“This is of catastrophic proportions! It’s a complete disaster! This is a failure of abominable proportions!”

  “We were weeks away! Weeks! Full completion would have let us win this war for good!”

  “How much did we lose? How much would it take now?”

  “With the progress destroyed on World Ritus, it would take us another seven to eight years.”

  “Seven to eight years?!”

  “At minimum under ideal conditions.”

  “And realistically?”

  “Ten to fifteen years. Conservatively, twenty or more years.”

  “We don't have seven to eight years, let alone any more than that! The amount the masses outnumber us by isn’t even worth questioning!”

  “What can be recovered? Is there anything that can be?”

  “Unfortunately, damage to World Ritus seems to be very thorough. And by that, I mean complete and total obliteration.”

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  “There’s really nothing that can be retrieved?”

  “Work is being done right now. Squads have been sent in to recover whatever they can find, if it’s not also in bits and pieces like the planet is. If we can salvage any non-corrupted files transmitted elsewhere anywhere, it might increase our chances.”

  “And if that fails?”

  “We still might have enough to make do with what we currently have. We’ll just have to fill in the gaps with our own knowledge and expertise.”

  “You know the results of that. Given how many test subjects it’s destroyed, when do you deem it safe enough for us to use?”

  “When we know it’s ready. There’s nothing we can’t do, nothing out of our grasp. We have the resources and the populations.”

  “We’d be doing them a favor, anyway. I’d kill myself living on those streets, too.”

  “What about Zviedal? And the woman?”

  “Both are likely still at large. No remains of them have yet been found at the site of Ritus. Just a lot of dead Ulminhans.”

  “They pose a grave threat to our security. You see what those monkeys have started doing out there? They’re rallying behind a cause! Zviedal and the woman are giving them that. We must make an example of them.”

  “Suppose we do that and they become martyrs?”

  “We’ve done it all before. Defame, delegitimize, then destroy the rest. Crush them before anyone crawls anywhere.”

  “Any more questions, gentlemen?”

  Down the halls, through the walls, held in detention, with a broken ear, a scarred, burned, battered and injured General Hiau listens in on the confidential conversation.