Read Duty from Ashes for Free Online Page B

recommended. She knew that had been all that had kept her alive just as she knew her time was limited and another failure would mean death – or worse.
    Now this. Another failure to jeopardize her mission.
    Damn it, did she have to do everything herself?

C HAPTER F OUR
     
     
    A SHLYN REACHED FOR HER MUG as the lights in the conference room came up. From her place at the head of the table, she waited as her companions processed what they had just seen. She had certainly needed a few moments after viewing the vid-feed the first time. Even after reviewing it several times, the contents of the vid still affected her. How could it not, when it presented incontrovertible proof of the sadism of their enemy?
    Not that that was anything new.
    Looking at the ten men and women seated around the conference table, she saw the same horror and anger – no, the same fury. Anger was much too mild a word. – she had felt when she first watched the vid. It wasn’t as if they’d never witnessed such cruelty from their enemy. Far from it, in fact. Most of them, herself included, had seen it firsthand too many times to count during the previous war.
    Previous war.
    Ashlyn almost snorted aloud. What a farce. Oh, there had been a truce, on paper at least. But every one of her companions knew different. The fact there had been no formal declaration of war and no major incursion into Fuerconese or allied space meant nothing. The only difference between what had been happening during the truce and a war was that the Callusians had run their operations under the guise of piracy and smuggling. Shipping lines had been disrupted, usually to such an extent that the ships and their crews were never heard from again. Even so, former President Markham had allowed the farce to continue. He’d refused to do anything to protect Fuerconese interests outside the home system, much less that of their allies. That decision had come back to bite all of them.
    Not that it surprised Ash any. The previous war had been marked by politicians pushing their own personal agendas, no matter what the cost to those who trusted them to take any and all action necessary to protect Fuercon and her allies. Worse, there had been a few members of the military who had used the war to line their own pockets. That was something Ashlyn knew all too well. Good people, Marines and civilians alike, had died due to greed and incompetence. It very well could have continued had those same politicians and corrupt members of the military hadn’t tried to make scapegoats out of Ash and the surviving members of her unit.
    Fortunately, the public, tired of a war the politicians weren’t trying to win, had finally had enough. When the elections came around, Markham and most of his cronies had been voted out of office. The new administration, led by President Derek Harper, had immediately put plans into action to not only free Ash and her people but to clear them of all charges leveled against them.
    That had been just the first step in a long-range plan by the president to finally end hostilities with the Callusians once and for all.
    After two years in the hellhole on Tarsus, Ash had suddenly found herself back on the planet where she’d been born and where she’d grown up. There had been no explanation and now warning. One day she’d been escorted from her cell and placed on a transport to Fuercon. But Fate was a fickle bitch and she wasn’t about to let Ash’s homecoming be an easy one. Without warning, the Callusians had launched a limited attack on the capital. At the time, FleetCom hadn’t realized the significance of the attack. But now they knew. The vid had confirmed their suspicions. The attack on Fuercon had been a feint, designed to keep the Fuerconese military close to home while the enemy moved into position to attack Cassius Prime.
    It was video of that initial attack on Cassius Prime that Ash and her senior advisors had been watching. If anything about the attack could