Three minutes remained until the explosion.🎀♠ 匚 👌♨
The leaders of Zion and the Slavs were still arguing. Both sides quoted scripture and cited precedent, ranging across past and present as though neither would stop until the other had been thoroughly refuted.
Curiously, whenever the argument reached an impasse and seemed about to collapse into violence, one of them would yield a little or simply change the subject, allowing it to continue.
After all, there were plenty of points to dispute about "the social classification of psionic infectees." Even if two hundred people paired off and each pair chose a different point, all hundred pairs could find something to argue about.
In fact, if necessary, they could argue for years.
That, of course, was impossible.
By now, most people understood what both sides wanted. Only a few single-celled creatures with a ladle less brain matter than everyone else had failed to catch on.
They did not want war.
Zion's position was easy to understand: they could not win. They had just over two hundred vehicles and, at the very most, a little over three thousand people. Three thousand against more than a hundred thousand? They would need a miracle.
The Slavs' position was harder to fathom. Anyone His Majesty the Emperor sent to command this war would naturally be a trusted confidant, or at least someone he believed would carry out his orders to the letter.
Why, then, was that person paying lip service to the emperor's orders while dragging his feet and refusing to begin the battle?
Inside the Slav army's command post—an absurdly large armored vehicle—a young officer could not help asking, "General, why haven't we attacked? Why are we arguing with those sinners instead?"
The general, whose hair had gone mostly white, glanced at him and switched