Singularity: Star Carrier: Book Three (15 page)

Several tactical points had impressed themselves on Gray in the few seconds of battle so far. The enemy was using beam weapons of some sort . . . and almost by definition those would be more accurate at close range, where speed-of-light time lag wouldn’t be as much of a factor in tracking and aiming. The KK projectiles, clearly, were for threats at longer ranges—say, at a guess, farther out than a tenth of a light second—about 30,000 kilometers.

“Incoming KK projectiles,” Gray’s AI warned. “Evasive maneuvering . . .”

Gray’s vector, currently, was toward the TRGA cylinder at about 5,000 kilometers per second, and he was still 300,000 kilometers out—about one minute’s flight. His AI was now applying full gravitational thrust to one side, giving the spacecraft a lateral component to its vector in order to avoid the cloud of KK slivers now streaking out toward him.

The projectile cloud, expanding as it moved, passed him. A few thousand kilometers distant, the Starhawk piloted by Lieutenant Miguel Zapeta detonated in a brilliant flash and a spray of hurtling fragments.

“I’m hit! I’m hit!” That was Lieutenant Pauline Owens, her Starhawk crippled and tumbling, now, out of control.

Two more gone.

“Listen up, Dragonfires!” Gray called out. He hoped his voice was calmer than he felt right now. “Everyone program all Kraits for indirect targeting, maximum yield!”

Each remaining Starhawk carried thirty-two nuke-tipped Kraits. Programmed for indirect targeting, the smart missiles would swing wide around the enemy’s flanks, coming in from the side or rear instead of from straight ahead.

“Dragonfires! Go Fox One on all Kraits!”

The surviving fighters in the squadron began dumping missiles, releasing them two at a time in rapid-fire volleys. Even Owens’ crippled fighter began dropping missiles as she tumbled straight toward the enemy formation now one light second away.

The enemy clearly was using some form of tactical net or linkage that gave them superb command and control, essentially allowing a fleet of four thousand spacecraft to function as a single unit. That meant the enemy was superbly quick, that he would respond to threats with super-human speed and precision. The fact that the alien formation numbered 4,096 of one type of ship, according to the inhumanly rapid counting abilities of his AI, and eight of another, had not been lost on Gray. That first number was a power of two—2
12
—as was the second, 2
3
. That suggested binary notation . . . and that, in turn, suggested computers.

It was possible, even likely, that they were up against an artificial intelligence.

The thought chilled, prickling the hairs at the back of Gray’s neck for two reasons. It meant they were up against an enemy with literally super-human reaction times, and it was just possible that the three fighter squadrons had now, for the very first time in thirty-eight long years of war, encountered the almost mythical Sh’daar.

CIC

TC/USNA CVS
America

Inbound, Texaghu Resch System

1750 hours, TFT

“The fighters should be engaging now, sir,” Commander Sinclair told Koenig.

“I see it,” Koenig replied.

The tactical display was showing what
should
be happening now—a swarm of thirty-six Starhawk fighters closing in on the enigmatic spinning cylinder in close orbit around the local star.

In fact, though, the information unfolding in the CIC tactical tank was seventy-six minutes out of date. It had taken that long for the light to crawl out to the fleet from the TRGA artifact.

Koenig had to make his decision without knowing the precise situation in there, a decision that might mean abandoning the three squadrons to save the rest of the carrier battlegroup.

“The objects we saw emerging from the TRGA represent a technology we have not yet seen.”

The voice was that of Karyn Mendelson. The brain behind it was the AI that served as Koenig’s personal secretary, using the voice and personality he’d programmed into it.

Karyn, he once again reminded himself, was dead.

“Yes,” he said, subvocalizing.

“That technology represents an unknown military capability. An unknown threat to this carrier battlegroup.”

“Yes. But in a way, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

The decision, Koenig thought, was a foregone conclusion. If he broke off now because he didn’t want to risk his fleet against an enemy of unknown strength and capabilities, all of the sacrifice, the battle deaths, the struggling and the striving up to this point would be thrown away. The crews of the other ships in the carrier group were volunteers; the ones who’d been most set against following him had gone home on board the
Karlsruhe
, the
Audace
, the
De Grasse
, or on one of the four Chinese ships. They were here because they wanted to be, because they’d believed in him and in what he was trying to do—to buy time for Earth by bringing the war home to the Sh’daar.

If he broke off and returned to Earth now he would be betraying the men and women who’d believed in him, people who were risking their own careers and well-being to follow him out into the Void against the orders of their world’s government. The chances were good that only he would answer to charges of treason if they returned or, at worst, it would be him and the fifty-eight ship captains in the docket back home.

And that, actually, was an argument for breaking off. If the battlegroup returned to Earth now, the captains of these fifty-eight ships might never again hold a ship command, but Koenig would bear the responsibility for his actions far more than they would. At least they would be
alive
, along with their crews. By a strict numerical analysis, clearly, it was worth it to trade thirty-six pilots already thrown against the enemy and save the nearly fifty thousand crew members of the CBG.

But . . . no. Quite apart from betraying those three squadrons of plots, it would be a betrayal of the trust of the entire fleet to cut and run now. And, more than that, it would be a betrayal of Earth, of the Confederation and, more, of all of Humankind. Koenig believed, with an unshakable, rock-solid conviction, that humanity would not survive another thirty-eight years of a defensive war against the Sh’daar and their allies. They needed to find the Sh’daar and to confront them, and that confrontation, whatever the tactical outcome, would have to shake the alien enemy so badly that they pulled back to regroup and to reconsider.

That was why they were here.

“Admiral?” It was Buchanan,
America
’s CO and Koenig’s flag captain. “We need your final go/no-go.”

“Yes.” Briefly, he considered asking Buchanan what he thought . . . but dismissed the impulse immediately. The responsibility was Koenig’s, and no one else’s. “We will maintain course and acceleration.”

“
Very
good, sir!” Buchanan didn’t smile, but there was a light in his eyes, and an enthusiasm in the way he said it that told Koenig that Buchanan approved.

He thought a moment, then thoughtclicked a new display into the tactical tank. Fifty-eight glowing icons, ranging from the smallest frigate to
America
herself, appeared in orderly ranks, grouped by ship type.

“The battlegroup will divide into two combat sections, van and main,” he continued, as the ship icons began resorting themselves under his direction. “The main will consist of the carriers, the supply and support ships, the railgun and long-range bombardment ships . . . and let’s include the Chinese contingent as well, as security, plus, let’s make it ten frigates and five destroyers as a forward screen.”

“Yes, sir. You’re holding the Chinese back?”

Koenig grinned. “I’m still not certain whether they’re here to help us or to keep an eye on me. In any case, the
Zheng He
is a carrier and will be in the main group. If we put the others in the van, it’s going to give us command-control headaches.

Cheng Hua
was a cruiser, the
Haiping
a destroyer, while the
Jianghu
and the
Ji Lin
both were classed as frigates. If those four weren’t absolutely committed to Koenig’s strategy, he didn’t want them in the rough-and-tumble of the van, where every ship would have to support every other. If he kept them back with the carrier
Zheng He
and under Admiral Liu’s direct command, he would have only one unknown to contend with within his own ranks.

“The rest,” Koenig continued, “will be in the van. Mostly cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. The lights will be the best ones equipped to deal with those alien fighters.”

He wasn’t convinced that the cloud of tiny vessels he’d seen emerging from the TRGA artifact were what the Confederation thought of as fighters. For all he knew, they were the alien equivalent of star carriers, launching fighters the size of his outstretched hand, but if he went by simple estimates of size, they read as very large fighters, similar in mass to Turusch Toads, or perhaps a little larger. Frigates and destroyers, while not much good against major capital ships, were designed to spot, track, and destroy fighters, and were generally deployed on a fleet’s perimeter to serve that purpose.

“Sounds good, Admiral.”

“I don’t know about
good
. It’s the best we can do with limited intel. A lot will depend on how the fighters do against the unknown hostiles.”

“I’ll give the orders, Admiral.”

And Koenig was left alone again with his thoughts.

VFA-44

Approaching TRGA

Texaghu Resch System

1753 hours, TFT

As the Dragonfires spread themselves out thin, Gray thought about the possibility that they were up against a machine intelligence. Was there
anything
there they could use, an advantage, a tactic, a weapon?

Humankind did not rely on AI combat units, and there was good reason for that. Within the Terran Confederation, among all of the polities of Humankind, in fact, AIs were designed with deliberate limits to their function, possessing what was called
limited purview
. The AI running his fighter’s systems, for instance, was
very
good at navigation, maneuvering, and even weapons tracking and control, but while it was classified as sentient it had absolutely no interest in, say, politics, human history, or the fine points of applied nanoengineering.

That built-in tunnel vision made them somewhat less flexible and adaptable than humans, which was why grav-fighters still had human pilots. AI-piloted warships and fighters were certainly technically possible—that’s what drones and Krait missiles were, after all—but humans had chosen centuries before to keep themselves in the technological loop, a guarantee that humans would retain control of their own creations.

There were arguments, Gray knew, to the effect that such attempts at staying in control were futile in the long run. Artificial intelligences were very fast, far faster than human brains and nervous systems. More, they could program and direct themselves—within certain broad parameters, true, but intelligences that powerful would be able to find a way around the barriers if they really wanted to. The trick was channeling those intelligences so that they
didn’t
want to take over from humans, a thought that, for an AI, was literally unthinkable.

Within the anti-technology communities of the Periphery, Gray knew from personal experience, there were people who held to the theory that artificially sentient machines were
already
the true rulers of the human species, but that they were staying behind the scenes for reasons of their own. Gray personally had had to overcome that in-grown prejudice during his period of training with the Navy. AIs, digital sentients on all of their myriad shapes and types, were personal assistants, secretaries, weapons, or ship guidance systems—even extensions of one’s own brain—not Humankind’s potential masters.

The tightly maneuvering hostiles out there represented something new. They might be under the control of an organic intelligence, might be nothing more than human-designed AIs with better command-control abilities . . . but Gray could not escape the idea that he was watching the mental processes of a digital intelligence as it analyzed threats and responded to them.

Every technic alien species encountered so far by humans possessed a unit for measuring time similar to the second. The concept of time measurement was unknown to dolphins or the floaters in the ice-locked Europan ocean and a few other intelligences that had never developed technology, but every species that
built
things measured time, and something approximating one second was a useful basic unit. The Agletsch, he knew, had the
shu
, which measured roughly .87 of one second. Those flashing movements as the aliens shifted their formation seemed to be happening in tightly parsed-out fragments of seconds, much faster than humans or Agletsch could handle with purely organic brains.