Jack Campbell - Invincible

“The Golden Mean,” Rione said. “It’s a ratio between numbers. Human use it in many things because we like seeing things with that proportion.”

“A ratio?” Geary asked.

“It’s an irrational mathematical constant,” Lieutenant Castries reported, squinting at the results of the query she had run. “Derived from the ratio of a larger quantity to a smaller one. It’s about one to one point six. Found in architecture, sculpture, the proportions of hard-copy books, paper, playing cards, music, and virtual windows among other things.”

“Exactly.” Rione gestured toward her display. “These displays probably default to such a ratio of sides because we like seeing things in those proportions. It is somehow part of us. Now look upon these creatures and what they have created. Somewhere within them is beauty.”

“Somewhere very deep within them perhaps,” Geary said.

“Look upon their works, think about those works, as you speak to them.”

“Or maybe get drunk first,” Desjani suggested. “That always makes ugly easier to accept.”

“I won’t ask how you know that,” Geary replied. He sighed, then stood up, trying to maintain a nonaggressive stance. But then he stopped. “Images. We can try imagery. How do I get my display to show along with me?”

“We want to show them one of our displays?” Desjani questioned.

“Yes.”

“Wait, Admiral,” the comm watch said, his hands flying over controls. “All right. It’s visible beside you if you transmit. Here’s a secondary window that shows what you look like.”

The secondary window popped up, so that Geary could see himself standing next to a display image. He considered how to do things, then tapped his comm controls. “Thank you for communicating with us. We want to pass through this star system peacefully.” He pointed to the jump exit they had arrived at, then swung his finger to point to one of the jump points on the other side of this star system. “There are enemies who have pursued us.” Now he held out an open palm in a shielding gesture against the representation of the bear-cow armada, his other hand poised to strike. “We will not fight you.” Now he dropped both hands as he faced the representation of the spider-wolf alien force, his palms outward and empty. “To the honor of our ancestors, this is Admiral Geary, out.”

“Captain?” Desjani looked over as the image of a lieutenant commander appeared before her. Geary recognized him as Dauntless ’s systems security officer. “We isolated the attachment to that alien message and ran it on a physically quarantined system so there was no way it could infect anything. It took a fair amount of work, but we figured out how to run it since it contained its own operating system that seemed to adapt to our hardware.”

“It adapted to our hardware?”

“Yes, Captain, but don’t worry. It can’t get to any other systems. There’s no physical or electronic connection, and the unit is in an isolation box.”

Desjani took a deep breath. “What is it?” she asked.

“I think…” The systems security officer scratched his head. “It’s got pictures, and some kind of interactive routine. It kind of reminded me of a kid’s book. You know, something for real young kids to teach words and stuff.”

“Words?” Charban cried. “A pictorial means of establishing communication!”

“Yes, sir,” the systems security officer agreed. “That’s what it feels like to me.”

“Keep it quarantined for now,” Desjani ordered, “and—”

“We need access to that,” Charban insisted.

“This is my ship, and I decide what gets access to its systems.”

“Captain Desjani,” Geary said formally, “I agree it should be quarantined, kept isolated, but we need to get access to it as soon as possible for both General Charban and Emissary Rione as well as the civilian experts.”

“We can put together a quarantined network,” the systems security officer suggested. “It will take some work, and they’ll have to access it in one compartment because we’ll run short, physical connections between the workstations, but that way they can all play with it at the same time.”

“Use one of the big conference rooms,” Desjani ordered. “Assume a dozen users at one time. How long until it’s up?”

“Half an hour, Captain.”

“Do it, and make sure if you need more time to do it right you ask for it. I don’t want that software having any access to the rest of the systems.”

The lieutenant commander nodded. “Yes, Captain. I don’t want something like that loose, either. If we can figure out how it adapted to our hardware, we’ll get some really cool ideas from it, though.”

Desjani twisted her mouth as she watched her security officer. “Their software does things our software can’t?”

“Yes, Captain.” The lieutenant commander grinned with almost childlike enthusiasm. “We don’t know how yet, but it was amazing to watch. The software is really… cool.”

“Thank you. Get on that network,” Desjani said. After the image of the systems security officer vanished, she looked at Geary. “Some software that makes my code monkeys drool with delight, and those things just gave it to us.”

“Maybe they don’t think it’s anything special,” Geary suggested.

“Maybe not, but if that’s so, I’d hate to see their special software.” Desjani turned to Charban. “General, you’ll have access to that program as soon as I get that isolated network safely set up.”

Geary faced Charban and Rione. “They must intend for us to use that program to develop a means of communication. Here’s what I most need to be able to communicate to them. I need them to know we don’t want to fight them. Can we transit their territory in peace? I need to know their attitude toward the bear-cows. Are they enemies? Neutral? Or allies? Will they stand by if we engage the bear-cow armada, or will they take an active role?”

Charban nodded, his eyes intent. “Those will be our priorities. But aside from the time we must spend learning how to ask those things, there is the time involved in exchanging messages. We are still more than fifty light-minutes from the spider-wolf ships.”

“I know we need time.” Geary tapped another control. “All units, accelerate to point one five light speed at time five zero.” That would buy some more hours before the bear-cows caught up, more hours to find out what the spider-wolves intended.

“How the hell are we going to take those things down?” Desjani wondered, looking at her display, where the bear-cow superbattleships were thundering in the wake of the human fleet.

“Has anyone here not seen the images sent to us by the beings in the ships ahead of us?” Geary asked, looking around the conference table. Since the message had been broadcast to the fleet, he expected that everyone had seen them.

The expressions on his ship captains answered the question without words.

“We still don’t know what the intent of the spider-wolves is,” Geary said. “Our experts and our emissaries are working to establish meaningful communications, but, at best, such communications will be primitive and very limited for some time.”

“Are they going to aid the Kicks?” Captain Badaya demanded. “That’s what we need to know.”

“The Kicks?” Geary looked around, seeing some of the officers nodding in recognition of the term and others looking as puzzled as he felt.

“It’s a term the sailors came up with,” Captain Duellos explained. “They started calling the bear-cows Killer Cows or Crazy Cows, which got condensed to KCs and CCs, which are both pronounced as Kicks.”

“Works for me,” Desjani muttered.