MERCS: Crimson Worlds Successors Read Online Free PDF Page B

built.
    But he himself was a creature of those wars.  His career, his fame, even his own image of self-worth was tied up in the persona of the great Admiral Augustus Garret.  He had sacrificed everything to his duty, and now he had nothing else.  War had been his life.  That didn’t make him proud, but he couldn’t deny it.  He’d been busy seeing to the downsizing of the massive war machine he had led, but he wondered what would happen when he was done.  Would there would be a place for him with no war to fight?
    Vance sighed.  “That may be true, but we certainly can’t build anything like this anymore…and I suspect it will be a long time before we have that kind of capacity again.”  His eyes narrowed, and his voice deepened, became more serious.  “And we both know there are greater dangers out there than colonial disputes.”
    Garret nodded.  He knew, perhaps better than any living being.  Man’s first contact with another species had been disastrous.  The war against the First Imperium had been a holocaust, and humanity had only escaped destruction by the barest margin.  But the enemy was still out there, somewhere, and it was only a matter of time before they returned.  And no one knew what other horrors existed in the depths of unexplored space.  But, whatever was out there, men like Garret and Vance were determined to be ready.
    “It was hard to convince some of the other officers, but I finally managed it.  The First Imperium put a hell of a scare into them, and it hasn’t worn off yet .”  No surprise there…those robot legions were the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a nightmare from hell.   “None of them could argue we didn’t need to be ready.  Besides, they were all facing the same option—scrapping the ships instead of entrusting them to your care.  Still, there is much suspicion, even between allies.  Most former Alliance officers don’t like the idea of ‘giving away’ our most powerful ships.”
    Garret had led humanity’s united forces against the First Imperium, and in the aftermath of the final battle on Earth, he’d gathered the naval commanders of the former Superpowers to a summit meeting.  Even after the horrendous losses of the final war, they had far more vessels than the economic output of the colonies could support.  And the political bonds between those worlds were rapidly dissolving.  Without the oppressive Earth governments, planets were declaring independence everywhere.  The surviving military forces were quickly finding themselves without nations to serve.
    It had taken weeks of debate and negotiation, but Garret was still a larger than life figure, renowned by all as the man who had saved humanity from the First Imperium.  He had always been uncomfortable with the share of credit he’d been given for a victory won by the sacrifice of thousands of men and women, but he was a master tactician, and he didn’t hesitate to use the adoration to gain acceptance for his plan.  In the end, he’d won widespread approval, and it was agreed that hundreds of mothballed vessels—battleships, cruisers, destroyers—would be stored on the Martian moon of Phobos, a reserve against the day when all mankind would again face the prospect of doom at the hands of an alien enemy.
    It was an ideal location.  The Sol system was deep in human-controlled space, insulated from any hostile future contact.  Mars was the last Superpower, and though the destruction of her four largest cities late in the war made her power a shadow of what it once had been, she still wielded far greater strength than any of the colony worlds.  The Martians could defend the stored vessels, ensure that no rogue parties took control of them.  Though the Confederation had sided openly with Garret and the Alliance Marines in the last war, her history had been one of cautious neutrality.  The Confederation was the natural choice to be custodian of mankind’s surplus weaponry.
    “I