The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [83]
No. The fear she observed today was different on some fundamental level. Even though the families she saw huddled in the lounge—men, women, and children clutching duffels, blankets, food containers, and toys as they waited anxiously for the transport ship upon which so many had pinned their hopes of escaping the implacable harm that was coming—were as human as she was. They were as human as those survivors of the Xindi assault who had subsequently sutured a deep scar on Earth’s global psyche, principally by getting right to work stitching up a planetary laceration that stretched from Florida to Venezuela.
It wasn’t that the survivors of the Xindi attack on Earth hadn’t been scared, of course. Brooks remembered the fear quite vividly, could still smell and taste it, particularly on occasions such as these, when fearful people surrounded her. The ’Fifty-Three attack had driven some into radical xenophobic fraternities like Terra Prime, which had employed terror tactics in a thankfully failed effort to rid the Sol system of all extraterrestrials—and in the process had nearly succeeded in destroying the Coalition of Planets, along with its promise of galactic peace.
We weren’t any less afraid then than any of these people are right now, Brooks thought after she had finished conducting a brief interview with a careworn, middle-aged man named Manfred who had told her he intended to stay and fight, come what may, once the transport arrived and his wife and two little daughters were safely aboard it. We were just less inclined to start talking exodus after the Xindi hit us. Or to send our children light-years away just to keep them safe.
She moved on to speak with a shell-shocked-looking woman in singed clothing who identified herself as Charis Idaho. Ms. Idaho had little to say other than that she had just lost nearly every member of her immediate family in a Romulan attack on a freighter convoy, a disaster that had occurred two days before. Brooks breathed a silent prayer of hope that neither Manfred nor any of his loved ones were about to suffer a similar fate.
“Mom’s going back to Earth, at least until all this blows over,” said a wiry, prematurely hardened teenage boy who stood beside the chair upon which Charis Idaho was perched like a frightened bird. The boy, who Brooks belatedly realized was Charis’s son—and perhaps the only other surviving member of the Idaho family— had a hypervigilant, only-barely-restrained manic air about him, and his clothing looked as distressed as his mother’s. He stared at Brooks for a moment from behind shaggy blond brows with eyes grown old before their time, then looked away, retreating behind a quasi-military emotional wall.
“Your mother’s going to Earth,” Brooks said, careful to prod gently. “Aren’t you going with her?”
Charis’s eyes grew huge and moist, supplying Brooks with a definitive answer before the boy found the words to respond.
“I’m taking the Delta Pavonis transport an hour from now,” he said, staring off in the direction of the setting “A” star.
“Delta Pavonis,” Brooks repeated. She knew that the Delta Pavonis system lay about nineteen light-years away from Earth, though she wasn’t quite certain how far it was from the Centauri colonies. “What’s at Delta Pavonis?”
“Basic MACO training,” he said, standing a little straighter as he spoke. Although he was tall for his age, at that moment he looked to Brooks like a little boy playing soldier.
“That’s a long way off for basic MACO