Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet by Graham Sharp Paul Page B

“but without any doubt at all best for you.
    “Second option: Go along with what the XO has proposed. Lot of work to do, lots of problems to sort out, but nothing this team can’t resolve.
    “Third, comm into the provost marshal the instant we drop into Nyleth nearspace and have you all arrested and charged with mutiny. That’s my duty; it’s what I should do. I think you all know that.
    “So those are the options, but before I tell you what I want to do, I have one question. I know what you think, but why? Why have you decided to risk it all? I need to understand that before I make my decision.”
    Faces stared back at Michael, silent, unmoving. Chief Fodor cast a glance at Ferreira. “May I, sir?”
    “Be my guest,” she said.
    Fodor dragged in a deep breath before speaking. “I see things this way, sir,” he said, turning to Michael. “If this was just a hypothetical discussion, I would never have agreed with anything so crazy and screwed up. And if it was just about you and Lieutenant Cheung, I would not have agreed. Never. But reality has a way of making you see things as they are, not how you’d like them to be. For the first time, I’ve had to look long and hard at the war and where it’s going, and let me tell you, I did not like what I saw. Not at all. All my life, I’ve been content to go wherever Fleet wanted me to go, to trust the brass and the politicians to lead us through, but not anymore.
    “We talked about this a lot before we met with you yesterday,so I think I speak for us all”—again heads nodded in unison—“and it’s quite simple. We all read the strategic assessments Fleet pushes out. I know I’m only an engineer, but I read them carefully, if only because I want to know that there’s a good reason why I risk my life every time we go into action. Problem is, I don’t see it now. I’d been kidding myself. We started fighting those Hammer bastards way more than a century ago. My grandfather wasn’t even born, for chrissakes! And here we are, more than a century later, still at each other’s throats, only this time the scumbags might actually win this damn war. Fleet says we’re in for at least another four years, maybe five …”
    Fodor’s voice cracked, forcing him to stop; he paused for a moment to recover.
    “We’re in for years of stalemate,” he continued. “Years and years! And even then we may not be able to destroy the Hammers. If they build a new antimatter production plant to replace the one we blew to hell at Devastation Reef, we’re screwed ’cause one thing’s for sure: It’ll be that and more before we get our own antimatter missiles operational. So what’s it all mean? Five more years, chipping away at the Hammers, not making a difference, more deaths of good ships, good spacers, good marines, that’s what it means, and for what?
    “I’ll tell you what for, sir,” Fodor said fiercely. “To postpone the inevitable. That’s all.” He took another deep breath to steady a voice trembling with emotion. “Let me go through the price my family has paid. I lost my father back in ’80, killed at the Battle of Mendes Reef when
Kercheval
and
Kronos
were ambushed. I lost a nephew and a cousin at the Battle of Comdur. The Hammers have torn my family apart, and they’ll go on doing it. That’s what five more years means. And it’s not only me. There’s not a spacer or marine here who hasn’t suffered at their hands.”
    Fodor stopped to look around the table.
    “Aunt, cousin, cousin, sister, brother, uncle, sister, father, cousin,” he said, finger stabbing in turn across the faces of everyone present, “and that does not begin to account for all the people we counted as good friends.”
    Fodor looked right at Michael. “Let’s take you, sir,” he said. “Mother and sister captured by the Hammers when theyhijacked the
Mumtaz
; you’re lucky they came home. Damn lucky. Most people taken by the Hammers never come home. You were lucky,