While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 21

  Kathryn had asked Bill for some time to consult with her crew on how they would proceed.  The alien obliged and returned down into the building on the descending platform.  He provided her with a frequency with which they could contact him on their scrolls when they were ready.

  She ordered the others to go off and enjoy the gardens while she conferred privately with Jaren.  After reaching him on the scroll, she pulled her scroll apart to contact Jaren and relay everything Bill had told them and asked.

  “Who’d have figured that our most advanced weapons were to them so antiquated they’d never thought to use them before?”

  “I know,” she answered, looking up into the sky for answers.  “I know, it… boggles the mind.”

  “So, what’s our play then?” he asked.  “What are our options?”

  “Well, sounds like we can have a grand old party while we watch the whole galaxy burn,” she sardonically suggested.

  “Not my first choice,” he answered as though she were serious, playing along.

  “No,” she said, “certainly not mine either.  But we really could just wash our hands of all of this, you know.  We could just cut our losses and portal back home.  They’d steal all of our antimatter sure, but I’m confident they’d leave us alone otherwise if we asked them to.”

  “Sure, and maybe we should if it weren’t for Maggie.”

  “Sure,” she sighed.  “Maybe it would be.  So instead we now have to commit our damaged ship, remaining crew, and potentially all of human civilization to a galactic civil war in which we’ve only heard one side’s version of it.”

  “Fair point,” Jaren acknowledged while slowly nodding.  “That other side is the one that abducted our daughter though, and this one has offered to help get her back.  That has to carry some weight.”

  “Bingo,” Kathryn affirmed, pointing a finger at the screen.

  “I feel obligated to point out another option, though I don’t really like it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sounds like they just want our warheads Kat, not necessarily us or our ship.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “What if we could have everything we want?” he asked.  “What if we could send the ship home without us or the warheads, but stay here ourselves and go after Maggie with them?  It’s as important as anything else that we report back at this point.  Our antimatter aside, I doubt anything else about our ship would be particularly useful to them.  Granted our personal priority is without a doubt Maggie, but countless other lives now rely on us getting this intel back to Command.”

  “If we could pull that off…” she looked out over the vast landscape in front of her as she stood at the edge of the terrace, “it would definitely be the better all the bad options.”

  “Agreed.  See what you can do.”

  “Aye, Captain,” she teased him again.  He waved her off with playful irritation and the line closed.  She considered whether she should consult with Margaret and Felix before summoning Bill back but didn’t see the point— the decision had been made.  She turned the scroll’s comm array to the frequency Bill had provided and said she was ready to meet with him again.  She wandered over to the area where they had come through the floor and before long it shimmered away and Bill with its silver ball stood in the centre of the platform as it rose up to replace the floor.

  “Have you reached a decision then?” Bill asked through the ball with a hopeful green tint.

  “Well, I’m ready to negotiate.  How’s that?”

  “Fair.” It answered amicably and gestured to a padded bench beside her with its double-jointed arm, inviting her to sit.  “First though, this has been bugging me.  Humans typically identify as male or female.  It affects our language; we have pronouns to address you in different ways so may I ask, does your species even have a gender?  Should I address you as he or she?  It or they, maybe?  Bill for example is typically a male name.”

  After climbing up onto the bench itself and sitting down with its four legs folded up underneath itself the creature answered.  “My species have no gender,” it answered as its mirror ball took on a yellow hue.  “Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say we have only one.  As a result, we have no comparable kind of identifying.”

  “How do you reproduce?” she asked, immediately blushing a bit at the potentially prying question.  “I’m sorry,” she let out a small nervous laugh, “I don’t mean to offend, it can be a… private topic in our culture.”

  “Not at all,” it said.  “We lay a clutch of eggs.  We can reproduce asexually by recombining our own genetic material when isolated or stressed, but we prefer to receive genetic material from others in mating to create recombinant offspring which are typically more robust.”

  Kathryn burned with a prying curiosity to know exactly what he meant by ‘receive genetic material’, but also considered maybe for now she was better off not knowing, and certainly probably better off not asking.  “You’re familiar enough with our language Bill, would you prefer we refer to you as male, female, or neutrally?”

  “It makes no difference to us,” it almost seemed to shrug.  “You said the name you provided me with is generally a male’s name, correct?”

  “That’s right,” she affirmed, finding herself weirdly embarrassed about something she couldn’t articulate.

  “Male then, if you like,” he said, and Kathryn nodded.  “I can’t guarantee all of my people will feel the same way, but I can’t imagine anyone caring given our lack of such a concept.”

  “Well… sorry to belabour the point, but you are familiar with the concept of gender don’t you?  Don’t most plants you come across have a kind of gender?  Most animals?”

  “Not particularly,” he answered.  He closed his eyes for a few moments before opening them again.  “The link suggests we have found such phenomena elsewhere but found it unremarkable.  Life on our home planet is mostly like ourselves, a single ‘gender’ with the ability to reproduce asexually, but a strong preference for recombining their offspring’s genetic material with another’s.”

  “Fascinating…” Kathryn marveled.  “It’s such a fixture of our own experience that it’s hard for us to imagine something outside of our ordinary.”

  The mirror ball began to shift slowly to a more pinkish colour.  “You said you were prepared to negotiate?” he asked, seeming eager to return to negotiations.

  “Yes, but sorry just one more question.  I’ve made a lot of assumptions about your floating ball there.  Do you only speak through it?”

  “It can serve many functions,” he answered, the ball growing a kind of yellow again.  Kathryn surmised the yellow meant a warmer feeling, something friendly and reflective, appreciation of sharing and bonding.  “Think of it as a far more advanced version of your scroll.”  He held up a three taloned hand and it came down to float slowly rotating above his hand.  

  “I can control it via The Link,” he explained.  “With it I can communicate with you here, or with any Bobbin on the surface or in the fleet above us.  It can become a tool,” he said as the silver material of the ball melted into a succession of shapes which her mind grasped to categorize into something like a screwdriver, then something like a tablet, then something like a soldering iron, “or a weapon,” he added as it melted into the more recognizable form of a knife, then into something more gun like.”

  “I’ve been guessing the colours reflect your mood, am I close?”

  “Quite accurate actually.  It was thought a helpful augment to our communication since the voice synthesis had difficulty incorporating tone the way you seem to be able to with ease.”

  “Thank you, that’s very helpful,” Kathryn said as the ball started drifting from yellow to pink again, a colour she was learning to associate with annoyance or perhaps just impatience.

  “You said you were ready to negotiate Admiral.  What can we help you with?”

  “I need to get my daughter back,” she answered in as serious a tone as she could.

  “I understand,” he offered as his mirror ball started shifting green with a note of his understanding and acceptance.

  “The only possible way I can see that happening now is with your help,” Kathryn continued.

  “Agreed.,” Bill answered with confidence.  As his mirror ball started to become orange, Kathryn came to really appreciate the clarity of it now that she was certain of its function.  It was still hard to be exact about what the colour meant, but the orange she imagined related to his confidence, even maybe pride at his people being powerful enough to help her.

  “I propose that my ship and her crew be sent back to the safety of our home world while myself and a small team stay behind with the weapons you require to locate Maggie and conduct a joint operation to rescue her.”

  The alien closed his eyes for a few moments before opening them again and focusing on her, something she’d come to understand meant he was consulting with The Link.  “This arrangement acceptable to us in principle,” he said.  Pink.  “I am gratified we are able to come to an agreeable arrangement regarding your ship’s supply of antimatter.”

  Kathryn nodded.  “We would also like to be provided with information which will allow us to access your portal network from our own rifts so we can maintain a diplomatic dialogue with you.  Ideally, we would like to be able to visit and explore all of the systems you’ve opened up, but at minimum we need access to at least one address that allows us to contact you when we need to”

  “This is not impossible,” Bill said, the hint of blue-purple to his ball perhaps indicating caution in his wording.  The colour grew more pronounced as he continued.  “I feel obligated to warn you though Admiral Barnes.  The enemy has your computer core— they are aware of your civilization now.  They know you have antimatter and what it means for this war.  While we can’t say for sure what that will lead them to do, you must understand that it now puts your people under threat.”

  “They know we have more.  A lot more,” Kathryn realized with horror.  “They’ll come after it now.

  “This can be expected now, I’m afraid.”  Green.  “However, it may not be their first option.  They may believe you don’t have a large enough supply to win them the war and instead focus all of their energies on building up their own production capacity as quickly as possible.  It is a feature of their permanent connection to the link that they act as one, focusing entirely on one priority at a time.”

  “Right,” Kathryn considered.  “All the same I think I’ll leave instructions with the ship to ask Command about securing additional weapons to send through for us.”

  “As I said Admiral Barnes, we surmise you do not have sufficient active weapons for either side to win the war outright.  What you have could at best be used to defend either side’s most critical strategic infrastructure.”

  Kathryn stood and put her hands on her hips as she pursed her lips for a few moments in contemplation, immediately regretting it when she felt the heavy gravity rest on her weary joints.  At least the difficulty breathing with the weight on her chest  had let up.  “Well, I’ll at least leave them with a recommendation to set up defensive postures around all of our rift crystals for the time being.  At least we have weapons which can hurt them if they try anything.  Will you grant us the ability to portal back to contact you?”

  “Yes of course, Admiral.  We are as sincere in our wish to become friends as we are dismayed to be meeting you under these circumstances.  You are after all only the fifth sentient species we have encountered.  We seek peaceful collaboration and cultural exchange.  We look forward to introducing you to the other three races as well.  It’s just… this damn war.”  His ball took on a strong metallic red which was easy to interpret as conveying his anger.

  “I understand Bill,” she offered sympathetically.  Between the discomfort of standing and realizing she had more to ask about their strategic situation, she sat back down on the bench.  “Can you tell me more about this ‘Link’?” she asked as she looked over and saw Felix and Margaret looking somewhat impatient.  The novelty of the alien garden had apparently lost its novelty as well as the horizon to horizon alien vista which had come into view as the mists had cleared beneath them.  They weren’t as high up as she’d imagined, figuring that the mists were kept lower to the ground than she’d expected in the heavier gravity.  “Have you found a way around the speed of light?  Can your link connect you in real time across worlds?”

  “Yes and no,” Bill answered.  “We’ve been able to unlock hyper-dimensionality to communicate faster than light, and while the signals can propagate through the portals, they only work on the scale of within star systems but not between.  Your mission logs suggest you have experienced our near range instantaneous communications system?  With it we can communicate nearly instantaneously between different planets within systems, but communication between them must be through open portals.”

  “So how do you maintain a system like The Link across star systems without constant interactions?”

  “Regular updates,” he explained.  “From this central planet, updates are issued every day through the portal to an update facility at a secret location in another system.  This facility’s sole job is to regularly cycle through dialing every active portal we have and transmitting the update.  On the other side, in every system, there is a local node which broadcasts the update to any receiving nodes in the system.  If a piece of information requires urgent dissemination, a new update can be issued immediately, and the process begins anew.  A hierarchy of priority ensures that the most vital systems are updated first in either case.”

  “But without real time communications how do you, well… ‘become one’ with the rest of your people?”

  “You misunderstand, we don’t link directly with other Bobbins in the way you describe.  We ‘become one’ with the information provided by The Link, which includes all of the life experience and wisdom of all who are now and have ever been a part of it.  We are unified with our species and all of its accumulated knowledge and wisdom, but we don’t have a real time link with the consciousness of other Bobbins.”

  “So how does your enemy operate as a hive mind the way you describe?”

  “It might be more accurate to say that they allow themselves to be controlled by The Link, which operates them based on the latest instructions provided by the updates.  They carry out their most recently received instructions like a computer operating system receiving regular updates.”

  “So… every one of you has the sum total of your civilization’s knowledge and experience inside your personal hardware?”  The idea of that kind of storage capacity let alone what it meant to exist that way boggled her mind.

  “Yes,” he answered matter of factly.

  “Damn… So how does it work now?  Your enemy doesn’t’ have access to your updates do they?  I assume you operate parallel systems at this point?”

  “When the war broke out, we both shifted frequencies and encryption, and now operate parallel systems, seperate branches of the original stream of updates.”

  “And that’s why you can’t just intercept one of their update broadcasts and use the information in it?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, if we could access one of their nodes,” the considered, “we could learn everything we needed to know, couldn’t we?”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as where my daughter is!” she exclaimed in exasperation before trying to pull herself back some but failed.  “Where our computer core is as well!  Whether or not they’ve realized about our anti-matter weapons yet, how their progress in creating more is going.  For fuck’s sakes Bill, whether or not they’ve already invaded our home worlds!”

  “Yes,” Bill cautiously offered.  “Directly accessing systems on one of their nodes would allow us access to their Link database, but such nodes for both of us are naturally among our most heavily defended facilities.  To successfully launch an incursion would require…”  The mirror ball took on a taupe hue as he seemed dubious, perhaps at the scale of firepower and resources such a campaign would require.

  “Unusually effective weapons perhaps?” Kathryn suggested with a raised eyebrow.

  The creature looked squarely up at her with two of his offset black eyes.  “We require those weapons to defend this system before anything else,” the alien clarified forcefully.

  “You said it yourself, Bill.  What we have wouldn’t be enough to stop an all-out assault on this system, and they’re unlikely to launch one anyways.  You need a new plan, a new strategy, a different way of thinking.”

  “Something bold,” he considered.  “Something so stupid they’d never see it coming…”  His expression changed to something she couldn’t recognize until the sphere turned a shade of orange.  “Something which could win the war all at once.”  She could swear that if he had a tail it would be wagging.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “We infiltrate a primary enemy Link node,” he said, but then the orange vanished from the ball, and it turned an equally prominent green.  “But sadly we could not commit those weapons to such an assault.”

  “Well maybe an overt assault isn’t necessary,” Kathryn suggested.  “What about a small covert team?  Could you disguise one of your ships as one of theirs somehow so you could safely approach?”

  Bill seemed to sigh.  “I’m afraid that’s not possible Admiral,” he said.  “Although—” he closed his eyes and the ball went black again as he consulted his link.  “There is one asset we’ve have been holding onto which might just be perfect for a mission like this.”

  “Go on.”

  “We captured a small enemy vessel some time ago, a deep space explorer.  It is scheduled to return to base relatively soon.  You see,” he explained, “any ship we captured was reported lost and locked out as soon as it missed its first scheduled check in; its signature would be delisted, and the vessel presumed hostile if encountered again the same way we initially regarded Ralph and its claims.  Its home base is as well guarded as any other, but if we could get aboard it using that ship we could access the facility’s database directly and extract whatever information we wanted,” he explained before excitedly adding: “their entire Link archive for that matter!”

  “Why didn’t you think of this plan on your own already?”

  “We did,” he answered, “but the value of such a plan is contingent on being able to safely leave the system again with the information after the extraction.  Otherwise, we have no way to relay the information back.”

  “But now you have a surprise which can help you escape.”

  “The warheads?”

  “The warheads.” she affirmed.  “What could you do with that information?”

  “Well,” he considered.  “If we shot our way out, the value of the information would rapidly deteriorate.  They would immediately shift their Link encryption since we could access it with the information we stole.  They would certainly redeploy their fleet but that would take a bit more time… we would learn all about their research and their ultimate plans though.  Using your weapons, the potential rewards now outweigh the risks.”

  “Alright,” she said, “it’s settled then.”  She stood, turned to face him, and held out her hand.  “You will send my ship and crew back home through the portal while I and a few other key personnel stay behind with our antimatter warheads to help you execute our plan, locate my daughter, and secure the intel that’ll help you win the war.  From there we play it by ear.”

  “Agreed,” he answered amicably as he reached out and shook her hand.