B009NFP2OW EBOK

by Douglas, Ian

  That was no surprise. There were tens of thousands of open star clusters scattered across the galaxy, most of them far beyond the tiny region known to humans. More, even a small change in the angle of view would dramatically change any cluster’s appearance.

  The nebula, Gray thought, might be more easily identified; though again, which way you looked at it markedly affected its shape. If the ship’s Astrogation Department could identify that cluster, though, it might lead to the discovery of the Slan homeworld.

  And that could be an extremely effective bargaining chip in any future negotiations with them.

  “Slan vision, while poor by human standards, and lacking color, is still sensitive enough to see this cluster and the associated nebula in its night sky, probably as a bright, out-of-focus blob. Observation would have shown it crossing the sky with their planet’s orbit of its sun. It would be visible, of course, for half of the planet’s 140-day year. From what we’ve been able to glean from their records so far, that cluster, The Mystery, is what led them first to develop means of translating electromagnetic radiation—including visible light—into sound, which they could then see when it was displayed on their instruments. It made it possible for them to discover space, the wider universe beyond their world, and then to navigate it. By any standards, a remarkable scientific, intellectual, and technological feat.”

  Another change of scene . . . and the point of view had pulled back to orbit, where a fleet of starships fell through sunlight and into shadow—Ballistas, huge and ponderous, with their distinctive green, black, and red color schemes, together with numerous, smaller red and black Sabers and a swarm of blue and black Stilettos.

  Gray looked hard at those ships. Something wasn’t adding up.

  “Why,” he asked after a moment, “are their ships color coded?”

  There was silence from the watchers. Not even the AI responded for a long moment.

  “Interesting point,” Commander Taggart said. “If the Slan are blind . . .”

  “Exactly. They’re not even aware of color. The color slashes and patterns on those ships look random, no two alike, but the overall color is consistent among each type. Green, red, and black for the Ballistas, red and black for Sabers, blue and black for their fighters. How, if they’re color blind?”

  “It seems likely,” America’s AI said, “that they had help in reaching space. This may be evidence that they have help in the building of their military spacecraft.”

  And that made two Sh’daar client races known to have been given help in escaping their homeworlds. The H’rulka, living, communal balloons evolved in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant similar to Jupiter, were thought to have received help from outside—obvious when you considered that their homeworld had no solid surface, no way to develop fire, mining, smelting, fossil fuels, nuclear power, or any of the other developments necessary for a technic civilization. The H’rulka, in their few direct communications with humans, had revealed precious little about the species they referred to as Starborn.

  This, Gray thought, might be a second line of evidence pointing to the ancient Starborn. The Department of Extraterrestrial Relations, back on Earth, had declared that making contact with the Starborn was a Class A-1 priority. It was quite possible that the species, about which nothing was known, was none other than the Sh’daar themselves, or yet another va Sh’daar, a Sh’daar client species.

  And yet . . .

  Twenty years before, in a dwarf galaxy 800 million years in the past and tens of thousands of light years distant, Humankind had learned that the original Sh’daar were, in fact, a collection of species, a kind of interstellar federation or association occupying the galaxy now known as Omega Centauri T-0.876gy. Those species had undergone what humans knew as the Technological Singularity and their federation had collapsed. Most of the original species, referred to now as the ur-Sh’daar, had vanished—exactly where or how was not understood. The ones left behind had become the modern Sh’daar, and they had carried with them a monstrous dread of the literally transformational power of advanced technology.

  And the Sh’daar remnant had set out to make certain that a technological rapture of that sort could never again occur. GRIN technologies—Genetics, Robotics, Information Systems, and Nanotechnology—were targeted as the driving forces behind the Singularity. Block those, and the Singularity would not take place.

  The war with the Sh’daar was essentially one of self-determination, with Humankind determined to continue developing all available technologies, with the Sh’daar equally determined to suppress those technologies that they considered to be threats.

  But if the Sh’daar mistrusted technology that much, if they wanted to limit it, why would they assist younger, less advanced cultures in developing it? Why would they put atechnic species like the H’rulka onto the path of spaceflight at all . . . or help the Slan discover that they lived in a much vaster universe than they knew, and help them navigate the empty vacuum to other worlds? There was, Gray thought, a lot more to it than met the eye.

  It was a seemingly insoluble mystery, but if there was a solution, that solution might be vital for Humankind’s long-term survival.

  “Have we uncovered any other information that might point to the Starborn?” Gray asked.

  “No,” America’s AI replied. “Nothing, at any rate, that we’ve been able to recognize.”

  “Continue your explorations of the Slan databases, then,” Gray said. “ ‘Know your enemy . . .’ ”

  “ ‘. . . and yourself, and you will win a hundred battles without a single loss,’ ” the AI said, completing the ancient truth. The aphorism was drawn from Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Gray wondered if the AI was trying to give him a not-so-subtle reminder that it was equally important to know yourself in order to win.

  Right now, the intent of the fifty-two surviving Confederation ships under the command of Justin Lavallée was as unknown to Gray as the identity of the mysterious Starborn.

  And he didn’t like being so deeply in the dark.

  Executive Office, USNA

  Columbus, District of Columbia

  United States of North America

  1235 hours, EST

  The conference in Koenig’s office had been going on for almost half an hour, now. Present were Koenig’s chief of staff, the secretary of state, and the Executive Office chief counsel.

  “I hope you realize, Mr. President,” Pamela Sharpe said, “that by escalating this situation, we may well be looking at open war with the rest of the Confederation.”

  Sharpe was the USNA secretary of state, which meant that it was her job to advise the president on matters relating to foreign policy . . . including war.

  “I’m quite aware of that, Pamela,” Koenig replied. “But they’re the ones attacking us, okay? We do have a right to defend ourselves.”

  “But . . . naval forces?” she said. “A small assault team on the back side of the moon is one thing, but—”

  “They have troops on the ground in our Periphery. We need naval support to block them.”

  “Missouri and Amazon are approaching Washington now,” Admiral Gene Armitage told Koenig.

  “And Pittsburgh?”

  “Still at L-2, sir, keeping an eye on Bruno Base. The Marines are redeploying there.”

  Koenig considered this. Bruno Base was probably of minor importance, especially since Lieutenant Burnham’s platoon had pulled the Confederation’s fangs lunarside. They might be able to bring the ’Burgh to Earth . . . or possibly to SupraQuito in case the Confederation was planning a grab there as well. SupraQuito was technically a Confederation synchorbital facility . . . but it was staffed primarily by USNA naval personnel and civilians.

  No. One problem at a time . . .

  Missouri and Amazon were Mississippi-class High Guard sentinel ships, designed to patrol the outer solar system in search of plane
toids that might one day threaten Earth . . . and ships seeking to change the orbit of planetoids to turn them into weapons.

  Wormwood had been the first such attack, an asteroid nudged into a collision course with Earth by a rogue Chinese Hegemony ship. Despite efforts to turn the incoming body aside, a part of the rock had fallen into the Atlantic, smashing the coastlines of Europe and the Americas.

  There’d been a second Atlantic tsunami in 2405, generated by a Turusch one-kilogram high-velocity impactor streaking in past the sun and exploding in the atmosphere. The shock had been as savage as if the incoming mass had been a small asteroid, and something on the order of 50 million people had died. The disaster had underscored the need to stop asteroids on intercept orbits, whether those orbits had been set by chance or by design.

  High Guard sentinels did not possess Alcubierre Drives, so they could not travel between the stars. They did pack the armament of a naval destroyer, however, and their gravitic singularity drives gave them a fair degree of maneuverability. Koenig hoped they could take on the Confederation forces now moving into several of the coastal Peripheries—Washington, D.C., Manhattan, Baltimore, and Boston. There were reports of Confederation spacecraft in low orbit, and of troops coming ashore from immense Jotun transports.

  That datum itself was of interest. Intelligence suggested that the Jotuns had come from the floating seasteader city of Atlantica, currently riding the Gulf Stream north 100 kilometers off the coast of Virginia. It was possible that the Confederation had moved in and taken over the seasteads eighteen months earlier expressly to use them as staging points for an invasion of the USNA Peripheries.

  “Do we have any Marines in a position where they could board those seasteads?” Koenig asked.

  “Marines and SEALS Team Twelve, Mr. President. At Oceana.”

  Koenig nodded, thoughtful. SEALS—the acronym stood for the elements within which those elite naval commandos operated: sea, air, land, and space. They were among the best close-combat forces available to the USNA—highly trained, superbly motivated, and possessing exceptional cybernetic and nanomedical enhancements.

  If they were stationed at Oceana, though, they might be vulnerable. Oceana had started as a naval air station in tidewater Virginia, a base slowly submerged by rising sea levels late in the twenty-first century. It now was an oceanic complex, built partly on the sea floor and partly on massive pylons above the surface, providing support for American combat naval air and space units. It was less than 150 kilometers from Atlantica’s current position, however, and the Confederation would be well aware that it was there. If the enemy decided to escalate, Oceana would be an early target.

  “Good,” Koenig said. “I want the SEALS off of Oceana and on their way to Atlantica as soon as possible. The Marines . . . let’s hold them for the Periphery . . . especially New York and D.C.”

  “I would recommend one battalion of Marines be reserved for follow-on at Atlantica, sir,” Armitage told him. “As follow-on after the SEALS get on board . . . and as reinforcements in case the place is more heavily defended than we think.”

  “Do it. Can you provide air cover out of Oceana?”

  “We have three aerospace squadrons there now, Mr. President. They can be over Atlantica in minutes.”

  “Okay. Send one to cover our forces at D.C., one on CAP to protect Oceana, and one to hit Atlantica.” He thought for a moment. “What are we missing?”

  “If I might suggest, sir . . . the political side of things.”

  Koenig gave a grim smile. He’d dropped back into admiral mode, giving orders about military deployment and strategy, and not addressing the fact that war is, ultimately, the pursuit of politics by other means.

  “Ilse Roettgen isn’t talking to me at the moment,” he said. “We’re going to need to get her attention.”

  “If beating those troop carriers out of Bruno Base doesn’t get it, Mr. President, I don’t know what will.”

  “Let’s see if grabbing Atlantica back from the bastards will turn up the volume for her. Meanwhile . . . I want the Periphery protected.”

  “We’re not on solid legal ground with that, Mr. President,” the other man in the room pointed out. He was Thomas St. James, and he was the president’s executive counsel. He was a true cyborg, with the top of his head artificially enlarged to create space for additional components, both organic tissue cloned from his own stem cells and silicon. A network of gold and silver wires appeared to be etched into his hairless scalp in rectilinear patterns, allowing him a constant interface with several very powerful AIs, experts in both international and extraplanetary law.

  “What’s the problem, Tom?” Koenig asked.

  “Great Britain versus Falklands, 2233. Russian Federation versus Ukraine, 2280. Manhattan versus New New York, 2301. Confederation versus Belgium, 2342. The United States of North America formally abandoned those territories now called the Periphery.”

  “Well, yeah . . . but we still own those territories, even if we don’t control them.”

  “Not exactly. After the Blood Death, the Second Chinese War, and the Nanotech Economic Collapse, the government simply could not afford to provide basic services like police or medical help, much less reclaim or rebuild flooded cities. Article 31 of the Confederation Constitution, dating from 2133, declares that Geneva has both the right and the responsibility to assume full government control of territories abandoned by local government or which have otherwise slipped into anarchy.”

  Trying to talk with St. James was like in-heading a law text download, a bit of self-torture guaranteed to give you a headache. “Is that the pretext they used for taking over the Atlantic seasteads?”

  “No, sir. That was carried out under the Confederation Oceanic Crisis Management Act of 2412.”

  “And Tsiolkovsky?”

  “The databases have not yet been updated, but they have publically declared Konstantin to be a world heritage treasure serving all Humankind. I expect that they will defend their actions today by appealing to the World Heritage Act.”

  “The bastards attacked us,” Armitage growled. “On the Lunar farside, and now along our East Coast! We can’t just . . . just surrender to their damned lawyers!”

  “We’re not going to surrender, Gene,” Koenig said.

  “If we fight, it will give the Confederation the pretext they need for declaring us in rebellion. It means civil war, Mr. President, and a nasty one.”

  “All civil wars are nasty,” Koenig replied. “But the worst part about this one is the timing. If the Sh’daar are making a new move . . .”

  “Geneva’s pulling this shit now on purpose, Mr. President,” Armitage said. “They want us to fold right away so we’re not divided and fighting each other when the Sh’daar get here.”

  “Possibly,” Koenig replied. He moved his hand over a contact plate on his desk, calling up a virtual display screen that floated in the air between them. The imagery was from a robotic security drone in D.C., peering from a mangrove tree at the ponderous mass of a Confederation Jotun. Armored troops were pouring down the lowered ramps and splashing through the shallow water still covering the National Mall. In the distance, the ancient gray dome of the old Capitol Building rose from a mass of trees and clinging kudzu.

  “This is not going to stand,” Koenig said. “I want those people taken down, Gene. Now.”

  “Mr. President,” St. James said. “I really must advise—”

  “I’ve heard your advice, damn it. We stop them. We stop them before the Sh’daar get here. And we’ll worry about the legality of it all later.”

  He switched off the robot-eye view. “You gentlemen are dismissed.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  13 November 2424

  Washington, former District of Columbia

  USNA Periphery

  1440 hours, TFT

  Shay Ashton took carefu
l aim at the lead armored figure struggling up the muddy flats below her position, perched on the slope of a hill still called the Georgetown Heights. The targeting data fed from her laser carbine appeared in her in-head, showing the magnified image of the Confederation soldier with a bright red targeting reticule superimposed on his chest. Battlespace sensors were relaying data about the target’s radio and laser-com linkages and data crossloading; he or she was an officer, and a fairly high-ranking one at that, if the amount of radio traffic was any indication.

  She thoughtclicked the trigger . . .

  A puff of vapor high on the soldier’s chest marked a direct hit. The figure staggered . . . but the armor, its surface almost perfectly reflecting the colors and shapes of the surrounding swamp, was already healing itself. Ashton’s carbine, more than powerful enough to deal with Virginian cross-river raiders, simply didn’t have the oomph to penetrate modern combat armor.

  She ducked back behind the cover of a low concrete wall, then began crawling to her left. Seconds later, the patch of wall where she’d been hiding shattered in smoke and hurtling fragments of stone.

  Before long, they were going to run out of places to hide.

  Picking away at the invaders this way was all but useless. Sometimes you got lucky, but it didn’t happen often. She’d racked up eight kills so far in as many hours, and probably hurt another dozen in the running firefight through the old Washington ruins. You had to hit the enemy’s armor just right; the joint between helmet and chest plastron, just below the ear, was a good aim point. Another was the visor strip on the helmet. Hit that right, and you might overload the circuitry and blind the soldier, at least temporarily.

  But if your aim wasn’t perfect, the chances were good that the armor would just shrug the bolt off.

  Shay’s people had no armor, and had already died by the hundreds.

  “We’ve got the popper set up!” a voice called over her in-head. “We’re gonna try for the Jotun!”

  Ashton shifted her attention to the nearest of five Jotun transports, just a kilometer away, hovering over the swampy ground of what once, centuries before, had been called the Ellipse. Local folklore still called it that, though no one remembered what it was, or why part of the mangrove swamp had been given a name drawn from geometry.