Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [15]
Tasia Tamblyn herself had gone to the new star of Oncier, site of the first test firing of the Klikiss Torch, and had watched the titanic battle between hydrogues and faeros, which had resulted in the complete snuffing of the artificial sun created from a gas-giant planet. Seeing a war in which whole worlds and stars were casualties, Tasia didn’t know how tiny humans could hope to cause any damage to the enemy…
But it wouldn’t stop her from trying. The drogues had killed her brother Ross on his skymine, and her lover Robb Brindle when he’d gone down into the clouds under a white flag of truce. If vengeance was at all in her power, Tasia didn’t intend to let the deep-core bastards get away with that. A stern expression had once looked out of place on her heart-shaped face, but not anymore.
She had pale skin from growing up under the icy ceiling of her clan’s water mines on Plumas, and had never gotten much color from serving in the EDF aboard ships all the time. Her light blue eyes reminded her of the frozen walls of the family settlement beneath the glacial surface of the isolated moon.
While her Manta was in dock at the asteroid belt shipyards, some of her crew had been rotated to either Mars or the Moon base for a week of downtime. For herself, Tasia had no use for furloughs and did not wish to visit Earth. The only time she’d gone there, in fact, was to contact Robb’s parents and tell them how their son had died.
The optimistic and kindhearted young man had been more than her lover, he had been her best friend. Of all the recruits in the EDF—many of whom were painfully bigoted—Robb alone had taken Tasia at her word, given her a chance to be herself, and loved her for it. In the dark days of the war, she still missed him very much. He’d thought he was doing something important and meaningful by volunteering to bring a message deep into a gas giant’s clouds, but in the end it had proven a foolish waste of his life. Now a talented young man was gone, leaving a small void in the Earth Defense Forces and an aching hole in Tasia’s heart.
It didn’t help matters that her compy EA had also disappeared shortly after delivering a warning to the Roamers at Osquivel. Tasia had been unable to find any clues to where the Listener compy had gone. Not only was EA a valuable piece of “equipment,” she was also a friend who had been owned by clan Tamblyn for many years. Tasia still held out hope that the compy would eventually find her way back to EDF headquarters, even if she had to take a lengthy, roundabout route.
Though it no doubt added to her feelings of isolation, Tasia preferred to spend the week aboard her ship, watching entertainment loops or playing games. She had a medium build, was fit and strong but didn’t show it. She’d become adept at Ping-Pong, thanks to practicing with Robb—so adept, in fact, that most of her crew made excuses whenever she challenged them to a match. She couldn’t wait until all repairs, upgrades, and inspections were finished, so she could be on her way again, to go head-to-head with the inhuman enemy.
Unexpectedly, she received a summons to go to the Grid 7 flagship. She shuttled over to the Jupiter to meet with Admiral Sheila Willis, adjusting her clean uniform, making sure her shoulder-length light brown hair was bound in regulation fashion under her cap.
When Tasia presented herself in the admiral’s lounge, she was surprised to see the brawny, dark-haired EDF commander, General Kurt Lanyan, sitting in a visitor’s chair. She snapped to attention. “General Lanyan, sir. And Admiral Willis. You called me, sirs?”
She had met the swarthy General in a strategy session before the Osquivel offensive, when