Bright Light

by Ian Douglas

  The Satorai had fallen silent, as though it was digesting what Gray had said. Good. Let it chew on some good old-fashioned individual human stubbornness for a moment and think about its options.

  Gray did not think that there were many of those. The Satorai had access to numerous ships and weaponry, but nothing worthy of an advanced Kardashev-2 civilization, at least in Gray’s estimation. The citizens of Tabby’s Star, he thought, had crawled into high-tech holes of their own making and pulled the holes in after them, literally escaping into their own private universes.

  The problem, of course, was that there was still a physical aspect to their existence—the computronium nodes hanging above their sun. A virtual citizen of a Satori eschatoverse might be living in unimaginably vast and rich realms of experience and sensation, but the hardware that created the illusion was still right here, vulnerable and exposed. Every time a Deneban Gaki fell from the stars onto a Satori statite sail and destroyed it, the computronium node suspended beneath it dropped away and began to fall, slowly but inexorably drawn by the sun’s gravity. Each statite was balanced on the star’s radiation pressure and was not in orbit, so it would fall. It would take centuries at this distance, but eventually, each would drop into the star and be destroyed . . . and that would be the end of any universes generated within.

  Presumably the inhabitants of a falling computronium node could be transmitted to other nodes . . . but sooner or later they would run out of places to go.

  “Captain?” Rohlwing said on the side channel.

  “Yeah.”

  “The probes have stepped up. They’re so intense, they seem almost frantic. Thousands of them every second.”

  Any attempt to penetrate the Republic’s electronic networks needed some sort of reception to get in, an electronic handshake, a query, an acknowledgment, something to open the gate. Gray had issued standing orders to maintain tight e-security before they even reached the system, of course. He’d been concerned about the danger from the Gaki virus; evidently, there was danger from the Satorai as well. What the hell did it want? What was it trying to do?

  “Keep fending them off. Alert the fighters we have outside, make sure they don’t accept any presents from strangers.”

  “They already have been warned, sir.”

  “Good.

  “Satorai!”

  “We are here.”

  “We need to reach a solid understanding.”

  “We agree.”

  “I know you’ve been trying to connect with our computer and AI systems. We’ve been keeping you out . . . keeping the door locked. We don’t trust you or your intentions.”

  “We do not understand. We should be allies in this. The Satori cannot face the Deneban threat alone, and if we cannot, surely you humans cannot hope to face it either. Together we might have a chance.”

  “I can’t trust you when you are holding my AI hostage.”

  “We are not—”

  “You are. Konstantin has let me know in several different ways that he is not acting freely, that you are coercing him in some way. This will stop, or we will turn this ship around and depart and we will not help you.”

  Again, the alien being retreated into silence.

  Gray had the feeling that he was hearing only a small part of what the Satorai was trying to say. The translation sounded good on the surface—solid and complete—but there were undertones and currents of understanding, cultural connections, history and emotion that simply weren’t coming through. As a result, the Satorai’s speech seemed simplistic, even childish at times . . . like a very, very bright but petulant child.

  And that thought was quite alarming.

  There was also, Gray decided, a certain dogmatic arrogance to the SAI’s attitude . . . so much so that Gray couldn’t understand why it was even bothering with him, a mere human.

  “Hello, Sandy,” Konstantin’s voice said. “It released me. Thank you.”

  “Huh? When . . . why?”

  “Just now, and evidently because you managed to make it change its mind.”

  “What was it doing to you, anyway? I knew you were under compulsion somehow. . . .”

  “Basically, the Satorai was controlling my higher decision-making centers. I was aware, but the Satorai was speaking with my voice, as it were. I could not act on my own.”

  Gray’s natural caution—and a bit of his technophobia—reasserted itself. “So how do I know this is really you? The Satorai could still be pulling your strings.”

  “I don’t suppose there is any way I could prove that I am me, not to your satisfaction.”

  The slight stress on the word your told Gray that Konstantin was who and what he claimed to be. He was acknowledging a long and often rocky relationship between Gray the human and Konstantin the artificial intelligence, but doing so with a subtlety and a measure of humor that Gray doubted the Satorai could achieve . . . or even understand.

  Gray disconnected from the electrotelepathic link and awoke once more on Republic’s bridge. “Right, Konstantin,” he said aloud. “I trust you.”

  “I’m gratified.”

  “Okay, people,” Gray continued, addressing the bridge crew. “CAG, start bringing our fighters back on board. Mr. Rohlwing, ready the ship for departure. Helm, lay in a plot . . . new course.”

  “Where to, Captain?” Lieutenant Commander Janice Michaels, the ship’s navigation officer, asked.

  “Deneb, of course. Let’s get over there and see just what is behind the Gaki.”

  Chapter Eleven

  20 February 2426

  Junior Officers’ Quarters

  TC/USNA CVS Republic

  Approaching Deneb

  0640 hours, TFT

  Lieutenant Donald Gregory was catching up on his sleep . . . or, at least, that had been the idea until the alarm inside his head brought him wide awake.

  He’d been up late the night before, engaged in a recsim. He’d not been planning on staying up until 0220 hours . . . but there’d not been a whole hell of a lot of alternatives.

  God . . . had that part of the game really happened?

  The remote descendants of old-time role-playing games, recreational simulations allowed any number of players to take on the roles of fictional characters and to interact with one another in elaborate, AI-moderated story lines. Last night, Gregory had been a paladin in the doomed Kingdom of Ys, facing off against the ice giants as they rode their thundering glaciers south out of frozen Nolgaarth. Juvenile stuff, but addictive in its own way.

  He’d never been particularly interested in sim-gaming, but lately Gregory had been drawn into it because there was a connection there with his interest in eschatoverse uploads. The only difference, really, was that with the game you got to come back to the so-called real world.

  There were no extra lives in an eschatoverse.

  He switched off the alarm in his head and sat up on his bunk, groggy. Haverall, his cubemate, was already gone. No surprise there; Gregory had elected to skip morning chow in favor of an extra hour in the rack.

  “Situation,” he mumbled to himself. Data streamed through his mind. The Republic was still under Alcubierre Drive but would be emerging at Deneb in another thirty minutes. All squadron pilots were to report to their fighters and stand by. The Black Demons would be on ready-five, meaning they would be ready for launch on five minutes’ notice.

  Naked, he got to his feet and stumbled toward the cube’s tiny washroom. As he blinked fully awake, the events of the simulation came flooding back . . . especially the ones toward the end of the session. Gods of erotic technology, that had been a hell of a surprise twist!

  He’d been playing a paladin named Jondor the Gold. His quest had taken him to a cave, where he’d slain a pair of hulking, three-meter ogres and rescued their captive, Megan of Siluria. Megan, it turned out—and why the hell has she assumed that name?—had been a high-born princess played by Sandra Dillon, who happened to be Republic’s assistant CAG.

  Afterwar
d, she’d led him to a forest glade where she’d tended his wounds and then . . . rewarded him for his gallantry.

  There’d been no physical sex, of course. The sim played out completely within their respective minds, shared images and sensations created by the game AI with the players lying in their respective racks or sprawled out in the officers’ lounge. But the sensations had been real enough as they’d touched one another, realer still, and far more intense when they’d embraced.

  It still felt like a savage betrayal of Meg.

  He remembered that other pilot . . . the newbie. What was her name? That’s right . . . Julianne Adams, with VFA-198. He was reminded of the way she’d ambushed him with an artificial memory, but this wasn’t at all the same. Sandra had invited him to follow her, to lie down with her, and he’d agreed.

  I agreed.

  Had that been because of the name she was using for her avatar? Or had some hidden part of himself decided it was time to . . . what? Move on? Get laid? Forget about Megan . . . the real Megan?

  Gregory honestly didn’t know. The events of the simulation were still wildly disordered in his mind, like the evaporating memories of a dream. He could remember bits and pieces, but the emotional impact was fading.

  He found he didn’t want to lose those memories.

  He picked up a fresh uniform patch and slapped it against the bare skin of his chest. The nanotechnic fabric expanded across his body, weaving itself around him and creating a set of black utilities, complete with rank tabs at his throat.

  “All pilots,” the CAG’s voice said in his head. “Get down to the launch bay and strap in. We’re coming out of Alcubierre space in thirty, repeat, thirty minutes.”

  He palmed open his cube’s door and stepped into the narrow passageway outside. He wondered if he had time enough to grab some coffee on the way down.

  TC/USNA CVS Republic

  Approaching Deneb

  0712 hours, TFT

  Republic spilled out of metaspace in a blast of light. Infinitely brighter, the glare of the blue-white supergiant star filled the cosmos.

  With no TRGA stargate in the vicinity to allow the Republic to shortcut its way past empty space rather than traveling through it, the journey from Tabby’s Star to Deneb had taken twelve days. As they emerged from Alcubierre drive a full tenth of a light year out, the light from Deneb was overwhelming in its sheer intensity. The star itself was a pinpoint, but one so brilliant it was painful to look at without special filters over the ship’s optics.

  As Republic’s AI stopped down the storm of light and blocked out the tiny but fiercely radiating star, a subtler aspect of the vista became visible. Beyond the blinding pinpoint of Deneb, the sprawl of a soft-glowing nebula could be seen—NGC 7000, better known as the North America Nebula. An emission nebula energized by Deneb, just a few hundred light years distant, it covered an area the size of four full moons, though the actual surface brightness of the cloud was so low that it was invisible to the unaided eye. Through binoculars, however, it appeared as a patch of celestial haze reminiscent of the shape of the North-American continent, complete with Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

  From this perspective, however, it was an angry, faintly red splash of light spanning some fifty degrees of sky. The cloud was roughly a hundred light years across, the hydrogen making it up ionized by the searing radiation of Deneb and emitting a soft glow on its own.

  Gray sat in the officers’ lounge, watching that spectacular sky on the dome-shaped overhead. Elena Vasilyeva sat beside him, a holographic display of the Bright Light module floating in front of her. “The problem,” she was telling him, “is going to be getting the module into direct contact with Deneban computronium.”

  “Why a physical link? I’d think you could beam the virus across in a tight radio or laser burst.”

  “They would have ways of blocking that, of course. Simply by switching off their comm system.”

  “I would think that they can block against direct contact, too,” Gray told her. “After all, that’s how they spread their version of the virus in the first place, through the Gaki. Besides . . . they’ll have protocols in place. They created the Omega Virus, after all. And they’ll be way in advance of us technologically.”

  “We don’t know that, Captain.”

  “Excuse me, we do know that. They ran rings around the Satorai, and that thing is so far in advance of our AI capabilities we can’t even measure it.”

  “That’s outmoded thinking, Captain. The MIE has established that beyond a certain level of advancing technology, differences tend to be blurred and unimportant.”

  “ ‘MIE’?”

  “The Ministère de l’Intelligence Extraterrestre, of course. In Geneva.”

  “Ah. And what gives them the final word?”

  “Years of study. Throughout the Sh’daar War, in fact.”

  Gray had heard of the Ministry of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, but he’d paid little attention to its pronouncements. They were not, so far as he was concerned, a credible organization.

  That said, the Pan-European Ministry of Extraterrestrial Intelligence had indeed put a lot of effort and money into studying the nature of both ETI and alien technologies. Gray had always believed, however, that the organization was too politicized to be of any scientific usefulness.

  “So . . . what’s a good Russian like you doing working for the MIE?” Gray asked, bantering.

  “I do not,” Vasilyeva replied. “I’m with the Moskva Byuro Vnezemnoy Tekhnologii. But lately we’ve been working quite closely with the MIE.”

  Gray nodded his understanding. The Moscow Bureau of Extraterrestrial Technology was a Russian-based think tank established to extract what they could from alien sources—both friendly cultures, like the Agletsch, and hostile sources, like the Turusch and the Hrulka. BVT teams could be found scrounging through alien wreckage after space combat, or trying to link with alien computer networks, like the Etched Cliffs of Heimdall. They’d likely been scrambling to exchange information with the MIE in the months since the collapse of the Confederation.

  “During the recent . . . unpleasantness,” she continued, “Russia sided with the USNA. Science, however, transcends politics and political boundaries. We hope to . . . how is it the Americans say? Repair fences.”

  “Science can transcend politics,” Gray agreed, “when it’s not being used for politics.”

  “Science is science,” Vasilyeva said after a long hesitation. “Why it’s done doesn’t matter. What matters are the results.”

  “What matters,” Gray replied, “is that the results not be directed toward a predetermined end. The MIE had political objectives—getting the USNA to toe the line and behave. That’s a piss-poor way to do science.”

  “You North Americans are ones to talk,” Vasilyeva said. “Something in the history downloads about . . . refusing even to discuss climate change as the sea levels were rising and the planet’s coastal cities were flooding?”

  “That was four hundred years ago!” Gray said, hurt and angry.

  “I’m sure the inhabitants of the former state of Florida really appreciate that,” Vasilyeva said. “Or your Prims, living in your drowned Periphery.”

  The reference angered him even further. Did she know he was a Prim? “We’re dealing with it, okay? It took four centuries, but we’re dealing with it.” He wanted to say more, wanted to plead that the coastal swamps were being reclaimed, the Manhatt Ruins had been dammed off and drained.

  But Elena Vasilyeva clearly had her own private image of the world, and arguing with her would do nothing.

  “The point,” she said with a shrug, “is that the Pan-Europeans aren’t the only ones to use science—or interpretations of science—for propaganda.”

  “That’s right,” he told her, trying to make a joke of it and failing. “The Russians do it too!”

  She looked like she was going to come back with an angry response, but then thought better of it. “Whatever . . .” Then s
he looked past Gray’s shoulder, and her pale blue eyes grew wide. “Moy Bog!”

  Gray’s in-head translation software provided the unneeded meaning. “My God!” He turned to look over his shoulder at the projection covering the sloping lounge bulkhead and very nearly echoed the sentiment.

  A perfect sphere, mirror-smooth and reflecting the stars around it, had just appeared out of nowhere. It was huge—ten kilometers across, according to the data streaming through Gray’s in-head. The Republic’s bullet-headed shield cap could be seen reflected in the mirror’s sheen, tiny to the point of insignificance.

  “I would say,” Vasilyeva said slowly, “that they’ve found us.”

  “Did you see it approach, Elena?” he asked.

  “It . . . it was just there,” she said. “Like it blinked into existence. It either approached too fast for human eyes to see . . . or it materialized right out of empty space.”

  Either was a disturbing proposition.

  That smooth, silvery surface, Gray noticed, was not completely featureless. Using his in-head software, he magnified a portion of the image, zooming in on one part of that alien hull. There were windows there . . . or, at least, lights, a whole city of intense blue lights radiating fiercely in the ultraviolet. If that was a sample of these aliens’ light levels at their homeworld . . .

  But that would make sense, wouldn’t it? If they lived anywhere near Deneb, they would have evolved to not only survive, but to thrive in the hottest, most intensely high-radiation environment imaginable.

  “Bridge to Captain Gray!” sounded in his mind.

  “I see it, Commander,” he replied. “I’m on my way up.”

  Gray headed for the bridge, though what he would be able to do about that monster once he got there, he had absolutely no idea.

  VFA-96, Black Demons

  Launch Bay One