Deep Time. Ian Douglas
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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.
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,