Descend- Seeing Stars, Sean Oswald [best e books to read .txt] 📗

nearly a third of the fleet. Of course, that left more than six hundred thousand ships left around the planet. They were in the eye of the storm so to speak and charting pathways out of the battlefield. There was still a prize to be claimed on the planet below.

      The Forlorn would absorb the remaining A’snkarnt technology and enhance themselves. But more important this was the last bastion of the AI known as Coreframe. It would make the Forlorn perfect. They would finally achieve the complete blending of the organic and the technological. Then they could spread out across the stars till all the universe was a reflection of their singular purpose.

      No further resistance was to be found on the planet below, but the Coreframe had somehow been downloaded. It was moving around the planet in ways that they didn’t understand. Such a powerful AI should have been static, but again their ancient enemy defied the inevitably of the Forlorn as no others had.

      Troops were being sent down and the planet scanned. The Overminds were in agreement but then new information appeared. Some of their ships on the outskirts of the battlefield had just been attacked. They were obliterated without passing on the identity of their attackers, but it was clear that there was at least some level of A’snkarnt technology being used.

      This would never do. It would take all of the remaining Overminds to integrate Coreframe into the Forlorn. This new threat couldn’t be disregarded. In an instant the four minds agreed, as they always did and dispatched thirty-thousand ships to deal with the threat. It was five percent of their remaining strength and the calculations they ran in an instant estimated the force to be overkill but there was no use in taking a risk.

      Besides, that was the most ships that they could safely navigate through the tears in space, at least if they wanted to do so quickly. Then reports came back as the ships were arriving. Something had to be wrong.

      There was only one ship present. It bore similarities to the Tamoori, a world which had been recently integrated. Their ship designs were excellent and soon would be used to modify future Forlorn ships. Their organic forms would become new Forlorn, although there was something odd about them that was delaying integration.

      The had small amounts of a strange energy which their people called PSI. It didn’t’ originate with them, but it defied any attempts by the Forlorn to control it. The only means they had learned of to store it was helite crystals possessed by the Tamoori themselves and those were rare. It would bear more study, but what was interesting now was that one of these vessels should be attacking Forlorn battleships.

      Nothing in their prior encounters suggested that such a ship could have survived beyond a few seconds of battle with one of the large Forlorn ships. There were also indications that this ship was different. It was made of an as of yet uncatalogued metal and showed signs of having A’snkarnt technology built into it.

      But worse there were other strange readings. Things connected to the limited data they had received from the probe that Caj Decius had sent back. It was something to do with another race that the deceased Overmind had deemed to be pure chaos. Such a thing could not exist. Progress was good, but change was bad, whimsical and the enemy of the order which the Forlorn represented.

      In an instant the decision was made that no matter how fascinating this ship might be it was not worth the risk. It must be obliterated. So as one several thousand battleships and their support ships fired. The green energy of Forlorn weaponry lit up the darkness of space and …

      Something happened, but they couldn’t sense what. A temporal anomaly occurred. Then a bomb ignited in the midst of their ships. Reality itself was warped. The ships had been so tightly packed together that more than half of them were destroyed.

      Their hulls became ice, or their drones lost connection with the shared mind, or one ship became a center of gravity that sucked in all the ships around it. The myriad of destructive forces unleashed made no sense. It wasn’t possible for such weapons to all exist in one bomb, but yet that is what their scans were telling them.

      The ship they had been sent to destroy was gone and it had just wiped-out thousands of Forlorn vessels. That could not be tolerated. This planet would be guarded by a thousand ships. For now, though, the integration of the treasures it held would have to be put on hold. It wasn’t safe to feast while an enemy such as this still existed.

_______________________________________

      Far beneath the fleet covering their planet Coreframe was on the move. The reality of personal movement, not as it controlled some ship or robot but with a body of its own, was something new.

      Except this body wasn’t really its own and it wasn’t fully controlled. Mostly, but not quite. The mind of the infant, Higen remained. It defied all logic but still the tiny human kept fighting. The body was matured now. Pushed forward by Coreframe using the data it had gathered from D’varn. The scans of Higen’s father served as an excellent template.

      But every time that Coreframe thought he had complete control, he would hear a tiny scream of defiance. The human mind was undeveloped but still it fought back. Most annoying was his insistence that his mother and father would save him. That unshakeable faith Higen held in those two beings defied all logic. Speaking to the little mind was useless, but still Coreframe tried, perhaps that was a failure of logic too.

      “Just fade away. It won’t hurt. You can’t withstand me