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Bright Light
Ian Douglas
There’s no more time…There’s always more time…Trevor Gray has been stripped of his command of the starship America, and is unsure what to do with his life. Having dedicated so much of himself to the service, he knew following the super-AI Konstantin’s advice could have severe consequences. He just never thought he would be out of the fight.Because that’s what Earth is in: a fight against a sinister alien force so technologically advanced that there seems little hope. That’s why he disobeyed his orders in the first place – to figure out a way to stop them. But now he’s beached.Which is just what Konstantin wanted.For the super-AI has a plan: connect Gray with the Pan-Europeans, and set him on a course to the remote star Deneb. There, he is to make contact with a mysterious alien civilization using the new artificial intelligence Bright Light, and maybe—if they can make it in time—prevent humanity from being wiped from the universe.
Copyright (#ub9c4522a-778c-5e55-a5c7-0e5bff3881ed)
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © William H. Keith, Jr. 2018
Cover illustration © Gregory Bridges
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
William H. Keith, Jr. asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008121129
Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008121136
Version: 2018-10-24
Dedication (#ub9c4522a-778c-5e55-a5c7-0e5bff3881ed)
As always …
for Brea
Contents
Cover (#u9a0dea8e-9e74-536e-b6e5-359ea5514146)
Title Page (#u72a02e7e-a4f2-543f-8fdc-03afc132387f)
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Epilogue
Keep Reading …
By Ian Douglas
About the Publisher
Prologue (#ub9c4522a-778c-5e55-a5c7-0e5bff3881ed)
The Consciousness had known of Earth and of the starfaring civilization centered there for a long time. Indeed, given that it spanned vast gulfs of time as well as space, it was as if it had always known.
In the heart of the teeming sphere of 10 million ancient suns known to the humans as Omega Centauri, at the central rosette of six massive black holes orbiting their common center in a patently artificial arrangement, the Consciousness brooded on the intelligent beings it had found in this new, painfully young universe.
Intelligent was such a relative concept.
This was bolstered by the fact that the Consciousness had … tasted a number of them, sampling the minute ships and other structures within this volume of space.
Most of the minds it had sampled were of pathetically slow and limited capabilities. A few—a very few—were of higher orders of intelligence, though none came close to the Consciousness in terms of depth or scope of Mind.
Methodically, the Consciousness consumed those worth the effort.
The rest it deleted.
And with a slowly increasing vigor, it explored more deeply into this corner of the new universe. It had identified a sullen red ember of a star, called Kapteyn’s Star by the minds it had assimilated, with a world engineered by beings uploaded into digital form, extremely ancient beings called the Baondyeddi, the Adjugredudhra, and the Groth Hoj. These species, parts of a corporate polity referred to by various sources as the Sh’daar, were in hiding from some unknown threat … quite possibly from the Consciousness itself, though the digital refugees didn’t seem to know exactly what it was they feared.
Despite their attempts to make themselves undetectable—including the slowing of their awareness of time down to seconds on each century, the Consciousness had found them … and it had devoured them, absorbing trillions of minds into its own teeming hive, giving them order and a sense of purpose that had been lacking before.
And in the process it learned of the N’gai Cluster … and of the human presence much closer at hand.
And on the human homeworld, just twelve light years distant from Kapteyn’s Star, the watching beings of that planet anticipated the arrival of the Consciousness over Earth with an increasing and existential dread.
Chapter One (#ub9c4522a-778c-5e55-a5c7-0e5bff3881ed)
30 January 2426
Battery Park
New York City
1545 hours, EST
“Get the hell out of my head!”
“I submit that we will have to talk at some point,” the voice in his head told him. It sounded faintly amused.
Trevor Gray, formerly of the USNA Navy, scowled. “Why?” he replied, blunt and challenging. “Damn it, Konstantin, you’ve wrecked my life. You know that, don’t you?”
“It was necessary for you to leave naval service. Vital, in fact.”
“Bullshit. You no longer own me. And I don’t think we have a thing to say to one another.”
Gray prowled the transparent observation deck extending out over the choppy waters of New York Harbor. At his back, the newly grown towers of what once had been the Manhatt Ruins stabbed skyward, gleaming glass and silver in the winter sun. The place had … changed during the past year, changed more than he’d ever imagined possible. The spot where he was standing had been underwater a few months ago. Now it was clean and shiny, with a scattering of civilians who looked like tourists.
He could sense Konstantin, the powerful AI entity based at Tsiolkovsky, on the far side of the moon, watching him closely from the vantage point of his own in-head circuitry. That took a little getting used to. Konstantin’s principal hardware might be on the moon, but its—his—consciousness could be anywhere within the Global Net on Earth, in low earth orbit—LEO—or in cislunar space. And for sure, a tiny fraction of the super-AI was here in Manhatt, interacting with Gray through his in-head circuitry.
“I need you,” Konstantin told him, “to meet with Elena Vasilyeva …”
“Damn it, Konstantin, you know how I feel about the Pan-Europeans.”
“The war is over, Captain,” Konstantin told him, as though explaining why to a four-year-old. “In any case, Ms. Vasilyeva is Russian. They were on our side, remember?”
“Sorry,” Gray said, his mental voice sharp. “It’s kind of hard to just forget about Columbus, y’know?”
“Which the Russians had nothing to do with, you may recall,” Konstantin said. “In any case, no one is asking you to forget about Columbus.”
Gray turned and scowled up at the new towers of Manhattan, his shoulders hunched against the chill, late-January wind off the water. He did not, in fact, hate the Europeans … not exactly. The destruction of the USNA capital at Columbus had almost certainly been an act by rogue elements within the Genevan military. Pan-European attempts to seize territory along the USNA east coast had been strategic opportunism, pure and simple, and the true causus belli had been their conviction that Humankind had to accept Sh’daar demands and restrict their fast-developing technologies.
And Konstantin was right. With the signing of the Treaty of London, the war was over. Even the alien Sh’daar were friends, now … of a sort. The recent discovery that they’d been under the influence of intelligent colonies of bacteria had finally enabled Humankind to begin to understand just what they wanted … and what they truly were.
No, Gray might not trust the Pan-Euros, but neither did he hate them. His anger right now was reserved for the AI that had arranged to have him drummed out of the Navy. At Konstantin’s urging, he’d taken the star carrier America to the long-time stellar mystery of KIC 8462852—a distant, F3V sun better known as “Tabby’s Star.” What America had brought back, an alien e-virus called the Omega Code, had been of tremendous importance … but his fourteen-hundred-light-year detour had been in direct and blatant disregard of orders. Naval officers, even admirals, could not simply ignore the dictates of military command procedure, even when ordered to do so by super-AIs. The court-martial board had directed that Gray be reduced in rank to captain, and that he retire from the Navy.
Only recently had Gray learned that it had been Konstantin who’d recommended to the board that he be summarily cashiered.
With friends like that …
“I’m bringing in a robot shuttle,” Konstantin told him. “Will you meet with Ms. Vasilyeva?”
“Why? More to the point, why me?”
“The Pan-Euros want to meet you face-to-face. Ms. Vasilyeva has requested that her team get to speak with you first. You are … something of a legend, Captain. Even among those who once were the enemy. You have the reputation of a brilliant tactician, and some of them, I believe, are a bit in awe of you.”
Gray made a sour face at the obvious attempt at flattery. “Sure. Whatever …”
“Ms. Vasilyeva’s xeno team has some new assets that should make first contact with the Denebans more immediately productive.”
“If you say so.” A new thought occurred to him. “But why do we have to use the Pan-Euros at all? What’s wrong with Doc Truitt? When it comes to understanding alien civilizations, he’s the best. He’s told me that on several occasions.”
George Truitt had been the senior xenosophontological expert on board the America. He was testy, rude, and difficult to work with, but he did know his stuff.
“Dr. Truitt has returned to Crisium Base, where he will be working on interpreting the data from the Tabby’s Star Dyson swarm. His work there is absolutely essential. I assure you that Dr. Vasilyeva is as qualified as he is in the field … and considerably easier to work with.”
Gray cocked an eyebrow at that. How did the AI know whether or not it was easy for one set of humans to work with another?
