Jack Campbell - Leviathan

“Can we even detect whether jump points can reach those more distant stars?” Desjani asked.

“I’ll see what I can find out, Captain,” Castries said. “But there’s nothing in our navigation systems that would indicate we can do that.”

“But we haven’t been looking for it, have we?” Desjani said.

“No, Captain. I don’t know if we know how to look for something like that.”

“Forty ships,” Geary said, focusing back on practical issues. “General Charban, we need to know why they are here, how they got here, why they are here, what they want, and why they are here.”

“In that order?” Charban asked.

“Yes. Get me answers, General. The Dancers pointed us toward Unity Alternate. Some of them left in a rush. Now this much larger group of their ships has appeared without warning, apparently using jump drives in ways we can’t. We need to know what game they are playing and whether they consider us teammates in that game or part of the playing equipment.”

“Admiral,” Charban said, “we’ve been trying to figure those things out since we first met the Dancers.”

“Get that green-haired girl,” Desjani suggested. “You know, the one who spots things no one else does. Maybe she can help some more with figuring out the Dancers.”

“Lieutenant Jamenson?” Geary asked. “That’s not a bad idea. General, we need to leave Varandal within a few days on an urgent mission. I can’t leave Varandal with forty alien ships here. There’s a very urgent need for answers.”

“I will try,” Charban said.

It took some work to pry Lieutenant Jamenson loose from Captain Smythe this time. Smythe, dealing with the mountain of work required to get the fleet out of Varandal in a few days’ time, did not want to give up his most valuable staff officer. Geary, not wanting to alienate a subordinate as capable as Smythe, was reluctant to simply order the action. “You do realize, Captain, that if I don’t have Lieutenant Jamenson’s help in understanding why the Dancers are here, the fleet may not be able to leave as intended, and all of the work you are doing would be wasted?”

Smythe gave in.

As soon as he heard she was aboard, Geary went to the special compartment set aside for communicating with the Dancers. The fleet’s system security personnel had been horrified when it was discovered that Dancer software could modify itself to work with human hardware, leading to an ironclad dictate that the Dancer software had to be kept on gear physically separated from other equipment.

Lieutenant Jamenson was there, seated at the long table holding the special comm gear, as were General Charban and Tanya Desjani. “How does it look?” Geary asked. “Ever since they arrived in this star system, the Dancers have been heading toward Dauntless at point two light. They’re almost on top of us now.”

“Fortunately,” Desjani added, “they haven’t shown any signs of strengthening shields or powering up weapons. Having a bunch of alien ships charging on an intercept for my ship does worry me, though.”

“What have they told us?” Geary demanded.

Charban sighed heavily enough to have put out the candles on a birthday cake. “There is no indication of hostile intent. As usual, they sound friendly. The Dancers sent us a long message that translated as ‘hello, it’s nice to be here, how are you?’ I asked them why they were here. The brief response said ‘we are on a mission.’ What mission? An ‘important mission.’ Admiral, why don’t you shoot me and put me out of my misery?”

Desjani was shaking her head. “Why would they go to the trouble to come here, then not talk to us in any meaningful way?”

A long silence followed her question.

Lieutenant Jamenson had been gazing at the comm gear and now asked General Charban about it. “This shows us the translations of what the Dancers have said? In human words? Can I use this to hear the original messages they send?”

“The original messages?” Charban asked. “You mean, in Dancer language? Yes, you can do that. We used to listen to them as well as the translations, but we stopped because it didn’t seem to help at all. Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not important. But it occurred to me that I had never heard a raw Dancer message. Since it’s something I haven’t tried, and everything we have tried hasn’t helped…”

“That makes at least as much sense as anything else about the Dancers,” Charban said. “I will warn you that some of the sounds the Dancers make probably could not be rendered by humans. Here. See this command that says ‘origin’? That means the same as original. And this command will direct the sound to you. That brings up a window with volume controls and that sort of thing.”

“Thank you, General.”

As Jamenson leaned close to the equipment, listening intently, Charban looked back at Geary. “I asked how the Dancers had gotten here. The reply was ‘we traveled.’ How did you travel? ‘By ship.’”

“They have to be messing with us,” Desjani said. “They’re on those ships laughing as they think about us trying to understand those messages.”

“What does it sound like when a Dancer laughs?” Geary wondered, thinking of those wolf-spider faces. “Did you ask them about Unity Alternate?”

“I asked them about the many stars,” Charban said. “They said, ‘are you watching?’ I said yes. They said ‘good.’”

The resulting extended silence was broken by Jamenson. “They sound different,” she said, not like someone who has discovered something but as if she had no idea what she had found.

“What sounds different?” Charban asked her.

“The Dancer messages.” Jamenson turned a puzzled look on the other three. “When I listen to the first message they send us each time, when they start a conversation, it’s sort of long, and it sounds… it sounds sort of musical.”

“The sounds used in the Dancer language—” Charban began.

“No, General. Excuse me. It’s not that. Those opening messages have a sort of bounce to them, a feeling of…” Jamenson struggled for the right word. “Of someone saying a song.”

“Or a poem?” Desjani asked.

“Maybe, Captain. But then after we answer, they answer, and their messages are, um, flat.”

“Flat?” Geary asked.

“Yes, sir. Oh, listen for yourselves. You’ll see.”

Charban, not bothering to hide his skepticism, leaned over and tapped a command. “Go ahead and play them. We’ll all hear now.”

Geary concentrated as the first Dancer message played back, the sounds strange to human throats echoing softly in the room. “You’re right, Lieutenant. There is a sort of bounce to it. Like a…”

“A spoken-word musical instrument?” Desjani said, intrigued.

“And then,” Jamenson said, “here’s their response to our reply.”

The same sort of sounds could be heard, but this time even though they sounded the same, they felt different. “Flat,” Geary said. “I see what you mean, Lieutenant. But what does that mean?”

Charban was frowning in thought. “If they sang to us to start a conversation… there are animals that do that, right?”

“Birds,” Desjani said. “Insects, some mammals, those things on that planet in Kostel Star System. They sing to identify each other, to pass information, for mating—”

“I sincerely hope that’s not why the Dancers would be singing to us,” Charban said.

“Could they be songs?” Jamenson asked. “Songs without music?” She played one of the opening messages again.

Geary listened as the strange tones of Dancer speech once more filled the conference room, the pitch of the words merging, blending, and soaring. “It must mean something. Something that the Dancers’ own translation software isn’t picking up.”