Antares Crucible

by Warwick Gibson

  Manoba, though, started to think about other things. He had done his best to make the known part of the Spiral Arm a safer and fairer place, but he had left ends unraveled. There were some 180 Buccra warships on the warpath in the core, and that could create new problems for the Alliance.

  The Druanii needed to be formally included in the Alliance, which would greatly expand its area outside the Spiral Arm, and proper cultural and trading exchanges needed to begin. The Alliance should really help the economies of the Centaur and Magenta peoples recover, after their losses during the final battle at the Antares sun. Opportunities to make new ties with other cultures could easily be lost.

  It was going to be hard to let go of the reins of power, but let go he must. For Asura, for himself, and to allow new leaders to emerge in the Alliance.

  He wondered if Fedic would want to step down from active duty as well. The medics would release him in a day or two, and Cordez had offered him his mountain hideaway as a place where he could recover, as he had done so many times before.

  Maybe he should start a veterans club, collecting together all the people who had been key to the Alliance success in the Second Phase of the Caerbrindii Wars, as Sallyanne had named the Invardii expansion into Alliance territory.

  Would ParapSanni be interested in a veterans club, he wondered. The Sumerians were longer lived than Humans, and he wondered how old ParapSanni was, in Human terms. He was fairly sure Fallostrina and Mordiselli would be starters for such a club.

  There were so many others.

  Asura laid her head on his shoulder. He started guiltily. She always did that when she knew he had wandered off into his thoughts.

  He brought his mind firmly back to the here and now. The two of them had some serious planning to do for their life together – and he knew in his heart that with her as his other half it would, indeed, be a wonderful life.

  She squeezed his arm.

  THE END

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