by Ian Douglas
“That seems internally contradictory.”
“If you’re into human existentialism,” Koenig said, still amused, “you must enjoy the absurd.”
“I do not understand your meaning.”
Good, Koenig thought. Keep him guessing.
“Joe, I have a proposal for you. I assume you’re eager to get home.”
“We were on our way home when your ships . . . detained us.”
“Yes, well, we’re sorry about that. Your ship was escaping from a member state of the Confederation, our enemies, just when those enemies had been defeated. It was possible that some members of those states were traveling with you.”
“None were. We were on Earth, at your Confederation’s explicit invitation, to discuss Earth’s future association with the Collective.”
“That was my assumption. How did those discussions go?”
“You will need to talk to the humans with whom we met on Earth.”
“We already have a list of names,” Lodge whispered in Koenig’s mind. “People in the Confederation government, in their State Department and ambassadorial service. We’ll be questioning them in short order.”
“We’ll do that, Joe,” Koenig said. “In the meantime, we have no reason to keep you or your ship here.”
“We are free to go?”
“Possibly. But we would like to send some ships along with yours.”
“What ships?”
“A star carrier and her escorts. What we call a carrier battlegroup of ten or twelve ships. We would like to meet with representatives of your government, and with the Sh’daar Collective.”
“That is not possible.”
Koenig considered his options. He had a bluff in mind as a last resort, but wasn’t sure how far he could take it.
“I know,” he told the being, “that you’ve come here across time as well as space.”
“Travel at velocities approaching that of light by its very definition entails travel through time.”
“Perhaps. I suppose relativity could be defined as a kind of time travel. But I think you know that I mean something different. Travel forward and backward in time, as distinct from travel through space.”
“What could possibly lead you to draw such a conclusion?”
“First of all, we know that you can tinker with the flow of time, at least to a limited extent. An interesting technology. You slowed down the time for Concord—that watchship you took on board—by a factor of at least a thousand to one. That was to control the crew, wasn’t it?”
“That has nothing to do with travel across time,” the alien said. But the Glothr sounded . . . hesitant? It was difficult to tell, listening to a translation produced by an AI intermediary, but Koenig had the impression that “Joe” was worried by this line of questioning.
“You’re a time traveler from our remote past, and you’ve come here through one of the TRGA cylinders . . . specifically a TRGA cylinder located in the star cluster we call the Beehive.”
The being in the window within Koenig’s mind said nothing. It appeared to be simply watching him, perhaps waiting him out. What, Koenig wondered, was it thinking right now?
“We could attempt to find your homeworld, your civilization, but there’s no guarantee that we would arrive at the same general time that you’ve come from. A small variation in vector through a TRGA’s spacetime matrix can result in an error of centuries, true? I wonder what would happen if we showed up in your planetary neck of the woods before you left to come here?”
That definitely got a reaction. The lights within the alien’s translucent form were pulsing wildly now, creating an intense glow.
“No!”
Koenig pushed on. “We humans are internally contradictory, you know. And divided. And absurd. I’m giving you the option of taking us directly to your superiors, rather than having primitives like us showing up at random, and blundering around in your history.”
The Glothr appeared to be quite agitated. Its translucent arms shifted and waved in the water, and patterns of yellow and green lights pulsed and throbbed, overwhelming the constellation of blue bioluminescence.
Koenig found the display fascinating; the Sh’daar of the N’gai Cloud—876 million years ago or twenty years ago, depending on how you looked at it—had seemed panicked by the idea of humans mucking about in their past. The mere threat of human warships exploring the N’gai Cloud in earlier times had brought about a considerable change of heart among the Sh’daar . . . and the promise to suspend hostilities against the Earth.
Apparently, the Glothr had the same terror.
Temporal paradox might well be the ultimate of all possible weapons. If, in a war with another civilization, you could go back in time and edit your enemy out of existence, you could win the war before it even started, and there would be nothing you could do to protect yourself from such an attack.
The downside was that any change you made in history might affect you as well as the enemy. The possibilities had been discussed in a number of strategy planning conferences and meetings ever since the possibility had been raised two decades earlier. Suppose Koenig sent the America back in time 876 million years to the N’gai Cloud and did something to edit the Sh’daar out of existence. If that happened, then Humankind would not have received the Sh’daar Ultimatuum in 2367, and almost sixty years of warfare would never have transpired. Millions, no billions who’d died both on Earth and among Earth’s colony worlds would now be alive. The civil war between North America and the Earth Confederation almost certainly wouldn’t have happened . . . and that, in turn, meant the city of Columbus and hundreds of thousands of citizens would not have been nano-devoured. At the very least, those thirty alien races described by the Agletsch would not have been conquered by the Sh’daar, and their histories would have been vastly different as well.
The catch was, editing the Sh’daar out of existence would also edit the recent history of Humankind.
How could Koenig—how could anyone—take the responsibility for that kind of meddling?
The possibility had been discussed in various military and scientific circles, of course, and a few years ago it had even been debated in the USNA Senate. The consensus held that tinkering with the past was too dangerous even to consider. And yet the possibility remained as a kind of ultimate doomsday scenario.
If Humankind was about to go under anyway . . .
None of that made any difference at the moment, however. What was important was that the Glothr didn’t know that humans wouldn’t meddle.
And they appeared to be terrified by that possibility, which represented, Koenig thought, the only advantage Humankind possessed in this galactic—and temporal—war.
The rippling lights shifted from greens and yellows back to blue, and the writhing being seemed to grow more calm.
“Very well, human,” the Glothr said. “We agree to your terms.”
Koenig nodded. “I will give the necessary orders.”
And the link with the alien was broken.
“What the hell was all that stuff about existential philosophy?” General Nolan said after a long moment of silence in the room.
“Existentialism starts off as a sense of confusion or disorientation in a world that is absurd or meaningless,” Koenig replied, thoughtful. “At least, that was the claim of its proponents, six hundred years ago. And it’s up to the individual to make sense of things, not religion or society or the state.”
“I don’t get it,” Brookings said.
“I’m not sure I do either,” Koenig replied. “But our friend was talking about ‘biological existential reality’ as it related to life in the galaxy. I was just trying to draw him out.”
“Well, you confused him, at least,” Sarah Taylor told him.
“Hell,” Caldwell said, “he confused me. You know, I really don’t
think that a human philosophical system can have any bearing at all on an alien intelligence.”
“I think it has all kinds of bearing,” Koenig said. “As long as you have mind—consciousness, self-awareness, and intelligence—you’re going to reflect on and act upon the world as you perceive it. We may perceive the universe in different ways from one another, but at least philosophy can let us compare notes.”
“I think we need to figure out what he meant by the ‘galaxy transforming into biological existential reality,’ ” Taylor said.
“And I think we need to get a fleet out to the Beehive cluster and through the TRGA to Joe’s home space and time,” Koenig said. “Let’s talk about that.”
Brookings nodded. “Who do you have in mind, Mr. President?”
“As it happens, Admiral Armitage has already begun assembling a fleet: Task Force One, with the carrier America as flag . . .”
Chapter Eleven
22 July, 2425
USNA Star Carrier America
Naval Base
Quito Synchorbital
1345 hours, TFT
“I’d be happier, Mr. President,” Admiral Gray said, “if we knew just who built the TRGA cylinders . . . and why.”
“Nervous that they might be Sh’daar? Or at least controlled by them?”
“Frankly, yes. And following a Sh’daar ship through a Sh’daar node without knowing what’s waiting for us on the other side strikes me as just a smidge beyond total insanity.”
Gray was seated in his office on board the America, linked in-head with the president of the USNA. Three weeks had passed since the capture of Charlie One. He’d received his orders five days ago, and he was still feeling more than a little daunted by them.
No one knew for sure who had built the TRGA cylinders originally. For a time, the assumption had been that they were Sh’daar constructs—and certainly the Sh’daar used them throughout their far-flung territories across both time and space. There were numerous TRGA cylinders within the N’gai Cloud of 876 million years ago, and a pathway provided by the original Texaghu Resch Gravitational Anomaly had given the America battlegroup access to the Sh’daar capital—for lack of a better term—two decades before.
But assumptions are not facts, and some researchers felt that the technology necessary to create TRGA cylinders—enormous inside-out Tipler machines, in fact—was well beyond the technological capabilities demonstrated by any of the known Sh’daar client species.
Of course, perhaps that was why the Sh’daar were trying to forbid certain technological advances and research. They had the necessary technologies themselves, but didn’t want anyone else ever to challenge them.
The Glothr appeared to be the most technically advanced of any Sh’daar client race yet encountered. They’d taken robotics to an extremely advanced degree, and their trick with slowing down time for the Concord while it was inside their vessel was impressive.
If the Glothr could warp time, even if just on a small scale, it could give them a staggering advantage in combat. Of course, they hadn’t used it in the battle that had captured the Glothr ship, except as a means of immobilizing the Concord. But was that because they couldn’t, or because they’d chosen not to?
No one knew except the Glothr themselves, and they weren’t exactly being forthcoming about it. They seemed to be pretending that they didn’t understand the question.
That was just one of the many issues going through Gray’s mind as he glanced at the AI-generated representation of TF-1 glowing above his workstation console. Task Force One was the flotilla newly completed around the star carrier America, consisting so far of thirty-two capital warships. The Marine carrier transport Marne and the battleships New York, Northern California, and Illinois had just cast off from the SupraQuito dockyards and were marked in space now by the pulsing wink of their navigation strobes. Four battlecruisers, four heavy cruisers, five light cruisers; and a number of smaller vessels—destroyers and frigates—were adrift in synchorbit as well, along with the heavy mass-driver bombardment vessel Farragut. The Concord and two other High Guard ships, Pax and Open Sky, had been recalled back to USNA naval service to fill out the roster. The fleet numbered as many warships as the North American government had been able to assemble . . . a risk, obviously, given the fears in some quarters that the Confederation was not yet truly beaten.
So far as Gray was concerned, the Confederation was pretty much out of the game, at least as an organized participant. Korosi’s holdouts in France, Turkey, and North India had been rounded up, Ilse Roettgen was again in control of the Earth Confederation Senate in Geneva, and a week ago she’d signed the Pax Deux, formally ending all hostilities between the Confederation and the United States of North America. The document also reaffirmed the basic unity of Humankind, and pledged assistance in the ongoing struggle against “all interstellar threats to terrestrial independence.”
In response to a direct request by President Koenig, several Confederation vessels had joined the fleet as well—the cruisers Churchill, Valiant, and Hessen, the French heavy battlecruiser Victoire, and the North Indian Ranvir.
Gray wasn’t sure if they were being included in TF-1 as additional firepower or to guarantee Geneva’s continued cooperation at home. Outside of the Confederation ship muster, there also were two powerful new Japanese warships, Yamato and Honshu, both technically battlecruisers, plus a Theocracy frigate, the Najim al Zafir.
The more, Gray thought, the merrier . . . though how well this mismatched congeries of vessels would respond to his command remained to be seen. There’d been no time to practice or to do much at all in the way of fleet coordination, save exchanging AI addresses and frequencies.
There were promises of even more ships—in particular a Chinese flotilla, as well as more Indian and German vessels—but those ships all were still out-system and would have to catch up with Task Force One later, if at all.
The incorporation of both Pan-European and North Indian ships in the expeditionary force presented at least the illusion that Humankind was now at last operating on a united front against the Sh’daar. It also, better than anything else, proved that the civil war against the Confederation was over.
What it didn’t prove, in Gray’s estimation, was that low-level hostilities with the Confederation were over for good. Korosi’s last stand had been, in effect, a holdout by forces unwilling to lay down their arms. Bad feelings and grudges ran deep on both sides of the divide, and it would be a long time yet before the Earth’s governments would be able to hammer out a single government—or even just a single way of seeing things—that might be acceptable to all.
But all of that was Koenig’s concern. Gray was faced with quite a different set of problems.
“You know, Mr. President,” he said, “if we don’t come back, it’s going to leave a terrible hole in the naval inventory.”
“I know,” Koenig told him. “That’s why you’d damned well better bring them back. Starships are expensive.”
“I’ll do my best. But I think you’re a little more confident of my abilities than I am.”
“I’m aware of that . . . Admiral.”
Koenig had stressed Gray’s rank, and Gray bit off an angry response. It remained a sore point between them, Gray’s promotion to full admiral over any number of other flag-rank officers by presidential executive order. Koenig had claimed the promotion was provisional, and if a later Senate confirmation hearing didn’t confirm it, he would go back to being a two-star rear admiral or less.
And that would be just fine with Gray.
Koenig claimed to have signed the order because Gray needed the extra mass of those four stars to boss the commanding officers of half a dozen other naval services—Chinese, Islamic Theocracy, and now their erstwhile enemies from the Confederation. From Gray’s perspective, it just meant he had to work harder than ever to justify the rank to hi
s own personnel . . . and created a lot of jealousy among all the other naval officers in the service. He didn’t deserve four stars, and he was still angry at Koenig for saddling him with them.
How much of Dahlquist’s defiance, he wondered, was due to his own too-quick rise through the ranks?
But, then, Koenig was the president, and the commander-in-chief of all USNA military forces. Gray was too much of a soldier to ignore orders.
Still, why couldn’t the man confine his commanding-in-chiefing to someone else?
Gray swallowed the anger. Now wasn’t the time or the place. Better to change the subject.
“I’m surprised, Mr. President, that the Glothr agreed to having this horde drop into their backyard. How did you manage that?”
“They weren’t pleased about it, but you’re going to have one thing going for you. Everyone in TF-1 isn’t going in at once.”
“I saw that in the orders,” Gray replied. “Just a squadron of fighters off of the America . . . and the three Guard cutters.”
“Right. Twelve fighters and three small WPS-100s won’t be particularly alarming to an entire world. And once they’ve ascertained that everything is clear, they send a message drone back and have the rest of you come through—if that seems prudent to you.”
“Meaning if they don’t see a fleet of ten thousand time-bending battlecruisers over there waiting to ambush us, we’re good to go. Got it.”
What was not said was what would happen to those ships and crews if Gray decided not to follow them.
“Based on the fighter squadron’s report,” Koenig continued, “you’ll decide what goes in next—the rest of the fleet, or just a few ships. You could even stagger your arrival over a period of time so you can count on reinforcements.”
“Which is fine, unless the Glothr get nervous when more and more of our warships keep popping in on them,” Gray said. “At some point, they might decide enough is enough and open fire. I’m also not sure dividing my force in the face of a superior possible enemy force will be a real good idea.”
