The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

antiseptic floods his tendrils, clearing them of any foreign
particles and cleansing his gustatory sense. It doesn't help. He can still
taste her in his mind.
    He remembers running through dirty catacombs, playing
meaningless games with vulgar creatures, looking at faces he's never known
before, and speaking in a language not his own. The vermin's mind has polluted
his own. Has corrupted his awareness. Foreign information floods the vast
neuronal pathways of his brain, rampant knowledge that has never been analyzed
and cataloged. Its invasion is indiscriminate, unfiltered by nanites. He feels diseased .
    My mind knows things I don't .
    There are facts about himself, though, about his past,
that help to ground him. Amharr recounts them like a silent mantra, pushing
himself into accustomed clarity by brute force.
    Since they broke their ties to their homeworld and their
ancestors, the High Emranti have continuously enhanced their bodies and adapted
them to life between the stars of the Grand Helix. One of the first things they
shed was their primeval ability to form deep links . That... barbaric ...
means to share visceral input between mates and partners was superseded by the
all but faultless bionic links , perfected through self-improving
nanotechnology. Those temporary connections do not function outside their
species. Not even with Primal Emranti, their distant relatives who chose to
remain on their homeworld. What happened with the neophyte is not possible.
    And yet.
    This is my doom , Amharr realizes. He paces faster,
strains to focus on other matters, but nothing helps. Nothing ever will. A
horrible sense of vulnerability overwhelms him.
    With great difficulty, Amharr summons sufficient
self-control to tackle matters constructively. The first problem on his list
are the Kolsamal. Specifically, their current elder, Gra'Ylgam—docile
intermediary to the Kolsamal flotilla populating the lower levels of the Undawan .
    Sharp and attentive, Gra'Ylgam must have realized Amharr's
corruption the moment he entered the vessel's crux to retrieve the neophyte.
But there had been no sense of imminent attack, which in itself was strange.
The Kolsamal are a forcefully subdued species, and Gra'Ylgam in particular, as
their elder, should have reacted with violence. But he tended to his duties
instead. Perhaps he is only biding his time, analyzing the risks before he strikes.
    Amharr places his hands on the synaptic nubs of the
command crescent. They glimmer and hum, rendering their diagnostics directly
into his brain. Mnemonic patterns show him the Undawan 's internal
systems, every living being aboard, and every piece of equipment or ship
currently in the bays.
    The technology of the small, crude neophyte ship is being
assimilated and cataloged. A first analysis reveals its threat potential to be
negligible. By the level of technology used, and all the probable variants the
neophytes may have developed around it, their race won't pose any considerable
problems. However his assessment of them turns out, they'll be easy to deal
with. They are a typical, uninteresting candidate for yet another long
integration process.
    Well, uninteresting except for their connection to the
Totorkha.
    It was a shard of a Totorkha mandible the neophyte stabbed
him with. Taken from a world with active hives if it's new enough to pierce his
hide with so little effort. Which means the neophytes treat with the Totorkha.
A dangerous choice, associating with a deconstructive race, one that
already underwent the Ascendancy's containment process long before Amharr's
time.
    The criteria for evaluating spaceborne races is simple. If
they're collaborative, productive and with a tendency toward self-sufficiency,
they are deemed constructive , and are integrated into the Ascendancy's
multispecies society and assigned a Dominant—a High Emranti, or a member of
another superior race. If, however, they are un-collaborative, destructive and
with a tendency toward