by Ian Douglas
"Okay, then," Vanderkamp said, her voice tight, "let's see if the bastards notice us now, damn it.…"
* * *
Hojo was shaking as the Hoshiryu slipped into the K-T plenum, safe at last from the fury of fire and destruction behind them.
"What damage, Shiozaki?" he demanded.
"Minor damage only, Lord," Hoshiryu's captain replied. "We were quite… lucky.…"
Lucky, yes. Both Hiryu and Unryu had been vaporized in the sharp, short fight, along with two heavy cruisers and three destroyers. The Japanese fleet had been mangled by the alien intelligence in a battle lasting only moments.
At least, though, Hojo had the considerable relief of knowing that he'd fulfilled his orders, at least in so far as the aliens had permitted it. If the materioshka intelligence had been attacking the Japanese fleet, it would attack the rebel flotilla as well. There would be no communication between the two, other than that of nuclear missiles, high energy lasers, and particle beams.
"Orders, Lord General?"
"We will withdraw to a safe distance," Hojo replied. He drew a deep, slow breath, steadying himself. He would not show fear to his subordinates. "Make it… fifty astronomical units. We will effect repairs, we shall dispatch a courier vessel to report back to headquarters and request reinforcements… and then… and then we shall return."
"Return, Lord?"
"To make certain that the rebels have been destroyed, of course."
"Ah. Hai, Chujosama."
And Hojo watched the rippling currents of the godsea as he thought about a civilization so technically advanced that it could reshape stars. Such a technology… such arrogance… one allowing them to extend the expected lifespan of a star by a billionfold, to rip heavy elements from a stellar core, or casually use a magnetically enslaved sun as a weapon…
Humans, he thought, fallible, weak, and squabbling as they were, had no business dealing with such beings.
The Jade Moon fleet would make certain that the rebels had no further dealings with the matrioshka intelligence, and then leave the aliens to their inscrutable and incomprehensible evolution of Mind.
* * *
The Black Griffins continued their descent into the cluster of artificially reworked stars. Behind them moved the New American capital ships, sinking into the red-lit murk, seeking safety within the depths of the alien cloud itself. Vaughn checked the readouts for the eight ascraft of his flight—Talmand, Hallman, Palmer, and himself, plus the four nubie replacements: Lederer, Abykayev, Wojtowicz, and Martinez. All of the warstriders in Green Flight were reporting optimum readiness, full power draw, and weapons ready.
Ready for what? he wondered. It was eerie, looking at those black loops and whorls of what looked like dust… and realizing that they were either the myriad components of a colossal computer, or enormous habitats supporting some billions or even trillions of life forms… and yet the whole cluster looked like something natural, a star cluster imbedded in thick swirls of dust.
The human mind, he thought, wasn't equipped to comprehend the cosmic scale. The cluster, he reminded himself, only occupied roughly the volume of a normal star. Three thousand micro-stars, sullenly glowing, imbedded within the dust clouds in shrouded pockets of ruby light… it was impossible just looking at them to tell that they were the artificially ignited fragments of deliberately broken suns, planet-sized, not the size of stars.
What kind of Mind casually disassembled stars to create such beauty?…
The others in the squadron must have felt that sense of throat-gripping awe as well. The normal banter was absent as they descended deeper into the cloud.
And then ahead, within the nebula's depths, something like a coal-black asteroid, irregular and misshapen, rose to meet them.
"What the hell is that?" Hallman asked.
"Careful, people," Vanderkamp ordered. "Keep those fingers off the trigger.…"
"Looks like… it's Naga material," Wheeler said. "Computronium, in a carbon matrix."
"There must be more to it than that," Sergeant Jocelyn Lederer said. "Like engines?"
"Mag-impulse," Jackowicz reported. "Working off the magnetic fields within the cluster… probably with artificial monopoles. Pretty elegant stuff…"
"So is that thing up ahead a ship?" Corporal Ramon asked. He was another of the squadron's nubies, a replacement for their losses at Catarata. "Or a weapon? Or something else?"
"I'd vote something else," Pardoe said. "It's too slow to be an ascraft."
"I don't know, Pard," Hallman said. "My scans show it as locked on to the Indie."
"Kuso!"
"I'm picking up two more of those things," Talmand reported. "Targeting both the Revolution and the Constitution."
"Lieutenant?" Vaughn transmitted. "What do we do?"
There was a long and nerve-wracking silence. "Wait one."
Obviously, she was conferring with the Connie's C3, the Combat Command Center. Vaughn's hands were sweating, and he could feel the pounding of his heart. Damn it… we've got to do something!…
"Okay, people," Vanderkamp said at last. "This is the word from Cee-three. Green Flight, you've got the lead. Maneuver in front of the one headed for the Connie. Red and Blue Flights provide back-up support."
"Maneuver in front and do what?" Palmer cried.
"Match vector… then decelerate. Slowly. See if that makes them stop."
"Oh, that makes so gokking much sense…" Falcone said.
"What about the other—" Martinez began.
"The other caps will do the same with their own ascraft squadrons," Vanderkamp snapped back. "Now can the commentary and do it!"
"Green Flight," Vaughn said. "With me… break left in three… two… one… mark!"
The eight Green Flight air-space craft accelerated hard for several seconds, then decelerated even harder, smoothly matching the course and speed of the black, relatively slow-moving mountain ahead. At a steady seven point four kilometers per second, it was closing with the Constitution at an almost stately pace. Depending on the Connie's speed and maneuvering, it would reach the Confederation vessel in about ten more minutes.
As they dropped into position, the mass loomed half a kilometer distant, its surface utterly black, but shining in places with by the red starlight. Vaughn had thought at first that the object was of a black so absolute that it drank every photon of incident light. At this close range, however, he could see the surface shifting and morphing as if with its own, radically alien life, and changes to the surface texture and shape managed to reflect, now and again, an oily, reddish sheen.
"Okay…" Hallman called out into an uncomfortable silence. Now what?"
"Reduce speed," Vaughn ordered. "See if that thing will match us."
"Sure," Lederer added. "They wouldn't dare run us down!"
But as the eight ascraft slowed from 7400 meters per second to 7300 meters per second, the black mountain began closing at 100 mps. .. relentless and unswerving.
"Okay!" Vaughn shouted. "Boost it! Boost it! Match velocities!"
"Well that worked well," Palmer said.
Vaughn bit off a sharp curse. Their maneuver had had exactly zero impact on the alien mass.
"Okay," he said after a moment more. "There's still one thing we can try."
"We can blast that thing with Hellrands!" Wheeler said.
"No!" Vaughn replied. "No. That's a last resort. Everybody else… hang back."
"Vaughn!" Vanderkamp called. "What are you doing?"
"Stopping a flying mountain," Vaughn replied. "Stand by.…"
He slowed his ascraft's velocity, and again the oncoming naga fragment closed… fifty meters per second… twenty meters per second… five…
The fragment completely blocked half of the entire sky, now. It was also, Vaughn noticed, morphing in shape from something typical of a natural planetoid—roughly potato shaped—to something more like a bowl. It was flattening out along its line of travel, the edges curving forward, the center forming a de
pression directly in front of him. As Vaughn's ascraft moved forward relative to the thing's motion, he had the feeling that it was about to swallow him whole.
"Vaughn!" Vanderkamp called. "Hold position!"
For a moment, fear warred with the hot, out-of-control yokie insanity pounding now through his veins.
"No! Wait!" he called. "It's okay! Let me do this.…"
There was, he was surprised to note, a thin trickle of cold rationality mingled with the ragged emotions of combat. He had his own Naga implant, a few grams of alien computronium inside his skull, linked in to his cerebral implant. Most New American warstrider jackers did. Normally, he wasn't aware of it. Communication with the material was on an almost unconscious level, and had more to do with processing incoming data than it did with communicating with alien machines.
But he could feel something now… a drawing… a calling, and it seemed to be emanating from the black mountain ahead.
Gently, he eased his Gyrfalcon forward, reshaping its prow into a mushroom shape, a shield to cushion the shock. Both mountain and Gyrfalcon were moving now together, hurtling toward the Constitution at 7.5 kilometers per second. Vaughn was jockeying his ascraft's controls through his link, however, gently, gently adjusting his velocity relative to the Naga fragment so that it was overtaking him by a meter a second… half a meter per second… ten centimeters per second…
Warstrider touched Naga… a kiss.
With his shield up against the soft and somewhat yielding surface of the black fragment, Vaughn applied forward thrust, pushing against the mountain… pushing hard.…
Nothing happened.
The inward struggle now was fear against that cold rationality. Somehow, the sento yokubo chaos and shrill, clamoring urgency had somehow evaporated. The fear rose, gibbering, as the mountain began to fold in over him, wrapping him in an inky, pitch-black embrace.
"Bravo Squadron, Bravo Squadron!" he called. "Do you copy?"
There was no response, and Vaughn realized in that instant that he was now utterly and completely alone, that he was buried inside the hurtling black mountain of computronium and cut off from the warstriders outside.
And in the next moment, he felt the walls of his trapped warstrider yielding… then dissolving as the Naga material began passing through his hull matrix and filling the ascraft's interior. Oily black liquid poured into his cockpit… was passing through the material of his flight suit.
He screamed, thrashing as the material, flooding his suit, began entering his body.…
7
"The machines are gaining ground on us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them.… (T)hat the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question."
"Darwin Among the Machines"
Samuel Butler
C.E. 1863
"My God!" Wheeler cried. "It swallowed him!…"
"Fire!" Vanderkamp shouted. "All units, commence fire!"
Colonel Rudy Griffin watched in horror as the neatly formulated plan to peacefully insert the squadron into the alien AI nebula dissolved into chaos. No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy ran von Moltke's famed aphorism… and evidently that held for attempts to avoid combat as well.
"Belay that fire order!" Griffin called through the squadron channel, but it was already too late. Half a dozen warstriders blasted away with high-energy particle guns and kinetic-impact cannon; the other squadrons facing the other two Naga fragments opened fire as well. Several of the ascraft held their fire… but then a cloud of silver spheres emerged from some hundreds of the nearest statite structures, swarming toward the human fleet.
"Sir!" Vanderkamp yelled. "We're under attack!"
"All units, commence fire," Griffin said, countermanding his own order. "Defend yourselves! Try not to damage the sails or the orbital habs!"
Maybe, if they kept the collateral damage to a minimum, they would have some room for negotiation. Please, God…
He checked the nearest of the red dwarf stars, a scant five million kilometers distant. It had already been maneuvered so that its axis of rotation was aligned with the rebel ships dropping into the micro-star nebula. At that distance, it would take between 16 and 17 seconds for light bearing news of the outbreak of fighting to reach it. The jets that would be fired from the red dwarf didn't move at the speed of light, but they came close; call it forty-five seconds to a minute before the Confederation ships could expect a response.…
Retaliation, he thought, would only be delayed by distance and the slow crawl of light. The aliens had already demonstrated that they were willing to sacrifice some of their infrastructure—the statite sails—in order to hit attackers.
"Damn it, Rudy," Admiral James Carson said. The two men were floating side by side in the microgravity of Constitution's Command Control Center, watching the sudden flare-up of fighting unfolding within a three-D holographic display. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"
"I know, Admiral. Look… we have maybe half a minute before they start sniping at us with stars. We need to go deeper."
"Deeper? What the hell—"
"Deeper into the nebula, sir! Where they can't use their starmining technology against our warships!"
Carson's eyes widened. "Not without hitting their own structures. Good thought!" He began snapping off mental orders, and the tiny Confederation fleet began accelerating, dropping deeper through the outer shells of the immense matrioshka cloud.
Griffin remained focused on his ascraft fighters, as the fighting spread. Attempts to hammer through the black Naga matrix of the fragments had so far failed—the semi-liquid stuff seemed to drink energy and absorb projectiles without limit. But the fragments had stopped their advance, at least for the moment.
The oncoming spheres, however, presented a new and deadly threat. There were simply too many of the things to engage each in turn, and it was obvious that the human defenses were going to be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers in very short order.
More and more of the 104th Regiment's warstriders were engaging the spheres, now. The things didn't appear to have shielding or other protection, and a single kinetic-kill slug was enough to explode one in a dazzling flash of light and hot plasma. Analyses of the radiation loosed by a sphere when it exploded told Griffin what he really didn't want to hear: the detonations carried the 511 keV gamma ray signature of annihilating positrons—the rest mass of an electron multiplied by the speed of light squared. Those spheres carried small amounts of antimatter as warhead payloads.
According to spectrographic scans of the debris clouds, most of their mass consisted of carbon- and silicon-based computronium, with traces of other elements. That might mean they were also intended for communication… though at the moment they seemed more interested in reaching the fleet's capital ships.
Swallowing Sergeant Major Vaughn's warstrider whole certainly did not look like an attempt to be conversational.
"Objects are coming into PD range, sir," a fire-control technician reported.
"Open fire!" Carson told her. "Keep those things away from the fleet!"
Each of the capital ships bristled with point defense weapons—both lasers and high-velocity gatling cannon. Within moments, space ahead of the fleet lit up with hundreds of rapidly strobing pulses of dazzling light and hard radiation as the alien spheres flared and vanished in bursts of hot plasma.
Then an intensely hot plasma jet struck the carrier-battleship Revolution, the bolt fired almost forty seconds earlier from the nearest captive red dwarf. Griffin swore. He'd actually forgotten about that threat, so intent had he been on the far nearer and more numerous antimatter spheres. The matrioshka intelligence had fired the weapon down into the cloud of statite sails, vaporizing several of them and releasing their suspended computronium payloads in a long, long drop into the center of the hypernode cluster.
But Griffin noticed something else as wel
l. "Interesting."
"What?" Carson demanded.
"The aliens are willing to sacrifice a few statites to get at us."
"They do have a few to spare," Carson replied dryly. "I believe you could call this a massively redundant system."
"Yes… but they fired at the Revolution, which was higher up among the upper statite shell… not the Independence. Or us."
"Give them time. They've only taken one shot."
"They might not take another, Admiral," Griffin replied. "Because we're entering a Bishop ring level."
Matrioshka brains were defined as multiple shells or layers, one inside another and all surrounding a central star or other energy source—in this case a ruby-glowing micro-star. The outermost shell consisted of statite computronium structures suspended from light sails and interconnected by invisible beams of infrared laser energy. But the next shell in consisted of the giant Bishop ring structures… presumably habitats for unknown billions or trillions of organic beings.
The Jenkins swarm of habitats just might shield Independence and Constitution from the deadly stellar plasma weapon.
Griffin and Carson waited, second dragging past second. Sphere weapons continued to detonate ahead, blasting local space with hard radiation, but another bolt from the red dwarf star didn't come. Griffin wondered if that suggested another tactic as well. If the hypernode intelligence sought to protect the rotating habitats, perhaps a threat to those habitats would force them negotiate. He didn't like the idea—in effect holding alien civilians hostage—but the human forces, vastly outnumbered and vastly outmatched in technology, had precious few advantages right now.
"Have your fighters pull back to protect the fleet," Carson ordered.
"Yes, sir." Griffin gave the necessary orders. There was some argument from some of the members of Bravo Squadron, a momentary protest that one of their people was trapped inside an alien Naga fragment, but they began moving back toward the Constitution in good order.