by Ian Douglas
Hell, one of the earliest nonhuman civilizations encountered by Humankind in times, the N’mah, had been encountered inside the empty spaces of the Sirius Stargate. An entire civilization, numbering tens of millions of individuals, complete with cities and a small enclosed ocean, had been surviving in there for thousands of years, hiding from the relentless searches of the xenophobic Xul.
The Dahlists must have been insane—or scared witless—to do something as psycho as blowing up a Stargate.
Of course, that sort of thing did happen. Marines had blown up a Gate or two in their history, centuries ago, in order to keep the Xul from tracking back to Sirius and finding Earth just eight and a half light years away. But Stargates represented a technology far more ancient than Humankind, quite possibly more ancient than the Xul, and once broken they could not be reassembled.
So far, only the single Stargate, Tavros-Endymion, had been discovered within the Large Magellanic Cloud. The next nearest Gate was the one designated Tun Tavern, halfway back to the Home Galaxy.
And that began to explain the Dahl Empire’s strategy. Even under Alcubierre Drive, Associative ships would need the better part of a century to make it all the way out here from Tun Tavern. By destroying the local Gate, Warlord Dahl must have been hoping that the Associative would decide it was too much trouble sending a fleet large enough to bring his egomaniac’s little empire to heel. By blowing the Gate when they did, the Dahlists had struck a savage blow against the gathering Associative Fleet, and balanced the disparity in numbers. Again, that might make the Associative government think twice about sending out an expedition to put down the Dahlist insurrection.
The wild cards were the big phase-shifter ships like the Nicholas. They were large enough to carry several sizeable Alcubierre warships, and could translate in from the Home Galaxy without benefit of a Stargate. All they needed was a decent metric of local space; the actual distance for the jump theoretically didn’t matter. Nal suspected that the enemy had held off on destroying the ring in hopes that Nicholas would move closer. Now, of course, they would need to take out the Nicholas by other means—ship-to-ship, or by d-teleporting assault troops into the transport’s command and weapons bays.
And then the power switched back on. Down again became down, and Nal released his handhold and dropped his boots to the deck. The overhead shimmered, then came to life once more, looking out into a shockingly changed starscape.
The Stargate was, indeed, gone, a white clot of fast-expanding plasma marking where it had been. The Samar fortress had been engulfed; its sky now was filled by a ragged white cloud that blotted out most of the background stars and the tangle of nebulae. The AI controlling the image projection was painting the locations and vector trails of ships nearby, creating a scrawl of green and red lines across the virtual depths of the overhead dome. Smaller, more fleeting streaks marked the paths of missiles, fighters, and assault pods; white flares of light blossomed on both sides as high-energy particle beams and fusion cannon, antimatter warheads and plasma weapons struck home.
“We have QCC communications with the Nicholas,” Lieutenant Fellacci reported. “They’re still there, thank God!”
“Roger that.”
Nal shared Fellacci’s heartfelt relief. The Dahl ships would be focusing their efforts on the Sam Nick, since she was the most formidable Associative warship now on the Tavros-Endymion side of the suddenly ex-Stargate. And if they destroyed her, none of the Marines in the Large Magellanic Cloud would be getting home.
Ever.
Command Deck
Marine Transport Major Samuel Nicholas
Objective Samar
0618 hours, GMT
“General Garroway, we have re-established contact with our people on board Objective Samar. They have re-established power and life-support, and the base QCC network is back on-line.”
“Excellent. What’s their tacsit?”
“There are currently large numbers of Dahlist troops still loose within the base. However, the Marines have secured several key positions within the structure, including the command-control center and primary fire control. THRP digital units have infiltrated Objective Samar’s electronic networks and are in control of all systems. Captain Corcoran reports that the situation is under control.”
A typical Marine response. Garroway wasn’t sure yet what he thought of the idea of t-Human Restricted Purpose agents. Were they human Marines? Or artificial electronic aigents, tools to be used and discarded? There was no time now to debate the ethics of the technology with himself, however. If the THRPs had helped Golf and Hotel Companies of the 2/9 to nail down that fortress, that was all that counted at the moment.
“Good. Pass the word to Corcoran to get those loose Dahlists rounded up fast. We don’t want some fanatic doing the same thing to Samar that they just did to the Stargate.”
“Affirmative, General.”
As he spoke, Garroway was studying the relentless approach of the Dahlist ships. They had just overwhelmed two smaller Associative destroyers, the Carlotti and the Lubichev, pounding them from all sides with antimatter missile fire and fusion beams. The Associative Fleet was still widely dispersed through the system, which gave the Dahl force a tremendous tactical advantage, the ability to close with isolated Associative ships and use local superiority of firepower to hammer them one and two at a time.
The tight-knit squadron of Dahl Empire ships, protectively grouped around the Curtains of Light, their flagship, was making straight for the Samuel Nicholas. They carried enough firepower among them to pose a serious threat to the far larger Associative vessel. The Nick possessed weapons of her own, of course, but nothing like the firepower of even the Curtains of Light by herself. She was a transport, for God’s sake, not a line-of-battle ship.
Listening in on the flow of commands within the Nicholas and among the other Associative vessels, Garroway knew that Ranser and his people were well aware of the threat. Admiral Dravid had just given orders to reverse the huge ship’s course, trying to take her out of harm’s way, but the transport maneuvered like a small planetoid—which in fact she was. The Samuel Nicholas had started life as a ten-kilometer planetoid, after all. And Ranser had just ordered all surviving Associative ships to fall back on the Nick’s position, to provide her with covering fire, and to concentrate the firepower of the Associative ships.
Curtains of Light opened fire on a crippled Associative cruiser, the Hermosillo, joined an instant later by the other Dahlist vessels surrounding her. The Hermosillo, savaged by the explosion of the Stargate, was adrift, her maneuvering gravitics dead, her defensive shields down. She returned fire with a fraction of her weaponry…then flared sun-bright as enemy fusion beams carved through her unresisting hull.
The Associative cruiser vanished, replaced by white light.
AI projections showed that the Dahl fleet was going to be pounding the Nicholas within the next few minutes. She would give a good account of herself…but the sims the command constellation AIs were running right now suggested that either the Nicholas was doomed, or she would be forced to translate out of the Large Magellanic Cloud and back to safety—abandoning the remaining handful of Associative warships.
With the destruction of the Stargate, the local gravitational metric had changed. Phase-shift ships would be as cut off from this region as ships that depended on Stargates for long-range jaunts. The Tavros-Endymion Cluster and the new-born Dahlist Empire would truly be cut off and on their own, safe from Associative interference for at least the next century or so.
The Dahlist strategy was looking less and less like a desperate, last-ditch defense against overwhelming numbers, and more like a meticulously crafted—and brilliant—battle plan.
The Dahl ships were moving within a thousand kilometers now of the former position of the Stargate, skirting the ragged edges of the fast-blossoming plasma cloud. They were less than twelve thousand kilometers now from the Samuel Nicholas, and closing fast.
Garroway glanced
at the icon representing Objective Samar, now adrift within that cloud.
Then he took a harder look. “Lofty? Open a channel to Captain Corcoran.”
“Captain Corcoran on-line, General.”
“Captain? This is Garroway. I need your help, here….”
Company H, 2/9
Command Deck
Objective Samar
0620 hours, GMT
“We need those main weapons on line now!” Nal all but screamed the thought-command over the channel.
“Restricted firing codes are necessary to comply with order,” a flat and utterly emotionless voice sounded in Nal’s head. “Restricted firing codes appear unavailable on this network.”
“The firing codes are in there! Find them!”
“Restricted firing codes appear unavailable on this network.”
The problem with thurps, Nal decided, was not the ethical aspect of human personalities shorn of emotion or curiosity. It was the sheer, stubborn single-mindedness of the things. Working with them was like working with a pre-AI computer, uninspired software that did absolutely nothing except what you told it to do.
But the powerful AIs running the Samuel Nicholas ship systems, as well as the AI in charge of Fleet Intelligence, were working together on the problem already, cranking through trillions of possible alphanumeric combinations in the course of seconds, searching for the right seven-space code that would unlock the combination. The right codes might surface at any moment…but it might take hours, yet, for even the superhuman machine intelligences to find them through what was essentially low-tech brute-force.
Nal had a new thought, however. “What search phrase are you using?” he demanded.
“We are searching for the term ‘firing code,’ or variations, as directed. There was no result.”
“Try ‘password.’”
“Affirmative. No result.”
“Try ‘weapons free.’”
“Affirmative. No result.”
“Try ‘freedom.’ Try ‘death to the Associative.’ Try ‘Imperial Victory’ or ‘Emperor Emelius Dahl’ or ‘victorious Empire’ or variations and combinations of all of these.”
“Affirmative. No result.”
It was unlikely that the Dahl command had passwords for weapons release stored on any easily accessible computer network. Even if they had—and in Nal’s experience, humans tended to be sloppy about such things—the chances that he could hit on the Dahl password for unlocking the weapons systems were small to nil, especially when the window of opportunity was only seconds long. But the thurps possessed nothing like human creativity, and would not find a password file at all if left to their own devices. At least there was a chance, if he kept throwing suggestions at them.
“Do you have access to the local calendar?”
“Affirmative. No result.”
“What is the date of Emelius Dahl’s birth?”
“Thirty-five Ebon, Year of the Associative 744.”
“Try that. All variations.”
“Affirmative. No result.”
“What would the year of his birth be in local terms?”
“Year minus forty-five.”
“Try that. All variations.”
“Affirmative. No result.”
“What is the date in the local calendar of the creation of the Dahl Empire?”
“One Dahl, Year Zero.”
The man was an egomaniac. “Try that. All variations.”
There was a longer than normal hesitation. “Access gained. Primary weapons coming on line.”
“Captain Corcoran!” Nal shouted. “We have weapons!”
“Track, lock, and fire!” Corcoran replied. “Do it!”
“Firing….”
Nal looked up at the overhead. Objective Samar possessed ten 4.35-meter fusion accelerators, designed to kill any warship coming through the Stargate. Each tube was essentially a mag-accelerator which took several kilos of compressed liquid hydrogen stored within tightly wound magnetic containment fields and hurled them at the target at a hair under the speed of light. The sharp acceleration collapsed the hydrogen mass, inducing fusion a fraction of a second after emerging from the weapon’s muzzle and directing the rapidly expanding mass, at star-core temperatures, into the target.
The first volley tore outward through the expanding plasma cloud created by the destruction of the Stargate, creating straight-line lightning bolts of searing radiation stark against the sky. Three fusion bolts struck the Curtain of Light broadside-on, slamming through her shields and vaporizing her hull in a radiant, destructive kiss.
There were plenty of Corps legends concerning Marines who’d dueled with enemy warships. Perhaps the most ancient went back two thousand years, to the battle for a tiny island—long since submerged by rising sea levels on Earth—called Wake. Late in the Year 166 of the Corps—early 1941, Old Style—four hundred and forty-nine men of the first Marine Defense Battalion, plus sixty-eight naval personnel and over twelve hundred civilian workers had come under attack by an invasion force launched by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Major James Devereaux, in command of the Marines under a Navy officer, had ordered his gunners to hold their fire until the Japanese vessels moved in close, then let loose with six five-inch naval cannon salvaged from a scrapped cruiser. The barrage had sent a shell into the ammunition locker of the destroyer Hayate and blown her out of the water, and scored eleven hits on the superstructure of the light cruiser Yubari. A second enemy destroyer had been sunk by Marine aircraft.
The Hayate had been the first Japanese warship sunk in World War II, and forced the enemy to withdraw—the first defeat of the war inflicted on the Japanese Empire.
Nal, as a boy hungry for anything he could find and download on the history of the ancient Marines, knew the story well. He tried not to think about the outcome of that particular engagement: the Japanese had returned, stormed the island, and taken it.
This time, however, history seemed unlikely to repeat itself. The Curtain of Light now resembled its own name, taking on the appearance of an unraveling knot of radiance. Other fusion bolts from the drifting fortress struck the heavy cruisers Endymion and Starlight, annihilating them in dazzling bursts of plasma flame.
And, suddenly, the survivors were fleeing, and the Battle of the Tavros-Endymion Gate was now truly over.
15
1002.2229
Recon Zephyr
The Great Annihilator
Galactic Core
0950 hours, GMT
It was a long, long drop.
The Marine OM-27 Eavesdropper Captain Ana McMillan fell endlessly through an eerie, black-violet light, buffeted by energies beyond human ken. On board, the consciousness of Lieutenant Amanda Karr looked out through the Eavesdropper’s sensors, trying to make sense of that turmoil of nonexistence.
Her inner time-keeper insisted that only seconds had passed since Recon Zephyr had whipped in through the ergosphere of the massive black hole known as the Great Annihilator. Her mind knew that a longer time had passed, that time for her was moving far more slowly than in the universe outside. How much more slowly was impossible to know. The answer depended on a number of variables, including the precise path the probe was taking as it passed through the severely warped spacetime of the Annihilator’s throat.
Captain Valledy was praying.
She ignored him. “Luther! How far in are we?”
The AI hesitated before answering. “That question cannot be answered directly, Lieutenant Karr. It’s not a matter of distance or of time now. We may literally be in a different kind of space…the base state of reality.”
“The Quantum Sea?”
“Affirmative.”
“Then what am I seeing?”
“Essentially you are seeing what your brain chooses to see.”
It was a less than satisfactory answer.
“Any sign of a Xul base or a ship or something?”
“Possibly. But human consciousness may be necessary to manifes
t it.”
Again, not helpful.
Karr pulled what data she had on the Quantum Sea down from her permanent memory storage. There wasn’t a lot. It had been known since the advent of quantum physics two millennia before that at the base level of reality, particles and antiparticles continually popped in and out of existence. The virtual energy of this effect was converted to actual energy by quantum power taps; estimates of the amount of potential raw energy hidden within a volume of hard vacuum the size of a human fist suggested something vast enough to destroy the entire Galaxy and a significant amount of the space-time fabric beyond. Perhaps fortunately, human QPT technology so far could access only a minute fraction of that potential—enough to power starships or detonate suns, but not enough to do serious injury to the Galaxy as a whole.
Theoretically, if you could control the standing wave forms of subatomic particles appearing and vanishing within the reality substrate, you could control the form of reality itself. That trick, too, remained so far beyond the grasp of human technology.
There were hints, though, that consciousness itself was what called forth reality from the infinite chaos of the Quantum Sea. Weiji-do and certain other mental and martial arts disciplines might offer a means of rewriting reality on the fly, as it were…but actual experiments along those lines had so far proven fruitless.
She tried focusing on the possibility…no, on the certainty that the Xul presence here in the Annihilator was close by, just ahead, in fact, that it was close enough to be coming into view…
And there it was.
The thing’s materialization was so abrupt and startling that Karr wondered for a moment if she’d simply missed seeing the thing at first in that diffuse, hazy, violet-blue glow.
Had its appearance been coincidence? Or had she just called the reality forth from a background chaos of infinite possibilities?
She suspected there could be no simple or direct answer to that question.
The object ahead was bigger than a typical asteroid…a dwarf planet, spherical in shape, heavily cratered, with a diameter of perhaps twelve hundred kilometers. Geometric patterns of golden light covered the surface, radiating out from central nodes, embracing the curve of the tiny world, like megapoli connected by brightly lit straight highways. More lights gleamed in a ring plane encircling the world, and Karr could make out the thread-slender and luminous spokes connecting points on the ring with points on the world’s equator.
