Eric nodded, slinging his rifle as he turned. He jumped for it, landing inside the Cherokee as the pilot pulled the big craft up and away. Eric turned around, leaning back out the door as the battered Drasin forces took the berm, scuttling over it and into the base they were leaving behind. He could see them pulling down the towers, tearing apart the temporary command housing, and generally making a mess of the place as the Cherokee turned and poured on the speed.

They just broke Mach when a flash of light filled everything, like a million flashbulbs had just gone off.

Eric didn’t have to look behind to know that Dallas wasn’t there anymore.

He slumped into a seat and strapped in. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone just then.

“Breaker’s bane.”

Bermont didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he’d heard more than a few of his Priminae crew whisper it and it felt fitting. They were a hundred kilometers outside of Dallas, orbiting the city at a leisurely pace, and every one of them was glued to the image of the rolling nuclear mushroom cloud that had engulfed the city.

Some rear part of his mind filled in the blanks, noting that it seemed to be a weapon in the five-hundred-megaton range to judge by the diameter of the blast wave. Few things inside it would remain in one piece. The shock front was far too powerful for that. It would be like getting slapped upside the head by a tank moving at Mach One.

“Did . . . did the Drasin do that?”

Bermont looked over to where one of the younger Priminae soldiers was gaping and he dropped a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“No, Travor, we did,” he said. “Sometimes, you must cut out the poison before it spreads.”

“But . . . it was a city, with people, no?” Travor asked plaintively. “A small one, I know, but . . .”

Bermont closed his eyes, trying not to either laugh or cry. For Travor, Dallas was indeed a very small city, but that wasn’t the point.

“Yes, it was, but it was a Drasin city. They took it from us, and we would rather see it burn than see them turn its resources against us,” he said honestly and earnestly. It made him feel better as well, to be honest, straightening the point in his own head. “Better to die in a flash of glory than be slowly consumed by those.”

“Lieutenant!”

He turned away, moving toward the front of the craft. “Yes?”

“We have a hit on Captain Weston’s IFF,” the copilot said. “The Odysseus signals that he is in a small craft, heading due east.”

“Alright, lock in and track him,” Bermont ordered. “We have to run him down.”

“Yes sir.”