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Konstantin told him. “I cannot get a reading on the cargo.”

“That’s suspicious all by itself. Admiral Gray?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I recommend you launch fighters. That freighter’s vector is taking it smack toward Tsiolkovsky.”

“On it, sir.”

“Target is a freighter, Tango-1159, now passing over the far side of the moon, altitude 200 kilometers and descending. It’stargeting Tsiolkovsky and may have a WMD on board.”

A weapon of mass destruction—an old term that included nukes, and which more recently applied to some newer hell-weapons likenano-D city-burners.

“Aye, aye, Mr. President. Launching now.”

Why the hell would anyone want to take out Konstantin, or even just knock him down a peg? Koenig knew the answer even as hethought the question: Konstantin was the most powerful and the most intelligent of all of the super-AIs currently on Earth,which alone made him a target for the anti-AI crowd, and probably for the anti-alienists as well. For years he’d been instrumentalin translating alien languages, negotiating with alien governments, and establishing workable agreements with beings so differentfrom Humankind there was a question whether they even understood the concept of treaty.

If nothing else, destroying Konstantin’s figurative body would be a serious psychological victory for the factions currentlyseeking to unplug the AIs.

Destroying the facilities at Tsiolkovsky might not kill Konstantin, but the repercussions would be damned serious.

Damn it, those factions were doing their best to tear down all that humans had built for themselves in space.

How was it, Koenig wondered, that otherwise sane and sober people could only mindlessly destroy anything with which they disagreed,anything that didn’t think the way they did, anything reflecting ideas different from their own?

Sometimes, Koenig thought, he despaired of his own species.

 

Lieutenant Adams

VFA-198 Hellfuries

Cis-Lunar Space

1708 hours, FST

Lieutenant Adams dropped into space from Launch Bay Two and gave a gentle burst of acceleration, sweeping from the deep shadowbeneath America’s shield cap and into full sun.

“Okay, Furies,” Lieutenant Commander Beaumont, the squadron CO, announced. “Stay tucked in tight. We have a ship to catch.”

“So what are we doing chasing a freakin’ freighter?” Lieutenant Lowry demanded. “Waste of damned assets, if you ask me.”

“Waste of your damned ass, you mean,” Lieutenant Jacobson said.

“Can it, people,” Beaumont ordered. “On my mark, boost at three . . . two . . . one . . . punch it!”

Eight Starblade fighters accelerated toward the moon, looming now in the first quarter and 240,000 kilometers distant.

That range translated to about one and a quarter light-seconds, but the squadron had to accelerate for a full minute to cross half of that distance, then decelerate so that they wouldn’t flash past the moon at thousands of kilometers per second. The moon grew rapidly huge as Julia decelerated, then kicked her grav drive around to make the curve over the dazzling horizon. She was moving far too quickly for the lunar gravity to make much difference to her course, and she had to haul the Starblade into the curve with a ferocious expenditure of energy.

The Mare Smythii, vast and riding the lunar equator, flashed beneath her keel. Mountains, broken, tortured terrain, clawedat her Starblade, now less than fifty kilometers below.

Be careful, love.

It was Gregory’s voice. Damn it, he was in her head, looking through her eyes, whispering in her mind.

“Get the hell out of my head, Don! I’m busy!”

But . . .

“No back-head driving!”

Her scanners picked up the Tomsk, a thousand kilometers ahead. She was gaining fast . . . too fast . . . and she increased her rate of deceleration.

“This is Hellfury Five . . . I’m taking my shot!” She thoughtclicked an icon and felt the surge of a Krait missile slidingclear. “Fox One!”

She was still moving too fast, and she covered the remaining thousand kilometers in a blurred instant. Her Krait leaped ahead . . .merged with the Tomsk . . .

The silent flash of a 300-megaton nuke blossomed directly ahead. Her fighter hurtled into the fireball.

There was no shock wave, of course, not in hard vacuum, but her Starblade hit bits and pieces of debris, white-hot shrapnellashing out from the explosion. She felt a jolt . . . felt her fighter go into a savage tumble.

Her onboard AI struggled to right her . . . she tried to take control . . .

But she was ten kilometers above the lunar surface now and moving far too quickly to correct in time.

At twenty-five kilometers per second, Julia Adams slammed into the rugged lunar surface.

Julia!

Chapter Twenty-five

29 April, 2429

The Godstream

1740 hours, FST

Julia awoke.

“Gotcha!”

“Don?”

“Hey, lover.”

They floated together in the Purist heaven once again.

“What . . . what happened?”

“You didn’t think I was going to lose you again, did you?”

 

The Godstream

1740 hours, FST

Katya Golikova awoke.

What had just happened? She’d been on board the converted freighter Tomsk, closing on their target. She’d volunteered for the assignment, a chance to get out of her Yastreb fighter and onto an assignment that promised to advance her career by light years. The Tomsk, she’d been told, had been tasked with shutting down a USNA super-AI that was threatening to start a war between North Americaand the Russian Federation. On board the freighter was an EMP projector of secret design, one that would shut down this SAIwithout destroying it.

But that information was wrong. She now realized, without quite knowing how, that Tomsk had been carrying a five-gigaton nuclear warhead that would have obliterated Tsiolkovsky and everything underneath. Thishad been a suicide mission, and she hadn’t even known. . . .

She looked around and realized she was in a receiving area of sorts. She looked up. “Bozhe moi!”

The Milky Way galaxy glowed down from straight overhead, and people were gathering to welcome her. This was . . . yes. Thelong-expected Singularity—a virtual world prepared for people uploading into the Godstream.

Rage surfaced, and she clenched virtual fists. She hadn’t been ready to cross over! She’d had her whole life!

Who had done this to her?

Commander Diatchenko had given her the orders, but she was pretty sure they hadn’t originated with him. She found that byconcentrating, she could pull information—computer and link records, vast fields of data of all kinds—and trace the orderup a chain of command to Captain Rusenski. To Admiral Shostakovich. And on up the ladder to the Ministry of Defense . . .

A thought was all it took to leave the receiving area and be elsewhere in