BooksBarbecue
Back Excession
Chapters (108)
  1. About the Author
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. 1 - Outside Context Problem
  6. I
  7. II
  8. III
  9. IV
  10. V
  11. VI
  12. 2 - Not Invented Here
  13. I
  14. II
  15. III
  16. 3 - Uninvited Guests
  17. I
  18. II
  19. III
  20. IV
  21. 4 - Dependency Principle
  22. I
  23. II
  24. III
  25. IV
  26. V
  27. 5 - Kiss The Blade
  28. I
  29. II
  30. III
  31. IV
  32. V
  33. VI
  34. 6 - Pittance
  35. I
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. 7 - Tier
  42. I
  43. II
  44. III
  45. IV
  46. 8 - Killing Time
  47. I
  48. II
  49. III
  50. IV
  51. V
  52. VI
  53. VII
  54. VIII
  55. 9 - Unacceptable Behaviour
  56. I
  57. II
  58. III
  59. IV
  60. V
  61. VI
  62. VII
  63. VIII
  64. IX
  65. X
  66. XI
  67. XII
  68. XIII
  69. XIV
  70. 10 - Heavy Messing
  71. I
  72. II
  73. III
  74. IV
  75. V
  76. VI
  77. VII
  78. VIII
  79. IX
  80. X
  81. XI
  82. XII
  83. XIII
  84. XIV
  85. XV
  86. 11 - Regarding Gravious
  87. I
  88. II
  89. III
  90. IV
  91. V
  92. VI
  93. VII
  94. VIII
  95. IX
  96. X
  97. XI
  98. XII
  99. XIII
  100. XIV
  101. 12 - Faring Well
  102. I
  103. II
  104. III
  105. IV
  106. V
  107. VI
  108. Epilogue

It thought. It searched. It could find no further mention of its twin.

It looked about itself, gauging its drift, and searching.

It was drifting at about two-eighty klicks a second, almost directly away from the Esperi system. In front of it - it focused all its damaged sensory capacity to peer ahead - nothing; it didn’t appear to be aimed at anything.

Two-eighty klicks a second; that was somewhere just underneath the theoretical limit beyond which something of its mass would start to produce a relativistic trace on the surface of space-time, if one had perfect instrumentation. Now, was that a coincidence, or not? If not, it might have been slung out of the ship for some reason; Displaced, perhaps. It concentrated its senses backwards. No obvious point of origin, and nothing coming after it, either. Hint of something though.

The drone refocused, cursing its hopelessly degraded senses. Behind it, it found . . . gas, plasma, carbon. It widened the cone of its focus.

What it had discovered was an inflating shell of debris, drifting after it at a tenth of its speed. It ran a rewind of the debris shell’s expansion; it originated at a point forty klicks behind the position where it had first woken up, eighteen fifty-three milliseconds ago.

Which implied it had been drifting totally unconscious for nearly half a second. Scary.

It scanned the distant shell of expanding particles. They’d been hot. Messy. That was wreckage. Battle wreckage, even. The carbon and the ions could originally have been part of itself, or part of the ship, or even part of a human. A few molecules of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. No oxygen.

But all of it doing just 10% of its own velocity. Odd, that. As though it had somehow been prioritised out of a sudden appearance of matter. Again, as though it had been Displaced, perhaps.

The drone flicked part of its attention back inside, to the sealed cores in its mind substrate with their warning notices. Can’t put this off any longer, I suppose, it thought.

It interrogated the two cores. PAST, the first was labelled. The other one was simply called 2/2.

Uh-huh, it thought.

It opened the first core and found its memories.

II

II

Genar-Hofoen floated within the shower, buffeted from all sides by the streams of water. The fans sucking the water back out of the AG shower chamber sounded awfully loud this morning. Part of his brain told him he was running short of oxygen; he’d either have to leave the shower or grope for the air hose which was probably in the last place he’d feel for it. It was either that or open his eyes. It all seemed too much bother. He was quite comfortable where he was.

He waited to see what would give first.