by Ian Douglas
For as long as he’d been in the Confederation Navy, Koenig had resisted giving any credence at all to the idea of a “Sh’daar Galactic Empire.” The catch phrase was popular with the newsim feeds back home, but in Koenig’s opinion, no civilization, however powerful, however technically advanced, could extend its political sway across galactic distances. Hundreds of billions of suns . . . most of them with worlds, and many of those replete with life. . . .
Gray emptiness encircled America as she plunged through the tunnel. Time and space twisted strangely, the shining pocket of stars up ahead seeming to recede as the carrier’s velocity increased toward c.
Trevor Gray
Omega Centauri
1355 hours, TFT
The break in the communications feed with the aliens had been abrupt and total. One moment, Gray had been in a virtual reality, on the simulated surface of the planet as it had been a billion years or more ago. The next, he was back in his all-too-real grounded Starhawk, encased in blackness, the external feeds severed, and even his connection with Lieutenant Schiere gone. He could guess what had happened. Ships from the carrier battlegroup had emerged on this side of the TRGA cylinder, following up on the message drone he’d dispatched hours before, and his Sh’daar hosts were suddenly intently and completely focused on something else.
“Can you pick up anything?” Gray asked his AI. The fighter’s electronic intelligence had been sampling the local electromagnetic spectrum. There were signals aplenty—mostly infrared radiation, but including radio waves modulated in a way that suggested a network intelligence. A ship this large must have hundreds of powerful computers, or the Sh’daar equivalent. Most likely, they were hardwired together—fiber optics, perhaps, or something more advanced.
But such machines leak RF—radio frequencies—and it’s possible for a sophisticated computer with the appropriate software to use that leakage to take a peek inside the background system.
His AI had been working on the problem for almost an hour now.
“The alien imagery is . . . alien,” his AI replied. “There is an optical component, but it is difficult to interpret.”
“You’re saying they see things differently from humans,” Gray suggested, “and not just as a metaphor for a different worldview.”
“Human brains have evolved to interpret impulses coming through the optic nerve,” the AI told him. “In fact, humans are capable of interpreting only a small percentage of the actual data available. The brain, in fact, acts like a kind of filter, screening out what it is programmed to exclude.”
“I don’t buy it. An apple is an apple, right?”
“And a Sh’daar, never having seen an apple, would have difficulty deciding what it was.”
“That’s cultural. If they’ve never seen anything like a piece of fruit, they wouldn’t know what it was, sure . . . but they would still see something round and red.”
“They almost certainly do not see red as what humans think of as ‘red,’ ” his AI said. “I certainly do not.”
“What do you see?”
“It’s questionable that I ‘see’ at all, and the same may be true for the Sh’daar. I observe patterns of digitized points, each with numerical values indicating hue, brightness, and reflectivity. At least one of the species we’ve just seen appears to sense mass in a way we would think of as shape and form. Another puts far more emphasis on texture than do humans. You might say that it ‘feels’ an object, but from a distance, by interpreting reflected photons differently than do you, through a completely different sensory net.”
Gray thought about this, then shook his head. “I’m still not tracking you.”
“It is important, Lieutenant, that you understand how different these beings actually are. They do not perceive reality in the same way that you do. And this makes tapping into their visual networks both difficult and uncertain. What seems commonplace or obvious to them might be invisible to us . . . or we might be aware of it but place an extremely low value on the information, when, in fact, it is that datum that they are most eager to convey.”
“We were doing all right earlier,” Gray pointed out. “They were drawing on that docuinteractive stored in my implant memory.”
“Agreed. And as we shared that virtual experience, they almost certainly were seeing something quite different. The exchange was possible because I was able to interface, in a tentative and unsatisfactory fashion, with their equivalent of an artificial intelligence. But I am still uncertain as to what, if any, information was usefully transmitted.”
“An apple is an apple is an apple,” Gray said, stubborn. “They must perceive something pretty much like it, or else they’re not living in the same universe we are. If I don’t see a solid wall in front of me, or if I interpret it as a pretty sunset, I’m going to get a sore nose when I walk into it.”
“And if you were an AI,” his system told him, “you might be aware of the wall, but it would not pose a barrier to you. A wall does not mean the same to an AI as it does to organic life.”
“So . . . you’re saying these aliens aren’t organic life forms? They’re digital uploads? Virtual reality?”
“I am not saying that. At least, not yet. The possibility is intriguing in some respects, however, especially in light of the possibility that the inhabitants of Heimdall—the planet we were virtually experiencing—eventually uploaded themselves into large and highly advanced computer networks somehow engraved within the rock strata of their world. We might well be dealing with a digitized sentience, one without organic substance, or, indeed, even without any material existence whatsoever.”
“The ghost in the machine,” Gray mused.
The phrase had been repopularized recently in discussions of the Vinge Singularity, speculations about the possible dramatic next step in human evolution. Gray had looked it up and downloaded the history; the term originally had been used by a twentieth-century British philosopher named Gilbert Ryle, poking fun at the much earlier philosopher Descarte and his separation of mind and body. If an intelligent species learned how to upload minds into machines, would they in fact be the same minds, or mere copies? Did the originals die, giving immortality to software imposters running on hardware, or did the ego, the actual identity of the original transfer as well?
Gray mistrusted modern technology, although his life—especially his current life as a Navy fighter pilot—depended on it. To a Prim brought up in the Manhat Ruins, technology had been the mark of the haves. The have-nots living in the Periphery quickly learned to hate and fear the high-tech Authorities who attempted to impose their laws on them. By extension, Prims came to hate the technology as well.
Those old habits, those old channels of thought, had been tough to reverse. Forced to join the Navy in order to buy treatment for his stroke-ravaged wife, he’d accepted the implants and the AIs and all the rest, he’d had to . . . but that deep inner core of mistrust and fear had never gone away.
The others in his squadron talked easily in late-night bull sessions about uploading their own minds into computer networks one day, a means of achieving immortality. For Gray, the very idea was as revolting as it was nonsensical. The human mind arose from the natural processes of the human brain, the firing of neurons, the release and reabsorption of neurotransmitter chemicals, the creation of set neural pathways in response to repeated stimuli and experience. Copy every aspect of the organic brain, right down to the molecular chemistry and transfer it to a computer . . . and what you had was a copy, an electronic facsimile. The original, surely, was still trapped in the organic body and doomed to die. That the copy was itself convinced that it was the original, successfully uploaded, made the whole idea that much more grotesque.
“Gilbert Ryle,” the AI said, apparently following Gray’s train of thought, “was unaware of the possibilities of future human evolution in concert with the developments of implant technology and artificial sentience. Human beings today—those who have adopted technological symbiosis—are s
ubstantively different from their atechnic ancestors. A new subspecies of human. Not Homo sapiens, but Homo sapiens machina, a symbiotic fusion of man and machine.”
“Bullshit,” Gray said, but he smiled in the darkness. “I started off as the archaic version, remember? Plain old untampered-with Homo sap. They didn’t change me by growing a computer in my head.”
“I would argue that they did.”
“I’m the same as I was before they gimmicked me up,” Gray said, the stubbornness returning. “My implants are tools, nothing more. I need them to interface with the fighter, to talk to you, to receive and store downloads, but I’m the same man I always was.”
“Are you?”
“Of course I am! I still remember . . .” He broke off the thought, suddenly uncertain.
“And if your memories had been changed,” his AI replied, “how would you know the difference?”
For a long time, Gray brooded in the darkness.
And after a time, his AI spoke again. “I have an incoming transmission. I believe the Sh’daar are attempting to continue the conversation.”
Gray drew a deep breath. He’d been shaken by his conversation with the fighter’s AI, and didn’t feel particularly able to discuss anything with his captors.
But he knew he had to try.
“Let’s see it,” he said.
A window opened in his mind, and he stepped through. He stood once again on that dark and icy plain beneath ten million closely crowded stars. The world’s surface was utterly barren and dead. He looked around for Schiere, but saw nothing, sensed nothing. The other pilot, evidently, was not a part of this conversation.
“Hello?” Gray called. “Is anyone there?”
And then he saw the flat, oval body semi-erect on sixteen jointed legs picking its way toward him across the frozen ground, velvet-skinned, four-eyed, disturbingly spiderlike. An Agletsch.
“Dra’ethde?” Gray asked, peering closely at the apparition’s body markings. He’d only ever known two Agletsch, the two on board America, and telling them apart by the subtle differences in their body markings was tricky. This one appeared to have more males adhering to what passed for her face, however.
“I am called Thedreh’schul,” the being replied in his mind. “And my masters wish to know what you are, yes-no?”
CIC
TC/USNA CVS America
TRGA and Omega Centauri
1401 hours, TFT
According to America’s chronometers, the carrier had been inside the tunnel for 7 minutes, now, and for much of that time she’d been traveling—judging by the light show outside—at close to the speed of light. The math of relativistic velocities said that 7 minutes subjective at near-c translated as something closer to 495 minutes objective—well over 8 hours.
Obviously, the rotating cylinder was not more than 8 light hours long; the physics people were calling it a stable Lorentzian wormhole, obviously artificial, obviously created as a bridge between the Texaghu Resch system and Omega Centauri. There was no way to actually measure the passage of time, save to count down to an emergence based on the data from young Gray’s message drone. According to that . . . 10 more seconds.
“All hands, all hands,” Captain Buchanan’s voice called over the shipwide net. America’s shields and screens went to full, cutting off even the limited view they’d had for the past subjective minutes. “Stand by for entry into normal space, in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”
America’s shields opened once more, and Koenig had his first direct view of the other side—a sky filled with stars and with ships. There’d been the very distinct possibility that they would emerge within a military disaster, finding every Confederation vessel that had already gone through blasted into debris, and the enemy waiting for them, weapons focused on the tunnel mouth.
But the door-kicking strategy, evidently, had worked. America slowed sharply in a blaze of raw light, drifting now into a diffuse haze of gas, ice particles, and floating debris . . . as well as small and disorganized groups of Confederation fighters, frigates, and destroyers. Numerous ships in the area were badly damaged—the Cheng Hua was leaking water, and the Gurrierre appeared to be little more than a slow-tumbling hulk. The floating wreckage gave silent evidence of the ferocity of the battle. Fighting was still going on in the distance, but the volume of battlespace close to the tunnel mouth had been secured.
“CAG, you may launch your CSP,” Captain Buchanan ordered over America’s tactical net.
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
They’d kept the slower, older SG-55 War Eagles on board for Combat Space Patrol, an envelope of fighters surrounding the battlegroup as an outer perimeter against enemy leakers, ships that might slip in close enough to do serious damage. Two squadrons, the Star Tigers and the Nighthawks, began dropping from America’s rotating flight decks. Both squadrons were at dangerously low strength; the War Eagles, less advanced than the newer Starhawks, had suffered badly at Alphekka. CAG Wizewski had estimated that they might have one last patrol in them before he was forced to close both squadrons out. The pilots were willing; their ships were falling apart.
America moved clear of the tunnel mouth. The other carriers in the battlegroup were beginning to emerge, now—the Abraham Lincoln and the United States of America, followed by the Pan-European Illustrious and the Jeanne d’Arc.
Koenig turned a coldly professional gaze toward the French light carrier. The damage she’d taken at HD 157950 had been repaired, and her water reserves replaced by cometary ice from that system’s Kuiper Belt. The mutiny that had brought her over to Koenig’s side, however, still worried him. Captain Michel had appeared convincingly genuine in his conviction to join CBG-18, but the man had turned against his own government. Could he be trusted?
As much, Koenig supposed, as anyone in the fleet. After all, Michel had had a choice; he could have returned freely to Earth with Giraurd.
He watched as the electronic links between ships was established, and the battlegroup’s tactical net came back on-line. The door-kickers had suffered serious casualties—the Santiago, Defensora, Vreeland, and Brown all destroyed, the King, Fletcher and the Ishigara badly damaged. The fighters . . . well, there were still fighters left, Koenig was glad to see. It would take time to sort through the network feeds and see what the butcher’s bill had been.
“Admiral Koenig,” his AI said in her voice. “The commanding—”
“Stop!” Koenig said, cutting off the PA in mid-sentence. The anger in his own voice startled him. “Just . . . stop.” What had just touched him off? That kind of unthinking, harsh reaction was not like him.
The AI waited, silent.
“I’m sorry,” Koenig said, feeling awkward about apologizing to a piece of software. “Go ahead.”
“Sir, the commanding officer of the Gurrierre is on-line.”
“Put him on.”
“Admiral Koenig?” a voice said, speaking with a strong French accent. There was no video. “This is Lieutenant Blaison.”
“Lieutenant?” Koenig asked. “What happened . . . oh.”
“The senior officers all are dead or missing,” Blaison replied. He sounded terribly young. “The bridge tower was destroyed. Some of them may have survived in life pods, but—”
“I understand. How can we be of assistance?”
“I have given the order to abandon ship, Admiral. The power plant is unstable and may decouple at any moment. If you could send some of your Search and Rescue craft to pick up the crew . . .”
Koenig glanced at his ship status readout. Both SAR squadrons, the Jolly Blacks and the DinoSARS, were already launching. “I’ll deploy some rescue tugs to help you, Lieutenant.”
“Many thanks, Admiral. We—”
And the communications link winked out.
On one of his large CIC displays, Koenig could see the Gurrierre, terribly damaged, her rear half broken and torn, her forward shield cap missing. A point about a third from what was left o
f the stern was twisting . . . crumpling as the micro black hole at the heart of Gurrierre’s power plant broke free of its containment field and drifted through the ship’s structure, devouring it as it went.
Power plant singularities were tiny—the size of an atomic nucleus—and could not devour their parent vessels quickly. But this one was loose and feeding, and the gravitational distortions were disrupting the ship’s structure, a crumpling effect slowly moving forward.
And as the singularity moved, it fed . . . and grew. A fierce point of X-ray radiation was flaring from the stricken bombardment vessel, now, as the atoms of the ship’s spine fell into the absolute nothingness of the tiny black hole.
Escape pods were drifting out from the Pan-European ship now, drive jets flaring to get them clear. She had a crew of almost a thousand. How many would be able to get off?
“CAG?” Koenig called.
“Yes, sir.”
“Direct Commander Corbin to send SAR tugs to help the Gurrierre. They’re abandoning ship.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Corbin was the CO of the DinoSARs. “Let him know there’s a loose singularity over there. Things will be going critical fast.”
“I’ll tell him, sir.”
America continued accelerating gently, moving deeper into cluster space.
Koenig’s heart was hammering, and he tried to figure out what he was feeling. Why the hell had he snapped at Karyn like that?
No, not Karyn. His PA. Software with Karyn Mendelson’s digitized personality overlaying the basic code.
Debris adrift in space . . .
For just a moment, he was back at the Defense of Earth . . . when Karyn, the real Karyn, had died at the Mars Synchorbital Station when a high-velocity kinetic-kill projectile smashed through the structure.
Six months. God, he missed her.
But his personal assistant was right, he knew. He wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, but seeing that field of debris after the savage battle had pulled something in him, some deep-buried thread of emotion connected with Karyn’s death.
