The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (26 page)

▸“THEY SENT MOST of the remaining fleet after the
Heralc
and the evacuees, Commander.”

Lora Breem nodded grimly, not saying anything else. She could read the screens as well as her subordinates could, but telling them that wouldn’t do any good. They needed to feel like they were doing something, so she let them do whatever it was that they normally would.

The Drasin “fleet,” or what was left of it, had indeed broken off for the most part to pursue the escaping ships. Only two badly damaged ships remained there in orbit of Theora, but she didn’t even have hand lasers to fire at them.

They dismantled the pods that were still more or less intact first. Though the weapons had been irreparably damaged, they weren’t taking any chances with them. Swarms of the little Drasin drones were thrown over the pods, quickly reducing them to rubble and more little Drasin drones that quickly began to die off in the vacuum of space.

She supposed that it should shock her, on some level, the disregard for their own lives that was inherent in Drasin tactics, but Lora just felt oddly numbed to it all as she watched. Soon
the first fiery traces were cutting through the atmosphere, the Drasin drop pods cutting down to the planet below.

“Maker, preserve us,” someone prayed, and it was followed by a hushed agreement that rolled around the command center. Lora, though, didn’t take her eyes off the screens as she counted the trails of fire that led to the planet below.

At ten, she stopped counting, the numb feeling taking more and more of her senses as she just watched and waited for the inevitable.

PLANET RANQUIL

▸MOP-UP TOOK LONGER than Brinks would have liked, because the Green Beanies had hidden the defenses better than he’d expected, but it was done quickly enough, he supposed. Just looking at the numbers, though, told him that they had a lot more drills in their future in order to bring the teams up to their peak performance.

A short distance away, he could see a group of soldiers chuckling and joking as Lieutenant Crowley looked over his rig for damage. He supposed that it was inevitable that the lieutenant catch some flack for tripping over a rock—Lord knows it wasn’t a shining example of how to get through a firefight—but Brinks was actually somewhat impressed with the armor the kid was using.

He’d seen suits that were bigger, suits that were faster, and suits that were better armed, but he’d also seen them all fall over at times, and this was the first one he’d seen actually get back on its feet without outside help. That was a big plus for the armor in his book, as long as it didn’t fall too much.

The extra room for power, weapons, and jammers didn’t hurt, either, of course.

“Major.”

Brinks turned, stiffening in his armor, and saluted. “Sir!”

Eric Weston returned his salute with a casual crispness that came from practice, and the major let his arm drop as the captain turned to survey the field.

“You were a bit off the mark, Major,” Eric said then, not looking back at him.

“Yes, sir. We have some work to do.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Eric said. “I expect that you’ll be getting plenty of practice.”

“Uh…sir?”

“Colonel Reed has asked permission for your temporary assignment to his command,” Eric told him. “Just while the
Odyssey
is in orbit. As we’ll probably be here for a few more weeks, at least, if not the next couple of months, I’ve agreed.”

“I see, sir,” Brinks said slowly. “Did the colonel happen to tell you what he wanted us to do?”

“I asked that question, actually,” Eric said with a half-smile.

Brinks bit his tongue. Of
course
the captain had asked that question. That wasn’t an answer, however.

Eric went on, not knowing, but guessing what reaction was going on under the major’s armor. “It has to do with the training of the Priminae ground forces, of course.”

Brinks winced. “Captain…My people aren’t instructors—”

Eric held up a hand and turned back, silencing the soldier. “I don’t think you’ll need to be, actually. Colonel Reed asked if I could spare you to operate as an opposing force.”

Brinks blinked. Then a slow smile crossed his face under his battle-obscured helm. “You mean we get to pretend to be Drasin, right, sir?”

“That’s what I understand, Major.”

“Sounds like fun, Captain.”

PRIMINAE COLONY, THEORA DEICE
Orbital Station

▸HELPLESSNESS.

It was just a word until you really experienced it.

Powerless, stricken, torture, anguish.

All words meaning nothing to someone who hasn’t experienced them each in turn.

Lora Breem knew the meaning of each of those words now, in ways that she never had before. Being unable to do anything other than watch as the Drasin began the dismantling of what was a thriving colony only hours earlier.

In days, it would be a lifeless world, nothing but the crawling, swarming drones of the enemy moving on its surface. Under the world’s crust, they would be teeming, chewing up the material of the planet itself to further their own suicidal propagation.

In weeks, there would be nothing in this place but a rapidly expanding field of debris that consisted mostly of the Drasin bodies themselves. Those and the cooling core of the world would make up a new asteroid field that would circle where a world had been until then.

Lora was a witness to the death of a world, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

In a vaguely sickening way, it was actually a relief when the limping cruiser turned on her command post, finally noticing that she was floating there.

Floating there and watching them.

Someone screamed behind her as the cruiser came wheeling at them, the energy surges from their position indicating weapons fire.

Breem didn’t scream; she just watched and waited.

If the Drasin had aimed properly, she would see a flash of light in the visible spectrum in the brief instant before she died. Waste energy from their lasers, flying ahead of the truly destructive force. It was the only thing she could think to do—to watch death coming rather than try to vainly evade it in some futile effort of denying reality.

So she straightened up in her chair and watched the screen.

Which promptly flashed a bright pure white and then went completely dead.

Lora closed her eyes then, just a bare scant moment ahead of the whirling lance of hellish fire that engulfed her command.

NACS ODYSSEY
High Orbit, Planet Ranquil

▸THINGS WERE COMING along well as far as Eric Weston could tell. In the past couple of weeks, ship time, the new training facilities had progressed to a state of operational construction, meaning that while the overall boot camp, officers corps, and academy were still under construction, the Priminae had begun passing students through each of them in turn.

Primarily the boot camp so far, of course. With Reed’s influence, that was inevitable. The reports from the Green Berets detachment were of a mixed bag, however. The troops were eager enough—some of them excessively so, according to the rough psych evaluations Weston had been forwarded—but they had a lot of problems with the idea of “controlled violence.” In some ways, Eric supposed that it made a weird kind of sense; violence was one of those things that could easily be considered a “black or white” sort of situation.

However, it wasn’t black and white, not for a proper army. Not if you wanted your military to actually defend the society that birthed it.

A soldier had to stand ready to fight, provide humanitarian aid, teach, learn, and do a multitude of things according to
the needs of society. Specialization, as one prominent author once said, was for insects. Just because you were better at one thing didn’t mean you ignored everything else.

And just because you were trained to fight didn’t mean that you had to dredge up some insane antiquated notion of bloodlust to cover the moral question of whether violence was right.

All things considered, Eric had to admit that he was just as pleased that it was Colonel Reed’s job to explain the difference between “justifiable” and “right.” To be honest, he’d often had the same question in mind when he was going through training with the Marines.

They’d been pretty much purged the first time he’d been shot at, however. There was just something very crystalizing about bullets whining over your head; it tended to put questions of morality in perspective.