by Ian Douglas
Natural-born diplomats, in other words. He wondered how Lloyd would get on with the Dhald’vi . . . then realized that Na Lal or his friends had wrapped Lloyd around their little . . . tentacle, leading him to agree to helping the Cooperative.
“The Cooperative became rigid in its ways of thinking hundreds of millions of years ago,” the Mind said through Lisa’s borrowed android body, interrupting St. Clair’s thoughts. “At some point, they sought to explore Andromeda as it approached the home Galaxy, and eventually to colonize it. We believe that various offshoots of the Cooperative colonizing Andromeda may have evolved significantly different philosophies and worldviews . . . and become the Dark.”
And now here we humans are—working to reconcile and disrupt both the Dark and the Cooperative. Perhaps what Newton was recovering now from his interface with the Bluestar fragment would be enough to resolve things once and for all.
“The Dark fragment is downloading information,” Newton told St. Clair. “A very great deal of it.”
St. Clair took a breath and braced himself. “Let me see. . . .”
“I think,” Lisa said, “that it wants to be understood.”
And then Kilgore took a step toward her and found himself in a different world. An instant before, he’d been standing in a gold-lit forest glade, speaking with the impossible resurrection of Lisa . . .
. . . and now he was back in his Marine armor, standing on a flat and barren plain beneath a violet sky. Rings arced overhead, other planets or moons hung above a distance-softened horizon, and the ocher ground at his feet was partially covered by long, cottony white filaments stretching off in every direction.
“What the hell?”
“This is Ki,” another voice said behind him. “We’re on the surface of Ki!”
Kilgore turned. His in-head circuitry identified the figure in a space-fighter pressure suit as Lieutenant Christopher Merrick of GFA-86. Behind him were other MCA-clad figures: Staff Sergeant Kari Rees, Marine Captain Greg Dixon, and twenty or thirty others—men and women who’d been swept up by the Bluestar during the fighting. As he watched, more and more figures seemed to step out of thin air, hundreds of them extending off toward the flat horizon.
It was the crew, he thought, of the destroyed Vera Cruz.
Kilgore gaped at the new arrivals for a moment, then turned to his left. There were several more figures there forty meters off, standing in the shelter of a grounded Devil Toad. One of them, he saw, was Lord Commander St. Clair.
“Where the hell did you all come from?” St. Clair said.
“I think, sir,” Dixon replied, “that we’re supposed to be some kind of a peace offering.”
St. Clair stood behind the broadcast podium, looking out across the live audience gathered in Elliott Square, and imagining the far larger electronic crowd of listeners beyond. Normally he would simply have told the colony what he wanted to say over Tellus Ad Astra’s electronic network and avoided the stress—not to mention the very real danger—of a physical, personally delivered speech. At least the crowd gathered here in the open was quiet and behaving in a civilized manner. The riots, the protests, the wild insurrectionist violence stirred up by both sides of the political spectrum appeared to have abated.
At least for now.
“The emergency,” he declared, “is not yet over. We have a ways to go yet before we can find a safe haven in this remote futurity.”
He heard a low undercurrent of noise, of murmuring from the gathered crowd. By declaring that the state of military emergency was still in effect, he was telling them that he would be remaining in power as the colony’s military commander, at least for the time being. And there were plenty of people here who didn’t like that one bit.
“We are of course continuing our negotiations with the Cooperative,” he told them. “By destroying the Bluestar threat, we’ve met the requirements of the government’s alliance with the Cooperative . . . rather to the Cooperative’s surprise, I might add. We’ve managed to take the edge off the Dark’s threat, at least for the moment, maybe bought the Cooperative some time. But the threat posed by the Andromedan Dark is still out there.”
The lifeboat fragment of the destroyed Bluestar was now in orbit around Ki, just outside the outer edge of the ring. When St. Clair had piloted the Kroajid moon into the Bluestar at close to the speed of light, the resultant blast had destroyed the Bluestar’s connection with the rest of the Andromedan Dark. The Dark, St. Clair now knew for certain, thanks to the new memories transmitted from the Fragment, was a galaxy-spanning super AI arising out of a million or perhaps billions of separate, lesser SAIs such as the Bluestar, interconnected by a faster-than-light communications network based on quantum entanglement.
The Fragment—Dumont’s people had taken to calling it “the Frag”—was providing a seemingly endless flood of data on how that particular trick worked.
But the thought that there were still billions of additional Bluestars out there was daunting to say the least. At least this one isolated fragment was friendly, and a good source of information about the rest of the alien network. From what St. Clair and Dumont’s xenotech people had been able to determine, the Frag in and of itself was a highly intelligent AI entity containing within itself a universe of virtual worlds and possibilities. When the Bluestar had been destroyed and the Frag found itself cut off from an entire galaxy of Mind, it had not so much surrendered as latched on to the nearest SAI network available . . . and that had been the world of Ki. The fact that the Frag had been able to integrate so seamlessly with the Mind of Ki was itself strong evidence that—as the Mind of Ki had already intimated—the Andromedan Dark had somehow originated within the Cooperative’s extragalactic expansion.
And that meant they were far from finished with either group.
“We are also,” St. Clair continued, addressing the listening crowd, “using captured alien technology to explore the history, the capabilities, and the weaknesses of the Andromedan Dark. We are going to have to face the Dark Mind again. And when we do, we will be ready.
“But in order to be able to do that, we need to re-make ourselves. We were cast adrift in this futurity by chance. We must take our own existence in hand, our own potential in hand, and find that path that gives us our best chances for survival . . . and our prosperity.”
St. Clair was not telling them the whole story. He couldn’t . . . partly because the whole story had not yet been uncovered, but mostly because the knowledge would do nothing for the Tellus population at all save add to the confusion, the fear, and the conflict. He didn’t like holding out. He didn’t like the politician’s stock-in-trade of bald-faced lies.
But the alternative was worse.
“To start with,” he continued, “I have uploaded to the colony’s AI my suggestions for some changes to our government. I’m not making this an order as military governor. I’m making suggestions that you, the citizens of Tellus Ad Astra can discuss, debate, and eventually vote on.
“But for a start, I want to get rid of the Earth Empire.”
It was pretty well-known that St. Clair, a firm Constitutionalist, had always opposed the Empire. But more than that, the Empire no longer had relevance for what was left of Humankind. A million souls locked into a tiny mobile colony—that was no empire! That was a tiny lifeboat of survivors adrift in strangeness, no different, really, than the Frag. And like the Frag, they needed to change their worldview, and their long-range focus.
But he knew that this was going to be a hard sell. And so he would start the transition here and now, while he still had the power.
“No more lords and ladies,” he continued. “No more elitist ruling class. Those titles and privileged-class honorifics served a purpose as we tried to pull order out of a warring chaos of 12 billion people, but they have no place here in the new system of governance we hope to create. As such, no more of this ‘Lord Commander’ crap. I am captain of the Ad Astra, no more—and no less—than that.”
St.
Clair could imagine he heard the howls of outrage from the elitists. They liked their titles and their prerogatives.
“I want you, the people of Tellus Ad Astra, to craft a new government of your choosing, led by men and women and AIs of your choosing. In the meantime, Newton and I will mind the store while you sort things out.”
He hoped that by abdicating the titles and honorifics of his own position, he might soften the blow somewhat, and help the transition move in the direction that it must. He knew, however, that he’d just touched off a firestorm by firing both Lloyd and Adler and all their cronies on the Cybercouncil. A clean sweep—out with the corruption, out with the influence-peddling, out with entitlements and backroom deals and attempted assassinations . . . that was the goal. St. Clair remembered a battle cry from the tangled and vicious American political wars of a century and a half before: drain the swamp.
I guess in this case, we could call it “opening the airlocks.”
Lloyd, Adler, Colfax, Hsien—all of the entitled Imperial class—they would all be at St. Clair’s throat after this broadcast. He knew that. The denizens of that swamp weren’t going to let themselves be drained without a very nasty fight indeed.
Of course, St. Clair had already taken steps to protect himself, but he was not going to be able to let his guard down for a moment. He knew that, too.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter.
Humankind mattered.
“Whatever the form and nature of your new civilian government,” he said, “my intent, my hope is that it will take its place among the myriad polities and worlds of the Galactic Cooperative as an equal. And if the Cooperative can’t accept us as equals, then we will go elsewhere. It’s a big universe. We will find—no, we will make a place for ourselves, for our children, for our future.”
That, at least, shouldn’t be a problem. Ad Astra had purchased quite a bit of respect from the Cooperative by destroying the Bluestar. Nevertheless, the humans of Tellus Ad Astra remained the equivalent of ignorant, savage children playing in the dirt among the feet of the gods. It was one thing to be accepted as equals. It would be a very long time indeed before they would be able to interact with the gods on anything like equality. Yet that wasn’t the goal—not really. The goal was simply this:
“One way or another,” St. Clair said, “we will survive. And I promise you, we will be the masters of our own future!”
Epilogue
A month later, Grayson St. Clair walked within the ice caverns of Pluto.
In 4 billion years, Pluto had not changed at all. Still orbiting far out in the frigid realm of the Kuiper Belt, not caring in the least whether an irrelevant Humankind called it planet or dwarf planet, the tiny world remained cold enough that water ice was as durable as granite, though deep beneath its surface, Pluto still hid an ocean of liquid water. After 8 billion years, evolution had produced some exceedingly strange life down there in the cold darkness.
But high above, in the frozen crust, nanotunnelers had chewed out an entire city, and robotic assemblers had grown rank upon endless rank of machines. Tugs and recovery vessels off the Ad Astra had mined tumbling lumps of rock and metal for their raw materials and channeled them to Pluto for assembly.
Slowly, an army was taking shape.
St. Clair was present within the Plutonian caverns by proxy only. With his body safely on board the Ad Astra, he was linked to a teleoperated robot identical to the ones used by Dumont and others. Visiting the factory remotely was necessary for humans; the caverns, most of them, still held the thin Plutonian atmosphere of nitrogen with traces of methane and carbon monoxide.
“To your left,” Newton told him. “That bank of cylinders.”
“I see it.”
It was quiet here, and blissfully peaceful. His speech the month before had indeed loosed a firestorm through the mobile colony. He wondered now if he’d done the right thing.
In fact, there’d been one other important piece of data he’d withheld from the Tellus Ad Astra population. It was a small thing, really . . . an awareness, a morsel of information that Newton had confirmed for him.
But that bit of data held within itself possibilities of staggering proportions.
The world of Ki was Earth. They all knew that now, beyond any shadow of a doubt. But there was something more . . . something that had been nagging at St. Clair about the name of Ki.
Some six thousand years before Tellus Ad Astra had departed Earth, the most advanced human civilization on the planet had been the ancient inhabitants of Sumer, a people dwelling in the fertile wet lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The Sumerians were still enigmatic. Probably, they’d been nomads from Asia Minor who’d settled in the Fertile Crescent and built the first cities there, but their exact origins were mysterious, and even their language appeared to be unrelated to other languages at the time.
Their word for “Earth,” it was known, was Ki.
Interesting.
The word Ki had been passed on to other, later civilizations. In ancient Greece, the word was Gi or Ge . . . and from there it eventually evolved into geo, the root of words like geography, and Gaia, the Greek goddess of the Earth.
The circularity of meaning was stunning. It might be coincidence—there were, after all, only a limited number of syllables humans could pronounce—but St. Clair thought that there was a different explanation, one tantalizing in its possibilities.
Time travel.
They’d considered those possibilities before, but come to no conclusions. But the idea that the Tellus Ad Astra had been pulled forward in time certainly raised those theories higher on the probability scale. Had members of the Galactic Cooperative gone back in time to Earth of 4 billion years past? Had they interacted with the inhabitants of ancient Sumer?
And what of the Xam?
At this point, it was all sheer speculation, but St. Clair was excited about the possibilities.
The humans stranded here in this alien future might yet have a means of getting home. . . .
He approached a row of plastic, transparent cylinders, within which were human-sized and-shaped figures. Androgynous, neither male nor female but quite lifelike, they were robots constructed to specifications stored within Newton’s memory, with artificial brains capable of human-level consciousness.
The robot army had not yet been activated, however.
They would be soon, though. One thing Ad Astra had dropped along with the trappings of empire was the Fifth Geneva Protocol. They would need an army in the months and years that would follow.
The androgyny gave the ranks of machines the look of particularly realistic mannequins. One out of that endless line, however, was different . . . distinctly female, and achingly familiar.
She’d been added to the assembly process at St. Clair’s request.
“Are you ready for us to begin?” Newton asked.
“Do it.”
Nothing appeared to happen, but St. Clair knew that Newton was transmitting a very long and complex set of software into the female robot’s brain. Software derived from the Mind of Ki.
Her eyes opened.
“Hello, Lisa,” St. Clair said.
She smiled at him.
About the Author
IAN DOUGLAS is one of the pseudonyms for William H. Keith, New York Times bestselling author of the popular military science fiction series The Heritage Trilogy, The Legacy Trilogy, The Inheritance Trilogy, Star Corpsman, and Star Carrier. A former naval corpsman, he lives in Pennsylvania.
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By Ian Douglas
Andromedan Dark
Altered Starscape
Darkness Falling
Star Carrier
Earth Strike
Center of Gravity
Singularity
Deep Space
Dark Matter
Deep Time
Dark Mind
Star Corpsman
Bloodstar
The Galactic Marines Saga
The Heritage Trilogy
Semper Mars
Luna Marine
Europa Strike
The Legacy Trilogy
Star Corps
Battlespace
Star Marines
The Inheritance Trilogy
Star Strike
Galactic Corps
Semper Human
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
darkness falling. Copyright © 2017 by William H. Keith, Jr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition DECEMBER 2017 ISBN: 978-0-06-237920-7
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-237922-1
Cover illustration by Gregory Bridges
Cover design by Amy Halperin
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