It was almost too much for Diplomats brain to encompass. Noticing the metric markers the shipboard computer projected next to the image of the other ship, he was again unnerved at the scale of the looming object. It grew visibly on the hullscreens at extreme magnification.
The Wisdom of Retreat's gravity planers performed an unexpected looping course correction, and the startled Diplomat shrieked a siren alarm call. He folded himself instinctively into a protective ball within his forceweb and quivered. Diplomats mind fled the Outsider threat into comforting darkness.
The peace was interrupted by a lancing pain at the base of his necks. The force of the blow made him see sparks fleeing in all directions.
Not again, Diplomat thought, squeezing his eyes shut and pulling his neck and legs tighter against his midsection. The pain shot through him again, still more intense. Diplomat clenched blunt vegetarian teeth, knowing the blows would not stop until he emerged.
A voice filled with harsh martial music blared a curse in the small lifebubble. Diplomat could feel the electric tingle of the pilot's forceweb being released. There was a clump and snap as the pilot's articulated boots left the control consoles. He could sense the pilot standing over him.
The comforting smell of the Herd emanating from the ventilators was replaced by a stench of dominance and barely harnessed rage. Diplomat gulped and tried to breathe through his mouths to avoid it.
It was the smell of the Wisdom of Retreat's pilot, only stronger and more angry. Diplomat had kept his distance during the voyage, even within the tiny lifebubble of the Wisdom of Retreat. There were limits to the ability of the airscrubbers to remove the pilot's distinctive odor, redolent with attack pheromones.
Besides, the pilot liked 'the smell of battle', as she called it.
The frightened puppeteer wished fervently he was back in the hospital burrow, his tired brain soothed by the psychists overlay induction devices. Had Diplomat not just returned from his final embassy to the Q'rynmoi? Had not the psychists bluntly stated that he was not ready for another mission? He tightened his necks around his midsection.
Diplomat could hear the angry duet of the pilot's whistling breath above him. She sang an offkey command, and his forceweb vanished instantly. Diplomat was left with an itchy feeling of residual static charge and insecurity.
"Stand up and control yourself, you miserable coward." The pilot's tones were rich with a symphony of contempt It made a word honored among the puppeteer race sound like an insult.
"Chew your courage drugs if need be," her voice continued in disdainful tones. "You are to carry out a task for the Hindmost and the entire puppeteer race. This is more important than your shameful and obvious lack of a notochord.”
The pilot's words stung Diplomat more than the pain at the base of his necks. He prided himself on his rare ability to work with dozens of alien species; why could he not deal as well with a member of his own race?
At least Diplomat thought the pilot was a member of his race.
The frightened puppeteer breathed deeply; it was no use postponing the inevitable. He unwrapped his necks. Opened his eyes one at a time. Moving gingerly, he stood in the small lifebubble. The scent of the pilot prickled angrily over Diplomat, like a swarm of stinging insects.
"No," he said carefully in measured tones, shoving his fears away as best he could. "I will not be needing the drug at this time." Diplomat was unsure of the truth of that statement. He looked at neither the hullscreen nor the pilot.
There was a splat of dismissive music.
"Then look at me, Diplomat." A chord of hard-edged humor entered the pilots voice, irony dripping from the title. "If you cannot look at me, how will you complete the Hindmost's Commands, let alone look the helium-beasts in the face?”
There was a meditative pause.
"That is," she continued, "if they can be said to actually have faces." The pilot hummed and whistled another musical note to her command console. "The hull is opaqued. Control your fear.”
Diplomat finally raised his heads, blinking, and looked up at the pilot of the Wisdom of Retreat.
And up.
The Hindmost's Guardian stood well over two meters in height. Impact armor covered the giant puppeteer's midsection completely. Each of her necks bore gleaming mirrorplate able to turn a beam of coherent light. Traditional battle helmets with razor-tipped talons rested on each head, and the pilot's eyes burned with emotions alien to Diplomat. Her legs were as armored as her necks, and holsters hung in instant reach of either mouth. Because Guardians were also deft with their three hooves, each was encased in space-ready magnetic boots, equipped with manipulators, cutting tools, lasers, projectile weapons, and Great Burrower knew what other horrors.
The Guardians were one of the most closely kept secrets of the puppeteer race. This warrior caste was small in number, bred and trained from birth for the necessary occasional insanity of aggression and combat. The Hindmost spoke for all puppeteers, and the Hindmost's Guardians carried out the Will of the Those Who Lead from Behind. They enforced treaties among puppeteer groups, advised the Deepest Council, designed and built safety devices and weaponry, and – from time to time – were called upon to defend puppeteer interests more directly.
Such as the present situation, reflected Diplomat, a tingle of repressed fear scurrying down both necks.
This Hindmost's Guardian held one head high and cocked to the side, the other low near her left leg holster. It was standard caution in what a Guardian would consider potentially dangerous situations; in other words, all of the time. The Hindmost's Guardians always expected danger, altercation, and even the obscenity of fighting. Relished it, it was said.
That alone made the pilot more alien to Diplomat than the barbaric Q'rynmoi and their breeding colonies.
"Better," hurrumphed the pilot. "Perhaps you will have your uses after all.”
"How long until we rendezvous with the Outsider ship?" Diplomat asked, gesturing with one head toward the opaqued hullscreens.
"Too soon for you," she replied, her song flippant and breezy. The Guardian's two heads suddenly reared up and looked at one another in a flash of rare humor, then returned to normal posture.
Diplomat paused and straightened. It was time to firmly grasp the issue with both mouths. "Please show me the Outsider craft again, Guardian." The giants may have had individual names within their own caste, but in puppeteer society, the Hindmost's Guardians were simply addressed as Guardian.
The only other choice of name a Guardian accepted was the grotesque puppeteer obscenity of 'Warrior'.
Diplomat was too well bred to use such a word.
"A little talker like yourself," the Guardian crooned, "can suddenly regain courage? And without drugs! I am somewhat impressed.”
Before Diplomat could reply, the pilot had moved back to her control console and sang the hullscreen to clarity once more. He settled in his own crashweb and, swallowing past dry throats, looked outward.
The Outsider craft looked more like a biological construct than spacecraft. Diplomat forced himself to crane his neck one at a time, trying to gain a sense of perspective. The space vessel was the size of a small moon, but not solid. Complex tangles of oddly colored metal gleamed in the starlight. The bent and twisted topology of the thing made Diplomats eyes ache to the roots of his necks. Platforms and oddly formed objects extruded from the tangles here and there. Points of brilliant light drifted around the ship, as if in long, slow orbits. Tiny motes glittered and darted above, below, and within the Outsider vessel.
A nest of threatening vermin, indeed, thought Diplomat, hooves tapping. He stuffed his autonomic flight psychotropism into the shadows of his deeper mind.
"What is your assessment, passenger?" the pilot rumbled with a grating melody. "Excuse me, I meant to sing Diplomat.”