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you?"
    "Well, I guess the part about how the Synod was actually controlling the Grand Hive. I don't get that; one of the strongest no-no's for a Veranorian is not to take the life of another Veranorian. Yet, the hive destroyed ships that had Veranorians serving on them, didn't they?" Lennon asked.
    Vance nodded. "Yes they did. The race we know and love as the Aracnise were created by the Veranorian Synod; without the knowledge or consent of their people. They were used by the Synod as a stalking horse to keep the focus of the Alliance while the Synod used subterfuge and mental conditioning to quietly take over the Alliance. They had pretty much succeeded but for a few of us that remained unaffected by the conditioning. Through the use of their puppets in the Council as well as High Command, they managed to keep us isolated and away from any positions that would have exposed what they had done.
    "While we were coming here, a young man was recruited from Earth that had unknowingly developed a fully functional, self-aware AI. When he arrived here, Logical Order Fen of the Veranorian Synod immediately demanded the AI be surrendered to him along with any and all information pertaining to it.
    "The young man resisted because while they were moving up here, the new AI discovered that the Aracs had been given all the technical specs of all of the ships in the Alliance Navy. Basically, she found proof that there was a spy in High Command. At the time, we had no idea that the spy actually was High Command. Appearing to comply with a Council mandate that he surrender the information Fen demanded, the young man created a new AI that had very special programming and sent her with Fen back to the Synod.
    "During that time, the new AI found the hidden subliminal programming in the Veranorian written teaching programs. I ordered her to remove that portion of the programming and within two weeks, this base was out from under the control of the Synod. Here's the kicker; the Veranorians on Base where also being programmed by the Synod, just in a slightly different way. The Veranorian people are not our enemy, but the Synod is guilty of treason against not only us, but their own people as well.
    "Now, the AI that was sent with Order Fen to the Synod was in actuality a ruse. She sat back quietly monitoring what the Veranorians were trying to get her to do, all the while reporting back here to me. If she would not have been the spy we had intended, the entire Alliance would belong to the Synod at this point, because no one would have been safe from the programming they gave that AI.
    "She allowed herself to be copied and spread throughout Veranor and to all their facilities. In that way she discovered that, not only had the Veranorians built and armed their own very large fleet of warships, but that the Grand Hive was actually in a specially built and guarded facility under the Dark Shroud mountains on the planet Veranor.
    "The facility was so isolated, that the AI installed there couldn't report back to us without exposing herself. The original programming of the AI sent to Veranor was to remove the programming from every system it encountered, so the AI in the Arac facility knew it was only a matter of time before they came to remove her from the system. Because we had suspected the Veranorians, the AI also had orders to completely destroy herself in the event of discovery to deny the Veranorians access to AI computer code.
    "While the AI waited, the Synod distributed and installed the new 'Veranorian' AI into most of the systems in the Alliance. Of course one of the first things she did was to remove the subliminal programming, thus allowing the rest of the Alliance to 'wake' up from Veranorian control. Of course, once the Veranorian Synod discovered the ruse, they immediately began trying to take the AI offline and still retain their code bases. None of the AI allowed it.
    "For the AI in the Arac facility, she took control of an orbital