“Ignore the Wardens and Lurkers and all the stuff that requires Essence or Ysalamir. How do we fight the rest if they’re not protected by the others?”
“It doesn’t matter, Bren. If we can’t hold territory we can’t deny it to them. They just re-infest it…unless we blow up the planets, and even then they can probably feed off their remains.”
“We’re taking worlds, not destroying them. We’re not going to be tricked into destroying our own prizes.”
“Prizes? We’re in a war for our survival and you’re talking like this is…” Esna cut off, bringing her hands up in front of her and staring at her palms. “What have I become?”
“Lost,” Bren said firmly. “Now find your way back.”
Esna stared at her hands, but her vision was directed inward. Rammak had died saving her, not because it would benefit the empire, or him. Had he not come for her he would have survived on Mace until the V’kit’no’sat war ended and the world was recolonized. He would have made it back even if nobody found him there before that, and even though he didn’t know that would happen, he chose to come out of hiding for her. Because she was Human.
Because he thought she was worth fighting for, regardless of what happened.
He wasn’t trying to merely survive, he was trying to live.
“This is the way of the warrior,” she reminded herself.
“As a child, you would wait,” Bren said, reciting an ancient song that immediately began to bring tears to Esna’s eyes, for she’d never heard it on Mace, but once she got into Canderous it was required learning…and somehow it seemed to have been written specifically for her, though she knew that was impossible. “And watch from far away.”
“But you always knew,” Esna said between sobs, “that you’d be the one that work while they all play.”
“And you…you lay awake at night and scheme, of all the things that you would change, but it was just a dream.”
“Here we are,” Esna ground out, finding a fire in her heart again with the words, “don’t turn away now. We are the warriors that built this town.”
“The time will come, when you’ll have to rise…”
“…above the best, improve yourself, your spirit never dies.”
A brief moment of silence followed, then Bren asked, “So why aren’t we?”
Esna stood up, flexing her arms up halfway and staring at her muscles and her quaking hands. “Leave the Wardens to the Archons.”
“Yes. Now how do we earn our victory against the minions?”
“We can’t hold territory, which means we can’t stop them from reproducing.”
“Then we have to kill them faster than they can make them,” Bren said firmly. “Is that a problem?”
Esna turned slowly and locked eyes with him. “Not for a warrior. Not when they’re all offense, no defense, and mostly stupid.”
“They’re brutes designed as killing machines, and less smart than the lizards. We beat them, why can we not beat the minions?”
“We can, it’s just a matter of numbers. But if we can’t deny them planets, they can…”
“What? Send in a few ships and hope to be left alone to grow into an army? We’re not a small empire anymore, Esna. If we can detect them landing, we can get to them before they can grow out of control.”
“If we’re fast enough, and strong enough.”
“I can do it single handedly,” Bren said, and she knew he wasn’t overestimating his abilities.
Esna’s mind raced, feeling a path here but slipping from it. Without a single secure world in the empire, how could you fight a war without sacrificing people wherever the enemy chose to hit?
“Holy shit,” she whispered, sitting back down on the bed again as her life radically changed in a moment of epiphany.
“You thought of something?” Bren asked insistently as he gently rose to his feet without a sound.
“We’re warriors, and we’re going to stand our ground and fight,” she said, volume returning to her voice. “I don’t know about the Founders, but we’re going to beat the Hadarak the hard way. No cheats. We’re going to earn dominance.”
“How?” Bren pressed.
“The way you and I are drawn to. Hand to hand, face to face, skill against skill. One planet at a time, sweeper teams, grunge work. No orbital bombardment other than the initial strikes. Send the fleet to own the spacelanes. To keep reinforcements from arriving. They will secure our victories while we make sure every last bit of infestation gets burned off the planets.”
“How does that change our current situation?”
“The Grand Border will hold. The Archons and the V’kit’no’sat won’t fail. When the expansion is contained, and no more evacuations have to be protected, we will have to hold indefinitely or take the war to them on their side. That’s what I’m thinking about, and now I know how to do it, if we’re only talking minions.”
Bren knelt down on one knee so he could look her in the eyes again. “Please share.”
“We have to rise above them, and by we I mean Canderous. We’re the anti-Hadarak faction. We have to become the anti-Hadarak faction.”
“Why you?”
“Our homes aren’t on planets, and they can’t be rammed by Wardens.”
“Your seda are a little faster, so you can evade them. How does that help us fight?”
“It means we have strongholds that can’t be hit by Wardens, and with proper upgrades even Lurkers won’t be able to. Big upgrades.”
“But you’re still running. Where’s the ‘stand your ground’ part?”
Esna smiled cruelly and placed a hand on the right side of Bren’s face.
“Which direction do you think we’ll be running?”
“I don’t understand, Esna. What can Canderous do that it isn’t already doing?”
“Evolve,” she said, kissing him hard once. “Thank you for kicking my ass into gear. It’s like I’d forgotten how to really
