The Dragon Never Sleeps

— 41 —

There were few occasions when the crews of Guardships came in contact. WarAvocat had come face to face with XII Fulminata crew only twice. He had not been impressed. They suffered from an excess of arrogance and presumption of superiority.

Still, there was a trap in that end space and there was no reason to suspect that it had not been put together with care. This might be the time the villains had what it would take. Wouldn't hurt to go in with more than one Guardship.

"You think too much, Strate," he muttered. "Don't think, act."

The tramp of many feet echoed through the corridors of Starbase. VII Gemina was warming every body and turning everyone loose, to have most of their expectations disappointed.

This was not the Starbase of old. This Starbase was a ghost artifact, empty corridors echoing only to phantom memories of the bustle that had been.

Today it was all automation, machines pursuing ancient programmes, overseen by the ghosts of ghosts, carrying on without human clutter.

There were six completed replacement Guardships in the construction channel and a dozen more being completed at a leisurely pace. They amounted to a macro-exemplar of the process by which slain soldiers were replaced. If a Guardship was lost, a replacement would be impressed with data left during its last visit to Starbase.

VII Gemina began updating its file when it broke off the Web. That would continue throughout its stay. All crew would register a current personal file.

VII Gemina might be destroyed, but there would always be a VII Gemina.

Those who created the fleet had faced a problem as old as idealism: how to keep the fire burning. Children reject the dreams of their parents, and grandchildren hold them in contempt.

Their answer was to preserve the founding generation.

A whisper from behind told Strate his time was no longer his own.

He did not hurry. They could not start without him. And they would be irked with him anyway, having to deal with a Dictat-WarAvocat who was one of the living.

He was less than a minute late. The stir had hardly settled.

Was there any real point to this formalization? A face-to-face only highlighted the ways in which Guardships had evolved independently.

VII Gemina had turned out a parade: soldiers, gunners, Twist Masters, pilots, ridership crews, OpsCrew and ServCrew. XII Fulminata had sent a minimum of live crew, a few passionless senior officers to attend the six Immortals who ruled the Guardship.

The formalities were to be conducted over a circular table at the center of a parade hall. That table was surrounded by equipment that would allow XII Fulminata's Immortals and VII Gemina's Deified to participate. XII Fulminata's delegation had not activated their images.

They waited till WarAvocat seated himself because in their universe the living snapped to attention in the presence of Immortals.

Hanaver Strate did not. "Ready? To remain in character you'll have a list of trivial complaints to demonstrate your superiority. Let's get them out of the way so we can get on with the job."

Thalygos Mundt winced. But Kole Marmigus looked at his opposite number and chuckled. WarAvocat XII Fulminata Delka Stareicha fixed Strate with his best cold stare. "You want us to break off into this end space first." He had turned up the chill on his voice box.

"You claimed the right by seniority. I happily yield the honors to so illustrious..."

"You think we'll go in there, take a beating, and look bad."

"Whoever goes in first stands a chance of hitting a firestorm. Whoever put out the bait believed he could take a Guardship. If you don't think XII Fulminata can handle it, you can run backup."

Stareicha was caught.

"You invited yourself, WarAvocat. If you want to play games meant to validate XII Fulminata's superiority, I'd as soon VII Gemina undertook the operation alone. Since neither first in nor second pleases you, why don't you return to routine patrol?"

Kole Marmigus chuckled again.

Prune-mouthed, Stareicha observed, "It must be getting near time to elect Dictats. Very well. XII Fulminata claims first honors."

History in the making. Formalities held for no better reason than so they could be recorded for posterity.

The shimmer behind Strate's shoulder murmured. Stareicha got a thoughful look.

Another Guardship was coming in. XXVIII Fretensis. It brought news of an Outsider attack upon the Closed System M. Meddinia. The creatures responsible sounded like the methane breather aboard Glorious Spent. Curious.

Had VII Gemina stumbled into one grand skein of schemes, or two? There had been nothing to connect the krekelen to the aliens aboard that Traveler, but now there was a connection between those two.

Their races appeared to be at war.

That was not permitted in Canon space.

The brass of that attack outraged Hanaver Strate's sense of the natural order.