The Secret Weapon
The most secret weapon is one you don't know you have.
The Secret Weapon ran in the June/July 2009 issue of AlienSkin Magazine.
THE SECRET WEAPON
by Ray Tabler
Prime Minister Singh interrupted the professor of xenoarchaeology. "Dr. Ramirez, if I have to sit through yet another of your extravagantly detailed holo-slides, I'm going to scream."
"I was told to prepare a short summary of our recent findings." Dr. Ramirez fidgeted in the middle of the private briefing room.
Singh sighed and rubbed her forehead. "Apparently you and I have differing definitions for the words short and summary."
"This is a summary. There are terabytes of information I had to leave out."
"I'm sure there are, Doctor. Here, I have an idea. Turn off the display." One of Singh's aides tapped a panel. The hologram of a multi-axis chart disappeared from the center of the room. "Now, Dr. Ramirez, just talk to me."
Ramirez stared forlornly at the space where his painstakingly crafted presentation had been. "Talk to you, Madam Prime Minister?"
"Dr. Ramirez, you are the Federation's leading expert on this subject, so you already have the necessary information in your head. Just explain it to me." Singh shrugged. "Imagine that I'm a bright twelve-year-old."
Ramirez fought off a momentary impulse to giggle as the image of an adolescent girl with Singh's iron gray hair popped into his head. Ramirez grasped that his career, or at least his funding, balanced on a knife edge.
"Okay." Ramirez marshaled his thoughts. "You know that ruins of the New Topekan civilization were first found twenty-seven years ago. That turned out to be merely an outpost, but by tradition all subsequent finds are referred to as New Topekan, because this culture was first discovered orbiting the planet New Topeka. Just as a type of wide-ranging early Native American Stone Age spear points are referred to as Clovis artifacts because they were first found at Clovis, New Mexico—”
"Doctor." Singh drummed her fingers on the tabletop.
"Yes, ah well, since then numerous New Topekan sites have been found and studied over a vast expanse of light years. No living New Topekans have ever been found and all of these sites are in ruins. It had been assumed that the New Topeka civilization collapsed hundreds or thousands of years ago."
"Had been assumed..."
"However, recently new analytical techniques were developed that allow much more precise dating of artifacts from New Topekan sites. With these techniques it has been determined that the last sites were abandoned no later than fifty to sixty years ago."
Singh's eyebrows rose. "What a tragedy, that Humanity missed the opportunity to interact with another interstellar race by as little as fifty years."
"Hmm." Ramirez shifted uncomfortably. "It appears that some kind of disaster struck the New Topekans. All sites exhibit signs of civil unrest if not outright warfare, construction projects incomplete, equipment abandoned while running, bodies strewn about everywhere. Whatever happened was sudden and overwhelming."
Ramirez gestured at the holo-display. "May I show one holo-slide? It will make the next part much easier to explain."
Singh exhaled. "Very well, Dr. Ramirez, you have intrigued me. I will allow you one slide."
Ramirez clutched the control as if it were a life raft on a storm-tossed sea. A star map popped into existence in the center of the room. "My research group decided to plot the dates of abandonment of each known New Topekan site on this map and color coded them by five-year increments."
Ramirez paused to let Singh adsorb the information on the map. The colors seemed to form an irregular bull's-eye with the oldest dates in the center.
"We reasoned, Madam Prime Minister, that whatever struck the New Topekan civilization originated from here." He indicated the small region of space surrounded by the oldest dates. "So, we requested a naval vessel to investigate."
"What did you find, Dr. Ramirez?"
"This." Ramirez jumped to another holo-slide without asking for Singh's consent. It displayed the fractal immensity of a derelict New Topekan ship. Moored to the New Topekan vessel was an antique Human starship.
The room was still. Singh blinked. "What am I looking at, Doctor?"
"This is the Federation Survey Vessel Bremerhaven, reported missing and assumed lost over a century ago."
"How long ago does your testing say that this particular New Topekan ship was abandoned?"
"Between one hundred and one hundred ten years ago."
Singh digested the facts in silence for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then signaled one of her aides to temporarily disable the recording system for the room. "How widely dispersed is this information, Dr. Ramirez?"
"We realized the sensitive nature of the situation and classified all data immediately. The crew of the ship that we used has been sequestered at Starbase 12 under the pretense of quarantine. My research team has level four security clearance and all of them are in this room."
Singh relaxed a bit. She had a chance of controlling the way this bombshell was packaged for the public.
"Just to be completely clear Dr. Ramirez, are you saying that whatever caused the collapse of the New Topekan civilization came from a Federation vessel?"
"No Madam Prime Minister, I am not saying that. Such a conclusion would be wild speculation that I would not want my name or the Institute's associated with."
Singh sighed. "I turned the cameras off, Dr. Ramirez. You can speak freely. This is going be a big enough mess as it is. I don't want any more surprises. What was it Doctor, a disease?"
Ramirez noted that, indeed, the small red lights on the holo cameras had gone out and shrugged. "We don't think so. From what we can tell, New Topekan physiology was just too different from ours. What makes us sick wouldn't have fazed them."
"What then, Doctor?"
"Madam Prime Minister, we may never know."
#
One hundred seven years earlier...
The battle was over. The enemy ships had proved to possess only rudimentary weapons, and few of those.
Extractor-of-Data floated close to the wounded enemy prisoner, harvesting data from its mind.
"What are the locations of your home star systems?" Extractor inserted the words into the enemy's mind.
"Home..." A pink mist frosted the inside of the enemy's pressure suit face plate.
Mental images tumbled into Extractor's consciousness. They made no sense; other enemies, green hills, a blue sky. How very odd the images were, much different from any other enemy Those-of-the-Nest had encountered before.
The enemy convulsed in pain. It reached out and grasped Extractor's thorax. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"
The enemy died.
Extractor-of-Data confirmed the enemy's death and moved back up the ruined corridor of the enemy ship to the breach in the hull where Director-of-Thirty-Six waited. Gripping the outside of the hull, in the vacuum, Extractor transmitted the images to Director then summarized.
"Only one enemy was alive. It had no useful data related to the locations of enemy star systems. This enemy is called Human."
Director-of-Thirty-Six paused to collate this extractor's data with that of the other extractors. The total picture was fragmentary. Perhaps if Those-of-the-Nest had realized how fragile this particular enemy's ships were the attack would have been less intense and more of the enemy would have survived long enough to provide more data to transmit to Director-of-Two-Hundred-Sixteen.
Director-of-Thirty-Six concluded there was no more data to be harvested from the derelict enemy ship. "Return to the Nest."
Extractor-of-Data and Others-of-the-Nest swarmed back along the kilometers-long grapple arm that held the enemy ship to the open framework that was the Nest. Those-of-the-Nest were bred for vacuum and microgravity. Once back to the Nest, Extractor moved diagonally and forward along the immense, fractal structure.
The extractors crowded about the nearest nutrient dispenser before returning to designated hollows in the structural beams that formed this part of the Nest. When the Nest needed Extractor-of-Data again Director-of-Thirty-Six would call. Until then Extractor would wait.
Extractor huddled in its hollow. The images and thoughts of the enemy lingered in its mind. Extractor had harvested data from other enemies, but the other enemies had been similar to Those-of-the-Nest. The enemy called Human was very different.
I don't want to die.
I... don’t want to die.
I...
Without knowing why Extractor pondered the enemy concepts harvested from the Human.
Don't want to die.
I...
I...
For the first time in its life Extractor thought about something other than eating or sleeping or completing a task that Director-of-Thirty-Six had assigned. For the first time Extractor viewed Others-of-the-Nest and even the Nest as something separate from itself. Extractor wondered if any of the other extractors, in their hollows in this part of the Nest, had harvested these concepts from the enemy called Human.
Extractor realized that something had happened. Something had changed. Dimly, but with certainty, Extractor comprehended that it would not share these concepts with Director-of-Thirty-Six. Only with great caution would Extractor share these concepts with any Others-of-the-Nest.
I don't want to die.
I...
Extractor began to ponder many things, and to plan.
The battle was over. Indeed, another had begun.
END
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Quite a bit longer than any of yours I've seen so far. But even so, the best of them I think. The flashback 107 years is a bit clunky but there wasn't any other way to do it.