Dark Matter (Star Carrier, Book 5)

by Ian Douglas

  “That is a gross oversimplification,” Truitt said. “In point of fact—”

  “If you please, Doctor,” Gray said sharply, interrupting, “we’re not here to argue definitions or sophontology. The Rosette Aliens have demonstrated the ability to rework an entire globular cluster, millions of stars—which, on the Kardashev scale, makes them at least a high K-2, and quite possibly a K-3. Human technology currently stands at . . . what is it, Doctor? K-1.2?”

  “Approximately that,” Truitt said, “yes. But—”

  “The point is that our industrious friends out there, as a civilization, routinely wield something like one hundred quintillion times more power than we can. I agree with Commander Blakeslee. There’s little we can do here, except establish automated monitoring stations.”

  “Again, assuming they let us leave,” Captain Guiterrez said. “We are deep, deep inside their operational area.”

  Gray opened a new channel within his in-head circuitry, and the bulkhead opposite the view of the cluster’s heart flowed and shimmered and then lit up with a schematic of the star cluster. The stars themselves were ghosted; otherwise, points of interest at the very center, including the position of America’s task force, would have been completely hidden.

  With a thoughtclick, the view zoomed in on Omega Centauri’s heart. The entire cluster was a tightly packed ball of suns about 230 light years across, but the Black Rosette—and the majority of the alien constructs—was at the very center, and America and the other Earth ships were only 50 AUs away—no distance at all in interstellar terms. One AU was defined as the distance between Earth and her sun—150,000,000 kilometers, on average. A single light year was roughly equal to about 64,000 Astronomical Units.

  It was interesting, Gray thought, not to mention quite worrying, that the aliens, whoever and whatever they were, had taken no apparent notice whatsoever of America and the ships with her. Carrier Battlegroup 40 consisted of the star carrier America; one cruiser, the Edmonton; three destroyers, the Ramirez, the John Young, and the Spruance; plus the provisioning ship Shenandoah. Though small as naval task forces went, the squadron represented a great deal of firepower, and yet the aliens had simply ignored them when they dropped out of their Alcubierre metaspace bubbles on the doorstep of . . . whatever the hell it was that they were building here.

  But they’d moved Walton’s recon ship when it drifted in front of the Black Rosette. Maybe they did care about humans . . . that or else human activity actually could inconvenience them or somehow pose a threat to their operations.

  Which was it? And how could the task force answer that question?

  “How would X-Dep suggest we communicate with these . . . people?” Gray asked.

  “We can’t,” Truitt said.

  “We might try various Sh’daar languages,” Kline added. “The Agletsch trade pidgins.”

  “Whoever the Rosette Aliens are,” Truitt said, “they likely come from a long way off. I doubt they’ve ever heard of the Sh’daar Collective or the Agletsch.”

  The Agletsch were a galactic spacefaring species well known as traders of information. Two had been on board America until her last swing past Earth, when they’d disembarked for an extended chat with naval intelligence Earthside. The Agletsch were known to carry minute artificial intelligences within them, called Seeds, that communicated with the Sh’daar when they were within range. Having them on board a military vessel was always a risk, since the Sh’daar Seed might well compromise the ship’s security . . . but they were also incredibly useful as allies. Agletsch knowledge spanned a large fraction of the Sh’daar Collective, and their knowledge of artificial trade languages, developed to allow diverse members of the Collective to communicate with one another, had more than once proven vital.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Gray said. “We know the Rosette started off as the Six Suns, almost a billion years ago. We know that the Builders left TRGA cylinders scattered across the galaxy, and that those artifacts allow at least a limited form of time travel. The Rosette Aliens might be the Builders . . . and if so, they’ve had contact with the Collective . . . or at least with the Sh’daar of over eight hundred million years ago.”

  The TRGA cylinder at Texaghu Resch had provided access to the Sh’daar inhabiting the N’gai Cloud 876 million years ago. It was generally believed, however, that the civilization that had constructed the TRGA cylinders was far older, and far more advanced, than even the now-vanished ur-Sh’daar.

  “We have no evidence that these aliens are the Builders,” Truitt snapped. “The Builders in any case are probably long extinct.”

  “I wonder?” Kline said. “A K-3 civilization might well be beyond threats of extinction. At the very least, they likely possess what for all practical intents and purposes amounts to both individual and cultural immortality.”

  “Don’t you think that a true galaxy-wide civilization, a K-3,” Gray said, “would be aware of other K-3 level civilizations nearby? That they would be able to communicate with one another?”

  “Some of the electronic Agletsch pidgins might be ideal for that,” Kline said. “They were designed for sapient species that have little or nothing in the way of biological similarities.”

  “But we’ve already transmitted messages of friendship and requests for open communications channels,” Commander Pamela Wilson said. Like Gutierrez, she was on the bridge at the moment, but linked in to the briefing session electronically. “In Drukrhu, and in four other Agletsch pidgins.”

  The languages had been loaded into America’s AI, so the Agletsch themselves weren’t necessary for translations. Gray wished the spidery little aliens were still on board, however. He would have liked to ask them if they’d ever encountered anything like the Rosette Aliens.

  But then again, the Agletsch traded in information, and rarely gave away anything for free. That particular bit of data might well be priced beyond Gray’s reach.

  He would have some questions for them, though, once America made it back to Earth.

  “Very well,” he said. He focused his concentration for a moment, composing a new message. “Transmit this, Commander Wilson, broadband and in all known Sh’daar languages.

  “Commander Blakeslee? Give us a course out of the cluster. We’re going to head for home.”

  Emergency Presidential Command Post

  Toronto

  United States of North America

  1435 hours, EST

  “What the hell is going on over there, Marcus?”

  Marcus Whitney, the president’s chief of staff, spread his hands. “Damned if I know, Mr. President. Intelligence doesn’t have a clear picture right now.”

  “Do we now what’s happened to President Roettgen?”

  “No, sir. Presumably, she was in the Ad Astra Complex when the rebel forces overran the place. She may be a prisoner; she may be dead.”

  Alexander Koenig, president of the United States of North America, stared at the viewall news feed and wondered if this would be the end of the war. Facts were sketchy, less than trustworthy, and often contradictory.

  But it did appear that the Terran Confederation government was on the point of collapse.

  The United States of North America had been a part of the Terran Confederation since 2133 and the creation of the Pax Confeoderata. That union had become increasingly strained, however, until open warfare had broken out.

  The causes of war were varied, but chief among them was a fundamental disagreement over how to prosecute the Sh’daar War. The USNA was committed to continuing the fight. The Confederation government wanted to accept the Sh’daar Ultimatum and become a part of the Sh’daar Collective. Disagreement in extrasolar policy—together with lesser issues such as rights of self-determination and rights to abandoned coastal areas like Manhattan, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.—had led first to skirmishes in space, then to all-out war. Gene
va’s forces had attacked the flooded ruins of D.C. and attempted to capture the Tsiolkovsky Array, the hyperintelligent AI computer complex on the lunar far side. Both attempts had been beaten off . . . but then the unthinkable had taken place.

  On 15 November, 2424, Confederation ships had struck the USNA capital at Columbus from space with a nano-deconstructor warhead, chewing a hole three kilometers wide and half a kilometer deep down into the heart of the city in an attempt to decapitate the North American leadership—meaning Koenig himself, as well as the USNA’s Earth-based command and control assets.

  The attack had failed—though the city had been destroyed and millions of people killed. The heavily shielded presidential command bunker had been two kilometers down . . . and Koenig and his staff had been able to escape by high-speed maglev train through a deep, evacuated rail tunnel connecting to the city of Toronto. And from the emergency command center set up in and beneath Toronto’s York Civic Complex, the USNA government had continued the war.

  Now, two months later, it appeared that the Confederation effort was collapsing.

  Appeared. That was the operative word. It won’t do, Koenig thought, to become overconfident now, or to drop your guard. The devastating nano-D attack on Columbus, an atrocity in contravention of any number of treaties and protocols, had triggered defections from the Confederation ranks. Russia and North India both had seceded from the Confederation and allied with the USNA. Two powerful independent powers had entered the war as well—the Chinese Hegemony and the Islamic Theocracy, both long excluded from the Confederation, both siding with the USNA in exchange for promises of inclusion in any new Earth government.

  But the Confederation had been scoring victories as well. Besides annihilating Columbus, they’d destroyed a number of USNA orbital assets, were effectively in control of the SupraQuito space elevator, and had brought together a large fleet with which they were effectively dominating solar space. Mexico and Honduras had seceded from the USNA and invaded South California, Texas, and two other districts. Pan-European forces had occupied the Manhat Ruins and parts of the Virginia and Carolina Periphery coastlines. The USNA military was badly stretched, outnumbered, and just hanging on. Even with Hegemony and Theocracy help, the issue was in doubt.

  “Maybe Konstantin has some information,” Koenig said.

  Whitney grinned. “The Great Konstantin sees all . . . knows all . . .”

  It was a running joke within the emergency command post. The computer array in Tsiolkovsky on the moon had been instrumental in a number of successes in the war so far—not least of which had been opening negotiations with the Theocracy and with the Chinese.

  “Sometimes I’m afraid that it does all,” Koenig replied.

  But he opened the channel anyway.

  The artificial intelligence known as Konstantin was very much an enigma, and one that many—perhaps most—humans did not entirely trust. Computer AIs had surpassed the commonly accepted measures of human intelligence four centuries ago, and the Konstantin Array was a fifth-generation AIP running within a network of DS-8940 Digital Sentience computers. AIP stood for artificial intelligence programmed. Humans hadn’t programmed Konstantin; machines had, by copying large chunks of code and weaving them together in ways that often surprised their human overseers.

  Theoretically, computer minds programmed by computers still carried the same constraints as their human-programmed counterparts. While Konstantin was theoretically 1010 times more powerful in terms of synaptic complexity than a human, he still possessed what was comfortingly known as limited purview. He was very good at processing data and he could follow orders quite well, but computers weren’t supposed to be able to make decisions independently of humans, nor were they supposed to demonstrate what was theoretically a purely human trait: creativity.

  And yet, Koenig knew, Konstantin had displayed remarkable creativity several times already, most notably when he’d quietly opened negotiations with the Theocracy and the Hegemony. No human had directed him to do so.

  The fact that he had might well mean victory for the USNA.

  Koenig gave a wry smile. He was used to calling AIs “it,” . . . but over the past few months, Konstantin for him had definitely become a he.

  After a delay of a few moments, a window opened in Koenig’s mind. A balding and white-haired man in old-fashioned clothing and gold pince-nez looked at him from behind a book with its title in Cyrillic letters. Behind him were the anachronistic screens of a circular workstation complete with floating monitor displays and free-floating transparent control panels. “Ah, Mr. President,” the AI’s electronic avatar said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  The original Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had been a Russian schoolteacher in the early 20th century, a hermit who’d seemed strange, even bizarre, to his neighbors, but who’d been convinced that one day Humankind would spread out to the stars. With Oberth, Goddard, and Korolyov, he’d become known as one of the fathers of modern spaceflight . . . the father, in fact, since he’d predated the others.

  “I assume you’ve been watching the situation in Geneva,” Koenig said.

  As always, there was an awkward two-and-a-half-second pause as Koenig’s words crawled up to the moon, and the AI’s reply crawled back.

  “Of course. We expected something of the sort, of course, but events appear to be moving with unexpected speed.”

  “You expected a revolution?”

  “There has been considerable public outcry over the destruction of Columbus, particularly in Europe,” Konstantin replied. On the screens behind him, European soldiers were fighting in the ravaged streets of Geneva. It was night over there, the sky reflecting the light of a burning city. In the background of one monitor, Koenig recognized the sprawl of the Plaza of Light in Geneva’s heart, dominated by the immense statue Ascent of Man. Hover tanks were moving toward the Confederation’s Ad Astra Government Complex.

  “Too,” Konstantin continued, “the war has been dragging on without significant victories for two months. Anticipation for an early and easy victory has given way to doubts about the morality or legality of the war.”

  “This could be the end of it, then,” Koenig said.

  “Do not assume a USNA victory yet, Mr. President. The rebels appear to be a faction under General Janos Matonyi Korosi, formerly a hard-liner within the Confederation Senate. He has wanted President Roettgen’s job and power for some time, now, and he may see this coup as a means not only of defeating you, but to opening negotiations with the Sh’daar directly, ending the Sh’daar War, and presenting himself as Earth’s savior. There is also a personal aspect.”

  “What aspect?”

  “His brother was Karl Mihaly Korosi, executive officer of the destroyer Mölder.”

  “Ah.”

  Mölder had been one of the Pan-European warships that launched the deadly nano-disassembler attack on Columbus. She’d been destroyed by a spread of nukes fired from the Missouri. Moments later, the bombardment vessel Estremadura had fired six nano-D warheads. Five had been intercepted out in space by the frigate John Paul Jones, but the sixth had destroyed Columbus, D.C.

  Koenig recalled that Ilse Roettgen, the president of the Confederation Senate, had seemed shocked when she learned that Columbus had been hit by nano-D. He was as sure as he could be that she’d not been putting on an act—and that suggested that rogue elements within her own government or military forces had been operating on their own, behind her back. And if Korosi’s brother had been killed on the Mölder . . .

  That connection, tenuous as it was, suggested that the hard-liners in the Geneva government had planned and carried out the attack on Columbus, and now were using the situation to seize power. Lovely.

  “You think General Korosi is out for revenge, then?”

  “Unknown. I am simply relying on Big Data to build up a comprehensive picture of what is going on over there. I have
been unable to penetrate Pan-European electronic security.”

  That, of course, would have been one of the first things Konstantin tried, and the Europeans would have expected that, and have had their electronic defenses in place. In fact, one of the causes of the war had been their attempt to capture the Konstantin Array, deploying an armored force across the lunar surface from the Confederation base at Giordano Bruno. They’d been stopped on the north rim of Tsiolkovsky Crater by a small force of USNA Marines, but it had been a close-run thing. Koenig had gathered through his daily security briefings that the Confederation had been trying to electronically compromise Konstantin ever since, trying and failing.

  So far . . .

  Curious, Koenig glanced at the book Tsiolkovsky’s image was holding. He neither spoke nor read Russian, but a translation program riding within his cerebral implant overlaid his mental view with the book’s title in English.

  The Will of the Universe: The Unknown Intelligence, by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Kaluga, 1928.

  Koenig had never heard of it, but wondered if Konstantin was allowing him to see that title for some specific reason. The AI array could be remarkably subtle at times.

  “So, do you have any recommendations?” Koenig asked. If others mistrusted the giant AI array, even if he, Koenig, still had misgivings, he nevertheless had been relying more and more on the powerful AI’s advice. Konstantin could mine what was called Big Data, pulling tens of thousands of minute, often unrelated facts from a vast sea of information floating Out There in the electronic ether of Global Net and the various smaller, local news and communications networks. He could piece together disparate data and reveal connections, conclusions and intelligence of which no human observer could have been aware.

  “I have been tracking Confederation communications exchanges, and conclude that the rogue component of their government is staging their operation from here.”