by Ian Douglas
“That will be your tactical decision, of course.”
“Mm. Thank you so much, Mr. President. Don’t you want to come along, sir? Revisit your glory days in the N’gai Cloud?”
“I have every confidence in your ability to carry this off, Admiral.”
“I’m flattered. Terrified, but flattered.” He considered possibilities for a moment. “You know, Mr. President, we can’t be certain that the other end of the TRGA link will be the Glothr home system. It might be the N’gai Cloud, where we visited the Sh’daar twenty years ago. It might be some other place in the galaxy at time now, rather than in the past. We just don’t know.”
“True.”
“Worst case—the Glothr could lead us someplace well away from their home system. Maybe a place with a Sh’daar fleet waiting for us, because they know something about faster-than-light communication and we don’t.”
“My, you do have a nasty, suspicious mind, don’t you?”
“It’s what I would try to do if the situation was reversed. They’re not going to want us coming anywhere near their homeworld. You do know that, right?”
“It depends on the payoff, Sandy,” Koenig said, using Gray’s old squadron handle. “If they can get us to surrender without a shot, to knuckle under to the Sh’daar demands, they’ll do it. Maybe they just want peace. That’ll be up to you and Dr. Rand.”
Dr. Lawrence Rand had been appointed ambassador-at-large by the USNA State Department. He and his staff, which included a team of xenosophontologists from Crisium, would be traveling on board the Glothr vessel inside a courier packet specially modified as a human-life-support hab module. They hoped to establish permanent peaceful relations with the Glothr at the very least, and possibly the larger Sh’daar Collective as well.
“And if they can squash us like a bug, they’ll do that instead. The mission briefing said the Glothr were . . . what? A billion years ahead of us?”
“Our Glothr friend was trying indirectly to make us think so,” Koenig said. “I don’t believe it for a minute, though.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“I might believe a million years. Maybe. But a species that’s been around for a billion years . . . hell, I’d expect them to have evolved into beings of pure light or something, ages ago. Wouldn’t you?”
“Transcendence,” Gray said. “Yeah. But that’s the point of the Sh’daar, isn’t it? They’re doing everything they can not to transcend to a higher order.”
“They want to block technological transcendence. But how do you stop evolution itself?”
“By taking control of your own genetics, of course. We’re doing that ourselves now.” Transhumans . . .
“And that’s one of the forbidden technologies.”
“Ah. I see what you mean.” A new thought occurred to Gray. “Huh. There’s an idea. If the Glothr are from the N’gai Cloud, they might have started out 876 million years ago, but be counting their presence at time now in this galaxy. That would mean their existence spans almost a billion years.”
“Maybe. I’d wondered about that, actually . . . but mostly I think our jellyfish friend was bluffing. They’ve lied about several things.”
“Such as?”
“I’m not convinced that they’re Sh’daar.”
“What?”
Gray felt Koenig’s shrug. “They don’t appear to have Seeds.”
That was a surprise.
The various time-now species encountered as members of the Sh’daar Collective included species startlingly different from one another, but they did seem to have one thing in common. Certain members of each species possessed tiny, BB-sized pellets somewhere within their bodies. Known as Sh’daar Seeds, they weren’t well understood as yet, but they seemed to be spy devices of a sort, storing up sights and sounds from the being’s immediate vicinity and, when a Sh’daar ship was close enough, transmitting that data in a tightly compressed burst. Not all Sh’daar individuals had them by any means, but most who had dealings with humans did, and the assumption was that the Seeds were one way of gathering intelligence about humans and their technology.
A new alien species only recently contacted, the monstrous Gr’doch, had not carried the telltale Seeds . . . and it had turned out that they were, in fact, enemies of the Sh’daar.
But the Glothr claimed to be part of the Collective—spokescreatures for the Sh’daar, in fact.
“It seems inconceivable that beings sent to actually negotiate with the Confederation wouldn’t be carrying Seeds,” Gray said. “Did they ask our guests about the Seeds out at Crisium?”
“They did.”
“And?”
“Our friends told the xeno boys that not all Sh’daar species carried them.”
“You know,” Gray said, thoughtful, “I’m beginning to wonder if the Glothr might not be a bit higher up the Sh’daar totem pole than some of the others, the Slan and Nungies and the rest.”
“My thought as well,” Koenig told him. “And Konstantin agrees with us, by the way.”
Gray frowned. He wasn’t comfortable with that super-AI looking over his shoulder. “We’ll need confirmation, of course.”
“Of course. You may be able to get it when you follow Charlie One out to the Beehive . . . and on through the TRGA. Be sure to come back and fill me in. A question?”
“Yes, sir?”
“The squadron you’re sending through the TRGA on point, and the three cutters. You’re confident in all of them? It’s a monumental responsibility.”
Gray hesitated before answering. And he wondered just how much the president knew. Everything, most likely. In a linked-in military network there were astonishingly few secrets. By not raising the problem with Dahlquist directly, Koenig was giving Gray the benefit of the doubt, and avoiding the ugly and dangerous specter of micromanagement.
“I have complete confidence in them, sir.”
“All of them? No problems?”
“Nothing worth mentioning, sir.”
“Good.”
A signal chimed within Gray’s awareness. “America’s skipper is telling me it’s time to haul ass, Mr. President.”
“Good luck, Sandy. Listen, I mean it. Be sure to come back home . . . and be sure you bring that expensive fleet with you.”
Gray laughed. “Aye, aye, sir.” He shifted mental channels. “Okay, Captain . . . take us out.”
And the star carrier America began accelerating.
Emergency Presidential Command Post
Toronto
United States of North America
1412 hours, EST
President Koenig watched on his own display as the ships of Task Force One formed up into a cone formation just beyond the sprawl of the immense SupraQuito naval facilities and began accelerating outbound. Off to one side, another ship—the massive, 900-meter form of the incongruously named Charlie One—was rising smoothly from the nearly full face of the moon. As the minutes passed, Charlie One slid into position at the fleet cone’s apex, leading them outbound in the direction of the small and inconspicuous constellation of Cancer.
“America reports clear communications with the alien vessel,” a voice whispered in Koenig’s mind. “All nominal.”
“Very well, Kelly,” Koenig replied. “Continue relaying messages for as long as the time lag allows.”
“Yes, sir.”
Koenig had heard some scuttlebutt and speculation within the Navy’s physics community, which had questioned whether some Sh’daar species already possessed faster-than-light communication. If so, the human fleet was going to be at a terrible disadvantage out there.
“I hope we’re doing the right thing,” he said aloud.
There was no one else in the presidential office with him . . . no organic being, at any rate.
Three seconds passed, the time required for Ko
enig’s words to reach the Konstantin AI facility at Tsiolkovsky, on the lunar far side, and for Konstantin’s reply to return . . . plus a half-second pause that likely was generated by the AI for a humanlike effect. Humans could be disconcerted by the speed of Konstantin’s responses to even the most complex of questions.
“We have done what we can to maximize Admiral Gray’s chances,” Konstantin’s voice replied.
“He still doesn’t like that promotion, you know,” Koenig said. “He’s still pretty angry about it. Angry at me.”
“The promotion had to appear to come from you,” Konstantin replied. “Otherwise, he might have discounted it . . . or rejected its legitimacy.”
“But it was your idea. And . . . you know? I still don’t understand why you suggested it.”
“Partly to give him the requisite authority with the commanding officers of ships and squadrons from other nations.”
“Well, yes . . . I know that. It makes sense.” Koenig had told Gray as much when he’d given him the news of the promotion: “You’ll need to pull at least an O-10 if you’re going to be on an equal footing with the likes of Ulyukayev or Gao or Singh.”
But the fact remained that someone like Jerry Matthews or Karyl Bennington already had the rank. “Hell,” Koenig continued, “there must be a few hundred four-star admirals that would have jumped at the chance to command TF-1. Why promote Sandy Gray and stir up all kinds of resentment within the Navy’s officer corps?”
“Because Gray, possibly more than any other officer in the USNA military, possesses extensive experience with a variety of nonhuman sentient species, in particular first-contact experience.”
And that was true as well. Last year, Matthews had fought a Confederation fleet to a standstill at Alpha Centauri A, but he hadn’t faced aliens since the H’rulka Incursion twenty years ago. Same for Bennington and Gramm. When it came to encounters with alien intelligences, their diplomatic skills were rather untested.
“Further,” Konstantin went on, “Gray is aggressive in combat, but flexible in his approach. More than most humans, he seems able to assess a threat and respond with diplomacy rather than firepower when diplomacy offers the best, most advantageous chance of conflict resolution. Too, his leadership skills are excellent, as is his capacity for both tactical and strategic thinking when force is called for.”
“Oh, he’s good,” Koenig said. “I’ll give you that. He’s also a bit of a maverick. He’s never fit the Navy mold comfortably, and he has a tendency to do things his own way.”
“True. But as your protégé, he will accept guidance from you and, through you, from me.”
It was a distinction Koenig had not thought of before. Yes, Koenig had helped the young officer along at several key points, helping further his career. As such, there definitely was a relationship between the two men that had been mutually beneficial. Koenig was well aware that the naval service was so intensely political once you reached the rank of captain . . . and Gray, the former Prim, had had a major strike against him from the start.
But Koenig had seen something in Gray that no one else . . .
“You’ve been maneuvering me in order to steer the guy?” Koenig asked. “You were using me!”
“Necessarily so. Would he have accepted a promotion, an explanation, and orders from me?”
“Well—”
“Perhaps more to the point, would you have agreed with my tactics?”
Koenig didn’t know whether to be angry or impressed. The unspoken assumption about artificial intelligence was that they could not—or, at the very least, would not—lie. Of course, an AI would do what it was programmed to do. For centuries, now, however, artificial intelligences had been programmed to program themselves, each new generation of AI designing its own successors. An AI could be programmed to lie, certainly . . . but there were supposed to be safeguards and protocols to prevent that.
Konstantin had originally suggested promoting Gray to full admiral, explaining that the move was necessary to give Gray the necessary command authority with foreign officers . . . and Koenig had accepted that at the time. But evidently there’d been a lot more to Konstantin’s reasoning.
Koenig knew from personal experience that Konstantin was quite capable of withholding some aspects of the truth for its own purposes. It had proven that just now, admitting that there’d been reasons for manipulating Gray that it had not discussed with Koenig. But Konstantin had also just revealed that its deception had gone well beyond merely withholding data, and extended into the grayer realm of misdirection.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Koenig said slowly. “He might have surprised you. . . .”
“This approach eliminates surprise as a factor.”
“I suppose it does. But—”
“As a Prim from the Manhat Ruins,” Konstantin went on, relentless, “Gray possesses a distinct mistrust both of authority and of technology—in particular of government authority and of advanced AIs such as myself, at least insofar as we are involved in government. But his time serving under your command on board the America forged a certain kinship between you, brought you together in what some refer to as ‘a band of brothers.’ He trusts you, and is more likely to follow your explicit orders even when they seem counterintuitive than he would be with someone else. And Gray’s experience with new alien species does make him . . . unique.”
“So you’re just saying he’s the right man for the job.”
“Indeed, Mr. President. As are you.”
That stopped Koenig in his figurative tracks. He’d been thinking about Konstantin’s eerie ability to manipulate humans to work its will—through religion, through misdirection, through the way it disseminated information. Now, the AI had just suggested that it had been manipulating Koenig’s path as well.
Though originally constructed and run by the USNA, Konstantin had begun as a Confederation project. It had guided a platoon of USNA Marines to protect itself, however, when Confederation forces had tried to seize it some months back, arguing that the USNA gave it the most freedom to develop its plans. More than once, Koenig had wondered just how well Konstantin understood the minds and emotions of its human caretakers. Surely working with humans was more complicated than simply identifying a few key emotional triggers and firing them off.
“What, exactly, did you have in mind?” Koenig asked, watching the electronic representation of the fleet dwindling against the stars. “Sending them out there, I mean?”
“The Sh’daar still represent a considerable unknown,” Konstantin replied, “in terms of both motivation and of capability. It is in Humankind’s best interests to end the conflict with them as quickly as possible, and on the best terms possible, both for your species and for our civilization.”
“Well, I would agree . . . but what do you get out of all of these Machiavellian shenanigans?”
“Besides my personal survival?”
“Well, survival is a pretty reasonable motivation all by itself. . . .”
The image of the departing task force floating in Koenig’s office was replaced by a new image, one that he’d been seeing a lot recently. A wall of dazzlingly bright stars, close-packed, the innermost core of a titanic globular cluster, and at the center the whirl of six black holes orbiting a common center of gravity in a spacetime-bending blur. Reaching out in all directions, the beams and girders of an enigmatic structure, some material, some apparently constructed of pure light, unfolded against the brilliant backdrop.
The Rosette Aliens . . .
“They may be coming this way,” Konstantin said quietly. “And we’ll want to be ready for them when they get here.”
Chapter Twelve
5 August, 2425
USNA Star Carrier America
M44, the Beehive Cluster
577 Light Years from Earth
0811 hours, TFT
“Fift
een minutes to Emergence, Admiral,” the ship’s AI whispered in his head.
“Very well.” Gray looked up from the remnants of breakfast and grinned at Laurie. “Time for us to go and earn our keep, Commander.”
Taggart dabbed at her lips. “I heard. Any bets as to what we’re going to find?”
“Probably a lot of stars.”
“You know what I mean!”
He laughed. “I don’t think we’re going to emerge inside a Glothr fleet, if that’s what you mean,” Gray said, rising from the table. They were in the officers’ mess in Hab 2, where spin-gravity provided about a half-G’s worth of weight, and you could enjoy your coffee in a cup instead of a squeeze bottle. “Not unless their communications technology is a lot more advanced than ours.”
“But the alien ship could have arrived a week ago,” Taggart said, also standing. “They might have had time to assemble a fleet even if they don’t have FTL radio.”
“Well, that’s what keeps this job interesting, isn’t it? Let’s get up to the bridge.”
Gray, a bit self-consciously, felt the curious glances of several officers as the two of them made their way toward the hab’s travel pod. His relationship with Laurie Taggart had begun a long time ago, when he was a captain. His explosive rise through the flag ranks had created a yawning gulf in rank between them . . . just one of the unpleasant issues raised by his recent series of promotions.
Despite the rules against fraternization being obsolete—people being people—there was still an undercurrent of . . . call it impropriety in a flag officer in a frankly sexual relationship with an officer five rank-jumps his junior. For a time, Gray had seriously considered breaking off the relationship with Laurie when he’d received his utterly unprecedented promotion to full admiral, but had decided against even bringing it up with her.
Perhaps he would have ended the relationship if she’d been directly under his command, but he was the commander of the task force, while she was America’s weapons officer. While he might be her CO, she didn’t report to him, but rather to America’s skipper, Sara Gutierrez.
