It started quietly, the way most rumors did, with a few cadets whispering over their trays in the cafeteria and falling silent whenever an instructor walked past. By the following day, it had reached nearly every table, and by the day after that, even the staff seemed to be speaking more quietly among themselves than usual.
The Mekharans had taken one of the Federation's planets.
Nobody seemed to know which one, how it had happened, or whether the news had come from an official source or simply from someone's cousin who served on a transport ship. But everyone agreed on what it would mean if it was true.
The war, which had dragged on for four thousand years in a slow and grinding stalemate, was about to become far more intense.
Nobody at the academy had much time to dwell on the news of the war because the morning of the field trip arrived before the rumor had a chance to settle into anything more solid than whispers.
