Would the sunfish accept the ESA’s technological superiority and welcome humankind in expectation of receiving more tools? Or would they become more aggressive, fighting for as much metal as they could scavenge from destroyed mecha?
The sunfishes’ rock clubs had been surprisingly effective against Vonnie’s scout suit. With steel blades beaten from shovels and air tanks, the sunfish might penetrate a suit through its joints or collar.
Authorizing gifts was Koebsch’s decision. He’d tabled the idea, suggesting it was too soon to gamble even with token presents of soft fabric or delicacies sealed in vacuum packs.
What if we poison them with our food? he’d said. What if they’re allergic to the fabric?
Metzler was positive he’d identified the starches and sugars in human food that would harm sunfish. Poisoning them was unlikely — but a month ago, while Vonnie was still recuperating, Pärnits had sunk her plans to bribe the sunfish.
We don’t know what gift-giving means to them, Pärnits had said. They’re perpetually on the edge of starvation. What if showing excess food is an insult? We could go down there with the best intentions, give them everything, and offend them so badly they’ll never forgive us.
Since then, Pärnits had apologized to her, but he stood by his assessment. So did Koebsch.
It seemed to Vonnie that hundreds of years of in-fighting must have left the sunfish primed to negotiate. They would always look for new allies and resources. Given the right circumstances, the ESA might bond with one tribe. Those sunfish could act as a doorway to more tribes. Together, they could begin to form a new, stable empire — as stable as the sunfish allowed.
In comparison, on Earth, the European Union had contracted and expanded several times since the twentieth-first century, gaining new states and losing them. Partly that was because none of its members had surrendered their national identities or languages. English was common yet not required by law. To this day, their members maintained separate armies in addition to the E.U. military.
How many languages and individual tribal customs did the sunfish possess? Dozens? Only a few? They were homogenous in so many ways.
Metzler had compared their situation to the arrival of Caucasian settlers in North America. With superior technology and plague-hardened immune systems developed in the congested terrain of Europe, those settlers had ended life as the Native Americans knew it within a few hundred years.
That the Native Americans had been demoralized was a significant factor. Some tribes fought long and well, but only a small percentage of their losses had been in battle. The settlers had taken their lands with sickness, with commerce, and with well-meaning religion or greed or ignorance. They’d corrupted the natives in a million ways like sunlight evaporating snow.
Vonnie didn’t want the same thing to happen here. Assholes like Dawson would compromise the sunfish at every turn, and for what? For money?
On the American frontier, the clash between two worlds had been so varied and lawless that some white settlers sold guns to the natives in exchange for pelts or safe passage, arming the indigenous population against their fellow whites.
On Europa, the points of contact were far fewer and closely supervised, but there would always be people who wanted the short-term gain. Men like Dawson lacked her moral center. He had no empathy. He wanted his prize, whereas Vonnie didn’t think her adventures on this moon would be complete even if she lived to her hundredth birthday. Aiding the sunfish, teaching and guiding them, was a project that could last decades.
I need to prove Dawson wrong by showing that the sunfish will accept us, she thought.
She was pleased with the design work she’d accomplished with Ash. They’d recalibrated their probes to be lighter and more responsive. Now she needed to convince Koebsch to upgrade their tactics as well.
“Can you excuse me?” she said to Ash.
“Why?”
Vonnie saved their files and made a shooing motion with one hand. “Please. Go get lunch. I’ll come in a minute. There’s a little job I need to do.”
Ash hesitated, but she nodded and stood up. “All right.” Then she left data/comm.
Vonnie heard her say something to Metzler in the next compartment. Metzler laughed, and Vonnie raised a privacy screen around her display.
She’d decided to up her own gamesmanship. She needed to be cagey even with her friends, delaying what they knew, earning favors, and, most of all, uniting them against Dawson.
I’ll be a spy, too, she thought — a spy on her own — a spy by herself — as sensitive and paranoid as a sunfish.
Cutting into the channel between Koebsch and Frerotte took longer than she’d anticipated. Frerotte’s encryptions repelled her hack. Trying a new strategy, she mastered control of his audio, then used this opening to further her gains into his virtual station. Unfortunately, his display went blank as soon as she broke in.
“—eep tracking,” Koebsch said before he looked at Vonnie. “This is a secure call, Von. Get out.”
“I need a minute.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
“We’re set to go with our new probes, but they’re not right for carrying supplies down into the ice,” she said. “I need to know if I should be building more probes or larger mecha.”
“Build the new probes. We’re not bringing down food or anything else.”
Vonnie shook her head. “I think we’re past holding back. It’s right to worry about cultural contamination and pushing the sunfish too fast, but this colony represents our best chance for a breakthrough, and they’ll never go back to the lives they had before we came along.”
“Von, I’m dealing with bigger problems.”
“Like what?”
“Sir, she might as well know,” Frerotte said. “We need our engineers.”
Koebsch grunted and reopened his display, giving Vonnie access to their datastreams. “This is for your eyes only until we decide how to handle it,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
The map was Frerotte’s. It showed their perimeter with the Brazilians, where Probes 114 and 115 had coordinated the actions of their spies.
“This is thirty minutes ago, then ten,” Frerotte said, playing two sims for Vonnie. In the first segment, the telemetry from 114 spiked across the board — radar, sonar, seismographs, and data/comm.
“That’s not sunfish,” Vonnie said.
“Not unless some of them have radios,” Koebsch said.
Something lunged toward 114, a bear-sized mass that had crept impossibly close, without noise, without vibrations, using a vein of rock to shield itself until it was within two kilometers of the probe. Then it lumbered forward in a blaze of electromagnetic activity, masking itself with sabotage and control programs.
The intruder’s SCPs must have been underway for hours. It was sophisticated enough to have blinded the spies to its presence altogether. 114 suffered the same false reads and distortions. 114’s sensors were unable to get a clean picture. There were only shadow-like glimpses.
Whatever it was, it was ten times larger than the probe. It hooked two arms above itself like weapons, and yet physically, it was slow. It covered the last kilometer in eight minutes, which was an eternity to mecha.
114 should have had time to run if it couldn’t defend itself. Instead, 114 shut off.
“We’re under attack,” Frerotte said.