Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 2: Redemption (9 page)

"I'd like a chance to be your friend," Cat said simply. She waited. There was absolutely no response. She turned her senses up to their maximum sensitivity. She could hear the movement of air molecules across the creature's external gills. These swished in continual lazy swirls that kept air moving over them.

She spoke again. "Is there anything I can get you?"
Across the full range of her enhanced senses she detected no response whatsoever. "You can't hear, can you?" she said.

"Cal, what biometric data do we have on our friend here? Is there any structure analogous to hearing organs?"

"
Many insectoid species utilize an asymmetrical tympanal membrane that responds to different frequencies of sound by vibrating in-concert with the incoming wavefront. The mechanical movement is differentially propagated along the membrane and picked up by neurons along the membrane's  length. There is no evidence of such a structure in this creature's anatomy."

"So this being has no sense of hearing."

"That may be true, however, there is a bulbous bioelectric organ located near the brainstem with what appears to be a resonance chamber.
"

"We know these creatures communicate in space with radio signals. Is it possible that these creatures..."

"
…
communicate primarily via radio packets. This is consistent with limited information the
Yorktown
was able to secure prior to the attack."
Cal continued.

"Then
," Cat said with a smile, "open a channel!"

Cat sat dejectedly at one of the tables in the galley of the rapidly reconstituting
GCP Heidman-2
. For the better part of five hours she had tried every combination of frequency and amplitude modulation she could think of in an effort to elicit a response from the creature sitting across the table from her.

At least she had developed enough of a rapport with her that she was able to coax her out of the small medical bay. Cat had randomly assigned a gender to the creature so she could stop thinking of th
e‘
he
r
’ as an 'it.' The smell of cinnamon was ever-present, but had diminished as the creature had become more relaxed.

Ricky Valen and Rebecca Kirkland entered the small galley followed by Rudy McQuin. The smell of cinnamon increased briefly.

"I see Cinnabon is making herself at home," Rebecca said while grabbing a cup of coffee.

Ricky had of course come up with the obvious name for their guest. It had been the least egregious of numerous suggestions he had made
; suggestions which included Bugaboo, Cricket, and Madam Roach. As for the race she came from, he simply called them Buggers and the name stuck despite Cat's objections.

"She is
," Cat confirmed. They had discovered that their guest loved both honey and maple syrup, as well as a variety of sweet jellies. A selection of each was on the table.

Cinnabon extended a pinkish gray proboscis towards each of the samples and sipped at them.

"My current concern is how to establish meaningful communication. We know from analysis of the signals we've intercepted that they use some type of paired orbital angular momentum radio signal to interact, but there seems to be some type of initiation handshake to kick things off that we can't identify."

Cinnabon chose that moment to chirp. That was what Cat called it when their guest emitted a high frequency radio burst. Her guess was that if she knew how to respond to this signal they would be able to start interacting on something closer to real communication.

She echoed the chirp back but received no response.

Rebecca, who had just finished several hours tweaking the
Heidman's
environmental systems, took a close look at the alien.

"I wonder if the issue is not so much the handshake as it is the timing. I was talking with that young engineer, Ensign Sanders. He has the
Heidman's
AI hold an open channel to all the Heshe systems. Turns out the Heshe tech was cycling through thousands of 'no-ops' waiting for the human tech to initiate a communication link each time it set about interacting with the rest of the ship. It may be our friend here is ' timing out' waiting for a response."

"It's an intriguing idea.
Cal, open a carrier on the same frequency Cinnabon uses when she chirps. The moment a signal is detected. Do not wait for it to complete, but echo back the last chirp sent."

Cal acknowledged the command and opened the carrier frequency.

***

The
Hymenopteran super-mind spent 3.8 milliseconds congratulating itself. This took the form of a low level endorphin surge across 20 percent of its collective. The hive had just conducted its first successful test of a hyperfold device. Three of the ten drones engaged in the test had not survived because of unexpected gravity sheering but that was a very acceptable result.

The cause of the sheering had been determined and a work-a-round developed. Construction of an invasion fleet was now underway. The fleet would be composed of hundreds of nickel-iron asteroids hollowed out by hive drones and fitted with hyperfold generators. No weapon systems would be necessary because the kinetic energy released by the impact of each ship would be used to destroy the invaders' home world.

The exotic matter used by these drives would be problematic, but the super-mind had several million drones near their end-of-life age segregated from the general population. They would pilot specially modified mining craft tangentially into the sun's corona. These craft would collect corona material in giant magnetic ram scoops. The radiation would kill the pilots but the mining craft would continue out of the corona where they and their exotic-matter-rich cargo could be recovered by a fleet waiting for that very purpose.

It would take the all-out effort of billions of drones
, but the invasion fleet would be ready in less than a third of an annual solar cycle of the nest world's primary. Once complete the super-mind's mandate to protect the hive could be realized.

***

The
Dante
made orbital insertion around Kepler-47b undetected. The defense ring around the planet which the
Yorktown
personnel now knew to be composed of millions of small attack craft remained essentially static.

The
Dante
deployed a series of cloaked probes around the planet and its large moons. Slowly a more complete picture of the system dynamics became apparent. As the moons, both of which were habitable by human standards, orbited the planet, they slowly passed by the entire ring structure. Small groups of the ring would depart and land on the moon they were closest to. For every small group that would leave the ring system, another would rejoin it from one of the moons.

Probes orbiting the moons detected a massive series of farms and an impressive technology base that seemed designed to minimize environmental impact. Whoever these people were, they had much they could teach the various GCP worlds.

What confused Ken Kirkland the most was the apparent lack of population in what appeared to be population centers. There were massive city structures that appeared devoid of any population. The farming centers seemed to be largely automated. Only the industrial centers seemed to have a substantial population, but even here the numbers seemed to be far below what they were designed for.

Ken glanced at Commander Melbourne. "Seems too quiet."

"If by that you mean 'Where the heck is everybody?' I agree," Sherry said.

Ken scratched his bushy red beard. "If I had to guess, the defense ring here and in solar orbit are the bulk of the population.
From the looks of things this is not their normal behavior. Those cities and farms were clearly designed to be inhabited."

Sherry adjusted the zoom on
one of the probe feeds they were monitoring. "Based on what we can see of the buildings and streets, they have not been abandoned for long. Also I'm seeing evidence of a massive subterranean system of tunnels and chambers. Even if both defense rings were to return to the smaller of the two moons I doubt they would be filled to capacity. Whatever happened here, I think their population has been decimated."

"Well, that would explain their 'attack first, ask questions later' approach to welcoming visitors
," Ken mused.

"Most of the ships leaving the planetary rings approach structures of this type
," Sherry said while pointing to a series of structures just outside one of the massive farming complexes. "I noticed a small number heading towards these domed structures."

"Any clue as to what they may be?" Ken asked.

"None at all. I'm going to set one of the cloaked probes to hang in geosynchronous orbit. I'd like to see if we can figure it out."

"Good idea
," Ken said. "In the meantime le
t’
s calculate the best way to approach our people on the surface. Once we enter the atmosphere we will effectively lose our invisibility."

***

Cat walked with Captain Jeffries in the short hall from the medical bay to the mess. Cinnabon followed a few feet behind. The creature never left Cat's presence. They had not yet been able to establish meaningful communication. Normally they would simply analyze conversations taking place between members of their species and slowly deduce meanings, but with the entire race using entangled quantum links there was no way to eavesdrop and hear the conversation.

Jeffries commented on the repairs taking place on his ship. Slowly but surely the advanced nanite systems were rebuilding the
Heidman
. She would never be a Bowman class vessel again, but in a few days she would be space-worthy. The problem would be what to do once she got to space.

The inhabitants of this system were still in orbit. The
Heidman-2
, as they were calling the rebuilt ship, needed to clear Kepler-47b's intense gravity well before its substantially weaker power generation systems could produce an adequate hyperfold in space-time to allow the ship to escape.

In addition, as Captain Jeffries repeatedly reminded her, there was the matter of checking out the second section of the
Heidman
which was located half a mile deeper within the planet's gravity well. This distance, although seemingly trivial, meant the atmospheric pressure was many times greater than the already incredible levels outside the section of the ship they were currently in. Any rescue mission to this section of the ship would require special planning.

"We need to work out how we are going to get to the other section. I don't think our encounter suits can operate at those pressures. Ken Kirkland and his teams will be here in a few hours
, but they are going to be faced with the same limitations we are."

Mike took a pair of coffee cups off the shelf as they entered the ship's mess.  He filled one and passed it to Cat. They had put
aside the tension that had developed as a result of his handling of Cinnabon before Cat had arrived on scene. That said, it remained apparent that he still had no love for the being whose people had attacked his ship.

"If we can't get to them in encounter suits, what about using autonomous robots to ferry the section of the ship uphill? They could use the same dirigible technique you used to get here from the shuttle crash site."

"I asked Rudy and Ensign Sanders to work up some numbers. It doesn't look promising. We have no idea what level of structural integrity we are dealing with, and the weight of that section of the ship, especially in this gravity, is prohibitive. What I'm personally leaning toward is more along the lines of cybernetic avatars. It would be like going in person but without the need for encounter suits. The avatars will allow us to access the situation and react based on direct observation," Cat said while sipping her coffee.

Ensign Sanders chose that moment to poke his head into the galley. "Captain, when you have a moment could you join the First Officer and Mr. Valen on the engineering deck?"

Mike looked at Cat as if to say 'Are we done here?'

"Go ahead
, duty calls. I'll just sit here with my coffee and Cinnabon."

Captain Jeffries looked momentarily confused and then smiled weakly as he realized the jest.

When he had left and it was just Cinnabon and herself, she pulled out her tablet and began working some numbers. Cinnabon was sipping an iced coffee, which, much to everyone's amazement, their guest had taken to like a duck takes to water.

Somewhere along the line Cat started to hum a tune that had been one of her father and mother's favorites.  She remembered as a little girl singing it with them both while she bounced on her bed. It had been a silly thing to do then
, but over the years, after her mother died, it had become a song she and her father hummed to remember. Much later, after they started to work together as lab partners, it had become something they hummed when they needed to think.

What happen next would become
legend within the GCP. Cinnabon issued a radio chirp. Per Cat's earlier instructions to Cal, the AI echoed the previous chirp before the new one had completed. Cinnabon's organic hive node responded to the hand shake and fully opened a conversation link. Over this link came a haunting rendition of Alex Harvey's 1970s
Delta Dawn
. For a Hymenopteran who had never heard of music or singing the impact of a melodic melody was like an epiphany.

The Hymenopteran stood up on all
its legs and began to sway. When Cat noticed this she stopped humming and Cinnabon became visibly agitated. It begged her to continue but for Cat all she could hear was a series of broad frequency clicks and whistles.

Not knowing what else to do and recognizing that her companion had responded to her humming
, she began to hum again. Immediately Cinnabon began to sway with the melody.  As an experiment she stopped. The reaction was as she expected: a burst of radio noise accompanied by physical agitation.

She started to hum a third time but this time she broke into song
:

Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on

Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?

And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today

To take you to his mansion in the sky?...

Amazingly Cinnabon began to echo the melody with the chirps and whistles within the radio noise. Cat stopped to listen and she heard a single word from her embedded Heshe encounter unit... "more?"