Tactical Error Read Online Free PDF

protested.
“There’s no way that we can fail now.”
    He stepped up close behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. She
almost could not stop herself from flinching under that touch, knowing the
incredible strength contained in those hands. Stronger even than the hands of
Starwolves, although he had only the two. “Just keep in mind who it is
we’re fighting, and never underestimate them. They are very, very good.
Their only weakness is that the only way they know how to think is like
themselves. My only remaining concern is how much Velmeran might have learned
from fighting us.”
    Maeken glanced out the window, seeing that the cutter was being sealed for
flight. She bent to collect her bags. “Well, I suppose that I should be
on my way. They seem to be ready.”
    “They have to wait for you,” Trace pointed out as he took one of
her bags for her. “It’s your ship.”
    Maeken laughed, giving him the benefit of the doubt. He joked so seldom, but
he was often funny without intending to be. “So, what will you do when
it’s all over? Retire?”
    “If I can,” he said as they walked over to take the lift down to
the main level of the bay. “It’s hardly going to be that simple, as
if the war will just end. I don’t know how many of their carriers we can
catch all at once. We might be hunting down Starwolves for some time yet to
come. But it is good to know that we can finally defeat them.”
    “If you are so sure of that, then why do I have to stay behind to pick
up the pieces if something goes wrong?” Maeken said softly, mostly to
herself. Trace did not seem to hear as he pressed the call button for the lift.
Maeken frowned. “What will happen, when the war is over? I mean,
everything about our military, our government, even our economy, is designed to
run on this war. We build a massive amount of ships, weapons and equipment each
year, and the Starwolves oblige us by destroying a large part of it all so that
we can build some more. I had always assumed that we would have done something
to end this war one way or another a long time ago, if we really wanted.”
    “That might have been true, in the past,” Trace answered.
“The war was a ready-made justification for limitless spending on
construction and research, for tight control on trade and interplanetary
travel. But then this business of genetic deterioration became an inescapable
fact, and the war has turned from an asset to a liability.”
    “But what do we do now?” Maeken insisted. “If the basic
economic structure of our civilization is about to come to an end, what do we
put in its place? What can we do?”
    “What can’t we do?” Trace asked in return, then stepped
out of the lift when the doors snapped open. “Don’t you understand?
The Union wants to take itself apart. A war economy is a system that belongs to
a forgotten age. I like to think that we have outgrown that, that perhaps we
outgrew such things a long time ago and just never realized it. I would like to
see my fleet become something very different than it is now, perhaps a body of
explorers and peacetime troubleshooters, and I don’t mean anything
military or clandestine by that, but an organization of scientists and diplomats
and teachers.”
    “In all the years that I’ve known you, I never suspected that
you were secretly a starry-eyed optimist,” Maeken remarked as she hurried
to keep pace with him. “So with everything else in the known universe
about to change, what is to become of you? Time at last to be yourself? Maybe
settle down and have children?”
    Trace considered that, his face making no less than two almost comical
contortions. “If I had children now, I would be just old enough to settle
down and have grandchildren.”
    Maeken frowned to herself. She could see that she would get nowhere along
that line, at least not until the war was over. “Well, if those are your
objectives, why not just make peace with the Starwolves? I’ve always
found