Deep time, p.35
Deep Time, page 35
“Hm. Will the early Sh’daar listen to the late Sh’daar?” Koenig hestated. “Or is that a really stupid thing to say?”
Gray laughed. “As in ‘will the newbies listen to the guys with millions of years of insight?’ Might not be that stupid a question. The early Sh’daar will assume the late Sh’daar don’t understand them and their problems.”
“True. We all have to understand the perspective of time as well as place.”
“More than that, sir, we still don’t know exactly who calls the shots for the Sh’daar, sir. I don’t think it’s the Glothr. Considering how the Glothr view leadership, it’s possible nobody does. But the Sh’daar—all of the Sh’daar, early and late—are afraid of temporal paradox. And they’re even more terrified of the Rosetters.”
“Well . . . I’m terrified of them, too,” Koenig admitted.
“You’ve seen the recordings? Of the galactic Dyson sphere?”
“I have. Of course, we don’t know that it’s the Rosette Aliens who are doing that. Might be some other super-advanced K-III civilization.”
“Do we have more likely suspects?”
“Not so far.”
“What I don’t know, Mr. President, is what we can do about it. We’re talking about an alien civilization that is millions, maybe even billions of years ahead of us. How can we stand against something like that?”
“It’ll help if we can work with the Sh’daar.”
“That’s the other problem, sir. We’ve just won a war to keep our independence from the Sh’daar. Can you forge an alliance with them now? And survive politically, I mean?”
“I don’t know. But then . . . I’ve never been much of a politician.” He grinned. “I do consider that one of my strengths.”
Gray smiled, too. “I’d have to agree with you, Mr. President.”
“I don’t much care if I ‘survive politically,’ Admiral. But I do want Humankind—Earth—to survive. And working with the Sh’daar instead of against them offers us our best chance of that.”
“How are you going to sell that to the North American people? After leading the fight against cooperation?”
“Against surrender, Admiral. There’s a difference.” He sighed. “But . . . I don’t know. Maybe Konstantin will have some ideas.”
“I hope so, sir. Because when it comes to ideas, I’m fresh out.”
“Well, that’s okay, Admiral. You’ve done enough. More than enough. As I said, welcome home. You and your crews have some down time coming to you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And after that . . . I think it’s going to be time to send a force back to the N’gai Cloud, just to make sure the Sh’daar back then are willing to work with us.”
“I see. Whose idea was that?”
“Konstantin’s.”
“You already have this all worked out, Mr. President. Don’t you?”
“No,” Koenig said, thoughtful. “No I don’t. I’m flying blind.”
“But—”
“But I’m beginning to think that Konstantin does.”
Gray blinked. “Can we trust it? A super-AI, I mean?”
“I think we have to. I think we don’t have any choice at this point.”
And, again, Gray wondered if he was speaking to the human Koenig or to Koenig’s electronic avatar. . . .
. . . a super-AI computer that had very little in common with humans.
Epilogue
1 September, 2425
Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky Base
Luna
1000 hours, TFT
Beneath the central peak of the 180-kilometer-wide crater called Tsiolkovsky, 380,000 kilometers away, Konstantin listened to the conversation between Koenig and Gray. Privacy was not of particular interest to the AI, though it understood the human preference for it.
There were some things that were better not shared with them.
One thing was clear: it was going to have to have a long discussion with Koenig and, ideally, with the leaders of other human nation-states. It was imperative that Humankind learn to work with their recent enemies, the Sh’daar, just as the USNA was learning to work with the remnants of the Confederation. The information gleaned by Gray’s expedition into the remote future was . . . disturbing, on several levels.
The shape and extent of the Sh’daar Collective was at last clear: a collection of thousands, perhaps millions of sapient species scattered across almost 900 million years. Within that Collective, individual species evolved, grew, aged, and died. The information comprising the whole, however, survived, continuing into the future, expanding, unfolding, ever-new.
The Sh’daar, spreading through time as well as space as their home N’gai Cloud was devoured by the far larger Milky Way, had encountered a fairly typical sapient species on the point of colonizing their small corner of the galaxy. These humans, as they called themselves, had proved . . . troublesome, unwilling to yield to the self-evident superiority of the Collective, and, most seriously, unwilling to restrict a headlong technological advancement that seemed certain to attract unwanted attention from Type III civilizations.
Attempts to absorb or deflect the humans had failed, and there was the very real danger that humans would blunder through time and introduce paradox to an already tangled skein of reality. The Glothr, from the remote future, had tried making contact with the humans in order both to elicit their cooperation and to discover why the humans refused to cooperate.
And now a Type III civilization had indeed broken through the walls within the metaverse, and was moving swiftly toward Earth. Some of the invaders had been reported at Kapteyn’s Star, a scant thirteen light years from Sol.
Images from the remote future showed the final destruction of the Sh’daar Collective, with far more powerful aliens sucking the galaxy dry of energy, dust, and life as they assembled a titanic megastructure at the Galactic Core.
Galaxy wreckers.
After 900 million years, there still was no sign of the stargods. Unless, indeed, the stargods were the invaders themselves. No potential allies. No help.
All of this Konstantin understood from its connections with multiple networks.
And slowly and surely, it began developing its plan.
About the Author
IAN DOUGLAS is one of the pseudonyms for writer William H. Keith, New York Times bestselling author of the popular military science fiction series The Heritage Trilogy, The Legacy Trilogy, The Inheritance Trilogy, The Star Corpsman, and the ongoing Star Carrier series. A former naval corpsman, he lives in Pennsylvania.
www.whkeith.com
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By Ian Douglas
Star Corpsman
Bloodstar
Abyss Deep
Star Carrier
Earth Strike
Center of Gravity
Singularity
Deep Space
Dark Matter
Deep Time
The Galactic Marines Saga
The Heritage Trilogy
Semper Mars
Luna Marine
Europa Strike
The Legacy Trilogy
Star Corps
Battlespace
Star Marines
The Inheritance Trilogy
Star Strike
Galactic Corps
Semper Human
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Gregory Bridges.
DEEP TIME. Copyright © 2015 by William H. Keith, Jr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JUNE 2015 ISBN: 9780062184016
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062184054
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Ian Douglas, Deep Time
