Jack Campbell - Invincible

“Two inspired ideas, Captain. Thank you.”

Desjani looked skeptical. “That’s the lieutenant who confuses things, right? I mean, on purpose she can confuse things.”

“Right,” Geary confirmed.

“And this helps with the spider-wolves how?”

“It’s the flip side of that which could prove useful,” Geary explained. “Lieutenant Jamenson can also spot information that is related but buried among lots of other data.”

“You mean like patterns?”

“Sort of.”

“Maybe she is a good choice, then.” Desjani settled back in her seat, touching her internal comm controls as she did so. “We have a little more than nineteen hours of travel time to the hypernet gate,” she told her crew. “Let’s get cracking on external hull work.”

The spider-wolves spent six hours aboard the captured bear-cow warship, focusing attention on areas like the control and engineering spaces while the human fleet focused their attention on what the spider-wolves were examining. Lieutenant Jamenson did get the opportunity to open her helmet at one point, but if her green hair surprised the spider-wolves as much as it did the average human, no one could tell.

Data poured in from fleet sensors examining the inhabited worlds. Grateful that he didn’t have to analyze threat activity, Geary left most of that to the civilian experts and Lieutenant Iger’s intelligence people. Occasionally, he would view areas of the planets that had come into view of the fleet’s full-spectrum sensors, seeing cities and towns that spread widely and seemed thinly occupied by human standards. The spider-wolves had plenty of population here, but they must prefer spreading out rather than concentrating into dense urban centers. Unlike in the bear-cow star system, the planets here had a wide variety of vegetation and a lot of it even within the spider-wolf cities.

Four hours after the spider-wolf team had left the captured bear-cow ship to another round of air hugs and with ten hours remaining before the human fleet reached the hypernet gate, Rione called Geary in his stateroom. “I need to brief you on a few things.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“In person.”

He sighed. Late at night. Rione in his cabin. Admiral Timbale had warned him that people would be watching for any signs of unprofessional behavior by either him or Desjani. “Madam Emissary—”

“Commander Benan can escort me.” She said it ironically, as if they were sharing a joke.

Naturally Commander Benan, her husband, wouldn’t be thrilled by this, either. “All right,” Geary said.

She showed up in only a few minutes, Commander Benan walking stiffly beside her as she entered. Once inside, he looked around, narrowed-eyed as if searching for dangers, then saluted with a rigid arm before pivoting and walking out of the stateroom to stand by the hatch as it closed.

Geary waited until the hatch had sealed before speaking. “How is he doing?”

“Better since that talk you had with him.”

“At least now we know what the root of his problem is and at least now I know how you’re being blackmailed.”

She didn’t answer for a while. “Without confirming the last part of your statement, it’s unfortunate that neither piece of information offers much in the way of immediate benefit,” Rione finally said.

“Yes. You’re right about that. But you say Commander Benan is more stable now?”

“I said he was better.” Rione walked to a chair and sat down, her gaze now on the star display. “More stable? A little. He’s still dangerous.”

“Be careful.”

“I’m always careful. Let me inform you of things I have learned from conversations with some of the spider-wolves while General Charban and the civilian experts talked with others.”

Geary sat down opposite her. “Were you talking to the one in charge? How senior in rank are the spider-wolves who have been talking to us?” The question had kept occurring to him but never when he was speaking to anyone who could answer it.

“I don’t know. We don’t know.” Rione spread her hands, palms up. “Whatever organizational structure the spider-wolves use is too complicated or too odd for us to grasp as of yet. One of those experts, that Dr. Shwartz, thinks the organizational diagram itself may resemble a web. She could be right. Whatever way they are arranged in rank, we haven’t been able to figure it out even though it seems clear enough to the spider-wolves.

“Now, there are things I have been told that you must know. I do not know how much of this should be known to others in this fleet, which is why I am briefing you in this manner.” Rione spoke briskly but matter-of-factly. “First off, the spider-wolves have informed me in a manner that cannot be misunderstood that when we encounter enigmas, they will not aid in any attack on the enigmas; nor will they help defend us against the enigmas. They will defend themselves, but they will not otherwise engage in hostilities.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Absolutely. We’re on our own when it comes to hostilities with the enigmas.”

“Has General Charban discussed with you his feelings about the spider-wolves and war?”

“Yes.” Rione shook her head. “It’s a possible explanation, but we don’t know it’s true. All I know is that they will not fight the enigmas except to save themselves.”

“At least they told us,” Geary said. “Do you think there might be a nonaggression pact between the enigmas and the spider-wolves?”

She started to reply, stopped as a thought hit her, then gave him a slight smile. “Because if there were such an agreement between the enigmas and another species, it might hold out hope that we could reach such a pact with the enigmas?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I’ll see what I can find out.” Rione tapped the controls on the star display, leaning in as she did so that she was close to Geary.

Even though they didn’t touch, he felt her closeness, memories coming unbidden of times they had been together in this stateroom before he and Tanya had known their own feelings for each other.

He gave Rione no sign that he had felt that, remembered those things, and she also did not react at all, her voice remaining composed and unemotional. “We’re going to come out of the spider-wolf hypernet at this star. It has a human designation but no name. The Syndics didn’t get that far when they were pushing into that region more than a century ago. From that star we will jump a short distance to this star. Again, no name from human sources, but when the spider-wolves spoke of it, they used the same symbol as they used for the star Honor even though this is a different type of star.”

Geary looked steadily at the display as he thought. “A symbol, a label, not for the star type, but for something else? They had a defensive force at Honor, guarding against the bear-cows. Does that star serve a similar purpose against the enigmas? That symbol might mean fortress or stronghold, or something like that.”

“It might.” Rione pointed again. “From that star, we jump to this one, which the Syndics named Hua and may have reached before the enigmas knocked them back to Midway. I don’t think the Syndics got that far, though, because the spider-wolves indicated that Hua is an enigma strongpoint of some kind. They signified some danger there.”

“Hopefully not an enigma hypernet gate,” Geary said. “I don’t want to have to run that kind of gauntlet again.” His own hand went out, tracing a path on the display. “And Hua is within jump range of Pele.”

“And from Pele we get to Midway,” Rione finished.

“Thank you. That’s all very important—”

“There’s one thing more.” She held out her data pad, revealing that it was displaying the symbol used by Syndicate Worlds’ ships to identify themselves. “I showed this to the spider-wolves I was talking to. They recognized it.”