by Ian Douglas
“Not with any confidence,” Mallory replied. “In any case, it’s very unlikely that we’d be able to find a gateway to anywhere useful.”
“We estimate,” America’s AI said, “a less than one ten-thousandth of a percent chance of recognizing where we emerge.”
That was the essential problem with TRGA cylinders. Estimates put the number of distinct spacetime paths through a given TRGA in the tens, possibly the hundreds of millions, but possible destinations included stars scattered across much of the galaxy, and a span of some millions of years. The only way to map a given pathway was to send a ship through, then do a thorough survey on the other side. Identifying stars and the general period of time in which the ship had emerged could take years, and might never be completed.
And if they just jumped through without a survey—like they had on the way to Invictus—they would end up somewhere unknown, with no idea of where or when they were.
Gray was prepared to try that in the event of an emergency, with no other way of saving his fleet, but he wasn’t that desperate just yet.
“How about trying to talk to them?” Fletcher asked.
“Sure,” McFarlane put in. “If we can’t fight ’em, maybe we could talk ’em to death.”
“Nice idea, CAG,” Mallory said, “with one small problem. We came here expecting to talk to them, and they ambushed us. I don’t think they want to talk.”
“The Turusch ambushed us,” Fletcher told him. “Maybe the Turusch acted independently. Maybe the Glothr want to talk, and the Turusch were trying to block that possibility.”
“And we have two pilots from the Demons,” Gray pointed out, “who say a mob of Glothr ships were after them. And the Pax and the Concord have vanished. We have to assume the Glothr are hostile.”
“Damn. You’re right.”
“America AI,” Gray said. “Do you have anything to suggest?”
Gray always felt a bit weird asking the AI his opinion, but he also knew that given half a chance, he could come up with unexpected—and highly creative—ideas.
“A direct attack against Invictus,” America’s AI said, “would be suicidal. As would a return through the TRGA, as would having the task force remain here. That suggests that you will need to defeat the enemy using deception.”
“You have a suggestion?”
“Possibly. A direction for your consideration, at least.”
“Let’s hear it, then.”
“It seems likely that if the ships of this task force were captured, the ships would be taken to the same place that they are holding the High Guard ships, and that that is also where they are holding Ambassador Rand and his people.”
“Possibly . . .”
“Almost certainly. The Glothr would be unlikely to set up and maintain separate quarters within which to create a standard terrestrial environment just for prisoners.”
“Seems logical,” Jamison said.
And the carrier’s AI began unfolding its idea.
Place of Cold Dreaming
Invictus Ring
1210 hours, TFT
“Tell us why humans reject the gift of belonging.”
“I don’t know. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Seven-one-cee-eight considered the answer, and wondered if the human was being insolent, arrogant, or simply responding with truth. Human emotions were extremely difficult to judge. Among the Kin, one simply had to read the flutter of luminescent organs through transparent integument to know exactly what the other was feeling. Humans were . . . different.
“Have you made progress, Seven-one-cee-eight?” The words crackled through its electrosense, transmitted by its swarm center.
“No, Nine-dee-el-six,” it replied, and the flash of blue at the top of its thorax paled to green to show its frustration. “No, and I begin to fear that meaningful communication with this species is impossible.”
“Why? Our computer linguists cracked their language codes, with Agletsch help. It should be a simple thing to transpose their words into modulated electrical pulses.”
“It would be, Nine-dee-el-six, if these creatures had the same worldview as we.”
“Worldview? What difference does that make?”
“It’s . . . difficult to put into pulses. They fear being in the dark, some of them.”
“So? Surely this is not important.”
“It seems to be important to them, at least over a long period of time. Vision is their primary sense, approximately what electrosense is for us. They are blind to electrical pulses.”
“Strange . . .”
“There’s worse. Because they have no electrosense, they are unaware of the presence of others of their species nearby. They also seem to fear being alone. Several have commented on what they refer to as the ‘emptiness’ of this part of space, outside of the galaxy.”
“Perhaps we can exploit these weaknesses. If they are uncomfortable, they may wish to cooperate, to answer our questions, so that we will be inclined to make them more comfortable.”
“I was working with that idea, yes. But it is difficult to know how far we can go without causing permanent physical or psychological harm.”
“That surely doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we learn what we need to know about these creatures.”
“The attempt may prove to be counterproductive.”
“We have a great many prisoners at the research facility,” Nine-dee-el-six said. “Continue working with them until you find one willing to cooperate.”
“Very well. I will continue to focus on the commanders of the two ships, and on the one that calls itself ‘an ambassador.’ They appear to hold positions analogous to that of a swarm center.”
“As you think best.”
“We swarm together,” Seven-one-cee-eight replied.
VFA-96, The Black Demons
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1620 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Gregory drifted in strangeness, an entire universe compressed into narrow, colored rings forward, his Starblade skimming just beneath c. In another few minutes, he saw, it would be time to commence deceleration.
Twelve fucking million years . . .
He wondered if humans had survived to this epoch . . . wondered if it would even be possible to find out. If Humankind had survived, the species must have evolved into something quite different by now.
There was a lot of speculation about human evolution, including the idea that human evolution, at least on the grand scale, had ceased. By taking control of his environment, by drastically extending the human life span, by genegineering his own genome, by merging his biology with his technology, Humankind had at least pushed back the most urgent evolutionary pressures, the demands of natural selection and survival of the fittest. To a certain extent, perhaps, the pace of human evolution had slowed, certainly.
But it hadn’t stopped. And twelve million years was a long time . . . twelve times longer than the survival time of the typical mammalian species.
There was a concept Gregory had heard in ready room bull sessions and in cosmological docuinteractive downloads: deep time, time on a geological scale. The Navy had already been forced to come to grips with the concept, knowing that the Sh’daar had emerged in the remote past, more than 800 million years ago.
And now he was hurtling toward an alien world 12 million years in the future. The mind could not quite take in chronological vistas on those scales.
Pulling back from those gulfs, he focused instead on recent memory: his rendezvous with Meg in the observation dome atop America’s spine. God, she was beautiful, but more than that, he was sharply aware that his feelings for her had steadily been shifting of late—from fuck buddy to something more.
Something much, much more.
He wanted to call her on a private channe
l, but the squadron was under comm discipline. Communicating ship to ship while nudging light speed was difficult enough. But no one in the fleet knew how well the Glothr could pick up such signals, or translate them, and that made radio silence all the more imperative.
Certainly, the Gothr knew they were coming by now. The question was just what they were going to do about it . . . and when.
A ping snapped him back to the here and now. His AI was alerting him to a contact, something up ahead.
“What have we got?” he asked.
His AI responded with impressions rather than words. Unknown . . . possible danger . . . something big . . . in excess of three hundred thousand tons . . .
A readout of hard data scrolled down through his awareness. His fighter’s sensors couldn’t see the oncoming object, but AI analysis could suggest what it might be.
And it was swiftly maneuvering toward the fleet.
USNA Star Carrier America
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1621 hours, TFT
“Incoming target,” Mallory snapped. “Closing fast.”
Well, it would be, with the fleet already hurtling toward it at close to the speed of light itself. The light carrying the data would be coming in just ahead of the object, leaving precious little warning time. The fighter cloud, extending well out beyond the main fleet, had spotted the thing first.
“Weapons tracking,” Commander Taggart reported.
“All task force vessels are locking on, Admiral,” Talbot added. Then, “What the hell is that?”
“Our Glothr friends coming out to gather us up,” Gray replied. “Let’s not make it easy for them.”
“Time, Admiral,” Captain Gutierrez told him.
“All ships . . . initiate deceleration.”
AI commands synchronized perfectly flashed from ship to ship. Depending on design, some vessels began projecting gravitational singularities astern. Others flipped end for end with the same effect, their hab modules protected from the high-velocity sleet of relativistic particles by power modules and aft sponsons.
The protective cloud of fighters would continue for minutes more, dispersing ahead of the fleet, and threaten the enemy.
“Comm,” Gray said. “Transmit the signal.”
“Transmitting, Admiral.”
And now . . . the wait began. . . .
Place of Cold Dreaming
Invictus Ring
1631 hours, TFT
“Seven-one-cee-eight! We are receiving a laser-com transmission . . . encoded electropulse!”
“Let me feel it.”
A circuit closed, and Seven-one-cee-eight felt the crackle and tingle of a modulated transmission . . . not in its own language, but in the artificial pidgin created to communicate with the humans. Much of the meaning was garbled and vague, but enough meaning came through the stilted translation to chill Seven-one-cee-eight’s ammonia-water lymph.
“Glothr. You brought us here to communicate with us directly, or so we were led to believe. Instead, you ambushed us, seized our personnel, and have captured two of our vessels. Among civilized species, these are hostile acts which can result in all-out war.
“Humankind desires peace with the Glothr, but we will fight if forced to do so. I suggest that our original plan—talking—would be more productive, and far less destructive of your world, and its artificial system of rings and orbital structures. The decision, however, is entirely yours. Please let us know your decision before we reach your world and begin selecting targets. . . .”
Seven-one-cee-eight bristled at the challenge and at the implied threat, the depths of its mantle glowing in deep blues and near ultraviolet. The humans presumed to order the Kin?
Their audacity, their sheer arrogance was stunning. What made them think they could challenge a world of 15 billion inhabitants with a fleet numbering fewer than twenty ships, and a technology centuries behind that of the Kin? Insanity!
“Deploy the twisters,” Seven-one-cee-eight ordered. “Let’s teach these upstart children a proper lesson.”
Chapter Nineteen
7 August, 2425
USNA Star Carrier America
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1638 hours, TFT
“Planetary objective now in sight,” Mallory reported. “Range just under one AU.”
“Range to hostile contact . . . four hundred thousand kilometers,” Taggart added.
A bit more than the distance between Earth and the moon.
“Belay that ‘hostile,’ Commander,” Gray said. “They may still want to talk.”
In fact, the more time that dragged on, the likelier it was that the Glothr were going to want to talk.
“Yes, sir. Range to alien vessel . . . now three hundred eighty thousand kilometers.”
The task force by now had decelerated to about a half c. The ships were broadly dispersed across several million kilometers, and the cloud of fighters—four squadrons of them—formed a vast and far-flung cloud around and well ahead of the main body of ships. The planet, with no local star to illuminate it, was invisible to the naked eye, though America’s sensors had pegged it on the ship’s various feeds and displays. The single Glothr vessel in front of them was also invisible, though it was much closer. Its mirror-polished surface reflected the endless night round about, and at that distance it was nearly impossible to see.
It was visible to radar and lidar, however, and it gave off heat, neutrinos, and mass . . . a lot of mass, probably created by a powerful microsingularity.
Or . . . perhaps not so micro, at that. Sensors showed that the alien’s mass was increasing, and very, very quickly.
As though it were warming up for a shot.
The plan suggested by America’s AI was quite simple. As with the Turusch, the task force needed to get in close to the enemy in order to threaten him with unacceptable damage. It also had to avoid the enemy’s time-bending stasis weapon, which would put any ship attacked by it at a severe disadvantage.
Little was known yet about that weapon, but the Marines had glimpsed that mirror-smooth shape hanging just above the Concord while it had been held inside Charlie One. It seemed unlikely that the Glothr could somehow project a temporal stasis across much distance, which in turn suggested that the cigar-shaped vessel itself was the weapon.
By spreading out, and by presenting the Glothr with as large a number of ships as possible—the task force’s nineteen remaining capital ships plus forty-one fighters—they hoped to block the use of the stasis weapon, or at least to limit its use to one or two ships. At least, that was the idea . . . though they were making a hell of a lot of assumptions here about the Glothr’s technology. Bending time, though, would take a lot of energy, and the weapon that did it would need to be large. Like that mirror-hulled, optically invisible ship up ahead.
“Even if he’s not hostile, though,” Gray said, “let’s see if we can crowd him a little. Boost acceleration and close with him.”
America increased her speed.
And the alien ship gave ground, falling back before the advancing fleet.
But long-range sensors were already picking up a cloud of ships, hundreds of them, emerging now from the rings of Invictus, accelerating, and bearing down on the task force with a terrible deliberation.
VFA-96, The Black Demons
Invictus Space, T+12 MY
1639 hours, TFT
“America, Black Demons!” Mackey, the squadron’s skipper, yelled. “They’re making their move!”
“All fighters,” came over the link from America. “All fighters, weapons are free, I repeat, weapons are free. You are clear to engage.”
For a fighter pilot, speed is life. Gregory accelerated his Starblade, watching the target icon grow huge forward. “Target lock!” he called. “Fox one!” The ancient radio call had origina
lly indicated launch of a heat-seeking missile. Now it meant a smart missile like the VG-10 Krait shipkiller.
Additional cries of “lock” and “fox one” sounded from other members of the squadron, as missile trails reached out from the fast-moving fighters and curved in toward their target. The first nuclear-tipped warhead flashed in a dazzling point of light . . .
. . . and froze there, close beside the alien ship’s hull.
Gregory wrestled with what he was seeing—a seeming impossibility. The nuclear detonation had been arrested somehow, reduced to an intense star-point of radiance perhaps ten meters from the alien’s hull, the light reflected off the mirrored surface. The alien vessel was still moving, of course, and it quickly left the arrested detonation behind. As it did so, the pinpoint expanded into the full blossoming flower of heat and radiation normally expected of a nuclear explosion.
“What the hell are they doing to our missiles?” Lieutenant Ruxton called.
“They’re bending time!” Mackey replied. “They’re slowing time down, somehow, right next to their hull!”
Gregory decided that they would learn more in the after-action analyses of drone sensor and long-ranged scanner data, but he was pretty sure Mackey had hit it square on the head. Those detonations, he realized, hadn’t been stopped completely, but they had been enormously slowed. If a nuclear warhead gave off x amount of radiation in one millisecond, stretching that millisecond to, say, a full second would reduce the intensity of that radiation by a factor of three . . . down to one-thousandth of the original value. That, plus the fact that the target vessel was still moving at a fair clip, putting distance between itself and the blasts . . . yeah, that made for a pretty effective defense.
In space, nuclear warheads lacked one destructive component that they possessed in atmosphere—a shock wave. Unless there was a local atmosphere—such as the plasma cloud from numerous such blasts—there was nothing to compress, no way to generate a fast-moving shock wave, and the warheads’ only destructive effect came from electromagnetic radiation—heat, light, UV rays, X-rays, and gamma radiation—plus some particulate radiation—alpha and beta particles. Even the effects of hard gamma rads would be sharply reduced if you spread them out over time.