Dark Matter. Ian Douglas
LCDR Kline.
Gray frowned at Truitt. In November, just two months ago, the man had been instrumental behind the scenes in devising a bit of offensive propaganda that had secured a Terran victory at Osiris—70 Ophiuchi A II—a colony world conquered by a Sh’daar client race called the Slan. By carefully analyzing communications with the Slan commander and what had been gleaned about their biology, Truitt and his xenosoph people had extrapolated a likely model of Slan psychology, one showing that they would be horrified at the idea of attacking their own community, an unthinkable act of barbarism . . . an act of animals. By beaming a message to the Slan suggesting that humans thought the same way Slan did, that humans actually shared the Slan collective-based psychology, Gray had forced the technologically superior Slan fleet to break off and retreat . . . a singular, spectacular victory.
And Truitt was the instrument of that victory.
It was too bad, Gray thought, that Truitt was also an egoistic grandstander, pompous, and possessing of social graces approximately on a par with wolverines.
“What the hell,” Mallory asked, “is a K-3 civilization?”
“Christ, you don’t know what Kardashev classification is?” Truitt said, glaring at Mallory. “I hope you understand tactics, Commander, better than you do technic sophontology.”
“Kardashev was a Russian astronomer,” Gray put in, “who developed a means of classifying planetary or interstellar civilizations based on how much energy they use. A K-3 civilization would use roughly as much energy as is emitted by all the stars of an entire galaxy.”
“That is a gross oversimplification,” Truitt said. “In point of fact—”
“If you please, Doctor,” Gray said sharply, interrupting, “we’re not here to argue definitions or sophontology. The Rosette Aliens have demonstrated the ability to rework an entire globular cluster, millions of stars—which, on the Kardashev scale, makes them at least a high K-2, and quite possibly a K-3. Human technology currently stands at . . . what is it, Doctor? K-1.2?”
“Approximately that,” Truitt said, “yes. But—”
“The point is that our industrious friends out there, as a civilization, routinely wield something like one hundred quintillion times more power than we can. I agree with Commander Blakeslee. There’s little we can do here, except establish automated monitoring stations.”
“Again, assuming they let us leave,” Captain Guiterrez said. “We are deep, deep inside their operational area.”
Gray opened a new channel within his in-head circuitry, and the bulkhead opposite the view of the cluster’s heart flowed and shimmered and then lit up with a schematic of the star cluster. The stars themselves were ghosted; otherwise, points of interest at the very center, including the position of America’s task force, would have been completely hidden.
With a thoughtclick, the view zoomed in on Omega Centauri’s heart. The entire cluster was a tightly packed ball of suns about 230 light years across, but the Black Rosette—and the majority of the alien constructs—was at the very center, and America and the other Earth ships were only 50 AUs away—no distance at all in interstellar terms. One AU was defined as the distance between Earth and her sun—150,000,000 kilometers, on average. A single light year was roughly equal to about 64,000 Astronomical Units.
It was interesting, Gray thought, not to mention quite worrying, that the aliens, whoever and whatever they were, had taken no apparent notice whatsoever of America and the ships with her. Carrier Battlegroup 40 consisted of the star carrier America; one cruiser, the Edmonton; three destroyers, the Ramirez, the John Young, and the Spruance; plus the provisioning ship Shenandoah. Though small as naval task forces went, the squadron represented a great deal of firepower, and yet the aliens had simply ignored them when they dropped out of their Alcubierre metaspace bubbles on the doorstep of . . . whatever the hell it was that they were building here.
But they’d moved Walton’s recon ship when it drifted in front of the Black Rosette. Maybe they did care about humans . . . that or else human activity actually could inconvenience them or somehow pose a threat to their operations.
Which was it? And how could the task force answer that question?
“How would X-Dep suggest we communicate with these . . . people?” Gray asked.
“We can’t,” Truitt said.
“We might try various Sh’daar languages,” Kline added. “The Agletsch trade pidgins.”
“Whoever the Rosette Aliens are,” Truitt said, “they likely come from a long way off. I doubt they’ve ever heard of the Sh’daar Collective or the Agletsch.”
The Agletsch were a galactic spacefaring species well known as traders of information. Two had been on board America until her last swing past Earth, when they’d disembarked for an extended chat with naval intelligence Earthside. The Agletsch were known to carry minute artificial intelligences within them, called Seeds, that communicated with the Sh’daar when they were within range. Having them on board a military vessel was always a risk, since the Sh’daar Seed might well compromise the ship’s security . . . but they were also incredibly useful as allies. Agletsch knowledge spanned a large fraction of the Sh’daar Collective, and their knowledge of artificial trade languages, developed to allow diverse members of the Collective to communicate with one another, had more than once proven vital.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Gray said. “We know the Rosette started off as the Six Suns, almost a billion years ago. We know that the Builders left TRGA cylinders scattered across the galaxy, and that those artifacts allow at least a limited form of time travel. The Rosette Aliens might be the Builders . . . and if so, they’ve had contact with the Collective . . . or at least with the Sh’daar of over eight hundred million years ago.”
The TRGA cylinder at Texaghu Resch had provided access to the Sh’daar inhabiting the N’gai Cloud 876 million years ago. It was generally believed, however, that the civilization that had constructed the TRGA cylinders was far older, and far more advanced, than even the now-vanished ur-Sh’daar.
“We have no evidence that these aliens are the Builders,” Truitt snapped. “The Builders in any case are probably long extinct.”
“I wonder?” Kline said. “A K-3 civilization might well be beyond threats of extinction. At the very least, they likely possess what for all practical intents and purposes amounts to both individual and cultural immortality.”
“Don’t you think that a true galaxy-wide civilization, a K-3,” Gray said, “would be aware of other K-3 level civilizations nearby? That they would be able to communicate with one another?”
“Some of the electronic Agletsch pidgins might be ideal for that,” Kline said. “They were designed for sapient species that have little or nothing in the way of biological similarities.”
“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