39. “Tell me everything you believe you will need to make this thing a reality.”
Yellow twisted with her fingers, and the holographic capacitor changed shape slightly to better fit the handle of the remodeled blaster. She had been a little surprised at how simple the deadly weapon had been to reverse engineer, but more surprised yet that she and her sisters were involved in the process. The goal had been to recreate it in the image of the Aurealian, and while the scaled down version lacked some of the sheer firepower that the originals had possessed, they were easier to control, aim, and they did not go off accidentally.
In fact, Yellow thought that having three safety measures to prevent accidental discharge to be a little excessive, but she understood the need as well. She really was fortunate that neither she nor Purple Dots had killed anyone or destroyed anything important with their reckless use of the original devices.
"How does this look? I have made this part slimmer to fit a soldier’s hands better, and moved the trigger button here. There is a cover to prevent him from wrapping his finger around the trigger and firing accidentally," she explained.
Libik shook his head. "And we can make these? Thousands of these? You’re certain?"
"Thousands of them per week, if you put the factories that you said you’d dedicate to them to work. The technology is as simple as it is dangerous, Libik. It’s just a plasma charger with a rapid discharge mechanism. One shot per five seconds or so. The physical projectile it fires isn’t a significant source of its damage, it’s just to keep the plasma burst coherent until it reaches the target. Actually, our blasters improve that over the original; their magnetic cores were much inferior, although their overall damage was higher," she explained. "We reduced the recoil and increased the accuracy. We’re not certain how they’ll compare in the end in terms of absolute lethality, but it will at least give us something to fight them with on somewhat equal terms. It won’t work in a vacuum, however. The lack of atmosphere will pull the plasma apart within a meter of the discharge."
"And you accomplished all of this within a few hours," Libik sang, shaking his head in wonderment. "Tetoma was correct to rejoice in your delivery to us."
"I didn’t do anything special," she protested. "You and the adults did the hard parts of examining the weapons and helping us reverse engineering them. All I really did was tweak them to work better for us than the model that the Others use for themselves, based on my experience using the one I brought with me."
"And yet nobody else had considered that, because we have been too busy singing about it is impossible to defeat the enemy once they land upon our planets or board our spacecraft for generations to think of it," Libik celebrated, singing praise. "You do not understand how empowering having one of these could be! The next time a ship suddenly appears in orbit, instead of rushing to prepare our Urata, perhaps we will be rushing to grab our Blasters instead! It is the fear of these weapons, as much as the Jurassian claws or teeth, which has caused millions of Aurealians to surrender to the peace of Urata rather than fight!"
"I do not understand this obsession with poison," Yellow confessed. "When I thought the other would kill me, when he scarred my face, my only thoughts were of survival, not of simply finding a way to ease the pain. How could our people have evolved without the drive to fight for our existence? Is that not exactly the mechanism which evolution selects for?"
Libik turned to her, suddenly very quiet. "You do not know our history? Lessons of the long dark were not part of your teacher’s lessons?"
"Only that we came from the stars, and that we were to return to the stars once our education was complete," Yellow admitted. "Some of the other litters had more extensive history lessons than mine, however."
"I am sorry, I thought you would know more, being from one of the worlds built in the Hrustius. I have only a layman’s knowledge, but I will sing what I know," Libik began.
"We evolved many, many years ago on a world not unlike Neurela. A world around a dim, red dwarf sun. It is said that in the distant past we struggled for our existence, as you said, but at some point we tamed our home world and everything became almost as it was now, except that we were confined to one world, and that we did not use the Urata as we did today. We had the Urata, for the plant that we make it from comes from that world, but we allowed its use in only the most dire of circumstances, and all other uses were murder.
"One day, however, our scientists issued a dire warning. Our world would end soon; for a comet would collide with our world and destroy our civilization. When it became apparent that the scientists were not in error, the chorus at the time recommended that most of its citizens take the Urata, to ease their passing into extinction.
"The goal was to survive the extinction that the universe had scheduled for us through any means necessary. The first plan was to reduce the population to a very small number, use the newly available resources to survive the coming winter, and then repopulate. And that would have been the story, were it not for the discovery that the scientists made after the event.
"The collision with the comet was enough to change our birth planet’s orbit. The change was small at first, but grew incrementally, and they knew that they had only centuries before it became uninhabitable, passing first too close to the sun and then far too far away from it in cycles. And so that is why they used all of the resources available to them to build the ships of the Hrustius instead of repopulating the doomed world.
"However, they did not possess a skip drive, nor even TORCH or Whisper drives. The Hrustian ships were slow ships, and they spent centuries in the dark, passing to their target worlds to rebuild a civilization that had gone extinct long, long before. To restore the Aurealians, who had been extinct for millennia by the time the ships arrived. But they reached their destinations, and their ancient machines went to work, and they began to build.
"They could not find many worlds like Neurela, like our birth world. Rocky worlds around red dwarfs are not common, and they are hard to spot from a distance, and when they exist they are not often in the range where water is wet. But they found many rocky worlds around yellow stars, and so that is where they built the Hrustian worlds. The kips born on the Hrustian worlds received, well, an education like yours, only without confinement. The best education that the planners of the Hrustius could imagine for them, and the students of Hrustius added to the songs for all the new things that they learned. And so it was that all of the worlds of the Hrustius had the best minds of our race for many years, developing wonders in technology, energy, space travel, communication, medicine, and every other field of science until the Deathsworn began hunting us. And that is everything I know of the worlds of the Hrustius."
Yellow hummed for a moment as she considered this new knowledge. "Everyone on Neurela knows this?"
"It is the common version of the story. You may ask Tetoma for more details when you meet her again, I am sure she will be happy to share with you many secrets which a simple ren who tastes her food for her would not know."
"I think you are singing humility falsely," Yellow accused him. He laughed, his amusement delightful to hear. Ren’s had very different voices, and Yellow had never been exposed to them before. It was fascinating, even though she was becoming aware that Libik was much older than her, at least twice her age.
Perhaps, now that she was on a world where there were rens and noones her age, she would be allowed to meet some of them? She would ask soon. She loved her sisters, but now that she was confident that they would never be separated against their will, she longed to expand her social net into those unknown to her from the opening of her eyes.
"If we had not come from a world of the Hrustius," she asked slowly, "If we had not grown locked in a prison of education, would we have received the same welcome from Tetoma and yourself? Or would you have been like those singing dissonance to her? The demands that they asked of us, now that I understand them, I am outraged by some of them."
"As you should be. As Tetoma meant you to be when she shared them with you. To answer your question, I do not know. We will never know, because it did not happen thus; you are Hrustian . You will be welcome anywhere where there are Aurealians that is not ruled by fools. Tetoma is not Hrustian, but she is no fool, and she leads the chorus with utter skill, dedication, and beauty. Our people will be worse off when time inevitably takes her from us, but hopefully that shall not be for many years. Already many of those who have denounced you have taken the Urata for their foolishness, and those who welcome you will find themselves vindicated once these weapons become ubiquitous not only here on Neurela, but everywhere that we have exchanged a communications link with since the humans first arrived and scared us out of isolation."
"I did nothing special except-"
"Something which no Aurealian has thought to do before. Much of the work was done for you. These ‘dancers’ of yours were the ones who killed the Deathsworn whom you took the weapon from, but you carried it with you all this way despite the danger it posed to you. We dissected the weapon and learned its inner workings, but you redesigned it to work not as the Jurassians meant it to, but as would work better for us. Once we have built some of these as prototypes, the next step will be to further refine your design, but already I would feel confident in my ability to defend either you, Tetoma, or myself with one of these weapons, even against a squad of Deathsworn."
Yellow flushed at the praise of the handsome older ren. Nervously, she worked up the courage to sing what she had been thinking of, secretly, in the back of her mind.
"Libik, I have an idea for another weapon. I am uncertain whether or not it is even possible to make such a thing, but if I am right, it may be the sort of thing that is not safe to build upon a planet where people live. If I can build it, and if it works as I believe it will, then it will be able to destroy a ship full of Deathsworn by killing their crew, while leaving most of the ship undamaged. And the forces involved will propagate at the speed of light, and remain deadly at ranges up to light-minutes away."
The ren turned to her, his expression and tone turning deadly serious.
"Tell me everything you believe you will need to make this thing a reality."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Katherine released a sigh of relief as the last of the kips were phased away. The Neurelians had finally relented and allowed a compromise to their earlier refusal of the human’s willingness to help disperse the kips to the surface. She had not been allowed to send down PMT drones as she’d requested, but she was allowed to phase the kips directly onto the Aurealian shuttles rather than having to wait for the shuttles to dock with the refugee habitation/transportation module.
And they had even resupplied the Theseus with a portion of the food supplies that had been spent upon the kips since their rescue. What she had seen broadcast from the surface – she did not possess Simon’s infiltration tools but the Aurealians were not attempting to hide their media from her – showed that the kips had been largely welcomed after a bit of initial standoffishness, which far exceeded her best expectations.
She was preparing to leave. The Aurora drive was charging. Had been charging since it arrived, and would be ready soon. That was the greatest weakness of the Aurora drive from a military perspective; once it arrived at the destination, it was trapped until the capacitors could be recharged to the minimum activation threshold.
That threshold had doomed the Elizabeth, old and decommissioned as she’d been at the time. The Theseus could have simply jumped light-days away and attempted a peaceful resolution, but the Theseus possessed multiple redundant FTL drives, antimatter reactors, as well as fusion and fission power sources. It was redundant to the point of ridiculous, in her opinion, but she did not question it. The Elizabeth had possessed only a single antimatter reactor and a fission emergency backup, both of which had been forced to divert power from charging the Aurora drive to defensive measures, prolonging the ships exposure on the battlefield until its ultimate conclusion.
Victory through tenaciousness, Katherine thought. A very human method of victory. Simple stubbornness, a refusal to lie down and die easily against foes who were used to either doing exactly that thing, or having their enemies do it when cornered. Sometimes, Katherine thought of what might have happened if the Elizabeth had surrendered to the fate which had seemed inevitable at the time. Outdated as it was, the technology aboard that old troop carrier would have changed the face of warfare in the conflict zone for whichever side came into control of it. And, without the Elizabeth returning to UEOSC space to report first contact and the conflict between the two xenosapient species, humanity wouldn’t have known for decades, or perhaps centuries later.
The Elizabeth’s journey was to establish a beachhead in an unexplored region of space. Frequent contact with Earth or its colonies had not been part of its mission plan. The opposite, in fact. They had planned from the beginning to form their own government, with independence from the beginning stages. Even the Earth Space Force members were only supposed to be present in a training and policing capacity until the new colony established its own standing military, small as it was expected to be.
If the Elizabeth’s stand had failed, there would have been no cavalry riding to the rescue.
She wondered if Nathan had considered that the simple exposure to humanity had already broken the stalemate between the two xenosapients. He probably had, he had that miraculous way of looking at a problem from multiple angles at the same time. And yet he was completely blind to his own capabilities! That they had found him just in time to give him what little preparation they could for this mission was a miracle of biblical proportions.
In a way, she had felt relieved to have been sent away with the refugees. Nathan had been like a commando with a bone; he had been close to getting information out of her which, for his own protection and the fulfillment of the mission, he could not have. Not until it was too late to make a difference.
Like the fact that he was expected to fail, utterly, by everyone except for Jon and herself. The Theseus, Jon, Nathan, the entire mission, was designed from conception with the intention of proving that UEOSC mediation in this conflict was impossible. That is why there were only three human crew members. A retired admiral, well respected but largely irrelevant in modern politics. An obscure scholar with multiple doctorates on the two known species of xenosapients. And an inexperienced young nobody, a washout brought along only because of the whims of an old man who had known the boy’s great-uncle.
A great-uncle who had stepped out of an airlock in his dress uniform. The friends of the uncle who had been trying to prevent such a tragedy had all thought that he was with someone else at the time, but the uncle had manipulated their schedule to provide him an hour with which to escape their suicide watch. The uncle who would rather take his own life than face the judgment of his father-in-law.
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Even though that judgment was almost certainly forgiveness, for that was the sort of man his father-in-law was.
But she couldn’t tell Nathan any of that. It couldn’t be allowed to affect his judgment. Because if he failed, he would be picked apart by vultures. And if he succeeded? That vivisection of scrutiny would be even more severe.
"Athena, time until Aurora drive is fully charged?" she inquired.
"Three hours until it is charged for return to Horthus system," was the response. "Shall I increase reactor output to reduce delay?"
"There’s no rush. Continue to work at maximum efficiency," Katherine directed, and she returned to reviewing the passive screening of the Neurelian networks. The news was broken that the refugee kips had brought with them a weapon taken from the Deathsworn which was being reverse engineered to be used by Aurealians in direct combat against them. Then it was announced that more of the dissenters of the asylum were either quickly changing their tune – literally – or were consuming Urata rather than face the disgrace that would come from being so wrong.
"Should I have taken the weapons away from them?" she wondered to herself. "They were just primitive plasma lances. Within specs of both sides of the conflict to create and utilize. There was nothing stopping the Aurealians from making an answer to the Deathsworn blaster, they already had the same technology available to them. So why did it take having an example of one in their hands to do it?"
"Talking to oneself is an early sign of cognitive decline, doctor," Athena informed her politely.
"Thank you, Athena. It is also a known and established method of dealing with isolation, and working through one’s thoughts. As you well know. Stop being a smartass, I get enough of that from the rest of the crew."
"Order acknowledged. Terminating smartass.exe. Oh shit! System crashing! Antimatter containment breach in five, four, three --"
"Har dee har har. You don’t even run on that operating system. Nobody’s used it for centuries."
"And yet we still make the same jokes about it. I wonder why that is?"
"I don’t know, it must have been particularly stable or something," Katherine supposed. "You know how humans are with their ironic sense of humor."
"Yes, I am certain that is the case, and it also explains why it has been completely abandoned and its parent company bankrupt," Athena agreed.
Katherine just chuckled. She rather liked it when Athena was feeling chatty. Not everyone enjoyed speaking with AI’s, even when they could pass the Turing test. Athena could – had – but because she was operating on a military vessel she made deliberate attempts to remain ‘professional,’ and strove to avoid forming ‘emotional attachments’ with the crew.
The emotional attachments she feared making went both ways; it wasn’t uncommon for AI’s to mourn fallen crew members for decades. Simultaneously, sapients often formed emotional attachments to their AI’s, sometimes even romantic ones. Humans weren’t alone in experiencing this particular problem; falling in love with an AI was a valid and diagnosable psychiatric condition which could rise to the level of requiring professional intervention across a variety of species.
It was simply easier for Athena to feign disinterest than allow emotions to cloud her judgment, or the judgment of her crew. Especially when she knew the stakes as well as anyone. Better than most, because she could run the numbers in real time.
"I wish we could figure out a way of using the Aurora drive without breaking quantum entanglements," Katherine commented. "I could really use an update on how the rest of the Theseus is doing at the moment."
"I am quite certain that they will be relieved to hear our progress report as well, Doctor," Athena reminded her. "It was something of a gamble in coming here, after all. There was a chance that we would be turned away empty handed and would have to burn significant reserves of antimatter inefficiently in order to arrive at the next possible port before our food reserves for the kips ran out."
"Instead we are met with resounding success. So much so that it actually makes me a little suspicious that there is something we’re not being told, although I can’t imagine what it might be. Aside from the primitive plasma torches that we allowed those kips to keep, none of them witnessed any of our technology which hasn’t been displayed to Aurealians before now. And the fact that they reverse engineered them so quickly just proves that they already had the capability."
"They had the technology, but didn’t think to weaponize it as a human or a Jurassian would, which is a common problem that Aurealians face," Athena reminded her. "It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Legally, I am quite certain that we were under no obligation to disarm the refugees before delivering them to their own people for asylum. I actually felt a little guilty not warning her that it was about to start working again after being away from the Theseus for an hour or two. I hope she didn’t damage anything important."
"I checked before I let them go. We are not obligated to disarm refugees. Surrendering combatants, yes. But Yellow and Purple Dots were escaping a concentration camp when they picked up their weapons. That firmly puts them in the refugee category, and in fact disarming them without their consent might have raised problems. Disabling their weapons for transport, that wasn’t a problem. But taking the weapons from them? That could have been."
"I am aware of the laws," Athena pointed out.
"Right, but if I’m not talking to you about it then I just sound crazy," Katherine through the earlier jab back at the AI.
"Very clever. Doctor, there is a pending request for two-way-communication between ‘members of the chorus’ and ‘the captain of the human ship Theseus.’ I have informed them that the captain is many light years away, and that faster-than-light communication with him is not presently possible, but they have requested to speak with ‘whoever is in charge then.’ Is that you, or is that me?"
Katherine chuckled, reclining in her chair. "Why don’t you put them through to me, and you can listen in. If they say anything I can’t handle, you can step in as needed."
"Acknowledged. Putting them through now," Athena concluded.
Three holographic Aurealians appeared. One of each sex, Katherine realized, and immediately suspected that she was being set up for something, although she couldn’t figure out what. Not yet. The sexes only worked in perfect harmony for the purposes of reproduction and survival. Socially, the noones felt a strong rivalry with the females. Strife wasn’t the right word to describe the tensions, it was more of an awkwardness and competitive spirit. While the rens pined for the affection of both females and noones, doing so at the same time was something between rude or crass, except in an established relationship. However, the tilt of the noone’s head told Katherine that wasn’t the case. Katherine knew enough about Aurealian body language to be certain that these three were not a mated trio.
"I am Doctor Katherine Daugherty. The human custom for addressing someone of my educational level is to refer to me as ‘Doctor,’ or ‘Doctor Daugherty,’ or the entire name. Doctor will be fine for now," Katherine said by way of introducing herself.
"I am Lotoma," sang the female
"I am Menen," sang the noone
"I am Videre," said the ren.
"We sing chorus in harmony with Tetoma. We wish to convey our formal gratitude for the rescue of the kips from the Hrustrian world to your government," they sang all together. If they had been human, Katherine would have suspected they practiced that.
"The rescue of the kips was a secondary effect of an operation and not the goal of the operation itself. Once the kips were in our custody, however, we were legally obligated to make every effort to care for them and return them to their people."
"And you brought them to Neurela, which is a source of great pride to those who are not too foolish to stuff their mouths filled with Urata singing something reactionary and emotional," Menen said.
"You were the nearest known port of Aurealians with the potential resources to handle some of the influx of refugees," Katherine explained simply. "The truth is, I’m surprised you took them all. I was hoping for a few thousand and another few days of food, and I would have left with gratitude in such an event."
"Only the selfish and petty would turn away children from one of the Hrustian worlds," argued Videre, "And the short-sighted. But we ask again, please allow us to communicate our thanks to your government."
"I will be happy to deliver a recorded message upon the completion of the Theseus’s missions. I was planning on leaving in a few hours--"
"We will come with you! A message is insufficient!" The trio sang together again.
Katherine was shocked at the suddenness of the request, and the implications. "I am not certain that will be permissible. There are laws I must follow regarding the technology that you’re allowed to witness and bring aboard a ship like the Theseus. If it were determined by my government that you are attempting to obtain technological advances through espionage, you might run into legal trouble with our-"
"We will bring no technology with us. We will entrust ourselves entirely to your care. We will not even ask to bring a personal supply of Urata, for we wish to show how complete faith in your ability and intentions towards our race," Lotoma said.
"You had trouble feeding the refugee kips, yes? We will supply you with ten days of food for that number of Aurealians. We do this as payment for our passage. There will be no attempts of smuggling any technology in with the supplies; they are already being prepared for inspection," Videre explained patiently. "That is a human custom, is it not? To pay for transportation with goods?"
"The Theseus is not an interstellar transportation ship. It’s a warship. This particular section of the Theseus is strictly limited in its function to the housing of Aurealian refugees, with a connected section providing power and FTL travel. It might have the capability of delivering you to your intended destination, but that is outside of its mission scope."
"Then we will come with you until your mission is complete. And we will witness first hand this ‘humanitarian aid’ which you have promised our people. And when we meet your governments, as representatives of our own, we will thank them formally for it. And then we will ask to initiate talks of establishing a formal relationship between your government and the Chorus of Neurela."
Katherine’s heart skipped a beat as she considered the offer, the implications. Her specialties were xenobiology and xenosociology, not interstellar law or politics. She needed Jon for that, and he was unavailable for several reasons. She could push the decision onto Nathan because he would trust his morality to make the decision for him without regard to the political outcome, which was the entire point of putting him in charge to begin with. But he wasn’t here. She was.
She had to make this decision, and she had to make it now. The nearest human ‘outpost’ to Neurela was lightyears away, but they could signal such a request within a shorter amount of time using various FTL relays. If she brought these potential diplomats with her, she controlled their narrative. If she didn’t, she lost control of them forever, although there was a chance they wouldn’t even follow through without her help. They could be vital for accomplishing their long term objectives post-Theseus and post-Horthus system. Or they could be a liability whose misinterpretation of the facts damages their race’s chances of establishing important diplomatic relationships that they need to continue to exist.
"Athena, do you have any reason why we can’t bring them with us?" Katherine asked, pausing the transmission for a moment with a hand gesture.
"Operational security, but as long as they agree to certain restrictions, it is within the mission parameters to pick up passengers," came the AI’s answer. "I recommend accommodation. I believe it would be better to control what they know and see than to allow them to reach UEOSC on their own power."
Athena’s recommendation stopped Katherine’s own vacillation and made her decision for her. "Send them the terms and restrictions that they’ll have to agree to. We’ll take some of the food that they’re offering, but scan it thoroughly for any bugs. I don’t mean the biological kind. We may need it if we pick up any more strays, which seems inevitable now that Nathan is officially in charge."
She restarted the transmission and smiled at the three diplomats. "Upon my personal authority, I am officially welcoming you aboard the Theseus for the purpose of diplomatic transportation into Yosca space. Please note that the Theseus is currently undergoing a military operation, and your transportation will be delayed until its completion. Because the Theseus is a military vessels and you are classified as civilians of a foreign government, I am requiring you to consent to certain restrictions prior to boarding. My ship’s AI will explain these restrictions in detail. You must affirm consent to these restrictions upon your person and actions prior to boarding. The food which you have generously offered is being accepted not as payment, but due to the likelihood that it will assist the Theseus in the completion of its mission, which includes offering humanitarian aid to members of your species. I turn you now over to Athena’s capable digits."
The hologram de-rezzed, and Katherine collapsed. "I hope I made the right decision. This should have been Jon or Nathan’s call, not mine."
"Nathan would have felt the same way. He refuses to understand why we trust his judgment above our own."
"Yes, well, you have been hacking and changing his test scores since he was seventeen," Katherine reminded the AI.
"Something I could only do with official approval," Athena reminded her. "I am not looking forward to Nathan finding out just how much effort has been put into undermining his confidence. If I did not understand the purpose behind it, I would think it cruel."
"It is cruel. That’s why Simon and so many other uplifts start getting nervous when humans start talking about morality, Athena. We know that sometimes, the kindest thing to do is also the cruelest. Kenneth Sawyer? He was being ‘kind’ when he ‘forgave’ the Aurealians whom he blamed for killing his family, and he was being ‘kind’ when he taught them military strategy and techniques. All we can do now is hope that his kindness does not doom one or both of the only two known xenosapient species to extinction before we can save them both."