Dark Mind - Ian Douglas

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      Humans now knew that the ancient Sh’daar had time-traveled to Earth’s galaxy in the twenty-sixth century, the epoch they called Tee-sub-prime, and made contact with the various star-faring civilizations that had been fighting their on-again, off-again war with Earth. On Earth, it begged the question were the Sh’daar of the twenty-sixth century under the control of the ancient N’gai civilization? No one knew for sure, and attempts to query the ancient Sh’daar had so far been frustrating and inconclusive.

      With the civil war on Earth concluded at last, however, it was time to find out the truth … and also for the humans to warn the ancient Sh’daar about what they had learned even further into the remote future. The America battlegroup had been dispatched as an escort for the Glothr emissary—an opportunity to show the flag, and to back up the Glothr representatives with firepower if necessary.

      Gray desperately hoped that firepower would not be necessary. The Sh’daar were so far in advance of Earth technology that it was difficult to even compare the two. Human tacticians still weren’t sure what it was that the Sh’daar had feared about America and her escorts twenty years ago … or why they’d given in so easily.

      Or if they had truly given in at all, Gray thought.

      “Range to Deep Time One now four thousand kilometers,” Mallory reported. “We’re slowing our approach.”

      “We’re receiving telemetry from DT-1,” Pam Wilson, the communications officer added. “They report everything quiet and normal.”

      “Very well.” So far, so good …

      The attack as they’d emerged from the TRGA had shaken Gray more than he cared to admit.

      Gray no longer needed image enhancement and magnification to see DT-1. It was visible in CIC’s forward view, just a kilometer away, now.

      “Konstantin?” Gray asked. “Are you ready?”

      “Of course, Admiral. You may release me at your discretion.”

      “Captain Gutierrez,” Gray said. “If you will …”

      “Aye, aye, Admiral. Releasing the baby in three … two … one … launch.”

      The Tsiolkovsky Orbital Computer Assembly—TOCA, for short—was a ten-meter cylindrical habitat that had made the voyage out from Earth strapped to America’s spine aft of the landing bays. It carried the computer hardware that was housing the sub-clone downloaded from the original Konstantin AI.

      Gray wasn’t certain the Sh’daar understood the concept of “ambassador,” but they’d given permission for the TOCA cylinder to be brought to N’gai, and for it—and Konstantin-2—to be linked to the Deep Time facility. The fact that the AI had already been in touch with the Adjugredudhran commander said they at least accepted Konstantin-2 as someone they could talk to.

      Something, Gray thought, definitely had changed in Sh’daar attitudes. Twenty years earlier, they’d been terrified that a human battlegroup had penetrated both space and time to reach this cluster. The Sh’daar had been willing to do almost anything—like end a war—to make the humans leave. Speculation and scuttlebutt had played with the idea that they were afraid human activity here in the past would rewrite the future—a future in which they had a vested interest.

      Now, however, they seemed to be welcoming contact.

      Gray suspected that they feared something else more than they feared humans … even humans playing in their own temporal backyard.

      The cylinder carrying Konstantin’s sub-clone passed America’s shield cap and dwindled toward the gleaming silver torus.

      And Gray couldn’t help wondering if even a super-AI was going to have trouble figuring out just what made the Sh’daar tick.

       Chapter Five

       2 November 2425

       Deep Time Orbital Facility-1

       N’gai Cluster

       1020 hours, TFT

      Gray was seated in what appeared to be a large classroom or lecture hall. Concentric rings of comfortable benches overlooked a central well a dozen meters across. A dome overhead looked out into the heart of the N’gai Cluster, filled with stars, with artificial worlds, with the enigmatic gleam of the Six Suns. McKennon, the lead xenosophontologist of the Deep Time facility, was seated next to him … or seemed to be. In fact, Gray was back in his office on board America, while McKennon was in a communications chamber on board DT-1. AI software created the illusion—the virtual reality—of their conversation within their cerebral implants.

      Other conference attendees—all human, so far—were scattered through the room, waiting for the start of what promised to be a very interesting meeting.

      “Yes,” Gray said, “but we weren’t sure of that. All we knew was that if we were just a hair off course during the passage through the TRGA cylinder, it could screw both with where and when we emerged … possibly by quite a lot.” Gray chuckled. “You have no idea how terrified I was that we might emerge before Koenig arrived here … twenty years ago. That would have done a job on causality, let me tell you!”

      “Twenty years out of eight hundred seventy-six million?” McKennon said, and nodded. “You would need a degree of precision good to within one part in forty-three point eight million. You’re right. That’s pretty tight! Fortunately, it looks like there’s some leeway built into the thing.”

      “We suspected as much when we took our initial temporal navigation readings,” Gray told her. “But it’s good to hear it from someone who knows what she’s doing.”

      “Who, me?” She laughed. “Just about everything we’ve done since we got here has been pure guesswork!”

      Gray looked up at the apparent dome covering the virtual classroom. Beyond, high in the sky and made tiny by distance, those six brilliant, blue-white suns locked together in a hexagram served to mock mere human science, math, and technology. They represented an obviously artificial engineering on an interstellar scale, one that utterly dwarfed human ideas of what was possible … human ideas of scale and scope and sanity.

      “I’d say your team has done a pretty good job so far,” Gray said slowly, “given that you’re working with ideas and capabilities that we can’t even begin to understand.”

      She followed his gaze up, up and out into the distance to the tightly ordered gleam of the Six Suns. “Every time I see that … thing,” she admitted, “I wonder how it’s even possible that we’ve survived as long as we have. The Sh’daar could have wiped us out easily, at any point since our first encounter with them. Instead, we’ve fought their proxies piecemeal. It doesn’t make sense.”

      “Did the Sh’daar build it?” Gray asked. “I thought there was some question about that.”

      “Well, if it wasn’t them, it was the ur-Sh’daar. Before they transcended. Same thing, really. The Sh’daar are the ur-Sh’daar … leftovers?”

      “Maybe,” Gray replied. “Or maybe there was a still earlier civilization.”

      “Please, Admiral,” McKennon said, raising her hands in mock pain. “We don’t need to complicate things by imagining whole pantheons of mystic ancient Stargods!”

      Gray laughed. “Of course not. But still … the universe started thirteen point eight billion years ago …”

      “Thirteen point eight two,” she said, correcting him.

      “Thirteen point eight two billion years,” he agreed. “Subtract four and a half billion

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