Tanya Desjani had beaten him to the bridge. “You’re not going to like the answer.”
General Charban was already there as well. He turned a bland look on Geary, as if determined to no longer be fazed by anything the Dancers did. “According to your experts, Admiral, they didn’t come from Bhavan.”
“They arrived at the jump point from Bhavan,” Geary insisted.
Charban indicated Lieutenant Castries, who looked uncomfortable. “Admiral,” she said, “we got a weird signature when the Dancers left jump.”
“A weird signature?” Geary pressed both hands against his forehead. “What does that mean?”
“Sir, when ships leave jump, they always emit a small burst of energy. It’s insignificant, and no one really knows what causes it, so no one worries about it.”
“Jaylen Cresida speculated that it might be caused by some sort of friction while traveling through jump space,” Desjani said, seated and with her chin resting in one palm. “As the lieutenant says, it’s so small an effect that it just gets noted and ignored.”
Geary nodded impatiently. “All right. I remember that. There was a research project before… before Grendel. A ship I was on assisted the research. I never heard any results from it, though.”
Lieutenant Castries indicated her display. “Our systems alerted us that when the Dancers left jump, the energy signature they gave off was much stronger than it should be and also had some unusual density readings.”
“Put it on my display,” Geary ordered, sitting down and glaring at the data as it sprang to life before him. “What the hell is that?”
“We… don’t know, sir.”
“The Dancer ships haven’t shown that kind of energy signature before when leaving jump?”
“No, sir.”
Charban cleared his throat. “Admiral, the Dancers insisted on going to Old Earth, so they could return the body of a human explorer who had been involved in early research into jump drives centuries ago. Apparently, he was in jump space for a very long time and did not come out until somewhere in the Dancer-occupied region of the galaxy.”
“I’m not likely to forget that,” Geary said. Being trapped in jump space was perhaps the worst nightmare scenario for space travelers. The thought of that ancient astronaut stuck in jump space until he died had rattled everyone who heard of it. “Hold on. Are you saying the Dancers might have jumped to Varandal not from Bhavan but all the way from their own territory? They would have been in jump space for months. No one could handle that.”
“No human could handle that,” Desjani corrected him.
Geary looked at her. “I had wondered what jump space felt like for the Dancers. Is there any other explanation for their getting here?”
“They could have jumped star by star all the way from the region of space they occupy,” she said. “But that many jumps and transiting that many star systems would have taken so long that they would have had to have started about a year ago.”
“Could they have figured out how to use the Syndic hypernet? Could they have gotten a Syndic key?”
“Yes, sir, but then why did they jump here from Bhavan rather than from Atalia or some other star on the Syndic side of things?”
Geary looked back at Castries. “Exactly how long would a single jump all the way from Dancer space take?”
Lieutenant Castries made a helpless gesture. “Sir, we don’t know. All we can do is extrapolate from the jumps we make from star to adjacent star, but we don’t know if there is a straight correlation between distances in our universe and distances in jump space, or what happens when you jump to a star much farther off than the ones nearest to the jump point you used.”
“Can we even detect whether jump points can reach those more distant stars?” Desjani asked.
“I’ll see what I can find out, Captain,” Castries said. “But there’s nothing in our navigation systems that would indicate we can do that.”
“But we haven’t been looking for it, have we?” Desjani said.
“No, Captain. I don’t know if we know how to look for something like that.”
“Forty ships,” Geary said, focusing back on practical issues. “General Charban, we need to know why they are here, how they got here, why they are here, what they want, and why they are here.”
“In that order?” Charban asked.
“Yes. Get me answers, General. The Dancers pointed us toward Unity Alternate. Some of them left in a rush. Now this much larger group of their ships has appeared without warning, apparently using jump drives in ways we can’t. We need to know what game they are playing and whether they consider us teammates in that game or part of the playing equipment.”
“Admiral,” Charban said, “we’ve been trying to figure those things out since we first met the Dancers.”
“Get that green-haired girl,” Desjani suggested. “You know, the one who spots things no one else does. Maybe she can help some more with figuring out the Dancers.”
“Lieutenant Jamenson?” Geary asked. “That’s not a bad idea. General, we need to leave Varandal within a few days on an urgent mission. I can’t leave Varandal with forty alien ships here. There’s a very urgent need for answers.”
“I will try,” Charban said.
It took some work to pry Lieutenant Jamenson loose from Captain Smythe this time. Smythe, dealing with the mountain of work required to get the fleet out of Varandal in a few days’ time, did not want to give up his most valuable staff officer. Geary, not wanting to alienate a subordinate as capable as Smythe, was reluctant to simply order the action. “You do realize, Captain, that if I don’t have Lieutenant Jamenson’s help in understanding why the Dancers are here, the fleet may not be able to leave as intended, and all of the work you are doing would be wasted?”
Smythe gave in.
As soon as he heard she was aboard, Geary went to the special compartment set aside for communicating with the Dancers. The fleet’s system security personnel had been horrified when it was discovered that Dancer software could modify itself to work with human hardware, leading to an ironclad dictate that the Dancer software had to be kept on gear physically separated from other equipment.
Lieutenant Jamenson was there, seated at the long table holding the special comm gear, as were General Charban and Tanya Desjani. “How does it look?” Geary asked. “Ever since they arrived in this star system, the Dancers have been heading toward Dauntless at point two light. They’re almost on top of us now.”
“Fortunately,” Desjani added, “they haven’t shown any signs of strengthening shields or powering up weapons. Having a bunch of alien ships charging on an intercept for my ship does worry me, though.”
“What have they told us?” Geary demanded.
Charban sighed heavily enough to have put out the candles on a birthday cake. “There is no indication of hostile intent. As usual, they sound friendly. The Dancers sent us a long message that translated as ‘hello, it’s nice to be here, how are you?’ I asked them why they were here. The brief response said ‘we are on a mission.’ What mission? An ‘important mission.’ Admiral, why don’t you shoot me and put me out of my misery?”
Desjani was shaking her head. “Why would they go to the trouble to come here, then not talk to us in any meaningful way?”
A long silence followed her question.
Lieutenant Jamenson had been gazing at the comm gear and now asked General Charban about it. “This shows us the translations of what the Dancers have said? In human words? Can I use this to hear the original messages they send?”
“The original messages?” Charban asked. “You mean, in Dancer language? Yes, you can do that. We used to listen to them as well as the translations, but we stopped because it didn’t seem to help at all. Why?”