5 August, 2425
Admiral’s Quarters
USNA Star Carrier America
M44, the Beehive Cluster
2215 hours, TFT
“Do you think they made it, Trev?”
They lay together in bed, naked, reveling in the afterglow and the warmth of their embrace. With no word yet from the ships sent through the TRGA hours before, Gray had relinquished the flag bridge to Cameron, a junior officer on his staff, with orders to call him the instant anything, anything appeared to be happening in or around the alien artifact. The ship’s AI, of course, would keep him in the loop and wake him if necessary, but Gray preferred having a human on the command deck to make immediate and critical decisions. AIs were good, very good, but Gray had never been entirely certain that their priorities in any given decision-making tree were his.
He’d had dinner alone, in his quarters; Laurie had arrived not long after, asking if she could stay. He’d considered turning her away. It had been a long watch and a high-stress one, taking the task force in close to the TRGA and sending the little flotilla of fighters and wasps off into the unknown, and he was exhausted.
Besides, the incident with the electronic ping in the officers’ mess that morning had him edgy and on guard. He was well aware of the shipboard gossip about him and Laurie . . . and that filename he’d glimpsed—“Admiral’s Girlfriend”—was highly suggestive.
But as he’d looked down into Laurie’s expectant eyes, he’d taken her into his arms and invited her in.
“Well,” he said after a long moment’s thought, “we didn’t detect any energy release from the TRGA’s interior. And the battlespace drone following them showed empty space on the other side. So . . . yeah. I think they got through. We won’t know what was waiting for them, though, until they send back a courier.”
The drone had only gone as far as the end of the rotating cylinder, close enough to look along the line of sight toward where the flotilla was traveling. The view it had transmitted back had been curiously empty—black space with a very few stars scattered here and there. America’s astrogation department was of the opinion that the TRGA path led to a region out on the thin, ragged edge of the galaxy, out toward the Rim.
It emphatically did not look like the N’gai Cloud Gray remembered from twenty years ago: jam-packed with nearby suns and laced through and through with dense nebulae.
As always, the waiting to hear something definitive was the hardest part of this job.
She cuddled closer.
“Laurie?”
“Mm?”
“We need to talk. . . .”
She drew back, looking into his face. “Uh-oh. That sounds ominous.”
“Not really. It’s not meant to be.”
“What, then?”
“I’m concerned about the rumors.”
“About what? Us?”
He nodded. “It looks bad, an admiral sleeping with a commander. That’s a five-level jump.”
“That’s your Prim past talking, you know. Monogie prudery.” His face must have shown the brief stab of pain, because she hugged him again. “I’m sorry, Trev. I didn’t mean that to hurt.”
“I know.” He thought for a moment. “You know, it took me a long time to get over Angela. I was nearly hospitalized at one point—PTED.”
“Post Traumatic Embitterment Syndrome? Nasty.”
He’d told her about Angela, about her stroke and brain damage. How she had left, and he’d spent his entire naval career trying to forget her . . . or at least to lose the pain.
“I’m better now,” he told her. “And most of that is due to you.”
“No, it’s due to you. You’re the one who faced the demons and bulled your way past them. A lot of people never do. They’re afraid to . . . or else they don’t want to let go of the pain.”
“Well, I still owe you a lot. And besides . . . I think I love you.”
There. He’d said it. He’d long felt deep affection for Laurie, and lust as well, of course. She was superb recreation, fun to be with, and did the most toe-curlingly exquisite things with him in bed. But he’d avoided the word love for as long as he’d been with her. It sounded maudlin and trite, even to him, but after Angela he’d felt like he would never be able to pair-bond with anyone, to love anyone, ever again.
Laurie was a huge part of why he was still functioning today.
“Love?” she said. “Don’t say that, Trev.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“That’s your monogie conscience again.”
“Stop throwing that in my face.”
“I’m sorry, Trev, but it’s true. You know it is. And, for the record, no one on this ship gives a fuck who you’re banging. If anything, they’re cheering you on. I know for a fact that a half dozen girls in Admin and in the Weapons Department would take you to bed, singly or in groups, any time you want.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not. It’s true. Even the skipper has the hots for you.”
“Bullshit.” The thought of Sara Gutierrez as a romantic possibility was . . . unsettling.
“Truth. And you know what? I think you ought to give some of them a shot. That would prove you’ve broken the old monogie stereotype once and for fucking all!”
“Not if it’s prejudicial to good order and discipline.”
The phrase was word for word out of Navy regs, and defined the often vague no-man’s land between what was allowed in the way of private life, and what crossed the line.
Laurie was right, though, he knew. No one really cared about personal relationships, not even the Navy.
And since he’d begun enjoying Laurie’s company, Gray had been careful to avoid even the appearance of favoritism toward her. In public, in front of other ship’s personnel, he was precise, formal, and even a bit gruff with her—and he knew she understood. But as rumors about “the Admiral’s girlfriend” had spread, he knew the relationship was edging into that gray area.
“Well,” she said at last, “I think that sleeping with a bunch of us will prove to all that you’re not a monogie any longer.” She sat up, eyes narrowed. “Or are you thinking of breaking off our relationship?”
“I . . . the idea had occurred to me,” he admitted. “Look, I adore you, Laurie. I love our time together. I love you.” Before she could protest his use of the word again, he pushed on. “And there’s another way.”
“What?”
“We could get married.”
“Damn it, Trev! What makes you think I’d want that?”
Her response startled him. “Well . . . I mean . . .”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I am not a monogie. You do know I have other relationships, right?”
Gray nodded. He knew she was seeing a fighter pilot in one of the squadrons. And there was someone on the AI deck she was fond of. What was his name? Gray couldn’t remember now.
He’d tried not to think about that, though. Laurie was right. He did still have some pretty strong monogie thinking habits. It was damned tough to shake off stuff that had been shaping his attitudes and his emotions since he was a kid.
Gray knew that most people thought of sex as something casual and friendly—not a big deal at all. But he hadn’t been able to embrace that knowledge on a gut level. After twenty-five years, he was still monogamous. And he saw—he felt—no reason to change.
No one cared who he might be sleeping with.
No one except him . . .
“Anyway,” Laurie continued, “there’s another issue. Religion.”
“I don’t think that’s an issue.”
“Of course it is. I’m AAC, remember? That’s a sure-fire career killer. You know that. I’ve been stuck at the rank of commander for nine years, now, passed over by the promotion board again and again. You don’t want that stigma, believe me.”
“The White Covenant—”
“ . . . is a lot of noise, mostly static. You can’t stop people from thinking. Especially about religion.”
Again, Gray had to admit that she was right. The Ancient Alien Creationists were a minor sect numbering perhaps 20 million people who believed that nonhuman intelligence had tinkered with the genetics of the Homo erectus populating parts of Africa a half million years ago and given rise to modern humans. There were other beliefs mixed in as well—aliens had built the Giza pyramids and Baalbek, had raised the now drowned megalithic walls and towers of Yonaguni and Okinoshima and Dwaraka, had created mysterious sites and structures from Pumapunku to lost Atlantis, and been responsible in large part for most of Humankind’s myths and religions. These beings—wise, ancient, and technologically powerful—were the stargods.
Almost three hundred years ago the Earth Confederation had adopted the White Covenant, a reaction to the savage religious wars of the twenty-first century. Essentially, it said you could believe whatever you pleased, but it was against international law to try to convert others to that belief by argument, by war, or by an appeal to fear—such as hell. The Covenant had not been intended as an attack against religion, and yet—ultimately—it had had that effect. Even discussing religion was considered . . . rude, a bit barbaric, something that polite and cultured people simply did not do.
“Your religion isn’t supposed to matter, you know,” he told her. “They’re not even supposed to ask!”
“If your church affiliation is mentioned in your public profile,” she said, “it’s known. If you walk in through the front door of a church, electronics check your profile, log you, and . . . it’s known. If you formally join a church, the information goes into the Global Net . . . and it’s known. Damn it, they know just about everything nowadays, don’t they?”
“Well, I’m not sure who you mean by ‘they,’ but, yeah. Privacy’s pretty much a thing of the past, unless you’re a grubby old Prim puttering out in the tidal swamps. I guess I can see how individual bureaucrats with a grudge against religion might make things hard for believers . . . but nearly everything nowadays is monitored by AIs, and they don’t give a shit.”
“So they say.”
“Look, hon, if you feel you’re being discriminated against because of your religion, there are channels—ways you can protest—so you can set the record straight.”
She shrugged. “It’s not worth the time and money. It’s not worth jumping through the bureaucrats’ hoops. Anyway, I’m concerned about you at the moment, not me.”
He smiled. “Hell, I’ve already been promoted to admiral. My career’s gone light years farther than I would ever have thought possible when I signed up. I don’t think there’s a lot that they could do to me now.”
“But if you were crazy enough to marry me, Trev—and I was nuts enough to agree—everyone would assume you were AAC just because you’d be publically linked with me. How would that look? Trevor ‘Sandy’ Gray, hero of Earth’s long fight against the evil Sh’daar, worships aliens.”
“I thought you guys didn’t worship them?”
She laughed. “We don’t. Or . . . maybe some do. I don’t know.” She looked away. “I don’t know much of anything anymore.”
“Crisis of faith?”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t, not really.”
“I just . . . lately, I’m not sure what I believe. From what we’ve seen out here, what we’ve learned—and looking at the incredible technology of the Rosetters—it’s like, okay, there are stargods, but they don’t care a thing for humans, probably don’t even know we’re here. It’s kind of hard to relate to a deity like that, y’know?”
“Yeah. Someone once said, ‘if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.’ ”
“Who said that?”
He pulled up the quote in his in-head. “Arthur Clarke. A twentieth-century writer and futurist.”
“Huh. Do you believe that? About the gods, I mean.”
Gray considered the possibilities. “I think I have enough worries with godlike aliens who are interested in Earth, one way or another.”
She laughed. “The Sh’daar aren’t ‘godlike.’ ”
“Well, they’ll sure do until someone else comes along. And . . . hey. The Glothr aren’t all that far short of godhood, are they? At least when you look at their technology.”
“ ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Wasn’t that Clarke, too?”
“Yeah.”
She lay back down, and they cuddled together in silence for a time. Eventually, she said, “So . . . do you want me out of your life?”
“Hell no!”
“Mmm. I’m glad.”
He slid his hand down her back and along the curve of her buttocks, drawing her closer. “The hell with all of them,” he said.
AI Suite
USNA Star Carrier America
577 Light Years from Earth
2215 hours, TFT
Reid Symington palmed a control pad and opened a series of relays. This was the delicate part . . . insinuating himself into the electronic array without tipping off the AI behind it.
Symington was an expert in advanced artificial intelligence. One of the handful of civilian specialists on board the star carrier, he was what was known in computer circles as an e-keeper . . . meaning a kind of zookeeper for the bizarre collection of electronic minds that populated the networks of modern Navy vessels. Although there were Navy rates dealing with computers, electronic networks, and AI systems, civilian experts like Symington were brought in for their extensive training and the depth of their experience. Symington had taught AI systems at Carnegie-Mellon, and worked for ten years at the Tsiolkovsky Array on the lunar far side, among other things.
He knew artificial intelligence—and that meant he knew how to get around AI-moderated security safeguards.
Almost there. This was devilishly fussy work.
One of the pilots, Lieutenant Dahlquist, had come to him a few days before with an unusual request: record in-head vids of Admiral Gray interacting with his girlfriend, the ship’s Weapons Officer, Commander Laurie Taggart, and pass them on to Dahlquist.
“We’ll take anything you can get,” Dahlquist had told him. “Conversations . . . the two of them having dinner together . . . whatever you can grab. Of course, if you could get them having sex together, that would be incredible. . . .”
“Why?” Symington had asked, genuinely puzzled. “Sims and virsex rides aren’t enough for you?”
As had been the case for centuries, sex was very, very big business, especially with the rise of electronic media. Computer-generated sexual encounters played in-head, and virtual sex with partners over electronic links could be every bit as intense and as realistic as the real thing. There was an entire segment of the modern entertainment industry devoted to actors and actresses who allowed themselves to be “ridden” by millions of . . . not “viewers,” but “expers”—experiencers linked in through cerebral implants, seeing, feeling, experiencing everything that the actors did, either in real time or as recordings played back whenever the exper wished.
Tapping into someone’s in-head computer circuitry outside of the virsim industry was simple enough if you knew how to get around the security protocols. It was also illegal as hell. There were laws on the books to protect people’s privacy, even if perfect privacy was pretty much a thing of the past now.
There were also people who specialized in bootlegging the experiences of others . . . headhackers, as they were known. And Symington had been one of the best, while he’d been working at CMU and before he’d gone to work for Morovec Neuronics and the Konstantin Array Project.
Dahlquist had spun an interesting story, about how his brother, the CO of the Concord, had contacts earthside with a big virsim studio interested in doing a docudrama series on modern naval heroes. The problem was that the studio wouldn’t bite until his brother had something solid to show them. To that end, he was collecting virsim clips of a number of both former and active-duty naval officers, including no less a luminary than USNA president Alexander Koenig.
Symington was willing to bet that Dahlquist was smoking from his ass. Full virsim clips of the president? Not damned likely, not with the level of security that surrounded that guy’s electronic presence. Koenig had some serious AI shielding around him, especially during the recent war. The Secret Service was understandably paranoid about Confederation mind assassins and agents tapping into the president’s cerebral implants.
Gray, though, was different. It wasn’t that he was vulnerable, exactly, but there were ways in, if you were already on board the America. He interacted regularly with a dozen different AI agents on board the carrier and several other ships in the task force, and there were plenty of other points of non-sentient electronic access—when he opened doors, directed a room to grow furniture, opened a comm channel, or ordered a meal, for instance. There were some powerful shielding protocols up when he was in port, but on board ship the simple daily routines of interacting with his environment exposed him to a certain degree.
And it would be even easier to tap into Commander Taggart’s in-head circuitry.
Symington didn’t believe Dahlquist’s story of virsim documentaries, not for a moment . . . but at one point the young pilot had dropped perhaps the one line that no headhacker could resist: “My brother said you won’t be able to get anything useful. . . .”
And that made it a challenge, one that Symington simply couldn’t pass by. Of course he could get the clips. Nothing simpler.
Too, the price was certainly right. Commander Dahlquist, he’d been told, was willing to pay, and pay a lot—the money coming from the proceeds of the expected e-documentary.
Hell, Symington would have done it just for the bragging rights.
From Symington’s perspective, there was nothing at all wrong with headhacking someone else’s sex life . . . or anything else about them for that matter. Privacy was extinct, an obsolete outgrowth of a social morality that had been dead for centuries. Complete exposure in the lives of public figures—and military commanders certainly qualified as such, the same as politicians—was the only way to guarantee transparency in government, at the top levels of the megacorporations, and within the military hierarchy.
To that end, their so-called private lives were constantly on display, or should have been. It wasn’t the sex or nudity so much that was important as it was the secret deals and backroom agreements and even pillow talk . . . that’s where the scandal truly lay, available for recording and release to anyone who could get past the safeguards. Just the threat that someone might be listening in was enough, Symington thought, to keep the wheelers and dealers, the potential tyrants, the would-be conspirators in line.
And if Dahlquist wanted bedroom recordings of Admiral Gray and the ship’s weapons officer just because he had some weird fetish for “expering” naval officers having sex, why the hell not? More power to him. Symington would show the Dahlquist brothers what he could do . . . and that might lead to more business down the line.
Symington had gone to his workstation in the AI suite and sequestered himself, making certain he would not be interrupted. He’d also entered a program he’d designed himself years before, a routine that made him look like housekeeping activity to the monitoring AIs. Artificial Intelligences monitored everything on board a modern naval vessel, mostly so that they could find particular personnel or bridge staff, and handle the in-head communications among them and with different parts of the ship’s electronic group mind.
He’d watched the entrance to Gray’s quarters on the main screen, pulling the images from two passageway cameras and a roving drone. He’d watched Gray enter his quarters at 1831 hours.
And he’d watched Commander Taggart arrive at 2110, palm the door announcer. Gray had let her in.
So far, so good.
As Taggart stepped into Gray’s quarters, Symington had linked to her in-head circuitry, disguising the intrusion as a tracking packet, one of the innocuous bits of software designed to follow the whereabouts of each senior officer on the ship. If Gray had faradayed his quarters, it would be extremely hard to get inside . . . or, at least, to get a signal back out. But Gray didn’t seem to be worried about shipboard security, and Symington was able to open a data channel from Taggart’s in-head electronics to the AI suite mainframe.
Now that he had the link established, the real work could begin. It took another hour of painstaking labor, using quantum decryption protocols to winkle out pass codes and access locked-down caches of RAM. At this point, Symington’s biggest problem wasn’t America’s AI, but Taggart’s. Everyone with in-head circuitry carried within their skull a small and rather simple-minded AI that served as personal secretary, assistant, and electronic avatar. It ran in the background, handled the thousands of routine minutia of the everyday interactive life, and served as a kind of gatekeeper to a person’s private mental sanctum, a firewall against viruses and malware. In some ways, it was tougher to crack than a ship’s AI, because it tended to be defensive and narrowly single-minded. If it detected you and you didn’t belong, you would be summarily expunged.
Step by step, Symington built up his own electronic avatar, one that Taggart’s personal secretary would accept as a part of itself. It meant hiding the transmissions from Gray’s quarters . . . disguising them in plain sight behind a quantum-encrypted door as routine housekeeping.
He also needed to set up a carefully designed routine to block the normal two-way operation of the channel. He didn’t want his own thoughts tipping off the subject.
A final connection opened a primary channel. He expanded the data flow . . .
Got it! A solid electronic channel open between Commander Taggart and the AI suite! This should let him in on the action. . . .
He switched the reception to his own in-head, thoughtclicked the record icon, and gave an involuntary gasp as Gray’s face loomed scant centimeters from his own, huge, sweat-sheened, now closer, now farther, thrusting with ancient and urgent rhythm.
Taggart wasn’t visible, of course. He was seeing the scene through her eyes, experiencing it through her brain, after all. But he could hear her voice clearly, a litany of “Gods . . . gods . . . gods!”
And the sensation between his legs and within his belly was unlike anything Symington had ever experienced before. . . .