“Yes. We think-this is still all speculation, understand-we think that the internal dialogue predisposes them to working in groups. First with their twins…but then in successively higher and higher groupings. It’s possible that the meta-Turusch I mentioned is a kind of group mind created by superimposing tens or hundreds or even thousands of separate conversations, all going on at once, and having new meaning arising from the background hash of separate voices.”

  “You said they had to have incredible brains to think on so many different levels at once. I think I’m beginning to understand.”

  “By comparison, we’re very slow,” Wilkerson agreed. “Just think about it. This concept of multiple layers in their conversation, even in their thinking, that’s something they evolved over the course of millions of years, probably, as they evolved speech. But what Falling Droplet was doing was communicating on three levels-one from each individual Turusch and a third arising from the two at once-and it was doing that in a language that was alien to it, in Lingua Galactica.”

  Koenig blinked, confused for a moment by Wilkerson’s use of the singular to refer to the two Turusch together…but it did make sense in an eldritch way. Turusch concepts of “them” and “me,” of “others” and “self,” must be quite different from the way humans thought of those concepts.

  He wondered if there was a way the difference could be used against them.

  Or if greater understanding would facilitate better communication…and an end to the war.

  “I’ll want you to put this together into a report, Doctor. Something we can broadcast to Earth and Mars. The Directorate needs to see this. So does Naval Intelligence. This could be what we need to put a stop to this war.”

  “I don’t think I see how, Admiral.”

  “Know your enemy, Doctor. One of the oldest and most basic of military dictums. If we know the enemy, that’s half of the battle. Half of the victory.”

  “Ah. And the other half?”

  “Knowing ourselves.”

  Wilkerson cut the electronic connection, and Koenig was alone with his thoughts once more in the CIC. The others of the CIC watch manned their stations in the pit, but, as Koenig had said, there wasn’t a lot for any of them to do now except to stay alert. The carrier battlegroup was now four hours into her 16.64-hour voyage out to the thirty-AU shell, approaching the orbit of Saturn and traveling now at a bit under 75,000 kilometers per second. At a quarter of the speed of light, there wasn’t yet any visible aberration in the view of the stars ahead. Boötis and neighboring Corona Borealis maintained their familiar shapes-a kite to the right, with bright Arcturus at the base, and a broad U shape of stars, like an upraised arm, to the left.

  What was it about transcendence that the Turusch-or, more likely, their Sh’daar masters-so feared? For that matter, what was transcendence, as they understood the term? That was the real problem here…knowing what completely alien cultures meant by the term.

  Hell, Koenig wasn’t certain he understood what the word meant. And beings with such different brains as the Turusch likely meant something very different, very alien.

  What was it the Turusch had said, their third-line description of transcendence? “Technic species evolve into higher forms. When they pass beyond, they leave behind…death.”

  That was it. The first half of that statement was transparent enough. For centuries now, humankind had speculated about its relationship with its technology, and about where that technology might be taking it. Humans today, human technology today, would be comprehensible-barely-to humans of three or four hundred years ago. But the GRIN technologies, especially, were rapidly going a long way toward changing what it meant to be human.

  Genetics. People like Michael Noranaga had engaged genetic prostheses to change their somatypes. Noranaga had done so in the line of duty, becoming a semi-aquatic selkie with more in common with marine mammals than with unaltered humans. But on Earth there were humans who changed their body shapes as a form of cultural or artistic expression…shapeshifters, they called themselves. The very idea of a human who looked like an elf or a mixture of wolf and human challenged the very concept of what it meant to be human.

  Robotics. Robots had become ubiquitous throughout human culture. The teleoperation of NTE robots let human minds explore toxic and deadly environments like the surface of Venus or the nitrogen-ice plains of Triton…human minds temporarily taking on bodies of plastic and nanolaminate alloys. And non-sentient robotic intelligences were everywhere, from smart clothes to smart buildings to smart missiles.

  Information Systems. Perhaps the biggest changes had occurred in that field. Through cerebral implants, any human in any civilized location could have instant access to all available information through the Net-Cloud. He could talk to anyone anywhere, limited only by the speed of light, and at great distances he could converse with another person’s AI-generated avatar. AIs, artificial intelligences of greater than human capability, operated everywhere throughout the myriad Net-Clouds, gathering and storing information, transmitting it, reshaping it, editing it, artificial minds that had already transcended the merely human.

  And Nanotechnology. Ships that reshaped themselves in flight, buildings that grew themselves from piles of debris, those were the most visible applications of the technology. Less visible but even more powerful were examples such as the trillions of nanorobotic devices pumping through Koenig’s circulatory system, cleaning out arteries, maintaining key balances within his metabolic processes, even repairing damaged chromosomes and guarding against cancers, disease, even the effects of aging. Alexander Koenig could expect to live to see the age of five hundred, they told him-theoretically, given ongoing nanomedical advances, there was no way to even guess how long he might live-assuming he survived the next day or so.

  The more far-reaching effects, though, the most transforming ones, appeared when various technologies mingled-the use of nanotechnology to grow the cerebral implants that gave people their links with the Net-Cloud, and which allowed people to have their own personal AI software running on their internal hardware. The four technologies designated as GRIN interacted with one another, multiplied one another’s effects and potencies.

  And where, and what, were they all leading to?

  Of greater concern right now, though, to Koenig’s mind, was the second half of the Turusch statement: “When they pass beyond, they leave behind death.”

  How did transcendence equate with death?

  Why would human transcendence be of concern to an alien species…in particular, an alien species like the Sh’daar, which might be half a billion years old?

  Humans had just taken the first step in beginning to understand the Turusch; they didn’t yet know what the Sh’daar looked like, much less understand how they thought.

  Somehow, Koenig thought, humans were going to have to come to grips with those questions, to begin to understand who and what the Sh’daar were and how they thought.

  And they would have to do so very swiftly indeed, if humankind was going to survive….

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  18 October 2404

  Starhawk Transit

  Fleet Rendezvous Point

  1.3-AU Orbit, Sol System

  0735 hours, TFT

  Hurry up and wait.

  Lieutenant Gray had heard that ancient military axiom often enough during the past five years. Likely it had been invoked by grizzled NCOs in the army of Sargon the Great forty-eight centuries before. But this was ludicrous.

  Starhawk Transit had boosted from Oceana at 0414 hours. It had taken nine minutes to get up to whispering range of c, a coasting phase of just three minutes, and another nine minutes of deceleration to reach Rendezvous Point Defender, roughly halfway between the current positions of Earth and Mars. By 0445, Gray and the other twenty-three Starhawk pilots were drifting in an empty sector of space, waiting. There was no one else there.

  Other naval vessels had begun arriving a few at a time. The destroyers Trumbull and Nehman and Ishigara. A heavy monitor out of Earth Synchorbit, the Warden. A Russian heavy cruiser, the Groznyy. One light fleet carrier from the European Federation, the Jeanne d’Arc. Others would be coming, but they were scattered across much of the Inner System-or they were still docked at synchorbital bases circling Earth or Mars, their crews still in the process of returning aboard, their power plants still off-line, some even with their weapons or drive systems partially disassembled for routine maintenance.

  It took time to get a capital ship under way unless, like America and her consorts, the quantum taps were already running and the ship rigged for space.

  Three fucking hours, Gray thought. We could have been out there by now….

  Just over an hour and a half earlier, at 0600 hours, he’d transmitted a request to the America, now outbound. At that time, the America battlegroup had been about one AU out from Mars, about two from the fleet rendezvous point, so they would have received the transmission at around 0615.

  It had been over an hour now, and still no response. By now, the battlegroup, accelerating at 500 gravities, would be three and a half AUs from Mars, about four and a half from the fleet rendezvous point, and traveling at around 72,000 kps. Even with the thirty-six-minute time lag one-way, he should have gotten a reply-if one was coming-at some point in the last forty-five minutes.

  “What the hell are they doing out there?” Gray said.

  “Don’t sweat it, Skipper,” Lieutenant j.g. Alys McMasters told him. “They’re probably arguing about it with Earth, and the time lag’s a killer!”

  Gray started, then bit off a curse. He’d not realized the channel was open, that he’d transmitted his exasperated comment over the fighter commnet.

  “I’m seriously considering boosting anyway,” Gray replied. “We’re useless here.”

  “A great way to end a promising career, Boss,” Lieutenant Frank Osterman said. “Last I heard, we go where we’re told, when we’re told. We don’t make strategy.”

  “Roger that,” Gray replied.

  But that didn’t make the wait easy.

  During the past hours, information had been moving across the solar system like expanding ripples from stones chucked in a lake. Limited by the speed of light, representing only small portions of the total picture, that information only slowly reached all of the people involved, all of the decision makers, all of the ships. The picture was complicated by retransmission delays, and by decisions by various officers and politicians along the way to pass the data along only to certain command levels.

  Which meant that units like the Starhawk transit squadron were operating in the dark. For all Gray and the newbie pilots in his command knew, the enemy fleet was zorching in at this moment, only a few minutes out…and no one had bothered to tell them. They knew that a Turusch signal beam had been intercepted some three hours earlier, confirming that there were at least two groups of enemy ships out at the thirty-AU shell, knew that the America battlegroup was headed for Point Libra, away from Triton.

  But they knew precious little else.

  “Incoming transmission,” Gray’s AI announced. “Source TCN America.”

  “Let’s hear it!”

  “Starhawk Transit Squadron, this is America CIC,” a woman’s voice said, static hissing and crackling behind the transmission as the Starhawk’s communication suite up-shifted the frequency to compensate for the Doppler effect. “Your provisional op plan is approved. Initiate immediately. You are designated Green Squadron, and are now under America CIC control. Lieutenant Gray is confirmed as Green Squadron Leader. Please note attached transmission, and acknowledge receipt. Transmission ends.”

  Gray felt a surge of relief…mingled with adrenaline-sparked terror. We’re going!

  His “provisional op plan,” as the CIC officer on America had put it, had been the rather strongly worded suggestion, made hours ago, that the twenty-four Starhawk fighters now orbiting at 1.3 AUs begin boosting immediately toward Point Libra. America had sent five squadrons toward Libra some four and a half hours ago-fifty-some fighters against a Turusch invasion fleet of unknown but certainly powerful composition.

  Throwing twenty-four more fighters into the ongoing battle out there might, might make a difference.

  He checked the attached transmission, an imbedded signal…and saw that it was an intercept picked up first at Earth, then transmitted under a classified security lock to the America, then retransmitted back to the rest of America’s battlegroup, including Green Squadron.

  Opening the imbed, he and the others in his squadron watched the final seconds of the Gallagher and the other unarmed High Guard ships at Triton, watched until the final camera view spun crazily, then vanished in a burst of white noise.

  “Jesus, Qwan-yin, and Buddha!” someone muttered.

  “It’s okay, people,” Gray said. “We’re going in the other direction-out to Point Libra.”

  “Yeah, where it’ll be worse,” Lieutenant j.g. Harper pointed out.

  “Volunteers only,” Gray said. “If you’d rather sit here feeling useless until the Tushies come to you, do so. I’m boosting out to meet the bastards.”

  “I’m with you, Lieutenant Gray,” McMasters told him.

  “Yeah, Skipper,” Lieutenant Tolliver added. “Let’s go kick Tushie tush!”

  Gray was already feeding orders to his AI, his Starhawk rotating sharply, bringing its prow into line with an invisible point against the sky in the direction of the constellation Libra. One by one, the other pilots chimed in.

  All twenty-three would follow him out toward Point Libra. He checked the time-0738 hours. “Kick it,” he told his AI.

  “Transit Squadron, this is the Jeanne d’Arc. Our CIC notes that you are leaving formation without proper authorization. Explain yourself.”

  The French light carrier had assumed the responsibility for control of local space traffic. The Jeanne carried three fighter squadrons-Franco-German KRG-17 Raschadler fighters, according to the fleet Warbook-and all of her bays were full. Gray had requested permission to dock when he and the newbies had arrived, and had had his request denied.

  “Jeanne d’Arc, this is Green Squadron,” he replied. “We have new orders.”

  “Negative, Green Squadron,” came the reply. “Captain La-Salle says that you are under his jurisdiction now. We need confirmation before releasing you to another command.”

  “Stuff it, Jeanne,” Gray replied. “We’re going where the action is.”

  And, followed by the rest of the fighters, he accelerated to fifty thousand gravities.

  Red Bravo Flight America Deep Recon

  Inbound, Sol System

  0814 hours, TFT

  Marissa Allyn’s Starhawk was out of missiles, but she still had power for her PBP and rounds for the KK cannon. Pulling her fighter into a hard turn, feeling the heavy drag of tidal forces as she rounded the projected drive singularity, she brought her ship into line with another Turusch ship and fired, sending a particle beam slashing cross the vessel, knocking down defensive shields and boring into the hull metal beneath. White flame-metal flash-heated into vapor-exploded across her forward display, and in another instant she’d hurtled through the fireball, debris flaring off her own shields.

  “Red Five!” Lieutenant Huerta called. “You have a Toad coming down on your six!”

  “Thanks, Red Seven! I see him!”

  No need to risk a turn. She spun her Starhawk end-for-end, the ship continuing in a straight online as she now faced back the way she’d come. A Toad, malevolent and chunky, burst though the expanding debris cloud of the destroyed Trash ship, and her AI immediately achieved a target lock, signaling her with a tone in her ear.

  Switching to guns, she triggered a long burst of kinetic-kill projectiles, accelerating a stream of depleted uranium slugs toward the target at twelve per second. The Toad’s shields had been up at around 90 percent to bring it through the debris field unhurt, shrouding the craft in a hazy blur, but as soon as it was clear of the evaporating fireball, this forward shields dropped to allow it to fire…and in that instant Allyn’s volley struck home.

  White flashes sparked and scintillated across the Toad’s prow. Allyn kept firing, kept hammering at the oncoming Toad, which suddenly ripped open under the punishment in a spray of fragments and molten metal.

  She spun her fighter through a full one-eighty once more and kicked in the acceleration. The sky around her was filled with ships, with drifting fragments, with flaring, silent explosions of light.

  The lopsided battle had been continuing for over an hour now. Allyn and the other three Starhawks in her flight had been harassing the Turusch fleet, making high-velocity passes through the enemy formation, creating as much damage and havoc on each pass as possible. There’d been two casualties. Lieutenant Cutler in the first run…and Lieutenant Friedman had been skimming low across the outer hull of a Turusch Echo-class battleship when a pair of homing Golf-Mikes had closed with his Starhawk and detonated. The blast had actually damaged the Echo; Nancy Friedman’s ship had been obliterated, half vaporized in the triggering detonation, half crumpled into the singularity in an instant.

  As the minutes slipped past, however, other Confederation fighters had begun arriving. All of the other Black Lightnings were now in the fight, along with ten of the Impactors and four Nighthawks-a total of twenty Starhawks and four SG-55 War Eagles. Red Bravo had been constantly broadcasting a streaming update on the engagement; the CTT by now had reached every Confederation fighter within one light hour of the battle, and they were coming in now from farther and farther away.

  A Turusch Sierra-class cruiser appeared on her combat display, five thousand kilometers ahead, and she adjusted her course to intercept, kicking in her grav drive to a full fifty thousand gravities, accelerating at 500 kilometers per second squared. She let her AI handle the weapons release. When she passed the enemy battleship four and a half seconds later, she was moving at over 2200 kilometers per second relative to the target; mere human reflexes were simply not quick enough to react at such velocities.

 

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