by Ian Douglas
The mag-tube car plunged into the tunnel at the rim of Crisium, emerging seconds later above the broad, flat plain of the near-circular mare. He could feel the vehicle decelerating. They were almost there.
The landscape outside the hurtling mag-lev was tediously monotonous. The mare was between four and five hundred kilometers across and utterly flat and dark. Crisium Base was built into the foothills along the mare’s northeastern rim. Normally a blaze of exterior lights would have greeted him, but the various near-side lunar facilities were operating under blackout conditions. There was no sense in calling attention to themselves, not with them so near.
Slower, now. He could see some outlying surface structures . . . mostly helium-3 mining facilities.
There was a lot of helium-3 here, stockpiled for transport to fusion reactors on and around Earth and elsewhere. Maybe there was a way to use that against . . . them?
Koenig was damned if he could see how. He looked up at the nightmare again, wondering.
The thing had lunged forward and engulfed the carrier America six days ago, then begun spreading tendrils of life out across space. Some of those tendrils had brushed across Earth . . . then begun . . . solidifying. More and more matter had flowed across from the Rosette entity, as fiery aurorae had stretched out across the heavens, creating a tightly woven basketry of cold flame that was both inexpressibly beautiful and terrifying in its strangeness.
Thank God that for whatever reason the Rosetters had used only a tiny fraction of their total mass. Had that entire cloud moved around Earth, a mass greater than that of Jupiter would have thoroughly screwed the gravitational balance of Earth, moon, and the various synchorbital structures, including the space elevators. There was now no way of knowing what was happening to the Earth or the synchorbital stations. All communications had been cut off. But apparently the aliens had decided to neutralize the planet, not destroy it.
At least not yet.
The mag-lev slid out of the harsh lunar sunlight and into the cool shade of an artificial cavern, as a massive airlock door sealed shut behind them.
“Mr. President,” an AI said, “we have arrived at Crisium Base.”
Dr. Wilkerson was waiting with a small army of technicians, assistants, and secret service personnel in the arrival concourse. An honor guard of Marines in combat utilities snapped to attention. “Welcome back, Mr. President,” Wilkerson said.
“Thanks, Phil. Anything new?”
“Not as such, sir. We’ve been continuing to beam requests to communicate at both the Rosette entity and at that shell or whatever it is that it threw around the Earth. We know we communicated with the entity before on these channels. We don’t know why it’s refusing to talk to us now.”
“It’s probably still deciding whether we’re dangerous,” Koenig replied. “Especially after we went and tossed nanodisassemblers at it.”
“You think that was a bad idea, sir?”
Koenig shook his head. “Damfino. What else were we supposed to do, though . . . let them eat us?”
“Mr. President, there’s no evidence that they . . .”
“I know, I know. Figure of speech.”
That was the trouble. There was no evidence one way or another that might reveal the Rosetters’ intent. Humans so far had managed to set the aliens back a little, but for the most part they were so far in advance of human technology that Humankind might as well be livestock . . . or insects to be swatted when they became inconvenient.
Sometimes, though, the insects had to risk being swatted. They had been gathering up there in the darkness by the hundreds. Soon they would begin to swarm.
And Koenig would be with them.
“Is a ship ready for me?” he asked.
Wilkerson looked uncomfortable. “Yes, sir. But I really must protest—”
“The responsibility is mine, Phil. Mine alone.”
John Crawford, the senior officer of Koenig’s Secret Service staff at Crisium, looked alarmed. “Ship, Mr. President? What ship? What are you talking about, sir?”
“Don’t sweat it, Jack. I’m going on a little jaunt, is all.”
Crawford sputtered, then managed to say, “Where?”
Koenig pointed at the cloud engulfing Earth. “There.”
“Mr. President, you can not leave the secure facilities here—”
For answer, Koenig walked over to the rigidly standing Marines. “Ready, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir!” Colonel Francis Mason rasped out. “Presidential guard! Present . . . arms!”
Weapons cracked and snapped in a perfectly executed display of precision and training. Mason barked another order, “Detail . . . halt! About . . . face! Forrard . . . harch!” The Marines, having closed around both Mason and Koenig, executed a sharp about-face and began to march.
“Hey! Wait!” Crawford yelled. “You can’t do that!”
“Of course I can,” Koenig said with cheerful dismissal. “I just did it!”
“Detail . . . double time . . . ,” Mason snapped. “Harch!”
And they harched, jogging across the open concourse and plunging through an open, airtight door. In the one-sixth G of lunar gravity, each step was a long glide.
Koenig had been planning this for a week, ever since he’d realized that his Secret Service detail was perfectly capable of knocking him out and dragging him to safety just because he didn’t want to go with them. He’d not particularly wanted to stay in the New White House and face death there if the aliens attacked . . . but the fact that he didn’t have a choice irked him.
And being stuck here on the moon gnawed at him. Unable to communicate with the Rosetters, unable to do anything but watch events unfolding around Earth a half million kilometers away, he’d decided that he was going to get back into the fight, no matter what his official government keepers might have to say about it.
While visiting Tsiolkovsky Base over on the Far Side, he’d made contact with Colonel Mason and arranged to have a private conversation with him. During a late-night discussion of military tactics, he’d managed to set up and plan his own kidnapping. The Marines didn’t like the Secret Service they were deployed with, as it turned out, and they were only too glad to help. They seemed to understand his need to be personally involved in freeing the United States of North America from the alien cloud and . . . sure, the rest of the planet as well.
The Marines hustled him down to the base debarkation area, where a number of small spacecraft were either in storage or being prepped for flight. There were several fighters, but it had been a long, long time since Koenig had strapped one of those babies on and flown it into combat. Besides, all of these were sleek, amorphous Starblades—modern fighter craft—and he wasn’t entirely sure he could figure out how to link with one, much less fly it.
Instead, they jogged toward the open ramp of an aged V-98 Kestrel parked on the flight line, a flat, dull-black delta shape with Marine Corps insignia. The pilot and flight crew were already on board.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. President,” the pilot said, meeting him at the top of the ramp with a relaxed and easygoing salute. “Where y’headed?”
“To the fleet,” Koenig replied. “Let me see the battlespace.”
“Aye, aye, sir. This way, if you please.”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Captain Luis Camacho, sir. United States Marines.”
“Okay, Luis. Lead the way.”
The Kestrel was cramped and uncomfortable, with a low overhead that challenged Koenig’s 185-centimeter frame. Though it mounted twin particle cannons in a dorsal turret, it was not, primarily, a weapons platform. Kesties had been used for decades to transport personnel ship to ship and between ship and planetary surface, a shuttle that used the well-established sardine packing technique to accommodate its passengers. The cockpit was at the forward end, with just enough free space for a three-man flight crew. “Here y’go, sir,” Camacho said, reaching for manual controls. “What do you want to see?”
&
nbsp; “Current deployment with vectors. Ah, there . . . good.”
A huge fleet was in orbit around Earth . . . around the cloud engulfing the Earth, rather. Ships had been gathering, first from Mars and other worlds in-system and lately from other star systems, ever since the Rosette entity had entered the Sol System. Koenig couldn’t be sure without linking into the Net, but he thought this might well be the largest fleet of space-faring vessels ever assembled by humans. More than two hundred capital ships from fifteen nations and five extrasolar colonies orbited the cloud now, arranged in tight groups spread out across the cloud’s entire circumference. He noted the icons for the railgun cruisers New York and San Francisco, the battle cruisers Kauffman and Essex, and the battleships Ontario and Michigan among the USNA ships. No heavy star carriers, but a scattering of CVLs and Marine transports—Nassau, Guam, Peleliu, and others. A large Pan-Euro contingent was present as well, including the heavy cruisers Champlain, Dedalo, Komet, Diana, and the massive heavy monitor Festung. A fleet of Chinese warships was close in, just skimming the upper limits of the cloud, and included the massive planetary bombardment monitor Hunan, the star carrier Guangdong, and the cruiser Shanxi. A Russian flotilla included the Stoykiy, Derznovennyy, Putin, and Varyag. The list of vessels went on and on, the names scrolling up the side of the holographic display, as the icons gleamed in colors indicating registry, drawing out the ellipses of their orbits as they moved. At this scale, the space around the Rosetter cloud looked crowded.
But Koenig knew that the reality was quite different—a handful of ships all but lost in emptiness.
The Lexington, he noticed, had not made it clear of SupraQuito Orbital. Not that he’d expected her to have gotten underway. She’d been badly smashed up at Kapteyn’s Star.
And his own old ship, the America . . . she was missing as well, swallowed by the cloud. Was she in the part surrounding Earth, he wondered? Or was she still out at the asteroid belt, where the main body of the Rosetter entity still drifted with serene indifference?
“President Koenig!” a familiar voice, greatly amplified, boomed from outside. “Mr. President, come out of there! We will disable that vessel!”
“External speakers?” Koenig asked Camacho.
The Marine tapped a transparent touch screen. “There you go, sir.”
“You do, Crawford,” Koenig barked back, “and I’ll have my Marines round all of you up and keep you out of the way! I’ll fly a damned fighter solo if I have to!”
“Sir! Please!” Crawford was pleading now. In Koenig’s experience the man had always been as tough as silicon carbide-ferroceramic duralloy composite. The change in demeanor was shocking. “I swore an oath!”
“So did I, Mr. Crawford. And I can’t fulfill it sitting on my ass out here.” He signaled to Mason to cut the channel, then nodded at the pilot. “Get us out of here, Casey.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The Kestrel’s engines began spooling up as Koenig peered out the cockpit transparency, wondering if Crawford would carry out his threat to disable the shuttle. A number of Secret Service people were gathered in a clump near the hangar bay’s entryway and they all appeared to be armed. They seemed to hesitate, though . . . to waver . . . and then they began backing through the blast doors. Camacho was settling back in the control seat, which grew and shifted to engulf his body and link him into the shuttle’s control systems.
“I recommend that you and your people get settled in aft, Mr. President.”
“Right. Keep me in the loop, please.”
“You go it, Mr. President!”
The shuttle was already nudging through a black membrane that molded itself to the ship’s hull, flowing over it as the Kestrel passed through into the hard vacuum of the lunar surface. Sunlight burst through the windows, harsh and white, and the shrilling of the drives picked up in pitch and decibels. Koenig made his way aft to the passenger compartment and dropped into an empty seat next to Colonel Mason.
“So tell me, sir,” Mason said conversationally, “just what are you figuring on doing out there? Issue an executive order?”
Acceleration gripped them, pressing them into their seats.
“If I have to.” Koenig grinned. “But I’d rather save drastic action like that for when they really piss me off!”
“Ooh-rah.”
In fact, Koenig hadn’t really given much thought to what he would actually do when he reached the human fleet. He would not be taking command from Admiral Reeve, he knew that. It had been too many years since he’d stood on the flag bridge of a warship linked to a fleet tactical feed. Worse than that, if he couldn’t link into the fleet network because of security concerns, he wouldn’t be of much use at all.
He didn’t like the idea of being a glorified passenger, but he hated more the idea of watching from the sidelines a half million kilometers away. If he was with the fleet, at least he could serve as a tactical consultant. It might have been a few years, but he still had plenty of experience to draw on.
On the downside, he could still be captured, even though he had disabled his in-head link circuitry. The ease with which the Rosetters had taken the America was very much on his mind.
Acceleration was replaced by free fall as the Kestrel boosted clear of the moon. View screens in the cabin showed their destination up ahead: the vast and swirling cloud of dust and light engulfing the Earth in a globe the size of Jupiter. That object, somewhat flattened at its poles, was big enough to hold a thousand Earths. It was also blocking all electromagnetic radiation going to and from the planet, so there was no way of determining what was going on inside . . . or even whether Earth was still intact. One of Wilkerson’s people, in a briefing earlier, had suggested that the Rosetters might use entire planets as raw material for their arcane constructions. Certainly, Earth’s mass was still inside the cloud; it hadn’t been converted to energy or spirited away through some kind of dimensional spacetime back door . . . but there was no guarantee at all that Earth’s teeming billions were still alive.
Negotiation, Koenig thought, was still the only viable possibility. Throughout the long-running Sh’daar War, clear and unfiltered communication had been the only hope for resolving the conflict. Eventually, humans had learned to talk with the myriad species of the N’gai Cloud civilization and come to a common agreement.
Would the same be possible with the Rosette entity? The best analyses of the being indicated that it represented an intelligence so far beyond human minds that there might literally be no common ground at all. No common ground meant no negotiation. Humankind’s super-AIs might have had a chance. . . .
Damn it, where had Konstantin gone?
Colonel Mason turned to Koenig. “Mr. President? I’m linked with Captain Camacho forward. Where do you want to go, exactly?”
“The flagship that’s directing fleet operations,” Koenig told the Marine. “The New York.”
“Okay. He says we’re on the way in.”
Ahead, the Rosetter cloud spanned the breadth of the screen, as Koenig felt the first hard bump of deceleration.
Somehow, he didn’t think that Admiral Reeve was going to be happy to see him.
Joint Base Edwards Spaceport
Suiteland Gate
Maryland Reincorporated Territory
1311 hours, EST
It was night on the planet Earth . . . night across the entire planet, an unimaginable state of affairs that teased and tugged at a person’s sanity. And it had been night, too, for almost a week, now. Temperatures were hovering around minus five, bitter and unrelenting. Temperatures had been dropping across the planet as the Rosetters closed in. Some said they intended to put the planet into a permanent and fatal deep freeze.
Shay Ashton had flown out to the spaceport in a robotic aircar that had deposited her here at the Suiteland Gate, just outside of what once had been the D.C. Beltway and some fifteen kilometers from the center of D.C. The sky was . . . strange—had been strange ever since that alien cloud had engulfed the
planet. Vast and swirling cloud patterns had descended upon the landscape, but the banks and cloud masses were internally lit by the flicker of what might be aurorae, electric-blue and green flashes like pulses of soft lightning. Sometimes the lightning seemed to build structures composed of material light . . . but eventually, those structures would shift and fade and merge into the clinging darkness.
The cloud had entered Earth’s atmosphere, too. Something like hard, black grit rattled off the robot car throughout the flight out of the city, and it stung her skin now. She couldn’t make out the details with the naked eye, but she knew that analyses of those grit particles had shown them to be alien machines, intricate devices larger than typical nanotechnology but still as small as individual flecks of confectioners’ sugar.
What those trillions of machines were actually doing—besides, presumably, linking with one another into a single colossal intelligence—was still unknown.
Bundled in her cold-weather gear and ignoring the tiny sting of windblown micromachines on her face, Ashton walked across open pavement to the spaceport’s main gate.
“Yes, miss? Can I help you?” the robot guard asked her. It was a Turing Four, an older model still in use by the government, designed to look cartoonish, like a caricature of a robot, to avoid the depths of the Uncanny Valley.
“I’m here to see the base commander,” she replied. She thoughtclicked an icon, transmitting her ID and authorization to the machine. “I have an appointment.”
“And what is your business here, Ms. Ashton?”
She almost told it that that was none of its business, but she bit her tongue. “I thought I’d see if they would take me back,” she said.
“You are . . . the former acting governor of—”
“As a fighter pilot,” she snapped. “You people are a little short of those right now, am I right?”
