Ian Douglas - Singularity

Willard Coleman had been the Confederation political officer on board the Illustrious , a civilian reporting to Hans Westerwelle on the Jeanne d’Arc , and tasked with keeping an eye on the loyalties of Confederation officers in the British squadron.

“In any case, we’ve been talking with the other commanders in the Pan-European squadron,” Harrison continued. “Except for the Jeanne d’Arc , they’re with us. Captain Michel, on the Arc , would have been too … but old Giraurd does need a way to get back home.”

“Good God. …”

“Don’t know about the Chinese, yet,” he went on. “But you can count on the rest of us. Nineteen ships, including two light carriers.”

“And that,” Koenig replied, “is the best news I’ve heard all day. Welcome aboard.”

He didn’t bring up the problems this decision would make for the various ship captains. They knew .

That they were willing to join Koenig’s career suicide, however, spoke volumes about how other naval officers viewed the Confederation …

… and what to do about the alien Sh’daar.

29 June 2405

Admiral’s Office

TC/USNA CVS America

Approaching Texaghu Resch System

112 light years from Earth

1002 hours, TFT

Seventy-four days after departing the refueling rendezvous within the Kuiper Belt of HD 157950, a total of fifty-eight ships tunneled through the Void within their Alcubierre bubbles, their AIs holding them on course for a star invisible from Earth. Admiral Koenig sat in his office, reviewing again the electronic files of the ships and crews that had joined CBG-18.

In fact, only seventeen of the Pan-European Federation ships had joined the battlegroup, not the nineteen Harrison had promised. As it turned out, Captain Michel and the Jeanne d’Arc had voted to join the squadron, a surprise last-moment mutiny that had thrown the European contingent into considerable disarray. The crews of three European ships—the destroyers Karlsruhe and Audace , and the heavy cruiser De Grasse —had voted not to join CBG-18, and returned to Sol. Admiral Giraurd had left on board the De Grasse , along with the political officers and a number of other men and women who’d chosen to adhere to Confederation Navy orders. Those three ships were crowded. A number of the officers and crew of the remaining Federation ships had elected to return to Earth as well, while some on board the three had transferred to vessels remaining with the battlegroup.

Four of the nine Chinese ships had returned to Earth as well. Five, however, under the command of Admiral Liu Zhu, had elected to join America and CBG-18. Koenig wasn’t sure, yet, if that represented Hegemon approval of his strategy … or if Beijing, independent of the Confederation, was simply determined to keep an eye on him.

Fifty-eight ships, then—more than twice the number surviving after Alphekka—were about to emerge at Texaghu Resch, and Koenig needed to have a long-anticipated conversation with the two nonhuman beings on board the star carrier America .

“Admiral,” Koenig’s personal electronic secretary said, “the two Agletsch are here to see you, as you requested.”

“Thank you. Send them in.”

The office door opened, and the aliens walked in, followed by a Marine guard.

Humans called them “bugs” or “spiders,” though they were, of course, unrelated to anything that had ever lived on Earth. Flattened and slightly elongated disk-shapes on sixteen slender, jointed legs, each stood as tall as a short human but took up considerably more space. Instead of chitin, their integuments were red-brown, soft, almost velvety, with blue and yellow markings like the reticulated patterns of some snakes. Legs and what passed for faces were black; four eyes on stalks emerged from each face, and Koenig was only now beginning to realize that the movements of the eye stalks added emphasis to their speech. Silver markings on their bodies were decoration of some sort, while each had a metallic device below its face that served as a translator.

Both Agletsch—their names were Gru’mulkisch and Dra’ethde—were, technically, female; their nonsentient males hung like grotesque, gelatinous leeches from their faces.

Koenig stood as they entered. “Thank you for coming,” he told them.

“We appreciate you seeing us, Admiral,” Dra’ethde told him. “We have been … concerned. We have not been allowed into your CIC or bridge since leaving Arcturus.”

Even now, Koenig had trouble telling the two apart, though there were subtle differences in the decorative silver inlays on their skins. A subroutine programmed into his cerebral implant had learned to recognize those patterns, however, and threw the name of the individual up against his visual field when one spoke. Dra’ethde appeared to be the senior of the two, though the niceties of Agletsch social structures were not yet well understood.

Koenig nodded to the Marine. “You can leave us, Staff Sergeant,” he said. “Wait in the office outside.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The Marine turned and left, the door sliding shut behind her.

“I do understand you concern,” Koenig told the aliens when they were alone. “You were excluded from the bridge and CIC on my orders.” He thoughtclicked an icon in his in-head display, and a three-dimensional image winked on in the air above his desk. It looked, Koenig thought, like a tangled mat of hair a meter tall, slowly rotating in space. “When we found these. Can you blame me?”

“No, Admiral Koenig. But we regret that you still do not … understand. Yes-no?”

The fact was that the two aliens were bugged —a humorous-enough statement given what Agletsch looked like to humans. Each being contained, hidden away within her brain, something called a Sh’daar Seed. The image of one, magnified several million times, hung in the air between them now.

The implants had only been discovered at Arcturus, when information concerning the destination of CBG-18, Alphekka, had been relayed from the Agletsch to a Sh’daar data web within a H’rulka community in the atmosphere of Alchameth, a gas giant circling the star Arcturus. The H’rulka were another species within the Sh’daar galactic web, and that intelligence had been transmitted to the Sh’daar forces stationed at Alphekka. The things were tiny, the metal in them masked by the silver inlays on their carapaces. Only after the transmission had been detected had close internal scans picked the things up, microscopic tangles of artificially grown components that apparently served as minute electronic nodes of an extended Sh’daar intelligence.

They allowed the Agletsch to serve as far-traveling eyes and ears for the absent Sh’daar, rulers of an extended galactic empire that had never been seen by humans … or by the members of any other species with which Humankind had communicated thus far. It was assumed that the Turusch and other nonhuman species aligned with the Sh’daar also had the implants. There were, Koenig knew, a number of Turusch now living in a base on Earth’s moon run by the Office of Naval Intelligence.

He wondered if they were broadcasting details of their life there to the Sh’daar net.

“And what is it that we don’t understand?” Koenig asked.

“That the Sh’daar Seed only becomes active when another node is close by.”

“And what do you mean by ‘close by’?”

“A few thousand of your kilometers.”

Their translators, Koenig thought, were doing a good job of turning Agletsch measures and numbers into human units. At least he hoped that was the case. A misunderstanding here—or a deliberate lie—could make for a serious intelligence leak to the enemy. That was why he’d ordered that the Agletsch be restricted in their freedom of movement on board the America —and why they now had a Marine guard following them everywhere except within the shielded suite of compartments designated as their quarters.