Ian Douglas - Dark Mind

Dolby and Jessop were down. Fitzgerald was down. Three other gun walkers scattered across the Temple platform all were struggling with overwhelming numbers of hostile machines. The Marines had now given up trying to provide cover for the walkers; there were so many alien fliers that every Marine had more than enough to handle just with the alien machines swarming around him or her.

A flight of black machines tumbled through the air toward Courtland. He snapped off three bursts from his laser, burning down two of the attackers but missing the third, which swooped suddenly, then slammed into his chest and exploded in a splash of black goo.

The impact staggered him back a step. He waved his arms wildly, uselessly, trying to shake or scrape off the liquid adhering to him.

Warning , his armor told him, the voice hammering in his head. Suit integrity compromised.

He was bleeding atmosphere. The good news was that the atmospheric pressure at Heimdall’s surface was less than half of what he carried in his armor, so his air mix was leaking out, and the ammonia and sulfur dioxide outside was not leaking in … yet.

Harper Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017

Copyright © William H. Keith, Jr 2017

Jacket layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover art by Gregory Bridges

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

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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008121099

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008121105

Version: 2017-05-04

For Deb and for Brea, bright lights illuminating my dark mind …

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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

By Ian Douglas

About the Publisher

It thought of itself as the “Consciousness,” and it was very, very old.

How old? There was no way even it could know the answer. Billions of years, certainly, as certain organic life-forms measured time … and possibly older than that, through an eternity spanning trillions of years and several universes.

Only recently had the Consciousness emerged into this latest, young and vital, universe, following the tug of gravity across the dimensional walls of the metaverse, seeking the siren call of Mind. Indeed, advanced intelligence had left numerous traces in this universe, and the Consciousness intended to find and merge with that intelligence … and assimilate it, molding it to the Consciousness’s will.

They’d entered the universe through a patently artificial gateway, a rapidly spinning rosette of black holes that served to tear multiple openings through the fabric of spacetime. That artifact itself was the most obvious evidence of local advanced intelligence and technology. The so-called Black Rosette was located at the center of what appeared to be a giant globular cluster of 10 million stars, but which in fact was the stripped-bare core of an ancient dwarf galaxy cannibalized by the far larger barred spiral known to a few of its inhabitants as the Milky Way.

A billion years before, that dwarf galaxy had been occupied by a consortium of intelligent species, a bewildering mélange of alien bioforms. Most had … passed on—there was no better term for it—entering their version of a technological singularity that had removed them from the mundane cosmos of matter. A few individuals had remained behind, survivors of the singularity that had reorganized themselves into a new civilization calling itself Sh’daar .

Kapteyn’s Star had been just one of the suns of that lost dwarf galaxy, the home of a race that had chosen to convert itself wholly into digital format, uploading some trillions of individuals into a series of circuits and metallic channels etched into the very rocks of their home planet. There, they passed the eons at a vastly reduced pace, experiencing a second or two for every thousand years that flickered past on the outside, in effect traveling swiftly into their own remote future. Within their digitized universe, they experienced near-infinite virtual vistas, worlds far richer, more detailed, and more rewarding than anything the natural cosmos had to offer.

Or they had until now.

Because the Consciousness was enveloping their entire cosmos, slowing a part of itself down to more easily interface with the digitized natives, and beginning the process of relentlessly drawing them into itself.

12 October 2425

Approaching Heimdall

Kapteyn’s Star

0840 hours, GMT

A quintet of sleek, Pan-European KRG-17 fighters fell past Bifrost, the sullen, red-banded, ice-ringed gas giant named for the Rainbow Bridge of Norse mythology. Kapitanleutnant Martin Schmidt tried boosting the gain on the incoming scanner data, but the receivers were already maxed out. Static crackled and hissed in his in-head feed. Radiation effects from the planet? Possibly. Bifrost’s field storms could get pretty bad sometimes.

But Schmidt was pretty sure that the interference was from something else. Not the random, natural hiss of charged particles accelerated by Bifrost’s magnetic fields, but something deliberate …

“ Adler Eins Zu Himmelschloss,” he called. “ Adler Eins Zu Himmelschloss.”

Static shrieked in reply.

He tried again. “Eagle One to Skycastle, Eagle One to Skycastle, please respond. What is the tacsit at Heimdall now? We’re blind out here. Over.”

Still nothing.

“What’s going on back there, Kapitanleutnant?” Leutnant Andrea Weidman, Eagle Five, called to him. “Ghosts?”

Ghosts referred to the unidentified craft that had been appearing in this star system for the past month or so, first singly, but then in ever-increasing numbers. That they were spacecraft of some sort was undeniable … as was the fact that they represented an unimaginably advanced technology. All attempts to make direct contact with them, however, had failed so far.