influenced,” Badaya asked, “by something hidden from them?”
“Imagine yourself in a dark room,” Dr. Shwartz replied. “Totally dark. Is there something in there with you? What is it? Is it dangerous? Is it dangerous enough to kill you? Do you want to fight it? Or flee? And if you wish to fight, how do you fight the unknown?”
The fleet officers were listening intently by then, and Desjani nodded. “Your theory matches everything we know about the aliens. They place a premium on hiding. The worms the aliens hid in human operating systems helped keep the aliens hidden from our sensors and let the aliens know where we were; but the worms in the hypernet gates also made them usable as surprise weapons.”
“Yes,” Shwartz said. “This method of attack is not unknown to us. Humans use ambushes, striking without warning while our foe’s back is turned, but we regard them as unfair and improper. Fighting, our instincts tell us, should involve two combatants standing up to each other, in the open, a ‘fair fight’ as we call it.”
“Snakes,” Captain Vitali remarked. “Are you saying the enigmas are like snakes?”
“In some ways, perhaps.”
“But do snakes fight other snakes by hiding and striking?” Badaya asked. “Do snakes fight other snakes at all? Here’s my main concern with your idea, Doctor. Using the unknown to impress and disconcert a foe requires a foe who is capable of grasping that an unknown threat could exist. It wouldn’t work against something that’s oblivious. It requires an opponent who’s aware.”
“Why is that a problem?” Duellos asked.
“Because the suggestion is that these aliens evolved to fight that way. Who was the enemy that led them to that strategy? What kind of opponents did they face who could be successfully unnerved and countered by a phantom enemy?”
Dr. Shwartz frowned, but slowly nodded. “That is a valid question. Many predators can be spooked by the right kinds of threats. Perhaps the enemy was themselves, with vicious fighting among separate groups from the beginning.”
“But there don’t appear to be very many of them,” another of the experts said. “After so much time in this star system, their settlements are still fairly small by human standards. That argues for a lower birthrate, a population that expands slower than a comparable human one would. And lower birthrates, smaller populations, should mean less conflict over resources, land, and everything else.”