Battlemind Read Free Page A

all spoke of a civilization mat thought in terms of millions of years, of eons rather man of decades.
    What kind of mind could think in such terms?
    And how could it be outthought and defeated?
    Kara was still trying to assimilate, to comprehend what mat kind of power meant. There was so much Man yet had to learn about me Web and about what the Web was trying to accomplish, both here at me Galactic Core and beyond, in the quieter backwaters of the Galaxy’s far-flung spiral arms. It was possible, though not certain yet, that the Web had created the huge spinning constructs called me Star-gates. Two were known, the first locked between me mutually orbiting white dwarfs that were all mat remained of the star called Nova Aquila, a second here at the Galactic Core.
    And mere were hints of others, she knew, scattered across me length and breadth of me entire Galaxy.
    But that’s Daren’s worry, she thought, thinking briefly of her half-brother back at Nova Aquila. And Dev’s.…
    The thought of Devis Cameron, of what he had become, sent a shudder through her consciousness. He, of all humanity, had been the first to see this place… in a way. She’d studied the records returned to human space by the probe he’d sent through the Nova Aquila Gate. But it was so hard to think of him as… human. She swiftly turned her thoughts to more immediate matters.
    The other warstriders continued their high-velocity sprint across the void, though there was no way to tell by looking at the stars or nebulae about them that they were moving at all. An hour ago, they’d entered a carefully mapped and plotted hyperdimensional pathway opening close by the blurred silver surface of the Nova Aquila Stargate; a timeless instant later, they’d emerged here, hurtling at high speed into the void of the Core. Though they possessed plasma thrusters for maneuvering, their primary drives grasped local magnetic fields, intensifying them, manipulating them to provide both velocity and changes in course.
    A world expanded from pinpoint to dusky sphere ahead. It was a barren and radiation-scorched place, utterly and forever lifeless—at least insofar as life could be defined as collections of organic chemicals. From space, the surface appeared to be a mottled patchwork of black rock and pale white-and-tan salts, its face peppered with craters and slashed time and time again by literally world-wracking collisions. As Kara drew closer, it became apparent that here, too, the machine rulers of this realm had stamped their imprint in the lifeless chaos of rock and desert. The surveys of this place, based on data gleaned by robotic probes, had designated the world as Core D9837.
    She hit the first traces of air, a thin haze of vapor about the burned-over world. There was scant atmosphere here—mostly carbon dioxide and a scattering of other heavy gases—but her entry speed was so high that her stricter struck flame as it stooped toward the world, scratching a white contrail across its deep blue-violet, light-tortured sky.
    To left and right, above and below, the other striders of the reconnaissance company hit atmosphere as well, but Kara was scarcely aware of them as she rode her strider down the long, flaming shaft of incandescence, sensing through her biolink with the machine’s AI the searing buffeting she was taking during the approach. Fire stood frozen in the sky overhead, looped in titanic streamers, arcs, delicate filigree traceries of energy, and in the spiraled magnificence of the Great Annihilator. Below, the face of a planet nearly as large as New America or Earth lay in rad-seared desolation, its surface curiously worked and reworked by processes unimaginable into vast, sprawling, and subtly alien geometries, shapes worked out in near-right angles, glowing strips of light, and convoluted mechanisms arranged in patterns not easily retained by merely human memory.
    The contrails of her comrades appeared, glowing gently, though the light here was