Warstrider: Battlemind by Ian Douglas

Author:Ian Douglas [Douglas, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Space Fleet, Space Opera, Military, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Amazon: B00NO6GOGG
Publisher: War Planet Press
Published: 2014-10-19T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Utter resolve is necessary when you are fighting an enemy. In order to beat him you must control the situation, regardless of the method you use. If you do not control the enemy, the enemy will control you.

— "Fire Scroll"

The Book of the Five Spheres

MIYAMOTO MUSASHI

seventeenth century B.C.E.

"The Gr'tak don't possess the same kind of intelligence humans do," Taki said. "Or the DalRiss, for that matter, or even the Naga. Some of us are beginning to think that intelligence may be common in the universe, but no two specific types of intelligence are quite the same."

Dev's visual representation of himself nodded. "Certainly, we've found enough differences in the intelligent species we've already studied to support such an idea."

It was two weeks since their initial contact with the Gr'tak. They were meeting in Cascadia . . . or, rather, in a virtual-world Cascadia, a shared illusion generated within the local Net back on New America. The familiar Alessandro-Hagan estate's conversation room had been altered with the addition of a conference table. A life-size image of a Gr'tak floated silently above the table's holoprojector, adding a surreal touch, complete with a pair of hovering, darting dragonfly creatures. Lessers, they were called, according to the lexicon of Gr'tak terminology still being hammered out. Present at the table were Dev, Daren, and Taki, of course, as well as Katya Alessandro and Vic Hagan. At Vic's suggestion, Kara was also present, turning the assembly into a family gathering . . . which left Dev feeling just a bit the outsider. He accepted that, however, since his disembodied state generally left him an outsider no matter where he was.

Also present, and also evidently feeling like outsiders, were two others who'd attended the ViRconference at Katya's suggestion. One was Kazuhiro Mishima, tall, elegantly dressed in formal red diplomatic robes, assigned by the Imperial government as the senior ambassador to the Confederation. The other was Dr. Frances Gresham, of the Confederation Senate Science Council. In another two hours, Katya and Vic were scheduled to present a full report to the Science Council, and they were using this opportunity to go over what Dev, Daren, and Taki had witnessed at High Frontier and to distill some of what they'd learned.

Gresham looked puzzled. "I'm not sure I understand. I mean, you're intelligent or you're not, right?"

"It's not that simple, Doctor," Daren told her. "For one thing, there are at least seventy different aspects of thought, memory, knowledge, and awareness that we've been able to categorize so far as distinct subsets of what we call sapience. Most authorities can't even agree on the exact number, but it is large."

"That's right," Taki added. "Some people have a talent in, oh, let's say, math. They can do complex calculations in their heads, retain long chains of numbers and manipulate them without having to write them down, even think in terms of equations and numeric series, without putting the thoughts into words. You follow?"

Kara tossed Daren a wry grin. "Yeah. My brother over there's like that.

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