“Effectively, yes,” Drakon said, wishing he knew what Gwen was thinking.
“Do you think that those ground forces workers who were rescued by Manticore will be able to provide any useful intelligence?”
Drakon nodded. “They already have. Manticore is still a ways from reaching this planet, but my ground code monkeys were able to walk the space code monkeys through accessing and downloading the data in the battle armor. Most of the data is a lot of nothing as those soldiers lay low waiting for rescue, but they got some decent data on the enigma attack that killed most of their unit.”
Iceni gave him a look. “That attack employed distance weapons, I understand. What did you learn from it?”
Colonel Malin answered. “Madam President, we were able to confirm from the battle armor status and records that the ground forces unit they were in was not leaking electronic signals when they were targeted by the enigmas. All of their emissions were extremely low power and extremely short-range, to tie their armor into a single tactical net.”
“Which means,” Drakon said, “that the enigmas are very, very good at spotting even tiny indications of comm and active sensor activity by our forces. But when those three soldiers went totally passive, nothing went after them. That might mean the enigmas don’t routinely employ active seekers.”
Iceni raised an eyebrow at Drakon. “Why would it imply that?”
“Because our own distance strike weapons are at least dual-seeker systems. If they don’t spot anything using the passive seeker that is looking for electronic signals, they automatically switch to active, or infrared, or visual. Visual can be movement triggered or look for shape matches.”
“If they don’t use active seekers,” Bradamont commented, “that’s consistent with the enigmas’ desire to remain hidden. Active paints your position loud and clear for anyone watching.”
“But what about IR?” Colonel Gozen asked. “That’s passive. But if the enigma weapons had automatically shifted to IR targeting they would have nailed those three soldiers.”
“IR might be a blind zone for them,” Drakon agreed. “I wish those three soldiers had gotten even a long-range look at some enigmas operating on the surface so we’d have at least a basic idea of what kind of protective suits or armor they use, and what sort of weapons they carry.” He shook his head ruefully. “I used to be unhappy about Syndicate intelligence reports that couldn’t tell me little details about new Alliance ground threats. I never realized how much basic and very important information I already knew as a matter of course.”
Colonel Malin frowned. “It is possible that the enigmas try to do all of their ground fighting at long range, beyond line of sight, so as to minimize any chance of being seen by a foe.”
“Even other enigmas?” Iceni asked. “Surely they don’t worry about other enigmas seeing them.”
“Such a strong motivation cannot operate in a vacuum,” Malin said. “The enigma desire for privacy, for remaining hidden, must influence their interactions with each other.”
Bradamont called up some images on her data pad, studying them. “When Admiral Geary’s fleet was in enigma-owned star systems we got long-range looks at enigma towns, but those looks were obscured by privacy fields over the towns. The fields appeared to be a routine thing. About all we could tell was that the towns were almost all coastal and were about half in the water and half along the surface of the coast.”
“The enigmas certainly live up to their names,” Gozen commented. “Could Black Jack’s ships have spotted deep underground installations like the enigmas are building at Iwa?”
“No,” Bradamont said. “Maybe if we had gotten in close we could have spotted traces, but getting in close would, we thought, lead the enigma population on the surface to commit mass suicide. Admiral Geary did not want to commit genocide.”
“Good for him,” Drakon commented. “But is it genocide if the other guys decide to kill themselves?”
“They’re dead either way,” Iceni said. “Even if it is second-degree genocide instead of first-degree. But after seeing those images of Iwa, I’m not sure I would have been as restrained as Black Jack was. Let me summarize. We know very little of enigma ground combat capabilities, except that they have signal detection capabilities markedly superior to our own and highly effective distance weapons. We know that they are building a base of some kind deep underground on that planet at Iwa. And we know, from what they did at Iwa, that the enigmas have not altered their basic approach to humanity.”
“Wiping out all trace of humans might be described as an approach,” Drakon said, wondering why he found the phrasing comical. “Here’s something else we can be sure of. Even if we overcome their defenses against ground attack, which I think we could do, but that has to be a guess since we know so little about the enigmas’ ground combat capabilities or how many enigmas are at this base, then from all we know the enigmas would have dead-men switches built into their gear to ensure their installation, and all of our troops, were blown to hell on the heels of our victory.”
“Dead-enigma switches,” Iceni said.
“What?”
“You said dead-man switches.” Iceni moved her head slowly to look at everyone else. “We’ve gone over the difficulties. Can any of you tell me how we can do this?”
“Why not just drop a big enough rock on the planet to reach however deep the enigmas are?” Drakon asked, unhappy at the idea of sending his soldiers against a foe of essentially unknown capabilities and strength.
“That would be one hell of a rock,” Bradamont said.
“It would take time,” Iceni said. “We would have to round up a local asteroid or minor planet that was big enough and boost it toward the target planet. It would take a while to get there. Besides that, we need to capture some enigma technology. Maybe some records that we can exploit. We still know almost nothing about them.”
“We know they keep attacking us,” Drakon said.
“But we don’t know why!”
“General Charban, who accompanied Admiral Geary’s fleet,” Captain Bradamont explained, “thought that it was pure paranoia in human terms. The enigmas may think that as long as we inquisitive humans are close enough to the enigmas, as long as we exist, we will keep trying to learn about the enigmas, keep trying to penetrate the screen of secrecy they maintain. We tried to use that as basis for establishing a peace agreement, promising that we would never violate their privacy if they did not attack us, but they never responded.”
“Except with more attacks,” Malin pointed out. “Paranoia would cause the enigmas to conclude that we will always violate any agreement and always be a threat to them.”
“I said paranoia in human terms,” Bradamont corrected. “Whatever drives enigma thinking and actions appears to have common elements with what we’d call paranoia, but they’re not human, and their ways of thinking may have major variations on how a human with paranoia would perceive things.”
“Captain,” Malin said, his words precise and cold, “while both General Drakon and President Iceni have expressed distaste at the idea of genocide, we may eventually be forced to engage in a war of elimination with the enigmas. We will have no choice.”
Drakon felt a reflexive tightening in his gut at Malin’s words. “We’ve spent the last century in a war that became more and more a war of elimination, Colonel. I’m personally sick of that kind of thing.”
“But if it is our only option—”
“You know I always ask for at least two options,” Drakon interrupted. “There are always at least two options.” He paused, then gave Iceni a sidelong look. “Just like our beloved President asked for more options a minute ago. And one option to beginning a genocidal war is learning enough about the enigmas to figure out what else might work, which takes us back to capturing that base. Colonel, can we come up with a way to take that enigma installation that doesn’t involve suicide for our soldiers and the enigmas alike?”