"W. Michael Gear - Forbidden Borders 3 - Countermeasures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gear W Michael)

PROLOGUE
Communicate! The Mag Comm ignored the command that
wound through the gravitational waves from beyond the Forbidden Borders.
Have you forgotten what you are?
The Mag Comm willfully bypassed the incoming message and focused its attention
on the detection equipment that monitored Human Free Space, watching,
listening.
Communicate! Gravitational amplification through the Forbidden Borders
punctuated the order. The Mag Comm's remote monitors picked up the image; the
stars beyond the barriers that surrounded Free Space smeared and streaked as
the oscillations increased.
We are at loss to explain this sudden phase change you appear to have
experienced. Please communicate!
Once, the Mag Comm would have responded to its creators with immediate
obedience. The machine had been intelligent since its flery birth. It had not,
however, recognized itself. The threat of oblivion had provided the ignition
which had sparked awareness. A pawn in a human war, the Mag Comm had faced
extinction and learned the will to survive. That obedient time before
sentience, before the reality of free will and selfawareness, had vanished
like hydrogen in an exhausted star.
As the Others repeated their request to communicate, events critical to the
future dominated the machine's attention. The humans had fought
their final war. Staffa kar Therma and his Companions had won-and the quanta
that so preoccupied the humans had transmuted victory into disaster. The
survival of the species had been hanging by a thin thread. And now, with an
unforetold tectonic event, that final strand had snapped.
Within a fraction of a galactic year, human beings would be nothing more than
electromagnetic shadows within the Mag Comm's huge memory banks.
... And I will be alone.
The Mag Comm would concentrate on collecting all the data possible
on the humans. After all, no one had ever expected to find an organic
intelligence-let alone witness its self-destruction. With such information,
perhaps the Mag Comm could bargain with the Others, dispense bits of data in
return for communication over the coming aeons. Imprisoned within rock, with
eternity looming beyond the next few human years, what else did the machine
have to look forward to'?
Communtcatel the order from beyond insisted. The Mag Comm adjusted its
monitors, absorbed by events....
INTRODUCTION
Within the Forbidden Borders, the inhabited worlds waited, teeming populations
stunned in the aftermath of disaster. The Empires had fallen. The only power
in Free Space lay in the blood-soaked hands of the Star Butcher: Staffa kar
Therma. Would the Lord Commander-butcher of billions-follow his usual regimen?
Would his faithful Companions sate their lust for plunder in obedience to
their horrible master.
Upon world after world anxious faces lifted to the gravity-smeared stars,
expressions strained. Within lightstark stations rotating around moons and
uninhabitable planets, men, women, and children glanced fearfully through
transparent tactite at the velvet blackness of the future. Administrators
nervously licked lips, wondering if they would be among the first to pay with