Dark Mind. Ian Douglas

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      The only reason Humankind had survived against that alliance as long as it had was the fact that the different members of the Sh’daar Collective had as much trouble communicating with one another as they did with humans. Organizing a joint military campaign across millions of years and with dozens of space-faring species with wildly diverse means of communicating turned out to be damned near impossible.

      “Huh,” Koenig said, thoughtful. “If the Tabby’s Star aliens haven’t been pressured by the Sh’daar, they might turn out to be useful allies for us.”

      “Exactly. Assuming, of course, that they care to involve themselves with humans.”

      “What … they might not because we’re so primitive? Or would they be put off by our body odor?”

      “Whatever terrestrial astronomers observed at Tabby’s Star in the year 2015,” Konstantin reminded Koenig, “would have happened 1480 years earlier … in the year 535 C.E., to be precise. If they were actually building a Dyson sphere when Europe’s Dark Ages were just getting started, where are they, and what are they building now? Such beings might seem like gods compared to humans.”

      “The Stargods …” It was an old idea, one suggesting a source for unexplained technological artifacts like the TRGAs scattered across the galaxy … or the Black Rosette at the heart of Omega Centauri. Laurie Taggart had been a passionate devotee of that idea, a member of the Ancient Alien Creationist Church.

      But it was also an idea that explained nothing.

      “What people enamored of the Stargods tend to forget,” Konstantin said, “is that such beings very likely have absolutely nothing in common with us. Would you stop to communicate with an anthill?”

      “I don’t know,” Koenig replied with a virtual shrug. “It depends on whether I could understand what the little buggers were saying. And there are entomologists who would be interested in finding a common language, if there was one.”

      “It is possible to push such metaphors too far, Mr. President. The point is that the Tabby’s Star aliens may have nothing whatsoever in common with humans, and no wish to communicate with them … or to help them against the Sh’daar.”

      “I could also imagine them having reached their own technological singularity,” Koenig said. “They might have built the thing, whatever it is … and then left. They’re not around any longer.”

      “True. Still, the fact that the Agletsch have suggested that a human ship explore Tabby’s Star outweighs, somewhat, the low probability of finding useful allies there.”

      “Well, if anyone in the galaxy knows about such allies, it would be them. I just wish we knew a bit more about the Aggie agenda. What the hell do they get out of all of this?”

      “You will need to treat this … gift of information with caution,” Konstantin said. “The Agletsch are Sh’daar agents, members of the Sh’daar Collective. We must assume the Agletsch have an agenda of their own, a reason to share this information freely. It is unlikely that they would actively help us against the Collective.”

      “Maybe they’re tired of sticking to the Collective’s party line. Maybe they’re trying to rebel.”

      The idea had been explored before. In the past, some Agletsch had seemed to be working outside of any Sh’daar influence. Others definitely worked within. There’d been … hints that they would prefer that their entire civilization be free of Sh’daar influence. And, indeed, the information they had traded to humans in the past concerning various Sh’daar client races had again and again proven to be priceless.

       But what was their angle this time?

       And can we risk ignoring their advice while we try to figure that out?

      “I would like to send our best out there,” Koenig told the AI, coming to a decision.

      “The star carrier America,” Konstantin replied. “Admiral Gray.”

      “You know, Konstantin, we do have other star carriers. Not enough, maybe … but we have others.”

      “Most currently undergoing repairs.”

      “There are the Declaration and the Lexington.”

      “Both untried as yet. And the Declaration is still undergoing space trials. I recommend using America when she returns from the N’gai Cluster.”

      “We were going to deploy America out to the Black Rosette. Operation Omega.”

      “But to explore what might well be an entire Dyson sphere,” Konstantin pointed out, “it would be best to have several fighter wings available. Star carriers offer certain specific tactical advantages not possible with cruisers or even light carriers.”

      “Point,” Koenig conceded, reluctantly. “But we’ve taken some heavy casualties. We may not have the luxury of using our first choice.”

      TC/USNA CVS America

       Flag Bridge/CIC

       N’gai Cluster

       1640 hours, TFT

      Admiral Gray floated in the CIC, gazing into a tangled jungle of suns ahead, against which even the biggest Sh’daar warships appeared to be toys. He remembered this vista from his last deployment here, back when he’d been a fighter driver under the command of Admiral Koenig.

      Now he was admiral … but the view was the same.

      Local space was crowded with suns, including hundreds more brilliant than Venus at its brightest in the skies of Earth. Six stars, in particular, outshone all others—a perfect hexagram of dazzlingly brilliant blue suns gleaming almost directly ahead. The Six Suns were the hub of the N’gai Cluster, a kind of central, focal monument for the Cluster’s star-faring civilization. Each giant star was forty times the mass of distant Sol, orbiting with the others around a central gravitational balance point in a perfect Klemperer rosette. Obviously they’d been engineered that way, probably nudged in from elsewhere in the galaxy and dropped into position. Quite possible those blue-white giant suns themselves were artificial, engineered by some highly advanced science. The stellar arrangement suggested an astonishing degree of technological prowess and skill, one millions of years in advance of current human capabilities.

      Eight hundred and some million years in the future, in the time Gray thought of as the present, those suns had long since gone supernova, reducing themselves to black holes—the enigmatic Black Rosette at the center of Omega Centauri. The N’gai Cluster—a dwarf galaxy—had been devoured by the gravitational hunger of the much larger Milky Way. The Omega Centauri star cluster itself was now known to be the remnant nucleus of this, the N’gai Cluster, 872 million years later.

      Gray stared into the brilliance of the Six Suns, and wondered …

       What were the Rosette Aliens?

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