Ian Douglas - Dark Mind

“What do they say, Konstantin?”

There was a brief but agonizing pause.

“The force ahead is siding with us,” the AI told him. “The small Sh’daar fighters appear to be … they are calling them counter-Refusers, which is confusing, but the word rebels may approximate the meaning.”

“Counterrevolutionaries?” Gray suggested. He’d encountered the term once in a downloaded history of twentieth-century global politics.

“Indeed. The Sh’daar, remember, began as what they termed Refusers, rejecting the ur-Sh’daar Schjaa Hok .”

“‘The Transcending,’” Gray said, giving the alien term its closest English translation. “I remember.”

They’d learned that bit of history twenty years ago, during the Koenig Expedition to this spacetime. Originally, the N’gai dwarf galaxy had been occupied by hundreds of mutually alien civilizations that humans now knew as the ur-Sh’daar … the original or primal Sh’daar. When that galactic culture had entered its own version of the technological singularity almost a billion years in Humankind’s past, some, for various reasons, had rejected or somehow avoided the transformation, becoming known as “Refusers.”

“Are you telling me that these fighter swarms are Sh’daar who embrace the ur-Sh’daar Transcending?”

“I do not yet have enough data on Sh’daar ideologies or political interactions to say with certainty,” Konstantin replied. “However, that is certainly a valid possibility.”

“So why the hell were they attacking us?”

“I do not have enough information as of yet to give you a meaningful reply,” Konstantin told him. “But this rebel subgroup must feel threatened by our arrival in some way. Perhaps they wish to join the original ur-Sh’daar, and fear that we would threaten or delay their plans.”

“Hell, if they want to go, let them,” Gray said. “Attacking us without provocation isn’t a rational act.”

“Again, Admiral, I would caution you that we lack hard data as to their motives, needs, and aspirations. It’s too early to speculate concerning their actions.”

Damned machine. “Let me know when you have hard data.”

“Of course.”

“In the meantime, what about our new best buddies out there?”

The Sh’daar vessels ahead were spreading out. America ’s long-range sensors were detecting bursts of gamma radiation—evidence of positron annihilation. The aliens were using antimatter weaponry.

“They appear to be attacking the rebels, Admiral.”

“You’re saying they’re rescuing us?”

“So it would appear, Admiral.”

“All ships,” Gray said, using the battlegroup’s tactical channel. “Disengage and pull back. The cavalry’s just galloped in to the rescue. Stay clear and let them do their thing.”

Sh’daar fighters continued to press their attack on the America battlegroup, trying to overwhelm the human defenses … but the fleet of capital ships was moving in swiftly, now, using precisely wielded bursts of antimatter particles to vaporize the minute alien ships.

And then the surviving alien fighters were breaking off and fleeing, scattering out and away and into the surrounding cloud of densely packed suns.

“Admiral, the Adjugredudhran commander of the Sh’daar flagship Ancient Hope gives you its greetings,” Konstantin reported. “It hopes our force has not suffered serious loss … and regrets the counter-Refuser attack on our vessels. It suggests that we follow the Sh’daar fleet into the Core … to the vicinity of the Six Suns.”

Gray let out a pent-up breath. He felt weak … shaky enough that he wondered if he would have been able to stand in a full gravity. So close …

“Please thank the Ad … thank the Sh’daar commander,” he replied, “and tell it that we will comply.”

“Well,” Mallory said out loud. He’d obviously been listening in on the conversation with Konstantin. “Let the diplomacy games begin.”

“Better with words than with particle cannon,” Gray said with a shrug. “I guess it’s a good thing we brought Konstantin-2 out here.”

“It would’ve been nice if the good guys had been here to meet us,” Mallory said. “I don’t trust this.”

“Neither do I, Dean. But let’s see what they have to say.”

And the battlegroup—the ten survivors, at any rate, plus the Glothr liaison ship—fell into formation with the far more numerous locals.

Admiral Gray looked at the nearest of the Sh’daar vessels—a monster wedge five kilometers long, its hull gliding past a few kilometers away like a massive black cliff dotted with city lights …

… and felt very, very small.

29 October 2425

New White House

Washington, D.C.

United States of North America

0840 hours, EST

“So what’s up on the docket for today?” President Koenig asked.

Marcus Whitney, Koenig’s White House chief of staff, laid a secure data pad on the high-tech desk before him. “You had a nine-hundred with the Pan-Euro ambassador, sir, and an eleven-hundred with the Periphery reclamation council from Northern Virginia …”

“‘Had?’”

“Yes, sir. I rescheduled. Konstantin wants to vir-meet with you.”

“Konstantin? Wants to see me ?” Generally, it was the other way around. “What about?”

“He has not divulged his agenda, Mr. President.”

The powerful AI rarely mixed its affairs with those of humans. Even so, its effects on human culture, technology, and politics had been far reaching indeed. Its input had effectively ended the USNA’s conflict with the Confederation government by employing memetic weaponry to turn civilian support against the war. It continually monitored news feeds and imagery from around the Earth, making suggestions that had averted famines, alleviated plagues, and blocked wars. It had guided presidents in both military and political exchanges both with other human states and with aliens.

Ever since Koenig had taken office as president, Konstantin had been an unofficial and highly secret special advisor. The strange thing was that the machine intelligence—not a human agency or department—seemed to have developed the idea.

And Koenig had no idea what the AI’s true motivations might be.

“I guess,” he said slowly, “I’d better find out what he wants. See that I’m not disturbed, Marcus.”

“Yes, sir.”

As his aide left the office, Koenig leaned back in his chair, which reshaped itself to more comfortably fit his frame. He placed the palm of his left hand on a smooth, glassy plate set into the chair’s arm and on the desk, the datapad winked on …

… and Koenig opened his eyes inside a small and dimly lit log cabin in Kaluga, Russia. An elderly man—white-haired, goateed, with wire-frame pince-nez and a sleepy expression—looked up from an old-fashioned book.

“Hello, Konstantin,” Koenig said. “You wanted to see me?”

As always, Koenig had the feeling that the figure before him was studying him narrowly, with a superhuman intensity quite at odds with the sleepy expression on its very human face. Everything was an illusion, of course, created by the AI and downloaded into Koenig’s mind through the virtual reality software running on his cerebral implants. The anachronistic touches demonstrated that—the real Konstantin Tsiolkovsky never had banks of high-definition monitors on the walls of his log house. Nor had the famous Russian pioneer of astronautic theory spoken English.

“Yes, Mr. President. It is time that you and I had a chat. I have some information that may be of interest.”