“This is good, isn’t it?” Juan asked eagerly as he listened in Director Marceline’s office to the Lord Admiral’s voice on Eva’s recording. They’d retrieved it from the tree shortly after Eva left it there. “This will be enough, won’t it? We can extract her now?”
He and Mark had been discussing Eva’s extraction, and the thought had become an obsession for Juan. They had to get her out. It was like gambling. You have to quit when you’re ahead. The ones that keep trying to win more are the ones who always lose everything.
Getting her out now was quitting while she was ahead. There was no shame in that.
“Not the dog,” Director Marceline moaned when Eva described that Jim had been killed. “What are we’re going to tell Amy?”
They listened quietly to the rest of the recording.
Juan thought about the suicide bomber who Eva described. The tactic was repulsive, but if there were only five hundred thousand aliens...
No. He couldn’t condone it. There had to be another way to fight them. Fair and square.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Director Marceline blurted when the playback ended.
“What, ma’am?” Mark asked.
“This Lord Admiral. How is he in charge? I thought the Admiral Commander, the one who first showed up, was in charge.”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” she repeated. “Oh well. We’ll figure it out. And no, Mr. de la Serda, you can’t extract her yet. I don’t think she’d come even if you tried. She’s too close to the top. I don’t think you understand how valuable an asset she is right now.”
“She’s a twenty-seven year old woman with her future ahead of her. She shouldn’t have to throw it away,” Juan protested but shut up when the Director’s face hardened.
“Millions, if not billions, have already died in this war. Billions more will die in the coming famine. She’s one person. If she can make a difference, she has to. We all have to.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mark interrupted before Juan could argue. He put his one arm around the baseball player. “C’mon, buddy. I’ll buy you a drink.”
Juan wanted to fight, wanted to argue, but he also knew it was pointless. Eva had chosen her life, had chosen her profession, and she knew what those choices might entail. He left the Director’s office with Mark.