Free J.M. Dillard - War of Worlds: The Resurrection by J. M. Dillard Page A

smiled, but she detected the obsession in his eyes. It frightened her. The man's not right. Well, what do you care so long as you have a job and Deb doesn't go hungry?
    "You won't regret it," Blackwood told her. "And after all, we are paying you well."
    She stiffened. "This may be hard for you to understand, Dr. Blackwood, but money isn't the most important thing I derive from my job. I like to feel that what I 'm doing is . . . meaningful. Now, if you'll excuse me . . ."
    His expression became serious for the first time since she'd met him. "Believe me, Suzanne, it's the most important work you've ever done, the most important work you'll ever do."
    But she was already walking out of his office, and pretended not to hear. She always tried to be honest with herself, and she knew she hadn't been totally up front with Blackwood. It wasn't just that she thought the project redundant. . .
    It was that she had never seen one of Them, except in her childish nightmares . . . and she wasn't sure she could stand to look at one in the flesh, even now.
    FIVE
    An observer stumbling upon the Jericho Valley site would have witnessed an eerie phenomenon: six humans—two in white technician's jump suits, four in black—standing shoulder-to-shoulder in three-person triangles. Around their bodies, the air crackled faintly with energy. A meditation ritual, perhaps; a communion of consciousness.
    Renewed by the energy drawn up from the planet's magnetic core, Xashron stirred from his trance to peer through new eyes at his comrades. Beside him, Konar and Xeera shielded their faces and squinted at the brilliant alien sun. Their host bodies were already beginning to decay. Xeera's host bore a red gash on his forehead; the pale flesh had split open when Xeera struck him with a blunt weapon. There were still bruises circling the neck of Konar's host. Xashron's host bore similar marks, but despite its limitations, this
    human male body was lean and young. He flexed the unfamiliar muscles, testing them. Combined with Xashron's own strength, this body would serve adequately.
    Nearby, the three who formed the Advocacy broke off their communion. Xashron looked at them and felt deep hatred for those hidden inside their hosts: Xana, Horek, Oshar. Strategists from the ruling class who spouted theory, who knew nothing themselves of war, but who planned the battles, decided who would live and who would die. To Xashron, they represented the idiocy of the ruling class; their carelessness, their impatience, caused the invasion to fail at the moment victory seemed surest. Over the protests of the lower-class scientists who feared not enough was known about the new planet, the government ordered the invasion. It was Xashron's duty to prepare the planet for his people, so they might leave their dying world to start anew. . . Only, he told himself bitterly, so the ruling class can allow this planet as well to be poisoned by our technology.
    And so Xashron, member of the military class, was obliged to forsake mate, carrier, children, and home, to come to this strange world. He was no lower-class servant. He was Supreme Commander, a member of the elite, in charge of an entire hemisphere's invasion . .. only to see all his soldiers perish from sickness until at last he, too, succumbed.
    He wondered now how many of his people had survived.. . and how many of them had expired, torn and mangled beyond all awakening when they lost consciousness at the controls and their ships plunged
    from the sky. Two of the metal containers he had opened contained the decayed, mortally wounded remnants of such soldiers. Even now he mourned.
    The Advocate had, of course, survived without scars, having always been protected like a carrier from all violence.
    The three of the Advocate moved and opened their eyes—small, strange eyes. It would have been far more just, Xashron reflected, for them to have died instead of his soldiers.
    Xana, the lone female member of the Advocate, stared at