“What do the messages say?” Joshua asked.
“One is almost completely unintelligible, some kind of image, I think. The computer’s running pattern analysis now. The rest are text only. Two have returned our greeting, and want to know what we’re doing here. Two are asking for proof that we’re xenocs. Three say welcome, and please rendezvous with the diskcity. Uh, they call it Tojolt-HI.”
“Give me a position on the three major friendlies,” Joshua said.
Three blue stars blinked over his neuroiconic image of Tojolt-HI. Two were located in the bulk of the disk, while the other was at the edge. “That settles it,” he said. “We concentrate on the rim source. I don’t want to try and manoeuvre Lady Mac anywhere near the interior until we know for sure what’s there. Do we know what that section’s called?”
“The dominion of Anthi-CL,” Oski said.
“Sarha, focus our com beam on them, please, narrow band.”
Joshua ran through the message from the rim to get a feel for the format, and composed a reply.
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT
TOJOLT-HI, DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL.
MESSAGE
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. WE HAVE TRAVELLED HERE IN THE ANTICIPATION OF EXCHANGE OF MATERIALS AND KNOWLEDGE BENEFICIAL TO BOTH SPECIES. WE REQUEST PERMISSION TO DOCK AND BEGIN THIS PROCESS. IF THIS IS ACCEPTABLE TO YOU, PLEASE PROVIDE AN APPROACH VECTOR.
CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
COMMUNICATION TO
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
MESSAGE
YOU ARE WELCOME TO MASTRIT-PJ. IGNORE ALL MESSAGES FROM OTHER TOJOLT-HI DOMINIONS. WE RETAIN THE LARGEST DEPOSITS OF MATERIAL AND KNOWLEDGE WITHIN OUR BOUNDARIES. YOU WILL GAIN THE MOST BENEFIT BY EXCHANGING WITH US. CONFIRM THIS REQUEST.
QUANTOOK-LOU
DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES
“What do you think?” Joshua asked.
“Not quite the kind of response you’d get from our Tyrathca,” Samuel said. “It could be their attitude has changed to adapt to their circumstances. They seem to be tinged with avarice.”
“Resources would be scarce here,” Kempster said. “There can be no new sources of solid matter for them to exploit. A kilo of your waste may well be more valuable to them than a thousand fuseodollars.”
“We’ll bear it in mind when we start negotiating,” Joshua said. “For now, we have an invitation. I think we’ll accept.”
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
MESSAGE
WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR INVITATION, AND CONFIRM THAT WE WISH TO EXCHANGE EXCLUSIVELY WITH YOU. PLEASE SEND APPROACH FLIGHT VECTOR.
CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT.
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
COMMUNICATION TO
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
MESSAGE
ARE YOU UNABLE TO COMPUTE APPROACH VECTOR? ARE YOU DAMAGED?
QUANTOOK-LOU
DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES
“Could be they don’t have traffic control here,” Joshua said. He ran a search through his neural nanonics encyclopaedia file on Hesperi-LN. “The Hesperi-LN Tyrathca didn’t have any formal control system before they started receiving Confederation ships.”
“You also need to have a lot of ships flying before that kind of arrangement becomes essential,” Ashly said. “We haven’t even detected one ship around Tojolt-HI yet. I’ve been running a constant scan.”
“They’re certainly scanning us in return,” Beaulieu said. “I’m registering seventeen different radar beams focused on us now. And I think there’s some laser radar directed our way, too.”
“No ships at all?” Joshua asked.
“I can’t find any drive emissions down there,” Sarha said. “With our optical sensor resolution, we ought to be able to see even a chemical reaction thruster flame inside that umbra.”
“Maybe they’ve used something like the voidhawk distortion field,” Dahybi suggested. “After all, Kempster said mass was precious to them. Maybe they can’t afford reaction drives.”
“Gravitonic detectors say you’re wrong,” Liol said. “I’m not picking up any kind of distortion pattern in this neck of the woods.”
“They’re not going to tip their hand this early in the game,” Monica said. “They won’t show us what they’ve got, especially if it’s combat capable.”
Sarha shifted under her restraint webbing to frown at the ESA agent. “That’s absurd. You can’t suddenly shut down all your spacecraft traffic the instant you detect a xenoc. You’d leave ships in transit. Besides, they don’t know how long we’ve been watching them.”
“You hope.”
Sarha gave an exasperated sigh. “They don’t have ZTT technology, so the only interstellar ships they can conceive are arkships. And if one of those used its fusion drive to decelerate into this system, they’d be able to track it from half a light-year out. They must be curious about us and how the hell we got here, that’s all.”
“Never mind,” Joshua grumbled.
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
MESSAGE
WE ARE NOT DAMAGED. WE HAVE CAPABILITY TO COMPUTE AN APPROACH VECTOR TO YOUR LOCATION ON TOJOLT-HI. WE DID NOT WANT TO BREAK ANY LAW YOU HAVE CONCERNING APPROACHING VEHICLES. ARE THERE ANY RESTRICTIONS COVERING APPROACH SPEED AND SEPARATION DISTANCE FROM YOUR PHYSICAL STRUCTURE?
CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
COMMUNICATION TO
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
MESSAGE
NO RESTRICTIONS CONCERNING YOUR APPROACH. WE WILL PROVIDE FINAL HOLDING POSITION COORDINATE WHEN YOU ARE WITHIN ONE THOUSAND KILOMETRES OF DOMINION TERRITORY.
QUANTOOK-LOU
DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES
STARSHIP LADY MACBETH
COMMUNICATION DIRECTED TO
DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL
MESSAGE
UNDERSTOOD. EXPECTED RENDEZVOUS TIME 45 MINUTES.
CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT
Joshua datavised the flight computer to ignite the fusion drives. Lady Mac headed in towards the diskcity at a half-gee acceleration. He refined the vector so they’d finish the main burn a hundred kilometres out from the rim. If fusion drives weren’t in common use in this system, Lady Mac ’s exhaust might prove disconcerting. A smile touched his lips at what they’d think of the antimatter drive.
“Joshua,” Syrinx called. “We’ve found another diskcity.”
“Where?” he asked. Everyone on Lady Mac ’s bridge perked up with interest.
“It’s trailing Tojolt-HI by forty five million kilometres, inclined two degrees to the ecliptic. Kempster and Renato were right. The odds of us emerging so close to the only inhabited structure are non-existent.”
“Jesus, you mean this redoubt civilization is strung out all around the star’s equatorial orbit?”
“Looks that way. We’re scanning probable locations for more of them. Assuming the separation distance is constant, and they’re not in wildly high inclination orbits, that would mean there’s well over a hundred of the things.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Over a hundred,” Ashly said. “That makes quite a civilization all told. How many Tyrathca do you think one of those diskcities could support?”
“With a surface area of twenty million square kilometres, I should think anything up to a hundred billion,” Sarha said. “Even with their level of technology, that’s a lot of area. Think how many people we cram into an arcology.”
“Look at it from the population perspective, and no wonder the Anthi-CL dominion wanted exclusivity,” Liol said. “The demand on resources must be phenomenal. I’m astonished they managed to survive this long. By rights they should have drowned in their own waste products a long time ago.”