Once she managed to slow the sobbing, San asked, “Sorry for what?”
“For everything. For robbing children of innocence. I tell myself that Our Lord will forgive because we prepare for war, but even if he does, I cannot forgive myself.”
San sensed a tone in the nun’s words; she saw the sadness in her eyes and Sister Joan’s slumping shoulders and downward gaze told her that much had transpired in San’s absence.
“Where are the others from my group?” she asked. “The other candidates I trained with?”
“Dead. They are all dead. We sent them with our ships to attack the new Chinese home world and none of them returned alive. It was a horrific battle, San. You are all that’s left from the first group.”
“How many groups have there been since mine?”
“Many. Too many. And there will be many, many more. You should know, child, that Sister Frances always claimed that you were the most talented child she ever trained, even after all the groups she marshaled after yours. It warms my heart to see you return.”
“I feel so old.”
Sister Joan laughed, letting go of San and then pointing at her own face. “You feel old? I am old, child, my lines almost as deep as Sister Frances’s were when you left. You are not old; you are experienced. Experiences are what make us grow and that growth is what you feel now, what sets you apart from these children, who have yet to experience anything. They have yet to feel a fraction of the pain you ingested.”
“What do I do now, Sister?”
“What do you want to do?”
San wondered if maybe this is how her father had felt all those years ago when he’d realized that he had to escape from his masters, the Chinese. Her adventure was over. There had been nothing glorious about their mission to Sommen space, and maybe she should go to prison, San thought, for all those she lost while in command. She had intended to fly home, to Mars, but what would she find? Somehow it felt as though there was nothing on the red planet that could ease her grief, nothing there to learn that was new. It took minutes of thinking before an idea sprouted.
“I want to go to Earth,” San said. “That’s where Wilson’s parents are and they deserve an explanation. But there’s also something I have to see.”
“What?”
“I have to see why one place is worth all the death and destruction I just witnessed. I want to see why Mother Abbess and the Order think Earth is a place worth dying for.”
THE END
Tyger Bright Page 29
