Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Pride

And he'd failed them.

He swallowed, his throat aching with bitterness and guilt. Already he'd replayed the battle a hundred times over in his mind, searching for something—anything—that he could have done differently. Something that he should have done, or shouldn't have done, that would have made a difference.

There was no way for him ever to make up for the people who'd died aboard his ship. The best he could do now was to make sure they hadn't died uselessly.

He opened his eyes again. The aliens were still going about their business, their tails corkscrewing slowly around as they conversed in small groups or bent over flickering consoles. He would survive, he promised himself silently. No matter what they did to him, he would survive. And as they learned about him, he would learn as much as he could about them.

And when the time was right, he would do whatever it took to escape from this place and get his knowledge back to the Commonwealth.

"Okay, Colonel, we've got us a green light to go in," Lieutenant Alex Williams said, keying the drudgeship's engines off standby. "Where do you want to go?"

"I'm not sure it really matters," Holloway admitted, gazing out the canopy at the brilliantly lit field of debris drifting through space in front of them. "Given Dorcas's location and all, I thought it might be instructive to see what we were up against. I guess I could have saved myself the trip."

"There's not much left to see," Williams agreed. "We've already picked up most of the big pieces and sent them off to the analysis center on Edo. Mostly what we're doing now is picking bodies out of the rubble."

Holloway nodded, his stomach tightening in anger. That part had shown up in exquisitely painful detail in the watchship records. Twenty-eight hundred men and women, most of them slaughtered for no reason. "We're going to have to make them pay for that."

"No argument from me on that one," Williams said grimly. "Odds among my crew are running five to one that we finally bring CIRCE out of retirement."

"Let's just hope they're damn careful when they start putting it back together," Holloway said, looking around at the floating debris. "All we need is for these butchers to get hold of a working CIRCE."

"These, or any other batch," Williams said. "The Pawoles still haven't forgiven us for using it on them. I'll bet the Yycromae wouldn't mind getting their hands on it, either."

"That's certainly a cheery thought." Holloway looked out the viewport at the dim sun of the system, so far away it was hardly distinguishable from the background stars around it. "What were they doing out here, anyway?"

"Probably poking around the cometary halo looking for stuff to mine," Williams said. "Wasting their time—our teams looked the place over about five years ago. Nothing here worth the effort of digging out. Look, Colonel, we've still got a lot of work to do out there. If you want, I can drop you off—wait a minute." He cocked his head slightly, listening intently to his earphone. "Williams here. You sure? Okay, stay with it—I'm on my way."

He keyed the drive, and the drudgeship swung around toward one of the banks of lights. "What is it?" Holloway asked.

"The jackpot, maybe," Williams said. "Someone's spotted what looks like a piece of alien ship outside the scavenger area."

Two other drudgeships were already there when they arrived, their remote analyzers drifting across the fragment's surface. "What have you got, Scotts?" Williams asked, touching a switch and pulling off his headset.

"Looks like a hull plate, Lieutenant," the other's voice came over the cockpit speaker. "A piece of one, anyway. Got some electronic fragments or something on the underside, too."

"What got it, a shrapnel line?"

"Looks more like expansion shock to me," Scotts said. "Probably flash-heated by a close-in warhead explosion and popped at the seams. I'm picking up some odd dust here, too—could be the same stuff. We'll scoop some of it up."

Holloway peered out at the milky-white plate, only slightly scarred except near the edges where it had broken. "One plate and some dust," he commented. "Must be one very sturdy hull material."

"All that, and more," Scotts said. "I want a copy of the stress-test report when it comes in."

A third remote had drifted in to join the other two now at the hull plate's surface. "What haven't you done yet?" Williams asked.

"Bakst is looking at the edge structure; I'm trying to get an angle on those electronics," Scotts said. "We haven't tried composition yet."

"Okay, I'll run that," Williams said, keying in the program. "The Jutland ships took a shot at this before the shooting started," he added to Holloway, leaning over in his seat to peer into the remote's display. "Didn't get 'em anywhere; but then, they were eight klicks away and trying to read through a heat-dump spectrum. Let's see if we can do a little better now... well, well. Bingo."

"What?" Holloway asked.

"It's not a metal alloy at all," Williams said, straightening up again. "It's a ceramic."

"A ceramic?" Holloway echoed. "I've never heard of a ceramic this tough."

"Me, neither," Williams said. "I guess we're hearing about it now."

"I guess we are," Holloway agreed. "And that explains why the radar-triggered missiles the force kept throwing never went off. There weren't any large masses of metal for them to lock on to."

"I don't think there were even any small ones," Scotts's voice came from the speaker. "You're going to love this, Lieutenant. These electronics things on the underside? No metal in 'em."

"Not even power lines?"

"If they're here, I can't find them," Scotts said. "All the filaments they've got running in and out are just optical control fibers. No idea how the power's getting in."

"Could they be using a Djadaran electron-tunneling effect?" Holloway asked.

"Not unless they've come up with a way to make it a lot more efficient than the Djadar ever did," Williams said. "How about it, Scotts?"

"I don't think so," Scotts said slowly. "Scan's still running, but so far I'm not reading any semiconductors, either."

"No metals or semiconductors?" Williams frowned. "All right, I give: what is there?"

"Throw your guess in with mine," Scotts said. "All I'm getting is the optical fibers plus some complex geometric shapes of unknown composition."

"Crystalline?"

"Or amorphous," Scotts said. "The analyzer can't seem to make up its mind on that one, either. We could try taking an interference reading."

"Not worth the effort," Williams said reluctantly. "We're just supposed to find this stuff, anyway—it's up to the geniuses on Edo to figure out what the hell it is. Pull your remotes back and I'll take this piece in. You and Bakst start a search of the area, see if you can find any more pieces. I'll swing a couple more ships over to give you a hand."

"Yes, sir."

Williams keyed the board speaker switch off again and put his headset back on. "Where are we going?" Holloway asked.

"Back to the Ganymede to drop this off," Williams said, looking at the display as he maneuvered the grabber arms out toward the alien plate. "And unless there's something else you want to see, Colonel, I'm going to drop you there with it. We've still got work to do out here. And there's no guarantee the aliens won't come back."

"I understand," Holloway nodded. "I'd better be getting back to Dorcas, anyway."

"I can't say I envy you your post," Williams said candidly. "Playing sitting duck on a rock like Dorcas isn't my idea of a fun tactical stance."

"I could think of better positions myself," Holloway agreed. "Somewhere in Orion Sector springs to mind. You think you'll be able to find all the bodies?"

"Probably," Williams said, the bulk of his attention clearly on the task at hand. "The battle was pretty well localized—it was over too fast for much drift. Why?"