Deep Time

Koenig ran down the list of briefings. At the top of the list was the capture of the alien starship, code-named Charlie One. It would be hours yet before America’s SAR tugs would catch the vessel and begin decelerating it. Until that happened, it was still hurtling outbound, now well past the orbit of Neptune and out into the Kuiper Belt. Details were sketchy, but evidently a fast-thinking fighter pilot off the America had used a drone to interfere with the alien’s singularity projector. Something important had clearly burned out; if it hadn’t, Charlie One would have slipped into metaspace long ago and been gone.

I’ll have to commend that pilot later, he thought. Another urgent point on the list caught his eye. It had to do with Charlie One’s apparent destination, in the constellation Cancer. He decided to study that later, too.

He moved to another item: closer to home there was a revolution against the Confederation government in South India, clashes between Chinese special forces and Russian troops in the Siberian maritime province, religious riots and demonstrations across the Theocracy, and massive flooding from a storm surge in the Philippines that almost certainly would foment unrest.

It went on:

A breakthrough in communicating with the Slan at Crisium … suspected sabotage in the Mt. Kenya space elevator … yet another formal protest by the Papess in Rome denouncing the White Covenant … government collapse in Geneva … possible Sh’daar activity at 70 Ophiuchi …

In short, very much business as usual. With the USNA walking the proverbial knife’s edge between survival and disaster on a dozen fronts.

“The big thing on the docket for today,” Whitney said, interrupting Koenig’s perusal of the list, “is the Washington dedication.”

Koenig groaned. “I don’t suppose we can put that off?”

“Not easily, sir. It’s an enormous affair, and there may be a hundred thousand people attending. It may turn out to be a lot bigger than that, as the news about Verdun moves down the Nets.”

Koenig sighed.

Washington, D.C., the former capital of the old United States, had been partially submerged by rising sea levels at the end of the twenty-first century. The capital had been moved to Columbus, Ohio, where it had remained for the next nearly three and a half centuries. Washington had slowly been claimed by swamp, mangroves, and forests of kudzu, which enveloped the exposed marble buildings and monuments. A part of the Periphery, it had been abandoned by the United States, then ignored by the new United States of North America. Tribes of Prims continued to hang on to a marginal existence there, fishing over what once had been the Mall, and fighting off periodic attacks by raiders out of the Virginia Periphery.

Late the previous year, not long after the beginning of hostilities in the civil war against the Confederation, the Pan-Europeans had attempted to take over Washington and several other parts of the North American Periphery. A sharp battle with local forces had broken the Confed attack. Since then, USNA help and technology had been pouring into the area, reclaiming the swamp, clearing old buildings and growing new ones, and freeing walls, monuments, and domes from the clinging riot of greenery.

Today, President Koenig was scheduled to fly to Washington and dedicate the reborn city, formally reinstating it as part of the USNA. Within the next six months, it was hoped, Washington would once again, after three centuries, be the North American capital. Preparations were already under way to move the physical apparatus of government from Toronto south.

Koenig wasn’t convinced that the move was a good idea. Since most of any government now was its electronic infrastructure rather than specific buildings, one city was pretty much the same as any other, and there’d even been suggestions that SupraQuito would be a better site. It had been centuries since government was dependent on a specific place. Washington, Columbus, and now Toronto all were symbols—potent symbols, perhaps, but only symbols, symbols of tradition and continuity and history. The real business of government long ago had been taken up by various AIs running in places as diverse as New New York, the Angelino-Francisco Metroplex, SupraQuito, and Tsiolkovsky, on the far side of the moon.

Humans were vital to the running of government, of course; with hardware purpose-grown in their brains from the time they were born, with in-head electronic memory and the ability to link with other people anywhere in the world, or to link with AIs possessing superhuman intelligence, government processes could be micromanaged by politicians as never before. But Koenig felt that the purely organic components of government—fallible, prone to corruption, prone to uninformed choices and bad days and just plain bad decisions—were fast becoming obsolete, save for when they were performing some of the more traditional duties of politicians …

Like presiding over the dedication of the opening of a once drowned city.

Koenig was tempted to cancel, but Marcus had a point about the crowds and Verdun. The victory in Europe had the looks of a final triumph over the Confederation. Celebration had already begun across North America … and in Europe, too, where the civil war had become increasingly unpopular. Starlight had been hammering the theme of peace for the past several months.

“Are we still on for having Constantine d’Angelo put in an electronic appearance? I gather he was pretty popular the other day in Geneva.”

“We are. They’ve grown a ten-story tall vidscreen in Washington overlooking the Mall, just like the one in the Place d’Lumiere.”

“So why can’t I put in an appearance the same way?”

Whitney shrugged. “I guess you could if you really want to, sir. But people are expecting to see you in the flesh and ten stories tall.”

And, of course, the single key difference between the president of the USNA and the leader of the new Starlight religion was that “Constantine d’Angelo” didn’t really exist—not as flesh and blood, at any rate. He was an electronic avatar, a construct created as a public face for Konstantin.

Most people with in-head electronics carried their own e-secretary with them, a pocket-sized personal assistant AI that could front for the human in handling incoming calls and routine business and be completely indistinguishable from the human prototype as it did so. These business and social stand-ins were referred to as secretaries or personal assistants or avatars and they existed only as electronic patterns of data, as images and sounds built up pixel by pixel and bit by bit by the AI generating them.

“Constantine d’Angelo” was no different, save that he claimed to be a real person. An elaborate and completely fictional background and biography had been carefully pieced together for him, and records had been put in place by USNA Intelligence proving that people had seen the flesh-and-blood d’Angelo. His parents were still alive in a Kuiper Belt greenhab; reportedly they were very private people who’d declined to be interviewed …

D’Angelo had appeared at the Place d’Lumiere projected on the giant screen overlooking the plaza in front of the ConGov pyramid and given a powerful speech decrying the Confederation’s war crimes and urging a cessation of hostilities. That speech, Koenig knew, had been meticulously crafted through recombinant memetic techniques to prepare a war-weary population for the USNA strike at the Verdun fortress, and the capture or death of Korosi, Denoix, and their cronies. The Starlight movement had been gathering strength, momentum, and the unassailable authority of the moral high ground … and no one outside of the innermost reaches of the USNA government appeared to realize that the entire movement was an electronic construct.

“What I need is a physical avatar,” Koenig said ruefully, “not just the electronic version.”

“A physical avatar,” Whitney said, thoughtful. “You mean like a touristbot?”

“Actually—”

“There are some pretty good TRs, sir.” The initials stood for “teleoperated robot,” and referred to simulacra that could be “ridden” long-distance by human operators.

“That won’t be necessary, Marcus.”

“No, really, sir. Dopplebots. We could have a stand-in made up for you that—”

“No, Marcus. I wasn’t serious.”

There were public figures, Koenig knew, simsex actors especially, who mentally rode robots designed to be indistinguishable from their human counterparts. And some tourists used them to explore the surface of Venus or the streets of distant cities without leaving home. He’d always found the idea of robotic public appearances gimmicky … and mildly rude. Showing up in a robot body when people thought it was you seemed deceptive, and a violation of the public trust. If the public spotted the stand-in—and no robotic replica was perfect—he’d never hear the end of it.

He sighed. “When do I have to be there?”

“Twelve thirty, sir. The program begins at one. A shuttle is scheduled to leave Toronto’s waterfront at twelve ten, with a twelve-minute flight.”

The maglev tubes to Washington weren’t open yet.

“Okay. Let’s see what we can get done before then.” He scanned again down the list of items appearing on his in-head, then projected it onto a virtual screen floating above his desk. “Tell me about this one … ‘Collapse in Geneva.’”

“A Starlight mob stormed the offices of the Confederation Senate this morning,” Whitney told him. “The police appear to have joined the mobs, and there’s a complete breakdown of social order …”

In Switzerland, of all places? Orderly, clean, law-abiding Switzerland? It seemed like the rankest blasphemy.

USNS/HGF Concord

In pursuit

0745 hours, TFT

By the time Concord had matched vectors with the alien and closed the range to a few hundred kilometers, Dahlquist had a real problem on his hands.

It wasn’t a matter of betraying the United States of North America … not at all. He’d been following the news feeds while Concord had been posted out in Vesta space, and it was clear that the civil war there was all but over. The Earth Confederation’s remaining fortresses had fallen, its leaders were dead or captured, the Geneva government itself under siege by religious fanatics. If he’d been able to seize Charlie One in the name of the Confederation—and the thought had crossed his mind hours earlier—who the hell would he give it to?

In any case, he remained loyal to the USNA. It was the Prim Sandy Gray he didn’t like, and whom he would disgrace if he possibly could. The guy never should have been promoted to flag rank so quickly—should never have been promoted past lieutenant at all. As Dahlquist saw things, Primitives never developed the same facility with in-head technology as people who’d been wired from birth. They might serve well enough in the military as enlisted personnel, but never as officers.

He didn’t realize it, but he was recapitulating an ancient argument of military service that went back to the old United States, to the British Empire, and even before: you had to be a college graduate to be commissioned as an officer. Arguably, it was an outgrowth of feudalism, when only landed gentry—the nobles—could afford armor and a horse, leaving peasants, by default, to become foot soldiers.

With the presumption that only the wealthy could afford formal education—and a formal education was required to teach a student the history, the tactics, and the deportment necessary for the proverbial officer and a gentleman—it was a system that had worked, and worked well, for something like two thousand years.

There were exceptions, of course. There always had been—the mustangs who came up through the ranks, the battlefield promotions, the noncom who found himself the senior man of an embattled platoon or company. In Dahlquist’s opinion, those scarcely counted. In modern combat, it was vital that an officer have that perfect union of the organic and the machine, the balance of human mind and AI, the speed and grasp of the computer melded perfectly with the intuition and the inventiveness of the human brain.

And upstart Prim admirals just didn’t cut it.

Concord’s AI was painting an image of the alien now. Three of America’s search-and-rescue tugs had already rendezvoused with the ship, latched on with ultra-strong cables, and were now decelerating the alien. Four of the star carrier’s fighters were present as well, standing off somewhat as they oversaw the deceleration. The sun was a tiny, shrunken bright star in the distance, now more than five light-hours—some forty AUs—off, roughly the average distance of tiny Pluto from Sol.

Two USNA warships—a frigate and a destroyer—were still thirty minutes away from rendezvous. That Concord had managed the feat before them was due entirely to the High Guard cutter’s beefed-up maneuvering suite. The same held true for the three SAR UTW-90s—the cutter and the tugs were designed as intercept vehicles, and thus outpaced the warships.

Each SAR vessel carried a crew of five under the command of a lieutenant or a lieutenant commander. Dahlquist was now the senior officer present.

Opportunity presents itself, he thought.

“Open a channel to the lead SAR tug,” he told his own communications officer.

“Lieutenant Commander Mitchell is on the line, sir.”

“Commander Mitchell?” he said. “This is Commander Terrance Dahlquist of the High Guard ship Concord. I am maneuvering to board the alien.”

“Concord,” a voice replied in his head, “this is Fly Catcher. That’s negative on rendezvous, repeat, negative. We are under orders not to board the alien under any circumstances until America has joined us.”

“I am disregarding those orders, Fly Catcher. Maintain deceleration. We’ll take it from here.”

The alien was growing huge in Dahlquist’s inner mind’s-eye window.

“Wave off, Concord! Wave off!”

“Negative,” Dahlquist replied. “We’re going in.”

And then things began to get exciting.

Chapter Six

29 June, 2425

USNS/HGF Concord

Charlie One

0750 hours, TFT

Concord had closed to within a hundred meters of the alien when the sleek gray-green hull directly ahead … changed.

“Fire!” Dahlquist screamed. “All weapons … fire!”

It was a response of pure and immediate panic. Concord’s weapons included lasers, particle beams, and missiles—these last tipped with variable-yield fusion warheads. Firing a spread of Krait missiles into a target that close would have meant incineration for the High Guard vessel.

The command was overridden, however, both by Concord’s AI and by Lieutenant Jeffry Thomas, Concord’s chief weapons officer. The ship’s beam weapons, though, slashed into the alien with what looked like deadly effect. Portions of the hull melted and flowed like syrup, heavy and viscous.

“Captain!” Concord’s helm officer yelled. “We’ve lost control!”

“Damn it, what’s happening?”

“We’re being dragged into that thing!”

Concord drifted forward, accelerating … then plunging into that seething, flowing surface. The liquid peeled back like a blossoming flower, then closed around and over the Concord as Dahlquist’s view was submerged in darkness.

And with a hard jolt, the Concord came to rest.

VFA-96, Black Demons

Charlie One

0751 hours, TFT

“They’re gone!” Connor screamed over the squadron’s tactical frequency. “That thing just fucking swallowed the Concord!”

She felt a surge of panic—a churning, tumbling, empty feeling that had her weak and shaking. Too well, she remembered her fighter being swallowed by a Slan warship seven months ago, out at 36 Ophiuchi AIII.

Damn, she’d thought she was over this. The psychs had probed and analyzed and, where possible, smoothed over her memories of the interrogation, separating the emotion from the simple facts of the events.

“Take it easy, Five,” Mackey told her.

“But what do we do?”

“Get ahold of yourself, Connor! That’s first!”

She gulped down several breaths, struggling to control herself, her fear. The psych sessions had taught her how to engage certain circuits within her cerebral implants.

And the alien monster wasn’t coming after her …

“I’m … okay …” she managed to say.

“Right. All fighters—nice and easy—start pulling back. No moves that can be considered hostile.”

“Might be a little late for that, boss, don’t you think?” Lieutenant Gerald Ruxton pointed out. “Concord was letting loose with everything she had. Of course the aliens think we’re hostile!”

“As long as they’re not shooting at us,” Mackey said, “I think we’re okay.”

“They haven’t done anything yet,” Martinez observed.

“Except eat the Concord!” Connor added.

“Well,” Mackey said, “Concord’s captain was talking about boarding the alien. Looks like he’s just done precisely that. Everybody just keep it cool. And increase your distance. We’ll back off to a couple of hundred kilometers. Slowly …”

It was, Connor thought, a damned peculiar problem. Were they under attack by the alien, or were they now in a peaceful, first-contact situation? There was no way to be sure.

The four Starblades drifted out from the huge alien, which now appeared to have returned to its normal, enigmatic self. The portion along one flank that had momentarily flowed like water was whole again, and apparently solid. And the Concord had vanished.

“So what do we do, Skipper?” Ruxton wanted to know.

“We pass the word to America,” Mackey replied. “And then we wait.”

The Mall

Washington, D.C.

United States of North America

1315 hours, EST

“The men who first founded this city,” Koenig was saying, addressing a crowd that filled the entire Mall and spread out into the streets and steps on all sides, “the men who created it as a seat of government the first time around could not have envisioned the society rebuilding it today. News could travel from New England to the South in a week, perhaps, and buildings like those around us were pieced together by stacking stone blocks upon each other—one at a time—not grown from dirt and a pinch of submicroscopic nanomachines. The human lifespan was five or six decades if you were lucky, ending in pain and senescence if it didn’t end in violence. Transportation on land was by horse or by animal-drawn cart, or you walked. Traveling by sea meant sails and wind power, or oars. And travel by air? Impossible—save, perhaps, for the Montgolfiers’ balloon. Citizens—those who could vote—were exclusively male, exclusively white, and exclusively landowners, and, therefore, rich.

“And yet the government those men established—uneven as it was, unequal as it was, unfair as it was in some few ways—saw the brilliant and masterful unfolding of true democracy. That of the greatest good for the greatest number, of a truly representative government that within just a few more decades became forever identified as the one government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ The instrument that those men created, the Constitution of the United States and its appended Bill of Rights, became the supreme expression of how government can and should work, of government where the rulers derive their power and authority from the governed, and not the other way around. A government with the various branches in balance with one another, checking one another, a barricade against tyranny, injustice, and from both mob rule and from dictatorial rule by a power-hungry elite.”

Physically, Koenig was standing inside a huge plastic bubble grown just for the event, with a stage set up inside, a kind of theater in the round with the dome’s walls projecting a 360-degree view of the surrounding crowd. With him, on chairs grown from the stage itself, were the day’s other speakers. The ten-story-high projection screen rose above the crowd at Koenig’s back, and he was glad he wasn’t able to see it from the podium. There was something about watching your own image towering thirty meters high that could put you off your stride if you were the least self-conscious.

Not that he was—you don’t spend a life as a fighter pilot and then run for office without supreme confidence in yourself. He continued on.

“The men who built this city, who created that government—they were not perfect. But what they created over six centuries ago remains today as a brilliant beacon of intelligence, of reason, of forethought, of far-reaching planning and vision, a beacon that has not been matched since.”

Standing at the podium mid-stage, Koenig read the speech as the words scrolled up his in-head window. He scarcely needed them. He’d helped Frank Carraglio craft this speech, and it was a good one: powerful, moving—a speech Koenig implicitly and fundamentally believed in. One he could recite unaided from his heart.

He wondered how the audience outside was receiving it, though: the physically present crowd—the AI estimates for the gathering exceeded 4 million people—and perhaps half a billion more that were linked in electronically from across the USNA and all over the world.

Koenig tried not to think about that part.

“It is to those men, to their memory, to their vision, and to their hopes for Humankind that we rededicate this city so recently rescued from the ocean’s grasp …”

As he spoke, an alert came through his in-head … a written message scrolling along the bottom of his mind’s eye from Marcus Whitney: Concord tried to initiate contact with Charlie One. Ship vanished inside alien. No further information.

Shit! What the hell was going on there at the solar system’s ragged, far-out edge? What had Commander Dahlquist been thinking, approaching the alien without nearby backup and support? Idiot!

“It was … uh … excuse me. It was a mistake for the government to abandon the Periphery, of course.” Finish the speech—worry about the situation later. He carried on. “It was a mistake to assume that when the sea had claimed our cities that no one remained behind, clinging to their homes.”

Of course he kept on going with the speech. There was nothing he could do about the situation, in any case. The confrontation with the alien was taking place more than five light-hours out. America and her escorts were a hell of a lot closer to the action than he was.

But in an offhand manner, he did wish he was still back in his office. His staff could keep him updated here almost as fast through his in-head links, but at least in his office he felt like he was in control. That was pure illusion, of course. His years commanding a star carrier and, later, a carrier group out among the stars had taught him time and time again that the thoughts and decisions of the senior policy makers back on Earth or at HQMILCOM Mars were largely irrelevant. They could set general policy, but micromanagement was an exercise in utter futility. It was the person in command on the scene who had to call the shots.

At the time, Koenig had been convinced that this was a good thing. With the positions reversed, he wasn’t so sure.

“Technology, however,” he continued, “has given us a chance to correct that old mistake, to take back what was ours, and even to bring forth something new.”