Retreat Hell Read Online Free

threat of colossal devastation when the starships returned.  If the Commonwealth Expeditionary Force hadn't been deployed to Lakshmibai, Ed knew that he would be dead by now, along with the representatives from Wolfbane.  Who knew what that would have done to relationships between the two interstellar powers?
    Ed was used to death, or so he’d told himself.  Being in the Marines meant the near-certainty of a violent death – and no one, not even the most highly-trained Marine, was immune.  He’d lost far too many people over the years, from Marines he’d considered friends to Marines who’d served under his command ... and then Avalon Knights and others who had joined the military and helped make the Commonwealth a success.  But those deaths had taken place before he'd screwed up, badly.  And he had screwed up.  In hindsight, always clearer than foresight, it was alarmingly clear that Lakshmibai was a disaster waiting to happen.
    “Hindsight is always clearer,” the lecture had said, when he’d gone to OCS on the Slaughterhouse.  “You will always be second-guessed by people who will have access to a much more accurate picture than you had at the time.  The trick is not to let those people get under your skin, because they will find it very hard to filter out the information they gathered in hindsight from what you knew before the disaster occurred.”
    He shook his head, bitterly.  There were just too many unanswered questions over the whole Lakshmibai debacle for him to relax, even if he had been inclined to let the dead go.  Had someone aided the locals, promising assistance that would prevent either the Commonwealth or Wolfbane taking bloody revenge for the slaughter of their people?  Had the locals believed that the starships would never return?  Or had they just been maddened fanatics, too enraged to consider the long-term consequences of their actions? 
    The preacher finally stopped speaking and nodded to the friends and family, who stepped forward, picked up clods of earth and started to hurl them into the grave.  Ed watched dispassionately as the coffin was slowly buried, part of him wishing that he could join them and help bury a young man who’d died too soon.  But Councillor Travis had made his wishes quite clear.  Ed could attend the funeral, but not take an active part in the ceremony.  He blamed Ed for his son’s death. 
    It was a bitter thought.  Ed had cared little for Earth’s cadre of professional politicians, from the mayors and managers of the giant cityblocks to the Grand Senators, who were – in fact, if not in name – an aristocracy that had succeeded, long ago, in barring outsiders from rising within the Empire’s power structure.  They’d known nothing, but politics; their actions were considered purely in terms of how they would help or hinder their endless quest for more and more political power.  It didn't take hindsight – as Professor Caesius had demonstrated years ago – to understand that Earth’s politicians were certainly part of the problems tearing the Empire apart.  And now the Empire was gone.
    But Councillor Travis was different.  Ed and Professor Caesius had written most of the requirements for political service on Avalon – and the rest of the Commonwealth – and Councillor Travis qualified.  Indeed, part of Ed rather admired the man for what he had accomplished, even before the Marines had arrived on Avalon and disposed the old Council.  He was no professional politician ... which made his new opposition to the military – and Ed personally – more than a little heartbreaking.  But there was no point in trying to avoid the fact.
    I never had children , Ed thought, sourly.  It wasn’t uncommon for Marines to have children while on active service, but the children tended to be raised by their mothers while the fathers were moved from trouble spot to trouble spot.  But Ed had never found someone he seriously considered marrying until