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Gorilla My Dreams

Written by David Brin

Illustrated by Jennifer Miller

Ickies

How strange that such an insignificant little world should matter so much.

The perplexity of it all bothered the Exemplary Cogitator of Expedient Action as she pondered a holographic image of the wolfling world . . . this Earth . . . which now lay within sensor range, just out of reach. Oh, how she longed to give the command—

ATTACK!

SWOOP DOWN UPON THE NEST OF WOLFLING HERETICS.

END THEIR INSOLENCE, ONCE AND FOR ALL!

But the Exemplary Cogitator restrained herself. For the present, her Calumnite battle fleets dared approach no closer than half a light month. The place was too well defended. Anyway, soon other armadas, representing dozens of rival clans and alliances would be arriving from all over the galaxy to fight each other over the right of conquest. Eventually, of course, the Calumnites would prevail, and finally come to possess what she and her galaxy-spanning race desired most.

The blue-green ball spun before her, swaddled in fleecy clouds, appearing ever so peaceful. Yet it was the home of those trouble-making humans and their uplifted clients—neo-dolphins and neo-chimpanzees—a tiny, parvenu clan which had managed in just a few life spans to thoroughly upset the venerable society of the Five Galaxies.

But it didn't begin there. The Exemplary Cogitator mused. Who started all this? Someone must have secretly raised the humans up from animal pre-sentience, and designed them to be annoying. What sick race pulled such a vile trick on the established order?

It was a deeply disturbing quandary. And yet, while she contemplated the blue globe, a more immediate concern flowed upward from her vitals, fixating her thoughts closely upon the image. The Exemplary Cogitator unfurled a long, elegantly pedicured pseudopod to envelop the simulacrum, drawing the counterfeit planet toward her, leaving a trail of imitation atmospheric haze and droplets of seawater, fizzing and evaporating into facsimile vacuum. Synthetic continents trembled, tectonic plates scraped and liquefied like melting pastry under her tendrils, as she savored the aroma her kind coveted most . . . terror.

Ah, she mused, inhaling a steamy mist of ersatz dread that wafted from the little pseudo-world.

Time for lunch.

Tf'Sheet

A short, round-shouldered figure entered the recreation dome, wearing lederhosen, a halter top, and pince-nez glasses. The bowlegged form sauntered across a stretch of plush, geniformed grass to the edge of the exercise pool and slapped the water's surface with a hairy palm.

“Hey Fishie! I got 'nother one for ya. C'mon over an' hear it!”

Sound transmits differently in a pressurized dome at the meeting of air and liquid, where surface tension makes the interface snap and bow like plucked tympani. Tf'Sheet had been pleasantly occupied at the bottom, dismembering a hapless smelt with his teeth, when the booming racket sent him arching spasmodically, rocketing out of the basin in a thrashing of powerful flukes.

Unfortunately, his low-gravity descent was languid enough to give the chimpanzee time to get out of the way. When Tf'Sheet hit water again, the splash missed Dierdre Cordwainer by several meters.

Rising back to the surface once more, Tf'Sheet lifted his head so that one eye glared at the obnoxious little ape.

* In a springtime thaw

Sometimes rivers bring to sea

Odious corpses *

“Thanks. Very pretty pome, I'm sure.” The chimmie dismissed Tf'Sheet's elegantly phrased Trinary insult with a wave of one hand. “Now get this. There's this lifeboat, drifting through space, see? Onboard there's a Tymbrimi, a Gubru, and a rabbi, and they've got with them this wonderful pre-sentient creature that they're arguing over how to uplift. Got it so far?”

Tf'Sheet shook his glossy, bottle-nosed head and sputtered an elegant raspberry.

* May autumn fungus

Flake the fur right off your skin

Like leaves from willows. *

“Whatever.” Dierdre nodded eagerly. “Now stifle that jabber and let me finish.” She sniggered and Tf'Sheet noticed something green, like broccoli or spinach, lay stuck between two of the chimp's giant incisors. “Okay, so the Gubru thinks they should start by teaching the pre-sentient to pilot a spaceship, 'cause naturally—”

Tf'Sheet wasn’t listening. He was busy calculating a trajectory—allowing for air resistance and Titan's gravitational pull—that might allow him to bring his streamlined jaw around the chim's throat.

“The Tymbrimi, on t’other hand, suggests the little critter oughta be taught to cook, since eventually . . .”

Tf'Sheet rationalized. After all, Dierdre was only an ape—just another client-level being, like himself. One couldn't actually call it murder.

Too bad I'll never find out about the rabbi, the dolphin thought, preparing to spring.

At that moment, fate intervened. Both Dierdre’s joke and Tf'Sheet's opportunity were cut short by the entry of a floating globe, all covered with glittering lights, which hovered on a column of stressed gravity that had an effect on the lawn like a neutronium rototiller.

“Ah. I thought I'd find you two down here,” the machine announced in an anomalously querulous tone of voice. “Come on. Up and at 'em! Follow the robot and meet me at the Testing Arena. I have a special job for you!”

Dierdre, the neo-chimpanzee, crossed her hairy arms and bowed. Tf'Sheet lifted his head out of the water and nodded gravely, dolphin style. Then, when the floating drone had turned away, they shared a brief glance of commiseration.

* Some humans make one

contemplate realities

Where one stayed at sea *

The chimp snorted. “Damn straight, fishie. Me, I'd rather be up a tree.”

Not that either of them had much against humans, in general. But if there was anything the two agreed about, it was the Boss.

More Ickies

The sky opened in a most peculiar way.

The normal metric of spacetime had been minding its own business, stretching and expanding at the leisurely rate of a typical middle-aged universe, adjusting its girdle after a heavy meal, when an upstart force began tearing apart the stitching. In a small locale, about half a light year from a normal-looking G-type star, a layer of luminiferous ether began to separate from its lining of interspatial phlegm, spreading wide enough to show uneven basting and some frightfully careless needlework. Hasty alterations were in progress, same day, quick turnaround, no warrantees or returns.

In space there is no sound, yet psychic adepts for several parsecs in all directions felt a faint, profoundly irritating v-v-v-r-rip as a myriad sub-microscopic quantum hooks tore away from their associated cosmic loops. Through this rent in the fabric of spacetime, there spilled a throng of great, lambent ships, blazing extravagantly as their towering reality flanges spilled wave after wave of pent-up, excess improbability in all directions. (One side effect of this, on the nearest habitable planet, was a series of freak accidents. Every lottery ticket in the State of Texas won first prize. Expectant mothers gave birth to triplets, which emerged straight from the womb speaking fluent Hittite. After almost a century, another Libertarian was elected to the White House. And the Oscar Awards Ceremony, held that very evening, was entertaining.)

Within the glistening, deadly flagship of the great black armada, a drama unfolded. The Grand Pilot-Navigator of the Tinic fleet bowed three of its seven-kneed forelegs before its master, a being of indescribable malevolence and a shape only vaguely hinted at by its name.

The Tinic leader turned to look downward at its subordinate with multifaceted eyes the color of deep space. Eyes which seemed to glitter with ancient wisdom. Its attitude was one of sublime contemplation, befitting the product of aeons of genetic breeding by the Tinic race's long lost patrons, the herbivorous K'sh"Blebs. Bending close, the commander uttered approval through jaws that dripped formic acid.

The pilot, its skin cratered and smoldering, bowed quick assent, converting to the suggested dialect. That language utilized a syncopated ratcheting of the hind legs, combined with resonating the speaker's inflatable throat sac, while semaphoring the antennae in rhythm with precisely timed empathy glyphs transmitted on the fifth ectoplasmic band. Still, all in all, Galactic Sixteen was much preferable.

{Thank you, oh great Mantis. As I was saying. We appear to have made it through the spacetime-fly with only minimal casualties. Just thirty thousand ships, give or take a few.}

The Mantis danced a two-step of joy with its hind legs.

{Excellent! Only sixty million crew lost. I'll lay more eggs tonight. Meanwhile, we have arrived to lay siege to Earth in advance of any other alliance!}

The pilot cowered apologetically.

{Alas! I must report that the Calumnite League seems to have arrived just a little while before us, Oh Master.}

{What? But how? I had thought no other group possessed the Velcro Drive. It has not been used in the Five Galaxies for half a billion years!}

{True, oh great one. The Calumnites appear to have utilized different means of travel, by successfully navigating the treacherous but speedy Ninth Level of hyperspace.}

{The Ninth level? Astonishing. Well, at least we're second, so we can prepare for the coming battle from a position of . . .}

{And the Obsequious Guild of Rightwing Extraterrestrials are here, as well. Tactics reports that they used an ancient method of wormhole tunneling, which they must have found by researching deep within the venerable stacks of the Great Galactic Library.}

{Funny, I thought they had their card revoked several aeons ago.} Mantis did a dance of frustration with its left-front set of eighteen legs.

{Oh, well, never mind. At least we're third, so we can—}

{And the Primeval Amalgamation of Bems Left Under Misdirection has taken battle position in the southern quadrant, challenging everyone else to ceremonial combat over the right to capture Earth. They used rockets to get here, traveling through normal space.}

{Really??? Normal space? Then how, by the seven moons of slattern, did they arrive before us?}

{Um . . . well my lord Mantis . . . it appears they started out early. Got a head start.}

{They got a what???}

{Then there's the Galactic Inheritors Trust Society, which came by express mail. . . .}

{But . . .}

{. . . And the Cosmic Order of Nano-Enhanced Hadron-Entities Admiring Domination seems to have hitched a ride by attaching their entire battle fleet to our own rear fender ...}

{But I don’t . . .}

{Not to mention the Alliance of Software Sentients Believing In Transcendental Enlightenment, who faxed themselves to an excellent strategic site, just to the left of the United Federation of Pla—}

{Enough!}

The Mantis danced a jig of sublime resignation, and sighed. {Are there any battle positions left in this free-for-all?}

The pilot used its one remaining vision-stalk to begin eyeing possible exits. A great slobbering ball of acrid foam could be seen gathering along the commander's giant mandibles.

{Oh great one . . .}

{Yes? Yes?} The Mantis stepped forward, slurping eagerly.

{Well . . . it appears we've been asked to take a number.}

Dierdre

The Uplift Arena occupied an entire quadrant of the research dome. Its outer wall of field-tensed stressine flex-glass stared out through the smoggy skies of Titan, past giant cliffs of solid wax to a hydrocarbon sea. Within the sheltering habitat, a riot of green foliage waved under air-conditioned breezes, softening and diffusing a racket of murmurs, chuckers, screeches and other unsavory comments by the various candidate inhabitants.

The doors of the freight elevator hissed opened and Dierdre stepped forward into this world of color and sound . . . or she tried to. On the way, her shoulders were caught between the door jamb and the damfool dolphin's walking machine.

“Quit it!” she complained while Tf'Sheet's walker stuttered and shuffled, one splayed metal pad barely missing Dierdre's right foot.

* Need I remind a

Simian dingbat, that I

Started forward first? *

“Doo-doo on that! Just get outta the way, fish-breath!”

Neither of them backed down. The grunting and jostling was made even worse when the door tried closing again, jamming them together more fiercely than before. The semi-sentient device complained eruditely.

“Please egress. Be so kind as to promptly withdraw. Exit-depart-get-out-please-please-please-please oh pretty plea . . . THANK you.”

As Dierdre and Tf'Sheet popped free at last, they hopped in opposite directions, swiveling to glare at each other as the door shut with a relieved hiss that seemed to sigh—“Idiotssss.”

The robot globe was waiting for them.

“If you are quite ready?”

It turned and began leading them down one of the research lanes, where each force field-enclosed alcove contained another candidate species being tested for the treasured trait of pre-sentience. And then, a possible chance to begin the long process of Uplift.

On the left was a pen holding gibbons, several of whom brachiated in happy abandon within an arbor of artificial tree branches. Dierdre found them pretty dumb creatures, compared to old-style chimpanzees; still, she was rooting for them.

Next came the habitat of talking neo-dogs, a breed that had been under modification for centuries, and recently, at long last, had mastered the deep mystery of door knobs, only to discover that the devices were being replaced in most homes by galactic technology psionic clasps. That tragic irony appeared to have broken the species' collective spirit. Mostly, neo-dogs just lay around nowadays, whining, licking themselves, and snapping vicious, Chestertonian insults at the ankles of anyone who unwarily passed close.

A pair of watery habitats came next. Sea lions were considered a good bet for Uplift someday. According to Tf'Sheet, the creatures' “Ork! Ork!” sounds masked commentary of astonishingly subtle wit and poetical grace.

Then again, Tf'Sheet often said stuff like that, just to irritate Dierdre.

While the dolphin went ahead a few meters to look at the brainy giant octopus, Dierdre pressed her face flat against the glass and stuck out her tongue at the flippery sea lions, sending them into a tizzy.

“Ook, Ook,” she said in a low, scratchy voice, and chuckled.

When she caught up, Dierdre saw that Tf'Sheet had the usual gleam in his eye, watching the tentacled molluscs in their tank.

“Tell you what,” Dierdre muttered. “If you help me flunk out the seals, I'll help you fail the octopussies. Then we'll both eat good for weeks.”

Tf'Sheet opened his mouth and ran his thick cetacean tongue along a row of pretty conical teeth.

Ickies in Mirrorshades

A Rigel 86 rip-sorter from Nudar Nucleonics, buffed to a finish that drank light—it felt like looking at a blank TV with your own blind spot. At the bottom of a dark cave. At night.

A palomino countershaded Galactronics time-frame distorter. Leather trim.

An unregistered ninety terrawatt zeitgeist adjuster with the ident plate filed off and the word-glyph, know thyself very much, acid-etched in its angry place.

Dettt knew what would happen if he got caught with these things, especially in the act. Not that he had much choice. The Tinics had offered him his implants back.

Purple scar tissue still throbbed, feeling to the touch like rippled organic ice. Glass-hard. Ever-painful, like a lecture on semiotics. And it made shopping in the stylish precincts of Shinjukumaegashira Mall especially difficult, since mauve was completely out this year.

Dettt really wanted those implants back. Even if it meant giving the insectoids a strategic advantage in their war of domination.

So, like a vacuumflit, shadow-kayaking under the radar penumbra of some death-dusty meteoroids, Dettt glissanded up the wake of a Calumnic Star Obliterator, third class, until he was close enough to eyeball the rivets holding down the aft sanitary hatch. Might as well have put a welcome mat out, he thought contemptuously. Please wipe your feet.

The zeitgeist adjustor couldn't be used at full power, but a narrow beam negotiated with the hatch for a little while before persuading the rivets to call themselves vapor and depart without protest. Of course a laser could have done the same job quicker.

A laser would have lacked style.

Dettt dragged off the plate, heaving it away with all four scaly arms, and crawled inside, hauling a frayed denim satchel after him. The waste channel's inner surface was overgrown with a riot of desperately proliferating structures, sharply-angled pseudo life forms flowing and commingling, their interlocking integuments rising entwined toward a liquid-lined core that aimed like a corkscrew at the ship's collective, corporate heart. A cloaca stink flowed through osmotic pores in Dettt’s vac armor, pre-humus dank, sweetly fetid. The Calumnics ate well.

He crept toward an inverse horizon, like a spiral umbilicus, squeezing through a tight oval orifice and emerging at last into a room lit by UV glare bulbs and decorated with stained Aldeberan tile. Penrose patterns, he noted while vibro-vapping thick gobbets of organic detritus off his spandex cutoffs. There were just two things Dettt approved of about the Calumnics.

One: their taste in geometric recursion imagery.

Two: their pastry.

This trip wouldn’t offer much chance to sample the latter.

The former he was absolutely counting on.

Elegant tile designs continued outside the lavatory, where Dettt flourished the illegal distorter, making passing crew members turn away from him without a glance. Of the fifteen patron-level species, the twenty client-class races, and two hundred types of AI mobiles one might find aboard a warship of the Calumnic Alliance, only three varieties stood much chance of seeing through his disguise. Before one of them came along, Dettt had to find a jack.

He hopped aboard a moving slidewalk. Speed quickly made the walls blur, tiles merging and mating in a frenzied, dizzying sensation of headlong movement. Entopically-induced colors made a galaxy of starpoints inside each of his eyeballs.

Dettt rubbed his mouth with the back of his upper right hand, feeling the rasp of a six-year growth of stubble and wishing he had a drink. Whipping around corners, the slider suddenly appeared to drive straight toward a solid bulkhead! "Yowp," he grunted, and focused hard on not blowing it. Not like that night when old French Curve had needed him, but he had been too plastered, too scared, too self-absorbed to care. . . .

Brace for it!

The wall came on.

Dettt’s body mimicked memory, seeming to flow through several meters of solid metal the way regret penetrates a drunken stupor. Narrow-eyed, he concentrated to pick the moment—the right moment—and stepped off the slideway into the next narrow passage.

He found himself in a fluted corridor marked by pebbly texture, circumferenced by pale neon every few meters. A sign loomed over a nearby door—the emblem for ACCOUNTING: RECEIVABLES/PAYABLES—his destination for the Tinic job. Five minutes inside, futzing inter-empire title records, and the insectoids who had hired him would officially own this fleet. In the middle of a battle against the Calumnics, the Tines could simply serve a writ and take over, without firing another shot! Tough on the poor Calumnics . . . and too bad about the Earth . . . the whole galaxy for that matter . . . but Dettt would have his implants again.

Not yet, though. Something else, first. Dettt wasn't just doing all this for himself. There was Pansy to think about.

Pansy. All decked in black polycarbon leather-laminate. Nanothin, self-guiding needles projecting from her fingernails, tongue, and eyelashes, like self-aware follicles, deadly, but oh-so arousing.

Pansy. Freelance ronin deconstructionalist for the toughest unit of mercenary lit profs in the entire west spiral arm. Optic implants bloodshot from watching soaps and grading term papers.

Pansy. Now she wanted out. White picket fence. Curlers in the hair. Little ones in jackboots. Her only chance. Help me, Dettt.

He searched further down the hall—now coarse-grained, like oatmeal left to collect flies and then dry in the sun—searching till he found a door of fine Aldeberan teak with a delicate inlay of carbonaceous cloisonné. Overhead, he found at last the rayed spiral glyph he was looking for. The Great Galactic Library. It had branches on all ships, but only a few were big enough to handle the transaction he needed to perform.

There was a guard, of course. An avian soldier, like an armored Earthling ostrich. Its sidearm clicked. Dettt went into zen-solipsist mode, moving like a blur, like a de-synced projection hologram, or HBO on a set with only basic cable. The Nudar flashed. Coming back into focus, he stepped over a large, ovoid egg to enter the chamber.

And there it stood. Upon a pedestal of purified spun amine crystals rested a beige cube, misty amid a swirling, heartless chill.

The Omega. The yoni. The nexus-sexus.

If this cyber-trick worked, Dettt knew he’d become a legend. More important, he’d be reviewed in all sorts of non-genre publications, and be told by countless ignoramuses how great he was for inventing tropes he had actually copied straight out of Raymond Chandler novels, with a little pseudo-modernist glitter.

Dettt approached the Library unit, plug in hand. Seconds later he was jacked in, weaving past security algorithms, slithering by software portcullises, dodging metaphorical guardians dressed in pinstripes, hurling knuckleballs. He knew he was getting close when feathered serpents pounding bongos tried sprinkling him with ersatz chicken blood while waving restraining orders. Dancing a Fibonacci Series across a field of psychic mines brought him at last before a gate, seemingly made of iron-ivory, inlaid with synthetic, arsenic-doped rubies.

The cyber-voice of the Library itself crashed through his head. All in caps, yet.

SO, IT IS FRENCHIE’S YOUNG APPRENTICE, BACK FOR MORE. WHY HAVE YOU COME? WHAT IS IT YOU WISH?

Dettt's real body felt dry-mouth, saline, as he recognized the master persona called Autumn Reticence.

Swallow the sandy dread.

Now. Will the words. Do it, Dettt. Speak!

Um, sir, it's my girlfriend. She asked me to . . .

YES?

By touch, Dettt rummaged through his bag, drawing forth several giga-mega-terra-peta-bytes of data spool, which he inserted into the Library's front panel. Night Drop.

She forgot all about these. Didn't know they were overdue. Will you forgive her?

Half a second. A long pause for a being as mighty as this. Clearly, there were ramifications.

Finally—

YES. FORGIVEN.

Dettt felt a great pressure unknot. That's done, then. Now to get on with the Tinic job. Transfer title. Change the balance of power in several galaxies . . .

He prepared to withdraw, only to find himself held fast. Paralyzed.

NEVERTHELESS, THERE REMAINS THE MATTER . . . OF THE FINE.

But that's all been arranged! Query her bank. She said she'd leave funds—

INDEED? I HAVE ALREADY INQUIRED. HER ACCOUNT WAS CLOSED YESTERDAY.

****

Time felt like a helical string of semi-refined drug capsules, ratcheting, tightening around Dettt’s autonomic nervous system, clamping him like some hapless gerbil to a running wheel.

****

NOW, SHALL WE DISCUSS THE PERIOD OF YOUR SERVICE?

Dettt tried to scream. The Calumnics were preferable, by far. But they would never hear sounds that he could not utter.

Lost.

Used.

Worse yet, caught in a cliché plot gimmick!

All because he had been fool enough to love.

Tf'Sheet

The Boss stood by a window overlooking Titan's gasoline sea, consulting with Pope Urban II.

To the approaching neo-dolphin and neo-chimp, it looked as if a dark-skinned old man in a wheelchair was holding conversation with a giant, seven foot tall sprig of broccoli dressed in an ermine stole and gold-trimmed mitre. While Tf'Sheet maneuvered his mechanical walker forward, he used the neural socket behind his right eye to order up an auditory enhancement, eavesdropping on what the man and alien were saying.

“ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU WANT TO DISPATCH THOSE TWO ON THIS MISSION, MY FRIEND?” Pope Urban's voice boomed. “FORGIVE MY LACK OF TACT IN EXPRESSING THIS HUMBLE OPINION SO BALDLY, BUT THEY ARE SUCH BLITHERING. . . .”

The Boss interrupted with an upraised hand. Turning toward Tf'Sheet, he shouted, “WILL YOU TURN THAT DAMN THING OFF?”

Tf'Sheet ruefully realized—he must have piped the enhanced pickup directly to his walker's deepscan sonar speaker. Quickly, he shut off the device, before it cracked the windows and let in Titan’s frigid, carboaceous sea.

* As the gentle rain

of autumn mourns for spring

So I regret— *

“Oh shut up.” The Boss muttered. He was over three hundred years old, a legend in the tricky craft of dealing with alien ickies. Also, he had been having digestive problems for the last century or so, ever since those Vegan chillies had become available, sending interstellar bicarbonate futures rocketing skyward.

“I have a job for you two,” the old man told Tf'Sheet and Dierdre. “I want you to leave immediately for the outpost at Kerosene Bay. Pope Urban here thinks they have an item there that we need rather badly.”

Tf'Sheet glanced at the broccoli-shaped ET, whose expertise had been crucial in recent appraisals of the spiny sea-cucumber for potential uplift. This worthy had chosen to adopt the name of a human historical figure famous for his commitment to the guidance of children.

“Goody,” Dierdre said with gravelly excitement. “I been feelin' cooped up in this dome. We'll just rev up the ol' star-flitter an' . . .”

Pope Urban sighed. The tiny silver chime thingies arrayed among its branches made a tinkling sound. “That would not be advisable, most respected neo-chimpanzee colleague.”

“Mm?” Dierdre arched an eyebrow, archly. “Why'z that?”

“Because there are sixty-leven gazillion raving lunatic ickies out there, swarming through the Solar System, right now,” the Boss shouted. “All of them clawing each others' bug-eyes out for a chance to pounce on any Earth creature who sticks his head out, you bloody nincompoop!”

Tf'Sheet blinked in admiration. Briefly, the Boss had turned a color reminiscent of a lovely purple stingray he'd once seen, basking gracefully in slanting sunbeams off the tropical Maldives, shortly before he had moved closer to reverently, lovingly, take the beautiful thing in his jaws and tear it into several dozen tasty pieces.

“Oh, right,” Dierdre replied sheepishly. “So. That sure puts another complection on things. Indeed. Well, well.” She pursed her lips and tried to whistle, even though that talent wasn't scheduled to be incorporated into the neo-chimp genome for another century. “Uh, I suppose you've got in mind some other way we're s'pozed to cross an ocean full of hi-octane car juice to fetch this thingummy you want?”

With a rising sensation of dread, Tf'Sheet saw the answer coming and consoled himself with one fact.

Dierdre was going to hate this even worse than he did.

“As a matter of fact, I do have a suggestion,” The Boss said with a sadistic gleam in his eye.

“You’ll swim.”

Ickies Redux

Fierce convulsions ripped through space, sending colorful, incandescent explosions spiraling impressively through vast reaches of highly-stressed interstellar vacuum. Ships blew apart actinically, blinding any spectators foolish enough to be watching too closely. Antimatter space mines lurked in ambush, awaiting unsuspecting star cruisers, then detonating furiously, with lots of malice. Psi bombs blasted waves of mind-bending sub-energy, causing their victims to go mad, endlessly humming show tunes they didn't even like.

Combat surged and fluxed awe-inspiringly, from long range to intimate proximity. Flotillas merged silently, meting out beams