The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) (8 page)

General Francis Hurst is forced to wait almost two hours
for a connection to his swarms while the large ships go through their post-Jump
procedures. He uses the time to crop his white-blond goatee in the crystal
mirror opposite his command desk. He inspects the crow's feet that have formed
since his last rejuvenation, and the furrows between his trimmed eyebrows. He
is not pleased.

There are over twenty-one light years between his Command
Carrier, the
Ares
—lagging behind in Sigma Serpentis to refuel—and the
swarms he dispatched to enter Epsilon Ophiuchi for preliminary scans.
Twenty-one light years is a tremendous distance, though easily annulled by the
QECI—the Trust's Quantum Entanglement Communication Interface, more commonly
referred to as
kesi
. Thanks to it, communication and military
coordination across interstellar distances is practically instantaneous. What
the General is waiting for is not physical distance to be overcome. He's
waiting for the humans to regain their feeble grasp of reality, for their
unhinged minds to recover from the fugue.

Hurst stands behind his desk, leaning against the backrest
of his chair. The large viewscreen on the wall displays a live feed of the
refueling activities. A steady trickle of supply drones exits the aft bay of
the
Ares
, heading diagonally upward toward the gas giant's rings. The
giant planet is bathed in a myriad of turquoise and salmon hues, speckled here
and there with orange and navy blue. Hurst frowns, reminding himself they're
just toxic super-storms chasing over the illusive surface of the planet. Out
here in space, nothing is what it seems.

He checks the time again. Twelve minutes to
kesi
readiness.

He's deployed all five sweeper swarms at his disposal to
Epsilon Ophiuchi, the next check-mark waiting to happen on his appointed
resource acquisition chart. Three more after it, and this odious task will be
done, his punishment fulfilled.

Hurst taps his foot on the hand-woven, natural fiber
carpet that stretches over the entire floor of his command deck. Nine minutes.

The swarms' AIs must have already launched the remote
sensor arrays and FTL probes, and run preliminary diagnostics of the new
system. This happens automatically in the time it takes the debilitated crew to
resume its duty. But even though AIs have become astonishingly efficient over
the past decades, real-time FTL communication and Swarm coordination are still
privileges enjoyed exclusively by humans. And most likely always will be. Even
if that means Hurst has to waste precious time waiting for his captains to be addressable.

He scratches his chin. Five minutes.

Despite the recent leaps in technological advancement, TMC
scientists haven't been able to reproduce the human brain computing abilities
faithfully, as the intelligent but insipid AIs demonstrate time and again. The
human consciousness has remained inimitable in its complexity, and Hurst feels
reassured by that. That human minds—like his—are magnificently unique.

Two minutes to
kesi
readiness.

Every second seems to pass slower than the previous one,
so Hurst opens the channel one minute early. The lead ship of the SSV3 is the
first to respond.

Hurst takes a deep breath and straightens his uniform,
brushes imaginary lint off his arms, and checks the insignias lined up on his
chest in a decade-old reflex. Then sits down stiffly, straight-backed. The
projector builds a model of the Epsilon Ophiuchi system with its seven planets
and three asteroid belts, superimposed by the translucent, three-dimensional
projection of the SSV3 captain's head.

"Captain Ernesto Mori of the Sweeper Swarm Vigor
Three reporting," the projection says.

Mori's auburn hair is disheveled. Three new, deep
scratches run down the left side of his face, eyelid to chin, the blood just
starting to clot.

"Status, Captain." Hurst resumes tapping his
foot under the desk.

Captain Mori looks sideways, a little disoriented, his
disembodied head turning in the air above Hurst's desk. Hurst sighs and
minimizes the captain's projection. He inspects the discovered planets one by
one, reading the survey results.

"There's an... uhm..." The Captain rubs his face
in an attempt to clear his thoughts. He winces as he unwittingly tears the
tender skin open again. "There's a potential resource in the second orbit,
sir. A solid planet, spiking up in EM measurements."

Hurst brings the planet to the forefront. It's a green
dwarf, four thousand two clicks in diameter, in a point twenty-three AU orbit
around Ophiuchi's star. There are no elevations and no craters of any size; no
differences in the coloration of its surface either. Nothing to indicate an
atmosphere that might explain the smoothness.

"Did you say solid?" Hurst asks, eying the
captain suspiciously.

Mori hesitates and frowns at something beyond the
projector's range.

Hurst slams his hand on the desk. "Get a grip, damn
it. You'll have enough time to sort out your fugue
after
you deploy the
Swarm. I don't have all day to give a simple order."

"Yes sir." Captain Mori stares straight ahead,
as if he's reciting by rote. "The result of our preliminary survey
indicates a high concentration of metal ore in the planet's crust, sir. Very
high probability of pyrochlore and platinum, maybe even up to four percent of
the planet's total mass, sir."

"Well I'll be damned." A wide grin stretches its
way across Hurst's face.

Such an enormous quantity of pyrochlore can give him
enough niobium to build himself a private fortress, to refurbish his entire
fleet—a total of sixty-seven ships—and still have enough left to hawk
throughout the Confederacy. He'd regain his status within the TMC, too, and put
a swift end to the tedious resource acquisition duty he's been sentenced to
after the Ceti fiasco.

"Take the swarms down to that planet, Captain."

"Yes sir. ETA is forty-five minutes, in-system
transfer time. Energy cost within upper range. We have a Go for all swarms.
Repeat, we have a Go. Thank you, sir. Captain Mori out."

Hurst nods to himself, and leans back in his chair.

It's been over ten years since the clash with those aliens
in the Tau Ceti system. Back then, he was in command of the xeno-diplomatic
contingent established there immediately after the Dorylinae were discovered.
Freelance scientists from all over the Confederacy poured in as news of the
aliens leaked into the Web. They disrupted everything, from the TMC's
communication and barter attempts, right on down through their hive
cartography.

The aliens proved resistant to human language and other
means of complex communication. Deciphering their primitive percussion and
ultrasound language proved to be a waste of time as well. That's why Hurst
calls them 'Klackers,' because of the repetitive, nonsensical click-clacking of
their mandibles.

As more and more of his resources were spent on the alien
issue with no recognizable result, he decided to put the scientists to good use
and employ their services directly. Equipped with TMC technology and unhindered
by guards, the hobby savants set up camps inside the Klacker hives. They soon
delivered streams of information and samples—all of which proved an even bigger
waste of time. The beasts were un-technological and primitive, and Hurst
eventually decided to move on.

The scientists refused to evacuate. When armed troops
stormed their camps to remove them by force, the Klackers intervened with
murderous violence. Hurst didn't hesitate to reply in kind and crush the alien
menace—and, as it turned out, his own career in the process.

Captain Mori hails him via
kesi
five minutes after
the swarms' arrival on target. His confusion has become concern: "Close
range scans give us heavy electromagnetic interference. It's likely caused by
some unidentified, planet-wide kinetic movement similar to shifts in tectonic
plates, but
perfectly
uniform. And we get approximately fifty eight
quadrillion life-signs, of even distribution." He swallows. "Sir, the
planet is teeming with life."

Hurst huffs and leans forward. "Any signs of advanced
technology, Captain? Transmissions? Satellites?"

"No, sir, nothing so far."

"Well, then. Don't wet your suit over some alien
fauna."

"Yes sir. I mean, no sir."

"Is the pyrochlore confirmed?"

"Yes. Our initial estimations were modest. A good
eleven percent of the planet's total mass is made of pyrochlore, two percent
microlite and zircon, and additional traces of silver, platinum and gold."

"Excellent." Hurst grins. "Prepare a
sweep."

"Sir, what about the aliens?"

"I don't care about alien critters, Captain. Do your
job."

"We need extensive scans of the planet, sir,
preferably from close orbit flights. The interference—given the planet's tight
rotation around its sun, we assume that—"

"Of course there's interference," Hurst says.
"The whole planet's nothing but a bug-infested ball of superconductive
ore. Set all five swarms in position for an immediate sweep, that's an
order."

"Yes sir."

Hurst turns his armchair toward the viewscreen. The force
field surrounding the
Ares
sizzles with the prickle of dust and stray
particles pelting down from the gas giant's rings. The surge of incoming supply
drones has lessened, and none of them fly out again. A Keres warship is turning
over lazily atop the aft bay, preparing to dock and power down once the inflow
of drones has stopped and the ship's defenses are on standby.

"General, sir," Captain Mori calls in. "All
swarms are in position, awaiting orders."

Hurst opens the armored cabinet of his desk and glares at
the object inside: a filigree synaptic wire helmet, with nanotube casings and a
field-protected nitrogen cooling system, as artistically crafted as a
hemispherical crown. The synaptic strands are woven into a meshwork of tiny
hexagons, adorned with thousands of fine protrusions like silvery hairs. They
disperse the fine electrostatic halo generated by the helmet as it expands and
accelerates the brain's functions through its direct hyper-band relay into the
synet.

The helmet creates an almost seamless interface between
one human mind and another, light-years away. The connection is mitigated by
the TMC Nexus—the latest technology in a decade-long, billion-credit effort.
Only a handful of generals have Nexus interfaces, and a very few others who can
afford to buy into the exclusivity, or blackmail their way in. It's one of
those rare, exquisite things that make Hurst's influence worthwhile, and he
enjoys every minute of it.

He takes the helmet out of the cabinet and twists it
between the tips of his fingers. Then lifts the helmet above his head and
crowns himself, an eager smile tugging at his lips.

The helmet registers the proximity of an adapted synet and
finds the tiny socket array at the base of his neatly cropped hairline.
Sixty-six micron-thin filaments unfurl out of a band at the base of the helmet
to plug into the socket array, connecting Hurst's synet to the helmet, and
through the Nexus right to Captain Mori's helmet and thus his synet, twenty-one
light years away.

Sweating with excitement, Hurst prepares to receive the
neural input from his Swarm Captain. The Nexus doesn't take long to launch the
interpretation algorithms, and then the multi-dimensional geometry encryption
of the
kesi
connection is sizzling with data.

Drenched in adrenaline and injected neurostimulants, aided
by the ease of experience, Hurst finds himself inhabiting Captain Mori's body
as he stands in the command center of the SSV3. He inspects the alien planet on
the Captain's viewscreen.

The Sweeper swarms have encircled the alien planet,
hanging now like mechanical puppets from his own fingers. All their systems are
online. The Sweeping fields are ready to envelop the planet in an
electromagnetic mesh, capable of overloading any type of electrical device and
organic nervous system in a matter of seconds.

"Prepare to sweep in ten seconds," Hurst relays
through the Nexus, and through the Captain's voice on the other end. The order
passes through the man's unresisting mind like water through a sieve.

"Yes, sir," one of Mori's commanders says.
"Starting sweep deployment countdown. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven..."

Through Captain Mori's eyes, Hurst sees the surface of the
planet as it's illuminated by streaks of light, the ships spanning their mesh
between them like spiders interweaving their gossamer filaments.

"...Four. Three. Two..."

The planet's surface cracks open, and several alerts go
off throughout the swarms. The sensors blank out and the AIs declare Red Alert.
The Nexus' emergency protocols kick in, kicking Hurst out, and forcing his
consciousness back into his body on the
Ares
, twenty-one light years
away from the action. With the Nexus connection broken off the helmet powers
down.

Hurst lunges from his chair to slam both fists on the
table. He hails Captain Mori via conventional
kesi
. "What the
fuck?" he barks at the flustered face hovering above his desk.

"We don't know, sir. Our sensors got fried by an EM
backlash and the AIs are stalled under emergency maintenance routines. All we
have are naked visuals and ultraviolet—we're blind across the rest of the
spectrum. But the planet's breaking apart in some sort of cataclysm. We're not
sure what's happening."

Hurst builds himself a 3D projection of the planet. With
no conclusive readings it looks like a green glass marble bursting from within.
Black, jagged lines grow and multiply across its surface, fissures and clefts
the size of canyons, tearing the planet's crust apart.