Rumble in the Library! (reposted, again! 8-)
Article One- Let the stars above us bear witness that our two species must be at peace with each other, now and forever. To that end let us therefore establish a new order of things, so that each kind may be free to pursue peace, prosperity and happiness.

***

Libraries are great places for people-watching. They're not necessarily on their best behavior, and not overly guarded. But they do often share my expectations of civility, quiet and tolerance. The fight that broke out a little ways down the aisle between the shelves of books was none of the above, which annoyed the hell out of me. I clapped the book I was browsing shut, loudly. That caused the offending parties to turn towards me. I set the book on a shelf regretfully and walked their way.

"Stay out of this!" The little alien chittered, and my ear-bud translated. It was, literally, a starfish alien, one of the weirder ones, a three-armed starfish with a few tendrils for grasping things. It went bipedal now and aimed the melted-looking long object in the tendrils on the back of its third tentacle at me. I saw no obvious eyes, so I wondered if the tendril-tips were light sensitive, and what this did to its' perspective on the universe.

Philosophy had to wait, though, because the big ugly monster it had been arguing with stomped over just then. It was some sort of hooved carnivore, a sort of centaur on three hind limbs. It had three arms with four-digits and a long switchblade claw in each paw, each of which now snicked open. The large head with no real neck had three eyes set far forward and close together. He, or she, didn't look too damn bright, and smelled like rotten meat. I waved a hand at the stench.

"Somebody needs a whole pack of breath-mints, Jaws," I said up at the monster, which was slobbering. The mandible split in two pieces and opened up wide as it roared. Ugh! I looked down at the starfish alien who was quivering with fear or anger, or both. "What's the all fuss about, Tiny?"

Maybe I should have been a little nicer, but whatever. The starfish shot off its beam weapon with a zat! He missed me as I ducked and rolled away from the starfish and between the monster's nasty-looking hooves. It was prancing like a quarter ton reindeer and I made like a weasel. I was quite lucky to slide under and through on my belly with a single cut to the back of my right hand. I rolled and was on my feet running. Those two got tangled up in each other’s egos, I expect, and let me go. There was a wet smack as the monster slapped the starfish into the shelves, and a second 'zat' sound as the beamer fired again. This time it hit the monster, which screamed its' rage and started stomping the starfish into chum. There was the smell of blood and burnt meat, now, as well as smoldering paper.

A librarian peeked around the stacks, down low, a turtle-like Haroo who I knew. "Anderson!" Librarian 2nd Class Alwekoo hissed, in good English. "I might have known that you were involved!"

"I was trying to stop it..." I said, wasting my breath. The Corp of Librarians have a dim view of me and my self-professed status as an 'acquisitions agent', but put up with me because I've been useful in the past. I couldn't afford to get banned; I do all my heavy research in here!

The monster with its bloody hooves turned our way at that point, and charged. I did what anybody with a decent sense of self-preservation would do- I ran away. It followed me; I have that effect on many people and aliens, like the chief petty officer who had been my drill instructor back in Naval Infantry. She was a Venus Space Navy lifer, and from our first meeting was determined to make a decent NI out of me- if it killed me.

God bless her. Because of her, I can run like the wind.

Down the long outer stacks of strange alien biology texts, galactic 'geography', and the history and politics of the Second Haroo Empire. Past fifty thousand tomes on alien religion and mythology and thirteen hundred thousand period romances, travel journals, poems in ten thousand tongues (God, how I love this place!). I dodged into the short stacks by the railing of the rotunda, the thing with the razor-sharp hooves bellowing and snapping at my head. I went between the spaces in the railing, which were made to keep foolish turtles from falling thirty feet and breaking their shells, but not skinny string-beans from the habitats of The Verge. I rolled onto my belly as I went through, to grab a hand-hold, and then my right hand slipped on damp, slick stone. I wrenched my left shoulder, lost my grip with the other hand, tumbled down-

And onto a pile of bunting, which the library staff would be hanging for Landing Day next local month. I still knocked the stuffing out of myself and lay there... until I heard the growling monster coming down the big main stairs. I sat up, and I tried to get my act together, I really did. I could almost hear DI Koudelka shouting at me inside my ringing head. But my legs weren't cooperating and I was staring at Jaw-Some when he, she, or it, suddenly turned towards the front doors of Golden Harbor Municipal Library and ran right out of there, stomping through the unlucky and the unwary.

***

Once there were a mighty people, laid low by a failed invasion and the aftershock wars resulting from that invasion. The Second Haroo Empire was a pretty nice place to be alive in by all the accounts I've seen and read, and when it came to an end over a thousand years ago several hundred Turtle worlds fell into darkness and savagery.

Let me tell you, humans and dragons do savagery better, but the Turtles made a decent job of it. Half of those worlds now lay fallow, and only one or two, like Levagwo with the city of Golden Harbor and its legendary Library, have climbed back into the light. The Library (always capital L, boys and girls!) is the result of a quasi-religious order, served and protected by militant librarian monks, mostly Haroo, but they have been known to accept other species. It is the very thing for a living relic and a warrior poet like my good friend Arnie.

Alright, I have this very bad habit of nick-naming folks at the drop of a hat. Arnie is the last remnant of the second empire, the last soldier from before the fall, and he's a cyborg killing machine with lots of clang. A terminator turtle; I don't know why he didn't kill me once he understood the name I'd nicked him with, but Arnie is just a big cuddly teddy bear, once you get to know him.

"David, why did you start a fight in my library?"

Did I mention he's thirteen hundred years old, and he's spent most of that time at the Library? He's head of security, the sheriff of Library-town.

"But I didn't start anything! It's not my fault!"

Arnie blinked rapidly and rolled his head around on his neck, surveying the damage. I winced, and yeah, felt a little shame and anger. These two idiots had gotten a few dozen irreplaceable books burned or partially destroyed. If that damn starfish wasn't already dead, I'd kill him again.

"What do you know, then?"

That was such an opening, but I controlled myself. "The starfish I've seen before, been around for the last few local months. But the big ugly with halitosis? Not so much."

Arnie nodded. “The dead alien had a library membership. We have an address. Walk with me.”

So I did. I was curious and wanted a little payback of my own. The Library is practically my home, even if the Corp of Librarians doesn't always appreciate me. That and if I ran into Jawsome while hanging out with Arnie, I liked my chances of survival a lot better.

Arnie, as usual, started into a long and involved story about his old unit. I wasn't listening too closely because it got me thinking about DI Koudelka and the petty officers who'd made my service a living hell, and the NI's and able spacers who I'd hung with. The Liberation War has had a long tail, and we'd seen action in the Tiamat campaign, a full fifteen years after the Covenant of Stars was signed. I realized that the Terminator Turtle was looking at me expectantly, so I said the first thing that came to mind. "You keep repeating 'Second Empire' this and 'Second Empire' that as if you expected there to be more..."

I trailed off, ashamed of myself. You don't kick a turtle when he's down. But Arnie just got a funny look in his eye and said, "Human, I will take what comes! I will take... whatever comes."

***

The starfish's lodgings were being tossed, quite literally, out a second story window with attached sunning platform, when we arrived. This was an older, more gentrified neighborhood in a respectable part of town. Nothing at all like my flop over in Cheapside by the fish market. The landlord was standing around hissing and kicking up a fuss until a trunk nearly landed on top of the old turtle, where upon he retreated and demanded that we do something. I'm a hundred and ninety centimeter, sixty eight kilo bean-pole from the habitats, and this short and boxy two-legged snapping turtle expected me to roust out a killer. Or more likely he was looking past me at Arnie.

The Terminator Turtle has a lot of clang, the metal and ceramic bits that serve as armor and weapons system casings. His entire left arm is cybernetic, a carbon-fiber buzz-saw claw with integral stun and blaster beam weapons. The right hand is some sort of fractal manipulator that usually looks more like a normal three-fingered, one thumbed hand, but occasionally blurs into a fog of green and blue lights that can reach inside locks and things. He likes to keep his head out in the clear, but some sort of helmet unfolds when the going gets interesting. I don't know what else he's carrying internally or externally, but he's definitely got Batman and his utility belt beat.

Something roared and we three looked up to see Jaw-Some standing at the big window. The sunning platform had had a low railing to keep turtles from failing into the city streets, now hanging loose. He took in me and Arnie and abruptly turned tail and ran, back through the second floor apartment. There was a crash as I suppose he made a hole in the back wall.

Arnie grabbed me up and said, "Hang on!" by way of warning. Then he jumped us six meters up and shoved me through the window as the sunning platform started to pull loose. It fell away and the terminator turtle wedged himself through the opening. It wasn't much of a window anymore, more like a double door.

"I don't like amusement park rides," I muttered, but Arnie ignored me and went on. I hate that. I caught up with him and we cleared the apartment before going on, even though it was fairly obvious that Jaw-Some had gone on through the wall and down into an internal courtyard. I had time to look around at an explosion of folded paper birds, fish, or maybe flowers, and some more melted-looking equipment. The monster was not doubling back to hit us from behind, and we moved on, though I did pocket something that looked like either an orchid or an alien butterfly.

He left us a trail of woe to follow. Jaw-some had taken the time to end some poor old lady turtle's pet singing frog, but left her untouched and keening. He destroyed the wagon that some mom or dad used to stroll with baby, stomped into splinters. He hated turtles, I'd say. In fact, the monster was little too obvious about it, and I said to Arnie, "Wait a minute," as we were about to go down a passageway and out a wrought-iron door that let back onto the streets. That was when the world just sort of fell in all around me, and went away for a while.

***

I woke up slow, drugged. I knew I was doped up in medbay, or hooked up to medical machinery, thus the slow thoughts. I worked this out for myself, and was passing proud. Then I became aware that someone was talking, in a language I didn't understand, and looked up into almond-shaped eyes. Then things went away again, but I dreamed of warm green eyes filled with flecks of gold.

I also dreamed about Goldie. Those were happy dreams, but guarded, like they would soon turn dark and twisted. I dreaded reliving the death of that little red and gold three-ling, a three year old dragon child that had adopted my unit. But Goldie only sent me good dreams this time, not nightmares.

When I woke again, my mind was clear and somebody had been holding my hand. I still felt it, warm and dry, comforting. Not a dream, my mind was clear and I was completely awake. So I opened my eyes and looked over at a Eurasian woman, Magda Chung, who was with the consulate. "Good morning, I think?"

"Good afternoon," she responded and wrote on a pad with a stylus. "You've been out for a few days, Mr. Anderson. Do you know that you should be dead?"

"I get that a lot."

She cracked a smile, the first I'd ever seen from her. Magda, Ms. Chung, and I, have been at cross-purposes for months. Her predecessor had made it possible for me to be "a bum hanging around on an alien world and sponging off of the Covenant of Stars" for medical treatment and the supplements that keep the local biota from sending me into anaphylactic shock, or starving while trying to get nutrition from it. Admittedly, I do get the stuff at cost, but I pay my way. I really have no clue as to what her problem is, and now I was even more at sea.

Speaking of which, the breeze blew in from the harbor, a storm coming in from the southeast, probably a pretty big blow. The clouds raced across the local sun and it went from bright to dim, warm to chilly. Magda shivered. She rolled up the pad with the stylus and put it away. Then she went over and closed the window.

"How's Arnie?"

"He didn't almost die, not like you."

"Too bad for him," I muttered. Magda looked at me funny. "He's a thirteen hundred year old soldier. Every war-buddy, every loved one or child he's ever known, has died, or will die, and he knows that. He's not stupid, and he's not made of stone. That has to get to him."

"You seem to have a special insight into, what do you call him, the determined turtle?"

"He's the ‘Dark Knight’ and the ‘Terminator’, all rolled up into one shell, if you follow me?"

She shook her head. "I don't."

"A gal in my old unit was a film-buff, two-D, especially late 20th Century Action Films. Valerie Astarte, war orphan... now and forever, Naval Infantry, the Seventy-Third." I kissed two finger-tips and touched it to the Eagle tattooed to my upper right arm, the one with the seven arrows in one claw and the three in another... which wasn't there, anymore. "Damn. Did I lose my right arm again?"

She swallowed. "Do you... tend leave body parts all over the place?"

"Only when I have to. The Covenant gives me such a good deal on replace-" I shut the hell up and felt along my right arm down to the fingertips. I also noticed the tell-tale skin discoloration of my left ring finger. "This is almost as bad as the Meat-Grinder. What, did Jaw-Some drop a building on us?"

It got very cold in the infirmary, and Magda just nodded.

"How many... how many dead?"

"We're still not completely sure, but less than it could have been. A few dozen."

I remembered the little old lady turtle and her dead singing frog, and the baby-wagon smashed to splinters by a monster that seemed to really hate turtles, as if there was a personal connection. Like the hate between humans and dragons, going on a century and change now. It was the kind of hate that is more personal than some loves; that can give a life meaning. Once upon a time the two species of the Covenant had been locked in just such a perfect hate, spiraling down into to mutually assured destruction. Thoughtful individuals of both species had found another way when fate, luck and genius intersected. But fifteen years later their children had been forced to deal with diehard dragons from the old Lung Reformed State, who had bugged out for the stars. We called one such world Tiamat, and there are probably a few others. The campaign to pacify it was the Meat-Grinder. It made human and dragon sausage spiced with mutiny, revenge and ultimately, victory. To have paid so much, and not won, that would have been intolerable.

Yeah, I understand the Terminator Turtle. But thank God it's not a perfect understanding.

"Any chance I can get out of here? I've got some work to do."

***

Whenever I don't have enough information, I go to the library. The Golden Harbor Municipal Library dates back to Landing Day. It was originally a personal gift from the Emperor to one of his trusted servants who retired and founded a colony on the edge of things. Given the nature of the library and the librarians, I've always wondered about that. If I wanted to plant a spy in a loyal but popular general's household, to mind him, that's a good way to go about it. The physical building is as old as the original colony, though of course it's been expanded on over the centuries.

It was pretty slow at the Muni. Some previously unheard of holy day for librarians, or some such. The new recruits and librarians third-class had the duty, and when the cat's away, the mice will play. A couple of kids with more imagination than sense had set up some bunting as a makeshift slide from the railing of the rotunda down to the main desk. It looked like fun, but I had work to do. I started with the scene of the crime and even retrieved my book from earlier. Then I branched out from there and hit pay dirt with Jeppiwazi's comprehensive master piece, Sapient Species of the (2nd) Empire and Adjacent States. A real page-turner and eye-opener.

The turtle had lied to me. It was a lie of omission, but still. The big bad alien I'd been calling Jaw-Some is a species well-known to the Turtles, and possibly almost extinct- the invaders, the outsiders that brought the 2nd Empire down, albeit indirectly. Their name for themselves translates as 'The Hungry Ones', and the Haroo called them the Dominators, or simply The Eaters. A predator species with bad hygiene and worse table manners, they conquered and enslaved subject species. They also ate them.

No, I wasn't very surprised by that one, either.

It did explain, somewhat, its hatred of Turtles in general, but not Arnie. He was playing at something, some internal thing, and I had a feeling that I needed to know, real bad.

I had lost that paper folding from the starfish's apartment, but I found directions for folding another one in a book not far from where they had their fight. What else I learned gave me an idea for why Jaw-Some was so interested in the Library. I folded a couple of 'alien butterflies' while the shadows got longer and I got hungry.

Golden Harbor is my adopted home town, and the Muni is my second home here. Once or thrice I've been here overnight, accidentally-on-purpose. I sneak in water and protein blocks, the byproduct of human starship life support systems all over the human expansion. They don't taste great, but they're my comfort food anyway. Taste isn't a prime consideration when you're hungry, and the algae and mycoprotein is good for you, fuel for the body. A little honey helps, but I didn't have any. Besides, my mind was three hundred light years away, on Tiamat.

Refugees and orphans happen in every war. There was nothing special about the little red and gold three-ling we found in a burned-out village. She'd been on her own for a while, gone feral, but she ate the food we put out for her. She much more was afraid of Blockhead, our Dragon liaison, than she was of us apes, which seemed to indicate that either her folks got burned out by loyalist forces for helping us, or had been forced to evac as part of the scorched earth policy. Six of one, half dozen of the other, I suppose. She adopted us and walked with us for a little while, totally against regs. I got used to her, or she got under my skin. My little sister.

I still don't understand how that happened. In the Verge, there just aren't all that many dragons, not like living among them day to day on Heartland or Tienshan, you see. The rest of my squad accused me of turning her into my dog, which makes even less sense. We don't go in for house pets, at least not among the old refugee families. Maybe that was it. I grew up in a family that kept Remembrance Day and made it Remembrance Week. My parents survived the Food Riots and the twelve bad years between That Day of Dragons and 'Good Words', before the Liberation War, when things were pretty ugly in the kleptocracy that is the Republic of Venus. After that came the rearmament, and twenty-five years of a good war has meant that the Verge has prospered. A rising tide lifts all boats.

I was restless, and was doing some isometrics and Tae Chi when Arnie found me in the nearly deserted library. I was caught up in it, the muscle tone and muscle memory weren't there anymore, and he snuck up on me. "Are you 'Rocky', maybe planning to run up and down the great steps, human?"

I spun around and tumbled forwards, coming up off my knees into a crouch, winded but with my fists at the ready, arms bent and blocking attacks to my chest. I wobbled and stood up straight, shaking my head. "Physical skills take something like a thousand repetitions to really 'take', and even my speed and cardio are way down. Darn!" I added with my biggest shit eating grin. "I guess I'll have to go with plan B."

"Which does not involve 'going toe-to-toe with a Big Ugly'?" Arnie was showing amusement in the manner of his species. Dragons hissed; Turtles stuck their tongues out, tasting the air drowsily with their eyes half-slitted, as if sunning themselves.

"I'm gonna shoot the bastard through the head from 60 meters." It was not a joke. I had a kill-zone and kill-shot all scoped out in my head. "Make him come to me."

"That can be arranged," Arnie said. "But I'm afraid I have old business with his kind."

"Old, old business? Which is?"

Arnie blinked rapidly at me, but otherwise he was expressionless. "Who do you serve, Human? What interests, what agendas?"

Almost, I answered him, but I lied instead. "Myself, turtle; you know that; I'm all about looking out for number one."

"You lie very well, up here," the terminator turtle said, touching the fractal hand to his head, "but you fool yourself. You never lie, in here," and Arnie touched his belly. A turtles's heart lies in a line, three redundant and simple in-line blood pumps, with a nearly infinite capacity to regenerate from trauma. Any one of them can shut down and be isolated while it was regrown, three hearts in one, complexity within simplicity. Further proof that the universe loves their shiny shells.

I heard the first patter of rainfall on the roof. It was not as late in the day as it seemed, just dark out. I didn't know what to say to Arnie, and at that moment he let me off the hook. "You're here past closing time, it seems. We closed early today, to get ready for Landing Day, don't you know."

Now he was the one lying. They had done all their preparations already. But, looking out into the rotunda, I saw that displays had been moved and space opened up. I hadn't been paying enough attention. Tarps covered what looked like replicas of dismounted Haroo Second Empire antipersonnel particle cannons. I whistled. "Those look very deadly, and uh, authentic..."

"They do, don't they?"

"Are you going to tell me, or not, Arnie?"

The terminator turtle smiled in the manner of his species and started to speak. Then front door of the library was blown to splinters, and Jaw-Some made a grand entrance. We crouched down behind the railing

"Wow, he really is as dumb as he looks, isn't he?" I stage-whispered.

"Smart enough to go to ground and stay put. We forced his hand this afternoon. The starship captain he'd made arrangements with lifted for Ahdweedah," a non-Turtle world far, far away and in the direction of the Dominator homeworld, "an hour ago. He needs transportation, and he needs it now."

"Are you saying that there's a starship in the library?"

"No, just directions to one; plus a key, if you will."

"Arnie..."

"Don't worry, he's not getting it."

The Eater stomped up the grand staircase, and made for the scene of his argument and the murder a few days ago. He waved a melted looking device, not the beam-wand thing, but obviously also made by the starfish or his people.

"What did you do to piss this guy off?” I muttered.

"We killed them with our kindness," Arnie said absently. "The invasion failed, but there was internal conflict. We needed time, and we didn't want to kill any more of the slaves operating their warships, or living among them in their cities. So our biological engineers took some naturally occurring viruses and improved on them. Three of them, which went through their population and, in combination, rendered over half of their population sterile. Since two fertile couples were needed for a successful pregnancy, their population fell off dramatically in the space of a few generations. While we tore our civilization apart, their subject species rose up and almost finished the job we had started."

I didn't see what Jaw-Some was looking for, I was frankly too busy chewing on what Arnie had just told me. The Eater fell to tearing up some more of the library though, so evidently whatever he was looking for wasn't there. And then Arnie stood up and walked a couple of steps towards him.

They looked at each other for something like ten seconds. Then Jaw-Some took a black cylinder off of his belt, twisted it and threw it at the turtle, roaring and hooting. The thing turned into a fog of red lights and didn't so much hit Arnie as wrap itself around him. The terminator turtle's clang seemed to be melting away, and the Eater strode towards my friend almost reverently.

"You suicidal son of a bitch," I muttered, stepping between them and wishing that I was somewhere else- anywhere else. "Hey! You big ugly, stupid steaming pile of-"

"Do not interrupt your betters," Jaw-Some said, or rather a voder on his belt translated something which he screeched. You could have dropped me with a fly swatter. Then I danced back out of the way as he turned and swatted at me. "I'll take care of you later," he added, but he paused, looking past me at the table where I'd been working- at the paper foldings.

"Hey! You! I know where the starship is!"

I had his attention.

"There is no starship- the Watcher tricked me..." he looked behind him at Arnie, whose clang was nearly gone. "But it was almost worth the trip."

"Yeah? Well, you're wrong. I can show you, but it's gonna cost you!"

"What if I don't kill you? And what about your friend here?"

"Who cares? I got expenses. You don't want it, I'll sell it to my people and be a hero." I smiled. "From what I hear, Second Empire tech was pretty hot shit. Hey, it's the only reason I've stuck it out in this moldy old pile of stone for the better part of a year!"

He stepped towards me and then again. "You will give me the starship!"

I had him. I turned and ran.

The Eater lumbered after me, but more cautiously this time. Last time I just barely stayed ahead of him, but this time we were playing cat and mouse for real. Only I was a mouse that needed to let him almost catch him, because I couldn't afford to let him loose interest. But the quarter-ton of teeth and sharp hooves was surprisingly quiet in the darkened library, and the storm-sounds were loud. Between the crash of thunder, I realized that Jaw-Some was no longer on my trail through the stacks, and I doubled back. I was a dozen meters from Arnie when there was a creak to my right and the shelf toppled over. I threw myself prone, pelted by falling books, and scrambled back through the tunnel between the leaning shelf. I almost went right into his snapping jaws.

"Not so fast, little morsel. You have something to tell me before I eat you!"

"Now why would I help you with that, exactly?" This thing really needed to join megalomaniacs anonymous.

"Because I'd let you live a little bit longer?" Jaw-Some kicked at the shelf, removing a half meter of my hiding place. A splinter of structural plastic about fifteen centimeters long fell in front of me, jagged and unwieldy but it would have to do. "I can make it quick, for a price. That is the best deal you're going to-" He kicked again and I shoved the point of the plastic shard into his leg, just above the hooves. While he was distracted, I ran some more.

My personal philosophy is that life is so much simpler if you don't let honor keep you from doing what you need to do. Sometimes standing and fighting gets you dead, quickly, and yet that's exactly what we did, in the mutiny on Tiamat. The alternative to standing and fighting was bugging out and letting the Admirals turn the planet and the people below us into glass, and we told them "Hell no!"

However, this wasn't about being able to live with yourself, it was about staying alive. I will freely admit that at this point I just ran away blindly. The Eater stumbled along on two and a half legs, but he ran me down and got to the top of the main stairs to the rotunda before me. There was no more bargaining. I think, if Jaw-Some was thinking any more than I was at that point, that he had decided to just have a taste, and then get the information out of me before I bled to death. He took a step towards me as I backed away, snapped his jaws, and then another step...

There was cloth under my left hand, from a banner that hadn't been completely hung. I didn't even think, I grabbed it and went over the railing, just in time. I fell and swung around screaming. As I swung back, Jaw-Some leaned down and snapped at me again, but he couldn't reach far enough over the railing. When I swung away, I felt something give, and looked below for a soft spot to land. So that was how I saw Librarian 2nd Class Alwekoo with his picked crew at the two working antipersonnel cannon, just as they opened fire.

I'd never been so close to the business end of one of these things before. The particle beams crisscrossed in his chest, putting entirely too much energy into Jaw-Some's upper body. Flesh roasted, and then the water deep inside flashed into steam under too much pressure and blew out. The cooked meat smell was delicious. What was left of the Eater tumbled down into the open space in the rotunda with a loud wet crunching sound. The body kicked some more and voided itself. The three eyes stayed on me until awareness faded away from them.

***

Arnie was still alive; without the clang, but very much still alive. Two younger librarians half-carried him down the great staircase. He looked passing pleased with himself, the turtle did. "I thought that you didn't like amusement rides?"

"Do you see this face?" I said, pointing. "For future reference, this is not a happy face!" I grabbed him in a bear hug and the two kids just stood back and grinned, turtle-fashion.

"Ack! Don't break me!"

I let go and looked him over. "What the fuck, Arnie? What the hell was that? And why are you still alive?"

"All very good questions," mused the terminator turtle. "The thing he threw at me was an anti-super soldier weapon of some kind. A cyber-phage, if you will. Typical of the Eaters; it ate my cybernetics. But not the nanotech of my fractal manipulator. That was a much later upgrade, experimental." Arnie was quiet, remembering things that were.

All power and glory to the Second Empire of the Haroo.

"So you'll live?"

"Until I die." Arnie saw my confusion and took pity on me. "The synthetic organs that kept me alive this long are gone now. I'll live out the natural balance of my life and I won't outlive any more of my children or grandchildren, or... great-grandchildren." He reached over and squeezed the shoulder of one of the youngsters with one of his, now two, fractal hands. They were skinnier but serviceable. He held them up to me. "These are all that is left, and they don't have any agendas of their own."

"But... the 'clang' did?"

"Yes. For over a thousand years I have had the Imperial Command Authority. I inherited it from a daisey-chain of my superiors but I was the last link. I had no choice but to implement contingencies created by emperors long dead. Now I get to choose things for myself, again." Arnie closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. "It's good to be alive."

"Amen to that, brother turtle."

***

I had a report to file, but I decided to drop by the Consulate in person. The storm didn't bother me much at all. Something about almond-shaped green eyes with flecks of gold. I meant to ask Magda if she was hungry and see where things went from there. Instead she ushered me into the Consuls' office without a word. I expected the fading old dragon, but when I saw who was sitting behind the desk, I gave up on a nice quiet evening for two.

"Report." The spy master was a woman who had been in Covenant Intelligence since before there even was a Covenant. Her family has had a long history of Machiavellian intrigue.

"Well, there was a rumble at the Library-"

"Cute, Anderson, but I already know something about that. I came here about the other matter?"

"That old wreck, under the bay? It may not be a wreck after all."

My control officer smiled. "Interesting."

I gave her rest of my report and thought about the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."