37. No plan survives contact with a human.
The humans have a saying "No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy." The Aurealians and the Jurassians have a similar saying. "No plan survives contact with a human."
Notoma sat calmly, listening to the hums and whispers of the ship around him as reports from their opening salvo came in. It was successful beyond his wildest hopes and dreams, the kinetic missiles destroying a significant portion of the Hruthian system’s Deathsworn emplacements. He could not claim credit for the plan, not entirely, but he had been the general placed in charge of enacting it. And it had almost gone off flawlessly. Would have gone off flawlessly, except for the presence of a human ship in the system.
He had delayed as long as possible once the decoy flares had appeared. That they were almost all decoys was another stroke of genius that he couldn’t claim credit for. Not all of them, but only one in four of the ships that had drawn the Deathsworn into position were manned. The rest were basically flying bricks with TORCH drives, skip drives, a fusion generator, and a remote navigation system.
That isn’t to say that those ‘flying bricks’ weren’t important to the overall plan. Each of them carried valuable supplies, munitions, and weapons, including enough missiles for several additional salvos like the one that had just crippled the Horthian system’s defenses. But for the most part, they were a bluff.
Bluffing was not an Aurealian trait. It was not particularly a Jurassian trait either. But it was a human trait, and it was a human weapon. One of the many clever weapons that had allowed the Elizabeth to survive impossible odds. And a weapon that the Aurealians had copied and were now attempting to exploit to their advantage for the first time after decades of planning.
And it had worked! Beautifully! Notoma could hear the cries of the doomed Deathsworn, those trapped on destroyed vessels or stations, and those who had had time to don vacuum suits before being sucked out into the void as they shouted for rescue over their radio comms with their dwindling supply of oxygen.
His ambush, which he could not claim credit for because credit belonged to the humans for the underlying strategies, but which he had helped plan, was one of the most successful raids on a fortified Deathsworn system in recent memory. And Notoma had only one question.
"What do you mean, ‘they all missed’?" he demanded, his voice a deep, low monotone. Deep for an Aurealian, anyway. To a human, he would sound like someone speaking with helium.
One of the ships lieutenants, Selben, nervously studied the report. "Of the thirteen missiles targeting the primary target and the eleven targeting the secondary target, none of the missiles made contact. Their targeting systems are reporting no errors, their flight logs indicate no malfunction. they’re still flying out there. They have escape velocity to exit the star’s gravitational field, but they’re on a long trip to nowhere."
"So, twenty-four depleted uranium warheads are traveling at somewhere between zero point one and zero point three times the speed of light and, even though they have the most advanced guidance systems we can build, they completely missed their targets, which were traveling at normal orbital speeds? These warheads, which had specific, mission critical targets, simply missed, while the overall pool of more than one point five million of their compatriots had a thirty percent rate of accuracy?"
"Statistically speaking, that’s well within the realm of -"
"Not when we’re talking about the difference between a planet sized target for the small statistical group! Hundreds of thousands of missiles struck targets as small as individual transport shuttles! How do we completely miss a planet-sized target? Oh, and yes, they’re planet-sized, because they’re PLANETS! The mission would have been over if those missiles had connected! How did we miss?"
The ship was silent except for the dull hum of the fusion engine, recently powered up now that they were no longer worried about stealth. Soon, the ship would need all the power it could handle, even to the point of exceeding the safety limits that had been law for generations. Another lesson learned from humans. It was better to break safety codes than allow the enemy to overtake you, or to lose lives to save engines which would be lost if you were destroyed anyway.
"We don’t know," Sergeant Disben admitted. Chain of command, another lesson from the humans. Democracy was great for peacetime and large populations, but poor for military decisions. This had been a particularly hard lesson for the Aurealians to swallow, not the least of which because it made them ‘more like the Deathsworn.’ But the military required leadership, not consensus. Consensus was for those who needed protection. Those who provided the protection required order and leadership to fulfill their duty. The discordant voices of those with less experience, those without knowledge of the overall mission, those voices had no place singing on a military vessel. The military was not a place for music as the Aurealians practiced it.
"We don’t know, but we have three guesses. They all start with ‘the humans.’ After that it gets a little strange," Sergeant Kontoma explained. "We knew they were there. Apparently they knew we were here, knew what we were planning, and disapproved of our plan to do it."
"Have they responded to our demands for communication?" Notoma demanded.
"They have acknowledged our hail. We lack any faster-than-light communication with them, so we’re at six hours of light-delay from their nearest known module. Their acknowledgment of our hail read literally ‘Acknowledged, stand by for two-way-communication drone to be moved into position.’" Captain Setik explained. Another lesson from the humans, having the person commanding the ship separate from the person handling the larger operation. It was Setik’s responsibility to keep Notoma alive, or at least to keep him from dying at the same time as the officers who would take over in case their ship was destroyed or boarded.
For centuries, Notoma thought, those ideas were synonymous. To be boarded meant death, because everyone knew that once you were boarded it was better to eat the Urata than allow yourself to be murdered. Today, he wondered how and why that had ever been. But then, he had met a human, and watched them fight for their lives. He did not understand what drove a human to fight , but he understood that his people had been wrong about the Urata . It was supposed to be a gentle mercy to the elderly and the ill. Not a cowardly act of surrender to a fate which was never as inevitable as it had seemed!
Yes, there had been a need to prevent the Deathsworn from taking captives, from establishing breeding populations. But the hard measures his governments had decided upon went far too far, and they did it too quickly. It angered him, enraged him, to think of all the lives lost, all the ground and planets simply surrendered, when they could have made the enemy pay for each step in blood of purple and green.
But that wasn’t today’s crisis. Today’s crisis was figuring out how their ambush had both succeeded beyond their wildest predictions and simultaneously failed completely.
The number of missiles that had struck their targets was in the neighborhood of five-hundred thousand. Most of those had stricken the same target multiple times. The most-struck targets were the moons around the gas giants, asteroid mines, and orbital factories, of which almost all of the specified targets were almost completely destroyed. Mobile platforms had been destroyed as well, but some of them had managed to sense and avoid the incoming projectiles in time. The smallest objects were mines and shuttle crafts; the latter were targets of opportunity, the former had simply had missile pods launched into the center of their area of denial destroyed by the thousands.
But somehow, they had missed the planets.
"Incoming hail from the humans. Two way communication using … updated standard protocol. They just updated our network computer for us, I don’t know if there’s a way we can fix it," Lieutenant Totoma admitted from Comms.
"Will it work to contact the rest of the fleet?" Notoma asked.
"It seems so. It simply encrypts the data sent between our ship and a FTL communication relay, it doesn’t change any of our other protocols, except the one to talk with the human vessel. Human vessel designation is ‘Theseus,’ by the way."
"Confirmed. Leave the computer as is, the humans will just break it again the next time they want to talk with us if we don’t. Put the humans up on the view screen," Notoma instructed.
While they had holograms, simple LCD screens were significantly less energy intensive, and the ship was a redesigned stealth ship, not a standard transport or cruiser. The fact that it had weapon bays and a fusion generator was already so far out of specifications that Notoma’s previous six generations of military leadership would have ‘shat bricks.’
"Hello and greetings to you. I believe we have about a five second light-speed delay between my drone and your ship. My name is Nathan Sawyer. I am captain of the UEOSC United Forces ship Theseus. Thank you for making time to respond to my hails," the young human on the screen said calmly.
"How long have you known we were out here, human?" Notoma asked.
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"The polite thing would be to at least address me as ‘Captain,’ or ‘Captain Sawyer,’ not by my species. We are still making introductions, however, and I would ask to know who I am speaking with and whether or not you authorized the ambush which was just executed by your force," Captain Sawyer said in the same even voice he had used in the beginning.
Notoma had learned Human. Or at least three of the predominant interstellar languages, of which Sawyer was speaking the most significant. It lacked much that was conveyed in song by the Aurealians, but then much of what was lacking could be made up for by the human’s interpretation of body language. The Aurealians had that too, but to a lesser degree, as they mostly relied upon their tone to convey such expressions.
"I apologize. I am General Notoma. And yes, I was one of the officers that authorized the ambush. Why does this information matter to you?" Notoma asked, forcing himself to be polite. He believed – was certain – that the human was a young example of his species, but he knew very well to never underestimate them for such a thing. It was the young of the Elizabeth that had carried the day.
"Thank you. I wish to convey the following information to you, General Notoma, as well as any other Aurealian commander of equal or greater rank. Item number one: I am putting this first just because you asked; I’ve known you were out there since the light of your missile pods TORCH drives was discovered by the Theseus’s sensors that had been scattered in the general vicinity. Item number two: the Theseus is here on official Yosca business. Specifically, we have three missions of which I am legally obligated to make you aware. You are not obligated to comply with the Theseus’s attempts to complete these missions, I am simply obligated to make reasonable attempts to inform you of them. If you do not have time to listen to these objectives, they will be sent to you in alternate for-"
"No! This is the optimal format for conveying sensitive information to our fleet," Notoma said quickly, remembering the last time the humans had broadcast ‘sensitive information’ over ‘alternative formats.’
"Technically, none of this information is sensitive. It is information which my government is requiring me to make your forces aware of. My predecessor has already made the local Jurassian government aware of this same information. Basically, I am required to inform you of the Theseus’s mission and role in this military action at the first opportunity to do so. I had thought that opportunity would be when the incoming vessels came in range of the relays I had sent out, but then you appeared, and that changes my timeline."``
"Humans are claiming neutrality unless provoked. You have not been provoked by Aurealians since the mistakes we made with the Elizabeth, for which we have apologized profusely and been forgiven, according to the relevant governments involved. You have no business in this conflict between our fleet and the Deathsworn here," Notoma insisted. "Unless you have finally decided to stop pretending that your morality allows you to listen to the screams of our children while you do nothing!"
"General Notoma, I, personally, have only been aware of the extent of the crimes against your people for less than three days. My government, and most governments within Yosca, are concealing this information from the public specifically because the public will be vocally and violently on your side if they became aware of this information. I assure you that all of my decisions since being made aware of the full breadth of the crimes against your people have been in goals of mitigating and eliminating those crimes from occurring in the future. Including my decision to redirect your kinetic missiles from striking the local inhabited planets, designated Horthus Prime and Horthus Secondus by local inhabitants. I have been spending literally every waking moment trying to think of ways to help your people, General, since I first learned of your true plight. And the nightmares I have learned about it have plagued what sleep I’ve gotten since."
"So it was you! You have thrown aside the veil of neutrality after all?"
"I saved at a minimum three hundred thousand Aurealian kips and young females from certain death today, General. Possibly more, that’s just the number we’ve counted. How can you look at those numbers and claim I am working for your enemy?" Nathan demanded. "I understand why you chose to target those targets, but your decision was not kind. It was not just. It was an act of cowardice, not honor. Those young females have been fighting for their lives against impossible odds, some of them for years! I spent hours speaking with one of them today, and you would have killed her! You almost stripped their right to exist away from them to soothe your own conscience about having abandoned them and those like them for so many years! That is not the kindness of Urata, that is a desperate attempt to assuage your own guilt, and that of your people!"
If Notoma had been human, he might have risen to anger at Captain Sawyer’s words. But he was Aurealian, and he was instead inspired to shame. It was true; Urata was meant to be a personal decision, made for oneself when the prospects of life grew too terrible. That had been before the practice had been corrupted by war, but now that he had met humans he understood that he had no right to decide such a thing for hundreds of thousands of young females simply because killing them was easier to accomplish than liberating them.
"What else can we do for them, but to give them a swift end?" Notoma asked, despair replacing his practiced monotone.
"I cannot answer that question for you, General. All I can do is inform you of several things. I have not technically informed you of the Theseus’s primary, secondary, and tertiary goals as of yet, as I am obligated to do at the first opportunity. Mission goals of UEOSC spacecraft ‘Theseus’ are listed as follows. Primary goal: Observe and document the conflict between your fleet or fleets and the Jurassians of this system. Secondary goal: Make all reasonable attempts to establish a ceasefire and initiate immediate mediation between the aforementioned parties. Tertiary goal: Make all reasonable attempts to limit and mitigate civilian deaths in the aforementioned conflict. End mission statements of UEOSC United Force spacecraft designation ‘Theseus’ as of current date and broadcast."
"You wish us to make peace with our mortal enemies?" Notoma questioned.
"If you cannot make peace with your enemy, General, then who can you make it with? What else would be the role of the peacemaker?"
"Humans. You trip yourselves and everyone else up with your words. You are so mighty and yet do so little with all of that strength! Why will you not help us?" Notoma demanded.
"I am trying, General ," Captain Sawyer said, emotions heavy in his voice. It was not musical, not as an Aurealian would have communicated such emotions. If it had been, it would have moved Notoma to tears. "But it is not something I can do alone. That is why I am here. That is why the Theseus is here. If we can establish a ceasefire, if we can establish mediation, then we might be able to establish a precedent, a framework which can work on other Hrustian worlds. A precedent that might actually give you and your enemies a chance of coexisting."
"There can be no peace as long as the Deathsworn are allowed to hunt us and our children," Notoma declared.
"Yes. I agree. An immediate cessation of all Aurealian hunting activities upon the planet of Horthus Prime must be a condition of any ceasefire agreement, and a long term solution to prevent the hunting of Aurealian sapients by Jurassians must be worked out during mediation. Are these acceptable points to you and your fleet, General Notoma?" the human asked, as though it were so simple.
"It is not my decision alone to make," Notoma admitted. "I was in charge of the ambush only. I must consult the other generals as well."
"Will you indicate an initial position on these two points? You may update this position by contacting the Theseus at any time through any medium or protocol that has been established between our peoples."
"My initial position is that those are minimum requirements so basic that they shouldn’t even be up for discussion. For as long as Aurealians are being hunted on Horthus Prime, there can be no peace within this star system between our people and the Deathsworn Jurassians," Notoma answered.
"Then as a neutral party I will inform the leader of the Horthus system of your minimum requirements for both a ceasefire and for mediation talks. I also wish to inform you that all hunts upon Horthus prime have been suspended since the TORCH flares of your primary fleet were first detected. It is believed that this decision was made in order to maximize the number of hostages to use against your forces, however, it should be noted that the results count towards your minimum requirements as long as the ban remains in place."
"They will resume killing our children down there the second we turn our drives away," Notoma countered.
"Then I suggest that you don’t leave until you’re satisfied that no such atrocity will ever occur in this system again, General. I am running short on time and my computer is telling me that I really need to get some rest soon before my lack of sleep begins to affect my judgment. I am transmitting to you now data on operation ‘Song and Dance,’ renamed from operation ‘house mouse mk 5456.’
"I believe you and your men will find the operational details to be uplifting. I also believe that the details of this operation may change your military objectives. Please note that operation ‘Song and Dance’ was initiated in the interest in preserving civilian lives on both sides of the conflict and is therefor held to be a neutral action in terms of your current conflict. It is our opinion that the Jurassians benefited more from this action than your side did.
"We estimate that the thousands of Aurealian lives saved are weighed against the lives of millions of Horthian militia who will not be required to defend these facilities now that they have been destroyed. Please also note that the Theseus could only undertake these actions legally because these cloning facilities were not being used to generate resources required to prosecute this system’s defense against invasion. These actions have been carefully weighed by myself and my predecessor and have been found to be within the mission scope and the mission goals of the Theseus. This is Captain Nathan Sawyer, over and out."
"General Notoma, over and out," the general answered. The young human vanished from the view screen a moment later, replaced by a simple UEOSC screensaver. "Disconnect the communication terminal used to communicate with the human from the rest of the system. Engage backup communication terminals for communication with the rest of the fleet. Review whatever data he just sent, and come find me when you have a summary. I will be in my room, I need to scream frustration for a while."