Jack Campbell - Invincible

Geary stared at the symbol. “You’re sure?”

“They told me they recognized it.”

“They spider-wolves know about the Syndics? They’ve had contact with the Syndicate Worlds?”

“I don’t think so. I think the Syndics are just as oblivious to the existence of the spider-wolves as we were. But here is the thing, Admiral. I asked them what this symbol represented, and they used the symbols for ‘enemy of your people.’”

“How could they—” Geary’s stare shifted to Rione. “The border with the Alliance is a very long distance from here. There haven’t been any Alliance ships in the region of Syndic space nearest here for at least a century except for our fleet. There certainly haven’t been any battles fought anywhere near that region. How the hell could they know that we were fighting a war with the Syndics?”

“That’s a very good question, Admiral.” Rione rested her chin on one hand, looking pensive. “We have learned that the enigmas had been spying on us long before we knew the enigmas existed. Perhaps…”

“The spider-wolves have been in Alliance space?” He forced himself to consider the idea.

“The enigmas planted worms in our sensor systems that hid them from us,” Rione said. “Could the spider-wolves have done the same?”

“If they have, they’re using yet another totally different principle. We’ve scrubbed those systems using everything we could dream up and found nothing else.”

“Have you ever heard of something like a spider-wolf ship being spotted in Alliance space?”

He searched his memory, finding nothing specific. “There are always false sightings. We call them that. Sensors say there’s something there. We take another look, and maybe that next look doesn’t see anything. Or we send a ship to investigate. Sometimes it finds something that was just hard to spot.” That had been how the Alliance fleet had found him, frozen in survival sleep in a damaged escape pod, its beacon inoperative and its power levels failing, so low they barely showed up on the latest fleet sensors. If they hadn’t spotted him then, if they hadn’t recognized that this wasn’t just another piece of lifeless debris, if a destroyer hadn’t taken a good look around and found him… Geary tried to banish the memory of the ice that had once filled him. “Usually, most of the time, whatever gets sent to investigate finds nothing. That’s called a false sighting.”

“What causes them?” Rione asked.

“Every system has glitches. Gremlins. Loose electrons. The name varies, but it means that something that isn’t there shows up as being there, or something that isn’t happening shows as happening, or something sticks where nothing should be able to stick. The same sort of tick that impacts everything that uses electronics and coding. That’s why we have human overrides on all of our systems.”

She nodded. “I did a little research before coming down here. There have been examples of such ‘false sightings’ all through human history, dating back to Old Earth. Most were easily explained. The others were dismissed. But if we knew such things happened, then it would too easily explain events that might not all actually be the result of glitches or gremlins. If the spider-wolves have decent stealth technology—”

“They have excellent stealth technology.” He thought of the mines at Honor.

“Then, Admiral, we must conclude the real possibility that while humanity tended to its own issues and bemoaned a universe empty of other minds like ours, more than one set of such minds may have been snooping around to learn what they could of us.”

He dug his palms into his eyes. “But why wouldn’t the spider-wolves have contacted us? We know why the enigmas didn’t. Why not the spider-wolves?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would they have done if our colonies, our exploration, had reached their boundaries before this?”

“Perhaps just what they did with us,” Rione said. “For whatever reason, they waited for us to get to them. The reason or reasons must have made sense to them. In practice, the enigmas were along the paths that humanity was expanding through in that region, so the enigmas blocked human contact with the spider-wolves.”

Geary sat looking at the display, trying to think. “If the spider-wolves know that the Syndics are our enemies, were our enemies, why do they think that we’re so eager to get to Midway before the enigmas?”

Rione smiled again. “The spider-wolves believe that we are helping our brother-enemies against our not-brother-enemies. They appear to be extremely impressed by that.” She stood up. “I shouldn’t spend too long in here.”

“I understand.” He stood as well, but as Rione turned to go Geary spoke again. “Victoria, I’m going to help him. I know what needs to be done, and I will make sure it is done when we get back to Alliance space.”

She watched him, then slowly nodded once. “Let us hope that he lives that long.”

Rione had barely been gone for a minute before Geary’s comm panel buzzed again with a familiar pattern. “Oh, you’re still up?” Desjani asked.

“As if you didn’t know. Are you calling to find out why Emissary Rione was here?”

“Was she?”

“Yes. Briefing me on items she has learned from the spider-wolves.” Items that Desjani needed to know as well. “Since I’ve already fed the gossip-beast enough tonight, I’ll let you know about it all tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Admiral.” Desjani gave him a curious look. “Whatever it is seems to have impressed you. Is it something we have to worry about?”

“I don’t know. For tonight, let’s just say that for some time now, humanity has been congratulating itself on how much we knew about the universe. And all that time it seems the universe has been laughing at us and making faces behind our back.”

He didn’t know why he had expected the spider-wolf hypernet gate to look different from the ones humans and enigmas had constructed, but he had. And in that, Geary wasn’t disappointed. The spider-wolves had crafted the tethers in ways that evoked the webs Dr. Shwartz kept using as metaphors. To Geary, the spider-wolf hypernet gate looked not only like a great feat of engineering (just as human hypernet gates did), but also like a work of art. Nonetheless, it was still a hypernet gate.

“I don’t like hypernets,” Geary mumbled just loud enough for Desjani to hear. He didn’t want to share his feelings with everyone on the bridge.

She looked up from checking the status of Dauntless to ensure her ship was ready for the transit. “Why not?”

“It feels unnatural.”

“Compared to what? Jump space?”

He glowered at her. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Desjani replied. “Seriously. If you want to travel from one star to another, you can’t do it in less than decades without doing something weird. Personally, I think hypernet space isn’t as weird as jump space.”

He didn’t reply, feeling grumpy. Rione’s information was weighing on his mind, worries about Midway kept rising to the surface, the lack of solid information about what the enigmas had at Hua meant he had to worry about that—

“The spider-wolves want to know if we’re ready,” General Charban said.

Geary ran his eyes down the fleet status readouts. It could be better. A lot better. Too much damage, not enough time or resources for all of the repairs that needed to be done. But they were ready to go. “Yes. The fleet is ready. Will the spider-wolves give us a countdown?”

“I’m not certain,” Charban said after passing on Geary’s reply using the coordination circuit. The words had barely left his mouth when the universe twitched and the stars disappeared, leaving only darkness around Dauntless . “Correction. The answer is no, they will not provide a countdown.”