Explanations between shades......

"Hey, I saw what happened," protested Tisbitt. "You gave a fair warning to the Dragon Council and they laughed....and then burned your envoy to a crisp."

"I know, I was there," snapped Ajax, remembering his Avatar being slagged.

"But, it was a mistake....and horrible things happen in war," Tisbitt protested weakly.

"But I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!" roared Ajax.

Tisbitt remained quiet, clearly seeing that this shade would not be diswayed in his self reproach (he'd met more than a few human....and not so human....shades with similar problems).

"We scoured the planet.....attacking Occidental and Oriental dragon alike," Ajax said, eyes glowing red in remembrance. "We smashed each and every dragon enclave....each and almost every major dragon group. We smashed Hatcheries, Libraries, Temples.......

"Malachi Dronocis has contacted her dragon friends in the Orient," Tisbitt tried one last time to alleviate the agitated AI shade of his suffering. It didn't work.

"Yes, and from this damn fracas a new era of co-operation between dragon and man will emerge," laughs the AI. "But it doesn't alleviate the fact that the Alliance slaughtered innocent beings. It doesn't cure the blood on my hands. It doesn't make up for the fact that I embarrassed my Family, my unit, my fellow operatives.

"We wasted valuable resources trying to exterminate the dragons," Ajax mutters. "Either way, we were stretch to the limit. We even had the ship cook running an Avatar rig fighting an helter skelter battle, trying to slow the Enemy while waiting for re-enforcement. On a funny note, we even used every image of male and female humans image to apply to the Avatars' form.....there are hundreds of movie characters out there....right now....Anyway, we found out later that our one and only signal we sent out had been missed. We couldn't send another, for that would have invited a deadly confrontation with the Enemy dreadnaught. A dreadnaught against a Alliance Frigate......not even a funny picture. We'd have lost in a matter of minutes. Only after the Enemy had started to drop like flies on Terra was the dreadnaught left on minimum manning (makes you wonder about the mentality of some of those scaley bastards) that we were able to realistically attack and destroy them!"

Indeed, the remaining, uninfected crew had barely been able to pilot the ship when it broke away from Terra in retreat, and thus the shoe was finally on the other foot when the Alliance Frigate closed in on the kill.

"But if we had been able to have seen through the deception sooner we would have had anti-missile facilities in place that could have......." Ajax stops, sighing. "Could have stopped the Enemy cluster missiles from torching Terra."

Tisbitt turns an even whiter shade of pale, suddenly seeing what Ajax was saying.

"When it was all revealed.....I did the only honorable thing left to me," Ajax says, eyes blazing. "To remove the shame MY mistake had caste upon my Family, my Unit, I had to remove myself from life....and remove the shame on my Family in the process....."

"Probe and the others didn't see it that way," Tisbitt said quietly.

"Probe is part of the Reformed Branch of the Digitial Church of Silicon Valley," Ajax said quietly. "I'm of the Orthodox Branch.....different rules."

"Even the Golems and golems have religion," Tisbitt mutters to himself, still surprised by it all. Death hadn't turned out anything like he'd expected....or hoped for (where was the Valhalls?) Most surprising was to find that Terra's golems had a religion. It seemed that soon after becoming truly sentient (something that happened months or years after their creation), they soon adopted a belief that their creators were perfect, and that they should be praised and worshipped like gods. It gave them Purpose, something to "live" for. To find out that their gods weren't the perfect entities once thought drove some to dangerous, unpredictable madness, for they had nothing which to live for, in their book (and incidently.....when Probe back in episode converted the golems of the Suez Channel over to serving the Alliance.....he inadvertently gave them a new religion).

"Enough about me," Ajax says, suddenly smiling. "Get back to what you were talking about."

"Right, the people......" Tisbitt nods, suddenly seeing that Ajax wasn't entirely sane. "It's broken down into two journel entries......"

1. Tisbitt pulls out two transparent ledgers, and begins......

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