Dark Matter

“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 was collapsing.

Appeared. That was the operative word. It won’t do, Koenig thought, to become overconfident now, or to drop your guard. The devastating nano-­D attack on Columbus, an atrocity in contravention of any number of treaties and protocols, had triggered defections from the Confederation ranks. Russia and North India both had seceded from the Confederation and allied with the USNA. Two powerful independent powers had entered the war as well—­the Chinese Hegemony and the Islamic Theocracy, both long excluded from the Confederation, both siding with the USNA in exchange for promises of inclusion in any new Earth government.

But the Confederation had been scoring victories as well. Besides annihilating Columbus, they’d destroyed a number of USNA orbital assets, were effectively in control of the SupraQuito space elevator, and had brought together a large fleet with which they were effectively dominating solar space. Mexico and Honduras had seceded from the USNA and invaded South California, Texas, and two other districts. Pan-­European forces had occupied the Manhat Ruins and parts of the Virginia and Carolina Periphery coastlines. The USNA military was badly stretched, outnumbered, and just hanging on. Even with Hegemony and Theocracy help, the issue was in doubt.

“Maybe Konstantin has some information,” Koenig said.

Whitney grinned. “The Great Konstantin sees all . . . knows all . . .”

It was a running joke within the emergency command post. The computer array in Tsiolkovsky on the moon had been instrumental in a number of successes in the war so far—­not least of which had been opening negotiations with the Theocracy and with the Chinese.

“Sometimes I’m afraid that it does all,” Koenig replied.

But he opened the channel anyway.

The artificial intelligence known as Konstantin was very much an enigma, and one that many—­perhaps most—­humans did not entirely trust. Computer AIs had surpassed the commonly accepted measures of human intelligence four centuries ago, and the Konstantin Array was a fifth-­generation AIP running within a network of DS-­8940 Digital Sentience computers. AIP stood for artificial intelligence programmed. Humans hadn’t programmed Konstantin; machines had, by copying large chunks of code and weaving them together in ways that often surprised their human overseers.

Theoretically, computer minds programmed by computers still carried the same constraints as their human-­programmed counterparts. While Konstantin was theoretically 1010 times more powerful in terms of synaptic complexity than a human, he still possessed what was comfortingly known as limited purview. He was very good at processing data and he could follow orders quite well, but computers weren’t supposed to be able to make decisions independently of humans, nor were they supposed to demonstrate what was theoretically a purely human trait: creativity.

And yet, Koenig knew, Konstantin had displayed remarkable creativity several times already, most notably when he’d quietly opened negotiations with the Theocracy and the Hegemony. No human had directed him to do so.

The fact that he had might well mean victory for the USNA.

Koenig gave a wry smile. He was used to calling AIs “it,” . . . but over the past few months, Konstantin for him had definitely become a he.

After a delay of a few moments, a window opened in Koenig’s mind. A balding and white-­haired man in old-­fashioned clothing and gold pince-­nez looked at him from behind a book with its title in Cyrillic letters. Behind him were the anachronistic screens of a circular workstation complete with floating monitor displays and free-­floating transparent control panels. “Ah, Mr. President,” the AI’s electronic avatar said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

The original Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had been a Russian schoolteacher in the early 20th century, a hermit who’d seemed strange, even bizarre, to his neighbors, but who’d been convinced that one day Humankind would spread out to the stars. With Oberth, Goddard, and Korolyov, he’d become known as one of the fathers of modern spaceflight . . . the father, in fact, since he’d predated the others.

“I assume you’ve been watching the situation in Geneva,” Koenig said.

As always, there was an awkward two-­and-­a-­half-­second pause as Koenig’s words crawled up to the moon, and the AI’s reply crawled back.

“Of course. We expected something of the sort, of course, but events appear to be moving with unexpected speed.”

“You expected a revolution?”

“There has been considerable public outcry over the destruction of Columbus, particularly in Europe,” Konstantin replied. On the screens behind him, European soldiers were fighting in the ravaged streets of Geneva. It was night over there, the sky reflecting the light of a burning city. In the background of one monitor, Koenig recognized the sprawl of the Plaza of Light in Geneva’s heart, dominated by the immense statue Ascent of Man. Hover tanks were moving toward the Confederation’s Ad Astra Government Complex.

“Too,” Konstantin continued, “the war has been dragging on without significant victories for two months. Anticipation for an early and easy victory has given way to doubts about the morality or legality of the war.”

“This could be the end of it, then,” Koenig said.

“Do not assume a USNA victory yet, Mr. President. The rebels appear to be a faction under General Janos Matonyi Korosi, formerly a hard-­liner within the Confederation Senate. He has wanted President Roettgen’s job and power for some time, now, and he may see this coup as a means not only of defeating you, but to opening negotiations with the Sh’daar directly, ending the Sh’daar War, and presenting himself as Earth’s savior. There is also a personal aspect.”

“What aspect?”

“His brother was Karl Mihaly Korosi, executive officer of the destroyer Mölder.”

“Ah.”

Mölder had been one of the Pan-­European warships that launched the deadly nano-­disassembler attack on Columbus. She’d been destroyed by a spread of nukes fired from the Missouri. Moments later, the bombardment vessel Estremadura had fired six nano-­D warheads. Five had been intercepted out in space by the frigate John Paul Jones, but the sixth had destroyed Columbus, D.C.

Koenig recalled that Ilse Roettgen, the president of the Confederation Senate, had seemed shocked when she learned that Columbus had been hit by nano-­D. He was as sure as he could be that she’d not been putting on an act—­and that suggested that rogue elements within her own ­government or military forces had been operating on their own, behind her back. And if Korosi’s brother had been killed on the Mölder . . .

That connection, tenuous as it was, suggested that the hard-­liners in the Geneva government had planned and carried out the attack on Columbus, and now were using the situation to seize power. Lovely.

“You think General Korosi is out for revenge, then?”