Ian Douglas - The Complete Inheritance Trilogy - Star Strike, Galactic Corps, Semper Human

What none of this took into account was the workload at established bases like Noctis-L. Training a company of raw recruits, breaking them out of their smug little civilian molds and building Marines out of what was left—that was a full-time job, and then some. Warhurst and five assistant DIs supervised Company 4102, now down to just forty-three recruits, and still it was never enough.

He closed his eyes. That one kid, Collins. After six weeks without her implants, she’d just … snapped. The messy and very public suicide had hit everyone hard, and the DI staff especially had been badly stressed. Damn it, he should have been there. …

Warhurst leaned back in his chair, his meal half finished but unwanted. He summoned a cup of coffee, though, and waited while a servo extended it to him from a nearby wall-mar. He knew there was nothing he could have done, and the board of inquiry had almost routinely absolved him and his staff of blame. But … he should have been there. Collins had stolen that thermite grenade one evening from a malfunctioning training arms locker when he’d been here , at home.

Angrily, he pushed the thought aside, then mentally clocked on the wallscreen, looking for the evening news. He wanted an external distraction, rather than an internal feed, telling himself he needed to keep his internal channels clear, in case there was a call from the base.

Which was pure theriashit, and he knew it. An emergency call would override any feed he had going. And either Achilles, the company AI, or Hector, who was reserved for the training staff, could talk to him at any time. He was avoiding the real issue, which was the strain within his marriage.

Damned right I’m avoiding it , he thought. And a good job I’m doing of it, too .

The news was dominated by the war, of course. The capture of Alighan was being hailed in the Senate as the defining victory of the war, the victory that would bring the Theocrats to their senses and bring them to the conference table.

“In other military news,” the announcer said, her three-meter-tall face filling the wall, “the Interstellar News Web have received an as yet unconfirmed report of hostile contact with what may be a Xul huntership outside of the Humankind Frontier. If true, this will be the first contact with the Xul in over 550 years.

“For this report, we go livefeed to Ian Castriani at Marine Corps Skybase headquarters in paraspace. Ian?”

The announcer’s face faded away, replaced by a young man standing in the Public Arena of the headquarters station. He looked intense, determined, and excited.

And what he had to say brought a cold, churning lump to the pit of Warhurst’s gut.

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