Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike by Doug Dandridge Page A

able to close his eyes.  And
hoping he didn’t have another dream to disrupt his serenity.
    *    
*     *
    Jennifer had been exhausted after the battle,
even though she had done nothing physical, other than staying awake and
supporting Sean.  But emotionally she had been overtaxed.  Not that she was not
used to stress, just a different kind.  She had fought for people’s lives in
the rare situations where medicine actually had trouble preserving life, which
didn’t happen all that much in civilian life.  The child she had saved from the
ravenous fungus that had attacked him on Sestius,for example.  Most
often even a catastrophic mistake by a surgeon could be rectified by putting
the patient into cryo, and later fixing the damage.  And that was when nanites
couldn’t just be injected into the damaged area and put to work.
    Military decisions were completely different,
as she had learned.  Ships that had been converted to plasma and small pieces,
along with their crews, could not be placed in cryo.  They could not be
rebuilt.  She had watched as those ships had been destroyed following the
orders of her fiancé, and she had been able to tell from his expression that he
felt every one of those deaths, knowing that they could not be avoided, and
still feeling responsible for them.
    She was having a nightmare about that battle,
seeing Sean calling out orders to his people, trying to avert the disaster
heading his way.  That disaster was in the form of hundreds of Ca’cadasan
ships, driving through their fire, accelerating, launching swarms of missiles
as they closed into beam weapon’s range.  And Sean was trying to come up with a
solution, something to save his ship, and his love, his eyes looking over at
her as he grimaced at the fate that awaited them both.
    A hand on her back woke her from the nightmare,
her breath hissing in at the start that the touch evoked.  She started to turn,
ready to fight whatever it was that was coming at her out of the night.
    “Easy,” said a gentle voice in her ear.  “It’s
just me.  You’re having a bad dream.”
    Sean climbed into the bed and pressed his body
against hers.  She dismissed the dream from her mind as she concentrated on the
warmth and scent of the man now next to her.  With a shifting of her body she
turned around to face her lover, her arms going around his body, feeling the
hard muscle of his chest against hers, and corded strength of his back.
    “How can you go through that?” she asked,
looking into his eyes and seeing the pain that still resided there.  “How can
any of your people hold up to that.”
    “Because someone has to,” said Sean with a head
shake.  “If we don’t, then who will.”
    “You could stay in the capital, and let your
senior officers handle the battles for you,” she said, tightening her grip
around him, feeling that if she didn’t hold tight he would simply fade away. 
“You know, like most Emperors.”
    “I can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. 
“I know, I have the wormhole coms to stay in touch.  I could give orders from
complete safety, but I won’t.  That would be unfair to the men and women I
order into danger.”
    “I can’t go through that again,” said Jennifer,
tears spilling from her eyes.  “I’m not strong enough to watch so many die, and
not be able to do anything about it.”
    “You’re stronger than you think,” said Sean
after kissing the tears from her cheeks.  “But you really have nothing to do
but observe, and that’s cruelty, plain and simple.”  Sean took in a deep
breath, releasing it as if trying to clear tension from his body.  “I don’t
want you to come on the next operation,” he said, almost blurting out the
words.  “I know you want to be with me.  But as you said,” Sean said hurriedly,
“this is pure torture to you.  And it would make me feel better if you were
safe.”
    Jennifer lay there for a moment, her hands
caressing the back of