"Nineteen Destroyers and forty-seven Frigates." Mary Beth said. "They are essentially a police force. They were having piracy problems along the Frontier here."
"They'll never stop a force that broke through the Zone with little hindrance." Gregory said, setting his own youthful frame into the co-pilots lounge. Young in body but old in spirit. "Warfare appears to be the natural state of affairs. When I retired, I vowed never to participate again. Now it looks as if I'll have no choice."
They had never talked of such things. Each had had their own reasons for their decisions. Perpetual youthfulness had not been enough to allay the weight of the things he had done in mankind's name. If he had not retired, he might one day have turned the guns of his fighter or transport on his own Commanding Officers. The Service Psych's must have reported somewhat similar findings because he was given his retirement without argument, when pilots of his skill were seldom released graciously.
Mary Beth made no comment and went back to the news release she was reading. She knew she had never been as close to the actual fighting as had Gregory, she knew she could never feel what he felt, but her reasons for retiring had been similar. In her opinion man had forever been too eager to make war on those races it had encountered. Complete subjugation to mankind's rule or complete destruction. She had always agreed that no enemies could be left within man's ranks, but those in positions of authority had always gone farther than she would have. Disarmament, she had always thought, should've been the answer.
Now however, Mary Beth was not so sure. Now an alien race had come to them, showing an aggression and an ability previously unknown to any but man. Maybe war was the natural state of affairs and survival belonged only to the fittest. Unlike Gregory, Mary Beth was not crushed by the weight of the things she had done. The decisions which she had made that had caused the deaths of untold enemies, the actual number of whom she would never really guess. What she understood that Gregory did not was that with which Gregory was made. Mary Beth Holter was an instinctive commander of both men and women and what she had seen in Gregory Matlin, why she had taken him both to her heart and her bed, was the carbon which underlay his personality. It was something the Psych Techs could never understand with all their ridiculous little tests and questions. When the chips were down was when Gregory Matlin would be up. He was a survivor.
