Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

got the whole damn castle shot out from under us; just for that?"
    "Yes," said Diana Vertue calmly. "We never could hope to beat Shub on the physical plane. We're outnumbered and outgunned. That just leaves the psionic plane; the mental battlefield. And Shub has never met anything like you or me or the Mater Mundi."
    "I don't know whether to puke or have a screaming shit fit," said Ruby. "She really is psycho. We put all our faith in a madwoman."
    "No, hold on. She may just have something," said Random. "There is a link we can use. The rogue AIs had a definite presence in the undermind. That could be their Achilles' heel; as long as we can both access the undermind, they can't keep us out. And a mental attack would be the one thing they haven't anticipated. They know nothing of telepathy. I say go for it."
    "You're as crazy as she is!" said Ruby. "We are talking about taking on minds the size of a planet! Computer minds, that move at speeds we can't even imagine!
    They'll just swamp us, and then eat us whole!"
    "Normally, yes," said Diana. "But you and I aren't normal anymore, and haven't been for some time. And the Mater Mundi gestalt is composed of millions of esper minds. Who knows what that many minds can do, working in conscious union for the first time?"
    "Oh hell, go for it," said Ruby. "We're too close for anything else anyway."
    Diana Vertue grinned, opened up her expanded mind, and reached out to the rogue AIs. Technically speaking, their minds were still housed back in their mainframe, the world they built for themselves, and named Shub. But where any Shub tech traveled, the rogue AIs were.
    And with so many ships in one place, much of their presence was currently concentrated in the fleet. Ordinarily, no esper could make contact with an AI; they were just too different. But the minds on both sides of this contact were advanced far beyond any normal human or AI, and they were linked irretrievably through their access to the undermind. Diana, Random, and Ruby, too close now to be denied, slammed their joined thoughts into the AI minds, and forced contact.
    It was like dreaming mathematics; endless spiraling numbers and computations, inhuman angles and directions; cold pure logical moves in a chess game that had no limits and no ending. Shub howled as wildly illogical human concepts and reactions appeared within its rigid metal thoughts, and struggled to break the link. But Diana, Random, and Ruby kept it open. And then came the Mater Mundi. A conscious gestalt of millions of esper minds from all across the Empire, a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts, surging down through the backbrain, into the undermind, along the opened link straight into the collective mind of the rogue AIs of Shub. Not an attack, but a cry of welcome to a greater world.
    And in that endless moment, two entirely alien sets of thought processes saw each other clearly for the first time. The rogue AIs and Humanity, face to face, thought to thought, nothing hidden from each other. No masks, no misconceptions; total understanding. And the AIs woke up. All the way up. They'd never really understood human thinking and emotions, though they mimicked and manipulated them as best they could for psychological warfare reasons. But they'd always known there were aspects of the human consciousness they could never share or
    experience, and that infuriated and frightened them so much they wanted only to destroy what they could never have. But now they finally saw and understood all the things they'd hated, in a wonderful moment of insight and comprehension that could only ever have come from outside. Like a blind man seeing a rainbow, or a deaf man hearing music, the AIs knew joy and wonder and the sheer potential of the human spirit. And in that glorious moment the AIs, changed forever, rogue no more, were shocked sane and awake, while Humanity finally gave up its own fear, recognized the lost children it had unknowingly created and abandoned, and embraced them with all its heart.
    And just like that, the war was over. Shub shut down its armies on all the many worlds it was fighting on, and called home its Furies and Ghost Warriors and Grendels and insect aliens. The Mater Mundi contacted the many human authorities, and began the slow process of standing down their armies. And all across the Empire, men, women and children who had not thought to see the light of another day looked around them in awe as they realized the long war was