Eric shot her a dry look, but figured there wasn’t much he could safely say there.

“I’m not tying your hands, Commodore. Do what you feel is necessary. Just keep in mind that we’re a little strapped for resources at the moment. Political needs aside, we can’t afford an extended war right now.”

“I understand, Admiral,” Eric said, “but if the Imperials are the ones who launched the Drasin assault . . .”

“Then we can’t afford not to ensure they never get anywhere near our solar system again, Commodore,” Gracen said firmly. “Just don’t open multiple fronts in a war we haven’t even really started fighting yet.”

Eric nodded. “Understood, Admiral.”

“Now,” Gracen shifted her tone, “let’s discuss what you let them do to my ship.”

“Your ship, ma’am?” Eric asked, amused.

“Damn right, my ship,” Gracen said. “I named her. The Warrior King is my baby, Commodore, and I’ll thank you not to let random fools cut slices off her hull.”

Eric laughed, shaking his head. “We’re a combat ship, Admiral. Lasers happen.”

“Just don’t let them happen to my ship, is all I’m saying.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

Gracen grew more serious after that. “I suppose you’d best show me those prisoners now.”

►►►

► The cells were still packed. Eric hadn’t been sure what to do with the men after arriving in Ranquil. Technically, they were Alliance prisoners, but his primary loyalty was to Earth and the Confederation, so he couldn’t just off-load them with Admiral Tanner and hope for the best.

“DNA analysis?” Gracen asked as she looked over the stoic men in the cells beyond the two-way glass. She’d seen men just like them in times past, and rarely had cause to want to see more of them.

“Priminae, junk DNA and all,” Eric confirmed. “Or perhaps the Priminae are actually Imperial, depending on how you look at it.”

“Very interesting,” Gracen whispered.

Her office was the first to have the odd DNA mismatch between the Priminae and Terran human stock revealed, information that still wasn’t widely known in the world at large. For all intents and purposes, Terrans and Priminae were human, so there was no point clouding the issue with technical data that even the experts were at a loss to fully explain.

“There is a significant split in their genetic line, however,” Eric added. “We’ve been mapping that over the past week.”

“Split?”

“Fits with the Priminae history, as we’ve been told. They’ve been separate cultures long enough for genetic drift to become measureable. Still clearly of the same stock, unlike Terran humans, but diverging steadily.”

“Ah.” She nodded.

Gracen had been forced to take several advanced courses in genetics just to understand what had been coming across her desk the past couple years, and thus she more fully grasped the implications of the Priminae-Imperial link than Eric did.