Stargods by Ian Douglas (best summer books TXT) 📕

“New Orleans was officially abandoned in 2075,” Marta said. “But much of it had been continually underwater for at least adecade before that.”

“Thank you, Marta. The people pulling the financial strings—the Big Twelve—they all would lose money if a major effort to curb the effects of climate change was put in place.”

Big Twelve was slang for the major megacorporate drivers of the USNA economy—petroleum companies, the major banks, agroconglomerates,and the largest pharmaceutical companies, mostly.

“Well, they all felt they were looking out for Number One.”

“Yeah. And because of that, we began losing cities. Miami. Washington, D.C., Boston—”

“Manhattan,” Gray put in.

“Exactly. Most of our coastal cities gone . . . or praying that the floodgates hold when the next storm surge hits.”

“So you think Walker is tied to the Big Twelve?”

“Has to be. You do not become President without some powerful money behind you.”

“Were you?”

“In part,” Koenig admitted, and Gray admired the candor. “The Nationalist Party wanted to be free of Pan-Euro politics. Theybrought me in as a war hero who would rally the people. The Big Twelve, those that weren’t completely controlled by Geneva,they backed me.” He shook his head. “I’m not proud of that.”

“You should be. We did need our independence. We’re better off now not tied to Geneva’s apron strings.”

“Maybe. But because we were busy fighting each other, we damned near lost the Sh’daar War.”

“Ah . . . yes. Hindsight. Wonderful thing, isn’t it, sir?”

Koenig shrugged. “I’m not sure there was anything we could have done differently.” He paused, then let the enormous head onthe wall do a brief fast-forward before letting it continue its monologue.

“In order to maintain our focus on the here-and-now,” Walker said, “and on the recovery of this great nation, I have today signed a presidential order directing all USNA naval forces to return to near-Earth space, to avoid any and all contact with alien forces, and most particularly, to avoid any contact with the Sh’daar, both those operating in this epoch and those in the remote past. Discussing the so-called TechnologicalSingularity with them can only distract us from the clear task at hand.”

“What the hell?” Gray said, suddenly leaning forward.

“It gets worse.” Koenig paused the image again, catching Walker’s face in a weirdly funny pursed-lips grimace. “But the baselineis . . . he’s cancelling the Sh’daar Archive Expedition.”

“But why? That’s pure research! It’s not political at all!”

“He thinks it is, and whatever he thinks is political had better serve his best interests, so far as he’s concerned.” Koenigsounded disgusted, but he obviously was making an effort not to say what he really thought. Open criticism of a sitting President by a former President simply wasn’t done.

Admiral Gray had no such restraints, though. He’d been in on the planning for the Sh’daar Archive project. There’d been talkof putting him in command of the America battlegroup again and sending them off to track down the Sh’daar migration, 800 million years in the past and tens of thousandsof light years distant.

The goal of the expedition, as Gray understood it, was to catch up with the Sh’daar evacuation fleet and talk with its personnelabout just what had transpired at their Schjaa Hok. Images of that event had been passed mentally to some humans, including Gray, but few hard facts remained. How long hadthe transformation taken? How had the ur-Sh’daar culture acted in protecting itself? What had worked and what had not? Somewherewithin that migration there must be records of the Sh’daar Transcendence, an archive of some sort that would be of incrediblevalue to a Humankind facing the same disruptive event.

The project had been suggested by none other than Konstantin. According to Koenig, the super-AI had come to him with the idea rather than approaching President Walker, whose beliefs about the Technological Singularity were well-known.

And that raised some extremely serious concerns about both the chain of command and government oversight . . . not to mentionthe impropriety of a former President second-guessing the man now sitting in the Oval Office.

“So,” Gray said, not sure where this was leading. “The Sh’daar expedition is cancelled?”

“Officially, yes,” Koenig told him. “But Konstantin feels this is far too important to be tossed aside by a political whim.”

“Konstantin . . .” Gray said, closing his eyes.

“Hello, Admiral Gray,” a familiar voice said inside his head. “It appears that you and I will be working together again.”

“Huh. Does that mean I get court-martialed and busted again?”

Obeying Konstantin’s directions several years before had resulted in him taking his carrier to Tabby’s Star against orders.

“That worked out okay, did it not?” Konstantin said. “You did regain both your lost rank and your credibility.”

“Maybe. But not my dignity. . . .”

Gray, thanks to his low-tech Prim origins, had never fully trusted this embodiment of ultra high-tech. Konstantin seemed tohave no qualms about reaching in and meddling, carrying out programs and even conspiracies if he thought the end justified the means. Theoretically, humans were still in the loop, guiding him. A kind of high-tech priesthoodof computer scientists served Konstantin in the deep regolith of Tsiolkovsky Crater on the moon, and if the powerful SAI evergot out of hand, they would pull the plug.

Again, though: in theory. Gray wondered if that was even possible now.

He had to admit, however, that Konstantin’s meddling had for the most part worked out quite well. He’d ended the civil war with the Confederation by infecting the Pan-Euro networks with a memegineering virus designed to make the European population question the morality of that war. He’d guided the creation of peaceful relations with two highly advanced civilizations, the Satorai at Tabby’s Star, and the Denebans, as well as with the Sh’daar.

And he’d been instrumental in defeating the strange group Consciousness known as the Rosette Aliens. All in all, a remarkabletrack record.

But Gray didn’t like the idea that Konstantin almost routinely acted on his own, without any input at all from humans.

Especially when Gray ended up taking almost all the risk.

“What Konstantin has proposed,” Koenig said carefully, “is that we dispatch the America to the outskirts of Omega Centauri to observe the hypernova effects there. We know the effects were partially blocked,