Post by Lorpius Prime on Aug 21, 2012 3:15:00 GMT -5
The Tadpoles' arkship looked like the Death Star. And once Pascual had that thought, nothing could shake it from his mind.
It was easily the largest artificial structure which had ever been seen inside the Solar System. Few of the faster-than-light starships operated by the Bats, Charterlings, or Kyhyex had ever approached close enough to Earth for Humanity to make precise measurements. But even the most generous estimates of the largest of those craft made them out to be rough spheres with diameters of less than 50 kilometers.
The Tadpole ship was also basically spherical, though a cone-shaped divot occupied about three quarters of one hemisphere and reached nearly to the ship's geometric center. But the sphere's diameter was only just shy of 300 kilometers. An alien spacecraft was now the fifth-largest moon of Uranus by volume. Some Fleet spacers had told Pascual that it was even possible the ship out-massed the largest of those natural moons by an order of magnitude. Pascual wasn't sure he found that notion plausible. But even if it wasn't true, the arkship was still an awesome beast.
Viewed against the backdrop of Uranus' steel-gray illuminated hemisphere, the Tadpole ship was nearly black. The Earth Fleet shuttle was still more than a thousand kilometers from its surface, but small structures and protrusions were becoming visible. Points of light floating around the ship like motes of dust were other spacecraft, mostly shuttles ferrying Tadpoles from the behemoth towards the human colony ships.
"Do you think we'll ever be able to build things like that?" Nadia leaned her head in beside Pascual's to look out the little porthole.
"I hope so," Pascual said a little distantly, "…someday. Though I can't imagine what something like that would cost." The scale was so huge; even though Pascual could put numbers to it, he knew he could not truly appreciate their meaning.
"There's no way it's economical," a voice said from in front of both of them. Spacer Apprentice Mohammed, the shuttle's copilot, apparently had nothing requiring his immediate attention. He was leaned back in his seat, with his head half-turned to speak to his passengers.
"Not even talking about the energy it must take to move a monster like that between stars," he waved one hand towards his forward monitor. "But just think what it would take to assemble a structure that large. Probably cheaper to build everyone on Earth their own personal helicopter."
Nadia pulled away from Pascual and turned towards the cockpit. "Spacer Mohammed, is it?"
Pascual couldn't see Nadia's expression from this angle, but he could see the copilot freeze and then swallow nervously. "Uh, yes Lieutenant. Sir."
Nadia didn't say anything more, but kept the Spacer in her gaze. Pascual wasn't really sure what had happened, but he could feel the tension and wanted to defuse it.
"Their homeworld was under attack," he said. "When everything's at stake like that, I imagine the expense doesn't matter so much."
The copilot turned towards him with visible relief. "Suppose that's a fair point, Ambassador. Wish more people felt that way about Earth Fleet."
Pascual was about to comment on just how fortunate they were so many people did feel that way about the Fleet, but the shuttle's pilot suddenly reached out an arm and smacked Spacer Mohammed on the back of his head.
"Ali, check our INS drift with the Danube again. I'd rather not make out like a fly against a windshield if you know what I mean."
"Aye, Chief," the copilot sat forward again to work with his instruments.
Outside the porthole, the looming arskhip had nearly obscured all of Uranus and the space beyond.
Lee Xi Feng twirled a loose strand of hair by her right temple as she read over the Uruguay CIC's latest evaluations of IR laser sweeps across the surface of the Tadpole arkship. In one corner of her monitor, a flashing indicator waited for her attention.
The last human mission to Uranus before Task Force One was the Voyager 2 probe in the 1980s. Voyager 2 was, in fact, the only other human mission to Uranus. That one fly-by had been celebrated as a triumph for early human space exploration, and produced a wealth of new data for Earth's small corps of pre-contact astronomers.
As a source of military-grade intelligence in 2073, it was a travesty. Earth Fleet had, effectively, no idea how many natural satellites Uranus had. Even if Voyager had had the equipment and time to make a perfect survey at the time, there was no telling what new objects could have been captured or created in collisions during the intervening century.
Commodore Lee's Task Force had access to the data from the Bat Orrery in Caracas. But even that information was eleven years out of date, and Earth Fleet wasn't exactly eager to depend on the Bats for intelligence in the first place.
The result of all of which was that, upon arrival in its parking orbit at the Uranus-Titania L4 point, Task Force One had identified upwards of two thousand "objects of interest" in the planetary system, each of which was a potential Tadpole installation. After a month on station, that list had been whittled down to seventy objects which the Commodore's intelligence officers considered certain or "highly likely" to be artificial, and four hundred others which they believed merely could be idle sensor platforms or weapons. For the moment, they weren't even worrying about any pebble-sized devices which might be hidden in the ring systems.
Each of those five hundred objects represented a threat to Task Force One. No matter what treaties the OES signed, no matter how amiable the human population as a whole, no matter how generous the alien races they dealt with, Earth Fleet had no friends, just potential enemies. The Fleet's duty was to prepare for the very worst eventualities, and always have a way to come out on top.
That meant if the Tadpoles ever decided to turn five hundred armed satellites and the weapons of a hundred spacecraft and a moon-sized arkship against the nine warships and ten support vessels of Task Force One, the Humans needed to be able to fight back using a grand total of fifty-eight railguns and four hundred traditional missiles.
Xi Feng had overcome worse odds in Academy war games. Just not very often.
She tapped at her monitor to close the CIC report, and then nodded at her XO.
"Begin the simulation, Commander."
The arkship had a docking bay.
The largest Earth Fleet ships had little ports, almost like cubbyholes, on their exteriors to allow the secure docking and transport of shuttles. Everything else was done the old fashioned way, mating airlock-to-airlock. Actually building a space inside of one ship large enough to carry another was still a dream for the long-off future.
But the Tadpoles had done it. A metal plate slid along rails to reveal a cavern that could have easily held the Uruguay, much less one little personnel shuttle. After the pilots maneuvered their tiny craft into their instructed position, it was seized by an enormous gantry and swung towards a berth. Two Tadpole transports of the same model as the one Rokden had taken to Earth loomed beside.
At the front of the shuttle, Spacer Mohammed turned towards the pilot.
"Is this when I make the joke about the tray tables?"
Chief Engels just looked back into the passenger couches. "We're secured," he said. "Everyone doing all right?"
Pascual grunted affirmatively while Nadia and the officers in the other couches nodded their own agreement.
"Supposedly the Tadpoles got all the docking mechanisms prepped in advance, so it shouldn't be much of a wait."
"Pressure gauge is good, Chief," the copilot said. "Just waiting on their signal."
"They probably want to take a moment to get the welcome committee organized," Pascual offered.
Across the little aisle down the center of the shuttle's seats, an Earth Fleet Lieutenant named Ellis had his face pressed up against a porthole, trying to get a better view of the docking bay interior.
"Or maybe they're running late," he said. "Can you imagine the internal transportation for this thing? They could be caught in a traffic jam."
"That would be awful poor planning on their part," Nadia replied a bit snobbishly.
Spacer Mohammed snorted, "Well, they're only—nope!" He tapped his monitor, "Tadpoles are confirming a seal, Chief."
Engels nodded, and then got up to stand by the airlock in the center of his cockpit. "Lady and gentlemen," he said, "if you would please make your way to the front of the shuttlecraft."
He drew a cloth facemask out of a pocket and pulled it over his head, while his copilot did the same. "Supposedly there's an airlock on the other side. But as we've never actually been here before, I recommend donning your masks now."
Pascual was ostensibly leading this little expedition of Humanity, and so would be first through the airlock. He shuffled his way up the aisle and dug his own mask out of his pant pocket. With the way the Tadpoles preferred their atmosphere, everyone would have worn masks anyway, but now… Pascual was not looking forward to the decontamination process when they returned to the Barn Swallow.
Chief Engels levered open the shuttle hatch, and there was only a small hiss of air out from the shuttle's cabin into the airlock chamber beyond. The chamber itself was made of an off-white plastic or ceramic. It was built to comfortably Human proportions, but ended at one of the Tadpole's wide circular doorways at the far end.
The shuttle pilot waited for Pascual, Nadia, Lieutenant Ellis, and Dr. Poplawski of the NMC to file into the airlock. "Well," he said when they were in place, "have a good time. We should be parked right here until you get back. All our comms are active, but I don't know if your phones will reach us from in there. Video contact every five hours, otherwise we hit the panic button."
"Roger, Chief," Ellis said.
"Stay alert," Nadia added.
Pascual waved over the tops of their heads, "We'll be sure to take some pictures for you two."
The Chief closed and sealed the shuttle's hatch behind them. For a moment or two, the airlock was silent, as everyone waited anxiously for their first glimpse inside the Tadpoles' arkship. Then the circular hatch split down the center and slid open.
Air rushed in just as it had on the transport the Tadpoles brought to Earth. The pressure difference with Earth Fleet standard was small, only noticeable during the transition, but not even enough to make one's ears pop. Pascual didn't notice it at all.
What he noticed was the cold.
Truthfully, it was not that cold, only a little chilly. Perhaps twelve degrees. But as Pascual had discovered to his own extreme discomfort earlier in this voyage, the Tadpoles considered "room temperature" to be something closer to forty degrees. He had slathered himself with antiperspirant expecting another oppressively hot tour through an enclosed jungle.
He was so stunned that it took him a moment to recover his wits and step through the hatchway. Seven Tadpoles were waiting just beyond to welcome their Human guests.
They were dressed like arctic explorers. Rather than loincloths, they wore baggy full-body suits that obscured their alien proportions, making them look even more like oversized Humans. Thick collars lined with a fur-like substance opened at their necks and rose to cover most of their bulbous heads.
One of the Tadpoles stepped forward and spoke with a familiar voice.
"Welcome friends, Ambassador Molinas," Rokden said. He held out a huge hand made even larger by a puffy mitten. "We are honored to have you aboard our ship."
Pascual's etiquette was able to overcome his shock, and he grasped Rokden's hand in return. Or more accurately, slapped the alien's palm, since his fingers did not reach far enough to close around anything.
"Thank you, Ambassador Rokden; we are honored to be here."
Rokden burbled, "I am Ambassador no longer, my friend. Back here I am only Elder Rokden, one of eight."
Pascual inclined his head respectfully. Then he turned to introduce his companions. "Elder Rokden, this is Lieutenant Ellis and Lieutenant Yatskaya of Earth Fleet; and you have already met Dr. Poplawski from the colony management team."
The three other Humans each shuffled forward to offer their own greetings and awkward handshakes.
When that was done, Rokden half-turned to gesture at two of the Tadpoles behind him, both of whom stepped forward.
"Please allow me to introduce Elder Morh and Captain Pakpeden, master of the ship."
Further handshakes were exchanged. Elder Morh was slightly shorter than Rokden, with a somewhat rounder face. Pakpeden, meanwhile, stood even with the old Ambassador, but kept a rigid posture and moved in sharp, precise bursts.
"Elder Morh is the senior amongst us on the council," Rokden said. "As much as our people have any single leader, it is her."
And with that, Rokden stepped backwards, leaving Morh at the visual head of the alien welcoming party. Her bulbous eyes followed his retreat, and then swiveled back towards Pascual.
"Elder Rokden has explained to me that you govern by dictatorship, rather than consensus," she said. Her voice buzzed at a slightly higher pitch than Rokden's, but contained none of his practiced inflections.
"Um," Pascual said, "dictatorship has certain… unpleasant implications that we prefer to avoid. I suppose we do use hierarchies of authority in government. But the positions in those hierarchies are usually selected by popular votes or proxies."
Morh's head bobbed up and down. "That must allow decision making to be so much simpler and less contentious."
"There are advantages," Pascual offered. He hoped the Tadpole didn't really intend to have a detailed discussion of political theory.
Morh nodded again. "Please walk this way, then," she said, "and we will show you to our home."
The Tadpole elder turned and began walking away from the airlock, back towards her fellows. Pascual hesitated for a second, and then skipped forward as well. The other Humans followed behind.
The four Tadpoles who hadn't been introduced, Pascual took for bodyguards. Their long coats were bulkier than the others', and objects that looked like enormous club hammers swung from belts at their waists. They took up positions on the flanks as the group moved forward in a small procession.
Pascual looked up to the ceiling to get a better sense of his surroundings. Though the space they were in was necessarily enclosed, his mind refused to label it a "room". The ceiling was at least fifty meters above their heads. To either side of the hatch from which they had emerged, airlocks of varying sizes—some quite large—were placed at intervals along a gently curving wall that stretched away for hundreds of meters in either direction. It looked like the largest loading dock or airport terminal Pascual had ever seen, which he supposed was appropriate. A complex network of rails stood up from the floor or hung from the ceiling in front of them. They formed tangled web near the airlocks, but farther away divided and led out to a series of tunnels burrowing into the arkship.
Elder Morh led them to a tubular car resting on one of the nearby rails. It might have been taken from any of a hundred metropolitan subways on Earth, though its doors were wide enough to comfortably admit the Tadpoles' girth.
"I take it these rails connect the whole of the ship?" Gerald Poplawski asked as they filed aboard.
"That's correct," Rokden answered. The last of the Tadpole bodyguards boarded and took up position by the car's doors as they slid shut. "They were mostly used for freight during our journey. Now, of course, we are moving the population."
Pascual peered out the windows, but there was no sign of any other cars offloading Tadpoles. There had been other transports docked nearby, but perhaps they were refueling or under repair. Or was there a second docking bay somewhere else, and that's where the great exodus was boarding.
Dr. Poplawski inquired about the total length of the whole track system. "I imagine it would have to be significant to serve a ship this size. Er, if you don't mind me asking."
There was a pause, after which Captain Pakpeden exchanged a few words with Rokden in their own language.
"About two hundred thousand kilometers, originally," the Tadpole shipmaster said at last. "But parts of the system have been repurposed or are no longer in use. Now it is maybe one half to two thirds of that length."
Lieutenant Ellis whistled. When Pakpeden and both Tadpole elders turned their heads to him, he flushed a little. "Impressive," he told them.
At last, the railcar began moving. The acceleration was smoother and slower than most subway systems Pascual had ridden. But it continued until they were travelling at what he judged to be at least a hundred kilometers per hour.
"Our destination," Elder Morh said, "is one of our primary residential areas. I thought that you might benefit from seeing the people that you are helping. And there are many among us who will appreciate the sight of the aliens who have brought their own salvation."
Something about the way she said this made Pascual slightly uncomfortable. Part of that was simply modesty in the face of gratitude. But he also couldn't shake the impression that they had just become props in a piece of political theater.
Well, he supposed, one probably didn't get to become the senior member of the Tadpole council of elders without a good head for public relations. Politics was politics.
Nadia nudged him in the side with her elbow and Pascual—who had some practice at politics himself—quickly arranged his face into a smile.
"Of course we'd be honored," he said.
Xi Feng decided there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. She looked up from the tablet in her hands to face the Uruguay's Executive Officer and Task Force One's Chief of Operations. Both were seated in the cruiser's small conference room, and neither looked any happier than the Commodore felt.
"Thoughts, gentlemen?"
"It… could have been worse," Hiram Wade said. Xi Feng narrowed her eyes at him. Apparently the fact that she had decided against delaying did not mean her XO had yet found anything genuinely constructive to offer.
In the Task Force's combat exercise, the Tadpoles' simulated surprise attack had wiped out every one of her nineteen Earth Fleet ships in the space of a half hour.
"I think," Lieutenant Commander Donaldson said, a little hesitantly, "that we probably could have been better prepared for this scenario. Much better prepared, even. But most of those adjustments would leave us in worse positions for other possibilities."
Xi Feng nodded. The simulation program—like all which they had run before—had randomly assigned capabilities to every object in the battlespace which the Task Force believed might be a Tadpole military structure or installation. This time the distribution turned out extremely unfavorable to the Task Force's deployment geometry and targeting plan. Too many smaller objects had turned out to be dormant missiles which rocketed themselves into the Human flotilla. And once one of Xi Feng's warships was knocked out of commission, it left a hole in the overlapping fields of their point defenses which could be exploited to take out the rest in sequence.
She grimaced and dug a thumb under her hair to rub one temple. "We could reassign more of our gun salvo towards the little particles. Leave the big structures for the missiles."
Wade pursed his lips, but then shook his head, "I don't like that, Commodore. There's just so damn many of the things. The only way we can count on picking out genuine targets ahead of time is if a high percentage turn out to be hostile. And if a high percentage are hostile, we're screwed no matter how perfect our form because we haven't enough guns to point at them all. I think we've got no choice but to focus primary fire on the big platforms and hope the low-probability threat stays small enough for the lasers to sweep."
"I agree with the XO," Donaldson said. "Maximize our odds within the scenarios we can survive."
"And I agree with both of you," Xi Feng told them. She took a few more deep breaths, hoping without success that some brilliant stratagem would occur to her. But nothing came. "All right, we'll leave the geometry and firing plan the way it is for now. But I still believe we have some room to improve on point-defense coordination." She looked at Donaldson, "And keep the support ships running action drills. I'm not sure I really trust their response times, and if we do end up facing a swarm like that, their lasers have to be working up to speed with the rest of us."
"Aye, Commodore," the Chief of Operations said.
Some of the tension began to drain from the room as their meeting drew to a close.
Wade turned towards Donaldson, "Think Ellis will bring back anything that lets us narrow down the target list?"
The Lieutenant Commander shook his head, "Kid's got a good eye. But he won't have much of a view from the inside, and I don't imagine the Tadpoles simply volunteering to share anything of real value. Do you disagree?"
The XO looked up towards the ceiling before saying, slowly, "I'm worried that he won't make it back alive at all."
"What?" Xi Feng blinked a few times at her second-in-command.
Wade lowered his head again to meet her eyes. "It's the first delegation sent to meet a strange and unknown people on their own lands. History says there's like a fifty-fifty chance they'll all be boiled and eaten by the natives."
"Yes," Donaldson stroked his chin. "Yes, it all makes sense now. This was merely a ruse to lure us here so they could feast upon our flesh. And we walked right into it, Commodore, I'm sorry."
The XO nodded gravely, "We should carve some kind of cryptic warning into the hull with a plasma torch for the rescue mission to discover. And make sure to set the tables in the mess before we abandon ship—"
Xi Feng made a gesture like she was about to throw her tablet at their heads. "Dismissed!"
It was easily the largest artificial structure which had ever been seen inside the Solar System. Few of the faster-than-light starships operated by the Bats, Charterlings, or Kyhyex had ever approached close enough to Earth for Humanity to make precise measurements. But even the most generous estimates of the largest of those craft made them out to be rough spheres with diameters of less than 50 kilometers.
The Tadpole ship was also basically spherical, though a cone-shaped divot occupied about three quarters of one hemisphere and reached nearly to the ship's geometric center. But the sphere's diameter was only just shy of 300 kilometers. An alien spacecraft was now the fifth-largest moon of Uranus by volume. Some Fleet spacers had told Pascual that it was even possible the ship out-massed the largest of those natural moons by an order of magnitude. Pascual wasn't sure he found that notion plausible. But even if it wasn't true, the arkship was still an awesome beast.
Viewed against the backdrop of Uranus' steel-gray illuminated hemisphere, the Tadpole ship was nearly black. The Earth Fleet shuttle was still more than a thousand kilometers from its surface, but small structures and protrusions were becoming visible. Points of light floating around the ship like motes of dust were other spacecraft, mostly shuttles ferrying Tadpoles from the behemoth towards the human colony ships.
"Do you think we'll ever be able to build things like that?" Nadia leaned her head in beside Pascual's to look out the little porthole.
"I hope so," Pascual said a little distantly, "…someday. Though I can't imagine what something like that would cost." The scale was so huge; even though Pascual could put numbers to it, he knew he could not truly appreciate their meaning.
"There's no way it's economical," a voice said from in front of both of them. Spacer Apprentice Mohammed, the shuttle's copilot, apparently had nothing requiring his immediate attention. He was leaned back in his seat, with his head half-turned to speak to his passengers.
"Not even talking about the energy it must take to move a monster like that between stars," he waved one hand towards his forward monitor. "But just think what it would take to assemble a structure that large. Probably cheaper to build everyone on Earth their own personal helicopter."
Nadia pulled away from Pascual and turned towards the cockpit. "Spacer Mohammed, is it?"
Pascual couldn't see Nadia's expression from this angle, but he could see the copilot freeze and then swallow nervously. "Uh, yes Lieutenant. Sir."
Nadia didn't say anything more, but kept the Spacer in her gaze. Pascual wasn't really sure what had happened, but he could feel the tension and wanted to defuse it.
"Their homeworld was under attack," he said. "When everything's at stake like that, I imagine the expense doesn't matter so much."
The copilot turned towards him with visible relief. "Suppose that's a fair point, Ambassador. Wish more people felt that way about Earth Fleet."
Pascual was about to comment on just how fortunate they were so many people did feel that way about the Fleet, but the shuttle's pilot suddenly reached out an arm and smacked Spacer Mohammed on the back of his head.
"Ali, check our INS drift with the Danube again. I'd rather not make out like a fly against a windshield if you know what I mean."
"Aye, Chief," the copilot sat forward again to work with his instruments.
Outside the porthole, the looming arskhip had nearly obscured all of Uranus and the space beyond.
* * *
Lee Xi Feng twirled a loose strand of hair by her right temple as she read over the Uruguay CIC's latest evaluations of IR laser sweeps across the surface of the Tadpole arkship. In one corner of her monitor, a flashing indicator waited for her attention.
The last human mission to Uranus before Task Force One was the Voyager 2 probe in the 1980s. Voyager 2 was, in fact, the only other human mission to Uranus. That one fly-by had been celebrated as a triumph for early human space exploration, and produced a wealth of new data for Earth's small corps of pre-contact astronomers.
As a source of military-grade intelligence in 2073, it was a travesty. Earth Fleet had, effectively, no idea how many natural satellites Uranus had. Even if Voyager had had the equipment and time to make a perfect survey at the time, there was no telling what new objects could have been captured or created in collisions during the intervening century.
Commodore Lee's Task Force had access to the data from the Bat Orrery in Caracas. But even that information was eleven years out of date, and Earth Fleet wasn't exactly eager to depend on the Bats for intelligence in the first place.
The result of all of which was that, upon arrival in its parking orbit at the Uranus-Titania L4 point, Task Force One had identified upwards of two thousand "objects of interest" in the planetary system, each of which was a potential Tadpole installation. After a month on station, that list had been whittled down to seventy objects which the Commodore's intelligence officers considered certain or "highly likely" to be artificial, and four hundred others which they believed merely could be idle sensor platforms or weapons. For the moment, they weren't even worrying about any pebble-sized devices which might be hidden in the ring systems.
Each of those five hundred objects represented a threat to Task Force One. No matter what treaties the OES signed, no matter how amiable the human population as a whole, no matter how generous the alien races they dealt with, Earth Fleet had no friends, just potential enemies. The Fleet's duty was to prepare for the very worst eventualities, and always have a way to come out on top.
That meant if the Tadpoles ever decided to turn five hundred armed satellites and the weapons of a hundred spacecraft and a moon-sized arkship against the nine warships and ten support vessels of Task Force One, the Humans needed to be able to fight back using a grand total of fifty-eight railguns and four hundred traditional missiles.
Xi Feng had overcome worse odds in Academy war games. Just not very often.
She tapped at her monitor to close the CIC report, and then nodded at her XO.
"Begin the simulation, Commander."
* * *
The arkship had a docking bay.
The largest Earth Fleet ships had little ports, almost like cubbyholes, on their exteriors to allow the secure docking and transport of shuttles. Everything else was done the old fashioned way, mating airlock-to-airlock. Actually building a space inside of one ship large enough to carry another was still a dream for the long-off future.
But the Tadpoles had done it. A metal plate slid along rails to reveal a cavern that could have easily held the Uruguay, much less one little personnel shuttle. After the pilots maneuvered their tiny craft into their instructed position, it was seized by an enormous gantry and swung towards a berth. Two Tadpole transports of the same model as the one Rokden had taken to Earth loomed beside.
At the front of the shuttle, Spacer Mohammed turned towards the pilot.
"Is this when I make the joke about the tray tables?"
Chief Engels just looked back into the passenger couches. "We're secured," he said. "Everyone doing all right?"
Pascual grunted affirmatively while Nadia and the officers in the other couches nodded their own agreement.
"Supposedly the Tadpoles got all the docking mechanisms prepped in advance, so it shouldn't be much of a wait."
"Pressure gauge is good, Chief," the copilot said. "Just waiting on their signal."
"They probably want to take a moment to get the welcome committee organized," Pascual offered.
Across the little aisle down the center of the shuttle's seats, an Earth Fleet Lieutenant named Ellis had his face pressed up against a porthole, trying to get a better view of the docking bay interior.
"Or maybe they're running late," he said. "Can you imagine the internal transportation for this thing? They could be caught in a traffic jam."
"That would be awful poor planning on their part," Nadia replied a bit snobbishly.
Spacer Mohammed snorted, "Well, they're only—nope!" He tapped his monitor, "Tadpoles are confirming a seal, Chief."
Engels nodded, and then got up to stand by the airlock in the center of his cockpit. "Lady and gentlemen," he said, "if you would please make your way to the front of the shuttlecraft."
He drew a cloth facemask out of a pocket and pulled it over his head, while his copilot did the same. "Supposedly there's an airlock on the other side. But as we've never actually been here before, I recommend donning your masks now."
Pascual was ostensibly leading this little expedition of Humanity, and so would be first through the airlock. He shuffled his way up the aisle and dug his own mask out of his pant pocket. With the way the Tadpoles preferred their atmosphere, everyone would have worn masks anyway, but now… Pascual was not looking forward to the decontamination process when they returned to the Barn Swallow.
Chief Engels levered open the shuttle hatch, and there was only a small hiss of air out from the shuttle's cabin into the airlock chamber beyond. The chamber itself was made of an off-white plastic or ceramic. It was built to comfortably Human proportions, but ended at one of the Tadpole's wide circular doorways at the far end.
The shuttle pilot waited for Pascual, Nadia, Lieutenant Ellis, and Dr. Poplawski of the NMC to file into the airlock. "Well," he said when they were in place, "have a good time. We should be parked right here until you get back. All our comms are active, but I don't know if your phones will reach us from in there. Video contact every five hours, otherwise we hit the panic button."
"Roger, Chief," Ellis said.
"Stay alert," Nadia added.
Pascual waved over the tops of their heads, "We'll be sure to take some pictures for you two."
The Chief closed and sealed the shuttle's hatch behind them. For a moment or two, the airlock was silent, as everyone waited anxiously for their first glimpse inside the Tadpoles' arkship. Then the circular hatch split down the center and slid open.
Air rushed in just as it had on the transport the Tadpoles brought to Earth. The pressure difference with Earth Fleet standard was small, only noticeable during the transition, but not even enough to make one's ears pop. Pascual didn't notice it at all.
What he noticed was the cold.
Truthfully, it was not that cold, only a little chilly. Perhaps twelve degrees. But as Pascual had discovered to his own extreme discomfort earlier in this voyage, the Tadpoles considered "room temperature" to be something closer to forty degrees. He had slathered himself with antiperspirant expecting another oppressively hot tour through an enclosed jungle.
He was so stunned that it took him a moment to recover his wits and step through the hatchway. Seven Tadpoles were waiting just beyond to welcome their Human guests.
They were dressed like arctic explorers. Rather than loincloths, they wore baggy full-body suits that obscured their alien proportions, making them look even more like oversized Humans. Thick collars lined with a fur-like substance opened at their necks and rose to cover most of their bulbous heads.
One of the Tadpoles stepped forward and spoke with a familiar voice.
"Welcome friends, Ambassador Molinas," Rokden said. He held out a huge hand made even larger by a puffy mitten. "We are honored to have you aboard our ship."
Pascual's etiquette was able to overcome his shock, and he grasped Rokden's hand in return. Or more accurately, slapped the alien's palm, since his fingers did not reach far enough to close around anything.
"Thank you, Ambassador Rokden; we are honored to be here."
Rokden burbled, "I am Ambassador no longer, my friend. Back here I am only Elder Rokden, one of eight."
Pascual inclined his head respectfully. Then he turned to introduce his companions. "Elder Rokden, this is Lieutenant Ellis and Lieutenant Yatskaya of Earth Fleet; and you have already met Dr. Poplawski from the colony management team."
The three other Humans each shuffled forward to offer their own greetings and awkward handshakes.
When that was done, Rokden half-turned to gesture at two of the Tadpoles behind him, both of whom stepped forward.
"Please allow me to introduce Elder Morh and Captain Pakpeden, master of the ship."
Further handshakes were exchanged. Elder Morh was slightly shorter than Rokden, with a somewhat rounder face. Pakpeden, meanwhile, stood even with the old Ambassador, but kept a rigid posture and moved in sharp, precise bursts.
"Elder Morh is the senior amongst us on the council," Rokden said. "As much as our people have any single leader, it is her."
And with that, Rokden stepped backwards, leaving Morh at the visual head of the alien welcoming party. Her bulbous eyes followed his retreat, and then swiveled back towards Pascual.
"Elder Rokden has explained to me that you govern by dictatorship, rather than consensus," she said. Her voice buzzed at a slightly higher pitch than Rokden's, but contained none of his practiced inflections.
"Um," Pascual said, "dictatorship has certain… unpleasant implications that we prefer to avoid. I suppose we do use hierarchies of authority in government. But the positions in those hierarchies are usually selected by popular votes or proxies."
Morh's head bobbed up and down. "That must allow decision making to be so much simpler and less contentious."
"There are advantages," Pascual offered. He hoped the Tadpole didn't really intend to have a detailed discussion of political theory.
Morh nodded again. "Please walk this way, then," she said, "and we will show you to our home."
The Tadpole elder turned and began walking away from the airlock, back towards her fellows. Pascual hesitated for a second, and then skipped forward as well. The other Humans followed behind.
The four Tadpoles who hadn't been introduced, Pascual took for bodyguards. Their long coats were bulkier than the others', and objects that looked like enormous club hammers swung from belts at their waists. They took up positions on the flanks as the group moved forward in a small procession.
Pascual looked up to the ceiling to get a better sense of his surroundings. Though the space they were in was necessarily enclosed, his mind refused to label it a "room". The ceiling was at least fifty meters above their heads. To either side of the hatch from which they had emerged, airlocks of varying sizes—some quite large—were placed at intervals along a gently curving wall that stretched away for hundreds of meters in either direction. It looked like the largest loading dock or airport terminal Pascual had ever seen, which he supposed was appropriate. A complex network of rails stood up from the floor or hung from the ceiling in front of them. They formed tangled web near the airlocks, but farther away divided and led out to a series of tunnels burrowing into the arkship.
Elder Morh led them to a tubular car resting on one of the nearby rails. It might have been taken from any of a hundred metropolitan subways on Earth, though its doors were wide enough to comfortably admit the Tadpoles' girth.
"I take it these rails connect the whole of the ship?" Gerald Poplawski asked as they filed aboard.
"That's correct," Rokden answered. The last of the Tadpole bodyguards boarded and took up position by the car's doors as they slid shut. "They were mostly used for freight during our journey. Now, of course, we are moving the population."
Pascual peered out the windows, but there was no sign of any other cars offloading Tadpoles. There had been other transports docked nearby, but perhaps they were refueling or under repair. Or was there a second docking bay somewhere else, and that's where the great exodus was boarding.
Dr. Poplawski inquired about the total length of the whole track system. "I imagine it would have to be significant to serve a ship this size. Er, if you don't mind me asking."
There was a pause, after which Captain Pakpeden exchanged a few words with Rokden in their own language.
"About two hundred thousand kilometers, originally," the Tadpole shipmaster said at last. "But parts of the system have been repurposed or are no longer in use. Now it is maybe one half to two thirds of that length."
Lieutenant Ellis whistled. When Pakpeden and both Tadpole elders turned their heads to him, he flushed a little. "Impressive," he told them.
At last, the railcar began moving. The acceleration was smoother and slower than most subway systems Pascual had ridden. But it continued until they were travelling at what he judged to be at least a hundred kilometers per hour.
"Our destination," Elder Morh said, "is one of our primary residential areas. I thought that you might benefit from seeing the people that you are helping. And there are many among us who will appreciate the sight of the aliens who have brought their own salvation."
Something about the way she said this made Pascual slightly uncomfortable. Part of that was simply modesty in the face of gratitude. But he also couldn't shake the impression that they had just become props in a piece of political theater.
Well, he supposed, one probably didn't get to become the senior member of the Tadpole council of elders without a good head for public relations. Politics was politics.
Nadia nudged him in the side with her elbow and Pascual—who had some practice at politics himself—quickly arranged his face into a smile.
"Of course we'd be honored," he said.
* * *
Xi Feng decided there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. She looked up from the tablet in her hands to face the Uruguay's Executive Officer and Task Force One's Chief of Operations. Both were seated in the cruiser's small conference room, and neither looked any happier than the Commodore felt.
"Thoughts, gentlemen?"
"It… could have been worse," Hiram Wade said. Xi Feng narrowed her eyes at him. Apparently the fact that she had decided against delaying did not mean her XO had yet found anything genuinely constructive to offer.
In the Task Force's combat exercise, the Tadpoles' simulated surprise attack had wiped out every one of her nineteen Earth Fleet ships in the space of a half hour.
"I think," Lieutenant Commander Donaldson said, a little hesitantly, "that we probably could have been better prepared for this scenario. Much better prepared, even. But most of those adjustments would leave us in worse positions for other possibilities."
Xi Feng nodded. The simulation program—like all which they had run before—had randomly assigned capabilities to every object in the battlespace which the Task Force believed might be a Tadpole military structure or installation. This time the distribution turned out extremely unfavorable to the Task Force's deployment geometry and targeting plan. Too many smaller objects had turned out to be dormant missiles which rocketed themselves into the Human flotilla. And once one of Xi Feng's warships was knocked out of commission, it left a hole in the overlapping fields of their point defenses which could be exploited to take out the rest in sequence.
She grimaced and dug a thumb under her hair to rub one temple. "We could reassign more of our gun salvo towards the little particles. Leave the big structures for the missiles."
Wade pursed his lips, but then shook his head, "I don't like that, Commodore. There's just so damn many of the things. The only way we can count on picking out genuine targets ahead of time is if a high percentage turn out to be hostile. And if a high percentage are hostile, we're screwed no matter how perfect our form because we haven't enough guns to point at them all. I think we've got no choice but to focus primary fire on the big platforms and hope the low-probability threat stays small enough for the lasers to sweep."
"I agree with the XO," Donaldson said. "Maximize our odds within the scenarios we can survive."
"And I agree with both of you," Xi Feng told them. She took a few more deep breaths, hoping without success that some brilliant stratagem would occur to her. But nothing came. "All right, we'll leave the geometry and firing plan the way it is for now. But I still believe we have some room to improve on point-defense coordination." She looked at Donaldson, "And keep the support ships running action drills. I'm not sure I really trust their response times, and if we do end up facing a swarm like that, their lasers have to be working up to speed with the rest of us."
"Aye, Commodore," the Chief of Operations said.
Some of the tension began to drain from the room as their meeting drew to a close.
Wade turned towards Donaldson, "Think Ellis will bring back anything that lets us narrow down the target list?"
The Lieutenant Commander shook his head, "Kid's got a good eye. But he won't have much of a view from the inside, and I don't imagine the Tadpoles simply volunteering to share anything of real value. Do you disagree?"
The XO looked up towards the ceiling before saying, slowly, "I'm worried that he won't make it back alive at all."
"What?" Xi Feng blinked a few times at her second-in-command.
Wade lowered his head again to meet her eyes. "It's the first delegation sent to meet a strange and unknown people on their own lands. History says there's like a fifty-fifty chance they'll all be boiled and eaten by the natives."
"Yes," Donaldson stroked his chin. "Yes, it all makes sense now. This was merely a ruse to lure us here so they could feast upon our flesh. And we walked right into it, Commodore, I'm sorry."
The XO nodded gravely, "We should carve some kind of cryptic warning into the hull with a plasma torch for the rescue mission to discover. And make sure to set the tables in the mess before we abandon ship—"
Xi Feng made a gesture like she was about to throw her tablet at their heads. "Dismissed!"