Chapter 15

Dear Willow,

I want you to know that as soon as I think that we might have a fighting chance against the Sa'arm I will be looking for a way to join the battle. But I must tell you that as of now we aren't winning. Indeed it seems to me that the lessons that we're learning about fighting the Sa'arm are coming at an awfully high cost in terms of human lives. This is especially true given that we don't yet have a clue as to how fast the Sa'arm multiply. All we know for sure is that there are at least billions of them on every world that they've infested.

I do think that I would worry a great deal if you decide to pursue a combat specialty. We have lost fleets and MEF's (Marine Expeditionary Forces) in the battles I've heard about. What we've destroyed that pertained to the Sa'arm was small and seems to have been replaced two, four, and even ten or more times over.

I tell you this so you won't think me a coward. I want to protect my family. But I hesitate to throw myself into a conflict where there is no odds of me winning. You remember the joke that Mr. Bowman, the math teacher used to make about lotteries being a tax on people who are bad at math? Well let me say that right now the people who are out learning the lessons that are necessary for humanity to fight the Sa'arm successfully are facing nearly as high odds and they are not going to win anything except another chance to fight the Sa'arm every time they succeed in surviving a battle. And we are winning very few battles. So far as the war is going I have to say that for now we are being pushed back on all fronts.

I shall see if the pod AI will blur out strategic portions of pictures of myself and my family. Then I shall have it attach said pictures to this letter. I think that I live with the most beautiful women in the universe (outside of you) but then in both cases I'm sure I'm prejudiced.

One thing you should consider when you're a sponsor is this: Concubines have ears, we also have feelings. I might have been much more willing to get on the pointy end of the stick, so to speak if I hadn't overheard the marines talking about all the people who'd been killed fighting the Sa'arm and how they aren't sure that they've even made so much as a scratch in the number of Sa'arm we'll have to fight and kill. And that, dearest sister, is part of the rub. Even knowing that the AI's are right in their hesitance to coordinate our fight, the fact of their hesitance is making our fight much more difficult.

I haven't a picture yet, as Marissa has to authorize one, but I thought that I'd get this out before I make another hyper jump.

Your brother,

Will