by Ian Douglas
The Tok Lord gave the orders, and in moments the ponderous Nungiirtok vessel was under way, shaping a faster-than-light course back toward Earth.
USNA CVS America
Penrose TRGA
1350 hours, FST
Gray had been worried about just how they were going to get back to their own Milky Way, their own epoch. Passing through a TRGA was like threading a needle, and when that needle was tumbling through space, the task was damned near impossible. If the ships of the squadron missed their alignments and were off course by even a few meters, they might end up anywhere.
Or anywhen.
But during their discussions with the Sh’daar, the aliens had provided the answer in the form of a low-grade computer AI, a non-conscious, non-self-aware software package formatted for human computers and designed to be beamed into a TRGA’s control systems using laser-com technology.
Buried within the cylindrical shell of each TRGA was a computer programmed for station-keeping. When the Sh’daar had fled the N’gai galactic core, they’d let the Thorne TRGA tumble as a means of discouraging pursuit by the Consciousness. Assured by the humans that the Consciousness was gone, they provided the software so that the human squadron could get back home.
America and the other vessels had first returned to the spot in space where they’d left the Storozhevoy and taken on board the twenty-five Nungiirtok prisoners before rendezvousing with the Thorne TRGA and beaming the software into its computer. The simpleminded AI immediately reset the station-keeping systems and regained full control of the gravitational fields surrounding the structure, using the positions of nearby stars to calculate the precise orientation of the device.
With the TRGA again stable, America slipped into the end of the open cylinder, following a precisely calculated angle into the interior and through . . .
. . . and emerged moments later from the gaping maw of the Penrose TRGA, tens of thousands of light years and hundreds of millions of years removed from Thorne. One by one, the other ships of the squadron, including the captured Russian vessels, emerged as well, following closely in America’s wake.
They were now seventy-nine light years—about six days’ travel time—from home.
“So,” Gray said, once America was tucked away into its own small bubble of warped space and on course for Earth, “what did we learn, if anything?”
Normally, he ate in the officers’ mess, but this time he’d invited Truitt, Kline, and Mallory to join him in the wardroom for a more formal dinner. While they ate, they went through a relaxed and informal debriefing, discussing the mission so far. Unlike the cafeteria setup of the mess deck, the wardroom was more of a luxury dining room, complete with comfortable chairs and an imitation mahogany table nano-grown from the thickly carpeted decks, and viewalls showing, at the moment, a wooded glade and waterfall somewhere on Earth. Humanoid robots served food and drinks ordered in-head, and twenty-second-century chamber music played discreetly in the background. The room was located in Hab Three, and under a half G of simulated gravity.
“I’d say the most important thing,” Kline said after a moment’s thought, “is that the Sh’daar are a lot more reasonable than anyone’s given them credit for. Ghresthrepni was positively cheerful as he was talking with us.”
“Probably because they’re all happy to be getting away from the Consciousness,” Truitt said, picking at his imitation fish. “The Sh’daar were all terrified of that mad mind. Now they’re able to vanish into the wilderness of a galaxy far larger than their own N’gai Cluster and lose themselves in time as well.” He shrugged. “In my opinion they’re well out of it.”
“Makes you wonder, though,” Mallory said, “what’s going to happen to them. I mean, they’re on course to colonize our galaxy, right? But in this time, our time, all we’ve encountered are the Baondyeddi on Heimdall, and they were only there because they’d slowed down the passage of time for themselves inside their private, virtual world. Where are all the rest of them? The Sjhlurrr and the Adjug . . . Adjugred . . .” He made a face. “You know the ones I mean. Composite starfish.”
“On Earth,” Kline said carefully, “any given species generally lasts for 1 to 2 million years before it goes extinct or evolves into something different. After 800 million years? I doubt that any of them would look even remotely like the originals.”
“They must be here,” Truitt said. “Their remote descendants, I mean. Somebody went and recruited all of the Sh’daar client species—the Turusch and the H’rulka and the Nungiirtok and all the other races we’ve been fighting with the past sixty or seventy years.”
“More likely the Sh’daar just used time travel,” Mallory said. “After all, they have the TRGAs, just like us. In fact, we now know definitively that they built the things.”
“Time travel, yes,” Truitt said, nodding. “They would have to have that in order to infect modern species with Paramycoplasma.”
Gray finished the last of his nano-grown lobster, leaned back, and picked up his coffee cup. “I think we can assume that if the Sh’daar still exist in our galaxy today, they’ve evolved into something as different from their ancestors as we are different from trilobites.”
“Exactly,” Mallory said. “That or they’ve gone through additional singularities. Maybe they eventually made peace with the idea. Maybe they all turned into immortal hyperdimensional gods and wouldn’t be caught dead hanging around this universe.”
“All very interesting,” Gray said, studying his coffee. “But I was really asking what we’ve learned that has a bearing on our mission.”
“All of that does have a bearing on the mission,” Truitt said. “We went out there to learn what might be in store for us with the Singularity. We know the Sh’daar will colonize the galaxy, our galaxy, but then eventually vanish somewhere in the hundreds of millions of years between then and now. The point is that they survived.”
“Meanwhile, we have riots on Earth. Nations threatening each another. Fleets being mobilized. Anti-AI movements. Anti-alien xenophobe movements. Terrorism worse than anything we’ve seen in three centuries. Wars—more wars, I should say. And we haven’t even entered the Technological Singularity yet! God, what’s it going to be like when we do?”
“Hell on Earth,” Truitt said, grim. “Nothing less than hell on Earth.”
The New White House
Washington, D.C.
1500 hours, FST
“Five minutes, Mr. President.”
President James R. Walker nodded and finished downloading his speech from the White House server. It was a good speech, he thought. Powerful, to the point . . .
. . . and promising nothing.
To judge from the news feeds, the whole country—hell, the whole world—was in an uproar over what they were calling Towerfall. The underground nuke had utterly destroyed Port Ecuador, and it had cut the space elevator cable a few hundred meters above the mountain peak. Since then, the elevator’s dangling loose end had been drifting slowly west. Attempts were being made to reattach the end to the alternate anchor point, but so far the reports coming in had been less than encouraging.
Casualties in Port Ecuador were horrific, tens of thousands, at least, and possibly much, much more. From the news feeds he’d seen earlier, it looked as if the entire top of Mt. Cayambe had slumped down into a vast caldera and taken the Skyport with it.
Who the hell had done this thing, anyway? There hadn’t been a terrorist attack like this since the dirty bomb that had taken out Dushanbe. That had almost certainly been the Chinese, but Walker was reasonably sure the Hegemony wasn’t behind the Quito disaster. They had as much to lose from this as did the USNA . . . maybe more, since they’d constructed their big microgravity factory at SupraQuito.
No, everything seemed to point to a smaller, independent group. The damned Huffers, possibly . . . or one of the newer xenophobic anti-spacer organizations who insisted that Humankind was better off staying out of space. Even Dr. Michaels was a possible suspect
, though his primary interest seemed to be in banning AIs. He was a Humankind Firster, and most of them felt humans were better off staying on Earth . . . even if he did have that fancy low-G mansion at Midway.
In any case, Walker’s intelligence advisors didn’t yet have a clue as to who’d done it, and had recommended that the President wait before making an announcement in order to see if anyone came forward to brag or to make demands.
Screw that. Walker would not let the political initiative pass to others. His broadcast this afternoon would prove to both the nation and to the world that he was still very much in control.
“One minute, Mr. President.” A makeup technician lightly dusted his face with a brush and removed the bib. “You look good, sir,” he said. “Break a leg!”
Off expression, that. He wondered where it was from.
“You’re on, Mr. President.”
Walker strode out of the backstage alcove and onto the press conference stage. The pressroom was filled, both with human reporters and with robotcams and drones. He would be going live on nearly eight hundred channels. He wondered how many viewers, how many voters, would be watching.
The human and humanoid members of the audience rose as he walked up to the podium, then took their seats again as he placed his hands on either side of the lectern. An in-head window showed him an audience-eye view of himself, and he adjusted his face to an expression of gravitas.
“Good afternoon,” he began. “Although by now most of you have already heard the news, I come before you to announce the destruction of the spaceport outside of Quito, and the severing of the space elevator. We believe that this was carried out using a small nuclear device smuggled into underground caverns beneath the city. Port Ecuador has been completely destroyed with tremendous loss of life. All service up and down the elevator to SupraQuito has been suspended while engineers assess the damage and begin carrying out repairs. We do not, as yet, know who was responsible for this outrage, but I promise you that we will bring justice to those who carried out this cowardly and dastardly attack.
“Those of you with friends and relatives in Synchorbital—at the naval support facilities and the recreational and industrial compounds in orbit—I can assure you that they are in no immediate danger. I have been told by my scientific advisors that the space elevator cannot fall, and that while it might move out of its orbit somewhat, because the anchor point has been destroyed, it is in absolutely no danger of either crashing to Earth or flying off into space. Engineers and technicians with the Space Elevator Control Bureau have already released the small planetoid tethered to the outer end of the cable so that it does not pull the elevator and attached facilities out of orbit.
“As for the approximately sixty thousand people currently stranded in SupraQuito, and the additional five thousand or so at Midway, I will again stress that they are in no danger. Communications with Synchorbital have been interrupted by the sheer load of calls up- and down-cable, but they should be restored shortly.
“Finally, one sad, personal note. The blast disrupted the magnetic locks on a number of space elevator pods moving up- or down-cable, and many of these fell, re-entering Earth’s atmosphere at high velocity. I have been informed that former President Alexander Koenig was a passenger on one of these pods, and that despite attempts to grapple with his pod and bring it down safely, those attempts failed. His capsule burned up in the atmosphere and was destroyed. The former President was a close personal friend of mine, and I deeply, deeply regret his passing. My heart goes out to those whom Alex left behind, as indeed it goes out to the families and friends of all of those lost in this disaster.
“This concludes my prepared remarks. I will take questions now.” He pointed. “Ms. Halley.”
A woman in the second row stood. “A question and a follow-up, Mr. President. You say sixty thousand people are trapped in Synchorbital. How will they be fed without elevator service? And my follow-up—do you have any plans for evacuating them from orbit?”
“I did not say they were trapped, Ms. Halley. I said they were stranded—definitely a less loaded term. SupraQuito is a fair-sized city, as you are aware, and they have considerable reserves both of food and water, and of the rawmat necessary for technic processing. Besides, we do expect to have service resumed shortly.
“As for an evacuation, since they are in no danger, we have no plans to abandon SupraQuito at this time because it’s not necessary. I’m told that our military vessels at the naval yards will be made available to transport people back to Earth or to transport food and water to the residents if such should become necessary, but it won’t. Yes . . . over there.”
A young man with a beard in the far left of the room stood. “Mr. President . . . who do you think is responsible for this attack? And a follow-up . . . if we learn who did this, are you prepared to go to war to punish them?”
Walker had been waiting for that one. “We do not as yet know who was responsible. At this point, we doubt that it was another nation, because every nation on this planet depends on cheap and rapid access to synchronous orbit. It’s absolutely vital to our infrastructure, and to our continued prosperity, for every nation on the planet, not just us.
“There are, however, hundreds of grassroots organizations, rebel groups, and secret political action cadres with both the means and the motives to carry out such an attack. I suppose it’s even within the realm of possibility that the attack was carried out by a lone nut, a whack-job with a pocket nuke and a hell of a grudge against . . . somebody. Or a looney who just wanted his name to be in the news. We don’t know, but we will find out. And we will take action.”
“But will you go to war over this?”
“We will take whatever action is appropriate. You . . . in the red.”
A woman toward the back stood up. “Mr. President, do you think this might be the work of an anti-space group or one of the anti-AI organizations?”
“As I said, we have no idea as yet.” He pointed. “You . . .”
And the questions continued.
Koenig Residence
Columbus, Ohio
1503 hours, EST
Five hundred and thirty kilometers to the west, a gynoid robot watched the President’s face, three meters high and filling the viewall, wishing that she could cry.
Chapter Fifteen
24 April, 2429
Deep Space
Sol System
0514 hours, FST
The mountain-sized Nungiirtok ship, a converted asteroid, had been joined by others, a fleet called in by the massive Ashtongtok Tah. In ponderous procession, they dropped out of their version of faster-than-light drive out near the orbit of Saturn and began to move inward, toward the sun.
Toward the Earth.
The first to notice the intruders twenty-three minutes later was the High Guard patrol cruiser Steregushchiy, a Russian vessel watching for asteroids or comets that might someday pose a threat to Earth. At first, the line of asteroids coming in from Beyond looked natural. Comets occasionally were broken into pieces and strung out in long, eerily straight trails by a previous close encounter with a gas giant or other massive object. But magnetic, radio, infrared, and neutrino scans swiftly identified the intruders as artificial, with quantum-tap power plants and modulations of their energy fields suggesting intelligent design.
Steregushchiy transmitted a warning to Mars and to Earth on laser-com frequencies three seconds before a plasma beam struck her amidships, vaporizing her in a silent flash of raw light.
The New White House
Washington, D.C.
0815 hours, EST
“This just came through a few minutes ago, Mr. President,” Hal Matloff, the senior presidential aide, said as he handed Walker an animated printout.
“Just what am I supposed to be looking at here, Hal?” The sheet showed what appeared to be a three-second loop, set in deep space, and focused on a line of enhanced-color objects made tiny by distance. They were moving, and numbers flashing
and changing on either side of the page showed that they were distant . . . and therefore moving fast.
“A Russki patrol cruiser picked this up eighty-five light-minutes from Earth,” Matloff said. “The ship ceased transmission after just a few seconds.”
“What . . . it was destroyed?”
“We believe so, Mr. President,” Admiral Ronald Martinez, Chief of Naval Intelligence, said. “We have no hard data as yet, but we’ve deployed fighter squadrons from Mars and from Earth orbit to check it out.”
“If they are hostile, Mr. President, we need to deploy immediately! They are minutes away from Earth.”
“Are they the bastards who knocked down the space elevator?”
“Unlikely, sir,” Martinez said. “That may be an unfortunate coincidence.”
“Very unfortunate. So unfortunate I want you to investigate whether or not it was aliens who bombed the elevator.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dammit, it’s going to interfere with our naval deployment, big-time!”
“We have plenty of fleet assets at Mars, Mr. President,” Martinez said. “Some of the ships berthed at SupraQuito will be delayed while we find alternate means of getting their personnel on liberty up to the fleet, but we’re working on that now.”
“How many were in Port Ecuador when that blast went off?”
“We don’t know, sir. We’re working on that, too.”
“Well, dammit, work on finding out who these aliens are, and what they want!”
“Judging from what happened to the Steregushchiy, Mr. President, we’ll be able to ask them ourselves any minute now . . . when they kick down that door.” Matloff’s voice was grim.
“Coordinate with the Russians. Their fleet assets at SupraSingapore will help. And talk to the Pan-Euros and the Chinese, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do it!”
President Walker glowered at the door after the two men left. The world, he decided, was on its way to hell. Every new message, every new cerebral link brought more and bigger problems, until it seemed like civilization itself was tottering on the brink.