| ”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……”
-
 Tisbitt pulls out two transparent
ledgers, and begins……
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