Stargods by Ian Douglas (best summer books TXT) 📕

Koenig looked at Marta. “Sorry, my love. Duty calls. Again.”

“I understand, darling. Go on and save the world. Then you can come back here where you belong.”

A thought . . . and Koenig was in open space once more, part of the gathered gestalt of Mind swarming its way through thegulf between Earth and moon.

“Sounds like the damned Iad parasites got just what they deserved,” he said to Konstantin.

Yet, that’s why he was here. Koenig knew that the “experience” Konstantin had mentioned was an offhand reference to his yearsas POTUSNA. He knew about cutting deals, drawing lines, and arguably his greatest achievement had been the armistices he’dengineered with both the Pan-Europeans and the Sh’daar.

It would be interesting to see if he could get the lightning to strike there a third time.

In less than two seconds, Koenig was within the electronic landscape of the Ashtongtok Tah, currently moving over the lunar-near side south of the Mare Crisium a hundred kilometers above the crater Webb. The Nungiirtok,he noticed, possessed fairly sophisticated nanorepair mechanisms and systems, and were well on their way to restoring theirplanetoid ship to full operational capacity.

That was not good news.

One of the Nungiirtok appeared before Koenig, looming above him, its bizarre eyes swiveling to face him, the jointed appendagebeneath what passed for a face unfolding slightly in what might have been a nervous gesture . . . or a threatening one. Koenigadjusted the scale of the virtual scene, robbing the alien of any psychological advantage it might have had by appearing largeror more intimidating than Koenig did.

“His name,” Konstantin whispered inside Koenig’s mind, “is Gartok Nal, and he appears to be the new Nungiirtok leader.”

Koenig faced the alien, feeling the entire swarm of a billion human minds at his back.

“Gartok Nal,” he said. “We need to talk . . .”

Plaza of Light

Geneva, Pan-European Confederation

2340 hours, Zulu +1

The Café des Lumières des Étoiles was a popular sidewalk café across the Plaza of Light from the Ad Astra Confederation Government Complex. The establishment, Dr. Anton Michaels thought as he sipped his wine, was madly misnamed. Geneva was a city illuminated by repulsor-float constellations of reflector disks high aboveground, with projectors sending focused beams of intense white light into the sky, banishing the night and turning it to day. The faux sunlight sparkled and danced off the waters of Lake Geneva and the River Rhône, and gleamed from the flanks of Popolopoulis’s towering Ascent of Man. Thank God the mobs hadn’t succeeded in pulling that down; government offices were one thing, but that statue was an important piece of human culture and history. Destroy thatand you destroyed a part of yourself.

Those rampaging mobs had to be brought under control.

He picked up his wineglass, inhaled the bouquet, then took a delicate sip—a local sauvignon blanc.

“Dr. Michaels?”

He turned, smiled, and stood up. “Minister Vasilyev. Good to see you again.”

“I got your message.” Vasilyev sat down at the table. “Could you possibly have chosen a more public place for a meeting?”

Michaels smiled. Defense Minister Dimitri Vasilyev was paranoid about being found out. “There should be no problem. The city’sNet is down. We’re not being tracked, and no one can see our IDs.”

The riots in Geneva earlier that day had mostly died down, though there was some fighting still going on at some barricadesat Vernier and near Champel, and the acrid tang of police dispersal agents still hung in the air. There’d been talk of a declarationof martial law, but the authorities had been unwilling to take that step, fearing it would be provocative and knowing therewas nothing they could do to stop outsiders from traveling to the city.

Outsiders like Michaels and Vasilyev.

“So you’ve come down from your aerie,” the Russian Defense Minister said after using the table’s touch screen to order—vodka,Michaels noticed, with wry disapproval. “You made it down after the destruction of the elevator?”

“Actually, I’ve been Earthside for weeks. I have an electronic avatar at Midway handling my business. No one can tell I’mnot still up there.”

“Meaning no one could track you if you came down in a personal shuttle,” Vasilyev said, nodding. “Very smart.”

“It’s in our movement’s best interest, I think, that people think I’m still in my offices at Midway.”

“We’ll just hope you evade the notice of our would-be AI overlords.”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to discuss with you, Dimitri. Have your people been following the news about this Godstream stuff?”

“Some in the Science Bureau tell me it’s the Technological Singularity, at long last. Myself, I’m not sure that’s the case.The Kremlin’s official stance is to wait and see. You?”

“Well, you know the position of our President. . . .”

“Your President, if I may say so, is a buffoon.”

“Yes, but he’s our buffoon, even if he doesn’t know it. And buffoon or not, you agreed to send one of your star carriers out to stop one ofours.”

“Because it was politically expedient to do so. And you indicated that it was necessary.”

“It was. The anti-space and anti-alien people are making a lot of noise right now, and our position, for better or for worse, has been lumped in with theirs, at least in the public’s mind. If America’s destruction could be blamed on the Sh’daar aliens, we could memegineer the idea that the super-AIs are trying to cut usoff from space, or that aliens are in league with our SAIs.”

“Hence your attack on the Quito Space Elevator.”

“As you say. We needed something . . . flagrant, something to capture the public awareness.” Michaels shrugged. “Besides,we need to pull back from any political involvement in space so our own agenda can take hold.”

Vasilyev shook his head. “It’s too complicated, Anton. Things could backfire.”

“Only if the SAIs discover what we’re up to. In fact, if what we hear is happening within the Godstream is the Singularity, we may be rid of the AIs in any case. Then our governments suppress the anti-space people, and we come outon top.”

The political landscape, Michaels thought, was unusually tortured at the moment. As one of the founders of Humankind First, he was dedicated to eradicating both alien and AI influence on Earth, but beyond