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12 December 2404

Emergence, Arcturus System

36.7 light years from Earth

0310 hours, TFT

The recon probe emerged from its Alcubierre bubble of tightly warped space, bleeding off excess velocity in a burst of high-energy photons. An artificial gravitational singularity the size of a small dust particle and as massive as a star flicked on and off a few meters beyond the craft’s bulbous nose, dragging it forward with an acceleration of nearly five thousand standard gravities. At that rate, the craft would be crowding the speed of light within another one hundred minutes.

Only slightly larger than a VG–10 Krait smart missile, the ISVR–120 probe was too small to carry sentient organics; its pilot was a Gödel 2500 artificial intelligence packed into the solid-state circuitry that filled the pod’s core and so, technically, could be said to take up no space at all. Certainly it needed none of the bulky life-support equipment necessary for organic life.

The AI was called Alan, named after Alan Turing, one of the giants in the development of the first computers four and a half centuries earlier.

Within seconds of the probe craft’s emergence from the warp bubble, Alan had scanned the system ahead, a volume of space dominated by a single bloated and brilliant orange star. The Confederation Naval Standard Ephemeris entry on the star resided within Alan’s surface memory.

STAR: Alpha Boötis

COORDINATES: RA: 14^h 15^m 39.7^s Dec: +19˚ 10’ 56” D 11.24p

ALTERNATE NAMES: Arcturus, Alramech, Abramech, 16 Boötes

TYPE: K1.5IIIFe–0.5

MASS: 3.5 Sol; RADIUS: 25.7 Sol; LUMINOSITY: 210 Sol (Optical 113 Sol)

SURFACE TEMPERATURE: ~4300^oK

AGE: 9.7 billion years

APPARENT MAGNITUDE (SOL): –0.04; ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE: –0.29

DISTANCE FROM SOL: 36.7 LY

PLANETARY SYSTEM: 6 planets, including 1 Jovian and 5 sub-Jovian gas giants, plus 47 dwarf planets and 65 known satellites, plus numerous planetoids and cometary bodies.

One gas giant satellite, Jasper, is of interest with somewhat earthlike conditions due to gravitational/tidal effects. …

Arcturus, depending on how one measured such things, was the third or fourth brightest star in the night skies of Earth, a bright orange point at the base of the kite-shape of the constellation Boötis. From Alan’s emergence point some eighteen astronomical units out, Arcturus was a dazzling gold-orange beacon 113 times brighter than Sol would have been at the same distance. At infrared wavelengths, Arcturus was even brighter, flooding ambient space with sullen heat.

Alan’s primary objective lay almost directly beyond the star from his emergence point. His final approach would be masked by the star’s glare … if everything went right.

By the time Alan had traveled a third of the distance toward Arcturus—some 900 million kilometers—he was moving at a hair better than 99 percent of the speed of light. Velocity transformed his view of the surrounding universe, compressing it into a circle of light dead ahead—most of it infrared light from Arcturus, blue-shifted into optical wavelengths. The AI’s sensory correction program, however, was able to untangle the flood of speed-distorted light into its separate components and correct for the distortion. His velocity also distorted time, by seven to one at this velocity. Each passing minute for Alan was seven in the universe outside; it created the illusion that he was hurtling deeper into the Arcturus system much faster than he actually was.

Some two hundred minutes objective after entering the Arcturus system, Alan passed the star, skimming the giant’s photosphere. The probe’s electromagnetic shielding deflected the worst of ionizing radiation but had little effect on radiant heat. Briefly, the probe’s hull struggled with temperatures approaching 900 degrees Celsius. Nanotechnic currents within the hull laminates helped distribute the heat, radiating much of it harmlessly astern.

And then the star—its monstrous, turbulent, and roiling girth nearly twenty-six times larger than Sol’s—fell away behind, red-shifting abruptly to a near-invisibility, illuminated at optical wavelengths solely by red-shifted X-rays.

Alan’s objective now lay directly ahead, 20 astronomical units out.

Long-range detectors were already picking up ships, enemy ships, though at this distance those images were more than two and a half hours old. As expected, most of the enemy targets were grouped closely around a Jupiter-sized gas giant, listed in the database as Alchameth, and its Earth-sized moon, Jasper. Orbiting the moon was Arcturus Station, a terraforming base established by the Confederation three years ago to begin the process of turning Jasper into a human-habitable world.

But fourteen months ago, the Turusch had come. A Confederation naval task force stationed here had been all but wiped out, the orbital station had been captured. So far as could be gathered, nearly six thousand technicians, planetologists, xenologists, terraform specialists, and first-down colonists on the station—men, women, and children—had been butchered.

The probe’s sensors were picking up the faint reflected gleams of Arcturus Station two hundred kilometers above Jasper, and two Beta-class Turusch battleships hanging close alongside, each a small asteroid, crater-pocked and immense. Numerous smaller vessels swarmed in the giants’ shadows—Juliet- and Kilo-class cruisers.

If more distant Turusch warships were positioned far enough from Alchameth that they could have observed the emergence flash of the probe on the far side of Arcturus, there was no sign … though he was picking information out of light that had left Arcturus Station less than an hour after his entry into the system. A warning might well be on its way to those docked warships from sentries more than a light hour away.

Long minutes crawled past. The probe was hurtling toward the enemy vessels out of the glare of the local star, invisible … but before long the Turusch sensors would detect the distortions in space caused by the probe’s enormous AGM, its artificial gravitational mass. For a time, Alan considered the possibility that they simply weren’t looking in his direction, that he was not going to be noticed at all … and then the smaller warships alongside Arcturus Station began accelerating. Moments later, a cloud of missiles streaked in his direction. Alan began shifting the singularity drive randomly in different directions, causing the speeding probe to jink unpredictably. The time lag between his position and theirs gave him an advantage, time to calculate incoming trajectories and arrange not to be at their endpoints when the missiles detonated.

Alan’s recon pod was unarmed.

He increased acceleration, tacking additional nines onto his current percent c. Anti-ship missiles closed with him, and for a few moments Alan engaged in a deadly game of tag, jinking hard this way and that to confuse enemy missiles and defense systems. A nuclear fireball flared to port, dazzling and intense, the hard radiation sleeting across his screens.

Alan survived.

The gas giant Alchameth showed a disk, now, swelling rapidly as Alan’s sensors continued correcting for the speed distortion, becoming a vast, ringed and banded gas giant almost directly ahead. Alan focused on Jasper, visible now, high and to one side. A final course correction put him squarely on target. At 99.99% c, he flashed through the final 10 million kilometers in just 4.8 seconds subjective, passing Arcturus Station at a distance of just 315 kilometers.

He was prepared for the passage, with certain sensor collection heads extruded through the nano-liquid outer hull of the probe, trained on the enemy-held base, on the surface of the planet-sized moon, and on a large volume of surrounding space.

There was something else there … something just emerging now, not from behind Alchameth, but from within the gas giant’s seething, turbulent atmosphere, something unseen until this moment. Something huge …

High-energy beams lanced toward him as he passed, one grazing his screens and melting a portion of his hull.

And then he was past, speeding outbound at just less than the speed of light itself, as enemy ships and missiles scrambled to pursue.

But they needed to accelerate first, and would never be able to catch him.

Alan was injured, however; the grazing near-miss had burned out critical sensors, parts of his lateral maneuvering projectors, and his energy screen itself. That last was serious, because it meant that incoming radiation would fry his circuitry within the next few subjective hours.

Somehow, though, he needed to get the accumulated data from his near-passage of the station back to Earth.

And he was going to need to commit the AI equivalent of suicide to do so. …