“I’m afraid that isn’t my specialty, Captain,” Tanner smiled, glancing over his shoulder. “However, I can speak with our ground forces commander.”

“I expect you can,” Weston said. “In that case, what we might be able to do for you is to help cut down the opposition somewhat. Every ship we can take out for you is one less that you’ll have to deal with on the ground.”

Admiral Tanner took a deep breath, understanding entering his eyes. “I understand, and I thank you for your help, Captain.”

There was a moment of silence from the speakers, and Captain Weston’s voice returned, its tone serious.

“It’s what we do, Admiral.”

Traditions.

They mattered more than most people realized, especially in military units.

Commander Roberts knew this, and he had always felt that the best units were those that had traditions of excellence that every member could aspire to. Few were those who both saw the birth of those traditions and who realized just what it was they were seeing. Something told him, deep inside, that he was now among those few.

When the captain said those words, Roberts lifted his chin a little higher on reflex, though he knew that no one was looking at him. And around him, he could see the same effect on the others sitting there.

The young men and women assigned to the auxiliary bridge weren’t the Odyssey’s primary command crew; they were a little younger, and in what was already a young man’s navy, that meant they were practically in nappies. They had joined after the war, most of them, probably out of the same ideals, misguided though they may be, that the captain was now espousing.

They stood just a little taller, sat just a little straighter, and Roberts caught a gleam in the eyes of one of them as he glanced over his shoulder at the captain.

The commander risked a look at Weston, wondering if the captain had done it on purpose, but couldn’t tell from the other man’s stance. Weston was intent on his conversation with the alien admiral and wasn’t paying attention to the effect his words had.

Before the next shift was out, Roberts knew, the word would be spread across the ship. Everyone would know the gist, if not the details, of the captain’s proclamation.

It’s what we do.

Roberts doubted that the captain meant it the way it would be interpreted. It was just what soldiers said when they were complimented or thanked. In another time, another place, the words would be just that—words.

Here, though, and now, they had already taken on a new meaning. Traditions, Commander Roberts mused silently, were funny things. They started when you least expected them and endured through everything the universe could throw at them. And the captain had just started one hell of a tradition—assuming, of course, that anyone survived to pass it on.

It’s what we do.

Spoken to an alien admiral by a Terran captain in the defense of a world that wasn’t his own. The rest of the fleet, and all those that followed, would have one hell of a tradition to live up to.