by Ian Douglas
No matter. The information was valid, whether the specimen was alive or not.
Manta One
The Europan Sea
1630 hours Zulu
“Major?”
“Yes?”
“That…that thing. It’s moving!”
“Let me see.”
The Manta turned, slowing as it banked. Jeff looked down and back at the blue glow, now almost lost at the edge of visibility.
The glow was getting brighter, and sharper. At first, he thought the thing was lifting up off the Europan sea bottom and coming after them…but no, it appeared to be rising straight up, moving swiftly toward the ice-locked surface far above. A vast explosion of gas bubbles followed it from a seething, smoke-wreathed blackness in the depths shot through with flecks of orange light. Jeff heard thunder roll.
“Oh my God,” he said softly.
The Singer was rising to the surface.
The Life Seeker
Time unknown
12: >>…we rise…<<
Chorus 1: >>…we must reintegrate…we must reintegrate…<<
Chorus 2: >>…difficult…<<
Chorus 3: >>…necessary…<<
Chorus 4: >>…how?…<<
The intelligence that called itself Life Seeker, which humans knew as the Singer, had been a fragmented personality for century upon ragged, gnawing century. The fragmentation had originally been deliberate, a means of staying sane for a powerful and brilliant intelligence, trapped for millennia upon endless millennia alone.
As time had passed, however, the shattered, sometimes competing, sometimes overlapping shards of the Life Seeker’s mind had drifted apart, until they were truly distinct, multiple personalities. With great effort, that host of nearly four thousand minds, sundered one from another, could unify—reintegrate—to form short-lived choruses of unity of purpose and thought, but only for brief periods of time.
And when they did unify, the resulting mind was not entirely sane.
Manta One
The Europan Sea
1630 hours Zulu
“Pull up!” Jeff shouted. “Damn it! Pull up!”
Bubbles exploded around them, silvery, fast-moving missiles as solid at this depth as bricks. Below, a vast and tortured undersea landscape was slowly becoming visible, a field of orange-red magma aglow with a fierce and bloody light.
The Singer had been embedded somehow in the ocean floor, perhaps feeding off the energy of the magma deep within the tide-stretched worldlet. Now, the Singer was far above, and the roiling current of its passage was hurling the Manta into the depths like a leaf caught in the full-fury blast of a titanic waterfall.
The Life Seeker
Time unknown
393: >>…impact in sixty cycles…<<
Chorus 1: >>…we must reintegrate…we must reintegrate…<<
Chorus 2: >>…the Organics are of Type 2824…<<
Chorus 3: >>…we remember…we remember…<<
Chorus 4: >>…the Mind must be warned…<<
Chorus 1: >>…competition must be eliminated…<<
Chorus 2: >>…we will survive…<<
The Life Seeker struck the ice from below at nearly 100 kilometers per hour, and kept moving. Ice chunks the size of small mountains cascaded aside as superheated water exploded into the hard, thin vacuum of space. Cracks shattered the delicate Europan surface, a dazzling star visible hundreds of kilometers out into space.
As clouds of expanding fog boiled out across the surface of the moon, the Singer rose a bit more, towers shuddering clear of the crust like sky-stabbing spears, avalanches of ice cascading from domes and towers and turrets and arches with the look of some fantastic mingling of medieval castle and modern spacecraft…and then stopped.
The Life Seeker, encrusted with dying Europan sea life, its age-shriveled towers and parapets already collapsing upon themselves with the shock of their collision with the roof of the Europan ocean, pressed upward against the ice’s embrace, then locked solid, the towers at a slight angle from the vertical.
For a moment, it appeared lifeless…but then, energies stored deep within the machine-Ship’s belly gathered, pulsed, and flared. From an orifice atop the gigantic complex, a turret easily larger than the damaged ships orbiting Europa, a beam of energy thrust skyward in a radiant scream, momentarily outshining the local star.
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
800,000 kilometers from Europa
1632 hours Zulu
“What the hell was that?” Steve Marshal said, looking at the bridge screen.
The Jefferson had completed the swing around Jupiter’s night side, was emerging now, tail first, plasma drive firing as it killed the last few tens of kilometers per second and gentled in toward Europa orbit. The balyute sections, having served their purpose, had been discarded into the void. They were still half a million kilometers from the icy moon now, when a dazzling star appeared at the horizon, just over the curve from the Jefferson’s point of view.
Kaitlin stared at the flare, which lasted for several seconds, then faded. “An explosion?”
“It’s not at the location of Cadmus Base,” Steve said. “Over the horizon from there. Maybe 800 kilometers away.”
“I think we’d better get over there as quickly as we can, Captain.” She tried not to let her excitement get away from her. There was no telling what that phenomenon was…and whatever it was, it didn’t mean that there were survivors at the base.
“Agreed. Something’s going on down there. And I’d like to know what.”
The Life Seeker
Time unknown
Chorus United: >>I am whole. But…I am alone….<<
The Life Seeker’s reintegrated mind held together for several precious, glorious seconds. For the first time in five hundred millennia, thought came with the clarity of open, empty space and the coherence of a tight-focused laser, a burning, dazzling, brilliance of freedom and knowledge and Mind.
Subminds snapped into perfect alignment, scanning the heavens, searching for the nearest beacon.
There were no beacons.
The sky itself had changed, the stars now quietly aglow in different patterns than those recorded half a million years before.
But…but the Mind must yet be out there. Perhaps communications protocols had changed. Perhaps other things had changed. Much could, in so many years—years so numerous that the Life Seeker had long ago lost count.
The burst of energy it sent into the empty sky was intended to reach any of its own kind, or the world-Minds that had sent them forth ages before. If any were left, if any survived, they would hear…and come.
But for the Life Seeker, it was already too late. Long before, it had adapted its power intakes to feed on the warmth of this moon’s still-molten core. It had torn itself free from that energy source to reach the surface.
And now it was dying at last.
Carefully wrapped within that burst of energy was a complete report on the Life Seeker’s mission, on what it could remember. So very much had been lost. After the original crash, it had been badly damaged, trapped on the ocean bed of this moon. As the millennia passed, it had repaired itself to an extent, but somehow never thought again about escape.
Until the discovery of Species Type 2824 had…reminded it of its mission.
A formerly separate submind had clicked home with the rest, bringing with it…purpose. And the realization that it must sacrifice itself to warn the Mind.
A competitor species was abroad in the galaxy, had developed technology, was a potential threat. The Life Seeker could not exterminate it, not in its current condition. It would sacrifice itself to warn the Mind, and in that warning…die.
The Life Seeker’s mind was appallingly alone once more.
And loneliness could kill.
29 OCTOBER 2067
E-DARES Facility
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
0510 hours Zulu
“What the hell just happened?” Jeff asked. They were
gathered in the Squad Bay, all of the surviving Marines gathered at a single table, and the senior civilian personnel with them as well. Word had just come through from Chesty, who was running C-3. The Jefferson had successfully rounded Europa and was coming into orbit now. Chesty had contacted them on the newly repaired comm system, and landers would be touching down within another hour, both here and at the Chinese base.
The Chinese effort had collapsed completely with the death of General Xiang and the crippling of the Star Wind in orbit. It looked as though the fight for Europa had just become a massive rescue operation.
As for Jeff, the two SEALs, and Shigeru, they had made it back to the E-DARES facility…somehow, he still wasn’t sure how. A column of superheated water, exploding from the Europan sea floor, had nearly cooked them, had nearly flung them into the magma-filled abyss, but Hastings had pulled them out of their death-dive and managed to regain control.
Ten hours later, they were back at Cadmus Crater, exhausted, dirty, unshaven—and very happy to be alive.
Shigeru looked at the numbers unfolding on his PAD. “An energy pulse,” he said. “At least ten to the fourteenth megajoules, concentrated and focused into a single pulse lasting three-tenths of a second. It was aimed at…roughly eighteen hours thirty Right Ascension, minus twenty degrees declination. Sagittarius. Not quite toward the center of the galaxy, but near enough.”
“A call for help, perhaps,” Vasaliev suggested.
“Or a warning,” BJ said. “‘Watch out! There be humans here!’”
“We may never know,” Tom Pope said.
“Yeah!” Jeff said. “I’m thinking…I hope we never do know. Whatever it was, I don’t think it was good news for humans. The question is whether that pulse we saw was the message itself, which will take a few thousand years to get wherever it’s going…or if it was just a by-product.”
“A by-product?” BJ asked. “Of what?”
“Of a message traveling a lot faster than the electromagnetic pulse released by the transmission. To someone who’s going to follow it back here and find out what happened to the sender.”
“We don’t know they’re hostile,” Tom said.
“Somehow, I don’t think hostile is a word that has any meaning for them,” Jeff said. “Is a mosquito hostile when it bites you? Are you when you absently smash it with a slap? Hostility suggests foes who are more or less evenly balanced.”
“I hate to think how far ahead the Singer intelligence is of us.”
“Maybe they aren’t even aware of us,” BJ said. “We might be like bugs to them.”
“They are aware of us, Gunnery Sergeant,” Chesty’s voice said. The AI had been quiet, almost withdrawn since a system failure and crash. They’d been working at backing up the data he’d managed to acquire during his brief contact with the Singer in the E-DARES system. There could be a treasure trove there, though it might take years before they knew for sure. “They are very much aware of us.”
“You picked something up?” Jeff asked.
“No specifics, but there were…undercurrents to their thoughts, to the leaked radio signals, I should say. I picked up some in my attempt to communicate with it, and much more during that final, incredible pulse. I still do not understand much of what I saw, but I understand this much.
“The intelligence we know as the Singer is one part of an extraordinarily far-flung culture of, I believe, artificial intelligences. Or perhaps they once were organic, but long ago downloaded themselves into machine form.
“Half a million years ago, they were engaged in destroying other intelligences, some organic, some artificial or downloaded, in this part of the galaxy. The colony on Mars was an outpost of one of these other civilizations, the Singer—it called itself a Life Seeker, by the way—found them and destroyed them—but not before it itself was badly damaged. It attempted to land on Europa, broke through the ice, and was trapped at the bottom of the sea for very close to half a million years.
“During that time, and this is extremely broken and fragmentary, the Life Seeker became…lonely is the only word that makes sense in this context, though I don’t understand how this could affect a machine of such sophistication. Apparently, it divided itself into multiple personalities, simply to have someone to talk to.
“Possibly it took the process too far and was unable to reintegrate the fragments. Or it was physically damaged. Or perhaps it was simply that half a million years of nothing to do drove a mind that is in every respect far more powerful than those of humans completely insane.
“During that final pulse of energy, it was warning the beings who launched it that an enemy existed here, in this star system.”
“But…that’s ridiculous!” BJ said. “I mean, that was a war half a million years ago! Doesn’t it know it’s over?”
“I sensed a series of imperatives in the sideband leakage,” Chesty said. “It—its civilization, I should say—operates along intensely Darwinian modes of logic. Any other species, any intelligence which offers any threat, must be eliminated. It is the ultimate answer to Fermi’s Paradox, the only one that makes sense. The sky is empty because predator species such as this one hunt out intelligent species and destroy them, usually before they can even develop space travel.”
“The Hunters of the Dawn,” Jeff said. “I think we’ve just found them.”
“The question,” Chesty said, “is when they’re going to find us.”
Suit locker
E-DARES Facility
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
1210 hours Zulu
Lissa stretched, catlike, pulling back in Lucky’s arms. “So…how do I compare, Lucky? To the VR dolls, I mean?”
“Babe, there is no comparison.” He pulled her back, crushing her close. “No comparison at all.”
She kissed him, long and deep. “Is that good?”
“Mmmm. Very, very good. Better than I ever dreamed.”
It was curious. During the long, hot, crowded trip out from Earth, he’d seen Lissa naked several times, and topless nearly every day. He’d enjoyed the view, sure—he couldn’t be male and hetero and help but enjoy the view—but he hadn’t been all that interested.
After all, she was a Marine…one of the guys.
All that had changed now. They’d embraced when she’d returned from the Manta raid. She’d asked him about his leg; he’d asked her if she was okay—and somehow…
They were naked together now, and he felt…almost shy.
They were taking a fearful chance, meeting like this. The suit locker in the Squad Bay was likely to become kind of public if an alert sounded. But it honestly looked as though the fighting was over. They’d deliberately chosen the hour when most of the other Marines would be at chow down on the submerged E-DARES levels. Several thermal blankets spread out on the deck made an acceptable field-expedient bed. And Lucky was pretty sure they’d hear the elevator if someone rode it up from below.
And so, for a short while, at least, they had each other all to themselves.
And for the first time in quite a while, Lucky realized he wasn’t lonely.
It was passing strange, though, he thought, that he’d had to come all the way out to Jupiter space to find that out.
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
In Europa orbit
1545 hours Zulu
Kaitlin was floating on the bridge deck, watching the slow roll of Europa beneath the ship. The moon was incredibly beautiful, a delicately fragile crystal sphere, covered with its lacy webwork of linea and rills.
The loneliness she was feeling threatened to crush her. They had made it in time, as it turned out. The Marines at Cadmus were safe—what was left of them. A scant handful had survived, but they’d beaten the Chinese and saved the base, and though she was still waiting for the return message from Earth, she felt sure that her superiors would embrace the victory. There would be medals for those who’d defended the CWS base. Her career might be checked, but it would not end in court martial. Steve
would be a hero. A few, at least, of the MSEF Marines would come home.
But, after it all, Robbie was still gone. Somehow, she’d thought that delivering reinforcements to Europa, that reinforcing the MSEF expedition, would help her escape the pain and loneliness she felt with Rob’s death.
It hadn’t.
And…what of that immense thing locked in the ice midway between the CWS and Chinese bases? Twelve kilometers across, a titanic shell of intricate design. Even dead and lifeless, it could overwhelm the senses with sheer power of statistics.
A reminder of just how small, just how powerless humans were in an uncaring and brutal universe.
“Colonel!” John Reynolds emerged form the communications shack, excited. “Colonel Garroway!”
“Yes.” She did not turn from the display screen, and the marble-smooth brilliance of Europa turning below.
“The message from Earth just came in. They’re congratulating you on a brilliant operation. That’s what they said! ‘Brilliant!’”
She said nothing.
“There’s more.” When she didn’t reply, didn’t turn, he added, “There’s a lot more. It seems a Navy search-and-rescue op was deployed to the Asteroid Belt, just as another Peaceforcer ship showed up. The Liddy Dole. They tracked the hab modules from the Kennedy in simulation, and figured out where they were.
“Colonel, they found twenty men and women alive in one of those modules. Half starved, half frozen, dehydrated, yeah…but alive.
“And your son was among the survivors.”
The tears came before she could stop them, spilling from her eyes, adhering to her cheeks, launching themselves into the air in tiny, jiggling droplets of silver as she shook her head.
Robbie was alive.
And she was no longer quite so alone.
EPILOGUE
15 SEPTEMBER 2067
CWS Xenoarchaeological