Chapter 139

Dear Marissa,

Wow.

I figured that something was happening when Will didn't send a letter before we had to power up the tank and board the shuttle that was taking us to Tuftsat for our mission to burn the grasslands. I'll admit that while I worried some the mission came first and once we started going to daily briefings and were looking at all the video the various probes that had visited the system provided, I stopped paying attention to how many days it had been.

The most wonderful thing to hear is that Will is home with the rest of his family and that Katy has been found safe. He was so lost that I had to wonder if he'd ever return.

Part of me wants to try to arrange a visit of our families, but I know it won't happen anytime soon. We were told that Wadi must remain Sa'arm free and the units based here will remain until the local infestations exhaust their ability to make ships.

And our little mission to Tufts probably extended that time by a decade or more. Tufts is an interesting planet. It has water, but it also has huge grasslands. Our mission was to burn the largest as a way to limit the amount of food the Sa'arm would have for the next year. If their population is as high as people think we expect they will be suffering from famine for a while. Unfortunately, even though we extended our mission and moved to a second continent there will be enough food that the Sa'arm will likely recover. They might not have much food for the current solar cycle of Tufts, but the grasslands will probably grow back healthier.

At least that's what many of the local experts are thinking. They do say that the Sa'arm will eventually strip the planet almost bare and will likely starve, but the fact that there are multiple continents on Tufts limits that for now. The Sa'arm have only moved onto the largest continent and a couple of the larger islands. There are three other continents that are still largely pristine.

And the mission wasn't a complete success. We lost four tanks in the company. Not Fabio, Blackthorn or my friends from Earth, but it was still painful to see our compatriots tanks burning and know that the crews had perished.

The losses have meant that once again they need to transfer more people into the unit. This time they recalled Phoebe from Morass. She's in tank seven. I know tank seven isn't exactly a "lucky" tank in our unit, but she's just happy to be home all the time.

For now we are safe. The current reports say that the Sa'arm on Cubsat and Tuftsat are struggling to find a lot of materials to build new ships. I guess they have been observed transferring materials from a couple of heavy gravity worlds, but Admiral Himmel has the Navy working to blockade the systems and prevent material from reaching any Sa'arm shipyards. Unfortunately, enough material does get through that the Sa'arm will be fighting for a couple of decades. I'm afraid my daughter Electra will end up fighting them once she grows up. Honestly, everyone in our household would rather our children grow up and become a travelling music show. We definitely have enough talented parents to train them the right way.