The Complete Inheritance Trilogy: Star Strike, Galactic Corps, Semper Human

5

0507.1102

USMC Skybase

Paraspace

1005 hrs GMT

It was, Alexander decided, a bit like being in an enormous fish tank. The delegates of the Defense Advisory Council appeared in the simulation as small and relatively unobtrusive icons, until one or another spoke. At that point, the icon unfolded into what appeared to be a life-sized image, standing on emptiness and aglow with its own corona. With a swarm of golden icons surrounding him, together with a larger swarm of smaller, dimmer icons representing the group’s cloud of digital secretaries and personal electronic assistants, he felt as though he were a large and somewhat clumsy whale immersed within a school of fish.

There was also the feeling that the entire school was studying him intently, and not a little critically. They included, Cara had reminded him, eight delegates from the Commonwealth Senate, ten senior military officers from the Bureaus of Defense, five members of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Group, and Marie Devereaux, the President’s personal advisor and representative.

Alexander shrugged off the feeling, and continued with his presentation. They were adrift in an absolute blackness relieved only by a fuzzy circle of light surrounding them all, a ring dividing the darkness into two unequal parts. Within the smaller part, the ring shaded into blue, the leading edge. The trailing edge shaded into red.

This was how space had looked from the point of view of Perseus, the AI commanding the colony asteroid ship Argo during her flight across the Galaxy. The luminous ring was the bizarre and beautiful relativistic compression of space as seen at near-c velocities, a three-dimensional panorama overlaid here and there by the flickering alphanumerics of Perseus’s functional displays.

“We don’t have a lot to go on,” Alexander was telling the watching delegates. “From the time the Xul ship materialized alongside the Argo, to the moment of Argo’s destruction, less than five seconds elapsed. The AI in command of the vessel was in time-extended mode. He did not have time to fully react.”

Artificial sentients like Perseus were designed to control their own subjective passage of time. For machine intelligences that could note the passage of millionths of a second, the passage of a truly long period of relative inactivity—such as the subjective decades necessary for interstellar flight—could literally drive the AI insane. That, it was believed, was what had happened to The Singer, the Xul huntership trapped for half a million years beneath the ice of the Europan ocean.

Perseus had been experiencing time at roughly a thousand to one—meaning that a year was the same as roughly nine hours for a human. At that setting, though, those four and a half seconds after the appearance of the Xul ship had been the human equivalent of 4.5 thousandths of a second; it was amazing that Perseus had managed to do as much as he had.

In Alexander’s mind, and in the minds of the watching delegates, those last seconds played out in slow motion.

“As you see,” Alexander continued, indicating one of the numeric readouts, “the time scale has been altered so that we can experience the encounter at a ratio of about ten to one … four seconds becomes forty. Perseus would have been perceiving this about one hundred times more slowly.”

Abruptly, a shadow appeared against the eldritch starlight. One moment there was nothing; the next, it was there, immense against the luminous ring. With its velocity matched perfectly to that of Argo, the Xul huntership appeared undistorted, a convolute and complex mountain of curves, swellings, angles, spires, and sheer mass, the whole only slightly less black than the empty space ahead and behind, forbidding and sinister.

In fact, Alexander reminded himself, the Intruder was somewhat smaller than the Argo—perhaps 2 kilometers long and one wide, according to the data now appearing on the display, where the Argo was a potato-shaped rock over 8 kilometers thick along its long axis. But most of Argo was dead rock. The totality of her living and engineering areas, command and defense centers, storage tanks, and drive systems occupied something like three percent of the asteroid’s total bulk. The asteroid-shell of the Argo itself was invisible in the data simulation. Without the asteroid as a reference, the Intruder, slowly drifting closer, felt enormous.

“That looks nothing like the Intruder,” Senator Dav Gannel said. “The ship that attacked Earth … and the hunterships we encountered at the Sirius Stargate, they were shaped like huge needles. That thing is … I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s a lot fatter, more egg-shaped. How do we know it’s Xul?”

Alexander didn’t answer. The slow-motion seconds dragged by as the monster drew closer, until it blotted out a quarter of the light ring. The flickering alphanumerics indicated that Perseus was aware of the threat, and attempting to open a communications channel.

“They’re not responding,” another Council delegate said. “Of course they might not understand Anglic.”

“English, Senator,” Alexander said. “When Argo was launched, the principal language of trade and government was English. Perseus is signaling on several million channels, using microwave, infrared, and optical laser wavelengths. Remember, we’ve at least partially interfaced with a number of Xul vessels, and we were able to study The Singer, the one we recovered on Europa eight centuries ago. We know the frequencies they use, and some of their linguistic conventions. You can be sure the Intruder hears, and it understands enough to know Argo is trying to communicate. It’s just not listening.”

“Shouldn’t the Argo be trying to get away?” Devereaux asked.

“Madam Devereaux, the Argo is traveling at within a tenth of a percent of the speed of light. At that velocity, it would take a staggering amount of additional power to increase speed by even one kilometer per hour. She could decelerate or try moving laterally, adding a new vector to her current course and speed, but that means rotating the entire asteroid, and that would take time. And … the Intruder clearly possesses some type of faster-than-light drive, to have been able to overtake Argo so easily. No, Madam Chairman, there’s not a whole lot Perseus can do right now but try to talk.”

“Does she have any weapons at all?”

“A few. Beam weapons, for the most part, designed to reduce stray rocks and bits of debris in her path to charged plasmas that can be swept aside by the vessel’s protective mag fields. But if any of you have seen the recordings of the defense of Earth in 2314, you know that huntership shrugged off that kind of weaponry without giving it a thought. It took whole batteries of deep-space anti-asteroid laser cannons just to damage the Intruder, plus a Marine combat boarding party to go in and destroy it from the inside.”

“At the Battle of Sirius Gate,” General Regin Samuels pointed out, “the Earth forces used the thrusters from their capital ships as huge plasma cannons. What if—”

“No,” Alexander said. “Argo is employing a magnetic field drive we picked up from the N’mah, not plasma thrusters.” He didn’t add the obvious—that this wasn’t a problem-solving exercise, damn it, and it wasn’t happening in real time. What was revealed by this data sim had already happened.

The government delegates, he reflected, were a little too used to, and perhaps a little too reliant on, instantaneous communications.

There was no indication that the alien vessel even heard Perseus’ communications attempts. One point seven three seconds after the Intruder appeared, large portions of the AI’s circuitry began to fail—or, rather, it appeared to begin working for another system, as though it had been massively compromised by a computer virus.

“At this point,” Alexander explained, “the Argo is being penetrated by the alien’s computer network. It is very fast, and apparently evolving microsecond to microsecond, adapting in order to mesh with Perseus’s operating system. The pattern is identical to that employed by Xul hunterships in other engagements.”

It was as though the alien virus could trace the layout of Perseus’ myriad circuits, memory fields, and get a feel for the programs running there, to sense the overall pattern of the operating system before beginning to change it.

Beams and missiles stabbed out from the Argo, focusing on a relatively small region within the huge Intruder’s midship area. So far as those watching could tell, the result was exactly zero. Beams and missiles alike seemed to vanish into that monster structure without visible effect.

More alphanumerics appeared, detailing massive failures in the Argo’s cybe-hibe capsules. The Intruder was now infecting the colony ship’s sleeping passengers by way of their cybernetic interfaces.

“We’re not sure yet how the Xul manage this trick,” Alexander went on, “but we’ve seen them do it before. The first time was with an explorer vessel, Wings of Isis, at the Sirius Stargate in 2148. It apparently patterns or replicates human minds and memories, storing them as computer data. We believe the Xul are able to utilize this data to create patterned humans as virtual sentients or sims.”

Three point one seconds after the attack had begun, Perseus realized that all of its electronic barriers and defenses were failing, that electronic agents spawned by the Intruder’s operating system were spilling in over, around, and through every firewall and defensive program Perseus could bring into play. Perseus immediately released a highly compressed burst of data—a complete record of everything stored thus far—through Argo’s QCC, the FTL Quantum-Coupled Comm system that kept Argo in real-time contact with Earth.

Abruptly, the record froze, the alphanumeric columns and data blocks halted in mid-flicker.

“Four point zero one seconds,” Alexander said. “At this point, Perseus flashed the recording of Argo’s log back to Earth.”

“But … but everyone has been assuming that the Argo was destroyed,” Senator Kalin said, a mental sputter. “We don’t know that. They could still all be alive. …”

“Unlikely, Senator,” Alexander replied dryly. “First of all, of course, there’s been no further contact with the Argo during the past three days. There is also this. …”

Mentally, he highlighted one data block set off by itself—an indication of Argo’s physical status. Two lines in particular stood out—velocity and temperature. The asteroid starship’s velocity had abruptly plummeted by nearly point one c, and its temperature had risen inexplicably by some 1,500 degrees.

“When Perseus sent off the burst transmission, these two indicators had begun changing during the previous one one-thousandth of a second. We’re not sure, but what the physicists who’ve studied this believe is happening is that Argo’s forward velocity was somehow being directly transformed into kinetic energy. A very great deal of kinetic energy. And liberated as heat. A very great deal of heat.”

“These data show Argo is still completely intact,” Marie Devereaux noted. She sounded puzzled. “Senator Kalin is right. That doesn’t prove that the Argo was destroyed.”

“Look here, and here,” Alexander said, indicating two other inset data blocks. “The temperature increase is still confined to a relatively small area—a few hundred meters across, it looks like … but the temperature there in that one spot has risen 1,500 degrees Kelvin in less than a thousandth of a second. The physics people think the Xul simply stopped the Argo in mid-flight—and released all of that kinetic energy, the energy of a multi-billion-ton asteroid moving at near-c, as heat in one brief, intense blast. Believe me, Senator. That much energy all liberated at once would have turned the Argo into something resembling a pocket-sized supernova.”

“But why?” Kalin wanted to know.

“Evidently because the Xul had copied all of the data they felt they needed. They’re not known, remember, for taking physical prisoners.”

There was evidence enough, though, of their having uploaded human personalities and memories, however, and using those as subjects for extended interrogation. He’d seen some of the records taken from a Xul huntership, of what had happened to the crew of the Wings of Isis in 2148. He suppressed a cold shudder.

“If it’s the Xul,” Devereaux added.

He hesitated, wondering how forceful to make his response. It was vital, vital that these people understand. “Madam Chairperson, Senator Gannel asked a while ago how we could know that Argo was destroyed by a Xul huntership. The answer is we don’t.” He indicated the vast, convoluted ovoid hovering close by Argo in the frozen noumenal projection. “It’s not as though they’ve hung banners out announcing their identity. But I’ll tell you this. If that vessel is not Xul, then it’s being operated by someone just as smart, just as powerful, just as technologically advanced, and just as xenophobic as the Xul. If they’re not Xul, they’ll do until the real thing comes along, wouldn’t you say?”

“If it’s Xul,” Devereaux continued, “how much does this … incident hurt us?”

He sighed. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Fifty thousand twenty-fourth century politicians, plutocrats, bureaucrats, specialists, and technicians. How much damage could they do?”

That asteroid colony ship presented an interesting window into the politics of Humankind’s past. Shortly after the Xul attack on Earth, many of the survivors—especially those wealthy enough or politically powerful enough to buy the privilege—had elected to flee the Motherworld rather than remain behind to face a second attack that all knew to be inevitable. At that time, Humankind had not yet unraveled the secrets of faster-than-light travel. With N’mah help and technology, however, they’d constructed four asteroid starships each capable of carrying tens of thousands of refugees and which could accelerate to nearly the speed of light using the reactionless N’mah space drive.

From Alexander’s point of view, the decision to flee the Galaxy entirely, to travel over two million light-years to reach another galaxy, seemed to be a bit of overkill. Still, he had to admit that, judging by the interstellar vistas recorded at Night’s Edge and elsewhere, the Xul did appear to have a presence embracing much of the Galaxy. Two of their known bases—Night’s Edge and a Stargate nexus known only as Cluster Space—were actually located well outside of the Galactic plane, where the Galaxy’s spiral arms curved across the sky much as they did in Alexander’s noumenal simulation. Their empire, if that’s what it could be called, might well extend across the entire Milky Way—four hundred billion suns, and an unknown hundreds of billions of worlds.

The refugees of the twenty-fourth century had desperately hoped to find a new home well beyond even the Xul’s immensely long reach through space and time. It would take over two million years to make the trip, but relativistic time dilation would reduce that to something like thirty years; with the prospective colonists in cybe-hibe stasis, even that brief subjective time would vanish as they fled into the remote future.

The only question had been whether or not the refugee ships could slip out of the Galaxy without being spotted by the Xul. That hope, unfortunately, had failed.

“Our problem, of course,” Alexander went on, “is that we must assume that the Xul now know exactly where we are, and who we are. Most of the people on board probably didn’t have useful information that would lead the Xul back to Earth. A few would have, however, though I’m actually more concerned about the data Perseus might have been carrying. He probably had a complete record of the 2314 attack, for instance, and would have had the galactic coordinate system we use for navigation.

“The Xul are smart. They’ll put that data together with the elimination of their base at Night’s Edge, and know we were responsible. They might also be able to see enough of the stellar background in any visual records to positively locate Sol. And … there’s also Argo’s path. The refugee ships were supposed to make a course correction or two on the way out, so they didn’t draw a line straight back to Earth, but doing that sort of thing at relativistic speeds is time consuming and wastes energy. I doubt the changes were enough to throw the Xul off by very much. At the very least, they’ll figure the Argo set out from someplace close to the Sirius Stargate. That bit of data alone might be enough. It’s only eight and a half light-years from Earth.”

In fact there was so much Humankind didn’t know about the Xul or how they might reason things through. No one could explain why, for instance, they didn’t share data more freely among themselves. The only reason the Xul hadn’t identified Humankind as a serious threat centuries ago was the fact that the Night’s Edge raid did appear to have obliterated any record of the Xul operation against Earth nine years earlier.

“What about the other three refugee ships?” Navin Bergenhal, one of the Intelligence Advisory Group members, asked. “They’re all in danger now.”

“We’ll need to send out QCC flashes to them, of course,” Alexander said. “I doubt there’s anything they can do, though, since it’ll take a year of deceleration for them to slow down, and another year to build back up to near-c for the return trip. If they wanted to return.” He shrugged. “Their escapist philosophy may prove to be the best after all. If the Xul find Earth and the rest of our worlds, the only hope for Man’s survival might well rest in one or more of those surviving colony ships making it to M-31.”

“The destruction of the Argo is tragic, yes,” Devereaux said. “But I still don’t see an immediate threat. This all took place five hundred light-years away, after all. And the Xul have always been glacially slow in their military responses.”

Alexander nodded. “Agreed. If they behave as they have in the past, it might be some time before that information disseminates across all of Xul-controlled space. But, Madam Devereaux, we would be foolish to assume they won’t disseminate it, or that they won’t act upon it eventually. Our best xenopsych profiles so far suggest that the Xul are extreme xenophobes, that they destroy other technic races as a kind of instinctive defense mechanism. We’ve bloodied them a couple of times now, at Sirius, at Night’s Edge, and at Sol, so you can bet that they’re going to sit up and take notice.”

“We’re going to need to … consider this,” Devereaux said. “In light of the current difficulties with the Islamic Theocracy, we must proceed … circumspectly. Perhaps Intelligence can run some simulations plots, and come up with some realistic probabilities.”

Damn. He was going to have to turn up the heat. “With all due respect, Madam Devereaux,” he said, “that is fucking irresponsible. It’s also stupid, playing politics with the whole of Humankind at stake!”

There was a long pause. Devereaux’s head cocked to one side. “With all due respect what, General Alexander?”

“Eh?”

“Your filter blocked you,” Cara whispered in his mind.

“Oh, for the love of …” Angrily, he cleared part of the filter program, dropping it to a lower level. The software had decided that his choice of language left a lot to be desired, and had edited it.

“Excuse me, Ms. Devereaux,” he said as the program shifted to a lower level. He glanced down at himself. At least he was still in uniform. “Social convention required that I have my e-filters in place, lest I … give offense. But we don’t have time for that nonsense now. What I said, ma’am, was that delay, any delay—giving the matter further study, running numbers, whatever you wish to call it—is irresponsible and stupid. I believe the term my e-filter didn’t like was ‘fucking irresponsible.’”

“I see.” Her own e-filters were in place of course, but they didn’t stop a certain amount of disapproval from slipping through in those two short words. “And just what do you expect us to do about this, General Alexander?”

“A raid, Madam Devereaux.” At a thought, the frozen view from the Argo at the moment of the ship’s destruction vanished, and was replaced by the galactic map he’d been studying before the delegates had arrived. The viewpoint zoomed in on the irregular green glow of human space, on the path of the Argo, and on a tight scattering of red pinpoints marking the nearby systems from which the huntership might have emerged—Nu Andromeda, Epsilon Trianguli, and a few others. “What the Marines call a sneak-and-peek.”

The display continued to animate as he spoke, the viewpoint zooming in until Epsilon Trianguli showed as a hot, white sphere rather than as another star. An A2 type star, Epsilon Trianguli appeared imbedded in a far-flung corona of luminous gas, and even in simulation was almost too brilliant to look at directly.