Beyond the Light Horizon

by Ken MacLeod

Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Alien Invasion; Colonization

Synopsis

MacLeod's final book in the Lightspeed trilogy is nothing short of celestial. . .

The Fermi have departed from the rocky worlds, but they still haunt the gas giants. Their long-term intentions remain unknown. Hurled into the past by a time-slip, John Grant and his onboard AI navigate the long way back. They return to the present in a distant system, where they find Terre Nouveau, a human settlement already two hundred years old. Grant’s ship takes this astounding news to the far-roving Station, where Nayak has found new problems and a new lover. As the Station explores Terre Nouveau’s system, they encounter intelligent species far older than humanity, who are just as perplexed about the origins and intentions of the Fermi—a cosmic network of alien minds—as they are.

On Apis, rogue agent Marcus Owen rallies the native intelligent life against the human settlers, and passes on a warning from the Fermi: the humans must stop encroaching—or else. Myles and Marie take Owen’s warnings seriously. Other settlers are not convinced, and conflict erupts.

Owen is sent on a new mission, to Terre Nouveau’s colorful and verdant sister planet, where he finds that his arrival, and humanity’s, has been awaited longer than he expects.

As Earth’s empires—and other contenders—jostle for advantage around Terre Nouveau, John Grant works hard to expand his own business empire, in unexpected directions. But no one is prepared for how far the Fermi are willing to go—or for the unfolding of an audacious plan, millennia in the making, that reaches beyond the light horizon.

Release date: June 25, 2024

Publisher: Pyr

Print pages: 336

Sample

CHAPTER ONEMeteor Night

Apis, 1991, Wednesday 25 March 2071 according to Grant’s calendar

John Grant looked back from the door of the tractor unit. The forest was dark, the slope steep, the rapids in the ravine loud. The crowd he was leaving behind were well kitted out for wilderness survival, but perplexed and anxious.

‘Get them away,’ he told the young woman who stood looking up at him. ‘And make sure they look away from the flash. Tell them to cover the children’s ears. I’ll be going in ten minutes. OK?’

‘OK,’ she said. She turned away and with shouts and gestures urged the hundred or so people in her community up the hillside. Within a few minutes they were out of sight among the trees.

Grant swung into the cab, clunked the door shut behind him and strapped in. He was leaving these people in the past. He had promised to come back for them if he could find a way, but he knew he wouldn’t. On these same wooded hills their descendants − up ahead in the future, if it was the same future − awaited his return.

‘What the hell do I do now?’ he said.

He was asking himself, but it was Iskander who answered.

‘Go back to Earth,’ said the AI.

Grant was startled. ‘Forgot you were here.’

Of course Iskander was here − in his phone and glasses − but in all his thousand or so journeys back and forth between Earth and Apis, he’d never had to consult it. The navigation app had done all the work.

‘I spoke to remind you of my presence and availability,’ Iskander said. ‘This is not a situation where you want to feel alone.’

‘Thanks,’ Grant said. He spun the navigation app and set a course. He took a deep breath. ‘Well, let’s do it. No time like the present.’

‘You hope,’ said Iskander.

The jump was on them before Grant could think of a retort.

From where no gods live, Grant fell into Earth orbit. He looked at a dark Australia in disbelief. Ahead, the great cities of Asia glowed dim; Moscow, barely a glimmer. The sun rose over the Earth’s shoulder. Radio silence. Nothing on any band but hiss. Paris was shrunken, London a smudge of smoke on a band of white cloud. The Arctic shone brighter and bigger than he remembered.

‘Still in the past,’ Grant said. ‘Damn.’

He turned from the ice cap’s glare and checked the dash. The cab had three hours’ air supply. Twenty minutes’ worth had been used: twice as much as on a normal return trip. This trip hadn’t been normal.

‘The year is 1760,’ Iskander told him.

North America drifted by below. He thought about the hundred and more people he’d left in the forest, minutes earlier. ‘Christ, is that the date back on Apis?’

‘It is now. So to speak. If you mean, was that the date when we left? No. It was

1991.’

Generations in that forest, waiting for John Grant to come back.

‘How did the app manage to place us in Earth orbit?’

‘Millisecond correction, too fast for you to notice.’

‘Hmm. Can it get us down?’

‘And change history?’

‘Why not?’ Grant toyed with the notion. ‘I could find . . . Ben Franklin or somebody, share some of your knowledge, and save humanity centuries of grief.’

‘You don’t need me to tell you the flaws in that plan.’

‘Indeed not.’ Grant sighed and reached for the controls. ‘Oh well, back to Apis and hope we find ourselves in 2071.’

‘I wouldn’t recommend it.’ Iskander paused, as if expecting an objection, and continued. ‘We’re already in history, as it happens. I’ve just found in my library the archives of the Chinese Imperial astronomer, and they record an anomalous meteor crossing the entire sky, south-east to north-west, over a few minutes on this very day. That’s no meteor. That was us. This is most reassuring, because it proves that we haven’t already changed history. We’re in the same timeline as when we left Earth today.’

‘What’s the relevance to not going back to Apis?’

‘It gives me a starting point from which to calculate a way back to the present. So to speak. These temporal slippages are individually unpredictable, but statistically inevitable. It’s a matter of reckoning the odds and rolling the dice.’

Grant glanced again at the dash. Two hours and ten minutes of air left. Was that California ahead? ‘Take your time.’

‘I have.’ The AI sounded smug, no doubt intentionally. ‘My best guess is that to get back to Earth or Apis at the time you left, you first need to go a thousand light years away, then take up to five other jumps on the way back.’

‘Your guess?’

‘I don’t do theories. I look at the available data on temporal anomalies resulting from FTL travel and an empirical suggestion drops out. To explain the reasoning would take longer than the journey, not to mention your air supply.’

‘As would explaining where this “available data on temporal anomalies” came from?’

‘Correct. Now, it needn’t be a pointless journey. There are areas on the Black Horizon map from which the Station was warned off, ...