EST
Admiral Koenig looked at Carruthers with surprise. “They’re doing what ?”
“I know,” Carruthers said. “But the Senate majority feels that we don’t have a viable alternative.”
“But we do. Operation Crown Arrow.”
Carruthers gave a grim smile. “Not all of them see it that way. Especially if it turns out that these H’rulka are involved. They don’t wish to leave Earth open to attack. Not again.”
They were standing in a small temporary alcove within the concourse bowl. Carruthers and several of his aides, along with Rand Buchanan, Koenig’s flag captain, had retreated to the relative privacy and soundproof isolation of the alcove as the party outside continued to throb into high gear. Carruthers had asked Koenig to join them there. He’d ordered a martini from the local assembler, and was sipping it in an attempt to rid himself of the bitter taste of his electronic doppelganger’s speech earlier.
“But a special AI designed to negotiate with the Turusch? We’ve had Turusch POWs on Luna for two months now, and communicating with them is still a problem. What makes the Senate think we can pull off something like that?”
“I suppose,” Carruthers said slowly, “that they see it as an alternative to extermination.”
“The Sh’daar Ultimatum,” Koenig said, looking at his drink, “as delivered by their Agletsch toadies, made it pretty clear what the enemy wants of us. An absolute freeze on all technological development, especially GRIN technologies… and a limit to our expansion to other, new systems. Too high a price.”
“The Sh’daar Ultimatum was… what?” Carruthers said. “Thirty-seven years ago? And we’ve been steadily losing the war ever since it started. The Peace Faction is beginning to think that the price of admission may not be too high after all.”
“The Senate,” one of Carruthers’ aides put in, “is afraid.” Her name, Koenig could see from her id, was Diane Gregory, and she was a Navy captain. “The enemy got entirely too close to Earth last October,” she continued, “and the Peace Faction feels that it is only a matter of time before they succeed in an all-out attack on Earth’s technical infrastructure.”
No one was sure why the mysterious Sh’daar—the presumed overlords of an interstellar empire in toward the galactic core—had insisted that Humankind give up its love affair with a steadily and rapidly increasing technology. The presumption, of course, was that there were weapons just around the technological corner that might pose a threat even to the unseen masters of the galaxy, that the Sh’daar, through their subject races, were putting a cap on the technologies of emerging species in order to preserve their place at the top of the interstellar hierarchy.
But like so very much else about the Sh’daar, that was just a guess. So far as was known, no human had ever seen a Sh’daar; some human xenosophontologists had even suggested that they were a fiction, a kind of philosophical rallying point for diverse species like the Turusch, the Agletsch, the Nungiirtok, and the H’rulka.
But that, too, was just a theory… and not, in Koenig’s estimation, even a particularly likely one.
And not even the super-weapon idea managed to explain the Sh’daar concern with human science, specifically with genetics, robotics, information systems, and nanotechnology—the so-called GRIN technologies. GRIN had been the driving forces of human technical progress for four centuries, now, so much so that in many ways they defined human culture, technology, and economic growth. That was why it had been unthinkable, at least to the Confederation leaders of thirty-seven years ago, that Humankind surrender its fascination with those particular technologies.
It was difficult to imagine a weapon system relying on all four technologies that might pose a threat to godlike aliens inhabiting some remote corner of the galaxy. Nanotechnology? Absolutely.
Admiral Koenig looked at Carruthers with surprise. “They’re doing what ?”
“I know,” Carruthers said. “But the Senate majority feels that we don’t have a viable alternative.”
“But we do. Operation Crown Arrow.”
Carruthers gave a grim smile. “Not all of them see it that way. Especially if it turns out that these H’rulka are involved. They don’t wish to leave Earth open to attack. Not again.”
They were standing in a small temporary alcove within the concourse bowl. Carruthers and several of his aides, along with Rand Buchanan, Koenig’s flag captain, had retreated to the relative privacy and soundproof isolation of the alcove as the party outside continued to throb into high gear. Carruthers had asked Koenig to join them there. He’d ordered a martini from the local assembler, and was sipping it in an attempt to rid himself of the bitter taste of his electronic doppelganger’s speech earlier.
“But a special AI designed to negotiate with the Turusch? We’ve had Turusch POWs on Luna for two months now, and communicating with them is still a problem. What makes the Senate think we can pull off something like that?”
“I suppose,” Carruthers said slowly, “that they see it as an alternative to extermination.”
“The Sh’daar Ultimatum,” Koenig said, looking at his drink, “as delivered by their Agletsch toadies, made it pretty clear what the enemy wants of us. An absolute freeze on all technological development, especially GRIN technologies… and a limit to our expansion to other, new systems. Too high a price.”
“The Sh’daar Ultimatum was… what?” Carruthers said. “Thirty-seven years ago? And we’ve been steadily losing the war ever since it started. The Peace Faction is beginning to think that the price of admission may not be too high after all.”
“The Senate,” one of Carruthers’ aides put in, “is afraid.” Her name, Koenig could see from her id, was Diane Gregory, and she was a Navy captain. “The enemy got entirely too close to Earth last October,” she continued, “and the Peace Faction feels that it is only a matter of time before they succeed in an all-out attack on Earth’s technical infrastructure.”
No one was sure why the mysterious Sh’daar—the presumed overlords of an interstellar empire in toward the galactic core—had insisted that Humankind give up its love affair with a steadily and rapidly increasing technology. The presumption, of course, was that there were weapons just around the technological corner that might pose a threat even to the unseen masters of the galaxy, that the Sh’daar, through their subject races, were putting a cap on the technologies of emerging species in order to preserve their place at the top of the interstellar hierarchy.
But like so very much else about the Sh’daar, that was just a guess. So far as was known, no human had ever seen a Sh’daar; some human xenosophontologists had even suggested that they were a fiction, a kind of philosophical rallying point for diverse species like the Turusch, the Agletsch, the Nungiirtok, and the H’rulka.
But that, too, was just a theory… and not, in Koenig’s estimation, even a particularly likely one.
And not even the super-weapon idea managed to explain the Sh’daar concern with human science, specifically with genetics, robotics, information systems, and nanotechnology—the so-called GRIN technologies. GRIN had been the driving forces of human technical progress for four centuries, now, so much so that in many ways they defined human culture, technology, and economic growth. That was why it had been unthinkable, at least to the Confederation leaders of thirty-seven years ago, that Humankind surrender its fascination with those particular technologies.
It was difficult to imagine a weapon system relying on all four technologies that might pose a threat to godlike aliens inhabiting some remote corner of the galaxy. Nanotechnology? Absolutely.
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