The Dream of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 1) Read online

  “I’m spit-balling, Captain. What do you want from me?”

  Mallick laughed. “Sorry. Continue. Why are they broadcasting the Fibonacci sequence?”

  Carpenter held up his hands again.

  “Yeah, I don’t have a clue either,” Mallick said. “So let’s consider the other possibility.”

  “They’re Cho-ta’an.”

  Mallick nodded. “More likely that a Cho-ta’an ship ended up here than a human ship went off course. We don’t track all the Cho-ta’an ships. And we know the Cho-ta’an have their own exploration program. Who knows how many habitable worlds they’ve discovered that we know nothing about?”

  “We have no records of the Cho-ta’an being anywhere near this area of the galaxy. The nearest known Cho-ta’an jumpgate is a hundred lightyears from here. It’s one of the reasons we picked this region.”

  “You really think the IDL has a complete registry of Cho-ta’an gates?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. We know the approximate locations of sixteen gates, but we don’t know how many gates they have altogether. They could have a gate within a lightyear of here and we’d never know.”

  “There’s another possibility,” Carpenter said, rubbing the stubble on his chin with his thumb.

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe they hacked the Fomalhaut Gate.”

  “You think the Cho-ta’an used our gate to get here?”

  Carpenter shrugged. “Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation for running into another ship way out here? They used the Fomalhaut Gate.”

  Mallick frowned. “The gates use quantum encryption. And even if they could somehow get through, there’d be a record of the transit.”

  “There are ways around any kind of security. And you know the dirty secret about those gates as well as I do. They’re black boxes, modeled after the Cho-ta’an gates. The IDL still doesn’t fully understand the physics behind them. We know they work, but we don’t know how they work.”

  Mallick scowled at him, but Carpenter shrugged. As much as Mallick—and the IDL brass—hated to admit it, the fact was that no human really understood how the jumpgates worked. It was only because of luck that they had the technology at all: in the year 2143, an IDL warship intercepted a radio signal originating from what turned out to be an unfinished Cho-ta’an jumpgate. The ship eliminated the Cho-ta’an and took control of the gate. A research team was dispatched with the goal of deciphering the technology and reverse engineering the gate. The team, led by a physicist named Chris Turner, succeeded at the latter task, but made little progress on the former. Turner theorized that the gates made use of a hidden dimension—now known as Turner Space—to create shortcuts between two points in conventional space, but he died before publishing any conclusive findings.

  Mallick said, “We know the gates open a wormhole between two points in space, allowing instantaneous travel over light-years of conventional space.”

  Carpenter chuckled. “That’s what they do. Not how. Maybe the Cho-ta’an know how the gates cause a wormhole to open, and they’re using that knowledge to exploit our gates against us. Our security precautions prevent the gate activation mechanism from turning on. But if the Cho-ta’an can bypass the mechanism, they could use the gates. Without us ever knowing.”

  “Like hotwiring a car.”

  “Exactly.”

  The captain took another sip of coffee, his brow furrowed in thought. Carpenter knew this couldn’t be the first time Mallick had heard about the possibility of the IDL’s jumpgates being hacked, but like most IDL officers, the captain didn’t take the possibility seriously. The reason was obvious: if the Cho-ta’an could slip through the IDL’s jumpgates, the war was already lost. The IDL tended to focus on problems it could do something about. True to form, the captain changed the subject.

  “Doesn’t explain the transmission though,” he said. “Could be a trap, but why? Andrea Luhman’s a sitting duck. If the Cho-ta’an wanted to take us out, there are easier ways. Our only defense is the assurance that we’re not important enough for the Cho-ta’an to waste a ship chasing us.”

  “And why not a distress signal instead of the Fibonacci numbers?”

  “Too obvious,” Carpenter said, half-joking. “They know we’d never fall for that old trick.”

  Mallick ignored him. “And whatever they gain by luring us off course, it would seem that they have more to lose by revealing their position. I assume you’ve already sent the coordinates to Command?”

  “Of course,” said Carpenter. “It’ll be weeks before anyone receives the transmission though. Maybe it’s a rogue element.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that the Cho-ta’an have this secret base out here, and they detected Andrea Luhman. Somebody on the base is an IDL sympathizer, and they managed to jigger a transmitter to send us a signal.”

  “An IDL sympathizer? Is there such a thing? Has a Cho-ta’an ever come over to our side?”

  Carpenter shrugged. He’d never heard of it happening.

  “Seems more likely, if they have some kind of base on that planet, that the whole thing is off the books.”

  “You mean not sanctioned by the Cho-ta’an High Command? An outpost run by some rogue faction?”

  “Exactly. Could be the Fractalists.”

  “I thought they were a myth.”

  “That’s what the Cho-ta’an tell us,” the captain said. “But they would, wouldn’t they? It’s of utmost importance to them to maintain a monolithic front. Wouldn’t do to let their enemy know about their dissident factions.”

  “But even if the Fractalists exist… are they sympathetic to humanity?”

  “No idea. We may have to wake Stauffer. He knows all about this shit. Of course, this is all academic if we can’t get there. How far out of our way is it?”

  “Not far, relatively speaking. We’d have to pull three gees for a few days to decelerate and change course, but we could do it. I haven’t had time to work out a course, but I ran some quick calculations. We could be in orbit in less than a week.”

  Mallick winced. “Three gees is rough.”

  “It’ll be rougher the longer we wait.”

  “I hear you,” said the captain. “What do you think?”

  “Our mission is to look for habitable planets. Some place humanity can hide out and regroup if this war keeps going the way it has been.”

  “And?”

  “And I think up to a few hours ago, our best chance was the Finlan Cluster. Now the situation’s changed.”

  “Agreed. Even if that’s a Cho-ta’an base, our odds are better than bouncing around the Finlan Cluster. Whoever’s down there, we need to check it out.”

  *****

  Mallick and Carpenter spent some time going over Andrea Luhman’s roster. Andrea Luhman’s landing craft could hold four, and Mallick’s position was the more brains the better. It was a given that Mallick would be in the landing party and that Carpenter would stay with Andrea Luhman.

  The ship had a crew of fourteen, mostly scientists, who remained in stasis during the voyage. They agreed on reviving the ship’s engineer, Carolyn Reyes, as well as the resident expert on Cho-ta’an culture, Johannes Stauffer. If it really was a contingent of Cho-ta’an transmitting that signal, they’d need Stauffer’s knowledge of the aliens’ language and culture. The short, slightly built Lieutenant Reyes was not the most physically intimidating member of the crew, but she was probably the smartest and was definitely the coolest under pressure. Mallick and Carpenter differed in their choices for the fourth member of the expedition. They considered—but ultimately rejected—Chad Rogers, a mathematician and information systems expert. Even if the math-centric Fractalists were the source of the signal, it was doubtful that Andrea Luhman had been summoned to provide assistance with a particularly tricky equation.

  Carpenter next suggested their chief of security, Gabe Zuehlsdorf, but Mallick thought Thea Jane Slater, a biologist, was a better choic
e. Mallick argued that if they were walking into a trap, they were almost certainly doomed. Having a security expert with them was unlikely to help. Additionally, Slater had training as a pilot, so she could relieve Mallick if necessary. In the end, the captain overruled Carpenter. Gabe—the only member of the crew who was routinely addressed by his first name, due to his unwieldy surname—would remain in stasis for now. The four members of the lander mission would be Mallick, Reyes, Stauffer and Slater.

  Prior to intercepting the signal, Andrea Luhman had been decelerating toward the Finlan Cluster at half a gee. Now Carpenter had changed course and upped their deceleration to a full gee. The captain had told him to give Reyes and Stauffer a couple of hours to adjust before ramping up to a full three gees. Coming out of stasis was hard enough without finding your weight had suddenly tripled.

  Reyes seemed to know immediately that something was wrong. Whether she somehow knew that she hadn’t been under for the full six weeks or she noticed something in Carpenter’s demeanor, she started asking questions before he’d even gotten her upright.

  “Where are we?” she murmured. “What’s happening?”

  “Easy,” Carpenter replied, cradling her shoulders with his right arm. With his left hand he pressed an oxygen mask to her face. Her stasis suit was wet with the warm translucent goop that filled the chamber. “Captain will brief you in a couple hours.”

  “Captain’s up?” Reyes asked, her voice muffled by the mask.

  “Just relax,” Carpenter said. “I gotta check on Stauff—” He almost stopped himself in time.

  “Stauffer? Is it the Cho-ta’an? Have they made contact?”

  Carpenter sighed. The captain had told him not to say anything, but it was clear that Reyes wasn’t going to let it drop. “Just a signal,” Carpenter said. “Uncharted planet. Somebody is sending us the first seventeen numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. Captain wants to check it out.”

  Reyes nodded slowly but didn’t say anything more. She was either too stunned to think of any more questions or too busy fighting nausea to concentrate. Carpenter betted on the latter.

  “You gonna be all right?” he asked.

  Reyes nodded again.

  “Okay, I’ll be back in a few.”

  *****

  The five of them met around the plastic mess table. As there were only four chairs, Carpenter stood. The captain had just briefed them on the situation. At this point, they didn’t know much more than what Carpenter had told Reyes. Currently they were waiting for Stauffer to expand on the single word he had uttered in response.

  “Fractalists,” he had said, and then turned aside to vomit into a bag. As the rest of them knew next to nothing about the semi-legendary Cho-ta’an cult, they had little choice but to wait for Stauffer to recover. Stauffer, a tall, balding man in his late forties, was an unlikely choice for a space exploration mission. He had barely met the physical requirements but was selected because of his encyclopedic knowledge of the Cho-ta’an. Whatever was known about the Cho-ta’an, Stauffer knew it. He was fluent in the predominant Cho-ta’an language and had literally written the book on human-Cho-ta’an interaction. The book was short and mostly theoretical; aside from a few notable and abortive diplomatic meetings, the only contact between humans and Cho-ta’an thus far had been military confrontations.

  The very first human contact with the Cho-ta’an was in 2125, when a scout ship called Ubuntu was destroyed by a Cho-ta’an warship in the Tau Ceti system, less than twelve light-years from Earth. Coordinated attacks on human vessels started some three years later, indicating that the aliens possessed a means of faster-than-light travel. The Cho-ta’an underestimated the humans’ resolve and inventiveness, however: the governments of Earth, along with a collection of multinational corporations, quickly formed the Interstellar Defense League, which gradually beat back the Cho-ta’an. Eighteen years after the Ubuntu incident, an IDL warship took control of an unfinished Cho-ta’an jumpgate, and another eight years after that, the IDL finished construction on the first of its own gates.

  After a lull in hostilities of twenty-six years following the initial IDL victories, the Cho-ta’an attacks resumed. For the past twenty years, the Cho-ta’an had been sending warships further and further into human space, gradually conquering or rendering uninhabitable every human-occupied planet. In the past decade, the Cho-ta’an had even started building jump-gates well into human territory, allowing them to advance even faster. So far they hadn’t destroyed any of humanity’s eighteen gates, but it was hard to say whether this was because of the IDL’s formidable defenses or because the Cho-ta’an hoped someday to use the humans’ gates for their own purposes.

  All efforts at diplomatic overtures since the Ubuntu incident had failed. The Cho-ta’an didn’t respond except to launch more attacks. It was clear that they had no interest in sharing the galaxy or in any sort of peaceful resolution. Their scorched-planet tactics and overall strategy made it clear that their goal was the extermination of the human race. And over the past eighteen years, they’d made considerable progress.

  Sixteen of the nineteen habitable human worlds had been either taken over by the Cho-ta’an or so thoroughly polluted by Cho-ta’an bombardment that they were now essentially uninhabitable. Earth was one of the latter. The cradle of humanity had been one of the first casualties in the war with the Cho-ta’an. Only three human worlds—sparsely populated, barely habitable and spared thus far only because of their remoteness from the Cho-ta’an homeworld—remained, and these were in the process of being evacuated. Soon all that remained of humanity would be aboard several hundred starships. Most of humanity would wait in stasis aboard hastily constructed sleeper vessels. If the war didn’t turn around soon, the human race would last only as long as it took for the Cho-ta’an to hunt these ships down and destroy them—a few years, at most. Given the Cho-ta’an’s larger numbers and superior military strength, a reversal seemed unlikely. Even if Andrea Luhman’s mission was successful and they located a habitable world that was unknown to the Cho-ta’an, it would only be a matter of time before the Cho-ta’an found them.

  “Fractalists,” said Stauffer again, as if testing himself.

  “I thought they were a myth,” Slater replied. Tall, dark-skinned Slater was the youngest member of the crew. If by some chance the source of the transmission was neither human nor Cho-ta’an, they’d want her along.

  “No,” said Stauffer evenly. “That’s the official story, but most experts on Cho-ta’an culture believe they exist. Or did exist. The Cho-ta’an military command is pretty effective at weeding out these dissident sects. The Fractalists are obsessed with mathematics, like the old Pythagoreans on Earth. They consider the Fibonacci numbers to be sacred. And they would know that a ship like Andrea Luhman would have somebody on board who would know that. They’re identifying themselves.”

  “Why?” asked the captain.

  “Impossible to say. Clearly they wanted to get our attention. If they have anything else to say to us, they’re not ready to do it yet.”

  “They want to talk to us in person,” Reyes offered.

  “Perhaps,” Stauffer replied. “Or it could be a trap.”

  They all turned to look at Stauffer, whose expression was unreadable.

  “Look,” he went on, “obviously we’re going to check out the source of the signal. What choice do we have? And on a professional level, I’m very excited at the possibility of actually meeting a Cho-ta’an. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t give my honest assessment of the situation. Whoever’s on that planet, their reasons for being there have nothing to do with us. They’re Cho-ta’an, which means they’re most likely hostile to the IDL and humanity in general. They probably detected our transit by accident and now they’re sending an innocuous signal with just enough information to lure us to them, presumably for the purpose of eliminating us as a threat and/or seizing Andrea Luhman.”

  The room was silent for a moment. “I have to admit,” said Mallick at last, �
�I didn’t see that coming, from you of all people.”

  Stauffer shrugged. “My knowledge of Cho-ta’an culture hasn’t blinded me to what they are: a militaristic civilization bent on humanity’s destruction.”

  “To be clear,” Slater said, “you’re arguing that this is probably a Cho-ta’an trap… and that we should check it out anyway?”

  “Precisely,” said Stauffer. “The potential upside outweighs the overwhelming likelihood that we are going to die.”

  Chapter Two

  It took fifteen days for Andrea Luhman to reach the planet’s gravity well, the first three of which were spent at three gee acceleration. Several hours after Andrea Luhman changed course, the signal abruptly stopped transmitting, and at first Mallick thought the senders had changed their mind about their invitation. But then it started up again, two hours and thirty-eight minutes later. The signal repeated its sequence three more times over the course of seventeen seconds and then stopped again.

  “Conserving power?” Carpenter asked.

  “Maybe,” the captain replied, sitting next to Carpenter on the bridge. “Or just keeping a low profile. If they’ve detected us approaching them, they know we’ve gotten the message; no need to broadcast it to the whole galaxy.”

  Four days into the new course, the signal stopped completely, and once again Mallick began to wonder whether he’d made the right decision. At this point, though, it would make more sense to continue toward the unknown star, even if this turned out to be a wild goose chase. Worst case scenario, they could arc around the star and, with a few more days of uncomfortable acceleration, get back on their way to the Finlan Cluster. They’d have lost a few weeks, but that wasn’t much in the scheme of things.

  But when Mallick awoke the next day, he found that the signal had resumed its previous schedule—seventeen seconds on, followed by two hours and thirty-eight minutes off. The gap in transmission was just under eight hours long. Another eight hours (and three transmissions) later, there was another long gap.