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  To make matters worse, the Darhel wore gunny's stripes. The question was, had he earned them from politicking, as a reward to his Shylock skills, or the hard way, from operating in the field? Almost unnoticed amid the other shocks, he wore the badge of a sensat above his left pocket.

  After thousands of years of striving, humans were finally starting to make actual strides in extrasensory perception. The military, especially, had started using them for a variety of purposes. Very few could "read minds" but many of them could sense emotions even at a distance. A few could get a vague sense of the future.

  There were the expected prejudices against them. Despite the fact that few could sense, much less decipher, actual thoughts, everyone feared them for that potential ability to delve into the private recesses of the mind. Every sentient being that the humans had met had thoughts that they preferred not see the light of day. Thus, most found sensats uncomfortable companions. Most sensats, in fact, could just barely sense emotions and occasionally very strong and focused thoughts. They might get a vision of the last thing a dying person saw for instance. That didn't make people any happier.

  A few were found on the Deep Recon teams. Generally they were empaths who could do things like spot an ambush by the "lying in wait" emotions of the attackers. The Blobs were detectable by the sensats. Indeed, because sensats could detect a Blob kilometers away, the Tslek apparently used extrasensory perception as a normal means of communication.

  "Welcome back. I hope it was a good exercise?" the captain greeted them. There was an automatic but halfhearted flurry of mumbles and "sir"s as the team all but ignored him to stare at the Darhel.

  The captain had been prepared for that response, and rather than waste time, said, "Let me introduce Tirdal San Rintai." The Darhel nodded at the introduction and waited patiently. "Tirdal is a limited empath, a Class Two, and has completed the qual course for DRT sensat with a secondary skill of medic. He will be accompanying you on the upcoming mission."

  There were mutters and barely audible comments, which reached the surface when Dagger said, "No offense, sir, Tirdal"—with a faint nod at the Darhel—"but we've been a team for a long time and operate well together. We don't need unfamiliar personnel in our ranks at the start of a mission, with no prep or training time. It's more likely to screw things up than help."

  The captain fixed Dagger with a stare. "You think so, do you? You know what the mission is, then?" Before Dagger could even shake his head, he continued, riding over any other arguments that lurked beneath the surface. "Well, here's the facts: We have a warning order for an insertion on a possible Blob planet, to recover intel and possibly artifacts and prisoners. The only team that ever made it back from one of those had a sensat along. So we are taking a sensat. Period. Tirdal is available, trained and has Level Four sensat scores. He's going with us. Is that all right with you, Sergeant?" His emphasis while staring at Dagger made it clear he was tiring of Dagger's questioning on every mission order. The man could shoot like nobody's business, and outstalk a cheetah, but his regard for authority left much to be desired.

  Dagger stared back, firmly though not obviously defiantly, and said firmly, "Understood, sir. Tirdal, welcome to the team."

  At that, Tirdal finally betrayed action, stepping forward to shake hands. "I greet you, Dagger. I'm sure we can work together." His voice was sonorous and deep and his grip solid as Dagger took it. Then it was more than solid, a strong, crushing grasp, accompanied by a violet and cyan stare that locked with his eyes and seemed to look through them into the brain behind.

  Dagger pressed down on the hand, hard. Besides being a multiplanet-classed shot he was one of the strongest men on a team of very strong men. But he couldn't budge the Darhel's grip. After a moment he felt the Darhel start to press down and it was like having his hand in the grip of a mechanical press. After a moment's struggle his face finally betrayed a flicker of pain and the Darhel, smiling again, faintly, released the pressure.

  Dagger didn't betray any surprise outwardly, despite what he felt inside at Tirdal's disturbing presence and strength. "Yeah, no problem," he muttered, trying not to shake his hand in reaction to the pain.

  "I look forward to working with you," Tirdal said with a nod, his vertical-pupilled eyes never leaving the face of the sniper.

  The others shook hands and introduced themselves. Tirdal nodded to each in turn, saying almost nothing else.

  Chapter 2

  The premission briefing bore no shattering surprises. There was fuzzy vid from a probe flyby, with scientific data on geology and meteorology, botany and zoology. They were fuzzy because the probe was the size of a basketball and had whisked through at meteoric velocities, then done a datadump; anything larger or less covert would have given away the fact that someone was interested in the system.

  Mission gear was listed, some as required, some optional. Another list had forbidden items. No shocks there, either: nothing that could give away the location of an inhabited planet, no tech gear that didn't include a self-destruct, nothing personal that was indicative of culture or language, etc. Also tediously routine for the team was the situation: Enemy forces: unknown. Friendly forces: none. Attached assets: none. They were needed at once and had only minimal prep time. There was never time to rehearse it properly, but there was always time to waste a team or two. They would at least get two days to shake down with their new member. The military was generous in its own way. Day One was today, all talk. Day Two would be a field exercise.

  "The planet is quite Earth-like," the team commander, nicknamed Bell Toll, said. "Climate is temperate and moderate. I hate to sound too cheerful, but altogether it looks like a walk in the park compared to our usual missions."

  "How do we insert?" Gun Doll asked.

  One of the intel weenies briefing them replied, "A stealthed survey ship found an open tunnel to the system. It was quite unlikely, but there it was. The system they found contains both multiple Jovians and this high-quality planet. Sensor bots were dropped for their usual sweep, when faint energy emissions and hyper tracks were detected. The bots performed a cursory biosphere sweep and localized the emissions."

  "It's our job to do a drop," Bell Toll continued, "move to the area and determine, hopefully without detection, if there is or is not a Blob base in the area. There's something there, but it could be Blobs, free-colonizer humans or pirates. Or even another, unknown, race. It's up to us to determine which. And for that we'll need our sensat.

  "Tirdal, attention, please," he asked, and Tirdal snapped upright. "Tirdal's been in service for quite some time as an intel analyst and interrogator. He's only recently been through the DRT course, but has some experience and time in grade, so, by the chain of command, he will be third in line of command, after me and Shiva. At ease, Tirdal.

  "Class Two, for those of you who slept through all the training sessions, means he can detect emotions and thought processes, but not reliably acquire actual thought symbols. Level Four means he can detect out to a variable but undefined range greater than Level Three. He's going to be one of our early warning systems to keep us from walking into a tea party of Blobs. Also, if he can pick up any signs from a distance, we may not have to go in as far. I'm sure you all appreciate the advantage of that." They did. Brave fronts aside, anything that reduced mission risk was a good thing. Everyone took another look at the Darhel, looking as cool as an Oort planet in his brand-new uniform. Most of the stares were curious, but a couple were cold. He didn't seem fazed.

  "With all that said, are there any questions not addressed in this briefing or your packets?" There were not. All the questions that the team wanted to ask were on the unofficial forbidden list. "Why are we doing this shit?" "Are we actually expected to survive?" "Is this a good time to ask for a transfer?" Questions that flashed through most of their minds, at least from the second mission onward, but could never be spoken. They were DRT and they hadn't gotten this far by quitting.

  "Then you had better get last minute stuf
f fixed up and check your gear. Zero seven hundred start tomorrow. The initial oporder will be Thursday at zero nine hundred. We'll probably lift sometime around seventeen hundred to nineteen hundred hours. That's all. Tirdal, follow me," he finished with a point of his finger. He knew better than to leave the Darhel alone for now. The team was still unwinding from their last exercise and wouldn't react well to the stress of an incoming alien sensat. He could already hear the grumbles.

  Despite shorter legs, the Darhel strode easily down the duraplast hallway alongside the captain, feeling the human's conflicting thoughts. Beneath the turmoil, there was order and confidence. Even more than regular troops, sensats needed to know their commanders were prepared to deal with issues. Tirdal felt the coming question arising before Bell Toll opened his mouth. "So what do you think, Tirdal?"

  "Of the situation, Captain? Of the team? Of the preparations?"

  "Of the team, for now."

  "I don't think they like me much," Tirdal said slowly. He said everything slowly. His voice wasn't taciturn or filtered to be deep and empty, that was just how Darhel spoke. His only expression was a flip of his right ear.

  The pictures to either side of them were more formal, line drawings and holos of battles and locales. Bell Toll appeared to study them as he walked, though he'd no doubt seen them thousands of times before.

  "They may not like you," the captain said, frowning. "Yet. But small teams require trust and teamwork. Since you're new and haven't been with the team in their exercises, or missions for that matter, you're naturally going to experience a bit of standoffishness. This is just the nature of being new to a team. Don't let it worry you. Do your job and everyone will forget that . . ."

  "That I'm a shiftless Darhel freak?" Tirdal supplied with an ear flick.

  "If you take that point of view things will be very rough indeed," the captain said, stopping to lock eyes with the Darhel. "And I won't tolerate discrimination."

  "Yes, sir," Tirdal agreed, tasting the forceful honesty in the statement. For a wonder, the team commander seemed to accept him at face value: as a "newbie" team member, not a Darhel, not an evil demon Shylock. Still, the captain was keeping him separated from the rest of the team at present. Tirdal partly appreciated that because there was less stress in their thoughts when he wasn't around, but it wasn't a good sign. They'd have to learn to be comfortable to function.

  "But you still have to respect their unity and work to earn their trust," Bell Toll said, as if he were the sensat. "If you try to mess with the experienced members, they will go hard on you, trust me. You're the new boy, learn to deal."

  "Yes, sir. I'm prepared for that."

  "Good. They're—we're—going to give you the respect due your rank. But it is up to you to prove that you're worthy to be here, not up to us to prove that we are."

  "Yes, sir," Tirdal said as they reached the captain's office.

  "I'm sure you've got your own preparations," Bell Toll said as he turned at his door. "Oporder for the exercise is at zero nine hundred. Same briefing room."

  Tirdal flicked his ear again, then left as Bell Toll closed the door.

  Back in the team's briefing room, the NCO in charge had just returned. He'd arrived late and left early to deal with details, and no one had had a chance to talk to him, yet. Shiva, as he was known, walked in to the middle of the heated discussion about the Darhel. It was rather vehement, and he'd not even sat down before Thor confronted him.

  "We gotta goddamned Darhel sensat dumped on us, Sarge," he complained without even a nod of greeting.

  "I know, I was here," Shiva said. He was calm. Shiva was always calm. Considering the missions and the troops, it was a good attribute, and he'd made it as long as he had and to his rank because of it.

  "Good. What are you going to do about it?" Thor asked.

  "Nothing," Shiva replied. "Nothing I can do, and he's the sensat we've got. Sorry, Thor, you'll have to get used to him."

  "They probably let the little shrimp ghost Q course," Gorilla put in. "They always go easy on sensats." His voice was deep and gravelly to match his huge size.

  "Think so, huh?" Shiva asked, turning toward him.

  "Yeah, am I wrong?"

  "Well," Shiva drawled, a faint smile of amusement spreading across his face as he spread across the chair in a stretch. "He apparently maxed the course. Not 'exceptional,' but 'maxed.' I called Roy over at Course and the instructors were impressed. And most of 'em hated his guts. So there was no favoritism there."

  "It's probably just like the way chicks get treated," Gun Doll said. "There's so few of us, still, that we stand out. Everyone assumes that women, shrimps, aliens and civvy specialists get special treatment." She looked over at Dagger, who'd hazed her mercilessly upon her arrival, before grudgingly admitting she knew her job. "Right, Dagger?"

  Dagger was putting away fine tools from his cleaning and maintenance kit. He was forever tinkering with his rifle, and carried extra tools to that end. It was probably unauthorized for him to do depot level adjustments, but he shot well enough that no one would dare complain. He laid down a probe and shrugged very slightly.

  "I put him where I put everyone else. If he does his job, I don't have a problem. If Shiva says he maxed the course, I'll assume he can keep up, keep quiet and back us up." Closing the receiver on his gauss rifle, he cycled the mechanism, pressed the stud, and listened to the snap of the ignition circuit. "If he screws up, it'll make more work for me. Then we have a problem."

  Gun Doll, Gorilla and Shiva stared momentarily at each other, not at Dagger. Dagger wasn't paying attention to them. At least not outwardly. It was probably part of his act. He loved to play the cold killer. It was annoying, but it was how Dagger was.

  "Dammit, why did it have to be a Darhel? Why not a human sensat?" Thor groused.

  "Because we don't have enough," Shiva replied. Human sensats were not only rare, but were needed to produce GalTech materials, because the only way anyone had figured out to produce most of the gear at that level was the way the Indowy did it—by "praying." Actually, it was a complex ritual of meditation and thought, but it was very intensive and those doing it were not generally available nor disposed to lugging huge rucks through dangerous wilderness. The Michia Mentat, the largest school of the sensory arts, kept pretty much to themselves, and had since the Islendian Republic had split from the Solarian Systems Alliance some hundreds of years before. They'd served more in a diplomatic role between the Fringe and the SSA, and part of the treaty had been written to keep them out of military matters. They'd sat out the rebellion, their focus being within, but everyone knew how badly Earth and its allies would have fared had they been involved. "Don't see you going to sensat testing, Thor."

  "Could be worse. It could be an Indowy sensat who we'd literally have to carry," Gun Doll said.

  "We'll manage," Dagger said and snapped his firing circuit again after his last round of adjustments. It couldn't be coincidence this time. Everyone stared at him.

  "Right," Shiva said, breaking the tableau. "If you plan on drinking, getting laid or anything else tonight, get your crap squared away now. If you don't make excuses, I won't have to make explanations, and we'll all be happier. We're departing straight after a two-day run through. So live it up now."

  It was well after 1700 hours when the prep work was done. Shiva was still doing administrative stuff, which never ended—the troops had to be certified as to range time, medical appointments and the other minutiae of military life. Bell Toll was scrounging data, trying to wheedle a few facts that could give his people the edge in this op, as well as drafting the orders and acknowledging briefings. This op was going to play hell with their training schedule for the Readiness Standards Evaluation, which since this wasn't, yet, a "declared war," had to be met. That was the military; stick you out on the raw end one day and put you through chickenshit the next.

  Thor appointed himself patrol leader of the bar crawl, and proceeded to prod the others. He first cornered Dag
ger in his room, who replied, "Thanks, but if I'm going to be shooting, I'd like to be as sober as possible." His expression wasn't exactly condescending, but Dagger was very much the psychotic loner. He almost turned into a cloistered monk before a mission, and wasn't much of a partier afterwards. He'd been known to have three beers, once or twice. He'd even had an expensive shot of Earth whisky once. He wasn't cheap, he was just a purist.

  Tirdal was next, and looked somewhat confused. Behind him the lights were dim. His desk had been cleared and set with a small candlelike object, a book and some other items Thor couldn't identify from the door. They were some kind of religious or personal gear, and Thor didn't pry. It wasn't politeness; he was embarrassed. To his inquiry about joining the entourage, Tirdal replied, "You wish for us to appear in public as a group, then attempt to find private entertainment, then return to little sleep?"

  "That's sort of it," Thor agreed. "It's supposed to be fun and help take the edge off."

  Tirdal appeared to consider it for a moment, then replied.

  "My presence would create a disturbance among others that would not be helpful to you, I think. There will be nothing for me to do privately, and if left alone in public, there could be issues. As to 'taking the edge off,' I will meditate most certainly, and review recent events. I also need to study more of both human interaction and technical matters. So I think not. But I do thank you for the invitation. Perhaps when this is over the timing would be more appropriate."