Rings of the Master
1 primary work • 4 total works
Book 4
Even before the renegade pirates of the giant spaceship Thunder had collected all five of the rings that would eliminate the threat of Master System forever, Hawks knew that they still faced even greater problems.
The shapechanger, Vulture, was lost on the watery planet of Chanchuk, his fate unknown. Master System's space fleet dogged the renegade's every step. Hawks suspected that the group was harbouring a traitor, but he was powerless to act. And, most important, the rebels had not yet figured out how the rings were used - a riddle that seemed to have no solution!
Somewhere back on Earth lay the original computer interface, and somewhere in the distant past lay the secret to Master System's demise. As a historian, Hawks had the knowledge to solve the riddle; yet he had to be absolutely sure - for one misstep would destroy them all.
Across the galaxy and beyond, he Master System ruled. Once the product of human intelligence, it now far surpassed its creators. All understanding of it was lost and any attempt at rediscovery ruthlessly suppressed. The rule of the Master System was unchallenged.
Yet there was a key, long forgotten, that would break that control and it happened by chance that two people, an American and a Chinese woman, stumbled across the secret of the five golden rings that were the key.
Now their only hope lay in finding the rings themselves for the Master System was at their backs, hunting them down...
A mothballed space fleet, the great ships were silent and shut down. Each up to fourteen kilometres long, they had been circling Jupiter in their hundreds for nearly a millennium.
To the little band of fugitives, they were both their hope for the future and a terrible reminder of the past. Once they had been the slave ships of their time, transporting whole populations of unwilling humans to the star colonies at the behest of the Master System.
Now, reactivated, one might not only help them escape the Master System but take them in search of the five gold rings that were the key to its control and their freedom.
Cautiously, nervously, their craft edged towards the huge empty hull that loomed in the sky before them...
Vol 3
They were Thieves for Freedom.
The golden ring - a sacred object to the inhabitants of Janipur - was one of five. Together they were the key to control of the Master System and the only hope of humanity taking charge once more of its own destiny.
Hunted through the galaxy, the rebels' chances of survival, let alone success, were desperately slim. The three had been transmuted into Janipurians - four-legged, hairy creatures - and had infiltrated the complex, ritualised society of this long-ago terraformed planet.
And with them was Vulture, the artificially created shapechanger who could become, in body and mind, any organic creature. Vulture it was who now watched the solemn ceremony as the ring was brought out and displayed to the crowd, who understood that not just the Master System but the whole population would be hunting down the stealers of the ring.