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 necks 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 Diplomat's 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.”
He ignored the pilot's insult. “I have never seen such an Outsider craft before,” Diplomat replied, the fear looming once more. One of his heads dipped toward his medical pouch.
“Nor have any of the Deep Council. We have our theories, even as you quake to your hooves over things which are new.”
Diplomat flutter-blinked in veiled irritation.
“It appears that this Outsider craft uses hyperdrive,” he mused aloud to his pilot. The coldlife traders generally did not travel faster than light, preferring relativistic travel. The appearance of the Outsider vessel from hyperspace had set off alarms throughout the Homeworlds.
The Guardian puppeteer clacked her left set of molars in agreement. “It is exceedingly rare. The clan of helium-beasts with which our Race does business is known to use the hyperdrive in emergencies.”
The phrase made his neck pelts stand up. “What could constitute an emergency to such beings?” The Outsiders had little to do with the concerns of carbon-based, sunward forms of life. What could be an emergency to an Outsider? The thought chilled him.
“Perhaps their liquid helium is too warm,” whistled the pilot sourly.
Diplomat understood the basic aggressive paranoia of the Guardian caste — much of it made sense in a hostile universe — but the Outsiders were long-term partners of the puppeteer race.
“Are the Outsiders not our allies?” he asked as diplomatically as his title. “Have they not given our Race help in the past?”
“Again you grasp truth with one mouth only,” the pilot hummed. “We owe the helium-beasts much, but that dependency in turn leads to a threat to our Race.”
How like a Guardian, Diplomat thought, to view the gifts of the Outsiders as threats. The coldlife sentients had provided the puppeteers with many technological marvels, including the Mover of Worlds that had saved the puppeteer race so long ago. All the Outsiders had asked in return was that Diplomat's race observe and study other life-forms and occasionally report that information back.
Selling the many technological miracles of the Outsiders to other warmlife races had enriched the puppeteers for thousands of years.
A seemingly harmless arrangement, until the terse summons had been received in the Homeworlds. And this frightening moon-sized ship appeared just outside the puppeteer system's gravity well, waiting for an urgently demanded emissary.
What was happening?
Diplomat touched forked tongue to lip-fingers in thought. “You grazed with the Study Herd on this issue, I presume.”
The Guardian blinked assent.
“I need all of your briefing materials, Guardian,” Diplomat managed to muster.
The other puppeteer's heads came up in humor. “Hardly,” she grated. “I must feed you the information slowly, as tender leaves are fed to younglings before their grinding molars emerge. You would surely break under the strain of our mission, were it given you all at once.”
Diplomat squared his heads in a posture of pride, suppressing his fears, which lay ever ready to break out. Still, he was important to this mission, and the Wisdom of Retreat's pilot needed to be reminded of the fact. He forced himself to meet the Guardian's eyes directly.
Not in submission.
The soldier puppeteers free head meaningfully dipped down and touched the medal on the front of her impact armor. It was a holographic representation of the image of a retreating puppeteer: the Sigil of the Hindmost. She snorted in dismissal at Diplomat's earlier prideful tone. Even through his mouths, he could smell her annoyance-scent.
“I recognize your authority and honor,” persisted Diplomat, inwardly bemused that he was not curled up tightly again into a ball for the other puppeteer to kick. “Yet I act for the Hindmost as well. We are a team, Guardian, a small Herd of our own. We are to work together, against a common enemy. Toward a common goal. That too is a Hindmost's Command.”
A long pause.
Diplomat held his left breath as he tried not to listen to the other puppeteer's harsh breathing.