“Ma’am?” Weston asked, confused.

“The initial conferences have left a lot of the brass…impressed. They want the technology these ‘Colonials’ have to offer. Did you know that Mr. Corasc was approaching his second centennial by our standards?”

Weston nodded.

“Well, we have a few politicians who see themselves ‘serving their constituents’ well into the next century,” Gracen said, a little distastefully. “Beyond that, there have already been a few leaks to the press…So, Captain, you’re something of a hero in the Confederation. First contact, and all that junk…The Block has already started a press campaign to discredit you, of course, but it won’t have much effect on the home front for the near future.”

“So,” she went on, “we aren’t likely to be able to court martial you…It wouldn’t be good PR, or so I’m told.”

Weston winced, not certain he liked that being the only reason he may keep his career.

“That’s neither here nor there at the moment, however,” she said. “I want you to tell me about these…Drah-sin?”

“That’s how the Colonials pronounce it, yes, ma’am,” he replied. “To be honest, there’s not a lot to tell. We have some bodies of the soldier drones on the Odyssey, but once they cooled down, it seems like they just petrified, ma’am.”

“Petrified?”

“Their internal organs—as near as my people can tell—are suspended in a molten solution that’s extremely high in silicon. When they die, they just turn to rock…We can’t tell the organs from the rest of the body after that.”

“I see.”

“To be honest, though, ma’am…” Weston hesitated. “The Drasin don’t scare me much.”

The admiral looked at him, features perplexed. “Aren’t you the one who brought back the images of the planet? What did you call it? Port Fey?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Weston swallowed.

The images from Port Fuielles were disturbing, as were those from the first planet they had encountered the Drasin on. Days after the attack on Port Fuielles, the Odyssey had made another sweeping pass through the system, intent on seeing the true aftermath of the Drasin attack.

The world had been stripped clean by then, the Drasin literally erasing all evidence of humanity from its surface, along with most traces of life itself. It was well on its way to being a martian-like landscape by the time they had left the system a second time.

The other, however, wasn’t merely a nightmare. It was a terror of epic proportions.

The Drasin in the first system had used the intervening weeks from their first attack to multiply completely out of control. When ordered a pass with carnivore drones, all that had been left of the planet was a rapidly degenerating sphere of dead and dying Drasin drones. The things had literally eaten up the entire world in their endless quest to propagate, until the remnants of the planet broke up under a series of volcanic eruptions.

In some mindless instinct, the Drasin had destroyed everything they needed to live—at least as far as the drone had been able to tell. When the atmosphere bled off and the heat from the dying world began to cool, so did the drones. While many of the floating, kicking things were still alive in the orbit that used to hold a planet, the readings indicated that they were rapidly losing their internal heat and dying as well.