12 - My Enemy’s Enemy
Since the “weaving of Pochven,” there’s been a lot of talk about the Drifters: kybernauts trying to redirect our attention against this supposed shared foe, others valorizing them as natural allies against the demons who’ve dared pilfer not only our worlds but the very stars they orbit.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a popular saying, but not, maybe, always an accurate one? I don’t perhaps quite agree with the “my enemy’s enemy is my enemy’s enemy, no more, no less” analysis, either, though. Stuff’s complex. It’s really case by case.
Here … here I really think there’s no common cause to be found, or made.
Let’s leave aside completely for now the Drifter assassination of Empress Jamyl. It’s, I mean, obviously a big concern for the Empire but let’s still leave it.
Instead, let’s talk about contempt-- contempt, and the willingness to talk.
Communication on the most basic level isn’t a difficult thing. Human beings are really good at it. We communicate with each other, with other species (there’s lots of communication involved in training a slaver hound, for example), with computers; even utterly inhuman, artificial beings such as rogue drones send out the occasional broadcast. The Triglavian Collective communicates abundantly (actually they talk to our computers far too well, to the point where it’s a gaping security hole).
It doesn’t take much. Comms lasers aren’t hard. Mathematical principles form an easy starting point, and that’s even if there’s no shared language or common cultural or experiential ground to begin with. And we know the Drifters are way past that point: they can talk to us; they’ve done it before, during the Site One incident. They just don’t.
They don’t. At all. They don’t hack us, don’t manipulate us, don’t conduct diplomacy or try to get anything from us at all, except for that one time, and that was likely out of necessity (getting us to deliver biological samples they could culture and use to grow bodies).
Since then, they communicate only by violence, or by withholding it. I used to think this was the silence of deadly intent, that they meant to exterminate us, and they just had nothing to say to the dead. Now it seems they have larger worries: that they found the Abyss, and are deep into a war with the Collective-- a war of extermination, most likely.
But in a way, this makes it worse, or at least more insulting. Despite (or because of?) all their mysterious super-tech, the Drifters struggle in the Abyss to the point where a typical capsuleer diver’s cruiser is more than a match for a frontline battleship. We can kill Scylla and Kharybdis by the squadron, and still they not only don’t ask for help or even for us to just get out of the way, they don’t even deign to pursue us in K-space (where they have the advantage) unless we engage their units or go somewhere they don’t want us to be.
At least until we have something they want. Even then, they won’t lower themselves to speak with us again.
We’re treated like big, nasty, stinging insects: swatted if we offend, otherwise mostly just studied or ignored.
From the start, the Triglavian approach to capsuleer-kind has been, consistently, a series of dares: dare to enter our domain; dare to defend your own; dare to betray your own and join us, or to stand together and resist us. They almost certainly do not look at us as equals, since the terms of every dare are controlled by the Collective, but still, they invite us to test them, and ourselves. It may be an arrogant posture, but it doesn’t speak of contempt. They invite us to strive, and they reward success.
They’re the ones who’ve stolen our stars, but we’re not garbage to them. It’s not hard to imagine them cheering for us, in their way, should we manage to rally a counter-invasion of Pochven. We’re not quite their rivals, but we’re definitely people to Triglavian eyes.
The silence of the Drifters is eloquent. It says exactly what they think of us, as they play the part of celestials gazing upon arguably-sapient vermin. To them, we’re scum, trash-- in Triglavian terms, poshlost. We’re objects of contempt, to the degree they think of us at all. If we attack them, we gain no leverage. If we helped them, we’d gain no credit. They lowered themselves to talk to us once, because they had to … and never again. You don’t negotiate with a swarm of biting flies, and you owe it no favors just because you baited it into doing what you needed done, once (to your disgust).
If this is how they look at us, probably we will have to shock them out of that attitude before dialog is even possible. We have not found a way even to scratch the Hives, much less to communicate or dock with one. But it’s surely not impossible. A perfect defense of something so large … it may be out of reach for now, but there might be a way inside.
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy-- and even less, until I can be seen at least as a potential ally.
Or a threat.
Perhaps when we see ourselves reflected in black Drifter eyes, corners tense with worry, there will be something to discuss.