by Ian Douglas
The VR-5 was a remote-scan probe, a mass of sensory, transmission, and drive components imbedded within a nanomatrix that could shape itself as a slender needle a meter long for launch, or collapse into a black sphere twenty centimeters in diameter for reconnaissance. Schiere spent a moment linked with the Shadowstar’s AI, programming the probes.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re good to go. Launching Probe One in three . . . two . . . one . . . launch!”
The first ebon needle slid from the CP-240’s belly and vanished into space.
“And Probe Two in three . . . two . . . one . . . launch. And Number Three in three . . . two . . . one . . . launch.”
Within his in-head display, he watched as the twist of clotted space around the objective grew rapidly larger.
“Okay . . . you should be seeing the imagery from the probes, now. My AI is linking it back on the primary data channel. I’m still not entirely sure what I’m seeing. The area of twisted space appears to extend out from the central object by a kilometer or two. The object itself . . . looks like a dark gray cylinder buried inside a thick fog of hazy light. I can’t get radar or lidar reflections back, nothing coherent, anyway. The warp effect around the object is scattering everything I send.
“First probe is starting to enter the warped area. I . . . wait a sec . . . wait a sec . . .”
The VR-5 was penetrating the clotted light close to the near end of the object, and the shape inside was growing clear.
“My God!” Schiere said. “It’s hollow!”
The image transmitted from the first probe suddenly seemed to leap forward, as though something had reached out, snatched the probe, and jerked it into that rapidly spinning maw.
Schiere and his recording instrumentation caught just a glimpse down a long, black tunnel—to a blaze of light at the far end.
And then the probe was gone.
“America, Probe One,” Shield said. “It looks like my first drone got caught in an intense field of focused gravity and was pulled into the cylinder. Contact with the drone is lost.
“But if I had to guess, I’d say we’re looking at a star gate.”
Chapter Seven
29 June 2405
CIC
TC/USNA CVS America
Outer System, Texaghu Resch System
112 light years from Earth
1518 hours, TFT
Technically, the objective appeared to be a stable artificial wormhole.
In fiction, such things had been called star gates, jump gates, jump portals, and a dozen other names. In physics, they were termed Lorentzian wormholes, Schwarzchilde wormholes, or Einstein-Rosen bridges, but all of the names meant the same thing: a means of warping local space so tightly that a tunnel or doorway was opened between two points in spacetime quite possibly very far removed from each other. Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen had first postulated the idea of the Einstein-Rosen bridge as early as 1935, though the structure they’d proposed mathematically would have collapsed. Other physicists, much later, had proposed theoretical constructs called wormholes. The idea was that a worm crawling over the curved surface of an apple might take a long time to reach the other side; the trip would be shortened if he bored through the middle. The concept depended on three spatial dimensions being curved through a fourth.
For four centuries, wormholes had remain strictly theoretical, a possible outgrowth of certain equations within Einstein’s field equations. Whether they existed in nature was still unknown. Whether some advanced technical civilization could create wormholes, and keep them open, permitting shortcuts not through but past enormous stretches of space was likewise unknown . . . or it had been until now. There could be no thought that the TRGA object was natural; someone had built the thing.
But to do so required a degree of control over the laws of physics that was nothing short of godlike.
Koenig had frozen the image transmitted from Schiere’s remote drone at the eye-blink instant when the solid sheet of brilliant light had appeared on the other side. To human perceptions, the glimpse had been so brief that all that could be perceived was white light; at first, the people studying the images on board America had assumed that the probe was looking all the way through the hollow tube at the glaring surface of Texaghu Resch beyond.
With the image frozen and cleaned up by the AIs, however, the solid wall of white had been resolved. It wasn’t a picture of the surface of one star, but of many tens of thousands together. Beyond the wormhole, stars were swarming within a dense-packed cluster where individual suns were separated from one another, on average, by only about a tenth of a light year.
According to America’s astrogation department, there were only two possibilities. Either the wormhole opened within the heart of a globular star cluster . . . or it opened within the core of a fair-sized galaxy, either the Milky Way or some other, distant, galaxy. Which was it? The answer was important, and the stargazers were hard at work on the problem now.
And Koenig now had to make some important strategic decisions.
“America,” he said, addressing the primary artificial intelligence that ran the ship.
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Link through to the other ships in the battlegroup. Inform all ship captains and their staffs that we will hold a strategic virtual conference in . . . make it twenty minutes.”
“Very well, Admiral.”
Koenig continued studying the image transmitted by the recon probe. Tipler’s original theory had suggested that doorways between widely separated regions of space as well as of time might be opened around a dense, rotating cylinder. A ship would have accessed those doorways by following pathways just above the cylinder’s surface; he’d said nothing about what happened if the cylinder was hollow, however. That wall of stars clearly existed a long way away from this region of space—tens of thousands of light years at the very least, millions or even hundreds of millions of light years at worst. The question was whether it also was reaching through time, either into the past or into the remote future.
“America,” he said.
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Pass the word to all ships. We’re going to move closer to the TRGA.”
“Very well, Admiral.”
Shadow Probe 1
TRGA
Texaghu Resch System
1540 hours, TFT
By now, Schiere thought, his running commentary and the accompanying images had reached the battlegroup, and were causing all sorts of consternation. Within another hour and a half, he should have heard a response—stay put or come home. It would take that long for the transmission to reach him.
He hoped it would be a recall. For the past one hundred minutes, he’d been cautiously moving about the artifact, using VR-5 probes to get in close while keeping himself well outside the zone where the thing’s deadly gravitational grip might tear his ship to pieces—or send him somewhere else. Two of his probes had been destroyed within that dangerous region close to the cylinder; another had vanished down the cylinder’s maw. He’d launched two more VR-5s and maneuvered them in carefully, until they were stationed off the opening of the tube.
Through these proxies he continued watching, but there wasn’t a lot more he could do from here. He’d measured what there was to measure and transmitted the data back to America. Now all he could do was wait.
Movement . . .
One of his drones picked it up, a flash of movement emerging from the kilometer-wide opening of the rotating cylinder. He ordered the drone to pivot and track the object, to follow it . . . but too late. The drone was gone, vaporized. Before he could connect with the other drone, it too had been wiped from the sky.
By this time, Schiere realized that he was under attack, and that the situation was not good. His remote eyes had been swatted out of space, and he still hadn’t had a good look at the attacker.
Attackers. There were more than one.
A lot more . . .
Virtuality
C
BG-18
Outer System, Texaghu Resch System
1548 hours, TFT
Koenig had returned to his office for the staff meeting, and technically, that’s where he—or at least his body—was now. Within his mind, however, he was in an artificial space generated by the fleet net, the interlinked network of communications and information systems spread throughout all fifty-eight capital ships of the battlegroup. “I suggest,” Admiral Liu Zhu of the Chinese Hegemony light assault carrier Zheng He, was saying, “that we not enter the local star’s gravity well to such depth. Better that we remain in the outer system, against the possibility of ambush.”
“With respect, Admiral Liu,” Captain Harrison said, “we haven’t seen any sign of enemy ships in this system. What ambush?”
“As has been pointed out, the . . . the artifact, TRGA, may well be a means of creating a wormhole passage between two widely separated regions of space. The other end may open at a Sh’daar base. If so, large numbers of enemy ships could come through from unseen bases on the other side. We would have no way of knowing that we were in fact badly outnumbered.”
Koenig listened impassively to the debate as it unfolded. Within the minds of the ship captains and staff officers linked into the simulation, they were seated around a large conference table, within a room digitally re-created from one in the Hexagon basement in Columbus, where the USNA Joint Chiefs held their briefing sessions. In deference to the other Confederation members, the USNA flag and the 3-D portrait of American Senate president Carolyn Saunders had been edited. Now it was the Terran Confederation flag and a portrait of Regis DuPont.
Politics . . .
Admiral Liu, of course, wasn’t interested in Confederation politics other than in how they affected the Chinese Hegemony. Koenig didn’t know him personally, but he appeared to be a hardheaded sort with a keen eye for the long-term advantage.
And Koenig had to admit that he had a good point.
As if to underscore the unknowns, one bulkhead of the virtual conference room showed vid transmitted from the CP-240 reconnaissance probe—the enigmatic cylinder suspended in a golden glow of twisted light.
“We don’t have to close with the Triggah,” Colonel Murcheson pointed out, using the newly arisen slang for the TRGA. Murcheson was the commander of the USNA Marine contingent on board the Nassau, a Marine expeditionary force numbering some nine hundred infantry and a close-support group of SG-86 Rattlesnake fighters. “Our recon units can camp out close to the thing, while we take up a station that will let us pace it within fighter range. If anything does come through, we’d be able to catch them while they’re bottlenecked.”
“What is this term, ‘bottlenecked’?” one of Liu’s aides asked.
“He means any enemy ships coming through the TRGA would have to do so one at a time,” Koenig replied. “They’d be bunched up when they emerged, and relatively easy to pick off.”
“We could bloody well nail ’em one at a time,” Harrison said.
“This might also be our chance to steal a march on the Sh’daar,” Captain Jossel of the railgun cruiser Kinkaid said. “Can we assume that the Triggah is a Sh’daar artifact? That it leads to an important Sh’daar system . . . perhaps even their homeworld? For sixty years, now, we’ve been on the defensive. This is our chance to take the war to them for a change!”
“Right,” Captain Grunmeyer added. He was the CO of the heavy missile carrier Ma’at Mons. “Kick them where it hurts!”
“Except that if we traverse that tube,” Kapitän zur Weltraum Roesller of the Pan-European battleship Frederick der Grosse said, pointing at the image of the cylinder on the bulkhead, “it will be us who are bottlenecked at the far end.”
“If the other end of that thing does open in the Sh’daar home system,” Captain Blaine of the cruiser Independence pointed out, “it’s going to be protected. Heavy monitors, maybe. Or fortresses of some sort.”
“Good points,” Koenig put in. “But Captain Jossel is right. The chance to strike back at the Sh’daar is why we’re out here. If the TRGA offers us a shortcut to get at them, we’re going to take it.”
“Jesus,” Captain Samantha Adams of the cruiser Bainbridge said with considerable feeling, “We’re going to jump down a rabbit hole with no idea of what’s at the bottom?”
“The dangers—” Liu began.
“Can be met and matched,” Koenig said, interrupting. “We will, of course, use AI probes to investigate the cylinder, as well as any other technology we can bring to bear on the problem. We will not go through blind.”
“Probes will alert the enemy on the other side, Admiral,” Captain Buchanan said.
“We’ll address that when we get there,” Koenig said. “I want each of you to put your tactical teams to work on this . . . how to put our fleet through that wormhole with a good chance of breaking through on the other side. I want to see contingency plans assuming a large Turusch fleet on the other side . . . and for the possibility that they have the far end covered by some sort of fort or heavy orbital base. We must assume they’ll have that end well protected.
“Once we reach the artifact—that will be in another nine hours, give or take—we will assemble the fleet a hundred thousand kilometers from the opening and begin sending sneak-probes through.”
“Unless we get there and find the enemy has already emerged,” Captain Charles Whitlow of the star carrier United States of North America said. “I suggest we send in fighters ahead of us, just in case.”
“Sounds good,” Koenig said. He’d been about to suggest the same thing. “I suggest one Starhawk squadron apiece from the United States, the Lincoln, and the America.
“We’ll take it one step at a time. Okay . . . questions? Comments? Very well, ladies and gentlemen. Dismissed.”
And the figures gathered around the virtual table began winking out.
VFA-44
On board TC/USNA CVS America
Outer System, Texaghu Resch System
1622 hours, TFT
Gray was lying in his bunk downloading Dolinar’s Cultural Technologies as the battlegroup continued forging deeper into the Texaghu Resch system.
As squadron commander, Gray, theoretically, rated quarters of his own, but like so much else within the Navy hierarchy, theory gave way to practicality. Lieutenants rated four-to-a-compartment living space on board a carrier, which consisted of a small room with desk and lockers, a single-stall fresher, plus four occutubes set into the bulkhead opposite the door. Occutubes served as bunks—which common Navy usage still referred to as “racks” even though they now were completely enclosed.
The two-meter-long enclosure provided privacy and soundproofing for sleep, but also contained a full electronic hookup for various electronic services, including virtual rec and library access. He could link in with a movie, either passively or as a major character, or he could, as now, download text, lectures, and interactive question-and-answer sessions with an AI simulating a book’s author.
The tube was large enough for two, and was one of the few places on board where people could find the privacy for that type of activity as well, deliberately so, though the Navy and the ship’s command structure never admitted to that. Sexual activity was a normal aspect of human behavior and flight officers were human, despite persistent jokes to the contrary. Though physical relationships weren’t officially condoned or encouraged, they were usually ignored so long as they were kept quietly out of sight.
Gray had given that fact considerable thought lately, especially since Schiffie was one of the other three officers sharing this compartment.
It wasn’t even the sex he was missing so much, now, as the fact that Gray was lonely. Angela had left such a raw and gaping hole. Schiffie wasn’t interested in anything long term, but for a night or two . . .
Who would know? Where was the harm?
But he’d been making do with selections from the ship’s erotic interactives instead. It was a whole lot less complicated.
&
nbsp; And at the moment he wasn’t even immersing in an erotiactive. Cultural Technologies had been recommended by the CAG as a must-down for all pilots. Frank Dolinar was a nanotech specialist with sharply focused insights into the high tech of a wide range of sentient species, including Humankind, with an emphasis on GRIN tech—genetics, robotics, information systems, and nanotechnology.
The driver technologies that the enigmatic Sh’daar seemed determined to suppress throughout the galaxy. Captain Wizewski believed that understanding the enemy, understanding why he did the things he did, was vital in fighting him, a basic combat dictum first written down by Sun Tse a good 2,900 years before. According to Dolinar, GRIN was on the point of transforming Humankind into gods, with power over mass, energy, gravitation, and even reality itself. The Technological Singularity . . .
If the Sh’daar wanted to suppress human technological development, it could only mean that they feared what humans might soon achieve.
And that meant that the Sh’daar might not be the invulnerable and unconquerable super-beings people assumed them to be.
At the moment, Gray was immersed in a docuinteractive, with an AI sim of Dolinar leading him along the edge of an oddly patterned cliff face on Heimdall. The landscape around him was barren and broken, cloaked in ice, with red light glinting from the crest of a kilometer-high glacier on the horizon. Bifrost, the world’s gas-giant primary, arced from north to south, showing a slim bow of red and orange. Above, the system’s star, an M1.5 red dwarf, catalogued as Kapteyn’s Star, shone as a bright red point of light some 3.5 AUs away. Aurorae fired by Bifrost’s radiation belts interacting with Heimdall’s magnetic field shimmered across a deep violet sky.
Dolinar and Gray both stood on the icy desert unprotected, the writer in civvies, Gray in his undress Navy blacks, despite the fact that the temperature hovered around ten below Celsius and the atmosphere was a thin mix of carbon dioxide and methane. That was the beauty of visiting a place in sim: you didn’t need special protection in hostile environments.
