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

Despair!

It set the initial routines under way all the same - what else could it do? - and thought on.

It had a few million particles of anti-matter stored, it had some maniple-field capability left (somewhere between finger- and arm-strength, but down-scalable to the point of being able to work at the micrometer scale, and capable of slicing molecular bonds; it would need both capabilities when it came to building the prototype self-repairer constructs), it possessed two hundred and forty one-millimetre-long nanomissiles, also AM tipped, it could still put up a small mirror field about it, and it had its laser, which was not far off maximum potential. Plus it still had the thimbleful of mush that had been the final-resort back-up biochemical brain.

... Which might no longer be able to support thought, but could still inspire it . . .

Well, it was one way to use the nasty gooey mess. Sisela Ytheleus 1/2 started to fashion a shielded reaction chamber and began working out both how best to bring the anti-matter and the cellular gunge together to provide itself with the most reaction mass and maximum thrust and how to direct the resulting exhaust plume so as to minimise the chances of attracting attention.

Accelerating into the stars using a wasted brain; it had its amusing side, it supposed. It set those routines in motion too and - with the equivalent of a long sigh and the taking off of a jacket and the rolling up of sleeves - returned its attention to the self-repairer-building problem.

At that instant a skein wave passed around and through it; a sharp, purposeful ripple in space-time.

It stopped thinking for a nanosecond.

A few things produced such waves. Several were natural; collapsing stellar cores, for example. But this wave was compressed, tightly folded; not the massive, swell-long surge created when a star contracted into a black hole.

This wave was not natural; it had been made. It was a signal. Or it was part of a sense.

The drone Sisela Ytheleus 1/2 was helplessly aware of its body, the few kilos of mass it represented, resonating; producing an echoing signal that would transmit back along the radius of that expanding circular disturbance in the skein to whatever instrument had produced the pulse in the first place.

It felt . . . not despair. It felt sick.

It waited.

The reaction was not long in coming; a delicate, fanning, probing cluster of maser filaments, rods of energy seeming to converge almost at infinity, some distance off to one side from where it had guessed the artifact was, three hundred thousand or so kilometres away . . .

The drone tried to shield itself from the signals, but they overcame it. It started to shut down certain systems which might conceivably be corrupted by an attack through the maser signal itself, though the characteristics of the beam had not looked particularly sophisticated. Then suddenly the beam shut off.