The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [102]
Like Deneva and Berengaria, Threllvia IV never got those minutes. And still nobody can say why.
But despite the savage and unexpected nature of the Romulan assault, Andoria’s military and civilian fleets have risen nobly to the occasion, continuing to ferry hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of civilian refugees, many of them wounded, out of the system. They continue their efforts in defiance of the mounting danger, even as the situation on the ground looks progressively more hopeless.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome of this fierce clash over a distant Andorian outpost, the Imperial Guard and their civilian counterparts have already distinguished themselves for centuries to come. This reporter hopes that their fighting spirit will inspire her own world to bear whatever burden needs to be borne to stop the Romulan scourge in its tracks, to break its will, and finally to send it back where it came from.
From the Battle of Threllvia, this is Gannet Brooks.
Thirteenthmoon, Fesoan Lor’veln Year 463
Tuesday, November 18, 2155
Northern Wastes, Andoria
A chill wind blew across the soul of Hravishran th’Zoarhi, though it bore no connection to the blanket of ice and snow that covered the subterranean Aenar city.
“At least three of my former subordinates from the Kumari were serving aboard the Krotus when she was lost,” Shran said to Jhamel after word of the latest Romulan outrages had come to him, fresh from Threllvia.
“Thon. Keval. Tholos. All slain by the cowardly Romulans,” he continued, withdrawing to his quarter of the bed. “Who no doubt struck from a safe distance.”
“I am so very sorry,” said Jhamel, Shran’s favorite shelthreth-mate. With Vishri and Shenar out at the moment conducting Aenar Council business with Aenar leader Lissan, Shran and Jhamel had the entirety of their spacious, thermally insulated house—and the huge shelthreth bed that dominated the main sleeping chamber—all to themselves.
Her blind gray eyes brimming with moisture, Jhamel used her inherent Aenar-Andorian talents to speak directly inside his mind, a space he had grown used to sharing with her only very slowly and haltingly.
Didn’t that human journalist who reported from Threllvia mention survivors of the Krotus?
Shran had to admit that he had lately become an enthusiastic viewer of the reportage and commentary of the pinkskin news correspondent Gannet Brooks, whenever he could find the time. For one so young, Brooks seemed to understand the immutability of the circumstances that necessitated war far more keenly than many in her profession, and he included a few Andorians in that comparison. Brooks’s viewpoint seldom left him irritated and enraged the way the fear-spawned naïveté of isolationists like Keisha Naquase nearly always did.
I know that a handful of Krotus personnel were rescued, Shran thought to Jhamel, mentally “annunciating” his internalized words carefully to offset his own lack of Aenar telepathic ability. Trust me, neither Thon nor Keval nor Tholos would have willingly accepted anything less than a fight to the death.
“You can hope, Shran,” Jhamel said aloud. She rearranged the pillows and sat up on the bed, a motion that accentuated the curve of her already slightly distended belly. The first child of their shelthreth, a living symbol of hope, was due in about seven months.
That hope warmed the chill that had settled over his soul since he’d heard about the Krotus. But a volcanic anger burned beneath, stoking the violent interior fires that he had struggled to control every day since he’d first come to live among the pacifistic Aenar.
Shran knew that the fire would win in the end, and he felt in a brief, fluttering touch of minds that Jhamel knew it as