“The crew is welding new armor segments into place over the habitat breach now, Captain,” she informed him. “They’ve also taken the time to rip up the flight deck, and Corrin says that they’ll have it ready by the deadline.”

He nodded. “I’m sure they will. O-two?”

“The shipments from the surface have replenished our supply,” she told him. “As you ordered, we analyzed each tank, and it’s sterile and pure.”

“Thank you, Ensign.”

Weston fell silent, knowing that he had just been marking time, anyway. He didn’t need to micromanage his people and he knew it, but he was letting the situation on the planet get to him. He needed some sort of connection with these people when he went home, something the brass could effectively see and touch. Something more than just data banks. Or at least, he really wanted it.

An actual person—preferably people, in all truth—would make his reports a lot more believable to the brass. Weston wasn’t worried about being disbelieved, of course—at least not precisely. More, he was worried about his account being given a low priority, comparatively speaking.

So far, by his account, the alien species had committed no less than nine ships to this war of theirs. Along with Milla’s account, the number started climbing, even if you assumed that many of the ships the Odyssey had destroyed were the ones that originally wrecked the Colonial fleet.

In return, they’d eliminated the planetary populations of a minimum of two star systems, which was a massive breach of all accepted rules of warfare by Earth standards. While civilian casualties were sometimes unavoidable, they were not to be actively pursued. Of course, the term “rules of warfare” was one of the oldest oxymorons in recorded history, but even so, this was a major change from any conflict that Weston had experience in, even through study.

In some ways, the closest example he could think of was World War II. On both sides, the militaries involved sought out civilian targets and destroyed them with no quarter given. The German forces’ actions under the command of the SS and the Nazi party were well documented, and the American attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were equally horrific, if somewhat faster.

The Block Wars had never quite reached that level, probably because any attack on a civilian location with modern weapons was largely a waste of weaponry. An HVM rocket fired from an Archangel could tear a city to shreds in its terminal approach; the shock wave alone could kill hundreds.

Combine that fact with the pervasive and persistent use of cameras and the impact they had on world opinion, and even the most hardcore militants on either side weren’t stupid enough to do something that might galvanize neutral countries into taking sides.

However, the attacks on the Colonial worlds were something different—or at least that’s what he felt in his gut. It was true that they were at least possibly similar to the American strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, intended as proof of ability and will, more than intent to destroy. However, that thought didn’t sit right with him, and Weston didn’t believe it to be the case.