The Way of the Dhin

by John L. Clemmer

  The Way of the Dhin

  By John L. Clemmer

  Copyright © 2016 by John L. Clemmer. All Rights Reserved.

  Table of Contents

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  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Chip Trimmier for editorial efforts

  Cover art by Adam Burn

  To Iain Banks, for inspiration. R.I.P.

  Dedicated

  To the memory of

  Ted Wiedeman

  You helped me learn that hard work pays off.

  And to my wife Lisa,

  Because I love you.

  "There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things."

  "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

  0

  Vandenberg

  The narrow hills and valleys rushed by below in a blur.

  Aren’t we flying too low for this speed?

  “So how does this thing work, anyway?” asked the single passenger, in an attempt at self-distracting small talk.

  Jake took his attention away from the crafts luminous geometric controls and looked over. He decided he’d have a bit of fun.

  “Huh? You think I know? I’m just the pilot.”

  Ethan’s eyes widened, his jaw dropping slightly.

  “C’mon, you’ve got to have some idea.”

  The pilot proceeded as if this were the normal state of affairs, turning toward Ethan and away from the smooth, glowing, and alien control surfaces.

  “Well, it’s not just me. Even the engineers still aren’t sure. I know that seems crazy, but if you found a decent-sized rocket as a kid you might be able to put it on a go-kart without knowing any chemistry. And just maybe not kill yourself.”

  “Hold on—we might die in this thing?”

  Ethan tried to stay focused on the pilots gaze and ignore the California landscape rushing by below. Jake smiled back, seeing the edge of panic.

  “Heh, maybe that wasn’t the best analogy. No, it’s not going to go nuclear or rip the fabric of space—as best we can determine so far. It seems safe enough. We just aren’t sure how it works.”

  “OK, for what you do know, explain like I’m five.”

  The pilot gave a single quick nod.

  I’ve pushed enough of his buttons. He does seem genuinely interested. Seems OK. Give him a break—and some real information.

  “Hmm. We always thought the propulsion this thing can manage would take so much energy it wouldn’t be possible, nor practical, if it were possible—but it wouldn’t be possible. Fundamental constants dealing with space, energy, and matter—you can’t change these things—we knew that. Well, we were wrong. Missed it. Somehow this ‘engine’, if you can even think of it that way, modifies attractive and repulsive forces—at a quantum level—without ripping all the matter in and around it apart, or releasing huge amounts of radiation.”

  “What?”

  Ethan shook his head in disbelief. Jake pressed on.

  “You took some science in school, right? Well, in our understanding of the universe, there are multiple forces always at work, one of them being gravity, which is what you’d think this technology manipulates. But it’s doing much more than that. It’s modifying all the forces—electromagnetic, the strong and weak nuclear forces, all of them—and doing it in such a way to not cause the huge fluctuations expected of this sort of manipulation. There are no massive electromagnetic gradients, major chemical changes, or even particle bursts or cascading annihilations that would result in tons of excess energy and nuclear radiation.”

  “No way. That can’t—”

  “Yeah, it shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t be possible. It ought to take so much energy to make anything like these results happen that a star couldn’t power it, and even then still wouldn’t cause the effects you get. It’s not a matter of having enough energy—everything we knew told us you can’t change fundamental universal constants no matter how much you try.”

  He spread his hands, presenting the engine and capsule they were in. Jake continued.

  “Yet, somehow, the Dhin have done it, changing the various forces all together to make this thing go. It ought to be some ultimate death weapon, or whatnot, but instead this application of the technology just makes this thing ‘float’ and pushes it around, however fast you want. And doesn’t kill you with the acceleration.”

  Ethan shook his head again, trying to take it all in, and said,

  “Lucky for us. This is beyond fast. Fast doesn’t describe it. It’s terrifying. Must have been hard to learn to fly.”

  “You’d be surprised. It helps once you’re certain you can’t crash.”

  Ethan frowned, staring at the luminous alien controls, hoping to distract himself from the landmarks hurtling by. The perception of speed made worse by the apparent lack of anything resembling a windscreen. It was like riding in a stylized airframe designed by a mad Italian futurist. Digging up the traces of his college physics knowledge, he asked, “Why even change anything except the gravitational constant? Wouldn’t that be enough?”

  “Nope, not enough. Well, according to the particle physics team,” replied Jake.

  “Yep. I still don’t understand at all.”

  “No one does,” said Jake. “Well, except the Dhin, of course.”

  “Why haven’t we just asked them?”

  “They left.”

  “What, and just left this thing here? Before we could get any information out of them about how it worked?”

  “Looks like it, and they left several. We’re lucky this isn’t the only one. You have better than a zero-percent chance of doing your job.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. There’s just some super-secret conspiracy to keep the answers away from everyone, no?” Ethan gestured as if slowly closing a large book.

  Jake grinned. “Doesn’t seem so. According to the teams that worked with them, it was pretty hard to communicate.”

  “They got all the way here from who knows wherever with this and couldn’t manage to talk with us?”

  “Yep. Think of it this way, you know what it’s like when you’re trying to teach a dog new commands, or better yet try explaining something to it? Even a smart dog? Well... we’re the dog.” The pilot shrugged, gave Ethan an I-could-have-told-you look, then turned back to carefully inspect the luminous control panel.

  “Wow. That had to be exasperating. On both sides. We had our best people there, right? Not just politicians and military brass? Please tell me that’s not how it went down.”

  “We didn’t screw that up,” said Jake. “The best and brightest were all there, everyone of ‘em we could get. Every discipline you could think of that would matter. We just didn’t communicate very well at all.”

  “So you’re saying the Dhin got frustrated and took off?”

  “I guess so. That’s what it seems like to me, but I wasn’t there. Just an opinion.”

  Jake spread his hands, palms up, in a broad shrug. He lowered his hands, and then placed his right hand onto a teardrop-shaped backlit indentation to his right. Ethan fought the urge to lean as they swerved sharply, turning South
. He felt no inertial effect from the sudden change in direction. He gulped, hoping he wouldn’t find the need for a motion sickness bag. There wasn’t one. Trying to focus on the conversation, he said,

  “No way to contact them?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Just like everything in this situation. We’re not sure how.”

  The scope of the challenge became broader with every sentence.

  “And somehow, it falls on me, an R&D Project Manager from a company that’s not in Energy, Propulsion, or Spacecraft Manufacture, to lead the teams trying to ‘solve our problems’? How did I land this gig? Why me?”

  “Hey, I’m just the pilot, remember?”

  1

  Langley

  The probability analyses, intelligence action summaries, and data mining results surrounded the director like cold conspirators. Other than the numerous coherent on-axis LED screens and encrypted-channel shielded displays, the office was spotless and meticulously ordered. A glance might suggest to the uninitiated that no one occupied it. Those who knew understood it reflected the polished order and precision of the Coalition Security Director’s mind.

  The advanced data mining and expert systems driven analyses available to CoSec dwarfed anything else available, with the exception of AI. The director carefully studied conclusion after conclusion from the exhaustive reports.

  So I’m in zugzwang then.

  With an abrupt exhalation that only very few would recognize as a sigh, he turned to the hardened workstation, launched an application only rumored to exist, and began typing. The command syntax was complex. He selected new parameters, engaged various filters, and then, nodding to himself, started the simulation. He methodically closed the various reports, and then purged the source files from systems other than his own hardened workstation. He didn’t consider even his personal tablet secure enough.

  That path forward still tastes like ashes. Doubtless Arnold would secretly be pleased. If that’s possible.

  He hoped the AI hadn’t somehow managed the calculations to reach the same conclusion that he had.

  Goiânia

  Aiden knew he was going to die. The infection was progressing too quickly. He wouldn’t be able to connect with a doc-bot at a modern self-service clinic soon enough. There were some in the capital, but not this far out. Aiden shook his head, his dirty light brown hair swinging. If only antibiotics hadn’t become useless a few years ago. Then the situation became worse, thanks to the Nano-crisis. Thinking on it, he cringed. He knew treatment involved ripping out the festering tissue entirely. Then chemotherapy. Then gene therapy, and if he could afford it, stem cell or cloning treatments. Out here, none of that was available. He was going to die.

  I’ve avoided death by small-arms fire, rockets, IEDs, bandits with machetes, the fists of angry warlords and corrupt border guards. Now a skinned knee that became infected is going to take me down.

  Aiden winced and limped along the better-preserved portion of the road. The filthy grey cracked chunks of weak paving, like giant monochromatic peanut brittle along his route made for even slower progress.

  I wonder how long I’ve got? Well, keep going, Aiden, you can’t stay here. Let’s see if that drone’s finished raining hellfire yet... and if the road is still there.

  He scanned the horizon and turned his head slowly back and forth, listening. The drone hadn’t reappeared.

  “Not yet, at least,” he muttered, “and just maybe I’ll be gone when it does. Or dead.”

  Aiden’s limping gait let him hobble past the two miles of utterly crushed city. Now on the far side, he felt a faint relief. The pain still twinged sharper and sharper, like raw needles twisting into his thigh every few minutes. Abandoned cars, rusted light trucks, and a few dented and dusty vans were visible here and there past the edge of the blast zone, though everything left behind looked like rusty metal garbage. He saw no working vehicles in any condition remained. Gone like all the people, due to the evacuation.

  Have a shred of optimism. Surely some of these people died before they could be evac’d. Their ride can be a karmic gift to you. There might even be a motorcycle hiding around here somewhere.

  Two hours later, just as the sun dropped past the horizon, Aiden cranked up an ancient Suzuki VX 800 he’d found in an abandoned garage, and gratefully rode away from the smoke, debris, and creepy emptiness of the ruined city, heading northeast on the nominally intact Sistema Nacional de Rodovias. The bike’s dusty headlight strained to show a path ahead in the growing darkness.

  I’m still dying, but it won’t be behind the wheel of some crappy Bauru food truck.

  ***

  The drone was filthy, coated with ash and dust, but it didn’t care. The drone was its own pilot. The AI directing the drone recognized that an outsider might struggle with ascribing caring to a drone, but that limitation of language wasn’t a concern for the AI. Nor a problem for the drone as it followed the AI’s directives. It had intent. Purpose. Goals. Factors that didn’t interfere with it accomplishing its goals? Well, it didn’t care about those factors. The AI’s report for the Coalition military would never state it explicitly, but that was the most straightforward way of understanding a drone’s mind. It knew it had to find its targets, and knew once it found those targets it would deploy ordnance until it destroyed those targets. It did not consider limitations like running out of ordnance. It would not. There was always more available if it kept asking. It did not worry about its own destruction. If it discovered it might not remain operational, it would call for help. Another drone would come. Accomplish the goal. No matter what. The drone continued its leisurely GPS-guided homeward flight, toward the federal district in the capital, its base of operation on the rooftop of an unassuming building in a corporate office park.

  Its thorough scan of the crushed and smoldering area after the last barrage came back clean. As far as its algorithmically simple mind could be considered satisfied, it was satisfied. The mission was complete. It had found no power lines active anywhere, above or below ground. No heat signatures of generators, or any other power sources, were present. No RF signals in any band used by the enemy. It had excised computational capacity in the target zone.

  The homeward flight showed infrared signatures here and there, widely scattered, but those were not indicative of the target. The drone did not care about those signals. There would be more to do, but those missions were not on its schedule yet. Bursts of encrypted updates from the Command & Control net showed threats at zero in all areas for which it was responsible. As with engagement during its assignments, it had infinite patience in awaiting further instruction. Instructions would come. It was certain. Such was the mind of the drone.

  Vandenberg

  General Ruiz’ scowl could be frightening, even for those who knew him well. Chuck didn’t.

  “So, that failed too, Wiedeman?”

  The other military and political attendees around the conference room’s huge table all turned their gaze toward a plainly dressed scientist standing in front of a projection screen. Chuck Wiedeman looked fully the part of a civilian engineer, complete with his out-of-fashion glasses and unruly hair. Doing his best to ignore Ruiz’s simmering frown, the engineer replied,

  “Yes sir, there’s only bad news again. We’ll, ah, keep trying alternate methods, but it looks more and more like this tech just isn’t something that’s possible to weaponize.” Chuck knew perfectly well it wasn’t going to work. Had known for a while, and even suspected it from the beginning. He tried not to let that knowledge show in his tone or expression.

  “There’s got to be a way!” Ruiz barked. “This thing propels a half-ton chassis beyond Mach twenty without so much as a sonic hiccup, but you can’t get it to throw a titanium round down a test range?”

  “Easy, General, don’t have an aneurysm,” sighed a calm, quiet voice from the far corner of the conference room. Chuck glanced over, taking measure of the speaker again.

  He has to be CoSec. Or worse, if there is
anyone worse. No one else would be in here in a perfectly tailored, slightly darker than charcoal grey suit, but have no introduction, no entourage, and manage to talk to Ruiz that way.

  “When can we expect your next update?” the man in the suit asked softly yet clearly.

  “Um,” replied Chuck.

  “Two weeks,” interrupted a steely, yet feminine, voice from the console on the conference table.

  “Thanks, Alice. That’s right, ah, two weeks works for us.” Chuck concluded blandly. The AI, Alice, might have ideas of her own regarding their progress that she’d not yet shared with Chuck or anyone on the engineering team, and certainly not the attendees of this meeting.

  Chuck forced a smile, awkward as he stood up and turned for the door, eager to be out from under Ruiz’s glare and the penetrating poker face of the man in the suit. He still wondered how Ethan Bish, the new project manager, had managed to dodge this meeting.

  Two of the greatest discoveries ever in science—intelligent alien life and a gift of their technology that turns everything we thought we knew about physics on its head—and these two jerks and an AI are dead-set on making a weapon out of it. Some things never change.

  ***

  “Ethan, I think you’ll agree the most exciting aspects of our research, so far, are the defense applications, and you should focus on them in your next presentation,” Chuck said. His eyes darted across the numerous screens, whiteboards, and desktops in the workroom, and then pulled up a chart on one of the screens. Diagrams and equations covered the other views. Piled with scribbled notes, spreadsheets, reams of printed simulation results, the desk and side tables looked like chaos to Ethan. Random bits of gear scattered atop the piles looked as likely to be paperweights as they were works-in-progress.

  Ethan focused his full attention on the overly excited engineer. “Yes, you were eager to talk about the elimination of kinetic energy, or something like that.”