“Good,” Colin said. “We need that data to plan our next move.”
“Acknowledged,” Dahak said calmly.
“What else do you have for us?”
“Principally observational data, Sire. Our technical teams and my own remotes have completed their initial survey of the wreckage. I am now prepared to present a brief general summary of our findings. Shall I proceed?”
“Please do.”
“The present data contain anomalies. Specifically, certain aspects of Aku’Ultan technology do not logically correspond to others. For example, they appear to possess only a very rudimentary appreciation of gravitonics and their ships do not employ gravitonic sublight drives, yet their sublight missiles employ a highly sophisticated gravitonic drive which is, in fact, superior to that of the Imperium though inferior to that of the Empire.”
“Could they have picked that up from someone else?” MacMahan asked.
“The possibility exists. Yet having done so, why have they not applied it to their starships? Their relatively slow speed, even in hyper space, is a severe tactical handicap, and, logically, they should recognize the potentials of their own missile propulsion, yet they have not taken advantage of them.
“Nor is this the only anomaly. The computers aboard this starship are primitive in the extreme, but little advanced over those of Earth, yet the components of which they are built are very nearly on a par with my own, though far inferior to the Empire’s energy-state systems. Again, their hyper technology is highly sophisticated, yet there is no sign of beamed hyper fields, nor even of warp warheads or grenades. This is the more surprising in view of their extremely primitive, energy-intensive beam weapons. Their range is short, their effect limited, and their projectors both clumsy and massive, but little advanced from those of pre-Imperium Terra.”
“Any explanation for these anomalies?” Colin asked after a moment.
“I have none, Sire. It would appear that the Aku’Ultan have chosen, for reasons best known to themselves, to build extremely inefficient warships by the standards of their own evident technical capabilities. Why a warrior race should do such a thing surpasses my present understanding.”
“Yours and mine both,” Colin murmured, drumming on the conference table edge. Then he shook his head.
“Thank you, Dahak. Keep on this for us, please.”
“I shall, Sire.”
“In that case,” Colin turned to Isis and Cohanna, “what can you tell us about how these beasties are put together, Ladies?”
“I’ll let Captain Cohanna begin, if I may,” Isis said. “She’s supervised most of the autopsies.”
“All right. Cohanna?”
“Well,” Dahak’s surgeon said, “Councilor Tudor’s seen more of our live specimen, but we’ve both learned a fair bit from the dead ones.
“To summarize, the Achuultani are definitely warm-blooded, despite their saurian appearance, though their biochemistry incorporates an appalling level of metals by human standards. A fraction of it would kill any of us; their bones are virtually a crystalline alloy; their amino acids are incredible; and they use a sort of protein-analogue metal salt as an oxygen-carrier. I haven’t even been able to identify some of the elements in it yet, but it works. In fact, it’s a bit more efficient than hemoglobin, and it’s also what gives their blood that bright-orange color. Their chromosome structure is fascinating, but I’ll need several months before I can tell you much more than that about it.
“Now,” she drew a deep breath, “none of that is too terribly surprising, given that we’re dealing with an utterly alien species, but a few other points strike me as definitely weird.
“First, they have at least two sexes, but we’ve seen only males. It is, of course, possible that their culture doesn’t believe in exposing females to combat, but an incursion’s personnel spend decades of subjective time on operations. It seems a bit unlikely, to me, at any rate, that any race could be so immune to the biological drives as to remain celibate for periods like that. In addition, unless their psychology is entirely beyond our understanding, I would think that being cut off from all procreation would produce the same apathy it produces in human societies.
“Second, there appears to be an appalling lack of variation. I’ve yet to unravel their basic gene structure, but we’ve been carrying out tissue studies on the cadavers recovered from the wreck. By the standards of any species known to Terran or Imperial bioscience, they exhibit a statistically improbable—extremely improbable—homogeneity. Were it not for the very careful labeling we’ve done, I would be tempted to conclude that all of our tissue samples come from no more than a few score individuals. I have no explanation for how this might have come about.
“Third, and perhaps most puzzling, is the relative primitivism of their gross physiognomy. To the best of our knowledge, this same race has conducted offensive sweeps of our arm of the galaxy for over seventy million years, yet they do not exhibit the attributes one might expect such a long period of high-tech civilization to produce. They’re large, extremely strong, and well-suited to a relatively primitive environment. One would expect a species which had enjoyed technology for so long to have decreased in size, at the very least, and, perhaps, to have lost much of its tolerance for extreme environmental conditions. These creatures have done neither.”
“Is that really relevant?” Amesbury asked. “Humanity hasn’t exactly developed the attributes you describe, either here or in Imperial history.”
“The cases aren’t parallel, Sir Frederick. The Terran branch of the race is but recently removed from its own primitive period, and all of human history, from its beginnings on Mycos to the present, represents only a tiny fraction of the life experience of the Achuultani. Further, the Achuultani’s destruction of the Third Imperium eliminated all human-populated planets other than Birhat—a rather draconian reduction in the gene pool.”
“Point taken,” Amesbury said, and Cohanna gestured to Isis.
“Just as Cohanna has noted anomalies in Achuultani physiology,” the white-haired physician began, “I have observed anomalies in behavioral patterns. Obviously, our prisoner—his name is ‘Brashieel,’ as nearly as we can pronounce it—is a prisoner and so cannot be considered truly representative of his race. His behavior, however, is, by any human standard, bizarre.
“He appears resigned, yet not passive. In general, his behavior is docile, which could be assumed, genuine, or merely a response to our own biotechnics. Certainly he’s deduced that even our medical technicians are several times as strong as he is, though he may not realize this is due to artificial enhancement. He is not, however, apathetic. He’s alert, interested, and curious. We are unable to communicate with him as yet, but he appears to be actively assisting our efforts in this direction. I submit that for a soldier embarked upon a genocidal campaign to exhibit neither resistance to, nor even, so nearly as we can determine, hostility towards the species he recently attempted to annihilate isn’t exactly typical of a human response.”
“Um.” Colin tugged on his nose. “How are his injuries responding?”
“We can’t use quick-heal or regeneration on such an unknown physiology, but he appears to be recovering nicely. His bones are knitting a bit faster than a human’s would; tissue repairs seem to be taking rather longer.”
“All right,” Colin said, “what do we have? A technology with gaping holes, a species which seems evolutionarily retarded, and a prisoner whose responses defy our logical expectations. Does anyone have any suggestions which could account for all those things?”