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He held Julianne Adams close, the two of them floating, clinging to one another in microgravity, but constrained somewhat by the narrow storage space just off the carrier’s flight deck. Holding her head between his hands, he kissed her, deeply and hungrily.

  “Mmm,” she said after a long moment. “Maybe I should get captured by Russians more often.”

  She said it lightly enough, but he could hear the ragged edge to her voice.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her, worried. “Did they . . . are you? . . .”

  “I’m fine, Don,” she told him. “I’m okay. A bit shaky, maybe. Just . . . just hold me.”

  He did, pulling her closer.

  “I heard you’d been found,” he whispered into her hair. “But they took you straight to sick bay and wouldn’t let me in to see you.”

  “The . . . the Russians hit me with an injectable nano. It had me way off-kilter. But the med people gave me a counter-nano, something to clear out the bad stuff.”

  “And your implants?”

  “The docs told me they checked out okay.” She made a face. “God, I thought I was going to have to grow new hardware, though. I felt so dirty. . . .”

  “I know—”

  “You can’t know! I’m sorry, it’s just—I can’t have them in my head! That was the worst part.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “It’s . . . it’s not over,” she told him. “Not yet. But this helps. I just need you to hold me,” she said, quietly sobbing now.

  “My God, what did they do to you?”

  Tears danced around her face, tiny, glittering spheres adrift in microgravity.

  He held her, whispering to her that everything, everything would be okay.

  USNA CVS America

  Flag Bridge

  N’gai Cluster

  2235 hours, FST

  “First dozen drones away, Admiral,” Mackey told him. “We have signal.”

  “Very well, Mack,” Gray replied. He glanced at Lieutenant West. “Okay, Wild West,” he said. He didn’t usually address junior officers by their handles, but he was feeling more optimistic than he’d felt in some time. They’d beaten the Russians and a pack of Nungiirtok, they were on the trail of their quarry, and most important, they now had a definite plan of attack. “How are the others doing?”

  “We haven’t heard from the Birmingham yet, Admiral,” she replied. “Speed of light time lag. Acadia and Arlington both report ready for deployment, as soon as they have their drones on board.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral.”

  The nanufactories on Acadia had been working all out, turning rawmat into the modified Bright Light modules Mackey was calling “drones.” Konstantin had been programming those drones as they came off the assembler lines, and the first twelve had just been launched from Acadia’s flight bay. Bundles of some hundreds of drones had already been packed aboard interfleet transports and were on their way to Birmingham and Arlington, which would soon disperse across a huge volume of space to plant them. The fleet had spent several hours repositioning itself nearly two light years from the N’gai galactic center, an area that Konstantin had decided was statistically more likely than others to actually be concealing the big Sh’daar slow-movers, the artificial worlds and rings and terraformed cylinders. Wherever in all of this emptiness they now were, the human fleet ought to be able to pick them up with their improvised Godstream net.

  Behind them, a bright star burned in a thick, white haze—the hypernova. They were seeing its light now as it was two years ago at one year old and in that time it had faded quite a bit, but there still was glare enough from seven detonating suns to fill the dwarf galaxy’s core with radiance.

  That was another advantage of moving the search out here. The orbiting Six Suns Rosette generated gravity waves, very powerful gravity waves, but the disturbance was considerably dampened by distance. Out here, away from the interference, the human ships would have a much better chance of picking up the grav-drive disturbances of the Sh’daar fleet, especially if that fleet was close by in all of this aching emptiness.

  “Admiral?” Lieutenant West said.

  “Yes?”

  “Message from Captain Rand, sir. He wants to know your orders for the Russian squadron.”

  Gray nodded. He’d almost forgotten about them.

  “Tell him he may proceed at his discretion,” Gray told her. “Keep well spread out . . . but stay within five light-seconds of the America. If any of those crews cause trouble, I want to know about it immediately.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  One of the Russian destroyers, the Storozhevoy—the ship most badly damaged in the battle at the Rosette—had had her crew evacuated to the America, her drives melted down, and she’d been left adrift a few billion kilometers from the Rosette with twenty-five disgruntled Nungiirtok on board. Her small onboard nanufactory had been pegged—meaning it could only convert rawmat into certain limited finished goods—food of the Nungies’ choosing, water, air, and a few luxuries, but not weapons, comm devices, or drive components. They should be still sitting there when the human squadron returned.

  Storozhevoy had by chance proven to be a good name for the ship. It meant “Guardian.”

  The other three destroyers—Smell’yy, Provornyy, and Ognevoy—as well as the Moskva, all still had their Russian crews, but the officers had been taken off and replaced by USNA personnel, with a company of Marines on board each vessel to guard against an uprising by the prisoners. Gray had been tempted to maroon the Russians with their Nungiirtok allies, but he just didn’t have enough personnel to fill all four captured vessels’ crew billets, even on watch-and-watch. The Moskva alone had a crew of over four thousand, and while she now had no need of her space wing, there still weren’t enough people from the America to fill in. He was short of officers as it was and had to press a number of his chiefs and first class petty officers into roles usually filled by JGs, lieutenants, and lieutenant commanders.

  So long as the Russians behaved themselves, it ought to work . . . but he wanted to keep those ships close at hand, just in case he had to send a boarding party across.

  One concession he had made: Gray had asked Captain Rand to volunteer to take over the Moskva, and the young officer had jumped at the chance to redeem himself.

  Gray hoped he wouldn’t regret the decision.

  Chapter Twelve

  20 April, 2429

  Koenig Residence

  Westerville, Ohio

  1545 hours, EST

  “Mr. President?” a Marine guard said over Koenig’s in-head gear.

  “Yes, Master Sergeant?”

  “Sorry to bother you, sir, but we have an aircar inbound. One passenger. His ID checks out.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Randal Jennings. He’s one of Walker’s legal advisors. He says he needs to talk to you in person.”

  “I know him. Let him in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Koenig heard the disapproval in the Marine’s voice. The master sergeant would be thinking of things like a bomb hidden in the aircar, or nanomalware hidden in a handshake.

  Well, if Walker really wanted him dead, there wasn’t a lot Koenig could do to prevent it. He would take such precautions as he could, but he was not going to climb down a hole and pull it in after him.

  “What is it, love?” Marta asked.

  “One of Walker’s flunkies,” Koenig told her. “A yes-man from way back, a lawyer with a master’s degree in brownnosing. I remember him from Walker’s transition team.”

  “What does he want?”

  “Beats me. Probably delivering a message from Walker.” Koenig thought for a moment. “I’m going to ask you to stay out of sight.” No need to complicate things.

  “Of course. Can I listen in?”

  “Sure.” He opened an in-head channel. “Konstantin? Are you monitoring?”

  “Of course, Mr. President. The aircar is a Subaru-Rockwell Silver Streak
, with engine, cabin, and hull modifications. Fairly standard for the D.C. crowd. Extra power so it can mount extra armor.”

  “Are you picking up any threat? Weapons? Explosives?”

  “No, Mr. President, though any such could be shielded.” Konstantin hesitated. “The Marines have been quite thorough, however.”

  Koenig grinned. “I believe it. Okay, I’d like you to be looking over my shoulder when I talk to this guy. Don’t announce yourself, but listen in.”

  “Of course, Mr. President. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  Every now and then Konstantin demonstrated what Koenig could only call a sense of humor. It could be a little disconcerting at times.

  The aircar glided to a halt on Koenig’s landing deck a few moments later. The canopy split open, and a tall man in formal-dress skintights stepped out. Two Marine guards gave his ID a thorough check, then waved him on. Koenig met him at the door.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. President,” Jennings said, extending a hand.

  Koenig didn’t take it, but he disarmed the snub with a grin. “Hello, Randal. Sorry. Don’t like being rude, but doctor’s orders.”

  “Of course. You have no idea where I’ve been.”

  The trouble was, he did know, but he didn’t say anything about it. “What can I do for you? Or is this something for me from your boss?”

  “Do you know Dr. Anton Michaels?”

  “Not personally.”

  But Koenig knew of him, certainly—the Humankind Firster who’d been very much in the news of late. A billionaire and the CEO of an important space mining consortium, he supposedly had the ear of the President. Many assumed he was at least in part behind Walker’s distrust of SAI influences.

  “Dr. Michaels is currently at his habitat at Midway, and he would very much like to meet with you.”

  “About what?”

  “I have no idea. Quite possibly he wants to talk to you about the President’s intent to shut down super-AIs here on Earth, but I have no details. And President Walker wants you to meet with him.”

  “Why me?”

  Jennings shrugged. “Because the President can’t do it himself. Because you were the President and still have high-level security clearances. Because you’re something of a senior statesman now and have the best interests of your country at heart.”

  “Okay, but why send me halfway up the space elevator? I’m sure Dr. Michaels can find out where I live.”

  Jennings looked uncomfortable. “Well, the thing is, Dr. Michaels flat-out refuses to set foot on Earth, ever. He is convinced, as you probably know, that the SAIs control nearly everything on Earth, and he fears having them listen in on what he has to say. For that reason, he is asking that you go up to Midway and meet with him there. He says that it will be very much worth your while.”

  “Alex,” Konstantin whispered in Koenig’s mind, “I strongly advise against this.”

  “No,” Koenig said aloud. “Send someone else. I’m not a messenger boy for the damned Huffers.”

  “The President anticipated your refusal, sir, and advised me to tell you that our civilization, as currently constituted, cannot survive if the machines are shut down. He believes Michaels and the Humankind Firsters represent a serious threat to our peace and well-being. He knows that you are pro-SAI but also that you are loyal to the USNA, and you have those security clearances I mentioned. He told me to ask you . . . ‘please.’”

  Koenig blinked, not certain how to respond. “I thought President Walker and Dr. Michaels were best buds,” he said. “That Walker hates super-AIs as much as Michaels does. That Michaels had been serving in an advisory capacity with Walker’s inner circle. This is kind of coming in out of the blue, you know?”

  “The President believes—strongly—that the super-AIs need to be better controlled, that humans should have greater oversight over what they are doing, but—” Jennings emphasized the word, raising a forefinger as if to make the point “—he knows we can’t live without them. Michaels would have us eliminate all super-AIs and plunge us into a new Dark Ages. Financial collapse. Social collapse. Government collapse. Chaos and bloodshed on a scale that’ll make these riots we’ve been having lately look like a protest by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Ancient Alien Creationist Church. We can’t allow that to happen.”

  Maybe he had underestimated Walker . . . or misjudged him. His denial of the Singularity made him popular with a particular segment of the USNA population, conservative neo-Luddites and those who saw the Singularity as something involving the ascension of machines over Humankind. His rhetoric about reining in intelligent machines appealed to the same groups.

  Maybe what he’d been saying for the past several years was just political rhetoric. Dangerous rhetoric, if Jennings was to be understood, but more about expediency than true advocacy.

  “So what does Walker want me to do about it?”

  “As I said: talk to Michaels. Find out what he wants, but also see if he’s willing to compromise. Find out if he will support the control of SAIs, as opposed to their elimination. And do so in secret, without the media’s involvement. We don’t want the people making wild speculations about the President’s position.”

  “It’s all sounding pretty far-fetched.”

  “We need you, Mr. Koenig. The President needs you. Your country needs you. Quite possibly the whole of civilization needs you.”

  Koenig thought Jennings was trying now to appeal to some grandiloquent sense in Koenig of greatness or destiny or heroic patriotism. Such lures weren’t going to work on him, but he had to admire Jenning’s passion . . . or maybe his acting ability.

  “Konstantin?” he thought over the open channel.

  “Again, I strongly advise against it, Mr. President. It might very well be a trap.”

  A trap? To what end? If they wanted to kill him, they could do it easily enough—a missile fired into this house, for instance.

  Besides, he was intrigued by Michaels’s motivation. What did the man really want? His anti-AI stance was problematic. His mobile mining units out in the asteroid belt were, for the most part, highly automated, with only small human crews to keep an eye on things. Most of those machines were ordinary AI, not self-aware super-AIs like Konstantin, but his fear of SAIs seemed inconsistent and hypocritical.

  Koenig was forced to admit that he wanted to hear what Michaels had to say personally, rather than through the filter of the mass media.

  “How soon do you want me to go?” he asked aloud.

  “The sooner the better, Mr. President,” Jennings said, finally using Koenig’s honorary title. “A private el-car has been set aside for your use. You can take along a couple of bodyguards or assistants, if you wish.”

  Koenig gave it another few seconds’ consideration, then nodded. “I’ll go, Jennings. But just so you know, the President owes me for this one.”

  Maybe, just maybe, he could leverage that gratitude into some kind of guarantee for Konstantin.

  “I’ll inform the President, sir. And your nation thanks you.”

  USNA CVS America

  Flag Bridge

  N’gai Cluster

  1602 hours, FST

  “The network is ready for initial testing, Admiral,” Konstantin told Gray. “Two thousand modules have been dispersed across local space and have been interconnected by laser-com transmissions.”

  “How much time lag are we looking at?” Gray asked.

  “Five and a half minutes at most. Our ships and the modules are spread out over an area 100 million kilometers across. With America at the center of the deployment, however, it will take half that for signals to reach us from those modules on the perimeter, and I will be there to coordinate the incoming data.”

  “That could still slow things down quite a bit.”

  “Not unacceptably. We are not in any particular hurry, after all. And we will need the widest dispersal possible in order to sense something as subtle as gravity waves.”

  “Okay, if y
ou say so. How do you plan to test it?”

  “You and your volunteers will enter the net. You should find it similar to the Godstream on Earth. A thoughtclick, and you’ll find yourself within a virtual world reflecting the energy patterns in space around us. After a little more than eleven minutes, I should have all incoming signals coordinated, and we shall be able to pinpoint nearby sources of gravity waves. Are you ready to begin?”

  “No,” Gray said with a blunt lack of enthusiasm. “But let’s do it anyway.”

  Settling back in his seat, he closed his eyes, brought up an in-head menu, and thoughtclicked an icon. . . .

  It was like the Godstream back home, but with a virtual reality set in deep space rather than a landscape of light and movement and three-dimensional geometric shapes. The sensation of flight was the same, as was the electric thrill pulsing up his spine and setting his mind free in a way that reality never could. He could feel a rippling awareness spreading out around him, could see America herself below him, apparently several kilometers away—her slender keel extending aft from the immense hemisphere of her shield cap like the handle of an umbrella, the stately rotation of her hab modules about the spine, the wink-wink-wink of her running lights and the tiny specks of a squadron of encircling fighters on combat space patrol, keeping pace with the behemoth.

  She was making her way through normal space at dead slow, but he could see what was normally invisible on a ship under way, the steady, purring flicker of her projected grav field just ahead of the curve of her shield cap, an intensely warped area of space drawing the massive ship slowly forward. Each fighter had that flicker as well, deep blue luminosities just off their prows.

  That puzzled him for a moment. You couldn’t actually see warped space; you couldn’t see gravity, but that appeared to be exactly what he was sensing somehow.

  Then he realized that he was seeing gravity, or at least its more intense manifestations. As he studied his surroundings, he found himself becoming more and more aware of the fabric, the texture of space itself, not seen so much as sensed, rippling with uncountable waves and eddies and currents that filled all of circumambient space. It was as though space itself was a living, breathing, sensate organism, trembling, exquisitely alive, responding delicately and precisely to each movement of mass through its invisible matrix.