Dark Matter (Star Carrier, Book 5)

by Ian Douglas

  They were inside.

  Konstantin, invisible but ever present, led them in, questing ahead for metadata tags of interest. Code numbers and file names flickered and rippled around Ashton. Several flashed brightly, highlighted in red . . .

  Grdoch . . .

  La Connaisance d’étrangere . . .

  L’Affaire Vulcan . . .

  40 Eridani A II . . .

  This was why human minds were necessary in this sort of virtual assault. AIs were very good at following orders, and perhaps one as powerful as Konstantin could have made its own decisions about which data to tag, what to ignore. “Grdoch” was self-evident, so much so that it was quite possibly a false front, something placed there to distract virtual raiders. Konstantin would be examining that very closely indeed, searching for signs of viral land mines. Same for a file labeled, in French, “Alien Contact.”

  Others, though, tugged at Ashton’s intuition. “Vulcan,” for instance, was the name of an Earthlike planet only 16.5 light years from Sol, the location of an important German-Argentinean colony, while “40 Eridani” was the name of Vulcan’s star. Somehow, they called to her, so she tagged those as well.

  Keid . . .

  La Massacrer . . .

  Le Rapport d’Gouverneur Delgado de Vulcan . . .

  She had no idea what those were, but they seemed important. She could see the hyperlinks, channels of light, connecting those with the other more obvious data structures.

  As she tagged each highlighted data structure with a thought, Konstantin was able to open each file and siphon off the contents, shunting them via a high-speed Global Net pipeline back to Cheyenne Mountain, to USNA Intelligence headquarters, to USNA Naval headquarters on Mars, and to its own data banks at Tsiolkovsky, on the far side of the moon. Within seconds, the data would be backed up in so many different secure locations that there would be no chance of having it tracked and destroyed by Confederation counterintelligence.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Ashton called.

  “Rog! Just a sec . . .”

  Ashton still had her own software bomb. An immense building loomed to her left and below: OERE7746.gov.com, a massive cluster of quantum encryption servers. Thoughtclicking the structure, she released her worm. “Missile away!” she cried. “Okay, Newt! Let’s unjack.”

  Withdrawing from the Pan-European network should have been as simple as cutting the connection, but with their minds heavily invested in the fantasy of flying in a particular three-dimensional space, it was better—safer—to extract gradually, following the trail they’d blazed deep into the core of the OERE network. It didn’t take long . . . no more than a few seconds of perceived time . . .

  But Newt screamed in her ear.

  She glanced right just in time to see an amorphous blue-gray cloud, a thunderhead shot through with flickers of lightning and the dark gray shadow of rain as it engulfed Cabot’s fighter. There was a flicker . . . and Cabot was gone.

  Ashton felt a shudder run through her body . . . and then she was lying on her back, strapped down in an acceleration couch in the Ops Room at the Virtual Warfare Center. Cabot was in the couch next to hers, screaming, shrieking in an unholy mix of terror, rage, and agony as white-gowned technicians tried to restrain him.

  “Are you okay, Lieutenant?” It was Aldridge, standing next to her couch.

  “Y-yeah. Fine. What happened to—”

  “ICEscream. Poor devil . . .”

  She tried to rise, clawing at the safety straps.

  “Stay put, Lieutenant,” Aldridge told her. “Stay still. We need to check you out.”

  But there were other people screaming in the room as well, a shrill cacophony of horror and madness.

  “Get them off me! Get them off me!” Cabot was screaming, going on and on.

  And Shay Ashton wondered if she was going mad as well.

  Admiral’s Quarters, USNA CVS America

  En Route, Enceladus to Sol

  0425 hours, TFT

  “Admiral Gray. Please wake up.”

  Gray blinked himself awake out of a deep sleep. “Whazzat?”

  “Admiral Gray, I have an incoming communication for you. Comm department.”

  He checked his internal clock. Almost zero four thirty. Beside him, Laurie Taggart stirred, then reached for him, her hand gliding up his chest. His in-head personal assistant rarely spoke to him directly, but when it did there was good reason.

  “Okay,” he said in his head. “Put it through.”

  An in-head window opened, and he saw the face of Lieutenant Gary Kepner, one of America’s communications officers. “Sorry to wake you, Admiral,” Kepner said, “but we have an incoming laser com, marked urgent and personal for you.”

  “Who from?”

  “Uh . . . It’s flagged Office of the CIC, sir.”

  Meaning President Koenig. Zero four thirty . . . damn! The star carrier was on Eastern time, same as the president. Didn’t the guy ever sleep? A quick check on ship’s status showed him that America was currently accelerating at 0.7 gravities, boosting toward Earth . . . and was currently approaching the halfway point, just over 500 million kilometers out. The time delay on the incoming message would be about half an hour.

  “Put it through.”

  “The message requires a security release, Admiral. Blue-Two.”

  Ah. Gray swung his legs out of bed and sat up. Laurie stirred, but didn’t wake. Good. As the message window opened in his head, he got up and padded naked to the small office adjoining his sleeping quarters so that he could take the call without waking Laurie.

  He’d not been getting much sleep anyway. The sight . . . the sound of that alien food animal being devoured by that pack of Grdoch haunted him, banishing sleep. He might as well get up and be productive.

  In his office, he sat down at his workstation and touched a contact, raising a retinal scanner from its recess in the desktop. America’s AI knew who he was and where he was on board the ship at all times, of course. It could tell from his brain waves that he was who he claimed to be, but the ancient amenities still had to be observed. “Gray, Trevor, Admiral, one-nine-six-six-five-one-eight-zero-three Bravo,” he said.

  “Identity confirmed, Admiral,” the voice of the ship’s network said in his head. “Incoming message released.”

  “Admiral Gray, this is President Koenig.”

  Gray didn’t reply. It would take half an hour for any response to get back to Koenig. If necessary, computers could edit two halves of a conversation together for the records later.

  “I’ve been following your progress out there with great interest, Admiral,” Koenig went on. “Congratulations on your victory at Enceladus. Well done. Very well done indeed.”

  You didn’t call me in the middle of the night to congratulate me for that, though, Gray thought. Was he in for a reprimand over trying to kill the Grdoch food animal? He’d sent that report off hours ago, just before the moment when America broke orbit over Enceladus and started boosting for Earth.

  “Crisium XRD is looking forward to meeting your prisoners,” Koenig went on. “Have the Shenandoah take the captured alien directly to Luna. A cargo heavy-lift hauler will be there in orbit waiting to help get it down to the surface.”

  That made sense. The controls on the alien vessel were utterly beyond human comprehension—spongy cabinets large enough to hold a single Grdoch in a claustrophobic embrace; possibly they used their flexible, trunklike mouths to control the ship . . . or it was possible that they used some sort of direct neural linkage, as with human fighter pilots. Either way, there was no way for humans to control the captured alien transport independently, so the Shenandoah had taken the vessel under tow. Hallowell and two platoons of Marines were still on board, making certain the captured aliens stayed under lockdown. Once at the xenosophontological research departme
nt base beneath the dusty, crater-pocked plain of the Mare Crisium, the XRD staff would be able to address the problem of communicating with the Grdoch, and they’d be able to bring many more tools to bear on the problem than were available to America’s overworked xenosoph department.

  Better them than him. Gray thought again about those scarlet creatures rolling and squirming inside the living food animal and shuddered. He wanted no part of them.

  “In the meantime, we’ve come into possession of some new intelligence. I needn’t remind you that this is classified at Blue-Two. No discussion of this stuff even with your staff until either I personally or CO-HQMILCOM Mars gives you direct clearance, okay?”

  That was interesting. What the hell was going down?

  “A few hours ago,” Koenig went on, “we carried out a virtual military assault on the Pan-European computer net. The primary purpose of the raid was to plant recombinant memetic worms throughout the network, with the goal of undermining support for the war within the Confederation, and driving wedges between the various member states. It will take some time before we see the results of that action, of course . . . but the secondary goal of the raid has already born fruit. The raiders were able to tap into certain computer files in the Geneva Cloud, and steal top secret data on a recent ET contact—the Grdoch.”

  Well, well. Interesting indeed. Maybe they wouldn’t need to start from square one in learning how to communicate with the things.

  “What is of particular interest is that the Grdoch are not Grdoch va-Sh’daar, not members of the Sh’daar Collective. The Confederation apparently ran into them a year ago at Vulcan, made contact . . . and cut some sort of a deal with them. We’re . . . still studying the records we brought back from the Geneva Cloud. We’re not certain, but our analysts believe Geneva may have just turned over one of their extrasolar colonies to the Grdoch, and that that colony was destroyed.”

  God! Gray felt an unpleasant twist in his stomach. What would the Grdoch do with a human colony . . . with thousands of men, women, and children?

  He’d seen the hellish things eat, and he didn’t like the place where the thought was taking him.

  “The carrier Intrepid, Captain Glover, was deployed to Vulcan two weeks ago along with three destroyers . . . and all four ships are now overdue and presumed destroyed.

  “I don’t need to tell you, Sandy, that we—the USNA, I mean—need allies. Badly. We may be able to break up the Confederation if this RM plan succeeds . . . but we still need to stop the Sh’daar . . . and after that we have the Rosette Aliens out at Omega Centauri to worry about. The Grdoch offer us an enormous opportunity. I can’t stress this enough. They may be our one hope of survival, if we can pry them away from the Confederation and if we can enlist their help against the Sh’daar.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Gray said out loud. Aliens were, by simple definition, alien. Their motivations, their goals, their very worldview all were unknown to the USNA, and might well be unknown or even unknowable to the Pan-Europeans and to the Confederation as a whole.

  For a start . . . were the Grdoch helping the Confederation against North America in order to make peace with the Sh’daar, as Geneva wished? Were the Grdoch even aware of the Sh’daar . . . and would they be willing to ally with the United States against them?

  “I have issued orders,” Koenig told him, “to assemble an expeditionary force to travel to 40 Eridani and make contact with the Grdoch fleet that has assembled there. I want you and America to lead it.

  “Yes, I know America’s battlegroup is pretty badly dinged up,” Koenig said, and it felt like he was reading Gray’s mind across 3 AUs. “Edmonton and Spruance are destroyed . . . and America is badly damaged, with significant damage to the Shenandoah, the Young, and the Ramirez.

  “But HQMILCOM Mars is assembling a new force—we’re calling it Task Force Eridani. Besides the America, it will include the carrier Saratoga and, if we can get her back here from Chiron in time, the Constitution as well. Your operational orders will direct you to proceed to 40 Eridani and there investigate the disappearance of the Intrepid battlegroup, but you’ll also be working under a set of secret orders . . . to make contact with the Grdoch and, for a start, enlist their aid against the Confederation. After that, we’ll see if they’ll help us against the Sh’daar.

  “Time, obviously, is absolutely of the essence. You will bring America, Young, and Ramirez back to the dockyards at SupraQuito, where we will perform as much of a nano-refit as is possible, complete the refits on the Sara and on the Indie . . . and wait for the Connie to make it back from Chiron. HQ-Mars will release as many support vessels as they can—the Long Island, the Calgary, the California, and the Maine, at the very least. We also expect to bring in a Russian task force . . . and possibly smaller battlegroups from North India, China, and the Theocracy as well. Altogether, we hope to be able to deploy as many as twenty major warships.

  “You will command the USNA contingent, of course. The others will be under their own national commanders, but I have every confidence that you will be able to get them all to pull together and work with you. To give you the leverage you will need, I am granting you a provisional promotion to full admiral. Congratulations.”

  “What the fuck?” Gray shouted.

  “Yes, I know how you feel,” Koenig went on, again appearing to read Gray’s thoughts across half a billion kilometers of emptiness. “There are plenty of other four-star admirals running around here . . . Matthews, for a start. And Bennington. And Kinkaid. And not a damned one of them has your level of experience when it comes to First Contact. You’ll need to pull at least an Oh-ten if you’re going to be on an equal footing with the likes of Ulyukayev or Gao or Singh. I don’t want one of them calling the shots out at 40 Eridani.” He grinned at Gray from inside the window. “Call it the president’s prerogative.”

  “Damn you,” Gray said, groaning. “How to win friends and influence people.” Damn it, president or not, Koenig couldn’t do this to him!

  “I’ll need to see you here as soon as you get to SupraQuito. Be sure to file your engineering, damage control, and expendables reports with the orbital dock, so we can bring your contingent up to full strength. And . . . one thing more. I’m attaching a classified file to this message under the header Starlight. I want you to review it before you get here. It may have a bearing on your communications with the other fleet commanders.

  “I know I’m asking a lot of you, Sandy. Of you and your crew. But I also know that if anyone can pull this off, it’s you.

  “Koenig . . . out.”

  The president’s face winked off, and Gray blinked at the top of his desk.

  “Sandy? Are you okay? I heard you yell . . .”

  He turned in his chair. Laurie stood in the office entryway, naked, looking worried.

  “Sorry I woke you, dear,” he told her. “I got some . . . unexpected news.”

  “What is it?”

  Gray frowned. How secret was the news? Well . . . the fact of the promotion would be published soon, might already have been published, if Koenig was on the ball. He couldn’t talk about the upcoming mission yet, but he could tell about this lunacy.

  “I’ve just been bumped up to four stars,” he said, angry. “By Koenig. Provisionally, of course. Presidential prerogative, he calls it. But it’s not like I deserve it.”

  Taggart appeared to relax a bit, looking relieved. “Oh, well . . . do I bow in your presence? Or just kiss your ring?”

  “It’s not funny, Laurie.”

  “I thought you were having a nightmare.”

  “This is a nightmare! And I can’t wake up! Damn it, I don’t deserve the provisional rank I have now . . . and the son-of-a-bitch is jumping me up by two pay grades!”

  “Did he give you a reason?”

  “Yes.” Gray hesitated . . . then decided that this would be common news soon as well. “He’s
putting me in command of a joint fleet. USNA, Russian, Chinese, Indian. And he wants me to have enough mass to run the show.”

  “Makes perfect sense, if he doesn’t want the fleet commanded by a Russian.”

  “Ron Kinkaid is the man,” Gray said. “CO of CNHQ, Mars. Thirty years in the Navy, five of them as a full admiral.”

  “Yes. And how many alien civilizations has he made First Contact with?”

  Gray gave her a hard look. “What does First Contact have to do with anything?”

  She sighed. “It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? You were with Koenig when America went back in time and met the ur-Sh’daar on their home ground. And last year you made First Contact with the Slan. First Contact, and you made them break off in their campaign against us!”

  “My people did that. Lieutenant Connor. Dr. Truitt. Not me.”

  “Exactly. Your people. They reported to you, and were guided by your decisions. And that’s what Koenig is looking for: experience in making key decisions in a first-contact situation. You’re the best person for the job. Koenig is just making sure you can do that job.”

  Yeah, that he was. And by jumping outside the regular ladder of command and promoting him over how many thousands of rear and vice admirals, what was he doing to the Navy hierarchy—tradition-bound, aristocratic, and so weighed down by layers of seniority and flag-rank officers that promotion generally meant that someone above you had died? There would be insane jealousy just for a start, and that meant trouble just working with the men and women responsible for getting him the ships, repairs, and supplies he needed. There would be a perception of favoritism, with Gray cast in the role of teacher’s pet, and with it criticism of Koenig that he was playing favorites and interfering with military good order and discipline. Gray was already viewed as an outsider and as a maverick. His Prim background, the fact that he’d been a “squattie” in the swamps of the Manhattan Ruins until he’d been forced to seek medical attention for his wife—that would be held against him as well. He didn’t play the game, didn’t play well with others . . . and any naval officer with an anti-Prim prejudice—and that was most of them—would see him as a security risk, as immoral, even as a foreigner.