Loyal to the Destroyers is now posted.
This is a unpublished tale from my Unconquered Earth Cycle, and takes place in the same background universe as Farthest Man from Earth, Not Born a Man, and Twilight of the Gods.
It had previously appeared on this website in a slightly different form.
Chapter One of Six.
These events date from 2950 A.D.
The entry for this century from the Historical Institute Analects reads, in part, as follows:
It was due to the influence of nonhuman computer intelligence that the first expedition to the Destroyer World was launched, when that world was still some seven light-years away, detected only as an occlusion of the nebula NGC 6543 in Draco. The Anne Shamlin expedition discovered the true nature of the enemy.