Summer Planets by A. T. Nager (great YA SF novel a teenager age 19)

Page 19.

12. Year Of The Bread Ships (5000 CE)

The Magnon of the Mudsheaves raised his wand and a million ships fired up a million miles away in orbit of Mudsheave I.

The Magnon nodded to himself. The Bread Ships were a worthy gesture, good for trade.

It was 12 a.m., Lacryma Standard Time, and the year 5000 began. Long ago there had been great upheavals, and many ships had taken Bread from the Mudsheaves to the starving galaxy.

Now was a time of peace, though the Ankhmen threatened at every turn. But the Mudsheave Worlds were the Bread mother of all mankind. They would always survive. Lacryma, perhaps not. The Magnon lowered his eyes in great piety. He saw himself in the position of a fifth-millennium grandee, allying Ankhfire with the Mudsheaves. Bread and ships, a natural combination of powers for greatness. Yes, the Magnon thought to himself, perhaps it would be good if Mercury City fell and Lacryma lost the war. None would dare destroy the Mudsheaves. The Mudsheaves wed Ankhfire, and another two thousand years of peace would ensue. He, Onych IX, Magnon of All The Mudsheaves, would be remembered with past great leaders.

The Bread Ships, gathered from every nation for a great journey to the planets of the man-galaxy, were a sea of stars in the Mudsheave sky, and they moved slowly outward in a great arc, with the Lacryman League standard, revived after millennia of disuse, emblazoned on the flagship Lacryma Pacifer. The journey had begun. The Magnon smiled to himself. He had seen to it that they would first travel to the Ankhfire nations. The result would be a holy war.

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