Babylon 5 Casting Shadows The Passing of the Techno-Mages, Book I

Soon the war would come. With a cry of joy Anna swooped toward the barren moon, her sisters behind her. As her sleek body cut through the invigorating vacuum of space, she surveyed the training site eagerly, hungry for challenge. The Eye had specified the coordinates to be attacked. This exercise was to be at close range, surgical, precise. Anna loved training, exploring her abilities, honing her skills. She had learned the dizzying delight of movement, the exhilarating leap to hyperspace, the grace of flexion, the joy of the war cry. She had learned to deliver from their confinement great balls of destruction; to calculate the most efficient patterns of attack; to engage and never break off, not until the enemy was utterly destroyed. This would be the first time she uttered her war cry. As she wheeled toward the target, Anna held her body in perfect control. She felt tireless, invulnerable. The machine was so beautiful, so elegant. Perfect grace, perfect control, form and function integrated into the circuitry of the unbroken loop, the closed universe. All systems of the machine passed through her; she was its heart; she was its brain; she was the machine. She kept the neurons firing in harmony. She synchronized the cleansing and circulation in sublime synergy. She beat out a flawless march with the complex, multileveled systems. The skin of the machine was her skin; its bones and blood, her bones and blood. She and the machine were one: a great engine of chaos and destruction. The rocky brown surface of the moon grew closer, taking on definition, detail. She located the seven targets, boulders within a wide, shallow crater. She and her six sisters were each to destroy one. She narrowed her focus to her assigned target, coordinated her speed with her course. Excitement gathered in her throat. She plunged into the crater and shrieked out her war cry. Her body rushed with an ecstasy of fire. Energy blasted from her mouth in a brilliant red torrent. The boulder was vaporized. Around her, her sisters fell upon the targets, their mouths screaming destruction. Chaos through warfare, the Eye said. Evolution through bloodshed. Perfection through victory. One of the targets was not completely destroyed. A fragment remained. Anna pounced on it, eager to shriek again. She targeted it, screamed out chaos. The exhilaration shot through her. The fragment was obliterated, a hole scorched into the surface below. Excited by the activity, her sisters fell upon the vanquished target, shrieking out a cacophony of chaos. Particles of rock flew up as they blasted a great hole into the moon, firing again and again. Anna drew energy up into her mouth, screamed it out in blazing red. The greatest excitement is the thrill of battle, the Eye said. The greatest joy is the ecstasy of victory. Anna's greatest desire was to feel it. And she knew she would soon. For soon the war would come. The ship sang of the beauty of order, of perfect symmetry and ultimate peace. It glided through the calm blackness of space, absorbing it. Energy circulated through its petals in a regular rhythm. The serenity of its silent passage, the unity of its functioning, the satisfaction of service wove through its melody. Ahead, a blue-and-white orb glowed in the blackness, the goal of the journey. The ship slipped through the stillness toward it, following Kosh's direction eagerly. Obedience was its greatest joy. Within the song, Kosh slowed the ship's speed, directing it to stop a safe distance from the planet, which was known to its inhabitants as Soom. Although most of the planet's inhabitants had little technology, two lived among them and served as guardians, two fabulists, who would detect his presence if hCavelos, Jeanne is the author of 'Babylon 5 Casting Shadows The Passing of the Techno-Mages, Book I', published 0007 under ISBN 9780345427212 and ISBN 0345427211.