Dark Matter. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ taken no apparent notice whatsoever of America and the ships with her. Carrier Battlegroup 40 consisted of the star carrier America; one cruiser, the Edmonton; three destroyers, the Ramirez, the John Young, and the Spruance; plus the provisioning ship Shenandoah. Though small as naval task forces went, the squadron represented a great deal of firepower, and yet the aliens had simply ignored them when they dropped out of their Alcubierre metaspace bubbles on the doorstep of . . . whatever the hell it was that they were building here.

      But they’d moved Walton’s recon ship when it drifted in front of the Black Rosette. Maybe they did care about humans . . . that or else human activity actually could inconvenience them or somehow pose a threat to their operations.

      Which was it? And how could the task force answer that question?

      “How would X-­Dep suggest we communicate with these . . . ­people?” Gray asked.

      “We can’t,” Truitt said.

      “We might try various Sh’daar languages,” Kline added. “The Agletsch trade pidgins.”

      “Whoever the Rosette Aliens are,” Truitt said, “they likely come from a long way off. I doubt they’ve ever heard of the Sh’daar Collective or the Agletsch.”

      The Agletsch were a galactic spacefaring species well known as traders of information. Two had been on board America until her last swing past Earth, when they’d disembarked for an extended chat with naval intelligence Earthside. The Agletsch were known to carry minute artificial intelligences within them, called Seeds, that communicated with the Sh’daar when they were within range. Having them on board a military vessel was always a risk, since the Sh’daar Seed might well compromise the ship’s security . . . but they were also incredibly useful as allies. Agletsch knowledge spanned a large fraction of the Sh’daar Collective, and their knowledge of artificial trade languages, developed to allow diverse members of the Collective to communicate with one another, had more than once proven vital.

      “I’m not so sure about that,” Gray said. “We know the Rosette started off as the Six Suns, almost a billion years ago. We know that the Builders left TRGA cylinders scattered across the galaxy, and that those artifacts allow at least a limited form of time travel. The Rosette Aliens might be the Builders . . . and if so, they’ve had contact with the Collective . . . or at least with the Sh’daar of over eight hundred million years ago.”

      The TRGA cylinder at Texaghu Resch had provided access to the Sh’daar inhabiting the N’gai Cloud 876 million years ago. It was generally believed, however, that the civilization that had constructed the TRGA cylinders was far older, and far more advanced, than even the now-­vanished ur-­Sh’daar.

      “We have no evidence that these aliens are the Builders,” Truitt snapped. “The Builders in any case are probably long extinct.”

      “I wonder?” Kline said. “A K-­3 civilization might well be beyond threats of extinction. At the very least, they likely possess what for all practical intents and purposes amounts to both individual and cultural immortality.”

      “Don’t you think that a true galaxy-­wide civilization, a K-­3,” Gray said, “would be aware of other K-­3 level civilizations nearby? That they would be able to communicate with one another?”

      “Some of the electronic Agletsch pidgins might be ideal for that,” Kline said. “They were designed for sapient species that have little or nothing in the way of biological similarities.”

      “But we’ve already transmitted messages of friendship and requests for open communications channels,” Commander Pamela Wilson said. Like Gutierrez, she was on the bridge at the moment, but linked in to the briefing session electronically. “In Drukrhu, and in four other Agletsch pidgins.”

      The languages had been loaded into America’s AI, so the Agletsch themselves weren’t necessary for translations. Gray wished the spidery little aliens were still on board, however. He would have liked to ask them if they’d ever encountered anything like the Rosette Aliens.

      But then again, the Agletsch traded in information, and rarely gave away anything for free. That particular bit of data might well be priced beyond Gray’s reach.

      He would have some questions for them, though, once America made it back to Earth.

      “Very well,” he said. He focused his concentration for a moment, composing a new message. “Transmit this, Commander Wilson, broadband and in all known Sh’daar languages.

      “Commander Blakeslee? Give us a course out of the cluster. We’re going to head for home.”

      Emergency Presidential Command Post

      Toronto

      United States of North America

      1435 hours, EST

      “What the hell is going on over there, Marcus?”

      Marcus Whitney, the president’s chief of staff, spread his hands. “Damned if I know, Mr. President. Intelligence doesn’t have a clear picture right now.”

      “Do we now what’s happened to President Roettgen?”

      “No, sir. Presumably, she was in the Ad Astra Complex when the rebel forces overran the place. She may be a prisoner; she may be dead.”

      Alexander Koenig, president of the United States of North America, stared at the viewall news feed and wondered if this would be the end of the war. Facts were sketchy, less than trustworthy, and often contradictory.

      But it did appear that the Terran Confederation government was on the point of collapse.

      The United States of North America had been a part of the Terran Confederation since 2133 and the creation of the Pax Confeoderata. That union had become increasingly strained, however, until open warfare had broken out.

      The causes of war were varied, but chief among them was a fundamental disagreement over how to prosecute the Sh’daar War. The USNA was committed to continuing the fight. The Confederation government wanted to accept the Sh’daar Ultimatum and become a part of the Sh’daar Collective. Disagreement in extrasolar policy—­together with lesser issues such as rights of self-­determination and rights to abandoned coastal areas like Manhattan, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.—­had led first to skirmishes in space, then to all-­out war. Geneva’s forces had attacked the flooded ruins of D.C. and attempted to capture the Tsiolkovsky Array, the hyperintelligent AI computer complex on the lunar far side. Both attempts had been beaten off . . . but then the unthinkable had taken place.

      On 15 November, 2424, Confederation ships had struck the USNA capital at Columbus from space with a nano-­deconstructor warhead, chewing a hole three kilometers wide and half a kilometer deep down into the heart of the city in an attempt to decapitate the North American leadership—­meaning Koenig himself, as well as the USNA’s Earth-­based command and control assets.

      The attack had failed—­though the city had been destroyed and millions of ­people killed. The heavily shielded presidential command bunker had been two kilometers down . . . and Koenig and his staff had been able to escape by high-­speed maglev train through a deep, evacuated rail tunnel connecting to the city of Toronto. And from the emergency command center set up in and beneath Toronto’s York Civic Complex, the USNA government had continued the war.

      Now, two months later, it appeared that the Confederation effort СКАЧАТЬ