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"Third, and perhaps most puzzling, is the relative primitivism of their gross physiognomy. To the best of our knowledge, this same race has conducted offensive sweeps of our arm of the galaxy for over seventy million years, yet they do not exhibit the attributes one might expect such a long period of high-tech civilization to produce. They're large, extremely strong, and well-suited to a relatively primitive environment. One would expect a species which had enjoyed technology for so long to have decreased in size, at the very least, and, perhaps, to have lost much of its tolerance for extreme environmental conditions. These creatures have done neither."
"Is that really relevant?" Amesbury asked. "Humanity hasn't exactly developed the attributes you describe, either here or in Imperial history."
"The cases aren't parallel, Sir Frederick. The Terran branch of the race is but recently removed from its own primitive period, and all of human history, from its begi
"Point taken," Amesbury said, and Coha
"Just as Coha
"He appears resigned, yet not passive. In general, his behavior is docile, which could be assumed, genuine, or merely a response to our own biotechnics. Certainly he's deduced that even our medical technicians are several times as strong as he is, though he may not realize this is due to artificial enhancement. He is not, however, apathetic. He's alert, interested, and curious. We are unable to communicate with him as yet, but he appears to be actively assisting our efforts in this direction. I submit that for a soldier embarked upon a genocidal campaign to exhibit neither resistance to, nor even, so nearly as we can determine, hostility towards the species he recently attempted to a
"Um." Colin tugged on his nose. "How are his injuries responding?"
"We can't use quick-heal or regeneration on such an unknown physiology, but he appears to be recovering nicely. His bones are knitting a bit faster than a human's would; tissue repairs seem to be taking rather longer."
"All right," Colin said, "what do we have? A technology with gaping holes, a species which seems evolutionarily retarded, and a prisoner whose responses defy our logical expectations. Does anyone have any suggestions which could account for all those things?"
He looked around expectantly, but the only response was silence.
"Well," he sighed after a moment, "let's adjourn for now. Unless something breaks in the meantime, we'll convene again Wednesday at fourteen hundred hours. Will that be convenient for all of you?"
Heads nodded, and he rose.
"I'll see you all then," he said. He wanted to get home to Dahak anyway. The twins were teething, and 'Ta
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Brashieel, who had been a servant of thunders, curled in his new nest place and pondered. It had never occurred to him—nor to anyone else, so far as he knew—to consider the possibility of capture. Protectors did not capture nest-killers; they slew them. So, he had always assumed, did nest-killers deal with Protectors, yet these had not.
He had attempted to fight to the death, but he had failed, and, strangely, he no longer wished to die. No one had ever told him he must; had they simply failed, as he, to consider that he might not? Yet he felt a vague suspicion a true thinker in honor would have ended slaying yet another nest-killer.
Only Brashieel wished to live. He needed to consider the new things happening to and about him. These strange bipeds had destroyed Lord Chirdan's force with scarcely five twelves of ships. Admittedly, they were huge, yet it had taken but five twelves, when Lord Chirdan had been within day-twelfths of destroying this world. That was power. Such nest-killers could purge the galaxy of the Aku'Ultan, and the thought filled him with terror.
But why had they waited so long? He had seen this world's nest-killers now, and they were the same species as those who crewed those stupendous ships. Whether they were also the nest-killers who had built those sensor arrays he did not know. It seemed likely, yet if it were so those arrays must have told them long ago that the Great Visit was upon them, so why conceal their capability until this world had suffered such losses? And why had they not killed him? Because they sought information from him? That was possible, though it would not have occurred to a Protector. Which might, Brashieel admitted grudgingly, be yet another way in which his captors out-classed the Nest. But stranger even than that, they did not mistreat him. They were impossibly strong for such small beings. He had thought it was but the nest-killer's powered armor which had made him a fledgling in his hands... until he saw a slight, slender one with long hair lift one of their elevated sleeping pads and carry it away to clear his nest place. That was sobering proof of what they might have done to him had they chosen to.
Instead, they had tended his wounds, fed him food from Vindicator's wreck, provided air which was pleasant to breathe, not thin like their own—all that, when they should have struck him down. Was he not a nest-killer to their Protectors? Had he and his nestmates not come within a segment of destroying their very world? Were they so stupid they did not realize that they were—must be, forever—enemies to the death?
Or was it simply that they did not fear him? Beside those monster ships, the greatest ships of the Nest were fledglings with toy bows of mowap wood. Were they so powerful, so confident, that they did not fear the nest-killers of another people, another place?
That was the most terrifying thought of all, one which reeked of treason to the Nest, for there was—must always be—the fear, the Great Fear which only courage and the Way could quench. Yet if that was not so for these nest-killers, if they did not fear on sight, then was it possible they might not be nest-killers?
Brashieel curled in his new nest place, eyes closed, and whimpered in his sleep, wondering in his dreams which was truly the greater nightmare: to fear the nest-killers, or to fear that they did not fear him.
Colin and Jiltanith rose to welcome Earth's senior officers and their new starship captains. There were but fourteen captains. If they took every trained, bio-enhanced man and woman Earth's defenses could spare, they could have provided minimal crews for seventeen of the Imperial Guard's warships; they had chosen to crew only fifteen, fourteen Asgerds and one Vespa.
The Empire had gone in for more specialized designs than the Imperium, and the Asgerds were closest in concept to Dahak, well-rounded and equipped to fight at all ranges, while the Trosans were optimized for close combat with heavy beam armaments and the Vespas were optimized for planetary assaults. But the reason for ma