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Gurtrine’s Mandate

May thought this was strange, and said so. Saying so was, of course, a bad idea. It went something like this: “This seems too easy,” May said. “Shouldn’t have said that.” “Why not?” The pipe which had looked, from a distance, like it went on forever, suddenly twisted to the left. May pulled the ship around, scraped it against the metal wall, wiping out a row of perfectly good green lights, dropped the ship down to avoid a metal panel that drooped from the ceiling of the pipe, narrowly missed the purple rocket which overtook her, and cursed. Xan had the look of a startled house cat, his finger tips disappearing into the abused foam armrest of the chair. “That’s why not. Gurtrine’s Mandate— it’s a function of irony.” “What?” “Well, the story goes that Colonel Gurtrine the Third Great Colonel of-” “Tell me later.” May hated to cut him off mid anecdote but the purple rocket was now the size and color of a flaming grape and they were no longer in the lead.