Personal Log
Noemi Laporte
UEFg Indus

As elite units go, the Wargods should be a farce.

The Indus is a good ship, sure. Captain Kyrematen's Yangtze worked with Sorensen for years before the war, battling Gef raids. And Captain Genady's Katana and Captain Albani's Altan Orde have a history of their own. They fought their way out of Jupiter space during the Fall, blowing through two full bomber squadrons and a trio of corvettes. And then they jumped back in to escort civilian convoys...three times.

I'm not saying we're a bad bunch, as warriors go. But we are by no means elite. Even with Simms' last-minute training, the Indus' pilots were rookies when we went after the Agincourt. And hell, some of us have died like rookies. A lot of us didn't make it to that ejection handle.

So why are we still here? Why are we the tip of the spear, the ones making a difference, while the White Guard shuttle Elders about and the Fedayeen do...whatever it is the Fedayeen do, if they even exist? How did a bunch of Second and Third Fleet rooks spit in the face of the greatest war machine in human space and live to brag about it?

In the big picture I think it's because the Wargods aren't special at all. We are the Federation unleashed. We are what ordinary Ubuntu citizens can become, given a mission and the means to achieve it. What happened here in Sol didn't breed a race of pampered weaklings - it made a generation of smart, tough, versatile men and women. If our leaders ever took to the taste of blood, we could be a nightmare.

I suppose it's possible that anyone could have done what the Wargods have done. But I don't believe that, for one very specific reason.

We have Lorna Simms.

She is a dynamo. She eats up fear and grief and alloys them into rage and purpose. She beats us into the deck with her drills, mocks the dead - throwing out pictures of lost pilots, shouting their mistakes, ripping the pictures in half, demanding that we do better - and drives us all to the edge of sanity with her relentless demands. All in all, Simms is only fractionally more merciful than the enemy.

And we love her for it. I don't think there's a pilot in the squadron who would not dive into a beam just to earn a posthumous word of praise.

In battle she is a hellion, poised in some kind of zen state between manic glee and all-out fury. It's beautiful, and it makes me very happy, because it's so different from the nihilistic anger that used to drive her. Her people haven't stopped dying. She loses friends every mission. So what drew her back from the abyss she was flirting with when I showed up?

I think that she has found the thing that Kassim lacked. The belief that all this death, no matter how painful, has a purpose.

I hope that we can win this damn war soon, and not just because of the dreams. I'm tired of reminding myself that she's my Captain. Sometimes I catch a glance behind the armor of her eyes and think that she feels the same way. But Dad always said I was too full of myself.