by Ian Douglas
Dedication
For Deb and for Brea,
bright lights illuminating my
dark mind . . .
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Epilogue
About the Author
By Ian Douglas
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
It thought of itself as the “Consciousness,” and it was very, very old.
How old? There was no way even it could know the answer. Billions of years, certainly, as certain organic life-forms measured time . . . and possibly older than that, through an eternity spanning trillions of years and several universes.
Only recently had the Consciousness emerged into this latest, young and vital, universe, following the tug of gravity across the dimensional walls of the metaverse, seeking the siren call of Mind. Indeed, advanced intelligence had left numerous traces in this universe, and the Consciousness intended to find and merge with that intelligence . . . and assimilate it, molding it to the Consciousness’s will.
They’d entered the universe through a patently artificial gateway, a rapidly spinning rosette of black holes that served to tear multiple openings through the fabric of spacetime. That artifact itself was the most obvious evidence of local advanced intelligence and technology. The so-called Black Rosette was located at the center of what appeared to be a giant globular cluster of 10 million stars, but which in fact was the stripped-bare core of an ancient dwarf galaxy cannibalized by the far larger barred spiral known to a few of its inhabitants as the Milky Way.
A billion years before, that dwarf galaxy had been occupied by a consortium of intelligent species, a bewildering mélange of alien bioforms. Most had . . . passed on—there was no better term for it—entering their version of a technological singularity that had removed them from the mundane cosmos of matter. A few individuals had remained behind, survivors of the singularity that had reorganized themselves into a new civilization calling itself Sh’daar.
Kapteyn’s Star had been just one of the suns of that lost dwarf galaxy, the home of a race that had chosen to convert itself wholly into digital format, uploading some trillions of individuals into a series of circuits and metallic channels etched into the very rocks of their home planet. There, they passed the eons at a vastly reduced pace, experiencing a second or two for every thousand years that flickered past on the outside, in effect traveling swiftly into their own remote future. Within their digitized universe, they experienced near-infinite virtual vistas, worlds far richer, more detailed, and more rewarding than anything the natural cosmos had to offer.
Or they had until now.
Because the Consciousness was enveloping their entire cosmos, slowing a part of itself down to more easily interface with the digitized natives, and beginning the process of relentlessly drawing them into itself.
Chapter One
12 October 2425
Approaching Heimdall
Kapteyn’s Star
0840 hours, GMT
A quintet of sleek, Pan-European KRG-17 fighters fell past Bifrost, the sullen, red-banded, ice-ringed gas giant named for the Rainbow Bridge of Norse mythology. Kapitanleutnant Martin Schmidt tried boosting the gain on the incoming scanner data, but the receivers were already maxed out. Static crackled and hissed in his in-head feed. Radiation effects from the planet? Possibly. Bifrost’s field storms could get pretty bad sometimes.
But Schmidt was pretty sure that the interference was from something else. Not the random, natural hiss of charged particles accelerated by Bifrost’s magnetic fields, but something deliberate . . .
“Adler Eins Zu Himmelschloss,” he called. “Adler Eins Zu Himmelschloss.”
Static shrieked in reply.
He tried again. “Eagle One to Skycastle, Eagle One to Skycastle, please respond. What is the tacsit at Heimdall now? We’re blind out here. Over.”
Still nothing.
“What’s going on back there, Kapitanleutnant?” Leutnant Andrea Weidman, Eagle Five, called to him. “Ghosts?”
Ghosts referred to the unidentified craft that had been appearing in this star system for the past month or so, first singly, but then in ever-increasing numbers. That they were spacecraft of some sort was undeniable . . . as was the fact that they represented an unimaginably advanced technology. All attempts to make direct contact with them, however, had failed so far.
“Possibly,” Schmidt replied. “That’s what we’re here to find out. Adler Flight . . . shift to stealth mode and arm weapons.”
The black surfaces of the fighters rippled and shifted as the craft adjusted their outer shapes from winged to teardrops. While not optically invisible, their hull nanoflage absorbed nearly every whisper of incoming radar pulse, every bit of light. Their environmental systems shifted into high gear as well, storing the rising internal heat rather than radiating it as infrared.
The five Pan-European fighters skimmed in beneath Bifrost’s system of broad, brilliant rings, each circle eerily reminiscent of the concentric grooves of an old-fashioned twentieth-century phonograph record. Kapteyn’s Star, the local red dwarf sun, was a bright red pinpoint shining through the rings, wan and distant. Three and a half astronomical units from the giant Bifrost, it contributed little light and less heat.
“Himmelschloss,” Schmidt called. “Do you copy?” The message was tight beamed and shielded, but Schmidt knew they would have to switch to radio silence soon.
Still nothing but static. Himmelschloss—“Sky Castle”—was the Pan-European monitor that had brought them here, to the Kapteyn’s system, now following a few hundred thousand kilometers astern and shielded from Heimdall by the vast, sullen, and storm-shrouded bulk of Bifrost.
“If it’s ghosts, Marty,” Leutnant Herko Dobrindt said over a private com channel, “we’re not going to be able to fight them. Not with these antiques.”
Schmidt had just been thinking the same thing. KRG-17 Raschadler fighters were a Franco-German design twenty years out of date and well past their prime. They were still effective space fighters—not as maneuverable as the latest North-American fighters, perhaps, but they carried the latest weaponry. Schmidt doubted, however, that even the most up-to-date KRG-40 Raumsturm would have a chance against those . . .
Whatever those flying things were.
An orange crescent appeared ahead, beyond the broad plane of the giant’s rings. The world was Heimdall, a moon the size of Earth, kept warm this far from its diminutive sun by tidal stresses with Bifrost. The surface temperature now was a few degrees below the freezing point of water. At one time, though, a billion years earlier—so the scientists had told them—Heimdall had been warm and Earthlike. . . .
Heimdall, like its sun, was very old.
“I’m picking up ghosts up there,” Leutnant Gerd Heller announced. “My God, look at them all!”
“Record everything,”
Schmidt ordered. “Everything.”
Bifrost appeared to be enveloped in a hazy, filmy light. At first, Schmidt assumed he was seeing the world’s aurorae—Heimdall’s strong magnetic field interacted wildly with the charged-particle storms swirling about Bifrost, and the world’s icy surface often was bathed in a lambent, electric glow—but a closer inspection showed that the glow was in fact caused by planet-girdling clouds: a haze of apparent dust motes at this range, but consisting of some trillions of discrete objects ranging from millimeters wide up to several meters or more across.
And . . . there was something more. A lot more. Dimly glimpsed, so faint that Schmidt thought that they must be a trick of his eyes, there were shapes. Huge shapes dwarfing Heimdall, dwarfing even massive Bifrost. From his vantage point, skimming along beneath Bifrost’s rings, it seemed as though Heimdall was suspended within a vast and far-flung web so insubstantial, so gossamer, it was difficult to tell if it was there at all.
And yet it was filling all of space ahead. . . .
“Kapteyn Orbital,” Dobrindt said. “It’s gone!”
“We knew that,” Schmidt said.
“I mean there’s not even any trace of wreckage or debris. Something that big couldn’t have just vanished!”
No it couldn’t, Schmidt thought.
The station, a Stanford Torus housing more than 12,000 people, had been the principal base of the Kapteyn’s research colony, a Confederation facility built to study the enigmatic ruins on the moon it circled. Shortly after the arrival of the Rosette Aliens, six months ago, the base had been destroyed.
Or, at least, it had disappeared without a trace. Some still hoped it had simply been transported elsewhere.
Which meant the hopes for finding 12,000 Confederation personnel alive were fast dwindling. The heavy monitor Himmelschloss had deployed to the Kapteyn system to investigate.
Schmidt’s fighter jolted hard. His instrumentation showed what seemed to be ripples in spacetime, moving out from Bifrost. The static was growing stronger, too, as were the bizarre light effects, like aurorae engulfing all five fighters.
“Okay, Adler Flight,” Schmidt called. “This is where we part company. Maintain radio silence. I’ll . . . see you on the other side.”
“Good luck, Marty,” Dobrindt replied. “Going silent . . .”
The other four craft, nearly invisible even at this range, slowed, then dropped astern. Schmidt’s fighter continued drifting ahead, everything shut down now except for life support—struggling to control the fast-rising onboard temperatures—and passive scanners. No one knew if the alien ghosts would be able to track the fighter or not . . . or if they even cared. They appeared to be completely aloof to mere humans. But better safe than sorry.
Schmidt had volunteered for this, back on board the Himmelschloss during their voyage out from Earth. His chances seemed a lot more slender now, here in the blackness as he hurtled toward the light-enveloped moon ahead. The vast bulk of Bifrost dwindled steadily astern and he emerged from the shadow of the rings into wan, reddish starlight. His sensors could no longer detect the other Adler Flight ships, lost now in the radiation and magnetic fields encompassing the gas giant.
Schmidt felt alone—alone and lost in a way he’d never felt before, even when his partner of twenty-some years had left him a decade before.
I’m not going to survive this, he thought. But it was no good dwelling on that. Quickly, he thoughtclicked a series of in-head icons, compressing all of the data he’d acquired so far into a nanosecond burst. Fired in a tightly coherent pulse aft toward the other fighters, it might not be picked up or recognized by the aliens ahead . . . but who the hell knew what they were capable of?
Time passed. Once each minute he dispatched another nanosecond radio burst. All the while, the array of shifting lights, the weirdly interpenetrating patterns, the mysterious structures and shapes all spread until they filled the sky, with the moon at the glowing heart of the phenomenon. He magnified the images, zeroing in on the activity both on the surface and in orbit. Kapteyn Orbital was definitely gone; not even dust remained.
Twelve thousand researchers . . .
As the dark and silent teardrop streaked across Heimdall’s sky, the ghosts appeared to have taken notice. Schmidt was first aware of them as a stream of glowing motes rising from Heimdall’s surface, and he thought of a cloud of fireflies.
And there was something else moving out from the light-shrouded moon. Something huge.
“Mein Gott . . .”
He heard the cloud pelting the external hull of his ship, felt the jolt as they began dissolving the nanomatrix.
He was screaming as the hull of his fighter began to dissolve under the swarming assault.
26 October 2425
Watergate Convention Center
Washington, D.C.
United States of North America
2015 hours, EST
The diplomatic reception was in full swing, with well over a thousand physical attendees standing about in knots of color and formal dress. Others were present virtually, their holographs showing only a faint translucency to give away the fact that they were projections of people from all across the Earth and, in many cases, beyond.
Alexander Koenig, the current president of the United States of North America, stood in the Watergate’s Grand Gallery, with its floor-to-ceiling curving transparencies slowly rotating through 360 degrees across D.C.’s nighttime cityscape. The Grand Gallery, enclosed beneath a stadium-sized dome nearly two hundred meters across atop its forty-story tower, was crowded with dignitaries—politicians and military officers and social luminaries from around the globe, all of them gathered here to celebrate the simultaneous reopenings of the Pan-European embassy here in D.C. and the USNA embassy in Geneva.
And—just incidentally—they were here to celebrate, at long last, peace.
The throng dazzled in light and color. Costumes ran from military full-dress to liquid light to quite fashionable nudity, and nearly everything in between. President Koenig wore a rather severe two-tone gray dress jumpsuit with the presidential seal just above the formidable holographic display of his military ribbons. His personal security detail hovered close by, anonymous in black utilities and opaque helmets. Koenig smiled as those helmets turned to closely scan Generalleutnant Reinhardt Kurz as he approached the president. Evidently the Pan-European officer passed inspection, because the detail let him through.
Here it comes, Koenig thought, turning to greet the general.
“Mr. President?” the man said quietly, speaking English rather than through a translator. “I have . . . news.”
A half dozen journalism drones hovered nearby, reminding Koenig that he needed to watch what he said. Hell, he always needed to watch what he said . . . one of the antiperks of political office. But something about Kurz’s tone made it clear this needed to be private.
Koenig glanced again at the drones, then thoughtclicked a command on his in-head security menu. It alerted his security team that the current conversation was private and that nearby news drones should be blocked.
President Koenig already knew most of what the Pan-European general was about to tell him, but when it came to international politics, it always paid to be careful about revealing the depth of your knowledge . . . and the accuracy of your intelligence sources.
A confirmation light winked within Koenig’s consciousness, and he nodded at Kurz. “Go ahead, General. We can speak freely.” The drones were already drifting in different directions, looking for other news bytes to record and transmit. He knew that a few would be hovering at the periphery of his awareness, though, watching for the opportunity to record again.
Kurz drew a deep breath. “Sir, Kapteyn Orbital has been destroyed. We have confirmation. There is nothing left.”
“Son of a bitch,” Alexander Koenig replied with what he hoped was a convincing demeanor.
“At least ten Americans were on the orbital when it . . . vanished,” Kurz added. “T
heir names have been turned over to your state department.”
“Thank you, General.”
The man shrugged. “The least we could do, Mr. President.”
They stood side by side for a moment next to that part of the gallery’s transparency that currently overlooked the Potomac River and Roosevelt Island to the west. Beyond, a few lights showed against the darkness . . . but much of Northern Virginia was still mangrove swamp and tidal flat. Until quite recently, the entire D.C. area had been a part of the Periphery, lost to the United States of North America, most of it flooded by rising sea levels centuries earlier. Soon, though, nanufactories would be working out there, growing new arcologies from rock, dirt, and rubble.
Once a historic hotel complex on the river’s eastern shore, the original Watergate buildings had long ago collapsed into the rising tidewaters that had swallowed much of old Washington. That had been during the dark years of the late twenty-first century, when large stretches of the coastline of the then United States had been abandoned to rising sea levels and storm surges. Under Koenig’s administration, however, many of the abandoned Periphery regions at last were being reclaimed. The D.C. mangrove swamps had been drained, and a system of levees and dams had been constructed to keep the city from flooding again. The buildings were being regrown by nanotechnic agents programmed and released into the freshly revealed mud and rubble. Where possible, historic monuments and edifices had been renovated or rebuilt, but most of the buildings were completely new, as was the city’s overall layout. Whereas the original city had been drafted by Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the new plans were the work of Frank Lloyd WrAIght, an artificial intelligence already well known for its restoration work on Columbus and in the Manhatt Ruins.
As the dome smoothly rotated, new vistas slid into view. To the south and east, the newly regrown city soared and gleamed, ablaze with lights. The population was still small—fewer than fifty thousand had moved back so far—but Koenig was more than confident that it would grow.