“That’s a very good question,” Desjani agreed. “Does it mean there’s another sort of trap lurking somewhere in this star system?”
Geary braked the fleet’s velocity, holding it near the jump exit, while the fleet’s sensors scoured the star system repeatedly, fixing the locations of other jump points and trying to spot anything that could pose a potential danger. “Nothing, Lieutenant Iger?”
“No, sir. Just those warships that we can see. If there had been a gate here, and it had collapsed, we should be able to detect the remnants of the tethers. It doesn’t look like there has ever been a gate here.”
He called his senior fleet officers, asking them for opinions on what the lack of a gate here meant. None of them had good explanations.
Rione and Charban had no idea, either.
Admiral Lagemann and his fellow former prisoners couldn’t offer any good suggestions except for reiterating that the aliens liked to spring traps, which did nothing for Geary’s peace of mind.
Finally, in desperation, he called the civilian experts.
“Maybe the answer eludes us,” Dr. Shwartz suggested, “because we’re looking at the situation from a human perspective.”
“What do you mean?” Geary asked.
“We’re making assumptions. Examine what you’re taking for granted. What are hypernet gates for?”
“Very-high-speed interstellar transportation.” That was what he had first been told, and that was how humanity used them.
“What else can they be used for? Think of other potential uses that the aliens might consider primary uses.”
“I can’t think of anything else the gates are designed to do. As far as other capabilities, we know if they’re collapsed they—” He looked over at Desjani. “They’re weapons. The gates are weapons. Doomsday defenses for any star system.”
“Defenses?” Desjani asked, incredulous. “Like, a minefield?”
“The biggest damn minefield imaginable.” Geary pulled up a star display. “The enigmas were the ones who discovered how to build hypernets. They knew before they built any how dangerous hypernet gates could be. They never built them in their most valuable star systems. They built them on their borders.”
Charban shook his head. “A willingness to deliberately employ such things as defensive weapons? A great wall of hypernet gates? It’s a scorched-earth defense magnified beyond comprehension.”
“They’ve proven willing to destroy their damaged ships,” Rione pointed out, “and the crews of those ships. To us, it seems unimaginably ruthless. But to them, it seems such a defense is conceivable.”
“We got past it,” Geary said. “Maybe because we never intended to attack those star systems. We just wanted to get through them. Maybe that surprised the enigmas.”
Dr. Shwartz had been listening. “There’s also the possibility that the enigmas themselves shrank from employing such weapons. As different as they may be from us, self-preservation must play a role in their thinking even if it is species based rather than individually focused. There have been cases in human history where weapons were constructed and prepared, but not employed because their destructive power frightened those who had created them. The gates may be intended to deter attacks since their presence would make an assault on that star system impossible. The point may be not to use them.”
“They wouldn’t work as a deterrent unless potential attackers believed that the enigmas were willing to use them to wipe out their own star systems as well as the attackers,” Charban insisted.
“I believe it,” Desjani said.
Geary had his eyes locked on the display. Maybe there was still some hidden trap out there. The decision on whether to leave the area of the jump point and head into the inner star system was up to him. The uncertainties still surrounding what enigma technologies could do, and the enigma fondness for striking by surprise, made the decision far from easy. But in order to learn more about this race, he would have to send ships closer to some of those planets.
Split the force? Send out a strong formation, able to handle those dozen enigma warships and anything that might be expected to pop up while the rest of the fleet stayed near the jump point? “How much would be enough?” Geary wondered out loud.
Desjani frowned, then understood. “That would depend upon the threat.”
“And we don’t know the threat, which is why I’m considering splitting the force. Is the right response to an unknown danger to divide my own forces?”
“Not if you put it that way.” She waved toward her display. “If there were a gate here, sending everyone in-system would just ensure the destruction of the entire fleet. But there isn’t a gate.”
He could spend a long time wondering about what to do, hoping some new information would come in. But the enigmas were pursuing this fleet, and they had faster-than-light communications. The longer he waited, the more alien warships were likely to show up. “We’ll go as a fleet. My gut feeling is that any threat that appears in the next few days would be a serious challenge to part of this fleet, but together we should be able to handle whatever shows up.”
She grinned. “Where to, Admiral? The closest inhabited planet?”
“No.” He highlighted a decent-size installation on a large moon of a gas giant orbiting two light hours from the star. “We head for that. Isolated and not very large, so it won’t have the kind of defenses we might run into on one of the planets. If the enigmas’ anti-surveillance methods can even block our search efforts when we’re close, then we can send uncrewed probes in.”
“They might be able to destroy the probes.”
“Then we’ll hammer their defenses before we send the Marines to knock down doors and get some information the hard way.”
Desjani approved, of course, and when Geary looked back to check on his observers, he saw Rione as impassive as usual these days, while Charban simply appeared resigned to the necessity of using force.
He put the fleet onto a vector aimed at intercepting the gas giant in its orbit around the star newly christened Limbo but kept the fleet’s velocity at point one light speed.
The moon they were aiming for had been six light hours distant, making the transit there about two and a half days long. For the first day, nothing happened except that the alien warships came tearing up to a position a light hour away from the Alliance fleet, then maintained their distance, too few to threaten the fleet but a constant source of aggravation. But with the fleet only a day and half out from the alien installation, the aliens finally reacted directly to the human movements.
“A ship has left the installation,” the maneuvering watch reported. “Not one of their warships, but one of the blocky ones we think are freighters.”
“Evacuating personnel,” Desjani said.
Geary looked at the data. “He’s accelerating slowly. Their freighters seem to reflect the same economic realities that human ones do.”
“Yeah. You can’t make a profit if you spend too much on propulsion and fuel cells.” Her fingers danced over her display. “Lieutenant Casque, run some intercepts on that alien freighter to double-check my work.”
Casque worked almost as rapidly as Desjani, then nodded. “I come up with the same results, Captain. We can catch it.”
“Send the results to the Admiral’s display.”
Geary watched the long curves of the projected intercepts appear. The Alliance fleet was curving into the star system at an angle. The alien freighter was heading toward the star, aiming for one of the populated worlds. Behind the Alliance fleet, the dozen alien warships trailed like a patient pack of wolves. “Our force would have to move fast to get to that freighter before those alien warships. If every enigma left that installation, we’ll be left without any aliens to talk to unless we run down that ship. I’ll split off a fast-moving task force to do the job and keep the rest of the fleet on course so we can still examine the installation.”