Star Carrier 6: Deep Time
Page 35
There were some things that were better not shared with them.
One thing was clear: it was going to have to have a long discussion with Koenig and, ideally, with the leaders of other human nation-states. It was imperative that Humankind learn to work with their recent enemies, the Sh’daar, just as the USNA was learning to work with the remnants of the Confederation. The information gleaned by Gray’s expedition into the remote future was . . . disturbing, on several levels.
The shape and extent of the Sh’daar Collective was at last clear: a collection of thousands, perhaps millions of sapient species scattered across almost 900 million years. Within that Collective, individual species evolved, grew, aged, and died. The information comprising the whole, however, survived, continuing into the future, expanding, unfolding, ever-new.
The Sh’daar, spreading through time as well as space as their home N’gai Cloud was devoured by the far larger Milky Way, had encountered a fairly typical sapient species on the point of colonizing their small corner of the galaxy. These humans, as they called themselves, had proved . . . troublesome, unwilling to yield to the self-evident superiority of the Collective, and, most seriously, unwilling to restrict a headlong technological advancement that seemed certain to attract unwanted attention from Type III civilizations.
Attempts to absorb or deflect the humans had failed, and there was the very real danger that humans would blunder through time and introduce paradox to an already tangled skein of reality. The Glothr, from the remote future, had tried making contact with the humans in order both to elicit their cooperation and to discover why the humans refused to cooperate.
And now a Type III civilization had indeed broken through the walls within the metaverse, and was moving swiftly toward Earth. Some of the invaders had been reported at Kapteyn’s Star, a scant thirteen light years from Sol.
Images from the remote future showed the final destruction of the Sh’daar Collective, with far more powerful aliens sucking the galaxy dry of energy, dust, and life as they assembled a titanic megastructure at the Galactic Core.
Galaxy wreckers.
After 900 million years, there still was no sign of the stargods. Unless, indeed, the stargods were the invaders themselves. No potential allies. No help.
All of this Konstantin understood from its connections with multiple networks.
And slowly and surely, it began developing its plan.
About the Author
IAN DOUGLAS is one of the pseudonyms for writer William H. Keith, New York Times bestselling author of the popular military science fiction series The Heritage Trilogy, The Legacy Trilogy, The Inheritance Trilogy, The Star Corpsman, and the ongoing Star Carrier series. A former naval corpsman, he lives in Pennsylvania.
www.whkeith.com
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By Ian Douglas
Star Corpsman
Bloodstar
Abyss Deep
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Deep Time
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