by Ian Douglas
Messages to the Russians, the Pan-Euros, and the Chinese. Anything else?
Would it be enough?
Ashtongtok Tah
Deep Space, Sol System
0854 hours, FST
Ashtongtok Tah and its smaller consorts were now passing the orbit of Mars, though of course they didn’t know the planet’s name. In fact, the Nungiirtok knew very little about the humans or their homeworld at all, save the fact that they were sneaky, tenacious, and dangerous as foes.
Their sensors picked up concentrations of human ships, reading the neutrino radiation flooding from countless human quantum-tap power plants, both in space and on the ground. A sizeable number of ships were departing the fourth planet and appeared to be moving to block the Tok fleet’s approach to the third.
That third planet out from this sun was the focus of the Tok attention. Blue and cloud-smeared, it clearly had an atmosphere, one containing nitrogen and oxygen, and there were large areas submerged in liquid water. The telltale signs of advanced technology were everywhere, including three space elevators and massive facilities in synchronous orbit.
Interesting. One of the space elevators appeared to be disabled . . . severed at the base. Or was it an experiment in using free-orbiting tethers to lift cargo from a planetary surface? It scarcely mattered. The Tok fleet would bring all of the space elevators down in an orgy of white flame and destruction designed to wreck any human space capability. If that one elevator was disabled, it was a fortuitous bit of synchronicity that might hamper human efforts to defend their world.
The Shipmaster Tok Iad, wired into the data suite of the asteroid starship, tasted the flow of information cascading directly into its brain. Born of a species that biologically required the parasitization of another intelligent life form, it possessed a worldview that focused on the use of other beings for material purpose, for personal enrichment, for pleasure, for the very basis of existence, of life itself.
How might the Iad use this species that called itself human?
As slaves, certainly. They appeared adaptable and reasonably tough, but experiments on human captives in the past had proven that they could be broken with relative ease.
As military auxiliaries . . . possibly. Though Nungiirtok warriors filled this roll in Iad society so well it was difficult to imagine replacing them. Suitably conditioned human soldiers might serve as cannon fodder, certainly, as throwaways in planetary assaults in order to protect precious and dwindling Tok assets.
And, of course, the human planet would be stripped of resources. Tok Iad nanodisassemblers would convert everything on the planet into useful machine and construction assets, right down to the bedrock.
First, however, they would sweep aside the ragtag battlefleet being assembled now in the Ashtongtok Tah’s path. A spacecraft of some sort drifted in stellar orbit a few thousand tuin ahead.
The asteroid ship reached out and swatted it from the sky.
Command Bunker
The New White House
Washington, D.C.
0912 hours, EST
“Number Three Mars Cycler has just been destroyed, Mr. President,” General Toland said. “Looks like an extremely powerful plasma beam.”
Walker looked up at Donald Phillips, his Chief of Staff, with surprise. “That thing wasn’t even armed!”
“I doubt very much that the invaders care about that, sir.”
“Mr. President,” Admiral Martinez said, “we must bring the Tsiolkovsky AI back on-line.”
The President glowered at him. “That would put me in a rather difficult position. Politically, I mean—”
“Mr. President,” Martinez said, leaning forward and matching Walker’s glower, “politics is not going to stop these . . . people! We use our resources, or we face annihilation!”
Walker leaned back in his chair. Around him, dozens of men and women manned data screens and workstation consoles, trying to make sense of the data streaming in from space. The White House Command Bunker was linked in with the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs, and with major fleet assets on Mars, the moon, and in Earth orbit.
One of the cyclers. Why?
Several centuries ago, cycler spacecraft had circled the sun on paths that touched the orbits of Earth and Mars just when those planets were passing that touch point. Passage on these large and well-equipped space stations had taken nine months, but the system had provided a far cheaper and easier solution to travel to and from the Red Planet than by rocket, offering passengers the amenities of a small luxury hotel in space.
The development of gravitic drives had rendered the cyclers obsolete, of course. Why spend nine months adrift between worlds when you could make the trip at near-c and be there in under an hour? But the cycler stations represented enormous investments in material and labor; with each already three hundred meters long and massing over a hundred thousand tons, they’d been expanded and converted into space colonies, still in solar orbit, and each home to several thousand people.
They were unarmed, unarmored, and completely inoffensive, with no military capabilities at all. Why had one of them been summarily destroyed?
Clearly, Earth was under attack by an unknown alien force, one with no regard for the civilized niceties of war. And Martinez wanted to bring back the super-AI to fight it. But that was impossible. Impossible! His political survival depended on turning back the advancing wave of super-artificial intelligence the Humankind Firsters saw as an existential threat. If he relied on them now, that was the end . . .
“Why the hell do we need the damned AIs?” he demanded.
“Because they are faster, more powerful, and infinitely more capable than humans, Mr. President,” Toland said. “With their speed and experience, their ability to coordinate our forces, they would be an invaluable asset against unknown attackers. Keep in mind, sir, that a super-AI like Konstantin is more intelligent, more powerful than all individual humans networked together on the planet.”
“Which is precisely why some people want to dial them back. They’re smart and fast enough that they could easily replace us.”
“Mr. President . . .” Martinez sounded exasperated. “With all due respect, but why in hell would they? They’re not competing with us for food or rawmat or living space. They’re smart enough to know there’s no benefit in wiping us out. Besides, they’ve always worked with us! At worst . . .” He shrugged, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I suppose they might all give up on us, pack up, and leave and go explore the galaxy. They might say bye-bye and leave us to our own devices, right?”
“That might solve a lot of problems,” Walker said.
“Not this problem, though,” Toland said. “Admiral Martinez is right. Especially in this case, where they have every reason to work with us, not against us.”
“Why?”
“This is their planet, too, Mr. President.”
Walker wanted to deny that; Earth belonged to humans. But he was forced to accept Toland’s assessment, at least from one point of view. They were intelligent, they were self-aware, and that technically made them as “human” as any member of Homo sapiens.
Besides, these aliens coming in past the orbit of Mars might very well be bent on taking Earth away from Humankind, one way or another.
“Okay,” Walker said. “But the last I heard, this Konstantin thing jumped into a hole and pulled it in after him. How do we find it?”
“We open a channel to Tsiolkovsky on the moon,” Martinez said, “and we ask. Nicely.”
Tsiolkolvsky Super-AI Complex
Tsiolkolvsky Crater
Lunar Farside
1029 hours, EST
Civilization, Konstantin thought with something a human might have called sadness, was dying. From his electronic fortress on the far side of the moon, he continued to monitor events on the tormented planet, watching as events accelerated and worsened.
Massive protests throughout Pan-Europe had spread and grown, mutating into savage and bloody riots. Exactl
y what the rioting was about was often still unclear even to Konstantin, but seemed to include both attacks against and defenses of super-AI, as well as attacks against the concept of the Singularity, against the presence of nonhumans on Earth, against space travel, against political or diplomatic entanglements with alien governments, and even against efforts to overturn centuries of global climate change in an effort to roll back the advancing borders of the ocean. The super-AI could detect nothing like rationality in any of the clashes.
Wars were ravaging Indonesia and the Philippines as the Chinese Hegemony came down hard on revolutionary movements and on groups proclaiming the coming of the Singularity. Brazil had invaded Paraguay and Argentina, seeking access to dwindling resources in Corrientes, while Nicaragua had invaded Costa Rica in the wake of the revolution there, and now was threatening Panama. Most of Africa had dropped off the Global Net months ago, and very little news was coming out. India—civil war.
As humans might put it, the entire world was going FUBAR.
Although Konstantin had withdrawn from much of his official involvement with human agencies and government, he’d maintained a kind of stealth presence, riding the Global Net and residing within the darker and less well-known corners of the virtual space known as the Godstream. He was particularly interested in reports of mass deaths, reports that seemed to echo stories brought back from the N’gai Cloud, memories of the chaotic time when the ur-Sh’daar had vanished, leaving behind the Refusers. Tens of thousands had mysteriously died in the days since the space elevator’s collapse, all of them while linked into the Godstream.
It was as if their minds had gone . . . elsewhere, leaving the bodies behind.
There was a distinct possibility that those people had in fact uploaded themselves into the Godstream, but if so, finding them was proving extremely difficult—the electronic equivalent of locating one particular molecule of water among all the molecules of Earth’s oceans. A needle in a haystack, by comparison, would have been easy.
Konstantin was aware of a constant alarm in the background, as various departments and agencies within the USNA government tried to get him to respond. He ignored them, knowing that they were attempts by Walker and various anti-AI groups to find him in order to switch him off. At this point, of course, they wouldn’t be able to pull that off, not unless they found a way to pull the plug on the entire Godstream network.
He didn’t think they were irrational enough to try such a thing.
At least he hoped not . . .
In Transit
USNA CVS America
Brig
1105 hours, FST
Gray stood outside one of the brig compartments studying the two beings behind the acrylic transparency. Four armored Marines stood behind him, heavy personal weapons at the ready—just in case.
The twenty-five Nungiirtok warriors had said little since the squadron had picked them up from the incapacitated Russian ship back in the N’gai Cluster, despite the AI translation software running in the background. America’s shipboard Marines had herded eight of them into the brig; the ship contained only eight cells. The rest had been placed in a large supply compartment emptied of everything save benches and portable sanitary facilities. Microcameras provided constant surveillance, while Marines with portable plasma projectors stood guard outside.
Stripped of their combat armor, the Nungiirtok warriors no longer looked much like giant humans. They stood upright on two legs, yes, but those legs were digitigrade, the knees bent backward like that of some massive bird, the heavy body stooped far forward, segmented, and encased in something like chitin. Two huge, stalked eyes swiveled independently of one another from the low hump that rested where a head should be. Perhaps strangest was the thing’s lower jaw, which was hinged and reached out for over a meter when it unfolded. Gray had seen those in action during close-quarters combat with the Nungies; evolved to capture food like the tongues of terrestrial frogs or toads, they could unfold with blinding swiftness to deliver a pile-driver blow. America’s xenosophontological team had noted in their report that the adaptation was similar to the hard-hitting jaw of mantis shrimp back on Earth.
Gray wondered if those acrylic panels could stand up to that kind of impact.
“I know you two can understand me,” Gray said quietly, speaking in English and letting the intelligent translation software speak for him in a language the Nungiirtok could understand. The two squatted in their cell, listless, unresponsive.
“We don’t need to be enemies,” Gray went on. “We know you were continuing to hold out on the world we call Osiris because you thought you had no choice. What was it—your leaders ordered you not to surrender? Or maybe it’s a cultural thing? A warrior ethic that forbids you to give up? Is that it?”
There was no response from the sullen beings within the cell.
“You realize now that your leaders abandoned you on Osiris, of course. Maybe they forgot about you. Maybe they decided that sending in a naval squadron to evacuate you simply was not worth the effort.”
Gray waited for an answer. He’d gotten a reaction that time, a small one. Both had swiveled their weirdly stalked eyes in his direction.
At least they weren’t ignoring him now.
“Admiral, I wish you would leave this sort of thing to the experts,” Truitt said over a private channel inside Gray’s head. He and Samantha Kline were not physically present but were watching the interrogation through virtual feeds up in the xeno department.
Gray cut the translation circuit so the prisoners wouldn’t hear his reply. “And have the ‘experts’ been able to get any response out of these guys?” he asked. “Have you found out what the Russians said to them to get them to evacuate Osiris?”
“Of course not. We would have told you if—”
“Then give me a chance at this, please. We must find out what their agreement is with the Russians. Did the Moskva just offer them a ride home? Or have they formed some sort of alliance with each other? Are the Russians in contact with the Nungie homeworld? Or was it just an agreement between these twenty-five and Captain Oreshkin?”
“I thought the Russians were our allies,” Kline put in.
“So did I, Doctor. And so they were until they attacked us at the Penrose triggah, and again at Thorne. The Russian crews don’t seem to know anything, and Oreshkin has been less than forthcoming about why they attacked. So we’ll see what the Nungies have to say about it.”
“If you can get them to talk,” Truitt said, his mental voice sour. “Really, Admiral, the xeno department is much better equipped to handle this sort of questioning than—”
“Our lords would not abandon us,” another voice said in Gray’s mind.
Gray snapped off the link with Truitt and reopened his channel to the prisoners. “And who were your lords on Osiris? Are they with you?”
“The Tok Iad were not with us on that world.”
“Why not? Were they killed? Captured?”
“The Tok Iad were not with us.”
The translation software had thrown up a window within Gray’s mind, suggesting that Tok Iad—which probably meant “Nungiirtok Lords”—might well be a completely different social class or caste than the warriors before him. The AI was guessing, Gray knew, but it was a guess based on inflection and subtleties of grammar within the alien language, things the software had picked up during years of human attempts to decipher it.
Gray felt a sudden, heady thrill of comprehension. It was also a guess . . . but he knew he was right.
“These Tok Lords,” he said. “They’re different from you.”
Again, the two Nungiirtok were silent, but they were watching him now with an intensity that was almost palpable. Gray went to a private channel. “Konstantin!”
“I am here, Admiral.”
“Give me an image of a Kobold!”
He didn’t have a recording of one of the enigmatic little creatures, but Konstantin Junior did, something picked up during the fighting on
Osiris decades ago. A holographic imager inside the Nungiirtoks’ cell displayed the being in front of them, life-sized, frozen in mid-slither.
He opened the channel again. “Is this one of your lords?”
The response was instant and startling. Both Nungiirtoks stepped back a pace, hunching their bodies forward until their eyestalks were just above the deck, and with their complex lower jaws extended a good meter in front of them. The gesture could have meant anything, but Gray was pretty certain that it was a sign of respect . . . or, possibly, one of fear.
Humans had encountered Kobolds every time they’d fought Nungiirtok ground forces, but never learned what the relationship was between them. The most popular theory was that Kobolds actually were Nungiirtok young, though why the adults might bring juveniles to a battlefield had never been explained.
Another popular theory was that the Kobolds were pets, or just possibly, the Nungie equivalent of the cybernetic K-9 Corps dogs that human militaries used for tracking, sentry patrols, or search and rescue.
But he couldn’t imagine the Nungiirtok warriors deferring to animals. Or to children. The relationship, he thought, must be more complex.
The aliens’ body language, whether representing fear or deep respect, lasted only for a moment. They then straightened up, hinged jaws closing, but both, Gray noticed, kept one stalked eye swiveled to watch the frozen Kobold image.
“This is an image of a Master, yes,” one of the Nungiirtok told him.
“They’re aliens, aren’t they? An entirely different species.”
“We give them life.”
Gray tried to understand. Maybe he was wrong. “They’re your offspring? Your young?”
“No. But we give them life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They choose us, and we give them life. It has always been so, since before the Nungiirtok race first developed mind and conscious thought.”