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  Bell Toll shook Tirdal's hand as he came aboard from the cutter. It was strictly show, to make sure the scout's crew knew he was officially accepted. See the Darhel with the human commander? Must be some kind of consultant. That was the desired effect, and rumor control should have it through the ship at slightly less than lightspeed. Tirdal secured his gear and watched the others board and load.

  Entering was awkward. There was a null-gravity zone filling the hatch. The troops stepped off, spun and drifted down, fast at first, then slowing as they reached the deck, until they touched without impact and walked away. The field was computer controlled and managed everything in it as discrete packets so each person in the field moved at his own rate. Exiting would be done by jumping up lightly and being carried up and out. Turning to account for the opposing field was the only real complication. The interior of the lock was actually low enough that jumping down into it and even crawling out would not be an issue. But the field was there anyway, to help with cargo and inexperienced personnel.

  The interior of the bay they'd use for the trip was even more crowded than the compartment "above." One or at most two people could move around in it. To that end, they loaded one at a time. The interior was merely a corridor with two tiers of bunks bolted in on either side that were currently configured into G couches, legs raised slightly and the backs at a shallow angle. There were four right by the hatch and two each forward and aft. With them installed, the already tight corridor was narrow enough that Gorilla had to turn sideways to fit down it and also bend double. So he took the couch nearest the hatch. His gauss rifle/grenade launcher was secured in a rack on the hull side above his head and he was wearing his combat harness with ammunition, water, holstered pulser, combat knife and other accoutrements. He didn't notice it as a hindrance because he wore it like underwear, taking it off only to shower. He even slept in it most of the time.

  Gorilla was not happy in the enclosed space and everybody knew it.

  "Nice and snug, Gorilla?" Thor asked. "Need a teddy?" It did look vaguely like a crib, once the safety rail was up.

  Padding flowed up from the couches followed by hard memory plastic as reinforcement, fully cocooning the team members and leaving only their heads and necks exposed. Gorilla did not like this procedure either; it was a bit nightmarish for a paranoid claustrophobe. Thor was still kidding him about it as it sealed around his neck. "Maybe the captain can untuck you a bit."

  Gorilla said, "On the trip back I'm going to make sure to hide a few bugs and snakes in your couch, Thor."

  Thor shut up. He hated snakes.

  Masks descended and automatically snuggled for a good fit over the team's noses as the JG and a female corpsman (SBA) from the Ziv injected the troopers in their necks. As each was injected, he or she became very still and waxy and pale of skin. It was typical of Hiberzine. The corpsman finished up by touching a control and the memory plastic flowed up and over the exposed part so the team ended up disappearing in their cubicles, so many lumps of dull, gray plastic. Between the Hiberzine and the encasing, the troops were effectively in stasis.

  Tirdal was still watching the procedure. The medic turned and asked him, "Are you going to take a bunk now?"

  Tirdal flicked his ear and said, "I am not. Hiberzine doesn't work well on Darhel. The side effects are unpleasant."

  "That seems strange," the medic said with a frown. "I thought the Darhel invented Hiberzine for yourselves first, then adapted it to humans."

  "No," Tirdal said with a dark but bemused look. "It was invented for use on humans, by the Tchpth, at the request of the Darhel, about four thousand of your years ago." He turned and jumped expertly up the hatch and headed for the dreadnought.

  As his feet disappeared, the SBA looked at the injector and then at the JG. "I thought we only ran into the Darhel a thousand years ago?"

  "So did I." The looks they swapped were confused and faintly disturbed.

  Chapter 5

  Thor opened his eyes to see the Darhel as the cocooning material retracted. He sat up and stretched but it was more psychological than because of a real need. To the team no time had passed at all. Hiberzine suppressed all activity at the cellular level. There was no fatigue or strain.

  He saw Tirdal waiting, looking pretty much as he had before they went under. The JG and the medic, however, were jumpy. The medic was administering the Hiberzine antidote while the JG made sure everybody was recovering well. It was merely ritual; Hiberzine never had any major side effects. However, its process was still not understood, it not being a human creation, and it was always studied and regarded with a bit of awe.

  The others opened their eyes and looked around, taking only a moment to place themselves. As far as they were concerned, nothing had happened. The only real reaction was from Gorilla, who seemed more than glad to be out of the cocoon. He rolled his feet to the deck and sat on the grated floor, just to be out of the bunk.

  Bell Toll checked the internal chronometer in the nanocomp in his head and frowned. They'd been "down" for three months and the voyage was supposed to be a month and a half. What had been the delay?

  "What the hell happened to the schedule?" he demanded.

  "Things with the Blobs have heated up," the pilot said with a worried frown. "There's been another big clash in the sector and high command really wants to know if this is a major staging zone. Because of the fighting we were unable to use the intended system for a jump and had to do a non-tunnel jump, then refuel before doing a second jump. There was a nest of pirates there, which we cleaned out. Busy around the Fringe here," he added with a grimace.

  Bell Toll didn't speak; he just grimaced back.

  "For local information," the pilot continued, "we'll be checking out an anomaly around the second gas giant while the team is on the planet, and another stealth ship is on the way in support."

  Bell Toll nodded but didn't ask questions. The probability was that at least a task force was following the second stealth ship and for all he knew there might be a dozen stealth ships in the system. But he didn't need to know anything else, just who was available for pickup. Nobody was sure if the Blobs interrogated prisoners, or even took them. But operational security was still a standard watchword. What you don't know, you can't tell.

  The JG added, "There's a mission update and a standard news update available to you. I flagged it attention to you if you want to plug in and download it. I'm going to check on the insertion."

  "Thanks," Bell Toll said to his back as he headed forward. He realized the pilot was another navy type who couldn't or didn't comprehend Army thought processes and didn't want to be around them. Well, the discomfort was mutual.

  The team started checking some of the headlines they'd missed over a quarter of a year as Tirdal settled himself in his drop couch. Bell Toll noted the sidelong looks the medic was giving Tirdal and decided that stepping out of the compartment to inquire about that in private was called for. He waved to Shiva to keep everyone else in the small ship, received a nod, and stepped up the bounce field to the deck above.

  The sublieutenant was nervous and looked around a lot, as if expecting eavesdroppers.

  "What's wrong?" Bell Toll asked him.

  "Well," he replied, "it's not going to be on either download, but the Republic lost a lot of ships in the last clash. They held on with fighters but the Blobs really kicked our asses. If the Blobs ever overcome the fighters we are going to be in deep shit."

  "That bad, huh?" Bell Toll scowled. Why couldn't he get good news on this trip?

  "That bad," the lieutenant agreed. "Also, the Darhel was acting really weird. Did you train with him before you left?"

  Bell Toll shook his head. "Only briefly, why?"

  "Just weird," The JG replied. "Kept to himself mostly, worked out in the dreadnought's gym. He didn't even interact with the dreadnought's security team except to show ID, but they definitely were nervous around him, and it got worse as time went on. The first day one of the spacers tried to p
ick a fight with him."

  "How'd that turn out?" Bell Toll asked, his nerves jumping. He didn't like the possible outcomes.

  "He avoided it," the pilot said. "Just ignored the insults and the shove and walked past him."

  "That was it? No follow-up?" He'd expected the Darhel to fight. A human DRT would. It was disturbing in a way that no retaliation took place.

  "Well, not exactly. He walked over to the weights, set up the stack, and bench-pressed nearly five hundred kilos. Like it was nothing. Rep after rep. Everybody got real quiet and just moved away. That was the end of it."

  "Goddam," Bell Toll replied softly. He'd had no clue.

  "That's not all. After that, he was rarely in the gym at the same time as others but when he was it was always like that. He worked out in two point five gravities, had to turn it down even when heavy grav personnel turned up, and always pushed five or six times what anyone could believe. It just had people spooked. I mean, none of us had any idea how freaking strong the Darhel are."

  "Neither did I," Bell Toll replied, surprised himself. He turned and headed back down to the team. That was definitely something to keep in mind, and to ask about when the time was right. Dammit, no one knew enough about the Darhel. They could teach Intel branch about secrecy.

  As he reentered, he asked, "What's new in the news?"

  "Besides the military stuff," Shiva said, "which the press got wrong as usual, the Solarian Systems Alliance are going off into philosophical lotusland. It's not that they don't recognize the threat from the Tslek, it's like they just don't care. Their ambassador has been expressing distress, but he's quite adamant that the SSA isn't going to become involved in 'a regional war.' We could just let the next thrust through to teach them a lesson." He was sprawled for comfort, but still stuck in the small berth.

  "I often wonder if the SSA are humans or Indowy," Bell Toll replied. The Indowy were a harmless, endearing race of scientists who were inoffensive and had no concept of fighting at all. They'd been being obliterated by the billions when humans were brought into the war. And still they had a noncombative attitude. It was genetic.

  "How's that?" Tirdal asked.

  It was one of Tirdal's first questions, and with the tension regarding his presence, Bell Toll was grateful for the chance to talk. Not to mention the impending boredom of the metal and plastic walls.

  "What do you know about human history since we—" he paused knowing that he couldn't say, "threw you Darhel bastards out"—"secured our place as a galactic race?"

  "Very little," Tirdal replied.

  "Oh," Bell Toll said. "Well . . . let me synopsize."

  "Yes, sir," Tirdal nodded. He appeared ready to hear anything and remember it all. Maybe he was. It was one more creepy measure of him.

  "Earth and Barwhon were able to destroy the entire Posleen incursion. They had sufficient population to comb the surface and wipe all the ferals out. And it didn't take them long to get back up to populations in the billions. Most of the Fringe worlds were cut out around the main wave of the Posleen. Remember that we stopped one small advance of them; there were trillions of others going in other directions at the time."

  "Yes," Tirdal agreed. "We gave you the technology we couldn't use, to wipe out entire star systems as a means of eradicating them."

  "Yes," Bell Toll said. "And the Fringe—specifically the Federation—was secured from those we captured, which are now a buffer zone between the SSA and the Tular Posleen, who were the only ones who came to reason, after we killed enough billions of them.

  "Anyway, after Earth recovered, they wanted to resume business as usual."

  "Business as usual?" Tirdal asked.

  "Yes, stop fighting," Bell Toll said. "It's not natural to us, so they say."

  There was a moment's pause, and when Tirdal answered he sounded more distressed and confused than he had since they'd met him.

  "Not natural for humans to fight? Your seven million years of evolution has been one long, bloody battle. You had aggressive animals, short supplies, little technology for food and horrible means of communicating. The century before we introduced ourselves alone you exterminated over forty million of your own species. You exterminated over fifteen million of my race in the Dead Years."

  "Oh, so you did know something about us when we met," Shiva mused, ignoring the other comment. "We always thought so."

  "We've never denied it," Tirdal said.

  "No," Shiva said slowly. "But you never admitted it, either."

  "Anyway," Bell Toll continued, "Earth and the SSA are trying to, have been trying to, go back to a model a bit like the Indowy. No violence, pretend that technology is just a tool, and concentrate on philosophy. What's our term—?"

  "Aristotelian," Shiva supplied.

  "Thanks," the captain said with a smile. "And on the Fringe, we face ferals and potential alien threats like the Tslek."

  "So you're two distinct cultures in one race?" Tirdal said.

  "More than two," Shiva said. "We have dualities about everything."

  "Interesting," Tirdal said. They waited for a follow-up comment, but he resumed his reticence.

  Bell Toll said, "And that's why we split off, and why the Michia Mentat were busy producing weapons against the Posleen, and didn't get involved in the rebellion. A good thing, too, because that would have scared Earth into drastic action, instead of just deciding we were expensive distractions."

  "Which is why we don't have enough sensats of our own," Shiva said. "The Mentats are still remote, still concerned with personal development and growing technology, not concerned with the mundane world of carnivores and nukes."

  "I would like them," Tirdal said.

  Everyone else laughed. Tirdal did not.

  "So," Shiva said, "I expect this coming war will be us, possibly the Tular, possibly some Darhel, all against the Tslek, while Earth sits fat and happy and tries to undermine our culture from the rear."

  Gorilla asked, "You think it's that bad, Captain?"

  "I do, Gorilla," he said. "I can tell by the pricking of my thumbs. Unless something comes along to tip the balance in our favor, the Tslek are going to serve us up like Cram on toast. Oh, to hell with that. How are the Greenwood Grendels doing in deathball?"

  Shortly, it was time to move from the scoutship's personnel bay to the drop pod. The small, spherical craft would have the team in a circle facing inwards, their G couches contoured against the sides, packs and weapons between and underneath them. They were re-stowing gear, ensuring it was secured very tightly for the pending screaming drop through the atmosphere of the target planet. The commander followed them down, shouldering his gear on the way.

  Tirdal was closest to him, following everyone else's lead and fastening his ruck and weapon, a punch gun in his case. Bell Toll glanced at him as he finished and snugged into his drop harness. What else was there about the Darhel that he didn't know but should? He was really starting to wonder about them. All he or anyone else had to go on was Tirdal's performance in the Qual course, which was impressive enough. And could they trust him? "We never denied it." "No, but you never admitted it either." What other secrets were hiding behind those gold-flecked eyes? But without the sensat they were surely in deep shit.

  Everybody else was already in position and starting to strap down as Bell Toll locked his own equipment in place. He checked everyone's gear as he strode around the ring, all five paces of it, then did another circuit and checked their straps. Nodding to himself, he slumped into his own padding and started buckling in. When done, he plugged a wire into his helmet. "Pilot, we're secure and ready to drop."

  "Acknowledged. All stations secure," was the reply. The hatch dropped, clanged and sealed with a hiss. Whatever happened, they were now committed. It was probably psychosomatic, but Bell Toll always felt as if the atmosphere grew stuffier when that hatch sealed. It certainly had its own plastic and chemical smell that one never got used to.

  The stealth ship was on a ballistic track mimicking
a comet or other piece of deep-space debris. It had a very effective near black-body exterior and the entire system was made to absorb or deflect detection systems. The target planet had one large rotationally locked satellite, like Earth and the Moon, and the plan was to do a hard break in the shadow of the satellite, relative to the planet, then whip past the planet at a lower speed, catching another slingshot to push it back outsystem. If any of the trajectory was detected it would look like a very low probability meteor pass. Immediately after the braking maneuver all systems would shut down and they would become a hole in space. This would leave them in microgravity but everyone had trained in it before. The microgravity portion would last about a day and then they would be inserting through a low-orbit zone of the planet. The main ship would drop the pod and continue on the way while the pod did a small retro burn, then used atmosphere to brake.

  There were some dangers. If there were sensors on the "back" side of the satellite they would detect the braking maneuver. Also, if they had been tracked on the way in, the change in trajectory would be obvious. The only way they would know was if one of the ungodly fast Blob missiles headed their way. At a good fraction of the speed of light it wouldn't take long.

  The enemy might shoot the pod down as a precaution. If they weren't worried about getting detected they would shoot down every meteor that had the potential to be an insertion team. But the Blobs had as good an appreciation of tactical silence as humans. So far the technique had worked all the other times it had been used. So far as they knew, anyway. There were always teams and craft that disappeared without anyone knowing why.

  The fall into the system was tedious as nothing else can be. Someone once described combat as "Long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror." While true, it doesn't relay the underlying tension of that boredom, hoping for action to stop it while hoping not to have any action. The sheer hell it plays with one's nerves is indescribable. Any action at this juncture would mean instant, unfathomable death. The boredom was preferable.