Something had happened, but she didn’t know what in the hell it was. She blinked and glared at the Odysseus, where it was floating above her, trying to piece together what had occurred. It wouldn’t come together, however, and she wasn’t about to try again.

She finally turned her back on the serene vessel, and turned back to the visceral violence tearing her apart on-world.

“More to do. I’ll worry about the Odysseus later.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CARROW LOOKED OVER his command, both proud and ashamed of their performance in past actions. Both emotions were self-explanatory in his eyes. They had done exemplary duty whenever he had sent them out, yet in the end it all proved useless.

The Enterprise was settling into a low earth orbit, preparing to take on refugees just like the members of the Heroics, and he had little doubt that everyone on those ships felt just as he did. To have come this far, accomplished so much, and then failed . . . no, it just wasn’t the way things were supposed to go.

We should have waited a little longer, he decided. If they’d had a proper convoy, with resupply ships, the story might have ended differently.

That was easy to say in retrospect, of course. No one had known that the enemy would lay a trap like this. It wasn’t in their previous actions to even think along those lines. They learned a lot from Captain Weston in their previous engagements, as unfortunate as that was.

“Clear the lower decks,” he said, walking across to where his comm officer was coordinating the arrival of the refugees. “We’ll pack them in like sardines if we have to.”

“Yes sir.”

It wouldn’t really make much of a difference, a few hundred heads more or less, but it would make his people feel like they were accomplishing something. That was more important just now than anything else. If they lost hope, if they let this all get to them, well then it was game over. The question would just be how long until the end rather than whether it was coming.

He could feel that already seeping into the crew’s mood, and it was something he needed to head off as quickly as he could. The problem was, even he didn’t really want to try and keep up pretenses. This was the Earth they were talking about, damn it!

I am supposed to die in its defense. That is my world, my nation. Packing my hull with warm bodies and running for the stars wasn’t what I swore an oath to do.

They lay in wait. That isn’t how these things operate. What changed?