Dusts of Avalon - Beastwithin.org

“I have no idea. But let's not blow that up before we know what the hell is it.”“Sir—”“If this is some sort of a new Planner ploy, then we need to investigate it fully.Downgrade to yellow.”“As you say, sir.”“And get me Saladin's commander on horn — I need someone to get us beerrecon.”“Yes, sir. Uh… Mannerheim dropping out of hyperdrive, sir”, Batmann said asa new contact appeared on the screen.“Or make that Mannerheim's commander. We might need the FTL drive.”“Yes, sir.”Pyrehill wated the low-resolution photos of the alien cra in the horizonas Batmann linked up with the newly arrived frigate. e blurry spe that hadappeared out of nowhere looked strangely geometric for a Planner cra, and fartoo reflective. If they had tried to get their aention, they had succeeded.e orum was Unconcerned.Something out of ordinary had happened. ey were aware of the anomalythat had appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the blind spot of the human scannernetwork.It required no action. While of artificial nature, and obviously not humanorigin, this anomaly was an indication of deliberate action, and as an indicationof deliberate action, it was life. And all life was defenceless in face of the Logicof the Planners.An involvement of two species in mutual defence was a minor obstacle. Knowinghuman nature, they might annihilate the intruder. Either way, the orumdeduced that the unknown spacecra was of no consequence.III An Engineer SoarsFebruary 6, 2632, 16:48 UTC (11:48 EST)T unconquered: is was not a paperless office.Dr. Paul Grovepath was all for paperless workflow. In his field, he had to seea lot of blueprints and diagrams, and it was fairly obvious that there just wasn'tsu thing as “too big”. Only biologists could comfortably zoom into dead trees, heused to say to friends, not spaceship engineers. In days, the blond-haired, skinny