The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus by Brian Herbert Read Free Book Online Page B

solve the conundrum that had presented itself to him suddenly.
    Unlike Humans, Mutatis never traveled for leisure. They always had some important purpose in mind … usually military, political, or economic. In memory, Thinker recalled the bodily movements of the Human impostors. Remnants of their true identities could be seen in every step they took.
    They were Mutati soldiers, led by an officer.
    This worried Thinker, and he wondered if word had gotten out about the machine operations here. Down on the surface of the volcanic planet, in a region not visible from the orbital ring, the machines were secretly building a military force of their own, a collection of patched-together fighting robots. One day he would use them to prove that his sentient machines had value, that they should not have been discarded.
    Were the Mutatis here to spy on that operation? Or had they come for another reason?

Chapter Seven
    Our entire galaxy is in motion. The Scienscroll tells us this. But where is it going?
    —Master Noah of the Guardians
    At CorpOne headquarters on Canopa, Noah Watanabe had been shocked to see soldiers in green-and-brown Guardian uniforms, firing puissant rifles and setting off booming explosions. He came to realize that they were impersonating his own environmental activists, but there was no time to determine the reason. Instead, he’d led his small entourage to the rooftop of the main building, where they ran toward a dark blue, box-shaped aircraft.
    From the days when he had worked there, Noah knew the layout of the complex, and the main building had not changed much in fifteen years. Here and there, doorways were marked differently, but the corridors and lifts remained the same, and it was unchanged on the roof. The aircraft, one of the grid-planes kept on the premises for Prince Watanabe and his top officers, was familiar to Noah, for this was a technology so successful that it had not been significantly altered in nearly a century. The onboard semi-automatic systems were relatively simple to operate, and many people knew how to handle them from an early age.
    Noah and his men leaped aboard, and his adjutant Subi Danvar squeezed into the cockpit. Using voice commands and pressure pads, the rotund Danvar activated the takeoff sequence. Red and blue lights flashed across the instrument panel.
    The vessel extended four short wings and lifted off. Within moments it engaged the multi-altitude electronic grid system that was part of a planet-wide transportation network. Through the open doorway of the cockpit just forward of Noah’s seat, he saw automatic systems begin to kick in, as parallel yellow and blue lines on an instrument panel screen merged into each other, and became green.
    Danvar activated touch pads beneath the screen, then reached down for something in the flight bag beside his chair. A scar on the back of his right hand marked where doctors had attached cloned knuckles and fingers, after he lost them in a grid plane crash. Noah had his own moral objections to cloned Human body parts, but he’d never tried to force his views on other people.
    He felt a characteristic gentle bump as they locked into the grid, but this was followed moments later by a disturbingly sharp jolt. The screen flashed angry orange letters: TAIL SECTION DAMAGED BY PROJECTILE.
    Before Noah could react, the screen flashed again, this time in yellow: BACKUP SYSTEMS ENGAGED.
    The craft kept going with hardly a variation in its flight characteristics, and presently Noah felt a reassuring smooth sensation as the grid-plane accelerated to the standard speed of three hundred kilometers per hour.
    “Permission to seal the cockpit,” Danvar said. “I need to concentrate on the instruments.”
    “Do it,” Noah responded. Almost before permission was granted, the pilot slid the cockpit door shut, placing a white alloy barrier between them.
    Through a porthole Noah could see that they were leaving the Valley of the Princes behind, a