Ian Douglas - Dark Mind

A number of Sh’daar vessels, many considerably larger than America , by now had gathered around the human fleet, bending space briefly, and bringing the battlegroup across several light years to the dwarf galaxy’s heart. Now those ships were guiding America and the other vessels to their final destination, an entire world larger than Earth, covered over completely with black metal and the tangled, blazing knots of what could only be urban centers and vast industrial facilities. More of that planet’s surface appeared to be roofed over in artificial, light-drinking ebon materials than was open to the sky.

It was a single city the size of a planet.

The metallic world did not appear to have a sun, but was wandering among the densely packed stars of the cluster’s core, bathed in their light.

“The Adjugredudhran commander of the Sh’daar flagship reports that this is their capital world,” Konstantin-2 reported. “Daar N’gah.”

“Very well,” Gray replied. “Thank you. Do we have their permission to approach the consulate?”

There was a long pause. “Affirmative, Admiral. Deep Time currently is in an extended orbit, about half a million kilometers farther on. They request that we give Daar N’gah wide clearance due to local traffic.”

Which might, Gray reflected, be the full truth, or it might reflect Sh’daar concerns about more rebels appearing and the potential for collateral damage to the planet if another firefight began. Either way, it made sense to him from a tactical standpoint if he were in their position.

“Tell them we will comply.”

America , under her own power now, swung wide of the black metal world and decelerated into the indicated orbit. The consulate station unofficially known as Deep Time gleamed ahead in the harsh, reflected light from the Six Suns, a silvery, glittering torus rotating to provide those aboard with artificial gravity.

Deep Time had started out eight months earlier as a small USNA deep space military base constructed in the N’gai Cloud to keep an eye on the Sh’daar, a concession by the Collective possible only with the base’s near-total demilitarization. No lasers or particle cannon, no high-velocity KK weaponry, nothing that might upset the unknowable currents and eddies of time itself. The men and women stationed here were permitted sidearms, but the posting was strictly made on a volunteer basis. Hand lasers and man-portable pee-beeps were no match for five-kilometer flying mountains.

A couple of months earlier, while America had been deployed to the far future, the Deep Time station in the far past had been designated as a kind of semiofficial consulate, Humankind’s ambassadorial presence in the N’gai Cluster … though, again, no one knew what the Sh’daar themselves thought of the arrangement. The consulate staff, including almost a hundred xenosophontologists, had been studying the Sh’daar and their civilization, at least as it had existed in the remote past, the epoch known as Tee-sub-minus.

Humans now knew that the ancient Sh’daar had time-traveled to Earth’s galaxy in the twenty-sixth century, the epoch they called Tee-sub-prime, and made contact with the various star-faring civilizations that had been fighting their on-again, off-again war with Earth. On Earth, it begged the question were the Sh’daar of the twenty-sixth century under the control of the ancient N’gai civilization? No one knew for sure, and attempts to query the ancient Sh’daar had so far been frustrating and inconclusive.

With the civil war on Earth concluded at last, however, it was time to find out the truth … and also for the humans to warn the ancient Sh’daar about what they had learned even further into the remote future. The America battlegroup had been dispatched as an escort for the Glothr emissary—an opportunity to show the flag, and to back up the Glothr representatives with firepower if necessary.

Gray desperately hoped that firepower would not be necessary. The Sh’daar were so far in advance of Earth technology that it was difficult to even compare the two. Human tacticians still weren’t sure what it was that the Sh’daar had feared about America and her escorts twenty years ago … or why they’d given in so easily.

Or if they had truly given in at all , Gray thought.

“Range to Deep Time One now four thousand kilometers,” Mallory reported. “We’re slowing our approach.”

“We’re receiving telemetry from DT-1,” Pam Wilson, the communications officer added. “They report everything quiet and normal.”

“Very well.” So far, so good …

The attack as they’d emerged from the TRGA had shaken Gray more than he cared to admit.

Gray no longer needed image enhancement and magnification to see DT-1. It was visible in CIC’s forward view, just a kilometer away, now.

“Konstantin?” Gray asked. “Are you ready?”

“Of course, Admiral. You may release me at your discretion.”

“Captain Gutierrez,” Gray said. “If you will …”

“Aye, aye, Admiral. Releasing the baby in three … two … one … launch .”

The Tsiolkovsky Orbital Computer Assembly—TOCA, for short—was a ten-meter cylindrical habitat that had made the voyage out from Earth strapped to America ’s spine aft of the landing bays. It carried the computer hardware that was housing the sub-clone downloaded from the original Konstantin AI.

Gray wasn’t certain the Sh’daar understood the concept of “ambassador,” but they’d given permission for the TOCA cylinder to be brought to N’gai, and for it—and Konstantin-2—to be linked to the Deep Time facility. The fact that the AI had already been in touch with the Adjugredudhran commander said they at least accepted Konstantin-2 as someone they could talk to.

Something, Gray thought, definitely had changed in Sh’daar attitudes. Twenty years earlier, they’d been terrified that a human battlegroup had penetrated both space and time to reach this cluster. The Sh’daar had been willing to do almost anything—like end a war—to make the humans leave. Speculation and scuttlebutt had played with the idea that they were afraid human activity here in the past would rewrite the future—a future in which they had a vested interest.

Now, however, they seemed to be welcoming contact.

Gray suspected that they feared something else more than they feared humans … even humans playing in their own temporal backyard.

The cylinder carrying Konstantin’s sub-clone passed America ’s shield cap and dwindled toward the gleaming silver torus.

And Gray couldn’t help wondering if even a super-AI was going to have trouble figuring out just what made the Sh’daar tick.

2 November 2425

Deep Time Orbital Facility-1

N’gai Cluster

1020 hours, TFT

Gray was seated in what appeared to be a large classroom or lecture hall. Concentric rings of comfortable benches overlooked a central well a dozen meters across. A dome overhead looked out into the heart of the N’gai Cluster, filled with stars, with artificial worlds, with the enigmatic gleam of the Six Suns. McKennon, the lead xenosophontologist of the Deep Time facility, was seated next to him … or seemed to be. In fact, Gray was back in his office on board America , while McKennon was in a communications chamber on board DT-1. AI software created the illusion—the virtual reality—of their conversation within their cerebral implants.

Other conference attendees—all human, so far—were scattered through the room, waiting for the start of what promised to be a very interesting meeting.