Tenacious

16

“But how?” Jack asked, raising the practical question that would, no doubt, dog Kris’s every waking hour from now until her last breath.

Or the other guy’s.

“That is something we will figure out,” Kris said. “Nelly, how many glass coffins are here?”

“I’ve been able to observe four hundred and twelve from what you’ve seen. I’ve just checked in on the boffins’ network, and I believe that number is correct. That includes the first samples.”

“That many!” Kris said, trying to feel the sorrow and finding that 412 was just too big a number to feel. But it could be analyzed.

Assuming they’ve had one hundred thousand years to commit all those atrocities, what does that average out to? One every two hundred and fifty years.”

“One every 242.7184466 years,” Nelly said. Professor la Duke wasn’t the only one given to babbling over what they were looking at. Kris could not recall the last time Nelly had not rounded up or down to the nearest significant number.

“However, Kris, if I may point out,” Nelly went on, “there are two species here after the one we have dated to two hundred years ago. If we can assume that they are alternately adding kills to both sides, it seems a likely conclusion that they are killing more planets now than in the beginning.”

“There are more of the bastards,” Jack whispered, amazement in his voice as the realization dawned.

“It looks that way,” Kris said, but she’d spotted something.

“Jacques, what are those markings behind each coffin?” Kris pointing to the wall behind the cubes. “It looks like a memorial or something.”

“We think those are numbers in the first line. Possibly a star’s location. The rest are words. We’ll have to study them.”

“Kris, I have been studying them,” Nelly said. “Could you look closely at the writing behind the fish with all the teeth?”

Kris moved in that direction.

“Notice the bottom of the writing. All the writings above are in the same font and the lines are equally spaced. The last two lines are in a different font, larger and etched deeper into the stone. It appears to me very likely that someone added a comment.”

“Is that the only aquatic life-form?” Kris asked.

Jacques paused to consult his computer, but Nelly was faster. “Yes it is. I’ve also identified the line as identical to other markings we’ve found in three of the other memorials. I think we may have the name of one of the ships. I don’t know what it means, but we may have ourselves a name.”

“And I very much want to know how many ships are represented here,” Kris said.

“I think we all do,” Jacques agreed.

Kris turned toward the entrance. “I’ve seen enough. Jack, you and I need to get out of these hard suits and back to where we can do some thinking. Jacques, give us more to think about.”

Three hours later, Kris and Jack sat across from Penny and Masao as Nelly gave them the briefing on the pyramid’s contents. It was easier to take at a distance, but Penny was still reduced to tears.

Kris put the meeting on hold while Masao held her and shed some tears himself.

Kris found herself fishing a tissue out of a box for Penny, then took one herself.

Even Jack asked for one.

Kris located a second box and let Penny and Masao have the first while she and Jack shared the second. Without the restrictions of an armored helmet, it was impossible not to feel the pain in the pictures at not only the loss of that family at the entrance, but the blight represented by the walls of horror.

“So that is what we are fighting,” Penny finally said.

“Yes. We are fighting to keep our skulls from being added to a pile on that floor and one of us locked in plastic as the only proof that we ever lived,” Kris said. “They are not adding a human, an Iteeche, or an Alwan to that house of horrors. Not on my watch.”

“Yes,” Penny said. “We will not lose. We can’t.”

“Did any of you notice something about that lineup?” Masao said.

They waited for him to make his point. “They all represent one species. None of them have two standing together. What do you think they’d make of us and the Alwans on one planet?”

“They’d either take the Alwans for animals,” Penny said, “or go looking for where we came from. And if they’ve got any ability to read DNA, they’ll know that we don’t fit on Alwa.”

“Yeah,” Kris said. “Good old Grampa Ray goofed it big this time. No matter how big an industrial base we build on Alwa, we can’t fake our DNA fingerprint. When we killed that first base ship, we started a war, and no amount of us dying on Alwa will shake the raiders from hunting for the first race that managed to kill them in what, over a hundred thousand years?”

“We don’t know that all of the other races failed to put up a decent fight,” Jack said.

“The bastards sure don’t fight as if they’ve had a tough, space-based enemy for some time,” Kris pointed out.

“I will concede that,” Jack said.

“So, what do we do now?” Penny ask. “Do we know enough to head home and dig in for the next fight?”

Kris chewed on that thought for a long moment, then shook her head. “I still want to talk to one of them. I want to know if what we’re assuming is the way it is. I want to know what makes their minds tick.”

“That’s assuming you can find someone running around with a flint-tipped spear on this planet who knows anything about what happened a hundred thousand years ago,” Penny quipped.

“That’s the problem,” Jack said. “I doubt if any of the natives here have any written records. Handing knowledge down by word of mouth has its limits.”

“Carefully constructed sagas can last a long time,” Masao pointed out.

“What about the locals that were recently landed?” Kris said. “The ones that are still wearing rags? They have to know the official story from their ship. Maybe they’ll tell us what’s happening on the ships and why that pyramid of horrors is down there?”

“But they were tossed off the ships,” Jack said. “Won’t that impact their perspective?”

“And even if we ignore that minor issue,” Penny said, smiling enigmatically at her understatement, “that’s just one ship’s version.”

“All good points,” Kris admitted, “but I want to talk to someone. I want to hear something, right or wrong. Those that are stuck down there living from hand to mouth look like a better prospect than those that blow their ships up rather than talk. Somehow, there has to be some way for us to make contact with them before they manage to kill themselves.”

“Or us,” Jack pointed out.

“They don’t get to kill us,” Kris said, voice cold as steel.

“So, how do we get one of them in a mood to talk?” Penny asked.

“Let’s talk to Jacques,” Kris said. “He’s the anthropologist. If he can’t figure out a way to get a word in edgewise with people struggling to survive on what they can hunt, scavenge, or dig up, no one can.”

So Jacques and Amanda were recalled from the surface, and Kris found out she’d bitten off a whole lot more than she thought though not more than she was willing to chew.

After listening to Kris, Jacques shook his head. “I would not suggest that we just sleepy dart one of them and haul them up here. People can kill themselves by running into a wall over and over again. I suspect if these dudes got the shock of finding themselves on a strange ship, that is exactly what they would do.”

“We look just like them. Can’t we pass for them?” Kris asked.

“Bare-ass naked, I might,” Jacques said. “But dressed here, on this ship?” He shook his head. “Even the smell of the ship might give us away. No doubt our language would, and definitely our questions would. No, we’ve got to come at this using a totally neutral approach.”

“Does that mean you have one?” Kris asked.

The anthropologist settled into a chair and rubbed his chin. It had been a while since he had shaved. “We’ve got surveillance bugs following several of the gens around. I can’t actually call them clans or tribes. They’re much too small. What we’ve found is that they speak similar languages, but different enough that they would have trouble talking to each other.”

Kris made a puzzled look. Jacques took mercy on her.

“Most of us speak Standard. It’s a cross between Old Earth’s English and Spanish, which themselves were a cross between several languages that preceded them like German, French, and before them, Latin and Greek. Then you have to throw in borrowed words from all over Earth: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Swahili. Don’t get me started, or I will bore you to death.

“Anyway, back on Old Earth, the French, the Italians, and the Spanish spoke languages that branched off from Latin. They shared a lot of similar words, but put two of them in a bar and they couldn’t order a drink.

“However, we have a lot of scout bots following different gens around, collecting sessions of their speech and the context for it. With any luck, we should have a good idea of what they’re saying in a week, two at the most.”

“The markings in the pyramid,” Kris said. “Will we be reading them as quickly?”

“Not likely. We have only the most minimum of context for them. For example, we know that there is a kind of star location given for each of the specimens. It’s the opening line etched into the wall behind every one of them. We think it’s giving us numbers, but we can’t even be sure of that. It’s a lot easier to crack a living language than a dead one, and the written markings on the pyramid are, for all practical matters, dead to us.”

“Can we do anything to help you crack the living languages? I’m including in that the languages of the natives in the dominant culture,” Kris said. “I wonder if their language is anywhere close to the star raiders’ language?”

“Possibly, but quite likely not,” Jacques said. “In a hundred thousand years, languages can change a lot. And remember, these are the ones that stayed behind when the others took up wandering the stars and slaughtering everything they meet. There’s bound to be some basis for that difference.”

“And these people on the ground have been attacked by the star raiders,” Nelly put in. “We’ve dated three of the more recent depredations. We’re sure the most recent was lased from space in the last ten thousand years.”

“But why?” Amanda asked.

Kris took a shot at an answer. “They may be flesh of their flesh, but they chose to stay behind, to separate off from those who are carrying the torch. They can live, but they can’t ever threaten the star rovers. If they look to be developing a science-based, industrial culture, they burn it.”

“You may be right,” Amanda said. “Dear God, I hate this. And I hate them.”

“We can’t afford to hate them,” Kris said. “If necessary, I will destroy them, but I will not hate them. Hate like that is what turned them into whatever it is they are.”

Jack and Jacques nodded agreement.

“There is one thing that might help us correlate the data we’re collecting,” Jacques said, changing the topic to something they controlled.

“Name it, and it’s yours,” Kris said.

“The use of the ships’ main computers to grind the data.”

“Oops,” Kris said, “On that, you will have to speak to my flag captain. No one messes with the ships’ computers without his say-so.”

Which brought Captain Drago into the conversation. He looked more than negative to the idea, even when Nelly offered to coordinate the data processing.

“Thank you, Nelly, but I like having my ships ready to run at the first sign they need to. If you and yours are messing with our nav computers, we might find ourselves still sitting here, counting zeros and ones by hand, and running short of ones, when the big uglies show up.”

“Captain,” Nelly said, “I assure you that we can load the data in the unused space of your machines, and they can process it during the time they are sitting idle. If you get any warning from your pickets, we can wash the data from them in a matter of seconds.”

“But you’d lose it all,” Jacques said.

“Sir, if we are running away from here, will it matter that we lose the data we need to make contact with a species that is growing more distant by the second in our rearview mirror?” Nelly said, dryly.

“You have a point,” Jacques admitted.

“Remember, you will still have the original data stored for later reload somewhere else,” Kris pointed out. “Assuming that once we bug out of here, we have any intentions of coming back.”

“Now that is an interesting question,” Drago said.

“Which one?” Kris asked.

“Do we want to leave a calling card to tell the aliens we’ve seen where they came from? That we’ve visited their old stomping ground and, what? Left it alone? Blown their little trophy room to smithereens? What are we going to do, Your Highness?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Kris said. When she got a surprised look from everyone present, she hastily added, “No. Really. I’m still thinking.”

“But you are thinking about it,” Drago said.

“Yes. What kind of calling card would you leave?” she asked her flag captain and retired admiral.

“I’d lase that damn pyramid from space for two, three orbits. See just how big a hole I could make where it now stands,” he said without blinking an eye.

“That’s one option,” Kris said. “Some might take it as a declaration of war.”

“And blowing two of their mother ships to hell ain’t?” he shot right back at her.

“But that wouldn’t break the cycle of killing,” Amanda said. “Unless someone is willing to be the Optimistic Fool and try something out of the usual, all we have left is everyone’s doing the same old same old. Look where that’s gotten us.”

“Another good point,” Kris said.

“Besides,” Jacques put in, “what you’re looking at down there is both the greatest biological collection of different evolutionary trails and the last vestige that whole planets ever lived. I’d hate to see it blasted to dust even if it was a message I thought needed delivering.”

Kris frowned as she found herself agreeing with him.

“So, which is it going to be?” Captain Drago asked with a raised eyebrow.

“As I said, I haven’t decided yet,” Kris said. “However, I have decided that I want to make contact with the locals and I want to make that contact as quickly as possible before some blood-drenched joker drops in here to mount his latest trophy. Captain Drago, if you don’t have major problems with it, I’d like to have Nelly mount all the data from the language scouts in the spare space on our ships’ computers.”

“I’ll have my network support team start working with Nelly right away.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Nelly said.

“Don’t make me regret this momentary lapse in good judgment,” Captain Drago growled.

“I will endeavor greatly to see that you don’t,” Nelly said. Was there a bit of a laugh somewhere in her voice?

“Jacques, I do have a question for you,” Nelly said.

“Yes?”

“Which group of naked, abandoned raiders are you intent on passing yourself off as being from when you make contact with the most recent set of marooned raiders?”

“I haven’t decided,” he said.

“Which explains why your kisses has been so scratchy of late,” Amanda said. “I wondered why you quit shaving.”

“Part of the price of falling in love with a field-going anthropologist,” Jacques said.

“Why, oh my heart, couldn’t you have gone pitter-pat for some nice economics major with a briefcase and a boring day job?” Amanda asked no one in particular.

“I thought that might be the case,” Nelly said. “Kris, I have enough matrix, even after you shot up some of it surviving your third alien battle. I’d like to generate the new child and give it into Jacques’s care.”

“Amanda, will you be jealous, dear?” Jacques asked.

“Of course I will be, honey,” came with not-so-sweet undertones, “but I’ll just have to muddle along with my own pet computer. Though, who knows, with me jealous of you, and you wandering around bare-ass and flirting with every other mud-caked native down there with big boobs, I just might find that nice guy with the boring day job up here.”

“There are no boring day jobs up here,” Jacques pointed out.

“Don’t you hate it when they’re right?” Kris said with a sad smile for Amanda.

“If he gets a Nelly-class computer, I want ice cream. Chocolate ice cream with nuts,” Amanda said glumly.

“Both of us do,” Kris said, and adjourned the meeting.

Jack and Jacques left for Marine country to examine what could pass as minimal gear for going native. At Jack’s collarbone, Sal was already going through the drill for bringing a new computer up to speed, no doubt with a large helping hand from Nelly, who was strangely quiet at Kris’s own collarbone.

The pantry off the wardroom did prove to have a supply of chocolate ice cream with nuts and other crunchy things and no one with the gumption to tell the admiral, princess, and viceroy that she couldn’t raid the wardroom’s supplies.

The two young women dived into their consolation prize as their men, no doubt, contemplated the joyous life of a caveman.

“What is it about men that they don’t value chocolate properly?” Kris asked.

“Who’d want a world without chocolate?” Amanda asked back.

“Or good dentistry?”

“Or proper pain control when you’re having a baby?”

“You can’t be thinking of having a baby,” Kris said. “You’ve got the same birth-control implants in you that I’ve got in me.”

“Yes, but they wear out, dearie,” Amanda said, taking a dainty and ladylike small bite of the much-praised ice cream.

“And they will be replaced,” Kris said, using the full authority of her command.

“I’m a civilian,” Amanda pointed out.

“In a combat zone. Check your paperwork. When you signed on, you signed a reserve commission. You cause me too much grief, and your civilian days are over.”

“I need more ice cream,” Amanda said.

“So do I,” Kris said.

Their next spoonfuls were not at all small and dainty.