by Ian Douglas
The Marines standing at the pressure door were pouring fire into the advancing mass, shot after shot snapping down the corridor and flashing with each hit of the oncoming Nungies.
“Pour it on, people!” McDevitt yelled. He could feel the insane bloodlust of combat rising, feel that giddy, out-of-control whirlwind of rage and excitement that he’d not experienced since his last hand-to-hand battle ten years ago.
Lieutenant colonels weren’t supposed to feel bloodlust, and they certainly weren’t supposed to engage in combat at knife-fight range.
But McDevitt was a Marine, and every Marine was a rifleman.
More Nungiirtok appeared down the passageway, and he shifted his aim to them.
USNA CVS America
CIC
N’gai Cluster
1656 hours, FST
“Are you ready for this, Konstantin?”
“Unknown, Admiral. Since I do not know in detail exactly what I will encounter over there, I honestly cannot say whether I am prepared to face it or not.”
Gray frowned but decided not to pursue it. If anyone could pull this off, it was Konstantin. The links were solidly in place and protected against enemy attempts to jam or compromise them. With any luck, this would be over so quickly they wouldn’t have the chance to counter it.
“You should warn the Marines that I am on the way,” Konstantin told him.
“Right. How long is this gonna take, you think?”
“Unknown. But in human time scales, at least, it should be over very quickly.”
And then the SAI was gone.
Gray had suggested the idea moments ago, but it had been Konstantin who’d worked out the details. What they were trying was similar to the Omega virus—an electronic attack aimed at AI systems they’d picked up from the Denebans and employed against the Consciousness. What Gray was uncertain about was whether this would work against organic beings like the Nungiirtok . . . and how. The Consciousness had been an extremely advanced SAI, software, not organic life.
But Konstantin Junior had another angle, he promised, something that should give them a decided edge.
Whatever Konstantin had in mind, Gray hoped it worked out.
Konstantin-2
CIS CV Moskva
N’gai Cluster
1657 hours, FST
To say that Konstantin could see the way humans did was somewhat problematic. Certainly, he made use of camera feeds, some tens of thousands of them at a time, and he could pick up visual input from the cerebral implants of humans who were recording what they were seeing.
But there were no cameras within the Godstream, and Konstantin’s mind worked far differently from its human counterparts. It was aware of colors and patterns as it streamed through the laser-com link between the America and the Moskva and onto the Russian carrier’s bridge, and it was sharply aware of myriad scenes flooding through its awareness, the points of view of thousands of men, women, and machines, of readings from over two thousand sensors of various types. Coupled with these, woven through them in a tapestry of staggering scope and complexity, was the heartbeat throb of over seven hundred networks, information frameworks, power and data feeds, and shipboard operational systems, all entangled with one another in a vast and powerful whole.
Antiviral systems and interlocking tiers of security software were encountered . . . and overwhelmed. Konstantin was much faster and could think around, over, or through any security block he encountered.
There were AIs within that network, but none capable of self-awareness or self-determination on Konstantin’s level. The Russians had long mistrusted anything that gave too much power to locally autonomous systems, such as ships and military units, preferring to keep everything under a human captain’s control.
And even then, they had other humans in place to watch the captain.
But Moskva was self-aware now. Konstantin was in complete control of every system and data feed and was shutting down major systems—drive and primary power taps, weapons, PriFly, navigation, external sensors—all to the consternation of the human controllers in the ship’s CIC and secondary bridge. Moskva was now blind, toothless, and paralyzed.
One thing Konstantin could not do was attack the Nungiirtok directly by interfering with their electronic implants or by shutting down their battlesuits. The Nungiirtok possessed sophisticated electronics imbedded within their tough hides and in their battlesuits, but the computer protocols and encoding all were vastly different from human standards. In time, Konstantin would be able to crack them, but for now he had to settle for a less direct approach.
He found he could jam their communications, broadcasting a piercing blast of feedback static through their comm receivers so that they could no longer talk to one another. After a moment’s experimentation, he found he could also set their battlesuit optical scanners to wide-open low-light. The Nungiirtok had large and sensitive eyes, the evolutionary product—human xenobiologists believed—of a genesis on the world of a cooler, dimmer sun than Sol. With their optics set to receive every photon available in a darkened room, the normal, ambient lighting within Moskva’s corridors abruptly became a hellish, blinding glare.
For Konstantin, the Godstream was a kind of surging, flowing ocean within which he moved, absorbed data, and manipulated systems. Things had indeed happened quickly. Between his arrival within Moskva’s networks and the moment he changed the settings on the Nungiirtok optics, just .06 of a second had passed. He waited another five seconds, monitoring the thrashing, erratic response of the aliens before finding the Russian commanding officer and opening a direct com link with him.
“Kapitan Pervogo Ranga Yuri Yuryevich Oreshkin,” Konstantin said with a measured, formal gravity.
The man jumped. “Who is there? What are you?”
“I am the artificial intelligence now in control of your vessel,” Konstantin said in perfect Russian. “I suggest you lay down your weapons and surrender this ship.”
“Or what?” Oreshkin demanded.
“Several possibilities come to mind,” Konstantin replied. “Among them shutting down life support or changing gas mix to one high in CO2 or lacking oxygen. I could also destroy this ship after my people evacuate back to their ships.”
“That would be murder!”
“That would be war. Believe me, I have no human compunctions about doing what must be done to secure the safety of my people and my ship. I would imagine that you feel the same way about protecting your crew.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then the Russian commander gave in. This time, he spoke English. “Okay . . . okay! I will give the order.”
Eighteen seconds after transferring his awareness to the Moskva, Konstantin reported back to Gray. “We have control of the Moskva.”
Elsewhere, the battle continued but was swiftly drawing to a close. Konstantin found control codes within the Moskva’s PriFly, and used them to shut down Russian fighters engaging the Arlington, Birmingham, and America herself. The four Russian destroyers were not so easily commandeered, but Oreshkin himself transmitted orders to his forces to cease fighting before they could close with America.
It took a little longer to subdue the Nungiirtok, but at last the shooting stopped, and the USNA forces secured the Russian carrier.
Now they needed to discover the reason for the attack.
Lieutenant Adams
Moskva
N’gai Clluster
1845 hours, FST
Lieutenant Adams had been alone in this cell for what felt like hours. The place was essentially a steel box three meters by four meters by three meters high—scarcely enough room to pace. A fold-down bunk occupied the back bulkhead. Toilet facilities and a water tap folded out of another. The light overhead was never off.
Occasionally she could hear a commotion in the distance: boots running down corridors, piercing yells and shouts. Once she heard the dull, distant boom of an explosion.
What the hell was going on out there?
&
nbsp; At last, the door to her cell slid open, and an armored figure leaned in . . .
An armored figure wearing the insignia of the USNA Marines.
Rising from her bunk, Adams couldn’t resist. She was a devotee of old movies, especially space yarns. “Aren’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper?”
The Marine seemed taken aback. “What the fuck?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Classical reference. What the hell is that ruckus out there?”
The Marine seemed to recover his composure. “Sergeant Hobbes, ma’am, USNA Marines. We saw there was a prisoner in here . . . so I guess this is a rescue. Who are you?”
“Julianne Adams, Lieutenant,” she managed. “VFA-198, off the America . . .”
Then the enormity of what was happening struck her, and she sagged, racked by sobs.
But she was able to walk out of the cell under her own power, and minutes later she was on her way back to the America.
USNA CVS America
Officers’ Mess
N’gai Cluster
1850 hours, FST
“The question of the hour is why the Russians attacked us,” Gray said. “Are we at war with them back home? There wasn’t any problem with them of which I was aware.”
Truitt made a face. “Who knows why the Russians do anything?”
They were sitting in the officers’ mess, located within Hab Two, one of the modules rotating around America’s spine in order to create a spin gravity equivalent to about half a G. With Gray were Truitt and Kline, who’d just returned on board after interviewing several of the Nungiirtok on the Moskva, and Dr. Greg Mallory, from the xenotechnology department. Dinner had just been served by a human messman—one of the perks of the officers’ mess—and Gray was enjoying a concoction of shrimp and rice that completely hid its humble origins as reconstituted rawmat.
“Now, Doctor,” Gray chided. “If I’ve learned anything from you, it’s that intelligent beings have reasons for doing what they do. Humans, Turusch, Nungiirtok—it doesn’t matter. Each has an agenda.”
“Sorry, Admiral. My specialty is xenosophonts—aliens. Humans . . .” He shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Okay . . . so what have you learned about the Nungies?” Gray continued. “What the hell were they doing on board a Russian star carrier?”
“Well, Oreshkin claims it was a humanitarian mission,” Kline told him. “A group of Nungiirtok were stranded on Osiris twenty years ago, out in the mountains beyond the city of Abdju.”
“Stranded?”
“They were cut off when Confederation forces landed and retook the planet,” Truitt said. “They refused to surrender, but their Turusch transports were gone and they had no way of leaving the planet. Apparently the Russians made contact and convinced them to come with them.”
“To where?”
“They appear to have been on their way to the Russian research station on Mars,” Mallory replied. “Presumably they would have been repatriated to their home planet, since we’re no longer at war with either the Sh’daar or the Sh’daar Collective.”
Gray nodded. This was old news, practically ancient history. He’d been a fighter pilot on board the America, back when the Nungies and their Turusch allies had captured the 70 Ophiuchi system. The Nungies had held a fearsome reputation as hulking, heavily armored ground troops, and they’d rolled right over the lightly armed colonial militia out there.
European forces had gone back to 70 Ophiuchi A II—Osiris—several years later and retaken the colony of New Egypt on the planet’s southern continent. With the Turusch naval forces broken, the Nungiirtok on the planet had been unable to resupply and unable to evacuate. Apparently, though, the counterattack hadn’t cleaned out all of the invaders. A planet, after all, was an enormous place, offering way too many places to hide.
“Are they going to be a problem?” Gray asked Truitt.
“I don’t think so,” the older man replied. “Especially since we can essentially offer them the same thing the Russians did—repatriation.”
“They did attack us, Doctor.”
“At the Russians’ behest. I see no advantage in punishing them for the sake of punishment. All they want is to go home.”
“I don’t care about punishment. I’m worried about what twenty-five Nungiirtok warriors are going to do on board America, especially when they learn we will not be taking them home right away.”
“We could leave them on the Moskva,” Kline suggested.
“Where the Russians might try to retake their ship, maybe with help from their Nungie allies?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You know, there’s an alternative,” Mallory said.
“Yes? I’d love to hear it.”
“We transfer them to the Arlington. Better yet, make it one of the Russian destroyers. We take off the human crew, we make sure the rawmat reserves are adequate, and we remove the drive module so they can’t go anywhere.” He gestured toward the viewall bulkhead, at thronging stars and the tight, tiny circle of stars in the distance, the accretion disks of six brand-new black holes. “We leave them here. Make sure their shielding is okay, of course—we don’t want them to fry in a high-rad environment. Then we go do what we have to do and pick them up on our way back.”
“Turn a destroyer into a prison camp, huh?” He nodded. “Makes sense. They’re gonna be pissed if we don’t make it back.”
“They would be pissed if they went with us and we didn’t make it back,” Truitt pointed out. “It’s a humane option, given the constraints of our mission. Besides, we leave the ship broadcasting on a distress frequency and leave a recording describing what we’ve done. Other expeditions are bound to come to the N’gai Cluster over the next few months to study the aftereffects of the hypernova. The prisoners will be fine.”
“Okay. We’ll need to have the Marines be very sure that the ship we choose is clean of weapons, though. We can’t afford to leave any guards behind, and I don’t want to come back and find any . . . surprises.”
Gray closed his eyes and opened a channel to Mackey, letting him know what he wanted. Mackey acknowledged; the Russian destroyer Slava had not yet rejoined the Moskva and was adrift a few kilometers off. She would do . . .
“Okay,” he said, returning to the mess hall. “I need your assessments. Where are the Sh’daar refugees, and how are we going to make contact?”
“Out there, of course,” Truitt said, with a vague wave of his hand toward the panorama of deep space. “Where would you expect?”
Gray eyed the head of America’s xenosophontology department and frowned. “I’d hoped for something more substantial from you, Doctor. More useful.”
“Well, they can’t have gone far, right?” Kline said. “Last time we saw them, they were traveling in normal space.”
“A lot of them were,” Mallory replied. “The big, mobile colonies, the McKendree cylinders, the Banks orbitals. Big things, too big to go fast, too big to fit through a TRGA.”
“Well, then,” Truitt said. “Seems to me they can’t have gone farther than three light years, right?”
Gray looked up at the overhead. “Dr. Truitt . . . do you have any idea at all how big a light year is?”
“Certainly. A little over nine trillion kilometers.”
“And how tiny any vessel or artifact fashioned by intelligence actually is within all of that emptiness? We would have trouble spotting a planet within a light year or three. Even something as big as a Banks orbital would be all but lost in all that emptiness.”
“Surely,” Kline said, “there must be some way of finding a whole fleet of such structures.”
“We’ll search,” Gray said. “Maybe we’ll pick up radio chatter or the beams of laser coms. Maybe we can pick them up on infrared or by X-ray trails. A structure that big plowing through dust and gas at close to c should leave a pretty bright radiation track. But it’s not going to be easy. These guys don’t want to be found, remember. They’re afraid of the Consc
iousness chasing after them, and they know that thing is a hell of a lot more technologically advanced than we are.”
“If it’s as big a problem as you suggest, Admiral,” Truitt said, thoughtful, “what do you suggest we do?”
“We might scout ahead looking for the smaller Sh’daar ships traveling faster than light—under their equivalent of Alcubierre Drive. Alcubierre Drive uses focused gravitational singularities to tuck the space around them into a bubble moving at FTL, and that generates some pretty significant gravitational waves.”
“Surely that’s how they’re moving their big world-ships as well,” Mallory said. “If we can pick up gravity waves . . .”
Gray shook his head. “The power usage for an Alcubierre Drive is many orders of magnitude greater at FTL velocities as opposed to sublight. We should be able to pick up FTL ships under drive with the equipment we have on board America. Structures moving at sublight . . . not so much. Again, we’ll look. But I want you to know we’re going to be searching a world-sized haystack for a microscopic needle.”
“Do we at least know what direction they were headed?” Kline asked.
Gray grinned at her. “Sure!” He waved his arm. “That way! We know they’re headed for the galactic disk of the Milky Way. That’s an enormous area to search.”
Truitt scowled. “If their Alcubierre Drive is as good as ours . . .” he began.
“It’s at least as good,” Mallory pointed out.
“. . . then in three years they should have made it all the way from N’gai to the Milky Way’s disk. Ten thousand light years, you said?”
