Dragonstar Destiny

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A WAILING SOUND
pierced Kii’s cold-sleep dreams.

Servomechanisms were triggered and slowly brought him to consciousness. The sound of the klaxon initially seemed distant, both in time and space, but gradually its urgent sound became more real, more immediate, and his mind began to clear, to grasp the significance of its message.

It is time!
thought Kii as he fought against the effects of the eons-long hibernation.

Slowly the remote tensors were warming him, reviving him.
How long have I slept?
Soon, tactile sensation would be returning to his limbs, his claws, and he attempted to move in the chamber before he was able. He could not stop himself from pressing against the webbed restraints. There was an anxiety, an excitement, boiling in him.

The Returning! A new era in the making!

Summoning up his resolve, he initiated the age-old exercise of
zir
—deep,
steady breathing, dilating his nostrils, keeping his jaws clamped shut. He did this to rid his mind of erratic thoughts, of impulsive, nonproductive thinking. There was nothing to do but wait until the automatic mechanisms which monitored his life-forces were satisfied with stable readings. Only then would the machines free him from his self-imposed prison.

Finally the alarm lapsed into silence. The webbing dissolved, releasing Kii from his coffin-like enclosure. Still, he moved cautiously, because he was very old, very weak In contrast to the electric, scintillant activity of his mind, Kii’s body responded with a glacial slowness. Kii stepped down and carefully balanced himself on his thick legs. It was difficult to fight off the dizziness, and he knew that he would require an “assistor”—a motorized exoskeleton—to move about the lab-cell.

Kii sighed and lashed his tongue in the air as he climbed into the assistor, feeling its sensors come to life and begin monitoring his kinetic movements and responses. Each time he moved, the power-assisted exoskeleton would move with him, effectively amplifying his strength and ease of mobility. The amplification was an odd sensation, and required a period of adjustment. Kii took several experimental steps around the cell, anxious to inspect his instruments, but knowing that he must not injure himself.

The thought suddenly struck him. that on the entire planet, only Kii was conscious, awake, sentient. It was an oddly frightening proposition to think that the fate of your whole species most likely would depend upon what you did in the next several time units. But Kii did not like to think in such dramatic terms. More simply, he had a few simple tasks to perform. He was no one special, really. His genotype had selected him to be the one awakened. When all was confirmed, he would awaken the others.

That had been the plan.

With confidence, he exited the cryogenic chamber, entering a featureless corridor comprised of dull metallic walls and ceiling. The floor was carpeted in a thick, fibrous synthetic which afforded a firm, yet comfortable purchase for Kii’s splayed, clawed feet. Looking down the corridor, Kii calmly observed that it continued to the convergence point of perspective. It appeared to be endless, and after a fashion, it was indeed.

As Kii moved along the metallic passage, he contemplated his location in the vast crisscrossing network of corridors, shafts, and cells. The entire planet had been artificially enclosed, burrowed, and re-formed to assume the shape and function of a gigantic hive. It was an impossibly large data bank, a repository, a library
world.
Each hive-cell resembled a separate neuron, each corridor the connecting nerve-pathways, forming a planetary
gestalt
—a
quiescent, nonorganic brain brimming over with data and potential.

With each step Kii gained confidence in his use of the assistor. Although countless eras may have passed, subjectively he was unaware of the occurrence. The cold-sleep had kept him in a timeless void, and he wondered if death was any different from that seemingly endless state. But there would be time enough for death, he thought. Right now, he was about the business of life!

New
life, thought Kii. For we are the creators, the progenitors, and once again our greatest dreams are reaching fruition!

The thought filled him with a gladness and a pride that warmed his very bones. Surely there was no better genotype than his ... to be a Planner was to be the most noble of your species!

With renewed confidence, he moved quickly down the corridor, letting the powered exoskeleton do all the work. Kii passed through the featureless maze of interconnecting corridors as though following the demands of an ancient instinct. He arrived at the entrance to another lab-cell, placed his foreclaw against the entry grid, and watched the field dissipate, allowing him to pass through.

He moved quickly to a interface console and plugged himself into the semiorganic computer by means of a bioneered coupling on the back of his neck, just below his brain stem. There was an icy tingle beside his skull as the interface was activated, and suddenly Kii was informed of all that had transpired.

Initially he was shocked to discover how much time had passed: so many millions of time units! Could it be possible that there had been so many failures? Apparently. Otherwise he and the rest of the Planners would not have slept for such a long time.

Nevertheless, he thought with a great, pleasant expansion of his nostrils, the signal had been received and the response had been triggered. A Returning! Proof again that the plan was as inexorable as the great turning wheels of the planets about their suns.

His warm thoughts were abruptly interrupted by new data.

Impossible!
thought Kii. And yet the information which flowed into him was irrefutable. Remote servos were starting up—mechanisms which were somehow
beyond
the interface’s sphere of control. Kii pinpointed the location of the renegade devices and was shocked to discover that an entire cold-sleep chamber was being warmed.

This should not be happening, he thought, as he videoed the relevant lab-cell.

The scene filled his mind like a movie screen. He watched an entire wall of cryogenic tanks begin to open. The webbing in all of them was starting to dissolve, revealing the now-awakening occupants.

But this was not part of the plan! It was far too early to awaken the others, and Kii could not understand what could have gone wrong or why this was happening.

There was nothing to do but continue to watch the chamber by means of the remote video. The last of the webbing dissolved from the tanks in the forefront of the scene, and Kii saw with a growing horror what was being awakened.

Turning away from the console, he attempted to secure the control-cell. Interfacing with the emergency defense net, Kii felt blocked at every level, stymied. Another force had tampered with the network—there could be no other plausible explanation. Fighting a wave of panic and sense of impending failure, he continued to search the network for a solution, a means of breaking through the patches and bridges which had been jimmied into the system.

Suddenly behind him there was the sound of two energy fields in flux—the air crackled and sizzled.

Turning, Kii saw the barrier-field to his cell boil away in the final splash of a disruptor weapon. A thin cloak of vapor hung within the threshold of the entrance until it was penetrated by a large
,
powerfully built figure. Muscles rippled beneath its scaly hide as it stepped forward to regard Kii with flat, pale yellow eyes.

“Do not move,” said the Mover.

“How did you do this?” asked Kii. “Why? What do you want?”

The Mover also wore an assistor, although this one was outfitted with combat options. Weapons bristled from gauntlets which braced each forelimb. The Mover advanced and slapped Kii across his lower jaw. The pain spread like white heat up the side of his skull.

“Silence!’” said the Mover. More of his genotype poured into the control-cell, all looking as formidable as the first. “We were planted to oversee your Awakening. We must contact our Brethren of this New Time for orders.”

Kii gestured his assent and understanding. There was a numbness in his jaw now, and he realized that the Mover could have killed him just as easily. There was nothing to do but cooperate ... for the moment at least.

Kii would wait until the ship returned. By then, he was certain that he would be true to his genotype ... that he would have a new plan.