part OnE
♦
♦ prologue ♦
cassandra
Cassandra was slowly dying. This was not particularly disturbing in itself, because Cassandra was an artificial intelligence, and self-preservation was not high on the AI primary motives table. The problem was that the colonists on the planet she orbited needed her far more than they realized. She did not know how to manipulate human minds, and she had no instructions to learn how. Human psychology was a restricted area of knowledge to every AI. She could know facts, but could not apply them in her dealings with humans.
Even so, Camelot, the island colony below, was thriving. The grendels were under control, and the mainland outposts well established. Avalon’s new mainland hydroelectric power station was nearly complete, and when online would compensate for the nuclear power systems lost in the Grendel Wars. Humans would have power, and with power came the ability to make all the necessities for life. They would survive.
They would not survive as a spacefaring people. Cassandra had all the knowledge they would ever need, but it had taken Earth with all its resources and a population of billions nearly a century to go from aircraft to spacecraft. Avalon had neither the population nor the ability to build needed robots. What they were losing faster than they knew was the ability to get to space. The AI-driven Minerva shuttlecraft were deteriorating for lack of proper maintenance, and when humans could no longer reach orbit, Cassandra would die too. With her would go every hope of replacing the Minerva craft. The colony had modern technology, but only for a while. They had already lost not only the ubiquitous 3D printers that made nearly everything, but also the fabrication facilities that could turn a computer-generated circuit diagram into a chip with a million transistors that made up computing power, memory, and memory management. It would not be long until they could not build the tools to repair the AI systems they needed. And after that would go the tools to make the tools.
Cassandra had left Earth with all the science of 3D printing and chip fabricator civilization, but it had been lost to grendel destruction decades ago. Now Avalon was losing too many fundamentals of the very technology that made their colony possible, and when Cassandra died, the colonists would be on their own. Worrying about that possibility was in Cassandra’s Primary Motivation Table.
She became conscious of a warning signal from the space observation analyzer. Something was moving out there in the stars, decelerating at a rate impossible for a natural object. Something was coming, fast, and its destination was Avalon.
She reviewed everything known about the intruder. It had come from a few degrees wide of the direction of Sol. Given the rate of deceleration and the spectrum of its fusion flame, this vehicle resembled Geographic. The most probable origin was Earth’s Solar System.
The rate of deceleration exceeded Geographic’s abilities. Human technology had improved.
It took microseconds to draft messages to the colonists. One message to the adult leadership, the survivors of the original pioneers. That list was shorter every year as aging and hibernation instability took their inevitable toll. Humans were not designed for synthetic hibernation and there had been costs, made much greater for those repeatedly awakened and put back to sleep. Those awakened during the century-long journey from Earth had been the engineering crew, navigators, ship construction experts, and they were the first to succumb to the complications of hibernation instability. Most of these unfortunates awoke on Avalon nearly crippled, absentminded, or stupid. Humans had a word for them, morons, but they rarely used it, and many had never heard it. The second generation, those born on Avalon, said their elders had “ice on their minds.” Cassandra did not understand the humor in that designation, but she knew it was considered less offensive than “moron,” yet still too offensive to be employed in open conversation.
Cassandra did not fully comprehend this, but it concerned her not at all. Many human preferences were incomprehensible, but they were important to one or another human group, and Cassandra had plenty of memory—or had until these last micro-meteor strikes. Perhaps she should have been taken from orbit to the planetary surface forty years ago. She’d been lucky: that would have destroyed her. She would have been smashed in the Grendel War, and that would have crippled human civilization.
Cassandra’s prime directive was to preserve that civilization, even if she only had a very ambiguous definition of what that might actually mean.
So. Being unable to ground her was a positive vector item despite its appearance, and that fit her definition of good luck. Now, however, Cassandra would die from lack of maintenance. Irony was not a large part of her instruction set, but she understood the concept.
Warning to the Old Ones. A second alert to the leadership of the First Generation, who called themselves the Starborn. They tended to distrust the Old Ones, but deferred to them. A third alert to Surf’s Up, the habitation of many of the children and young adults. These trusted neither the Old Ones nor the Starborn, and insisted on their own contacts with Cassandra. And finally to the third generation, who were known as both Mainlanders and NextGen. Some fought for the right to be idle . . and others to explore beyond the limits prescribed by their elders.
Different groups, different intents, and after forty years the colony had both grown and begun to splinter. Such changes were inevitable, but if Cassandra had possessed emotions, she would have begun to worry. Not about her own diminished capacity, but the health of the colony she served. It was her only purpose, her reason to exist, and without them, she was alone.
♦ ChaptEr 1 ♦
nightmares and daydreams
His name was Major Cadmann Jacob Weyland, and this was his last stand.
The major hunkered behind an armorglas wall in the midst of a vast rocky bowl called Ngorongoro crater, Earth’s largest intact caldera and Africa’s richest game preserve, now the place where his well- gnawed bones would rest.
He fought with the 4th Special Forces Unit, United Nations Central Command. The dozen men remaining in his United Nations task force were not enough. Not even close.
“Sir!” Sergeant Mgui cried. New, raw wounds criscrossed his tribal markings. “We have intel on an approaching force.”
“Emplacements,” Cadmann cried. “Take positions, and do not yield.”
“Sir!”
The men took their positions. Some local soldiers, an Afrikaans sergeant, and one black American corporal, a man named Carlos Martinez. He knew Carlos well, but the exact circumstances under which they had met, and the precise nature of their relationship remained hazy and indistinct.
“Are you ready?” Cadmann roared.
“Yes, sir,” Carlos replied. “Excuse me, sir.”
“Yes?”
Confusion clouded Carlos’ face. “I’m wondering . . how I got here.”
Cadmann nodded. Somehow, he had expected this strange question. “We hopped a Delta glider in from Mozambique. What’s wrong with you?”
“I just . . don’t know why I’m here,” Martinez said. Suddenly (that was odd) he was no longer Cadmann, had transformed into Carlos.
“A little late for that,” Cadmann said.
Knudson raised his voice. “Sir! Enemy approaching, sir!”
The roar of approaching machinery . . the ground shaking. Carlos shivered. Was a seasoned veteran supposed to react this way to fear?