Chapter 60

Dear busy brother,

Wow, there are things in this letter that surprised me. I guess your governor is a lot more paranoid than anyone on Wadi. I mean, we are putting in things, but most of our improvements are more about making our surroundings more pleasant. I haven't heard anything about a fear of some BEMs (bug eyed monsters) or anything. I'm sure a huge part of it is just how far from Earth and the rest of humanity we are. I mean I've been told that there have been a few colonies that suffered from rather poor management, but no one around here knows of one.

Not that there haven't been issues. I told you that officially Wadi is part of Leo district, but the truth is that the district doesn't really exist anymore. The two planets that someone back on Earth says are the district are Wadi and Morass, but with the exception of the "Roughnecks" no Leo District unit is on either planet. They all abandoned the district. Supposedly they were redeployed to an area needing more attention, but I can't see a location that needs help more.

As for pirates? Wow. I guess you can have trouble with them, but to be honest why would anyone turn pirate? If you work with the aliens you can get everything you need. And while I know some will claim its about "freedom" the truth is that we are very free. One of the revelations the men on our artillery battery realized is that there is no rule against concubines helping or carrying weapons. (You obviously have a governor who figured that out). They just can't leave the planet without their registered "owner" or a properly designated proxy owner. Here we aren't really working to make them into a militia. We don't need additional warriors since the Sa'arm are slowly being squeezed out. Their population growth has stopped and we have been able to start whittling their numbers down. We do fear another sphere visiting, but Borneo district has started rotating their ships through the system. I've heard that the commanders on both Morass and Wadi are suggesting that the systems be considered part of Borneo district and the Leo district be dissolved. Considering the fact that the district commander is light years away on some breeding colony I support that idea. I'm not sure what Borneo command thinks though.

On your question about the Sa'arm tactics. I made a call to Char, the woman who leads the Roughnecks. She revealed that she's fought the Sa'arm on Leo, Tufts and now Wadi. They are actually not much tougher if they are tunneling. They do spread out faster and will often surface in locations you never expected, but the tactics we are using here work almost as well. The Sa'arm tend to be very aggressive when provoked. The trick is to set up the provocation in an area where you know they won't explode out of a tunnel and cut off your retreat. If they pull that off they wipe out units. And one thing that Char said is that they can tunnel through solid rock faster than you might think. In fact they may tunnel through it faster since they don't have to reinforce the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.