Chapter 130

Dear Sisters in law,

As you've probably learned from Lily's letter to Brianna she believes that Will should be headed home soon and that it should take decidedly less time than the two years he set as a time frame originally. That is because if I understand what Lily is telling me about the nature of star-gates you can't just drift into the event horizon that they create. No matter what they don't entirely screen out matter. That is one of the reasons that the Confederacy either stopped using them or never used them extensively. That is that once you open one it is hard to keep your neighbors, who may be far more aggressive than you from being able to use them. They can be 'tuned' to certain ship operating 'frequencies' but that only goes so far.

One thing that Lily says, in her new capacity as my research assistant, is that she doesn't think that what they want to do, which is drift into the event horizon for the 'star-gate' will work the way that the Aer Lingus' AI says it will. Yet that is where they think that they 'hear' what they think is an emergency locator beacon.

They haven't said as much but the only thing that I can think that might be out there is Katy's tug. Of course I know that the main reason that no one wants to say that what they hear is Katy's tug is that if they say that and think that then find nothing but a long echo through the 'gate' we'll all be even more disappointed than we are now by being separated for long enough that I'm doing a bit more than showing as far as my pregnancy goes. With all good luck Will will return before his next daughter is born. I've been having words with the AI on that count. But its logic seems sound in some ways, that is that we must preload lots of women so that the next generation can be even larger. I expect that some places will be loading up on male babies too. Because we do seem to be having a problem with attrition in our military due to the fact that we haven't figured out how to cause major casualties to the Sa'arm without causing major environmental damage that causes the world to be useless to us. Really I should say that the Sa'arm create a situation where the world they occupy becomes a dead zone.

Other people can attempt to say that the loss of the world or the destruction of the biodiversity that a world represents is the reason we must stop the Sa'arm. Very few people will say that the only choice we have eventually is the destruction of the Sa'arm. Whether they're evolved or a mad science project gone horribly awry, the fact is that they do not (in fact seem utterly incapable of) recognize that they've destroyed sentient life. That is unacceptable.

If we were certain that the Sa'arm understood that they were destroying sentient life then we could say that what they're doing is beyond unacceptable, indeed we could say that it is evil. There are some I'm sure in the universe, maybe even among our allies in the Confederacy, who would ask; who are we to determine what is evil. I can only answer that while we reluctantly fight the Sa'arm because they will not otherwise be dissuaded from destroying yet more worlds and more sentient life forms, they march forward without seeming to ever recognize what they are doing. And it seems to me that the only way to stop them from expanding and eating the entire galaxy at least is to kill them wholesale.