Bright Light
There’s no more time…There’s always more time…Trevor Gray has been stripped of his command of the starship America, and is unsure what to do with his life. Having dedicated so much of himself to the service, he knew following the super-AI Konstantin’s advice could have severe consequences. He just never thought he would be out of the fight.Because that’s what Earth is in: a fight against a sinister alien force so technologically advanced that there seems little hope. That’s why he disobeyed his orders in the first place – to figure out a way to stop them. But now he’s beached.Which is just what Konstantin wanted.For the super-AI has a plan: connect Gray with the Pan-Europeans, and set him on a course to the remote star Deneb. There, he is to make contact with a mysterious alien civilization using the new artificial intelligence Bright Light, and maybe—if they can make it in time—prevent humanity from being wiped from the universe.
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HarperVoyager
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © William H. Keith, Jr. 2018
Cover illustration © Gregory Bridges
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
William H. Keith, Jr. asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008121129
Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008121136
Version: 2018-10-24
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Epilogue
Keep Reading â¦
By Ian Douglas
About the Publisher
The Consciousness had known of Earth and of the starfaring civilization centered there for a long time. Indeed, given that it spanned vast gulfs of time as well as space, it was as if it had always known.
In the heart of the teeming sphere of 10 million ancient suns known to the humans as Omega Centauri, at the central rosette of six massive black holes orbiting their common center in a patently artificial arrangement, the Consciousness brooded on the intelligent beings it had found in this new, painfully young universe.
Intelligent was such a relative concept.
This was bolstered by the fact that the Consciousness had ⦠tasted a number of them, sampling the minute ships and other structures within this volume of space.
Most of the minds it had sampled were of pathetically slow and limited capabilities. A fewâa very fewâwere of higher orders of intelligence, though none came close to the Consciousness in terms of depth or scope of Mind.
Methodically, the Consciousness consumed those worth the effort.
The rest it deleted.
And with a slowly increasing vigor, it explored more deeply into this corner of the new universe. It had identified a sullen red ember of a star, called Kapteynâs Star by the minds it had assimilated, with a world engineered by beings uploaded into digital form, extremely ancient beings called the Baondyeddi, the Adjugredudhra, and the Groth Hoj. These species, parts of a corporate polity referred to by various sources as the Shâdaar, were in hiding from some unknown threat ⦠quite possibly from the Consciousness itself, though the digital refugees didnât seem to know exactly what it was they feared.
Despite their attempts to make themselves undetectableâincluding the slowing of their awareness of time down to seconds on each century, the Consciousness had found them ⦠and it had devoured them, absorbing trillions of minds into its own teeming hive, giving them order and a sense of purpose that had been lacking before.
And in the process it learned of the Nâgai Cluster ⦠and of the human presence much closer at hand.
And on the human homeworld, just twelve light years distant from Kapteynâs Star, the watching beings of that planet anticipated the arrival of the Consciousness over Earth with an increasing and existential dread.
30 January 2426
Battery Park
New York City
1545 hours, EST
âGet the hell out of my head!â
âI submit that we will have to talk at some point,â the voice in his head told him. It sounded faintly amused.
Trevor Gray, formerly of the USNA Navy, scowled. âWhy?â he replied, blunt and challenging. âDamn it, Konstantin, youâve wrecked my life. You know that, donât you?â
âIt was necessary for you to leave naval service. Vital, in fact.â
âBullshit. You no longer own me. And I donât think we have a thing to say to one another.â
