[H3]James E. Carter[/h3]
[hr]
Carter sat stiffly in his chair, his hands clasped loosely before him, the muscle arpund his cheekbones tightened with every new revelation Swaiger delivered.

Fifteen thousand dead. The Quinians cut off. The Imperial Family taken. Only a single princess unaccounted for, likely dead.

He had told himself a hundred times over that this wasn’t his war, that whatever happened east of the Evig wasn’t his to shoulder. But watching Arkadios, the usually unflappable and composed officer, visibly shaken by the news…

It hit him harder than he expected. The old soldier looked like a man who had been told his family had died, for all intends and purposes he had been told just that. Carter felt a heaviness settle in him. Maybe it wad sympathy, maybe the echo of what he had buried back home when the Confederacy’s guns had fallen silent over scorched farmland.

[I]Goddamn mess[/i], he thought. [I]All of it.[/i]

He cleared his throat lightly, easing forward in his seat.

“Colonel,” he said, raising hos gloved hand slightly, “any word on the Commonwealth’s stance in all this? Last I heard, they were keeping out of Old Continent affairs, is that still the memorandum of the day?”