Warstrider: Rebellion by Ian Douglas
Author:Ian Douglas [Douglas, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Colonization, Galactic Empire, Military, Space Fleet, Space Marine
Amazon: B00M6UB5J2
Publisher: War Planet Press
Published: 2014-07-26T12:00:00+00:00
Chapter 19
We can imagine hierarchies of Xenophobe awareness, then, with thousands of separate cells networked together like so many unintelligent computers into a low-level kind of consciousness. We know that vast Xeno communities exist far below the surfaces of worlds they've infested. Perhaps these, with millions or hundreds of millions of interconnected cells, have more powerful, more intelligent minds, minds of human or even superhuman scope and power. Finally, when all of the Xenophobe communities of a world join together in the contemplative stage, we can imagine that they enter a new and higher state of consciousness, the "One," the World Mind we encountered within the depths of Alya B-V.
What, I wonder, do such minds dream of?
—from a report given before the
Hegemony Council on Space Exploration
Devis Cameron
C.E. 2542
Katya tumbled from her prison in a wet gush of tarry liquid. The darkness surrounding her was still absolute, a primal night unrelieved by the slightest trace of illumination. She could sense the space surrounding her, though, a hot and steaming void. She could hear things—drippings, rustlings, unnameable slitherings and squishing sounds—that sounded close and helped describe the unseen emptiness around her.
There was atmosphere here, at least. She'd wondered about that during the descent, since the Xenophobes' underground highways weren't literal tunnels, and their deep caverns didn't necessarily open to the outside air. Her mask wouldn't have been able to handle vacuum. She'd imagined, though, that the air underground would be the same mix as on the surface, or else it might be the gaseous product of some Xeno-related chemical reaction. Either way, she wouldn't be able to breathe it. She pressed her fingertips against her mask, checking the pressure seal.
Secure. Next, she tried exploring this new prison by touch. Her outstretched right hand met soft and yielding surfaces in one direction, empty space in another. The floor was soft too, as though she stood on small and somewhat lumpy cushions beneath a few centimeters of some liquid with the consistency of thick syrup. Reaching above her head she could not feel a ceiling, but there was an impression—possibly psychosomatic, perhaps the workings of some latent human sense beyond the normal five—of a vast and crushing weight balanced precariously above her head.
This was worse, far worse than the Alyan vault where Dev had encountered the Xeno World Mind, for there'd been other people there, the troops of Cameron's Commandos who'd followed Dev into the bowls of the planet, and there'd been light from Dev's Scoutstrider and there'd been Dev himself, emerging from the wet cocoon of Xeno cells that had pinned him temporarily against the living wall of the cavern. She knew she was in a similar cavern far below Eridu's surface.
Grimly, she wrestled again with her claustrophobia. It had receded for a time during her descent, but it reemerged now, plucking at her tautly strung nerves, a devil's music of heart-thumping terror throbbing at the ragged edge of sanity itself.
The heat made it infinitely worse. Where it touched bare skin, the air was stiflingly hot, hotter by far than the equatorial jungle west of Babel.
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