The AID didn't say anything. Neither did the e-mail appear holographically.
"AID?" Connors insisted, an annoyed quality creeping into his voice.
"You don't want to see it," the device answered definitively.
"Don't tell me what I want," Connors said angrily, heat rising to his face as blood pressure turned it red. "Just gimme my goddamned mail."
"Captain — "
"Look, AID, I've had no word from my wife since leaving Barwhon. Just give me my mail."
"Very well, Captain." The e-mail list appeared immediately, projected on the air over the desk.
Connors was surprised to see only a single letter from his wife. He opened it and began to read. It was short, a mere five lines. Then again, how much detail is required to say one's wife is pregnant by another man and that she has filed for divorce.
Interlude
The outer defenses of the city were crumbling now, Guanamarioch sensed. The sounds of battle — the thunder of railguns, the clash of the boma blades, the cries of the wounded and dying — grew ever closer.
He felt a slight envy for those Kessentai chosen to stay behind and cover the retreat to and loading of the ships that would take the clan to their new home. Their names were recorded in the Scrolls of Remembrance and they would be read off at intervals to remind the People of their sacrifice. That was as much immortality as any of the Po'oslena'ar, the People of the Ships, might aspire to.
Yet instead of leading his oolt into the fight, Guanamarioch on his hovering tenar led them as they marched four abreast and one hundred deep towards the waiting ship. Other oolt'os, similarly, formed long snaking columns from the city's outskirts all the way to the heavily defended spaceport.