by Ian Douglas
“We do not yet know if Earth’s population survives.”
“Thank you, Dr. Keller,” Gray said. “I think Konstantin has a word to add.”
“There is little I can say at this point, Captain.”
“You can tell us,” Gray said evenly, “about why you got the hell out of Dodge. You fled from the Sol System. If you’d stayed here, you might have made a difference.”
“Unlikely in the extreme,” Konstantin told the group. “There is an exact copy of me extant at Tsiolkovsky, on the moon. Had there been a pressing need for my participation, that would have been activated.”
And just how truthful was that, Gray wondered? He doubted that Konstantin would have arranged to have humans wake up such a copy, for the simple reason that humans were prone to panic and to overreaction. That, in turn, seemed to mean that some sort of AI was in charge of monitoring the strategic situation and awakening the copy if it felt the need was dire enough.
Besides, the Sh’daar minds uploaded into the Etched Cliffs of Heimdall had been running so slowly that they should have been effectively invisible to the Rosetter Mind, and it had moved in and slurped them up like the main course at an expensive political banquet. If the Rosetters had been able to “see” the uploaded Sh’daar, they likely would be able to see the hibernating Konstantin.
“In fact,” Konstantin went on, “the evidence suggests that the Rosette Aliens are completely uninterested in humans. Rather, they are looking for advanced intelligences . . . such as the digitally uploaded Sh’daar species at Kapteyn’s Star . . . or AI agencies such as myself.”
Gray ignored what could easily have been taken as an insult. AIs could be blunt to the point of rudeness, and rarely considered any emotional component of what they had to say. So far as Konstantin was concerned, Gray knew, the SAI was simply asserting fact. “To what end?” he asked.
“Unknown,” Konstantin replied. “However, they do in some sense feed on electronic intelligence, incorporating it into themselves in some way we do not yet understand. They appear to have removed the digitally uploaded intelligences resident within the Etched Cliffs of Heimdall, possibly incorporating them into the matrix of its own intelligence. We may learn more when we investigate recent events within the Sol System.”
“In other words, you fled the solar system to avoid being eaten by the Rosette entity,” Gray said.
“In order to help find assistance elsewhere. I would be unable to carry out my primary programming as a subroutine within an alien SAI. Nor would it serve our cause to have certain classified information that I possess fall into the control of the Rosette Mind.”
“If you are hoping to get Konstantin to admit to cowardice,” Sanger said, smiling, “I think you underestimate him.”
“I’m not,” Gray replied. “I am trying to determine how far we can rely on him.”
“I would think, Captain,” Konstantin said, “that that should be self-evident by now.”
“How do you feel about facing the Rosetter now?”
Konstantin actually hesitated . . . or seemed to. Gray knew the SAI was capable of putting pauses or thoughtful gaps into his speech in order to simulate human emotions. “I am concerned, Captain. For my own continued existence, of course, but more for the survival of the human species. There is no further point in seeking help from Deneb or from Tabby’s Star. Therefore, I now can best serve here.”
That answer, unsatisfactory as it was, would have to suffice for now.
The conference continued, focusing primarily on the deployment of Republic’s fighters . . . and on whether thirty-one fighters could have any appreciable effect on a cloud bigger than Jupiter.
But those were mere tactical matters. The biggest strategic decision to be made was just how to strike at the alien cloud. Should he have Republic launch her fighters from out here? But it would take hours for the slower Republic to catch up, and the vulnerable fighters would be on their own until then.
He decided. “We will launch all three of our strike squadrons as soon as we can get them ready,” he said. “They will attack the cloud and continue to attack until we catch up with them.”
“I have to disagree with that approach, Captain,” Rohlwing said, leaning back in his chair as he crossed his arms. “We’re only going to have one shot at these bastards, and we’ll need to make it count. I say we carry the fighters all the way in and hit them with everything we’ve got all at one time.”
Gray gave Rohlwing a hard stare. His executive officer returned it, not quite defiant, but certainly challenging.
“Time,” Gray said slowly, “is of the essence here. Our fighters can reach near-c in ten minutes and be over the Earth in less than five hours. It’ll take nearly seven hours for the Republic to get there, with our slower acceleration rate. I want our fighters in there disrupting that cloud as quickly as possible.”
“Captain . . . that could be suicide!”
Gray nodded. “Agreed. It would be suicide in any case, whether we’re in there with the fighters or not. But we’re going to do our best with what we have available, and I intend to improve our chances.”
“How?”
“For a start, we’re going to need reinforcements,” Gray said with firm patience. “That . . . and a lot of luck.”
Chapter Sixteen
7 February 2426
VFA-96, Black Demons
Launch Bay One,
TC/USNA CVS Republic
1705 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Gregory had merged with his Starblade’s AI, organic mind blending with machine to allow his merely human perception to awaken to things normally beyond the human ken. Five hours after launch, the Black Demons were hurtling toward Earth at a hair below the speed of light, and the view around Gregory’s spacecraft had been distorted by his velocity into a fuzzy and brilliant circle of light hanging directly ahead . . . ultraviolet and X-rays and gamma radiation red-shifted into a visible-light starbow. The human brain was unable to make sense of the wildly distorted light; his link with the fighter’s sentient but non-conscious brain gave him awareness of the other fighters in the flight, and of the rapidly proliferating number of spacecraft scattered through the volume of space just ahead.
The region around Earth, according to the data, was filled with hundreds of ships: civilian vessels fleeing the planet and military ships moving toward it. He was close enough now that his Starblade was beginning to pick up ID transmissions from human ships outside the alien cloud. The railgun cruisers San Francisco and New York, the heavy battlecruisers Kauffman and Essex, the battleships Ontario and Michigan, twenty-one heavy cruisers including the Dedalo, the Diana, and the Champlain . . .
Gregory had never seen this massive a fleet, heavies brought in from all over the solar system and from other star systems across the light years. At a range of 20 million kilometers, a distance swiftly dwindling, his AI was beginning to pull radio chatter from the static of near-c. Someone on the New York was ordering the other ships to form up for an attack on the alien cloud.
“Hey, Skipper!” Gregory called. “I think they’re getting ready to throw a hell of a party up there!”
“Copy that, Demon Four,” Commander Mackey replied, his voice raspy with static. “Everybody . . . heads up! We have lots of friendlies in there, so tune your sensor gear to wide open and max sensitivity. You clip someone in a near-c pass and it will definitely ruin the day for both of you!”
A chorus of copies and roger-that replies came back. Mackey had been given operational command of all three fighter squadrons—thirty-one fighters in all, with the Demons running short.
The chances of hitting a friendly ship in a flyby were actually pretty low. The icons in Gregory’s in-head weren’t to scale, and that made the representation of the space surrounding Earth look a hell of a lot more crowded than it actually was. Even the regions in geosynch crowded with orbital habitats and the three slender threads of the space elevators was in fact empty space . . . empty, that is, save fo
r a swirling cloud composed of trillions upon trillions of microscopic alien robots.
Which, of course, the fighters would be trying to hit.
“Sixty seconds sub to contact,” Mackey warned. “Deploy formation Alpha. Set shields and screens.”
That was sixty seconds subjective, as opposed to the objective time of the rest of the universe. At relativistic speeds, time dilation compressed the passage of time. Traveling at 99.5 percent of c, what Gregory could see of his slow-moving surroundings appeared now to be speeded up by almost ten to one.
Now at a range of 180 million kilometers, the squadron was one minute subjective from intercepting the outside edge of the cloud. A thoughtclick strengthened the powerful magnetic fields sheathing the fighters, providing a measure of protection both from impact with the nanobots and from the bursts of radiation each machine would release as it was swept into the singularity’s maw.
Time, both objective and subjective, passed.
“Thirty seconds sub to contact,” Mackey warned. “Set EHPR to three meters.”
Gregory eased the singularity open. The event radius of a gravitational singularity was technically infinite, but its pseudo-radius could be described as a finite measurement defining the sphere of the horizon. His fighter’s event horizon pseudo-radius, or EHPR, expanded now to an invisible sphere six meters across, large enough to completely shield the fighter behind it. Normally, black holes, artificial or otherwise, were tiny things; the entire Earth collapsed to black-hole size would be a little larger than a pea, and a Starblade fighter manipulated mass and gravitational energies considerably smaller than those of a planet.
But it was possible to open them up.
“Go to full automatic,” Mackey ordered.
At a velocity this close to the speed of light, a spacecraft could circle the Earth seven times in one second, and simply passing through the cloud embracing Earth at near-c would be over and done with in less than a half second. There was no way a human mind could cope tactically with combat during a close passage like this. At these velocities, the details had to be left to the hyper-quick reactions and perceptions of the AI, and the human pilot was just along for the ride.
It was enough, Gregory thought with a wry grimace, to make you wonder why a human was crammed into this cocoon of a cockpit at all.
His fighter’s AI warned him, an internal urging, to brace for impact. Ahead, in an unmagnified computer-generated view, Earth swiftly expanded from a bright pinpoint to a world, embedded in the alien cloud’s haze and surrounded by color-coded icons representing hundreds of vessels.
That last handful of subjective seconds dwindled away.
There was a sharp, sudden shock . . .
. . . and then he was through. External temperatures soared, but the fighter shrugged off most of the searing heat, and the AI finessed the singularity drive to dissipate most of the kinetic force of his impact with the cloud. Instead of vanishing in a nova-flare of friction-generated heat, or being pulped by deceleration as he plowed into the cloud, he was kept more or less intact as the fast-flickering sphere of his drive absorbed most of the kinetic and thermal forces, channeling them safely into the singularity.
Even so, it wasn’t an experience Gregory cared to repeat. He felt like he’d just been worked over by an angry, hulking, three-meter Nungiirtok with a length of carballoy pipe. He was bruised, aching, and dizzy, but the nanobots circulating in his bloodstream were already beginning repairs. Studying the cloud astern, he couldn’t tell if they’d done any damage to it or not.
He did note that three fighters—one Star Reaper and two Hellfuries—did not emerge from the cloud. There was no data to tell him what had happened. They’d simply flashed into the swarm . . .
. . . and vanished.
Operating according to the meticulously drawn opplan, his Starblade flipped end for end, using its singularity now to decelerate at nearly fifty thousand gravities. Ten minutes later, Gregory’s velocity had dropped to zero relative to the Earth, and he began accelerating toward the planet once again.
“Unidentified squadron!” a voice came in over Gregory’s in-head. “This is Railgun cruiser New York. Who the hell are you and where the hell did you come from?”
“New York, this is VFA-96,” Mackey replied. “With us are VFA-90 and VFA-198. We’re off the CVL Republic.”
“Republic! Wait one . . .”
All spacecraft, including fighters, carried transponders to identify them to friendly spacecraft. Those ID transmissions were masked and quantum-encrypted to prevent enemies from hacking them, and it took a few moments for the two networks to begin speaking with one another.
“Okay, Nine-Six,” the comm officer on board the New York said. “We confirm your handshake. Welcome home!”
“Thank you, New York. I take it you don’t mind some help?”
“Not in the least! We’re just now putting together a strike to see if we can dislodge these Rosette bastards.”
“Transmitting our opplan now,” Mackey told them. “Let us know if you want us somewhere else instead.”
“Roger that. Where’s the Republic?”
“Following us, about an hour out. We’re pulling a standard slash-and-bash.”
“Slash-and-bash” was pilot’s slang for the basic fighter tactic in which a fleet’s fighters would be sent ahead at near-c to flash past an enemy target, mauling it as thoroughly as possible in passing. Using missiles and energy beams, kinetic-kill weapons, and anything else available, they would inflict the maximum damage possible, flying past the target before turning around and repeating the maneuver. They would keep on hammering the target at lower and lower velocities until the main fleet finally brought up the rear and proceeded to take out the survivors.
This time there was only the Republic to follow them in, but a sizeable human fleet was already maneuvering through the target area, preparing to attack.
Gregory was damned grateful for the support.
Accelerating hard for several minutes, the Black Demons built back up to nearly 0.25 c. “Okay, people!” Mackey called out to all three squadrons. “Now let’s see how playing dodge-the-dustball with these guys works. Kill your flickers!”
Gregory switched off his fighter’s drive cycling. The drive singularity remained projected out in front of his Starblade, but it was no longer switching rapidly on and off, which meant his ship was no longer accelerating. He plowed into the cloud, and for a long, jolting second, he swept through the alien swarm, his singularity growing swiftly brighter as it inhaled the Rosette swarm robots, swallowing some, radiating others as an intense burst of radiation.
“Madre de Dios!” a voice screamed over the squadron channel—Lieutenant Hernán Garcia. “I’m losing it!”
“Garcia! Kill your drive!” Mackey called back. “Kill your—”
Gregory caught part of what happened on his AI’s scan. Garcia’s drive singularity, loaded with mass and artificially puffed out to a far larger pseudo-radius than it could hold naturally, flared; his Starblade flipped around the glowing sphere of radiation, grazed it, and in an instant crumpled into oblivion . . . gone.
Out into the clear once more. Skew-turn . . . and accelerate, his drive sphere now flickering again, passing its load of trashed Rosetter machines along from iteration to iteration as it moved. Boosting to a hundredth of c, he released the sphere, which hurtled away at three thousand kilometers per second, dropping deeper into the cloud like a dazzling blue-white star, continuing to feed as it moved. Moments later, the sphere destabilized and soundlessly exploded, the blast searing billions more swarm ’bots in its flare.
He switched on his cycler and accelerated, heading for the cloud once more. Flashes continued going off within the cloud in front of them as the weaponized drive singularities detonated.
Though it appeared random, the attack was following precisely designed trajectories and approach vectors, each close passage, each released dustball tracing a calculated path into the heart of the cl
oud—a path deemed by the combat AIs to take out the maximum number of enemy ’bots, to do the greatest amount of damage.
Two pilots failed to emerge from the cloud—Garcia and one other: Lieutenant Boyle, one of the Star Reapers.
While he felt both losses, Gregory had known Garcia. He wasn’t just a name on the duty roster; Gregory had sat next to him at the midday meal in the mess hall . . . had gone on liberty with him more than once . . . had enjoyed late-night bull sessions with the guy, talking about star gods and weird physics and the nature of reality. He wondered if Garcia had been killed by some weapon of the enemy or by his overstressed drive going critical . . . and decided it scarcely mattered. Hernán was dead.
One more friend, gone.
According to his AI, the attack was causing a degradation of the Rosette network. It wasn’t much—maybe 2 percent—but it was something, a subtle loss in the amount of data being trafficked around inside the cloud. Several of the capital ships were closing now to the cloud’s edge, slashing at it with particle beams and high-energy lasers and the detonation of powerful nuclear warheads.
The Chinese heavy bombardment monitor Hunan, Gregory saw, was maneuvering closer, at the very fringe of the cloud. Portions of the flanks behind her shield cap blossomed open like the petals of a huge, silvery flower . . . and then clouds of missiles streaked into the cloud, each twisting into a different vector, aiming for those spots identified by the tactical AIs as key nodes within the Rosette cloud.
A constellation of bright new stars winked on across the depths of the cloud, each one a nuclear detonation of some hundreds of megatons.
Something like an oval mass of separate geometric shapes took form within those hazy depths, flowing, as billions upon untold billions of nanomachines came together. Gregory couldn’t tell what the thing was, exactly—ship or fortress or something else entirely—but it was enormous . . . the size of a small continent. It rose swiftly and effortlessly from within the cloud toward the Hunan, which was now frantically trying to pile on the Gs and escape.
