Chapter 85

Dear Brother,

Captain Walker tells me that the commander of the military district and his marine general counterpart have a great reputation. She did not go into a lot of detail, but supposedly they have been very willing to replace problem commanders when it has proven necessary. I just have to pray that they decide its necessary in the Darling Downs fiasco. And not so much for myself or for my unit, but for all the future marines who would be thrown away uselessly in battles.

I guess in a way I can understand why the two men thought things were going well. If you were only reading reports and casualty counts you'd be sure that we were winning resoundingly. Most battles saw us killing fifty or sixty Sa'arm warriors for each man who died. At least that worked while they advanced. If they got to melee range they could reverse that ratio quickly. And that was the problem. Sure we would kill them in huge numbers and a blocking force of two hundred marines would kill more than ten thousand attacking Sa'arm. It sounds great until you realize that a small Sa'arm attack was fifty to one hundred thousand warriors. It didn't matter that we would kill thousands, they still overran the position and usually killed the majority of the defenders.

Colonel Yarnway and Major Lynch didn't realize that because they refused to actually watch the battles.

It was disheartening and frustrating. I can say that I doubt either man will be an effective commander in the future. I know that by the time we were pushed back to just the main base, none of their men really believed in their leadership anymore. They would listen to Gunny Mann, Gunny Wright and me, but that was about it. Both Gunnys tried to adjust any order so that we weren't fighting to the death to defend a position, but by the time Erica lost her temper we knew we would be abandoning the planet in the near future.

As you read, I was removed from the planet shortly after Erica's arrest. Colonel Yarnway wanted to make sure I could not testify so I was teleported onto Freya. The battlecruiser was on an attack mission to one of the many contested worlds in the sector. In fact I boarded on their second stop of a scheduled seven. They left Borneo and were going to Darling Downs, Wolf 3-6-7, Ishtar, Ursus 12, Tufts, Morass, Wadi, and finally back to Borneo. The visits after Ursus are expected to be flybys, where they pass through the system without a major battle, but Wolf and Ursus are expected to involve heavy fighting. Lilith, Captain Walker's concubine tells me that both systems are resource rich, but light on organic material the Sa'arm can feed on, so Borneo command has been trying to blockade the planets.

Part of me wants to demand that Captain Walker change her plans and swing by Borneo, but I'd never ask her to disobey an order just to get me to the trial. I was not a witness, and while I can testify to the growing morale issues and blatant disrespect shown by Major Lynch toward all of the troops from Wadi, Horace and others can do the same. I do know that messages were sent to see if Colonel Frost and Major Fabio can attend the trial. Either one of them can give far more detail than I can about what conditions were like on the planet.

I also have heard that Major Lynch might try to impeach my testimony by pointing out that I am living with Erica and that until recently we shared a single male concubine. Captain Walker has said that at one time there were a lot of problems on Borneo when some of the over-sexed male sponsors gave female sponsors and their concubines a lot of grief. I guess long ago it resulted in a brawl, so many of the female sponsors now live in enclaves where there are no male lead households. Of course, that means that the more abusive men try to form towns as well. Major Lynch used to live on Borneo and was a prominent resident of one of the less savory townships.

The waiting is hard. And it promises to be harder. I'm writing this as Freya maneuvers towards the docks in the Ishtarat system. The battle in the Wolf system was frightening. All I could do was sit with the ships concubines and hope that I survived. At least I started doing that. I ended up participating in a way I never expected.