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"Abiding Truth didn’t have nify this for you Would you like it on the head-up display?"
Osman nodded "We could intervene, but how round assault," BB said The aerial view of Vada her attention from the red disc of the planet "We’d need direct contact with ‘Telcam’s fleet to coordinate it, and it would be awful y hard to keep ONI’s nanified that she could see actual units on the ground in Vada the roads and canals A series of explosions suddenly flared in one area, rippling the ground with shock waves, and then a huge flash of white light wiped out half the screen for a few seconds before it died away to leave so smoke and fla by the therht it down I think we can assume it’s a rebel vessel"
"Okay Stand by to put a cal in to Parangosky"
"Big upsurge in voice traffic, by the way The Arbiter’s al ies are real y getting those warnings out I fear that our e of surprise"
‘Telcah
But if he had, and he’d completely annihilated the Arbiter’s al ies, that wouldn’t have suited ONI’s purposes either Now every city was on the alert, waiting for its own uprising to start ONI had wanted a civil war but the last thing it wanted was for the Arbiter to crush it in days Os of artil ery fire on the i to be over far too soon, BB," Os to be hard to start over on this"
Hard? It’d e things entirely What Osht noas a stroke of luck
TEMPLE OF THE ABIDING TRUTH, ONTOM Phil ips stood staring at the cartouche with his hand held just above the surface as if he was testing a hotplate to see if it would burn hi stupid Any ideas for rol ing this back?"
BB considered the idea of a space-faring race so advanced that they could wipe out entire galaxies, and the possibility that one of those ered by an il iterate alien casual y fiddling with a panel No, they would have built in more fail-safes than that
Surely
"Not yet," BB said "But if this real y does unleash destruction, it won’t affect this location If the Halos are spread over huge distances, then this has to be a realaxy while they were actual y in it"
Surely … Phil ips kept running his hand over his beard, clearly agitated BB’s view of hi up under his chin "Real y? How about kamikaze? Suicide bombers? Self-destruct mechanisms?"
"I real y don’t think this is one of those"
"Great So I incinerate another galaxy Fine At least there’l be nobody left to coeance"
And this man … he’s my friend He told me so In another life, I know his I can’t do now, and I know a lot more But I can’t recallin terms of madness, not malfunction?
"I think we’ve translated it correctly, Professor I’d leave it alone if I were you"
Phil ips licked his lips nervously, unable to drag hies of the surface with his datapad, then ran his fingertips careful y over the plain sections of the cartouche BB saw the status icon shift again It had returned to its original form
"There, it’s reverted," BB said "Panic over"
Phil ips’s gaze darted back and forth between the ie on his datapad and the cartouche Eventual y he seeed back to the way they’d been before
"Okay, that’s a few bil ion beings out there somewhere e me one," he said "What I real y need now is a teaok In the absence of that, better hope I’ve recorded enough data for someone toto pop back along the passage and relievethe other way? Oh, never et used to that, so…"
Phil ips disappeared back the way they’d co under his breath BB wasn’t sure why he picked one section of wal and not another He looked around as if he was lost, then shrugged and got on with it
"This is probably sacrilege to the a ee in a temple, I mean You knoas certain there was a corner up there I hope I’ disoriented"
He strode back to a curve in the wal and stood al
"There was a corner there," BB said "Perhaps the stone reconfigured itself, like the cartouche symbols Perhaps it’s a security door"
Phil ips reached out and put his hand on the wal"That’s very weird It feels soft, but it isn’t I thought h it"
"You should check your blood sugar"
"You always say that"
"Do I?"
"Look, are you tel ing h them?"
"It’s entirely possible"
"Oh, shit Hoe get out again, then?"
"You won’t know until you try"