Part 7 (1/2)

”Just coming up now, sir.” Ten seconds went by. Finally, Kasparov said, ”Bogie is very long and very narrow, somewhere between one-eight-zero-zero and two-three-zero-zero meters in length with a fifty-two to seventy-five-meter beam. He's got reactionless drive, so we don't have a drive spectrum to work with on identification. On the other hand, there aren't many races with that technology, so that narrows down the possibilities.”

Reactionless drive was an exotic technology that gave its possessor sublight propulsion without having to shoot hot gases out the back end of the s.h.i.+p. Because a hot sublight drive emitting brilliant plasma flying out a thruster nozzle at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light tended to stand out against the dark, cold background of interstellar s.p.a.ce, everyone wanted reactionless drive, but only a handful of the most advanced civilizations had it.

There were only three known races with s.h.i.+ps that combined large size, long and narrow shapes, and reactionless drive: the Lakirr, who would randomly decide either to ignore you or vaporize you in a heartbeat with their obscenely advanced weaponry-no one could ever predict which; the Sarthan, who were not dangerous at all unless you let them try to sell you something; and the Vaaach, a very powerful but highly insular species who did not get involved in anyone else's business but who dealt swiftly and severely with anyone who got involved in theirs.

In any event, Max was not going to let pa.s.s an opportunity to gather intelligence and train his crew at the same time. Precious little was known about all three of these races, and anything learned from close observation of their vessels would be valuable to Naval Intelligence. Plus, his people needed practice tracking, identifying, and closing on s.h.i.+ps un.o.bserved. That was the best way to kill the enemy: sneak up on him and stab him in the back before he even knows you're there. Besides, his crew needed confidence p.r.o.nto, and the only way for them to get it was to do something difficult and live to tell about it. This was the chance to do just that.

”People, we are going to work up this target. Let's see how close we can get and how much we can observe without being observed ourselves. Maneuvering, reduce drive to 10 percent, and allow the target to get ahead of us, and then let's slip in on his six o'clock. Maintain range of at least eighteen thousand kills until I tell you to close.” Max pulled up the sensors' best estimate of the contact's course plot, increased the scale to maximum, and squinted at it for a moment.

”Aye, sir. Reduce drive to 10 percent, slip in on his six, keep range in excess of one-eight-triple-zero kills until ordered otherwise.”

”Skipper?” said Garcia softly, his voice carrying no farther than the edge of the command island occupied by only him and the captain.

”Yes, XO?” Max matched his volume.

”b.a.l.l.sy move, sir. Risky too. What if they take offense at being tailed?”

”This crew needs to practice these skills under conditions of risk, and they need to succeed at something. Anything. If we're spotted, we apologize, or we evade and escape, depending on who it turns out to be.”

”They might not give us that chance, sir. If it's the Lakirr, and they woke up on the wrong side of the mossy rock this morning, they could hit us with their antiproton beam, and we'd evaporate in about three-eighths of a second.”

”Between you and me, XO, it's not the Lakirr.”

”How do you know, sir? We've got no drive spectrum, no comm traffic, no markings, and no read on configuration except that the s.h.i.+p is something of an alien phallic symbol.”

”I can tell from their s.h.i.+p handling. If you watch the plot of their trajectory at large scale, you can see they're not moving in a smooth path.” He pointed to a screen on his display, showing an almost imperceptible serpentine motion in three dimensions. ”They slew their bow around ever so slightly to change the angle of their sensor beams relative to any target in their path. It reminds me of an animal following a scent by moving its nose back and forth. It's the Vaaach. I've seen them do that before.”

”It's not in the recognition protocols.”

”I sent it up the line, but Intel never included it in any of the official protocols, saying that 'the purported observation was not supported by sufficiently variegated phenomenologies to be regarded as an authoritative indicium of vessel origin,' which I think is IntelSpeak for 'We didn't think of it, so we're not going to sign off on it.'”

Garcia chuckled. ”Been there. Done that. Bought the memory wipe.”

”Anyway, trust me on this one. It's the Vaaach. I want to see how long it takes the children to figure it out and how they do it. And no prompting from the studio audience.”

”My lips are sealed.” Whatever a studio audience was.

Chief Petty Officer First Cla.s.s Claude LeBlanc directed the activities of the three s.p.a.cers at the Maneuvering Stations, giving drive and course change orders. The tactical display showed that the bogie was slowly pulling ahead and the c.u.mberland was tiptoeing around to get behind it. After a few minutes, the bogie was dead ahead.

”Captain, I think we have an ID on the bogie,” said Kasparov. ”But it's not by the book. We have only a single phenomenology, and the one we've got isn't even an accepted recognition protocol but, well, I think it's pretty solid, sir.”

”Mr. Kasparov, when I was in Sensors, I made an identification or two that wasn't in the ARPs, so tell me what you've got.”

”Now that we're nearly on her six, we're getting some good images of a few viewports the contact is showing aft. G.o.d only knows why they aren't shuttered, but there they are. Maybe they think that no one would ever be back here, or maybe it's an oversight.”

”And maybe they want us to see them so that we can do whatever it is you just did,” Max suggested. ”I hear there are some species out there that are very much into the sport of tracking and being tracked.”

”Anyway, the guys in the back room brainstormed that if we aggregated the light from all of those viewports, we might have enough photons to do a reasonably good spectral a.n.a.lysis.”

This was pretty d.a.m.n smart. Max and Garcia smiled with approval as they worked through the concept. ”So, you're thinking that the people who design lights for a s.h.i.+p are going to give the crew light that closely approximates the spectral balance of their sun as seen from the surface of their homeworld, right?”

”Exactly, sir, because that's what we do on our s.h.i.+ps.”

”And did you get a match?”

”Yes, sir. The spectral curve from those viewports is a nearly perfect fit with what you would see at local noon on a partly cloudy day on the surface of Grrlrrmgkruhgror.”

It sounded like he had something caught in his throat. ”Growl... what?”

”It's the name of the Vaaach homeworld, sir. Sigint finally decrypted it from a civilian traffic routing message a few days ago.”

”Good job. Never seen that one before. Write it up and I'll kick it up the line. Maybe in a month or two folks around the fleet will be taking spectra on viewports to do a 'Kasparov ID.'”

Kasparov beamed. Max knew he could be counted on to pa.s.s that information on to his back room and that the confidence problem in that department might well be solved for good.

”And Kasparov?”

”Sir?”

”Unless I'm missing something, you just identified this target, so...”

”Oh. Sorry, sir.” He changed to his CIC announcement voice. ”Target tentatively identified as originating from a neutral power, the Vaaach sovereignty. Redesignating Uniform One as Nebula One.”

”Intel, now that we know we're dealing with the Vaaach, what does that tell us?”

The ensign at the Intel console, whom Max knew to be on his first war cruise after being promoted out of the twenty-seven-man Intel back room on a battlecruiser, could only manage to stare like a Volem Woodsgrazer caught in the vehicle guidebeams.

Once again, the wisdom of Commodore Middleton came to Max's mind: ”A wars.h.i.+p captain is a lot like a teacher, with a life-and-death grading scale.” School was in session today, and CIC was the cla.s.sroom.

”Mr. Bhattacharyya, you're one of the most intelligent people on this s.h.i.+p, not including myself and the XO, of course. I'm sure you could stand there and talk to me for fifteen minutes, summarizing everything known to Naval Intelligence about the Vaaach. That doesn't help me. You explaining to me about what their lawmaking process is like or whether their poetry rhymes doesn't help me do my job today.”

Max stepped off the command island, crossed over to the Intel console, put his hand on the young man's shoulder, and looked him straight in the eye. ”What I need you to do, and what a capable intelligence officer does, is take all that wonderful information you have in your head about the Vaaach, and apply it to our current situation, distilling from that vast body of data in your skull the few sentences of facts, conclusions, and informed conjecture that will a.s.sist me in making the decisions I'm going to make over the next few minutes. The ability to do that is what distinguishes a mere database from an intelligence officer. Now, Ensign, what do you have to tell me that I can use?”

Max could see the wheels turning in the young man's head. According to his records, he really was quite brilliant. ”Well, sir, first, the Vaaach are an arboreal species, and the trees on their homeworld are more than a kilometer tall, with the Vaaach living in multiple levels in the forest canopy. Accordingly, one would expect them to be skilled at three-dimensional thinking. Their tactics would probably not be subject to the two-dimensional bias that humans and others descended from surface-dwelling species have to struggle with. Second, previous interactions with humans show them to be very deliberate. Our experience is that they tend to act slowly, after careful consideration, but are very sure and resolute about decisions once they are made and change their minds very rarely.

”Third, it is known that they have an elaborate code of honor and that, unlike some species who are honorable only in their internal dealings, the Vaaach conduct their dealings with other races under their code. You can expect them to be very honorable, for their word will be their bond, and that they will not lie to you or manipulate the truth to obtain advantage.” He stopped, considering how he needed to qualify the previous statement. ”On the other hand, they are tough negotiators and skilled bargainers, in part because they are very patient and are not afraid to walk away from a deal and come back days or even years later when the situation has turned to their advantage.

”Fourth, in combat they are tenacious, skillful, and extremely courageous. As best we can tell from secondary sources, they have never lost a war. If they are fighting, I would very much want to be on their side, and I would very much not want to be their enemy.

”Fifth, although we have had little contact with them, what little information we have suggests their technology to be significantly more advanced than ours, a fact suggested by their possession of reactionless drive technology.” He stopped, apparently searching his mind for other relevant data. ”Does that help, sir?”

”Very much. Thank you, Ensign.” Max walked slowly over to the chief at Maneuvering. ”Chief LeBlanc, you wouldn't happen to be a c.o.o.na.s.s, would you?”

Max used the slang term for a Cajun, one that, though it sounded insulting, was generally used in a friendly fas.h.i.+on, especially from one Cajun to another. The older man smiled, revealing a mouth full of large, only slightly crooked teeth. ”Only if there is gumbo to be eaten, crawfish to be boiled, two steps to be danced, or beer to be drunk. Um, sir.”

”Sounds good to me. You from Nouvelle Acadiana?” The chief nodded. ”Moi, aussi. Maybe we'll both see it again, someday.” Max did, after all, still have some cousins there he got along with pretty well, and his grandfather was still alive. ”When we win this war and get back home, let's round up a yard of friends and family and boil us up a big pot of crawfish, with corn and potatoes, and a cooler full of beer on the side.”

”And pecan pie for dessert,” added the chief.

”You got it.” Max got back down to business. ”Chief, you ever crawl a duck pond?”