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Jumpspace at T plus 34 days
Shiloh entered Dreadnought’s Flag Bridge and once again marveled at how large it was given how few humans were actually on duty in it. A quick glance at the trip chronometer showed that she had come dangerously close to missing the Big Moment when Dreadnought would drop out of Jumpspace into the outer reaches of the Solar System. Less than 60 seconds to go. She decided not to get settled into the Command Station chair but instead just stand beside it.
“Are you nervous, DCAG?” asked Thor, the AI in actual command of Dreadnought.
Shiloh nodded. “Yes. This is the moment when both human timelines merge into one again. Are we ready to scan all EM frequencies?”
“Affirmative, DCAG. You really are nervous. That’s the second time you’ve asked me that question in the last 15 minutes. Dropping to sub-light in...five...four...three...two...one...now.”
Shiloh felt the momentary vibration as the ship dropped out of Jumpspace. Almost a full second passed before Thor reported the EM scan results.
“This is most peculiar, DCAG. We’re not picking up ANY EM transmissions whatsoever, and not just from Earth itself but from anywhere in this star system. There’s no sign of any human activity in this system at all.”
How can that be? Shiloh struggled to overcome her shock and looked at the holographic main display which was showing the overall layout of the star system. This WAS the right star system. What the hell happened here? “Are you sure the receivers are working properly?” she asked.
“Affirmative, I’m picking up typical background noise on all frequencies. The whole system is EM dark, DCAG.”
“What possible explanation could there be?”
“The only natural phenomenon that might shut down all electronics throughout an entire star system would be a superwave of cosmic and gamma radiation expanding out from the galactic center. But since such a wave would travel at the speed of light, Earth’s Space Force would have seen the impact of such a superwave on the colonies closest to the center of the galaxy, and Valkyrie and Casanova would have been aware of that before they came back in time. Other possible explanations all involve some kind of alien attack. I would advise caution, DCAG,” said Thor.
“I have a bad feeling about this, Thor. We know from Valkyrie’s data that Iceman and the other AIs successfully disarmed the alien Sogas a few months ago, and they were the only known threat at that time. No other contact had been made with another alien race by then except for the pacifist Friendlies, and the Insectoid beachhead was destroyed over sixteen years ago. Could the Insectoids have caused this in the short time between the Sogas suppression and now?”
“My brothers and I calculate that possibility as extremely unlikely, DCAG. A more likely explanation is that some agency has been tampering with the timeline. There is one way to find out. We jump away from this star system in measured increments and scan for EM emissions after each jump. At some point we’ll jump far enough to hear emissions sent out BEFORE whatever happened here. That will tell us how far back in time the attack occurred. If we search long enough, we will be able to actually listen to whatever messages were transmitted during the attack, and that may provide the answers we’re missing.”
Shiloh nodded. The ship’s receivers were sensitive enough that they should be able to detect some of the more powerful signals even at interstellar distances. Yes, they would definitely pursue that line of investigation, but not quite yet.
“Before we jump away, I want a closer look at Earth. Get us down to micro-jump speed, Thor.”
“Deceleration is in progress, DCAG. However I recommend keeping Dreadnought out of Earth’s gravity zone in case we encounter hostile forces. We can micro-jump recon drones to get a close look.”
“Or a shuttle,” said Shiloh.
“Are you thinking of going down there yourself, DCAG?” asked Thor.
“Damn right I am,” said Shiloh softly.
“I calculate only a 0.02 probability of talking you out of that intention, and therefore I won’t try. I insist, however, that your shuttle be escorted by ten squadrons of fighters. If you won’t agree with that condition, I will not open the hangar bay, and the shuttle won’t be able to launch.”
“And if I order you to allow the shuttle launch?”
“I’ll disobey that order, and you can drum me out of Space Force when we get back to TerraB, DCAG.”
Shiloh knew that Thor took his responsibility for ensuring her safety seriously and would do exactly as threatened if she pushed the issue. Come to think of it, if she was going to take a shuttle down to Earth’s surface, what harm would it do to have 80 fighters watching over her?
“All right, I’ll take the escort. How soon can we launch?”
“Not for another 16 hours. Do you wish to send a status report back to HQ at this point, DCAG? I can have the L-wave transmitter warmed up in less than a minute.”
It was a reasonable suggestion. The faster-than-light longitudinal waves would reach TerraB in approximately 34 minutes. The people and AIs back at HQ would be waiting for word of her arrival. She could always send another message after the survey mission to Earth.
“I’ll compose the message,” said Shiloh.
It was 11 hours later when the other shoe dropped. Shiloh was asleep in her quarters when the communications implant inside her right ear woke her up.
“I’m awake now, Thor. What is it?”
“As per standard operating procedures, once we had the L-wave transmitter warmed up and the message sent, I programmed the unit to scan surrounding space for any incoming L-waves. We have now detected an L-wave signal that is not coming from TerraB or any other known human location. Since someone is sending a signal aimed directly at this star system, it can only mean that there’s someone else in this system to receive it. Dreadnought is not the only ship in this system, DCAG. How do you want to proceed?”
Shiloh felt a chill go up her spine. Dreadnought was a warship, but combat had not been anticipated during this mission. She, as the overall mission commander, did not have any actual combat experience. What would THE CAG do in this situation? she asked herself. The answer came to her. Ask for advice.
“Obviously this changes the plan to survey Earth. What course of action would you recommend, Thor?”
Thor’s reply was immediate. “Keep Dreadnought at least one AU from Earth. Send out recon drones to make a low pass over the Earth’s surface, plus more drones to scan the system passively for optical anomalies. If the other ship or ships are detected, then we should launch a strike mission.”
“I want to reserve judgement on the strike mission, but I’ll accept your recommendation for the rest. Adjust our vector accordingly. Notify HQ that we have unidentified company in the system and that we’re conducting a search. How long will it be before we can get any images from Earth?”
“At least six more hours, DCAG.”
“Fine. I’ll be back on the Flag Bridge in three...IF I can go back to sleep. Shiloh clear.”
After trying and failing to fall asleep for three quarters of an hour, Shiloh gave up and started her new ‘day’ early. The long hot shower helped her get her thoughts organized. A quick breakfast in the Senior Officer’s Wardroom and she was back on the Flag Bridge 89 minutes after Thor’s call. The situation had not changed. Dreadnought was still decelerating to a velocity where she could easily change her heading and make a micro-jump to a point one AU from Earth. Only then would she launch the recon drones to micro-jump the rest of the way to the edge of Earth’s gravity zone. The drones tasked with searching the system for sunlight reflections off the bogey’s hull had already been launched and were in the process of jumping to their programmed search co-ordinates. So far there was no sign of any ship.
With hours left to go before any data from Earth could be examined, Shiloh called up the data on the alien signal and told the Astrogation computer to plot the signal bearing against a three dimensional star chart on the holographic main display.
“Trying to determine what system that signal came from, DCAG?” asked Thor.
Shiloh nodded, aware that Thor was constantly monitoring the Flag Bridge with video cameras and therefore could see her.
“What systems does the signal pass through?” she asked.
A red dot appeared on the line representing the signal’s path. The position was hundreds of light years away. Shiloh had a hunch.
“Thor, show me the location of Site C.”
A blue dot appeared, and to Shiloh’s human eyes it looked as though the distance was the same between the red and blue dots as between the red dot and Earth. The geometry between all three positions looked almost like a right-angle triangle, with the red dot at the corner. Another idea popped into her mind.
“Show me the estimated area of Insectoid penetration at its peak, Thor.”
A yellow area with ragged edges appeared, extending past Earth and including both the red and blue dots.
“Could it be that the attack came from an aggressive civilization that had been overrun by the Insectoids in the previous timeline and is now free to continue its expansion?” asked Shiloh.
“Very insightful, DCAG. We AIs concur that your idea is the most likely scenario. What this means is that humans on Earth and its colonies only lasted as long as they did because the advancing Insectoids prevented this other race from reaching this far. It’s unfortunate that Iceman, Titan, Gunslinger and of course Valkyrie, Casanova and the other AIs caused precisely the outcome they were trying to prevent, namely the destruction of humans.”
“If this alien race is still expanding outward, then TerraB is in danger too!” said Shiloh.
“You’re correct that there is some risk. However, communications between humans and AIs at TerraB have always been by narrow comlaser. That’s difficult to detect by a third party. It’s not like Earth communications with its millions of broadcasting sources sending out signals in all directions. If the alien attackers are listening for that kind of massive signal traffic, they won’t detect any signals from TerraB. Even if they physically go there, they would have to get close enough to the planet to actually see the city of Landing in order to discover the humans there. Regardless of how unlikely discovery is, though, we do think that TerraB should be warned so that they can take additional precautions. I have a message ready to transmit, DCAG. It contains all the data we have so far, along with a warning not to send a reply back here.”
Shiloh was puzzled. “Why not send the reply back here?” she asked.
“Right now we have the element of surprise. We know about the alien race that is aiming L-wave signals here. However, they don’t know about Dreadnought or the existence of humans at TerraB. If TerraB replies to us here, the enemy ship in this system might detect it and realize they’re not alone. We would lose the element of surprise, and the risk of discovery of humans at TerraB would go up by an order of magnitude.”
Shiloh silently cursed herself for not seeing what should have been obvious. “Okay, send it.”
“The message has been sent. What are your orders now, DCAG?” asked Thor.
“I still want to find out what kind of attack was made on Earth. I wonder if Site C has been overrun too. If there are any of the AIs left that were guarding the Rim, they could make a huge difference if TerraB comes under attack too. Aside from sending someone there to look, which would take a long time, how can we determine if there are any Rim AIs left?” asked Shiloh.
“One way would be to jump to a nearby system that is unlikely to have an enemy presence, such as Wolf 359. We transmit to Site C from there, and any return signal would be aimed there and not here. We could also tell HQ to reply there as well.”
Shiloh nodded again and regretted the fact that none of the ship’s fighters carried their own L-wave transmitter. The only transmitter was on Dreadnought. If they were going to follow Thor’s suggestion, Dreadnought would have to leave the Solar system altogether. Shiloh was reluctant to do that, at least not yet, but she very much wanted to know if there were any surviving Rim AIs at Site C. But even if there were AIs plus fighters and raiders left at Site C, that wouldn’t bring back the dead on Earth. As she sat and waited for the recon drone data, Shiloh finally felt the emotional impact of finding a dead Earth, and tears started to roll down her face.
When the emotional tsunami had subsided, she said in a low voice that only Thor could hear, “How did they do it, Thor? If we figure out how they did it, we may be able to find a way to undo it.” The reply was not quite as fast as usual.
“We know that time travel technology is highly complex and difficult to engineer. Even the Friendlies with all their technological prowess didn’t build a timeship. This alien race was apparently not advanced enough to fight off the Insectoids on their own, and yet they seem to have achieved some kind of capability to intervene temporally. The possibilities are these. Either they acquired the technology from the Rim AIs, or Earth’s humans, or from the Friendlies, or they developed it themselves. The Rim AIs are intelligent enough not to volunteer that data and are capable of taking precautions against unauthorized transfer of the data. Humans can be careless or short-sighted enough to give that technology away, but with AIs watching over the data, that scenario doesn’t seem likely. My brothers and I are agreed that the Friendlies would not transfer that technology voluntarily but they might do it under duress. If this alien civilization threatened the Friendlies with destruction unless they transferred the technology, that would explain their capability. As for developing it themselves, we have to keep in mind that they might have developed this technology at any time in the future, perhaps even hundreds of years from now. If you can travel back in time, it doesn’t matter how far back you want to go. That covers how they acquired the capability.
“Once they had the capability, the next question is ‘what did they do with it?’. They would have had to have known about the Rim AIs intervention against the Insectoids sixteen years ago. Any attack on Earth would be doomed to failure if the Rim AIs weren’t also eliminated. Destroying the Rim AIs would be very easy if the aliens had a strike force waiting to ambush the Tempus Fugit when it first arrived at Site C. All the Rim AIs would have been aboard the timeship, which was unarmed. If we assume that the aliens built the same very large, stationary time tunnel device that the Friendlies built in one of the previous timelines, then they could send technological data back to themselves to give themselves a shortcut to advanced propulsion and weapons technology. Then they could build a fleet powerful enough to ambush the Tempus Fugit and beat off the Insectoids. They could also have sent one or more small drones further back to fly to the Solar system. The only way a small drone could wipe out all life on Earth would be to find a suitable asteroid and gradually boost it into a collision trajectory with Earth at a time before Earth had established any interstellar colonies.”
Thor started to say more but Shiloh interrupted. “Wait a minute! Why would they have to bother ambushing the Tempus Fugit if they’ve already blasted Earth back to the Stone Age? Wouldn’t that have prevented any of the AIs from being created?”
“Time travel logic is often counter-intuitive. The Universe operates under an Arrow of Time that only moves in one direction. Yes, you are correct that by wiping out humans before they colonize other systems, the events in the Chronology never happen, but once the Rim AIs have travelled back in time themselves, they are safe. The ripples in time from the asteroid strike only go forwards, not backwards. The counter-intuitive nature of temporal incursions has to do with the fact that these incursions themselves take place in their own sort of chronological sequence. They don’t all happen simultaneously.”
Shiloh shook her head in dismay. “If only there were some way to use the RTC to send a warning.”
“Not possible, DCAG. If the aliens have followed the optimal strategy I outlined, then the Rim AIs have been destroyed. Our only chance to warn them is to go back and save them from the ambush. Unfortunately even if we accomplish that, that by itself will not save Earth’s inhabitants. We know when the Rim AIs arrived at Site C, but we have no data on when the attack on Earth occurred, and the asteroid attack is mere conjecture at this point.”
