Invincible

TEN

Admiral Lagemann spread his hands in apology. “I know that’s not a welcome assessment.”

“It’s an incredibly valuable assessment,” Geary replied. “I don’t know whether I can do what I need to do in time for it to make a difference, but at least I know I need to do it.” He measured with his eyes the distance back to Midway, knowing it was much too far given how little time he might have. “It may be impossible. Especially with that superbattleship we have to haul along with us.”

“We can’t risk losing that,” Lagemann agreed. “Have you been aboard it?”

“Only virtually. I’ve seen a few compartments, some passageways, and during the capture of the ship, of course.”

“Hell of an operation,” Lagemann said. “The colonels and generals with me on Mistral all agree that your General Carabali did a fine job. But, anyway, I’ve been on that ship in person. While the other members of my assessment group were finalizing their conclusions, I volunteered for some of the cleanup duty because I wanted a chance to see an alien ship. Besides, it never hurts for sailors and Marines to see an admiral doing real work, does it?” Lagemann paused in memory. “Being on that alien ship was like a dream. Literally like that. Familiar, and yet strange. I’d be walking down a passageway, everything feeling right about this ship I was in, normal, then I would encounter something utterly weird but which belonged in that place. You never really appreciate how many things we do in certain standard ways because everyone does them that way until you get around a totally alien creation built by someone who doesn’t share any of our understandings of how things should be done.”

Geary nodded. “It’s got the engineers alternately thrilled at the new approaches and pulling their hair out at things they can’t figure out.”

“If we’re taking it back, who’s going to ride it, act as commanding officer?”

He hadn’t even considered that yet.

“You’ll need at least a captain,” Lagemann suggested. “Maybe even an admiral if one volunteered.”

“Where would I find an admiral dumb enough to volunteer for that?” Geary asked, smiling. “It’s going to be hardship duty. The bear-cow life support is erratic after all the damage we inflicted taking that ship, the only food will be battle rations, and the furnishings are all sized wrong for us.”

“Sounds like a little slice of heaven,” Lagemann said.

“Can anyone on Mistral keep an eye on things if you’re on the superbattleship?” Lagemann had been a reliable source of information and a steady presence among the former prisoners, some of whom had reacted very badly to discovering that they no longer had any role to play in the destiny of the fleet or the Alliance.

“Admiral Meloch. Angela has a steady hand and a steady head. Or General Ezeigwe. He’s aerospace defense forces, but don’t hold that against him.”

“I won’t.” Geary thought only for a moment, feeling the prod of having to get moving on the assessment that Lagemann had brought. “All right. Consider yourself assigned to command of the prize crew on the superbattleship. Coordinate with the Marine on-scene commander and the officer in charge of the engineers aboard it. I’ll notify General Carabali and Captain Smythe.”

Lagemann stood up, smiling with enthusiasm. “It’ll be nice to be really responsible for something again! Any idea when the next shuttle from here to the superbattleship will fly?”

“I’m sure we can arrange something fairly soon.”

“Is there an official designation for the superbattleship yet? Some name a little less cumbersome than ‘the Captured Kick Superbattleship’?”

“I hadn’t thought about that, either. I’ll get back to you.”

“Great. With all due respect, Admiral, I’ve learned that one of the officers aboard Dauntless is the daughter of a man I served with. Before I take the shuttle back to the CKSB, I’d like to see her and let her know—” Lagemann’s smile wavered, then vanished. “I’d like to let her know how her father died. It was something I wanted to do in person.”

After Lagemann left, Geary sat, trying to think what he could do. One thing overrode everything else. He couldn’t possibly get to Pele or Midway in time unless the spider-wolves agreed to let him pass through their territory, which hopefully extended a fair way back toward human space. Which meant he had to talk to those who had been trying to talk to the spider-wolves.

He called Rione, finding her in her cabin going over pictograms. “You’re supposed to be resting, Madam Emissary.”

“So are you. And since when did you expect me to follow your orders?” She still looked tired and obviously wasn’t in the mood for banter.

“I know you’ve been talking to the spider-wolves about getting us clearance to head back toward human-controlled space through spider-wolf territory,” Geary said without further preamble. “That has now become an urgent priority. We need to be able to get back to the vicinity of Pele or Midway as quickly as possible.”

Rione eyed him, then nodded. “The enigmas?”

“Very likely, yes.”

“I understand. I should have thought of that. General Charban and I will make that our highest priority now. Oh, you or someone else had asked how the spider-wolves manipulate small objects with those claws. It turns out they have small… wormlike tentacles inside each claw that they can extrude for fine-motor tasks.”

“Small wormlike tentacles? Inside each claw?”

His reaction must have been showing because Rione smiled crookedly. “I know. Could they possibly be any more physically repulsive to us? That’s something we have to overcome. Speaking of which, I recommend you call Dr. Setin and Dr. Shwartz. They have an intriguing theory about the spider-wolves that I think you want to hear.”

“All right. Thanks.” He punched in the call to Mistral, quickly getting a reply from a guilty-looking Dr. Setin.

“Admiral! Is there something?”

“Yes.” Geary studied the expert on nonhuman intelligent aliens, trying to figure out why he had the appearance of an undergraduate caught cheating on an exam. Cheating… “Are you working, Doctor?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Setin blurted out. “But it is so important, we didn’t think we could afford to pause. I knew that you would understand.”

Which is why you didn’t tell me? “Emissary Rione said that you and Dr. Shwartz have a theory about the spider-wolves?”

“Oh, yes. It’s not really at the stage where—”

Dr. Shwartz expanded the view of the comm screen on their end so that she was in it, too, looking haggard but gleeful. “I think we should tell the admiral. This is more of a gut instinct, a belief, than something scientifically provable at this point. We can puzzle over exact words and phrases the spider-wolves seem to be employing until new stars replace the old and not find any certainty. What I feel to be true of these beings, and Dr. Setin agrees this is a real possibility, is that they think in patterns.”

“Patterns?”

“Yes. General Charban and Emissary Rione and all of the rest of us keep trying to talk in terms of specific things. It took me a while to understand that the aliens were always talking about connections between things. You and I are seeing a forest made up of individual trees. They are seeing the forest as the primary thing.” She paused, grimacing unhappily. “Maybe that is not the right analogy because they use terms that seem to refer to balancing of forces. Like spiderwebs. That’s what made me think of this. Our academic bias is to assume that something that looks like a spider can’t actually be a spider. It needs to be deconstructed and broken down to learn what it really is. But what if the spider-wolves are indeed descended from the thing they resemble to us? Something spiderlike. Something that makes webs, in which everything is tied together, all the tensions and forces in equilibrium, a picture of beauty and stability. Imagine a race of beings that sees everything in those terms.”

Geary frowned in thought, leaning back. “Like their ship formations. Not just functional, but also beautiful to our eyes. And if they come from something that could build webs like spiders, that would imply natural instincts for the sort of engineering that humans look at in awe.”

“Yes! Something that thinks differently from us but in a way we can still touch, still grasp in our way.”

“Humans can see patterns,” Geary objected. “That’s not alien to us.”

“We can,” Dr. Setin broke in, “but that’s not our bias. This was what led me to consider Dr. Shwartz’s ideas to be intriguing because humans don’t instinctively think in terms of patterns. We think in terms of opposites. Black and white, good and bad, yin and yang, thesis and antithesis, yes and no, right and left, friend and enemy. What matters to us are opposites, and everything that isn’t a clear opposite is evaluated on a scale of where it lies between opposites. Lukewarm. Maybe. Gray. When we stretch our minds, we can see patterns, but that’s not our natural way of seeing things.”

He had to think about that some more, the implications gradually growing apparent, while the doctors waited. “Then to these aliens, we’re neither allies nor enemies. We’re part of some pattern.”

“We think so,” Dr. Shwartz said. “There was one sentence they sent that I kept puzzling over. It seemed to say, ‘The picture is changed but remains.’ And then I thought, what if they mean not picture, but pattern? Our arrival changed the pattern, but the pattern isn’t gone, it has just altered. And then the spider-wolves said, ‘Together we hold the picture.’ Well, if that really means ‘together we hold the pattern,’ then that explains what they expect from us. Our part in this pattern, I think we can speculate, is in their eyes to provide another anchor so that the pattern through which they view the universe can retain stability.”

“You think these creatures see humanity as a force for stability?” Geary asked.

The two doctors both hesitated, then exchanged glances. “That does sound odd, doesn’t it?” Dr. Shwartz said. “We don’t see ourselves that way. But then how many outside observers have ever evaluated humanity? Perhaps, compared to the likes of the paranoid enigmas and the rapacious bear-cows, we look pretty good to the spider-wolves.”

“There’s a term, a pictogram,” Dr. Setin added, “that they keep using. The software they gave us interprets it in various ways. Anchor or foundation or bond or keel or buttress. Those are all things that lend stability to something. It keeps coming up when they talk to us. This concept of having firm anchors appears to be critically important to them.”

He understood then. “Because without anchors, any pattern is going to unravel, come apart.”

“Exactly.”

“I think,” Dr. Shwartz continued in a cautious voice, “that their idea of an anchor may include intangibles as well as physical objects. Ideas. Theories. Philosophies. Mathematics. All of these things contribute to the pattern, all of these things help keep it in place.”

If only they weren’t so ugly… “It sounds like the spider-wolves and we can understand each other. Or at least understand enough to coexist in peace and maybe exchange ideas.”

“I think so, Admiral, yes.” She made an uncomfortable gesture. “Of course, this remains a theory. It’s not always clear at all how they react to something we try to say. Reading emotion on them is… challenging.”

“There are subtle color shifts,” Dr. Setin explained. “We’ve spotted those on the spider-wolf people, changes in hue on the head and body, but we don’t know which color means what. It is possible there are other cues to feelings, like scents or hormonal emissions, but since we’re carrying on all of this by remote communications and are not physically in the same room with them, we can’t know that.”

“I… understand.” What did the spider-wolves smell like? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Have they said anything about the ship we captured?”

“The ship?” Both doctors appeared uncomfortable now. “We haven’t talked much about that…” Dr. Setin said.

“Why? Are the spider-wolves upset about that?”

“No. It’s…” Setin looked downward. “The… attack. We’ve seen… the aftermath. So many… so very many…”

Geary got it then. “The bear-cows we had to kill. I know that’s not easy to contemplate. It wasn’t something we did by choice. They chased us here, they attacked us here, and they refused to surrender.”

“But, to meet a new species, and then to… to…”

“Have you given the same amount of anguish to the men and women who died because the bear-cows wouldn’t even talk to us?” That had come out harshly, more angry than he had intended. “I’m sorry. But the ugly truth is that the bear-cows cared less for the lives of their fellow bear-cows than you and I did. That’s a difference in the view of the universe between our species that left us no alternatives. If you think I am happy about that, you’re mistaken.”

“We know that, Admiral,” Dr. Shwartz said. “We regret that it had to be so. It’s not a criticism of your actions.”

Dr. Setin didn’t look as if he entirely agreed with that, but if so, he had the good sense to remain silent.

“What about the six living bear-cows, Admiral?” Dr. Shwartz asked. “We keep being told the matter is classified.”

“They’re recovering, as far as we can tell, but remain comatose,” Geary said. “They’re totally isolated from human contact to try to keep them from panicking if they wake up. That’s all I know right now.”

After that call ended, Geary sat staring at his star display, thinking that he should try to rest. Or maybe do something just for fun. Read a book—

His comm panel buzzed.

Dr. Nasr, the senior fleet medical officer, looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He probably hadn’t, despite Geary’s orders that everyone stand down for a day. Doctors had always considered themselves above the military discipline that governed everyone else, making no secret that they thought their oaths as physicians held more important status than the rules binding other officers. “You left me a message, Admiral?”

He had? When? Prompted by the doctor’s statement, Geary finally recalled. The message had been cached in the comm system on Dauntless, set to transmit when the fleet left jump days ago. Neither he nor the doctor had experienced the luxury of time for dealing with that message until now. “It’s about one of the fleet’s officers. Commander Benan.”

“Benan?” Nasr’s eyes went vague as he searched memory. “Injured during the battle?”

“No. This pertains to the reasons for his difficulties in adjusting to having been liberated from the Syndic labor camp at Dunai.”

Nasr sighed. “Admiral, I fully appreciate your concern for all of your officers, but we’re still heavily engaged in dealing with combat injuries right now.”

“Doctor”—something in Geary’s voice caused Nasr’s gaze on him to sharpen—“what do you know about mental blocks?”

The doctor stared silently back at Geary for several seconds. “Not much.”

“Do you know if the nature of blocks has changed in the last century?”

The doctor paused again for a long while before replying, his face increasingly grim, then finally shook his head. “In every way that matters, no.”

“But they’re being used now.” Geary made it a statement.

“You know that, Admiral?”

“I know that. I didn’t know it until very recently.”

The doctor closed his eyes, then opened them again to focus on Geary. “Officially, on an unclassified level, and even for most levels of classification, blocks are not used. I couldn’t discuss this with anyone else but you, because you’re the fleet commander. I’m not blocked, I would have left the service rather than agree to that, but I have taken an oath to follow security procedures.”

“Commander Benan also could only discuss it with me because I was the fleet commander.”

“Commander Benan? Why would a line officer—he has been blocked?”

“Yes.” Geary wondered what else to say, what else he could say. “Purely by chance I satisfied the conditions under which he could tell me.”

“He couldn’t tell me.” The doctor slammed his open palm onto the table before him, his face working with anger. “Damn! Do you know, Admiral, that by discussing a specific case of mental blocking with me, you are violating security regulations?”

“Are you telling me that security regulations don’t allow you to know what’s wrong with one of your patients, a patient who is a fleet officer?”

“I’m not even allowed to tell you that.” Geary had grown used to this doctor’s being professionally unflappable, but now Dr. Nasr was openly bitter. “There might be one or two other medical personnel in this fleet who know about the use of blocks, but even I don’t know who they are.”

“Ancestors preserve us,” Geary said. “Does that at least mean the use of blocks is rare?”

“As far as I know.” The doctor loaded that statement with irony as he tapped a query into his console. “It certainly explains the problems we’re seeing in Commander Benan. Personality changes, problems with controlling anger and impulses, occasional confusion.”

“He had a good record before he was captured by the Syndics,” Geary pointed out.

“Did he?” The doctor pulled up some records, scanning them rapidly. “I see. Yes. He reported aboard his new ship, and three months later, he was captured. Two weeks’ leave prior to reporting to that ship, and about three weeks in transit before he joined the ship. All told, a little more than four months.” The doctor paused, his brow furrowing. “Yes. Six months. That’s the usual time before symptoms of a block start manifesting clearly. Commander Benan got captured before they showed.”

And if he hadn’t been captured, his performance aboard his ship would have deteriorated, he would have committed offenses against discipline and good order, all for no known reason, and eventually he would have been expelled from the service. “I remember something about suicide,” Geary said slowly. “When I went through commanding officer capture and interrogation survival school a century ago, they didn’t tell us much about blocks, but there was something about suicide when they talked about why blocks weren’t used.”

“Yes.” The doctor’s mouth worked with distaste. “It’s common in blocked individuals. They’re suffering from the symptoms, they know what’s wrong, but they literally can’t tell anyone else, any attempts at treatment fail because the real underlying cause isn’t known to those directing treatment, and…” He shook his head. “An impulsive decision, the only way out, the only way to find peace, and that’s it. I’m about to make a statement that would get me in great trouble with security, Admiral.”

“Feel free. I’ll defend you.”

“Thank you. It has occurred to me on those rare occasions when I thought about blocks that they are indeed aimed at keeping secrets by the oldest and surest means. They eventually drive those given blocks to suicide, and once those individuals are dead, the secrets they carried can never be divulged.”

Dead men tell no tales. How old was that saying? Geary let out a slow breath, trying to calm himself. “Why not just kill them?”

“But we are civilized people, Admiral. We wouldn’t kill someone out of hand.” This time, the doctor’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“I see why they keep this so secret,” Geary said. “If more than a very few people knew about Alliance use of mental blocks, then the facts would come out somehow, and the blowback would be ferocious. How often do the Syndics use mental blocks?”

Dr. Nasr shook his head. “They don’t. I’m sure I would have been told if they did. Being less civilized than we are, the Syndics apparently simply shoot anyone who inconveniently knows the wrong things. It’s a much more efficient way of eliminating the problem if you look at it in a sufficiently cold-blooded manner.”

What could he say to that? “Thank you for your information, Doctor. With what you now know, can you provide any better treatment for Commander Benan?”

“There are some measures I can try, but I doubt they will help much. The block has to be lifted, Admiral. Then we can try to start undoing the damage.”

“Can I order you to lift the block?”

“No, Admiral.” The doctor spread his hands helplessly. “Even if you could, I don’t know how to do it. I know, in a theoretical way, how blocks are impressed upon individual brains. I don’t know how to do it in practice, though, and I wouldn’t have accepted such training. That means I also have no idea how to lift a block.”

“So Commander Benan has to wait for effective treatment until we get home.”

“If he lasts that long, and if once we get there, you can get authorization to have the block lifted. The only ones who will know how to do it will also be people who will only do it if they receive proper orders through proper channels.” Dr. Nasr shook his head. “I am sorry, Admiral.”

“It is in no way your fault.”

“If that is all, I’m needed in surgery in fifteen minutes.”

“Are you getting enough sleep?”

Dr. Nasr paused. “My patients need me, Admiral. If you’ll excuse me, I have to—” He stopped speaking, staring to one side as another message came in to him. “One of the bear-cows became fully conscious, Admiral. He is now dead.”

“Dead.” Geary felt a bitter taste in his mouth. “As soon as he realized he had been captured.”

“Yes. He shut down his entire metabolism. I don’t know how. But given the isolation in which we’ve kept them by the time we could react it was too late.”

“I had hoped that one of them would take the time to realize that if we had patched them up, tried to make them well, it would indicate we didn’t mean them harm.”

The doctor hesitated again, then spoke heavily. “Admiral, the creatures here, the…”

“Spider-wolves.”

“Yes. Have you considered the possibility that they eat like the spiders with which we are familiar?”

“To be perfectly frank, Doctor,” Geary admitted, “I’ve tried not to think about what they eat and how they eat it.”

“That’s understandable.” Dr. Nasr grimaced. “Some spiders don’t kill their prey at once, you know. They paralyze it, perhaps, or just wrap it in webbing to immobilize it. Then they leave it, keeping it handy for when they want to eat. They don’t want their prey injured. They want it alive and ready for consumption.”

He didn’t get it at first, then the doctor’s meaning washed over him. “The bear-cows might have encountered the spider-wolves and learned that the spider-wolves liked eating their prey alive, and that they considered bear-cows prey?”

“It is something we must consider,” Dr. Nasr said. “We don’t know. But it is a possibility. We don’t know that these bear-cows didn’t deal with predators like that on their own world before they achieved dominance. We don’t know whether or not they’ve encountered other species who like the taste of bear-cow. Humans do not usually consider themselves prey, Admiral. But when we do get that feeling, that we are nothing but something’s next meal, it is a very horrifying feeling. I wondered at first why a sentient species would develop the means of shutting down its own vital functions, of willing itself to die. But these bear-cows are prey. They have always been prey. They may have developed the means to will themselves to death at the same time as they developed intelligence. I can imagine the physical pain of being eaten, but I cannot imagine the mental pain of knowing I am being eaten. Under such circumstances, the ability to cease suffering would be a welcome option.”

A buzz sounded in Dr. Nasr’s office, and he jerked in reaction. “My surgery. Admiral, I must go.”

“All right, Doctor. Make sure the remaining five bear-cows are kept sedated, kept unconscious.”

Dr. Nasr paused in midreach to end the call. “You realize that we know so little of their physiology, of how they react to medications, that we might easily kill them by trying to keep them sedated.”

“I understand, Doctor.” Damned if we do and damned if we don’t. “Unless we want the other five to kill themselves, or die of other causes, I don’t see any alternative at this point.”

Geary sat brooding after the call ended. What could he do with the bear-cows? An attempted humanitarian gesture had turned into a need to keep them in a state of living death to keep them from actually dying. Would letting them die be the humane thing to do?

He realized that he was thinking of them as bear-cows again, not as Kicks, after speaking with the scientists and the doctor. But no matter what they were called, the same problems remained.

And the talk with Dr. Nasr about Commander Benan hadn’t exactly been comforting, either.

He had no doubt that someone, or more likely a number of important someones, had convinced themselves that the use of mental blocks in a few cases was a justified and humane way to handle knowledge too explosive to risk its ending up in the wrong hands.

But at least one someone who knew about Benan’s involvement in Brass Prince hadn’t been blocked, and had been able to use their knowledge to blackmail Rione. Furthermore, everything pointed to that someone being a very high-ranking individual in the fleet or the government.

It was long past time to shine some light on an ugly shadow. He could ask Lieutenant Iger about proper security procedures, and would undoubtedly be told that proper procedures required Geary to say nothing to anyone though he did wonder if even the intelligence officer knew about this particular thing. No. He wouldn’t do that. “Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer,” a chief had advised him when he was just an ensign. It felt like that conversation had taken place a hundred years ago.

Actually, he realized, it had taken place a hundred years ago. But it would take a lot longer than that for him to forget that particular wise advice.

When I get back to Alliance space, there will be changes made, and people like Commander Benan will be helped. I’ll tell anyone I need to in order for that to happen. Security is not a license for people in authority to hide tactics they would never openly admit to using.

The next morning, he was stopping by Dauntless’s bridge, trying to look rested and confident while he checked on the latest status of everything. He could have done those same checks from inside his stateroom, but leaders had to get out among their people, had to show that they were engaged and involved.

“I hope to hear today that we’ve got clearance to head home through spider-wolf-controlled territory,” he told Tanya.

“Good,” she replied. “Before you make any agreements with them, though, Lieutenant Yuon has something to tell you.” Desjani gestured to her combat systems watch-stander.

Lieutenant Yuon blinked, stood a bit straighter, then nodded toward his display. “Admiral, Captain Desjani asked us to take a real good look at the jump points in this star system. There wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen already at the one we arrived at, but we eventually found something at each of the other ones.”

Geary saw new symbols appear on his display, glowing red with familiar danger markers. “Mines?”

“A mine, Admiral. Just one. At each jump exit. Hidden by some really impressive stealth technology. A really big mine.”

That made no sense at all. One really big mine? Geary bent a puzzled look on Desjani.

She waved toward Yuon again. “Make your report, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, Captain. I had the sensors report everything on the mines, but nothing unusual registered. So then I had them scan the areas right around the mines for anything unusual. And eventually the fleet’s sensors spotted some space-time distortion.”

“Space-time distortion? Around a mine? How could—? Wait a minute. Space-time distortion. Isn’t that what happens close to a hypernet gate?”

Desjani mimed applause. “You got it. Or rather, Lieutenant Yuon got it.”

“They’re weaponized versions of the gates, Admiral,” Yuon explained eagerly. “No transportation capability, just a means to set off incredibly powerful bursts of energy.”

“What do the weapons engineers say about this?”

“We asked Captain Smythe,” Desjani said. “His people first denied that you could put that sort of thing in something the size of those mines, big as they are, then conceded that really good engineers might be able to do it.”

“Really good engineers,” Geary repeated. “Like the spider-wolves.”

“And that,” Desjani concluded, “is why the bear-cows haven’t just waltzed through this star system and jumped onward. If anybody tries to use one of those jump points without spider-wolf permission, it’s boom boom out go the lights. I thought you should know that.”

“Thanks. And thank you, Lieutenant Yuon. That was an impressive piece of research and analysis.”

Yuon beamed, and Lieutenant Castries raised a congratulatory fist toward him.

“Just remember when dealing with these guys,” Desjani said, “that they have tricks up their sleeves. And they have more sleeves than we do. How do we know what they’re thinking?”

“The civilian experts believe that the spider-wolves think in patterns, and that they see us as having a role in keeping that pattern stable. As if we help anchor the pattern.”

Desjani raised her eyebrows skeptically. “A stable pattern? You mean, like, everything?”

“Yeah. Everything. Life. The universe.”

“How can they think that’s stable? There’s nothing stable about life, the universe, or anything else. Everything is always changing. They can’t believe that some pattern exists and never alters as long as it is anchored well enough.”

“No,” Geary said. “They said something about the pattern changing but remaining. It can change. But to them, reality is that pattern.”

“Hmmph.” Her skepticism was clear enough. “I’m not saying they’re bear-cows, or enigmas, but they’re still aliens.”

“You don’t have to remind me of that.”

Her reply was interrupted by an incoming call from Rione, with Charban visible in the background. “The spider-wolves are willing to let us transit their territory,” Rione told Geary slightly breathlessly.

“Thank the living stars. How soon—”

“There’s more.” The corners of her mouth bent upward in a triumphant smile. “They have a hypernet. They will use some of their ships to escort us through it to some location much, much closer to human territory.”

Geary stared, unable to believe their luck. “That’s absolutely wonderful. When—”

“There’s more,” Rione broke in again. “They have two conditions. The first condition is that one of their ships, carrying a diplomatic delegation, accompany us home.”

“Agreed,” Geary said immediately.

“Such an agreement would allow the spider-wolves to know exactly where human space is located, Admiral.”

“I suspect they already had an idea of that if their border with the enigmas runs that close to Pele. Maybe they’ve never actually come into contact with us, but they must have picked up some indications of another race confronting the enigmas in that region. What’s the other condition?”

“They want something from us,” Charban said.

“What?”

“That’s the problem. We can’t figure out what it is they want.”

“But—Some piece of information? Do they want the superbattleship we captured from the bear-cows?”

“No,” Charban insisted. “It is definitely not the superbattleship. It is not information. It is a thing. Something related to engineering.”

“Engineering? A race of master engineers wants something related to engineering from us?” Geary questioned.

“Yes. They seem to want it badly. The offer to let us use their hypernet came while we were trying to figure out what they wanted. Apparently, they thought we were bargaining as opposed to being confused.”

“Whatever works. But we still don’t know what it is?”

“No!” Charban’s frustration grew more visible. “As best I can translate the pictograms and words they are using, it is something like ‘universal fixing substance.’”

“Universal fixing substance?” Geary asked. “We have a universal fixing substance?”

Charban spread his hands in exasperation. “They think we do. And they want it from us.”

“But why do they think that? What did we do to make them think we had some universal fixing substance?”

“I can’t determine the answer to that given our very limited communications. From their persistence, and their certainty, I would guess that they thought we had demonstrated the use of such a thing.”

Geary looked around the bridge. “What do we have that fits that name?”

Everyone looked as if they were thinking intently. No one offered any suggestions.

“Glue?” Lieutenant Yuon finally suggested.

That made as much sense as anything. “Glue?” Geary echoed to Charban.

“No, Admiral. I thought of that and offered a tube of adhesive. They said no, then asked for the universal fixing substance again.”

“Admiral, ask the engineers,” Desjani said. “Captain Smythe and his people. If anyone would know anything about that, it would be the engineers on the auxiliaries.”

“If any of the engineers know about some universal fixing substance,” Geary said, “and never mentioned it to me, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

But Smythe, already worn from the days of work getting repairs done, only stared back at Geary with a blank expression. “Universal fixing substance?”

“Right. What have we got that fits that description?”

“Nothing. That’s like… universal solvent. Nice to have, but no one has ever actually come up with one. Well, actually, a universal solvent would be very bad to have because you couldn’t make a container to hold it—”

“Captain Smythe,” Geary broke in, “the spider-wolves are certain we have it.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Please notify all of your engineers that we need it and ask them what they think could be it.”

“Very well, Admiral. But I’ll be frank that I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting anyone in this fleet to produce something that can fix anything.”

Geary waited until Smythe had ended the call, then sent out a message to every ship asking them if any could identify whatever it was the aliens wanted.

Then he waited, with growing impatience. With every second, the enigma retaliatory force was getting closer to Midway, but all he could do was sit here. He made another call. “Captain Smythe, have you figured out how to move that superbattleship yet?”

“Uh, yes, Admiral,” Smythe replied, only momentarily fazed by the new topic. “We’ll use the battleships.”

“Battleships? Plural?”

“Yes.” Smythe perked up at the chance to discuss something any engineer would see as sexy. “Four of them. Relentless, Reprisal, Superb, and Splendid. They were shot up fairly badly, but their propulsion systems remain in fine shape. We’ll mate them to the superbattleship, link their propulsion controls through a coordination unit, and use them to haul the superbattleship home.”

“Those are going to be four very unhappy battleships,” Desjani murmured.

“What else have we got that can haul around that much mass?” Geary asked her. “Besides, they’ll also serve as defenders of that thing. Since we blew away every weapon on the superbattleship, our own battleships’ weapons will have to do the job of making sure no one destroys it. Have we heard any answers on the universal fixing substance yet?”

“Not since the last time you asked,” she replied.

“The question went to every ship?”

“Via the command circuit, yes, Admiral. You sent it.”

Something about that made Geary pause, trying to catch an elusive thought. “Command circuit.”

“That’s what you used,” Desjani said, eyeing him defensively.

“Which goes to the commanding officers of all the ships in the fleet.”

“Yes… It always has.”

What was it? What idea was flitting just out of reach? “Who would they ask? On their ships?”

“Members of their crew.” Desjani shrugged. “Their officers, I suppose.”

“Their officers. You asked the officers on Dauntless?”

“Yes, Admiral.” She seemed curious as well as defensive now. “Are we going somewhere with this?”

“I don’t—” Going somewhere? The old joke. If junior officers are confused about where to go next, they should ask the senior enlisted, who will be happy to tell the junior officers where to go. “I’m an idiot.”

Desjani raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you speaking purely on a professional basis? Because on a personal basis, I resent that.”

“Tanya, when you need to know something, how to do something, who do you go to? Who gets things done?”

She looked puzzled, then smiled. “The chiefs.”

“The chiefs. The senior enlisted. Why the hell haven’t we asked them what they think this universal fixing substance is?”

“Because we’re both idiots. That’s the first place I should have asked.” Desjani tapped her internal comm controls. “This is the captain speaking. All chief petty officers are to muster in the chief’s mess immediately. Notify me when all are present.”

It took perhaps five minutes, then Desjani passed the question to her assembled senior enlisted corps. “Now we wait, Admiral.”

She had scarcely finished speaking when the image of Master Chief Gioninni appeared on the bridge. “Captain? You really want to know what universal fixing substance could refer to?”

“I take it you have an idea?” Desjani replied.

“Yes, Captain. As soon as you said it I looked at Senior Chief Tarrini and she looked at me and we both said ‘duct tape.’”