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Authors: Ian Douglas

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It made sense. A modern starcarrier battlegroup was the most flexible, most powerful means of confronting an unknown nonhuman threat.

“That would make sense, Konstantin,” Koenig said. “The
America
battlegroup is already preparing for a deployment out to Omega Centauri. However . . . the decision will be Admiral Steiger’s, and the Confederation Naval Command. The Slan capture of 36 Ophiuchi may . . . complicate matters. A
lot
.”

“Indeed. However, if the Sh’daar clients follow past tendencies, they will pause to digest what they have swallowed. The need for information about the identity of the destroyers of the
Endeavor
is critical.”

“Will you make that recommendation to Geneva?”

“In so far as my recommendation carries any weight there, yes, of course. Keep in mind, however, that I am technically the . . .
property
of the United States of North America, and that my input would be considered politically suspect by Geneva. At least until they succeed in assuming control of this facility by mandating that I am an asset for all of Humankind, not just for North Americans.”

“Politics . . .”

“As you say. It is a political issue, certainly.”

“I will do what I can, Konstantin,” Koenig said. “I can’t make any promises.”

“Keep me informed,” Konstantin told him. “I have a keen interest in how this will play out.”

So do I
, Koenig thought.
Karyn . . . alive . . .

Chapter Four

9 November 2424

Omega Centauri

T
-0.876gy

1546 hours, TFT

It had taken hours, but Red Mike at last was able to confirm his location both in space and in time.

The encircling panorama of stars was nearly solid, but individual stellar spectra could be identified like fingerprints, and the patterns of stars, distinguished by color, age, and luminosity, matched perfectly the photographs taken by the CVS
America
twenty years ago when she’d passed through the TRGA cylinder and entered this space and time. A careful search across that glowing backdrop had revealed the Six Suns, a circlet of brilliant blue stars half a light year away, each forty times the mass of Sol, all orbiting a common center of gravity.

That was Red Mike’s final confirmation. He had stepped across from Omega Centauri Tee-prime to Omega T
-0.876gy
, the dwarf galaxy falling in toward the spiral arms of the Milky Way more than 800 million years in the past.

Omega T
-0.876gy
, the N’gai Cloud of the Sh’daar, pulsed and throbbed with electronic life.

A quartet of deep space fortresses guarded this end of the TRGA cylinder, small asteroids bristling with weaponry and sensory gear. They’d ignored him as he drifted out of the cylinder, apparently unable to detect him when his internal energy currents were channeled down to such a low, slow level.

Deeper into the central core of the tiny galaxy, toward the blue-hot mystery of the Six Suns, radio and laser communications wove a complex and tangled network of technic civilization. Numerous planets were in high-velocity transit in the distance, their wakes of distorted space visible across several light years. The Sh’daar, it had been discovered twenty years ago, were able to move entire planets by warping a bubble of space around them—the faster-than-light Alcubierre Drive on an unimaginably huge scale.

Red Mike noted the fact of the moving planets, but remained incurious as to where they were being taken, or why. He detected the movement of starships as well. Many would be piloted by the Sh’daar equivalent of AIs, electronic life forms more akin to Red Mike than to their organic predecessors. Others, he knew, were piloted by organics. By
Refusers . . .

The tiny probe spent several more hours recording and mapping, all the while using local magnetic fields to very slowly decelerate until its velocity was zero relative to the surrounding space. Then, equally slowly, it began accelerating once more, moving back in the direction from which it had come.

There appeared to be no response from the fortresses, no indication that he’d been noticed.

With luck, the Sh’daar instrumentation on those guardian fortresses had not picked up the tiny surge of electromagnetic energy from a thirty-kilogram lump of nickel-iron when it unobtrusively reversed its course.

Squadron Common Room

TC/USNA CVS
America

Quito Synchorbital

1820 hours, TFT

“Look, I know how you feel, Nungie,” Lieutenant Willis Cross said with a careless shrug as he entered the common room.

“I told you, Nape. Don’t call me that.”

“Okay, okay . . . but you gotta take the big picture, y’know? The universe doesn’t revolve around you and your personal problems!”

Cross and Gregory had just had chow at the Hab Two mess hall, and were contemplating a free evening. Gregory glanced at the viewall display covering two bulkheads—a real-time view of Earth and the synchorbital base outside—then slumped into one of the low, deeply cushioned seats that had been grown out of the deck. Vincent Ramey had told him at chow that, yes, the scuttlebutt was true.
America
was being deployed to Omega Centauri.

Gregory had been in the Navy long enough that he put little credence in scuttlebutt—an ancient naval term for shipboard rumor. Such rumor routinely took on a life of its own, no matter how outrageous or unlikely it might be. But when you heard the same story again and again from a number of different sources, no matter how outrageous it might be, it seemed more and more possible with each hearing. The word circulating through America’s hab decks now was that a survey vessel, the
Endeavor
, had been attacked and destroyed by the Sh’daar at Omega Centauri, that Sh’daar forces were emerging in force from the Black Rosette, that
America
and her battlegroup were to be deployed there immediately. Cross and several others had been talking about the rumors at chow. Gregory had been resisting buying into the tales. Almost a month earlier, he’d heard stories circulating through the junior officers’ quarters to the effect that the battlegroup was bound for Osiris, for home, and he didn’t want to surrender that hope just yet.

“Having the Nungies parked just sixteen light years from Sol is not my ‘personal problem,’ okay?”

Gregory slapped his left palm down on the table next to his chair, allowing the exposed circuitry woven into the skin across the heel of his hand to come into contact with the table’s linkpad.
Coffee
, he thought, and added his personal code. A couple of seconds later, the coffee materialized on the receiver plate next to the pad, built up atom by atom so quickly it seemed to flash into solidity out of nothing in an instant. He picked up the mug—cool to the touch, with an animated image of
America
dropping out of Alcubierre Drive in a dazzling pulse of light—and sipped the coffee—hot enough to scald, with his preference of cream and sugar automatically added.

Cross dropped into the seat next to Gregory’s and ordered a glass of scotch on the rocks. Alcohol would have been unthinkable on board a USNA ship a couple of centuries ago . . . but the swarms of nano circulating through his body would block damage to his organs, and permit a pleasant buzz without allowing him to get drunk.

“Maybe ‘King’ Koenig doesn’t agree with you,” he suggested after taking a sip.

“The way I heard it, the Confederation bigwigs were in a panic over just how close the Nungies and their friends were. They were pushing for an Osiris relief expedition.”

“Some of them, maybe,” Cross admitted. “And the Chinese want Everdawn back, and the Islamics want Mufrid back and . . . fuck it. It’s all just politics anyway.”

Gregory nodded in glum agreement. The Confederation seemed glacial in its resolve to win back worlds and systems taken from Sol decades before. There was plenty of
talk
, sure . . . talk about Humankind claiming its place among the stars, about systems belonging to humans but now ruled by beings so alien that a meeting of minds with them was virtually impossible. But, somehow, nothing was ever actually done after all of the promises and resolve. The Islamic colony at Mufrid—Eta Boötis IV—was the perfect example. Evacuated when the Turusch had invaded in 2404, Mufrid had been briefly freed a few months later when
America
and a small fleet returned and raided the system.

But the battlegroup had moved on and Eta Boötis had been abandoned. The evacuees rescued from the planet’s inhospitable surface, some thousands of them, had been shipped back to Sol and ultimately transferred to refugee camps on Luna and within the Islamic Theocracy on Earth, where they remained to this day—still waiting.

It was all so . . .
stupid
.

Despite the clamor in some quarters of the Confederation itself, the Directorate in Geneva appeared to be in no hurry to reclaim Osiris or any of the other worlds taken from Confederation control during the past half century. As Cross had pointed out, it was all about politics. Neither the Theocracy nor the Chinese Hegemony were members of the Earth Confederation. Both, in fact, had been enemies of the Confederation at various times over the past few centuries, and Geneva certainly was not going to take care of their territorial issues with aliens before their own problems were addressed.

Confederation, Theocracy, Hegemony, and the Independents—none seemed able to confront the Sh’daar clients as a united front, as Humankind rather than a ragged confusion of separate nation-states.

“So,” Gregory said, “you coming in with me?”

Cross downed the last of his drink and made a face. “Might as well. They’re not letting us off the damned ship, that’s for sure.”

“All liberty cancelled,” Gregory said. “I know.”

“I can see calling back the guys who might’ve gone Earthside or out to Luna. But why do they have to lock us up like we were prisoners, or something?”

Gregory shrugged. “You played the sexinteractives at Angelo’s lately?”

“Yeah, man. Hot. You’re not only
there
, smack in the middle of the fantasy of your choice, but it feels like your nerves are ’cubing on double capacity.”

“Yup. Direct nanostimulation of the midbrain to stimulate a dopamine dump. Instantly addictive. Maybe they just don’t trust us to come back to the ship.”

“Aw, it’s harmless as long as you’re pumped full of anti-a,” Cross said. “Battlegroup Command is just on a power trip, is all.”

“Or,” Gregory said, settling back in the chair and closing his eyes, “maybe they just want to make sure we review this stuff.” He brought his palm down on the contact plate and relaxed.

He had to deliver a mental code group, to get clearance. The information he was downloading came from the Agletsch, by way of Naval Intelligence, and was not for public access.

After a moment, the data began scrolling past his mind’s eye.

Executive Office, USNA

Columbus, District of Columbia

United States of North America

2034 hours, EST

“What the hell do your . . .
masters
think they’re doing?” Koenig demanded.

He was in a virtual conference, standing in a . . .
place
, a world with towering mountains of ice on the horizon, and a night sky ablaze with the shifting green and red hues of a spectacular aurora. Stars gleamed, myriad pinpoints peeking through the auroral haze, and the intricate clots and twists and curlings of the Milky Way stretched across the zenith.

It was a real place, Koenig knew, a Confederation colony established in 2294 by settlers from North America and Russia. Themis was the human name for the cluster of cities on the great southern continent of Zeta Doradus V, some thirty-eight light years from Sol. The place was surprisingly Earthlike in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of planetary bodies, most of which were quite different, quite
alien
from Earth. A living, vibrant world of vast oceans, violet forests, and brilliant sunlight, Zeta Doradus was best known as the place of First Contact—Humankind’s first meeting with an extrasolar species.

Two of them—Gru’mulkisch and Dra’ethde—stood before Koenig now, looking up at him with almost comical twists to their stalked eyes—four apiece, rising from the spidery, flattened, sixteen-legged bodies covered in a velvety-brown leather patterned with gold and blue reticulations. Humans called them “bugs” or “spiders,” but in fact they were not much like either, with unsegmented bodies, an unpleasant mode of eating through their bellies, and sixteen limbs—short at the back and quite long at the front. Both were female; their male companions, like the mates of female Angler fish on Earth, were small parasites attached to their bodies. Properly, the beings were known as
Agletsch
.

“The masters have told us nothing, President Koenig,” Gru’mulkisch said, speaking through the small translation device affixed to what might approximate its chest. “It is not in their nature to do so, yes-no?”

“Are you certain that the attackers at Omega Centauri were Sh’daar?” Dra’ethde added. “Others might use the ancient transport systems. Others occupy the Great Deeps of the stars.”

Koenig glared at the two small aliens. He’d known these two particular individuals for a long time, ever since he’d commanded CBG-18. When the fleet had departed for Operation Crown Arrow, striking deep into Sh’daar space in order to buy time for a desperate Earth, he’d taken them along as native guides.

It was still difficult sometimes to follow how they thought. Their social conventions were strange—their need for privacy when they ate, for example. These two seemed to have been around forever, and had aged, outwardly at least, not at all. He didn’t know how their life span compared with that of humans. Were they still young? Old? Did age even make a difference for entities so alien, so different physically and emotionally from Humankind?

Generally, the Agletsch seemed friendly, unassuming, and at times eager to help . . . though they were not always forthcoming with important information. The Agletsch were interstellar traders. What they traded was information, exchanging data about star systems and life forms and interstellar civilizations for information about Earth and humanity, occasionally leavened with the stores of heavy elements that appeared to be a common medium of trade throughout the known galaxy, in particular platinum, iridium, rhenium, as well as some of the longer-half-lived artificials—neptunium-237, and californium-251.

And they gave
nothing
away for free.

“There are times,” Koenig told them, “when we do not ask you to sell us information because we do not know what to ask. If there is a threat to my species—whether it’s the Sh’daar or some other predatory race out there, I want to know about it.”

“This we understand, Mr. President Koenig,” Dra’ethde told him. “And if we had something definite to trade to you on the matter, we would be certain you were aware of the fact, yes-no? But in this instance we are . . .
bleep
!”

Koenig smiled. Agletsch translators sometimes encountered concepts they couldn’t handle in English, and the result was a brief, shrill, electronic tone. In twenty years, the Agletsch had gotten a lot better with English, but they still occasionally bleeped out.

“We are as ignorant as are you,” Gru’mulkisch supplied.

“I see.” Agletsch translations could also sometimes come across as blunt to the point of rudeness.

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