She glanced at the results but didn’t bother reading too deeply. “Highlights?”

“They’re Priminae, genetically speaking.”

“The same way Priminae are human, or . . . ?” Deirdre asked, one eyebrow rising.

“Negative. We went deeper than just common human DNA markers,” Mitchel said. “Their junk DNA matches the Priminae. They’re of the same stock as the Colonials.”

“Colonials,” Deirdre grumbled. “I guess we know now why they call themselves that. Someone should have thought to ask what they were colonies of in the first place. I mean, it was right there in the word. They even introduced themselves to us as being the Colonies. We assumed they meant colonies from a central world within the Priminae sphere, but now I’m thinking something else.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Deirdre looked through the glass, eyes on the men slumped within.

“Ruthless bastards,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Can’t imagine serving someone who’d blow my ticket off a hostile surface just because it wasn’t convenient to try and effect a rescue.”

“No ma’am.”

Deirdre glanced at the lieutenant but said nothing more. He was just answering with what he thought she wanted to hear, which was more or less what a good young Marine officer should do when he didn’t have anything useful to add to the conversation. But it didn’t help her much at the moment.

“Have we identified officers?”

“No,” Mitchel said, looking a little put out by that fact. “No hints even.”

Deirdre frowned, now more curious. “Really? That’s odd. Body language? Reactions?”

“Nothing, ma’am. Nothing on any of our analyses in fact,” Mitchel said. “They don’t talk to one another any differently, they don’t react to each other differently, just . . . nothing.”

“We killed three on the surface,” she said. “Check their gear and bodies against the living. Maybe we took out their commander.”

“Yes ma’am.”

►►►

► Eric kept one eye on Milla as he worked on, filling out after-action reports that he knew the admiral was going to want—in triplicate. Milla’s reaction earlier had been out of character for the normally quiet and reserved Priminae officer. Though he understood why, she had come close to the edge of proper comportment for a young officer serving on the command deck of the Odysseus. Whatever issues she had with the . . .

Hmm, what do we call them anyway? Eric wondered.

He was loath to start referring to them as the “enemy,” even in his head. Their reaction notwithstanding, it was a very bad idea to start thinking of people as the enemy until you were in direct combat with them or at the very least understood why you were fighting. That sort of mental rigidity led to bad places.

They weren’t really aliens either. Yet nor were they human, or even really Priminae.

Well, nothing to it I suppose but to go down there and ask some of the prisoners themselves, Eric decided, getting up.