overlook a couple of scraps of metal lying on the landing deck where you know damned well you parked your flitter. The pieces could be a very important part of your flitter’s magdrive train, but you tend to see the flitter’s absence, not the pieces’ presence.”
“Interesting analogy,” Vic said.
Kara reached out one slim hand, holding it above a contact plate on the table. “May I?”
“Of course.”
At her mental command, a patch of skin centered on the heel of her palm hardened into a peripheral contact plate, and she brought it down onto the black translucence of the table’s receiver pad. She felt the thrill of a solid link, gave a second command, and waited as her download trickled through to the AI controlling this compartment’s electronics.
There was a flicker in the air above the table, and then the image coalesced, showing the surface of Core D9837, and the ragged, double-beamed spiral of the Great Annihilator in the sky. In several brief scenes and uneven leaps, she took him through a sketch of the battle, with special attention lavished on the huge, floating pyramid.
“I’m sure you’ve already seen this,” she told him.
“I was following the op realtime,” he told her. “Through the data you were relaying to Ops.” The bald words could not—quite—mask the emotion behind them. He’d been worried. Well, so had she.
“This pyramid thing,” she said, pointing at the holographic image. “It’s new. Or, at least, it’s something we haven’t run across before. I don’t remember seeing anything quite like this at Nova Aquila. It might be primarily a spacecraft design, but I had the impression it was just as comfortable on a planetary surface… or floating above it, rather.”
“We haven’t really seen how they fight on a planet,” Vic said, eyes narrowing as he considered the image. “In fact, I think our assumption has been all along that they tend to operate mostly in space.”
“Not entirely true,” Kara reminded him. “We’ve seen them entering and leaving stars.”
“Yes. And when they have that kind of technology, it makes you wonder what they could possibly want something as paltry as a planet for.”
“Raw materials, most likely,” Kara replied.
“Maybe.” He pointed into the image, indicating the distant black and silver towers. “Of course, if this architecture is theirs, it suggests they do still use planets for habitation.”
She shook her head. “I never got close to those, but my impression is they weren’t inhabited so much as used.”
“Ruins of some other race that used to live there?”
She frowned. “I don’t think so. Core D9837 is a rogue, remember. Its star, if it even ever had one, must have been swallowed up by a black hole a good many millions of years ago.” That, at least, was the prevailing theory of the planetologists aboard Gauss, who’d suggested that the barren world’s high velocity through the Core was the result of its being ejected when its star perished. “And the environment. Kuso! I don’t see how any organic life form could have ever lived in there. Organic molecules would break down…” She snapped her fingers. “Like that.”
“The current theory,” Vic said, “is that the Web’s creators evolved on the fringes of the Galactic Core, where the radiation levels weren’t so high. They moved into the Core to tap the more freely available energies in there, and along the way they learned how to download their minds into machine bodies.”
She shrugged. “Sounds plausible, I suppose.”
“Which leaves us still wondering what people who mine stars use planets for.”
“Kuso, Dad, we don’t know anything about them. These people don’t just mine stars. They herd them into great, gokking chorus lines and drop them into giant black holes! As far as I can tell, planets are nothing more than inconveniences to them.”
“It certainly seems unlikely that machines that live in space, if live is the right
“Interesting analogy,” Vic said.
Kara reached out one slim hand, holding it above a contact plate on the table. “May I?”
“Of course.”
At her mental command, a patch of skin centered on the heel of her palm hardened into a peripheral contact plate, and she brought it down onto the black translucence of the table’s receiver pad. She felt the thrill of a solid link, gave a second command, and waited as her download trickled through to the AI controlling this compartment’s electronics.
There was a flicker in the air above the table, and then the image coalesced, showing the surface of Core D9837, and the ragged, double-beamed spiral of the Great Annihilator in the sky. In several brief scenes and uneven leaps, she took him through a sketch of the battle, with special attention lavished on the huge, floating pyramid.
“I’m sure you’ve already seen this,” she told him.
“I was following the op realtime,” he told her. “Through the data you were relaying to Ops.” The bald words could not—quite—mask the emotion behind them. He’d been worried. Well, so had she.
“This pyramid thing,” she said, pointing at the holographic image. “It’s new. Or, at least, it’s something we haven’t run across before. I don’t remember seeing anything quite like this at Nova Aquila. It might be primarily a spacecraft design, but I had the impression it was just as comfortable on a planetary surface… or floating above it, rather.”
“We haven’t really seen how they fight on a planet,” Vic said, eyes narrowing as he considered the image. “In fact, I think our assumption has been all along that they tend to operate mostly in space.”
“Not entirely true,” Kara reminded him. “We’ve seen them entering and leaving stars.”
“Yes. And when they have that kind of technology, it makes you wonder what they could possibly want something as paltry as a planet for.”
“Raw materials, most likely,” Kara replied.
“Maybe.” He pointed into the image, indicating the distant black and silver towers. “Of course, if this architecture is theirs, it suggests they do still use planets for habitation.”
She shook her head. “I never got close to those, but my impression is they weren’t inhabited so much as used.”
“Ruins of some other race that used to live there?”
She frowned. “I don’t think so. Core D9837 is a rogue, remember. Its star, if it even ever had one, must have been swallowed up by a black hole a good many millions of years ago.” That, at least, was the prevailing theory of the planetologists aboard Gauss, who’d suggested that the barren world’s high velocity through the Core was the result of its being ejected when its star perished. “And the environment. Kuso! I don’t see how any organic life form could have ever lived in there. Organic molecules would break down…” She snapped her fingers. “Like that.”
“The current theory,” Vic said, “is that the Web’s creators evolved on the fringes of the Galactic Core, where the radiation levels weren’t so high. They moved into the Core to tap the more freely available energies in there, and along the way they learned how to download their minds into machine bodies.”
She shrugged. “Sounds plausible, I suppose.”
“Which leaves us still wondering what people who mine stars use planets for.”
“Kuso, Dad, we don’t know anything about them. These people don’t just mine stars. They herd them into great, gokking chorus lines and drop them into giant black holes! As far as I can tell, planets are nothing more than inconveniences to them.”
“It certainly seems unlikely that machines that live in space, if live is the right
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