Ian Douglas - Bright Light

“Yes, Captain!”

“Resume firing nanotechnic disassemblers into the path of that thing.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Program them to detonate outside the range of those gravitics, if you can.”

“We’re estimating a range limit of around two hundred thousand kilometers,” Mallory told her. “That’s based on the ranges at which they killed Wotan and Kurst .”

“Good.”

“ Not good, ma’am. At that kind of range, the individual nano-D particles will be so broadly dispersed they might not have much of an effect.”

“What I want, Commander, is to turn that whole volume of space between us and them toxic. Put so many hungry nano-Ds in there, they’re going to get bit if they step inside.”

“Well … it’s worth a try, Captain.”

“It’s all we have, Commander.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Other ships were arriving from different parts of the Sol System, coming in a few at a time. Most were smaller than the America —gunships and destroyers and a couple of heavy cruisers, Varyag and Komet . A Chinese Hegemony contingent of eight vessels was reported en route, but it wouldn’t arrive for another thirty minutes at best.

“Pass the word to every ship as they come in,” Gutierrez said. “I want a wall up between Earth and that sphere. And they’re to use nano-D weaponry if they have it.”

A wall was the three-dimensional equivalent of a line in naval surface warfare, a formation that would give every defending vessel a clear shot at the enemy … and just maybe project the message that the Earth ships were not going to let the Rosette entity pass without a fight. Gutierrez had come into this conflict thinking of the alien cloud as a swarm of tiny ships, but she was beginning to understand them differently now. All of those microvessels out there were part of a whole; the enemy was an artificial intelligence residing within the entire alien swarm. They were facing, not a fleet, but a titanic alien being.

A being that now was extending itself, projecting beams of light in a complex three-dimensional network with no clear pattern that she could comprehend. She’d seen it before, though. Then, the Rosette entity appeared to be anchoring itself in space using solid light.

Now, the alien mass continued to move …

… and it was heading directly toward Earth, only a few AUs distant.

1 February 2426

New White House

Washington, D.C.

2142 hours, EST

“Mr. President?” Marcus Whitney said. “Incoming message for you, flagged ‘Most Urgent.’ Dr. Wilkerson, sir.”

“I’ll take it,” Koenig said. He was immersed in the holographic display showing the battle and could barely see Whitney through the glowing haze of imagery.

“This transmission is also going to the Joint Chiefs and secdef, and to Mars HQ, sir.”

With a thoughtclick, the projection showing America and several other ships facing off against the giant alien intruder faded out, replaced by the strained features of Phillip Wilkerson, head of the ONI Xenosophontological Research Department at Mare Crisium, on the moon.

Koenig nodded. “Yes, Doctor. What is it?”

The almost three-second time delay for the there-and-back signal transmission between Earth and moon seemed to drag out forever. “Good evening, Mr. President. I thought you would want to know. We’re uploading a new Omega virus to the America .”

“New how?”

“It’s the basic AI-Omega structure, with layered quantum encryption in the matrix.”

“English, please, Doctor.”

“We Turusched the code. It may help us get past the Rosette entity’s immunodefenses.”

Koenig considered this. They’d used the Tabby’s Star Omega virus against that thing with at least some success once before. It had stopped, at least, and an AI clone of Konstantin had been able to talk with it.

But they’d been assuming that Omega was a one-shot weapon. The Rosette entity was an enormously fast and powerful AI, far more capable in all respects than Konstantin. It would have analyzed that first attack and would now have defenses—like an organic body’s immune system—solidly in place.

“Turusched the code?” Koenig frowned. What the hell did that … ah! He got it.

The Turusch were an alien species, a part of the Sh’daar Associative with an unusual means of communication. The beings lived in closely bonded pairs and they spoke simultaneously, but not in unison. One would say one thing, the other something else … and the sounds of the two voices blended in a series of harmonics that carried yet a third, amplifying meaning. “Turusched the code” meant Wilkerson had figured out how to write viral codes in layers, like the complex Turusch language.

A number of Turusch pairs were still living in the xenosophontological research labs beneath the Mare Crisium as a kind of diplomatic community, where Wilkerson and his people had been studying them for over twenty years, now.

“You think this will give us another shot at the Rosetter?” Koenig asked.

“It should help us,” Wilkerson said slowly, “to communicate with it. We’ve been able to nest three AIs on top of one another. The deeper minds monitor the ones above, support them, and watch out for signs that the top-level mind has been corrupted or compromised. We’re calling it Trinity.”

Koenig wondered if Wilkerson was talking about something like the way the human brain worked, with conscious and subconscious minds … or the Freudian idea of id, ego, and superego. More likely, he decided, Wilkerson was discussing AI-related technicalities—which Koenig had no clue about.

Warfare, Koenig thought, was rapidly evolving beyond the ken of humans. Whether that was necessarily a bad thing remained to be seen. But it appeared that artificial intelligence was more interested in talking with the opponent and not simply destroying it in flame and fury, and that was something Koenig—as president of almost a billion people—could understand.

The problem was, he wasn’t even sure he had a choice in the matter anymore, because weaponry was increasingly godlike in its scope and power, and the AIs wielding it were so far beyond human capabilities as to make humans completely irrelevant.

Sooner rather than later, we might just be along for the ride. For now, though …

“Keep me informed,” Koenig told Wilkerson. “Don’t let your new toy give away the farm. But if it can buy us some breathing space, let it!”

“Absolutely, Mr. President.”

Koenig cut the link, wondering again where Konstantin was. The Omega Code incorporated part of Konstantin’s matrix into its structure, and presumably Trinity did as well. But he wanted to hear from the super-AI he knew. He didn’t always trust Konstantin … but it had been a loyal advisor for years.

He could almost think of it as his … friend.

Charlie Berquist, head of Koenig’s Secret Service detail, entered the Oval Office without ceremony. “Excuse me, Mr. President. We need to move you out of here.”

“Why?”

“ Now , Mr. President. If you please …”

Koenig sighed, then waved the display off. “They won’t be here for an hour at least. Plenty of time …”