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Sequel to my last story.

"You know Moongara, you have really been at this game too long." Sula said after looking at my plan. "This was the first thing you thought of when you found your quarters in disarray." He shook his head in disbelief and amusement. I noticed that Reth was still sitting on his shoulder, trying to read the plan. "Yes." I said.
"So what are the odds it will actually work?" He said.
"Pretty high." I said, taking the pad with the plan on it back. "You should have seen this place when I got back."
Tige nodded.
"Those little buggers got into everything in half a blink." She said. Tige is a goddess with the senses and reflexes to match...and she couldn't keep up with two of them.
"I don't understand." Reth said. "How can this help win a war?"
"What if your enemy can out build you?" Sula asked.
"This would be a way to break some of their ships but won't they just produce more?"
"Producing more ships isn't that easy." I said.
"Perhaps this will help." Sula said. "Shipyards are like giant ships with no engines." Okay, it is a little bit more complicated than that but that wasn't important at the moment.
"Oh, so you can have the Teslas break the shipyards?" Reth asked.
"Yes." Sula said. "And what strategic principle does that play into?"
"Breaking the enemy's supply lines." Reth said, suddenly understanding.
"Very good." Sula said, reaching up and scritching Reth behind the ear. I just shook my head. Sula can be a good teacher of all things strategic but most people never get past the fact that he very much looks like the word from which his name is derived, Osular'i, Dreng'ki Ancient for "bone breaker".
"So what is the first step in this little experiment?" Sula said.
"One task for you, one task for me." I said. "You go get your jeweler to make a bunch of Tesla sized shield charms to keep them safe, I will go see about getting a few more Teslas, including a few males."
"The Engineers are going to have a collective heartache." Tige said. "I will go warn them."
"Actually I would like to come with you." Sula said. "I can leave the order for protection talismans with one of the Dreng'ki's jewelers. And I will bring the D.V. Kali Ma, since you know the Anubis shouldn't be operating alone, even in friendly space."
"Plus you want to see what a convention is like." Tige piped in, 'helpfully'. Sula nodded.
"I don't want to." Reth says. "Too many people."
"Yes but you will be on my shoulder." Sula said, reassuringly.
"Can we bring Flamewalker? People will get out of the way for him." Reth suggested.
"Good gods, no." I said, face palming. "He may be a Nightmare but he is still a horse...a horse at a furry convention is going to get mobbed."
"I will take your word for it." Sula said. "Don't worry, Reth, if you stay on my shoulder, you can stay above the crowd."

I walked onto the Anubis's bridge, only to be confronted by my Chief Engineer and a rather large, metal cage with what looks like chicken wire wrapped around it.
"If we are going to be transporting those little chaos demons you call Teslas on board this ship, they go in here." She snarled, pointing at the cage. I just sighed and nodded.
"I am not even going to try to argue that one." I said...first rule of commanding a starship, never argue with your engineers, they will ALWAYS win. "Please put that in my quarters." I said, pointing to the cage.

Thankfully the trip to Earth, a good two weeks at maximum speed, was relatively uneventful. The base I live on is in the outer, outer rim of Catrian Imperial space, Earth is somewhere in the middle.

"I am starting to wish we had brought Flamewalker down here with us." I said with a sigh. The convention was much more crowded than I was expecting. I looked over to see how Sula was reacting to the crowd and noticed that Reth was now wearing something shiny on a leather collar. 'That's new' I thought. I looked again, more carefully...I think that it was a palm tree in silver. I remembered seeing a pair of those on the halter type thing that holds Flamewalker's headpiece on as part of his battle armor. I smiled, I had a feeling I knew where that shiny came from, knowing Sula's history. I made a mental note to ask Sula about it later. My thoughts were interrupted by a couple of shrieks.
"Can we take your picture?" A human said. "We have never had the furry aliens here before."
"Not right now, no." I said, before Sula could react.
We managed to work our way towards the Dealer's Den and to the wyrm breeders table. Sula let me take care of talking to D, the wyrm breeder, while he acted as body guard. This many people he doesn't know, he goes into guard dog mode.
"I would like to sign up for the egg draw." I said to D. I had been around the wyrm world enough to know that I couldn't just walk up and ask to buy Teslas...that would be too easy. Fortunately, we were just in time for a wyrm egg draw.

I eyed two metallic colored eggs, that usually meant Teslas. Given the looming presence that is Sula, everyone doing the drawing was looking at us before picking eggs and following my eyes to make sure they weren't picking the ones I wanted...not what I had intended. Thankfully I had a nice early place in line so I pulled the two eggs I wanted. A pair of Teslas, a tarnished male and a silver male. Perfect for my soon-to-be sabotage teams.
Then I heard a sqeeing noise behind me.
"Is that Reth?" A voice behind me said. I turned around to see a woman with a few wyrms on both of her shoulders and one sitting on her head. One of the wyrms was a Squeaker, a breed that Reth had helped establish.
"Yes." Reth said.
"Nice to meet you, grand sire of the Squeakers." She said. Reth smiled.
"So this is my great grand dad." Said one of the wyrms on her shoulder.
"Nice to meet you." Reth said, standing up and looking very pleased. In the process, the shiny fell to his front.
"What is that?" Asked the other wyrm.
"It is a DAK collar tag." Reth said, very pleased. "Sula gave it to me."
"Oh, it is very pretty." The other wyrm said. I could see a bit of disappointment in Reth's face, not getting to tell everything he knew about the origins of his new, prized shiny.
"Well if it isn't the cowardly growler." Another Growler sitting on another person's shoulder piped up.
"Be nice." The handler said.
"Why?" The other Growler snarled. "He is a coward, a disgrace to our kind."
"Really." Reth snapped back. "How much do you know about The Art of War?" I covered my muzzle with one paw, this couldn't possibly end well.
"What is that?" The other Growler looked confuse.
"Did you know you can defend your territory without all this fuss and fighting?" Reth said calmly. "Using the ideas in Sun Tzu's Art of War?" The other Growler looked horribly confused.
"You mean you can keep your territory without all this tiresome fighting?" He said, after picking his jaw up off his handler's shoulder.
"Have you ever cracked a book?" Reth said. "Or studied the battles of Gengis Khan or the Desert Fox?" Reth fluffed up to show off the ornament Sula had let him wear. I was starting to think Sula had told Reth it was a protection talisman, given how Reth was acting. "I have and now I can defend my territory without having to constantly fight. I know how to confuse my enemies, wear my enemies out without expending any energy on my part and how to make the terrain do the work for me." Reth said, thoroughly confident. The other Growler looked very small, being put in his place by this, supposed, coward.
"Does this mean you want to go to the library now?" The Growler's handler asked his wyrm.
"Maybe." The wyrm said, very quietly, trying not to admit that the little book wyrm had bested him. I was quite proud of him for being able to silence the little brat without either me or Sula having to get involved.
"Are you two coming to the wyrm meet up later?" D asked, once the fluff settled.
"I only brought Reth." I said sheepishly. "The rest of my wyrms wanted to stay with their new friends back home...except the Teslas, they only didn't want to come when they heard they had to ride in their cage or my engineers wouldn't allow them on the ship."
"Do I want to ask?" D said with a raised eye brow.
"On the way home, they got into the power relays that route power to the Anubis's main energy weapons. The engineers weren't pleased."
"Oh, that sounds like it could have been bad." D said.
"I think we will come to meet up anyway." I said. "I haven't gotten to meet many other handlers."
"I suppose I will come too." Sula said. "If nothing else, you could use a body guard." He said.
"Most generals have or had body guards." I said with a bit of a sigh. "Far be it for me to break tradition." Having Sula around is, occasionally, like having one's over protective big brother around.

The wyrm meet up was pleasant. There were no more challenges from other Growlers. Something tells me a warning got around about Reth and his new knowledge. I was in the proverbial dog house for not bringing the rest of my squirm, though tales of their exploits almost made up for it. The other Tesla handlers found the problems we had had with Teslas, particularly aboard the Anubis, were a favorite. My two new Teslas enjoyed the meet up too. I still needed to come up with names for the two. I will admit, naming wyrms is my least favorite part of getting new wyrms.

The next day, I was able to aquire two more Teslas, a gold male and female. I was quite pleased. I solemnly promised to register all of them. I found it a bit wierd when I got to thinking about it, that while wyrms are sentient creatures, they could be bought...I decided it was like our horses, they could pick their handlers by some form of magic and if that didn't work out, they had ways of finding another handler. The money exchanged was just a way of compensating the breeder and/or handler for the feed bill. As an example, there were several Tesla eggs in each of the egg batches I got to pick from but I only picked the ones that "spoke to me" and I got Teslas that seem quite happy to be with me. And they love the idea of getting to dismantle an enemy ship.


When we got back to the base, the "training" began. Sula, myself, Marr and the Anubis's chief engineer, Tala'shir, began explaining to the Teslas what to look for to get the best bits and pieces for their babies...namely the enemy's life support systems and weapons. This was along side lessons in how to NOT set off things like torpedos.

"Let the first test begin." I said. "Telaport the Teslas over to the 'enemy' ship." It was actually a ship ready for the scrap yard, ie not a ship I minded sacrificing to this test. Six Teslas versus a starship and its engineers. Yes, I made the engineers of the Anubis try to counter the Teslas since they are the best in the business. They failed...spectacularly. So did the security personnel who were also part of the test. It is very hard to find tiny Teslas running around a kilometer long war ship, particularly when the life support systems, artificial gravity and just about every other system on the ship is going haywire. And of course, being so tiny, Teslas can get into places that no one else can. The head of the security teams final report contained a description of one Tesla sighting and a fleeting sighting at that. About 2 hours later, the now useless hulk was towed into orbit around Tauru'Reng'Gou. It had gone from (maybe) usable starship hull to a giant Tesla nest. Just the result I had been hoping for. The engineers had been told to restore life support systems in the near future so that we could go and watch the Teslas in their "natural" habit.

"That went amazingly well." Sula said, looking over the after action reports from the teams involved in the test. "Though I think your engineers will be annoyed at you for quite a while."
"Yah, getting their butts kicked by a pack of tiny little fluff balls isn't going to make them real happy." I said. "But they knew what they were getting into."
"But the security staff didn't." Sula said with a laugh.
"They have hunted gremlins in the Anubis's conduits, Teslas aren't THAT much smaller."
"But they are infinitely faster." Tige said, reading over one of the action reports. "And you knew that from my experiences."
"Ah well," I said. "It worked and the others involved in the test will get over their bruised egos."
"Another option in the arsenal." Sula said. "Thankfully, right now, no need for it, so plenty of time to refine their training...but I remember sabotage teams taking quite a bit of training."
"And these guys didn't hardly take any." Tige said. "Nothing like taking advantage of natural abilities."
"So true." Sula said.
"This has to be one of your craziest, successful plans yet, Moongara." Tige said. "Very nice."
"I wonder what other sorts of help the wyrms will be." I said.