Dark Matter (Star Carrier, Book 5) (25 page)

And now Stephen was claiming
proof
.

“We have been searching for the reality of dark matter since the late twentieth century,” Stephen continued. “One of the great paradoxes of physics has long been wrapped up in the question: Why is gravity so
weak
?”

Why indeed. Despite what you might think about gravity’s strength when you fall down the stairs or contemplate the hellish surface environment of a neutron star, gravity is by many orders of magnitude the weakest of the four standard forces that operate the universe. Of the other three forces, the weak force—responsible for certain nuclear interactions such as beta decay—is still 10
25
times stronger than gravity, while electromagnetism is 10
36
times stronger—picture a child’s magnet picking up a nail against the total gravitational pull of an entire planet. The strong force, which holds together the quarks making up the protons and neutrons within an atomic nucleus, is 10
38
times stronger than gravity. The difference, of course, is that the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces act over limited distances—the strong interaction is actually undetectable beyond the boundary of an atom’s nucleus—while gravity operates across the entire universe.

Gravity’s relative weakness set it in stark contrast to the other forces. Numerous explanations had been advanced over the years, but the best, the most promising, had been the idea that gravity, alone of all particles or forces, had the ability to travel between the universes of the Bulk.

The Bulk was a hypothetical extra-dimensional realm within which multiple universes existed like an infinite number of two-dimensional sheets side by side . . . if by “side” you took into account the fact that there were more than the usual four dimensions of spacetime. From the perspective of this 4-D universe, the other universes occupied the same area, as distant from this reality as the thickness of a shadow. From the perspective of the hyperdimensional Bulk, all of the universes—the ’Branes of M-theory—were two-dimensional sheets side by side.

And if gravity was not limited to this one universe, perhaps it “leaked” into others.

If you supposed that the nearest other universes in this scheme were similar in their histories to this one, you could imagine that they included analogues of this galaxy. Gravitational leakage would explain, then, why galaxies seemed to be so much more massive than could be accounted for by simply tallying up the stars, planets, dust and gas observed in each.

The theory was elegant, and it allowed for simple and elegant expressions of several unified field theories. It explained the “Great Attractor”—that mysterious point in intergalactic space, off in the direction of the constellations Centaurus and Hydra, which seemed to be pulling on myriad galaxies, accelerating them along in what was popularly known as the Dark Flow. Perhaps most important: it gave an explanation for the mystery of dark matter.

Koenig pulled down a definition through his in-head, checking on the latest description of dark matter. Centuries before, careful measurement of the movement of visible matter within the Milky Way and throughout the universe had presented cosmologists with a most uncomfortable conundrum. All of the stars, planets, dust, gas, and energy . . .
everything
tangible within the universe actually amounted to less than 5 percent of what was actually out there. Fully 26.8 percent of the universe comprised so-called
dark matter
. . . with another 68.3 percent being the even more mysterious dark energy.

Normal matter, in other words, the kind that made up atoms, was responsible for less than 20 percent of all the matter out there. Dark matter was invisible, as its name implied, was intangible. And, in fact, the
only
way it could affect normal matter was through the effects of its gravity.

For a time, cosmologists had been confident that dark matter would turn out to be a physical particle fundamentally different from normal matter. For decades, a favorite candidate was the hypothetical “WIMP,” or weakly interactive massive particle. According to theory, WIMPs might annihilate one another, creating otherwise unexplainable bursts of gamma rays . . . or they might decay into normal matter. Attempts to detect anomalous gamma rays or emergent matter broke down, however, simply because there were other ways to explain the observed effects.

But suppose that dark matter was “dark” simply because it existed in neighboring, “nearby” universes? Unreachable . . . unobservable . . . but “felt” by virtue of that matter’s gravity leaking across the Bulk from other universes . . .

“We can now say with some confidence,” Stephen continued, “that the Shadowstar passing the black hole rosette in Omega Centauri was not, as we originally theorized, observing other regions of space in this universe. Instead, Lieutenant Walton actually was recording a succession of parallel universes, other universes more or less like our own within the hyperdimensional Bulk.

“With this in mind, we can also confidently suggest that the so-called Rosette Aliens are members of a
multiverse
-faring civilization of extremely advanced technological prowess, passing from their universe into ours. Why they are doing this is, of course, as yet unknown. They may be explorers. They may be refugees from their own, dying universe, attempting to cheat the deadly chill of entropy.

“Or . . . just possibly . . . they may represent this universe’s original Creator. . . .”

Koenig heard a kind of susurration running through the huge crowd listening to the AI’s presentation . . . a background murmur largely filtered out by the AI monitors running the event, but still audible nonetheless. One thought, put into the link matrix by a large number of minds arriving at the same conclusion independently, came through as an audible term:
the Stargods
.

“I am well aware that these suggestions will be highly controversial,” Stephen said, “particularly the last one. Still, as a hypothesis it should be testable . . . assuming that we find a way to interact with these beings, to communicate with them in some meaningful way. I leave it to others to suggest just how an ant might manage to communicate with a human as it walks across his great toe.”

Controversial? That was one word for it. Koenig felt a tingling wave of emotion sweeping up his spine, but couldn’t quite identify it. Wonder . . . awe . . . surprise . . . it was all of that, and quite a bit more.

“I do suggest,” Stephen went on, “that we take another, very close look at the anthropic principle.”

Koenig had to thoughtclick the icon for definitions again. He thought he remembered . . . yes. That was it.

The anthropic principle was as much philosophy as it was science . . . perhaps more so. Essentially, it could be stated by the question, Why does the universe appear to be precisely designed to allow—even to
require
—the appearance of life and, ultimately, of intelligence?

Within physics and cosmology, it turned out, there were certain numbers, values for specific physical constants, that were so fussily precise that any change in
any
of them would have precluded the appearance of life. Human understanding of M-theory and how the universe had appeared suggested that most—perhaps all of these numbers—were essentially random; they
could
have been almost anything.

The anthropic principle came in various flavors, ranging from weak to strong. The weak anthropic principle simply stated that the universe happened to allow the evolution of life and intelligence. The strong version went further: the universe
had
to be the way it was
because
it contained life. Variants of these two included one that required living observers for the universe to exist at all, and another that required a multitude of universes so that all possible combinations of laws and conditions existed.

Koenig ran quickly down through the list of fundamental variables.

N: The ratio of the Electrical Force to the Gravitational Force . . . the fact that electromagnetism is 10
36
times stronger than gravity. If gravity was any stronger, stars would have been smaller, hotter, and have aged much faster . . . too fast for their planets to evolve life. If gravity was weaker, stars might not have formed in the first place.

Sigma: The strength of the strong force binding protons and neutrons together within the atomic nucleus relative to the repulsive electrical force between positively charged protons. The number works out to .007 . . . and if it had been as small as .006, hydrogen would not be able to fuse within stars, while if it were .008, protons would have latched onto protons in the first instants of the big bang, and there would have been no free protons left from which to form hydrogen . . . and stars.

Omega: The rate of cosmic expansion . . . fast enough to give galaxies the billions of years necessary to evolve life, but not so fast that stars never formed.

Lambda: The strength of universal antigravity that drove the accelerating cosmic expansion in direct opposition to Omega, but slowly enough not to tear the cosmos apart before life could evolve.

Q: The amount of wrinkling in space as it unfolded from the Big Bang, a number defined as 10
-5
, small enough that all matter did not collapse into black holes early in the universe’s history, but large enough that stars could form from the primordial cloud of hydrogen.

D: The number of extended spatial dimensions. Had the universe existed as a “flatland” of only two primary dimensions instead of three, gravity would be even weaker than it is, and stars would never have formed.

G: The gravitational constant, a value given as 6.6784 x 10
-11
m
3
kg
-1
s
-2
. Stronger, and the universe would have already collapsed in upon itself. Weaker, and stars would never have formed, and stellar fusion would not have been possible.

There were other numbers on the list, but these were some of the most important—universal constants and ratios so important that if any of them had been just a little different, the universe would not be recognizable as what it is today . . . and life—at least, the kind of life that tended to build starships and squabble over politics and ponder the wonders of existence—would never have appeared. Koenig noted that the first six had been presented by the Astronomer Royal of England in 1999 in a book called
Just Six Numbers: the Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
. Other numbers had been added later—G, the mass of the Higgs Boson, the mass of the electron. Change any of these, and life became impossible.

Other variables were specific to Earth—the size of the planet’s iron core, which in turn determined the strength of the planet’s magnetic field and the degree to which it shielded the surface from harmful solar radiation and let Earth maintain an atmosphere. The fact that Earth possessed a large moon that stabilized the planet’s tendency to wobble. The continental drift that contributed to the planet’s incredible biodiversity. The oxygen atmosphere that allowed the development of fire . . . of smelting . . . of modern technology.

Life, it was now well known, had appeared on lots of planets without those secondary factors; the H’rulka, for instance, were immense gas bags floating in the hydrogen atmosphere of gas giants, while the Turusch had evolved in a reducing atmosphere that was mostly carbon dioxide. But there were hints that such species had required help to develop the technology necessary to leave the worlds of their birth.

The so-called Stargods . . .

The anthropic principle had long been evoked as proof of a God, a supreme being who had balanced those numbers precisely in order to permit life to form. Some suggested that it was life itself that determined the various values . . . perhaps the technic civilizations that survived and evolved all the way through to the end of their universe.

Koenig had trouble following some of the fuzzier philosophical concepts. The simplest approach, it seemed to him, would be to shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, if the numbers were different, we wouldn’t be here . . . but we
are
here, so maybe the numbers are what they are purely by chance.”

But that was dodging the issue, Koenig knew, a cheat, pure and simple. It beggared belief that all of those values should be what they were within such tiny, finicky, precise parameters.

One group of proponents of the strong anthropic principle—meaning the theory that the universe had been designed the way it was—suggested that extremely advanced aliens might have created this universe, complete with life-friendly constants . . . possibly as a bolt-hole for when their own universe began to die.

If the Rosette Aliens were
that
powerful . . .

Alexander Koenig, the president of the United States of North America, suddenly felt very,
very
small. . . .

“Deb?”

Electronically, he reached out, strengthening the virtual link with her, sensing in her the same feeling of awe and insignificance.

Somehow, that ghost of a human touch made a vast and incomprehenisble universe just a bit more manageable.

Chapter Seventeen

13 March 2425

USNA CVS
America

40 Eridani A System

1015 hours, TFT

Emergence
 . . .

In a sudden, flaring storm of photons, the star carrier
America
dropped from the emptiness of Alcubierre metaspace and into the reality of stars and worlds and radiant light. Ahead, just 30 astronomical units distant, 40 Eridani A gleamed in the distance, a type K-1 orange beacon, while much farther off, B and C, the other two stars of the system, showed as a close pair, ruby-red and diamond-white.

The
Constitution
and the
Saratoga
both had emerged from Alcubierre warp already just a few million kilometers ahead, and were already deploying their fighter wings. The destroyers
Sandoval
and
Young
were in the van, well out front, while the railgun cruiser
Decatur
drifted ten million kilometers to starboard. As Gray watched from
America
’s Flag Bridge, other ships dropped out of Alcubierre Drive moment by passing moment: the Russian
Slava
and
Plamennyy
, the North Indian
Shiva
and her escort
Ranvir
, the USNA heavy cruisers
Calgary
and
Maine
. The domed overhead of the flag bridge had been set to display the surrounding sky, with incoming ships picked out as green icons. The light cruiser
Gridley
. . . the destroyer
Ramirez
 . . .

Other, more distant ships appeared within the widening sphere of
America
’s 3-D plotting tanks as the light bearing their images crawled across intervening space to reach the flagship’s sensors.
Portland
,
Milwaukee
, and the Marine carrier
Inchon
, the Chinese cruiser
Fu Zhun
, the—

Searing light flooded the flag bridge, so sudden, so dazzling that Gray actually ducked down against the back of his command chair.
“What the fuck?”

The blast of light was fading swiftly, dwindling rapidly to a single extremely bright star aft, to port, and high, glaring against the blackness over Gray’s left shoulder.

“Emergence overlap, Admiral,” Commander Mallory reported from the main bridge.

“What ships?”

“We’re checking, sir.”

It was one of the hazards of interstellar travel, of course. The Alcubierre Drive functioned by wrapping up a starship, already traveling at close to the speed of light, inside a tight little bubble of gravitationally distorted space. The ghost of the long-dead Einstein declared that nothing—not matter, not energy—could travel faster than light. Indeed, matter couldn’t even reach
c,
while energy—photons—could
only
travel at that magical velocity of just under 300,000 kilometers per second.

The loophole, first pointed out by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre four centuries earlier, was that there was nothing that said that
space
couldn’t move faster than light. Indeed, during the first microsceonds of the big bang, space had moved considerably faster than light in the expansive outrush known to physicists as inflation. And, it turned out, a starship resting inside the bubble could travel
with
that bubble. So long as it was moving at less than light speed relative to the space within which it rested, there was no foul, no harm, the ghost of Einstein was appeased . . . and Humankind could travel to the stars in hours, days, or weeks instead of decades or centuries.

While resting within its Alcubierre bubble, a starship wasn’t in normal space, but in a kind of pocket universe outside of the normal expanse of four-dimensional spacetime, a region known as metaspace. Pockets of metaspace could overlap one another, or they could overlap ships or even worlds or whole stars in complete safety . . . but should a ship emerge from metaspace within the same volume of space occupied already by another ship or a chunk of rock, the results were both energetic and catastrophic.

Ships were so relatively tiny and the space they operated in so vast that such collisions were extraordinarily rare. Gray had heard of just one in the entire three-century history of interstellar flight, the
Umberto
and the
New Horizon
.

Now, evidently, two more ship names were to be added to the list now, and
damn
the ill luck that had brought them together at the same place and the same time.

“What ships?”
he demanded.

“Frigate
Sam Morison
, sir,” Commander Mallory announced. “She was already in normal space when another ship dropped on top of her. We suspect a failure in the communications pre-warp protocol. Still checking on the ID of the other vessel.”

Two ships lost out of the task group of twenty-four, and the operation had not even properly begun. Worse, that nova-flare of raw energy, a bubble of pure light expanding at the speed of light, would reach 40 Eridani’s inner system in just four hours.

Task Force Eridani had just announced its arrival in spectacular fashion.

Nothing could be gained by waiting. The light emitted by the various ships as they dropped from their Alcubierre bubbles was more than enough to alert any enemy vessels in-system, and there was no point in scrubbing the mission.

Gray opened the command channel. “You may launch fighters, CAG.”

“Very well, Admiral,” Captain Fletcher replied. “Launching fighters.”

America
’s contingent of fighters began emerging from the far larger starship, two by two from the twin axial launch tubes through the shield cap, and six by six from the rotating hab modules in the shield cap’s shadow. The view from a nearby battlespace drone showed the launch: dozens of minute, flying insects emerging from the far larger umbrella shape of the carrier, and moving into close squadron formation 10 kilometers off
America
’s newly resurfaced and painted prow.

After transferring control from Prifly to CIC, the ship’s Command Information Center, the fighters began accelerating, squadron after squadron. The Starhawks of the Dragonfires, VF-44, would stay with
America
, serving as her CAP—a defensive envelope still called combat air patrol even now, centuries after extending beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The other squadrons would accelerate at 50,000 gravities, coming a hairsbreadth shy of the speed of light in about ten minutes.

It was those squadrons, together with fighters launched from the other carriers in the task group, that would make First Contact with whatever was waiting for them there at Vulcan.

“Message coming through, sir,” Lieutenant Davidson, on the communications watch, said in Gray’s head. “Admiral Guo, on the
Shi Lang
.”

“Accept.”

Admiral Guo Hucheng’s bland, unemotional face appeared on a window opening within Gray’s mind. “Admiral Gray.”

“Yes, Admiral Guo.”

“It appears that one of my vessels, and one of yours, have . . . intersected.”

His lips were moving rapidly, completely out of synch with the calm, computer-generated voice speaking English in Gray’s mind.

“Yes, Admiral,” Gray replied, keeping his face neutral. “We appear to have lost the frigate
Samuel Eliot
Morison
. With which of your ships did it collide?”

“The light cruiser
Li Jinping
, Admiral. There appears to be some . . . conflict within the emergence protocols.”

With large numbers of ships emerging from metaspace at about the same time during fleet ops, and within the same target volume of space, the chances of emergence overlap, while still remote, were greater than they might be otherwise. The computer AIs operating each vessel in a naval formation were linked and their clocks synchronized before each Alcubierre translation in order to allow some additional spread in the emergence pattern of the ships. USNA ships had not worked this closely with ships in the Chinese navy before, however.

Such inexperience could lead to mistakes.

“We’re checking on that, Admiral. In the meantime, we need to commence acceleration.”

Guo’s eyes widened very slightly. “You intend to proceed, then?”

“Of course. It’s not as though the enemy won’t already be aware of our arrival.”

“True. Apparently I was mistaken in assuming you would respond like your Pan-European counterparts.”

Gray decided to accept that as a compliment. European commanders—in particularly the French—were notorious for being extremely cautious, to the point of aborting an operation if the element of surprise was lost.

“I intend, Admiral Guo, to take this fight to the enemy.
Now
.”

“Agreed. Guo out.”

The window closed, and Gray vented a small sigh of relief. The Chinese were still a very much unknown element. The events of the Second Sino-Western War had ended with the fall of a small asteroid into the Atlantic Ocean in 2132. Given the Biblical name Wormwood, from the Book of Revelations, the asteroid had been diverted from its normal orbit by a Chinese warship.

Though Beijing had insisted that a rogue Chinese officer had been responsible, the Chinese Hegemony had been blamed for the resultant tidal wave and the deaths of half a billion people, declared a rogue nation by the Allies, and denied membership in the
Pax Confeoderata
, the new world government organization that emerged after the war.

For years, elements within the USNA government had been seeking an alliance with the Chinese with varying degrees of success. Guo’s inclusion with Task Force Eridani was very much an experiment. Gray had already noted that Guo had not yet specifically placed himself under Gray’s command, but had so far been operating his squadron of four—now
three
—ships as an independent command.

Gray had responded by carefully not giving Guo direct orders, but by simply telling him what the rest of the task force was doing and inviting him to join in. The low-key approach had worked so far, at least if you ignored the loss of two ships in what was probably a protocol error.

Whether this informal operating procedure would work during combat was anyone’s guess. Gray was inclined to think that the system would break down under the stresses and demands of battle, and contented himself with the realization that the Hegemony’s contingent to the Vulcan operation was
only
four ships.

No.
Three
.

The situation was made deadly by the multiple levels of the task force’s current orders. HQ-MILCOM’s operational directives had included the possibility of establishing relations with the Grdoch, using the new language protocols taken from the Confederation.
That
wasn’t going to happen now if Gray had any say in the matter. Admiral Armitage’s final word to him had been to “use his own discretion.”

The reports from Vulcan’s Confederation governor had been brutally open about the Grdoch atrocities at 40 Eridani. They’d attacked human forces at Vulcan without provocation, accepted a treaty when one was offered by a well-armed battlefleet, then attacked again as soon as that fleet had departed.

According to Armitage and HQ-MILCOM, the Grdoch weren’t at all fussy about their mealtimes. The aliens had been feeding on
humans
at Vulcan. Gray had seen them feeding on the . . . what had Truitt named them?
Praedams
, that was it. Genetically tailored food beasts. The thought of people being devoured alive by those things was . . . horrific.

And it suggested a thoroughly alien mind-set for the Grdoch, a willingness to use intelligent life forms as food sources. Humans didn’t have a pristine record when it came to such niceties, of course, but in general—and for modern human cultures—eating thinking, rational beings, especially
alive
, was as close to unthinkable as it was possible to get. Grdoch biochemistry might be identical to that of humans, but their minds might be so alien, might work in such radically different ways, that true communication with them would forever be impossible.

From the sound of things, the various policy-making groups back on Earth were still divided on how to relate to the Grdoch. Geneva had initiated a treaty with them after they’d attacked Vulcan the first time, though it wasn’t entirely clear that they’d known about the aliens’ dietary habits. And MILCOM, it seemed, couldn’t quite bring itself to rejecting the possibility of an alliance entirely.
“Use your own discretion.”

Well, none of them had ever seen those things
eat
.

“All fighters away,” CAG Fletcher said in Gray’s mind. “They are boosting for Vulcan as dictated by the Opplan Alfa.”

“Very well,” Gray said over the in-head command link. “Captain Gutierrez, you may commence acceleration. Alert the rest of the task force, please.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral.”

And the remaining twenty-two ships of Task Force Eridani began to accelerate in-system.

VFA-96, Black Demons

Vulcan Space

1423 hours, TFT

“Black Demons, Demon One!” Commander Mackey’s voice rasped out. “Look sharp! We’re coming up on the objective . . . ten million kilometers.”

Lieutenant Megan Connor was well aware of that fact. The bizarrely warped and twisted view of the surrounding universe created by near-
c
flight had relaxed into normalcy as her fighter’s velocity dropped, and the target planet was dead ahead, growing rapidly from a blue-hued star to a tiny crescent. Magnified, the image was cloud-wreathed over vast stretches of ocean, and achingly reminiscent of home.

Red icons scattered across her view ahead marked potentially hostile warships. Two large ones tagged as unknowns were likely Grdoch vessels, but there were several smaller ones that her warbook was identifying as known designs—a Francesco-class light cruiser . . . several Rommel-class destroyers . . . five Rhone-class frigates. They were approaching in-system from the direction of the system’s third planet, half an AU out and well off to port.