Ian Douglas - Singularity

Harper Voyager

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2012

Copyright © William H. Keith, Jr 2012

William H. Keith, Jr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover art by Gregory Bridges

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007485956

Ebook Edition © November 2012 ISBN: 9780007485963

Version: 2017-09-12

For Deb, whose science is about as hard as it comes

Gray was sliding down a gravity well, as though he were being funneled straight toward the wildly rotating cylinder ahead.

Somehow, he realized, the Sh’daar had compressed a medium-sized star into a hollow cylinder a kilometer across and twenty long. Something didn’t add up. Beings that could create this thing weren’t merely good magicians. They were gods , or the closest thing to gods mere humans could imagine.

Gray’s fighter, falling free, was accelerating, moving faster and faster as the maw of the cylinder yawned ahead, the opening empty and utterly lightless.

Fifty more seconds, at this rate, and he would be drawn inside.

If the Sh’daar possessed such power, they didn’t need to rely on the Turusch or their other subject species.

Why fight this protracted war for almost forty years, when such technology could wipe Humankind out of existence with scarcely a thought?

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication For Deb, whose science is about as hard as it comes

Into the Jaws of a Savage God INTO THE JAWS OF A SAVAGE GOD Gray was sliding down a gravity well, as though he were being funneled straight toward the wildly rotating cylinder ahead. Somehow, he realized, the Sh’daar had compressed a medium-sized star into a hollow cylinder a kilometer across and twenty long. Something didn’t add up. Beings that could create this thing weren’t merely good magicians. They were gods , or the closest thing to gods mere humans could imagine. Gray’s fighter, falling free, was accelerating, moving faster and faster as the maw of the cylinder yawned ahead, the opening empty and utterly lightless. Fifty more seconds, at this rate, and he would be drawn inside. If the Sh’daar possessed such power, they didn’t need to rely on the Turusch or their other subject species. Why fight this protracted war for almost forty years, when such technology could wipe Humankind out of existence with scarcely a thought?

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

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Ian Douglas

About the Publisher

5 April 2405

Ad Astra Confederation Government Complex

Geneva, European Union

1450 hours, local time

It’s not possible to torture a piece of software. Not even an intelligent one.

Not that artificial intelligences possess anything like the civil rights of humans. With no rights to violate, the Internal Affairs interrogators could take the AI apart almost literally line by coded line, searching for hidden files or withheld memories.

The software avatar’s prototype , as its human object was known in the electronic intelligence business, had recorded a sizable amount of his own character, thoughts, and motivation within his AI counterparts. It was always possible that thoughts, memories—even entire histories—had slipped through from the fuzzy logic and holographic analog perceptions of the organic brain to a far simpler silicon-based digital format. This particular prototype was Admiral Alexander Koenig, and he worked closely with his AI personal assistant.

He had, in fact, developed what amounted to an emotional relationship with it, deliberately programming it with the personal characteristics—voice, thought patterns, judgment, the simulacra appearance, and so on—of his lover, Karyn Mendelson, killed during the battle to save Earth’s solar system just over six months earlier.

The primary software resided inside Koenig’s head, within the nanochelated implants in the twisting folds and furrows of the sulci of his brain. It served as his PA, or personal assistant, a kind of electronic secretary that could handle routine calls and virtual meetings, could so perfectly mimic Koenig’s appearance, voice, and mannerisms that callers could not tell whether they were speaking to the human or to the human-mimicking software. However, more than a month before, shortly after the Battle of Alphekka, Rear Admiral Koenig had copied his PA software, uploading it into one of the HAMP-20 Sleipnir-class mail packets carried as auxiliaries on board most of the ships of the fleet. Almost three times faster than the best possible speed for a capital ship under Alcubierre FTL Drive, they were used to carry high-velocity express communications across interstellar distances.

It had been this copied software that had piloted the most recent mail packet from Alphekka back to Earth.

And multiple copies of this copy were running inside the computers of the Naval Department of Internal Affairs, completely isolated from the outside world, electronic iterations that could be taken apart, tested to destruction, electronically shredded and pulled through a metaphorical sieve, in search of possible traces of Koenig’s thoughts.