“The war got very hot, very fast,” he went on as they shuffled, putting a random boulder behind them. “Mantis fighters hammered us over Japan. Nothing we had back then could touch them. CM fighters were just too fast, too maneuverable. We lost eighty percent of Japan, and most of our forces were beat all the way back to Iwo Jima.”

He glanced over at Milla, his eyes visible behind the goggles. “That may not mean much to you, but to the USA it was a big deal. To Eric, it was holy ground. He wasn’t going to let them take Iwo Jima. Project Double A went green ahead of schedule, and the fighting over the Pacific got real hot, real fast, and real bloody. Project Double A became the Archangels, and Eric Stanton Weston became Raziel, Secret of God and patron saint of the West Pacific.”

“Lofty titles,” Milla acknowledged.

“Those were ugly times.” Steph coughed, lifting the mask up to spit out phlegm before resealing it to take another breath. “Hope was a big thing. We became symbols, more powerful in how people perceived us than our actual effect on the battlefield.”

“I . . . understand,” Milla said, thinking about how people on Ranquil had reacted to the Odyssey.

“So that’s how I know Raze is coming,” Steph said. “He’s a Marine to the core. Symbols mean more to him than reality sometimes.”

“I . . . do not understand,” she said.

“Semper fi,” Steph told her. “Forever faithful. He’s coming. Keep moving.”

►►►

AEV Odysseus

► “We’re hitting turnaround, Captain!”

Eric nodded. “Do it.”

The Odysseus’ reactors didn’t whine the way the Odyssey’s systems would have, but the computers monitoring her telltales were screaming as they hit turnover. Half the systems went dead, their power being redirected entirely to the drives. Given the sheer level of power output by the Odysseus’ reactors, the fact that they were actually shutting down systems to conserve power at the moment made Eric’s head swim.

They’d put off turnover far longer than they should have, trying to get to the inner moon of the gas giant that much faster, but now they had to stop or the ship was going to buzz right on by.

“Reactors are spiking! We’re losing reactor mass, sir. Still stable, but dropping fast,” Miram announced from where she was monitoring the reports from maintenance and damage control.

“Space warp at one hundred twenty percent over flank,” Lieutenant Kinder declared. “We’re twisting local space into a pretzel, but it’s holding steady, sir.”

At that level of warping, Eric knew that the ship itself was in danger of being affected by the gravity fields they were projecting. If they lost control of the warp, it might cross the ship’s hull, and if that happened, there was a major chance that the Odysseus would tear itself apart.

A long, low keening sound echoing through the ship’s hull punctuated that thought.