Dusts of Avalon - Beastwithin.org

And now, it was time for the President, Generals Fyreheart and Pyrehill, somekind of a historian called Dr. Meryl Colbert, and a platoonful of men and womenfrom the Space Marine Corps who served as their honour guard to suit up anddepart from their shulecra.It was indeed a strange and wonderful thing to see the mysterious space stationup close. e President was an important man, but it seemed to him that all ofthe really important things always happened to other people; he needed to makehistory every week, but there was rarely any kind of hands-on feel to it. Now, hewas here, in the front; he wasn't merely looking at a report with photographs andvideo; he really was, honest to God, being dragged aboard a real alien spacecra,where he'd meet some aliens who masqueraded as the Knights of the Round Table.Or maybe they were the Knights of the Round Table. None of the theoriesmade mu more sense until they'd actually meet the aliens in question, but rightnow, that was a job that was to be done by both the scientists and politicians.“I do have one question”, President Malory said. “How do we talk to these beings?We can't remove our helmets here, and you can't speak in vacuum, right?”General Fyrehart looked shoed. e vulture-like, bald general had caused abit of a stir by aaining his rank in the age of — while generals under fourtywere not unheard of, no one was even sure if it was possible to take the coursesthat fast, but the military academies worldwide considered him a genius. If Plattermancould win wars from his office, Fyrehart was the kind of an officer whowon them by writing a book-size treatise on the strategy — years in advance. Hehad caused even bigger stir by being appointed a Secretary of Planetary Defenceby President Malory's predecessor, Jordan Monmouth; his warlike, rousing andstirring speees were probably good for geing people's hearts and minds behindthe defence effort against the Planners, but a lot of populace didn't like him, ashe reminded them too mu of the dark shadows of the bygone wars. Fyreharthadn't been fan of this hastily arranged plan before, and now, it seemed like thatsort of hasty planning reared its ugly head again. When you plan things properly,obvious snags like this seem to come to mind before the meeting is arranged.ere were a lot of things that didn't seem to work too well in this plan.“Yes, that does seem to present a problem, sir”, Fyrehart said. “We can onlyhope these… knights have radio.”“Well, we can only hope this plan is going to work out well.”“Daleworth!” General Pyrehill said as they reaed the entrance to the keep.“Come over here.”“Yes, sir.” Daleworth came to Pyrehill's side.“Anything unusual in sight? Anything new since your last visit here?”“Well, it seems the insides of the space station has this weird blue glow now,