Until the assault on the Terran homeworld, it had been clear to Central that the Drasin, while certainly authentic, were not operating according to their normal methods. Now, however, something had switched and the monsters were truly back.

That changed things.

Originally Central had doubted that they actually were Drasin, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The controlled and systematic assault was . . . out of character.

What they had done to the Terran system, however . . . that was very much a Drasin methodology. Whatever they had been when they first appeared, it was now clear that the Drasin had indeed returned.

Unfortunately, while Central did have detailed . . . information on the Drasin, the entity had no personal experience with them. Dry facts were of limited value and the entity found himself almost whimsically wishing that he’d taken more time to converse with Weston. The man had intuited a great many things about his enemy without facts to back him up, and he’d been largely correct, even concerning things that Central would have sworn the Terran had erred on.

Captain Weston’s death actually caused the entity to feel a certain degree of loss, an emotion that he’d only rarely experienced firsthand. One of the reasons that he kept apart from his people, getting to know them personally rather than through their memories, thoughts, and dreams . . . well, that led to connections, to complications . . . and, inevitably, to loss. It wasn’t something that Central would normally dwell on, but even eternal beings didn’t like to lose those they got to know.

Colonel Reed was silent as he looked over the strip of desert the locals had deeded over for use in training their forces. Since the first news from the Enterprise concerning Earth’s fate, he and the other men had been using the job to distract themselves from what had happened back home, but that excuse was wearing thin, to say the least.

He’d heard that the Big E was back in orbit, so Reed knew that it was just a matter of time before he got some fresh intelligence, but he almost didn’t want it. The last time he’d received news from home, it had taken everything he had just to get up the next morning and do his job rather than take his blade and slit his own wrists.

Reed had read all the files on those things. He’d even faced them once here on Ranquil, and the idea of hundreds of ships dropping thousands of drones on Earth . . . on his family? He could have taken that, could have handled it, but to be stuck on another planet? A thousand light-years away from where he was needed?

That was a line too damned far.

Reed didn’t want to hear about his dead homeworld, not while he was in no position to defend or avenge it.