The Hero Read online

  The best thing to do was sleep. However, one can only sleep so long, especially in microgravity. Each human figured to nap for about four hours of the duration, leaving close to twenty with almost nothing to do but fret.

  Gun Doll listened to dance music, her helmet display providing her a light show. That was all she apparently needed to keep her in a half-aware trance. Ferret and Shiva muttered and shook their heads at each other. Strange chick. Ferret would watch news and movies, switching between the two as he got bored with either fantasy or reality. Shiva would tear through documentary shows from a dozen planets, absorbing history, biology, art and culture at an amazing rate. He retained it all, too. His breadth of knowledge was staggering.

  Dagger simply stared at nothing. It was another part of his act or his personality. No one was sure which, and no one wanted to or dared ask. Dagger was as strange as Gun Doll, in his own freakish way. Hell, they were all strange. One couldn't be a DRT and be normal. The only thing they all shared was a high tolerance for pain and abuse.

  Gorilla kept full surround video and audio going. He wanted nothing to do with reality while cooped up in the ball-shaped coffin. Why anyone with his phobias had ever volunteered, no one would ever know. But he handled it every time. Next to him, Thor read books the really old-fashioned way—text on a screen. Historical fiction, fantasy, travel, romance, adventure, geekpunk futurefic and anything else he could get hold of. Bell Toll often felt Thor would be a much broader troop or even qualify as an officer if he'd read some nonfiction now and then. The man had a voracious appetite for words, but everything he read was escapist. Still, if that helped him cope, the captain wouldn't complain. No matter how removed from reality the man was here, in the field his senses and instincts were good and he could shoot well. He might not fit into a job in the city, but he was just fine in the weeds.

  Tirdal was the unknown quantity, and everyone except Dagger took surreptitious glances at him. He seemed absolutely calm, staring dead ahead as Dagger did, right at Dagger, right through Dagger. It was almost as if nothing were in front of him and he was staring into the stars. The faint, enigmatic, almost foxlike smile he bore didn't do much to reassure people. Was the Darhel totally flipped out? Meditating? Dead? No one wanted to ask. Dagger was staring back, staring through Tirdal. It was a creepy tableau.

  That just left Bell Toll to keep busy, worrying about his troops, the mission, the upcoming Readiness Standards Evaluation that had to be done, war or no, and little things like his chances for promotion or survival. His mind ran in loops, barely able to concentrate, until he realized he was rehashing the same half-thoughts over and over again, with no conclusions reached. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep, either. It was a wonderful start to the mission.

  After several eternities of sighing, twitching, moaning, frustrated exclamations, stretching and aimless mental drifting, he heard the pilot calling orders through the intercom. "Everyone make final check and confirm gear secure. Stand by for braking maneuvers and microgravity." The cocoons came up, much as they had before, but this time everybody was awake.

  Deceleration hit like a hammer as the ship struggled to take off the velocity it had built up dropping in. Actual deceleration was nearly six hundred gravities but apparent decel was only around six. The compensators were being strained even to accomplish that, and all the DRT troops crunched like atmospheric fighter pilots. The G couches helped compensate, fluid pressurizing limbs to keep blood flowing in the core and brain.

  Thor made a laconic comment in an attempt to hide his nervousness. "Not so bad. Remember the drop on Haley?" His voice was a bit tight from the pressure.

  "Was that the first or second time you tossed your guts?" Ferret asked back. He, too, was trying to sound casual and not succeeding.

  Gun Doll said, "Ferret . . . didn't you puke . . . so hard . . . you splashed me . . . on that drop?" The G was harder on her; it often was on women. But she'd never once thrown up on a drop that anyone could recall.

  Straining slightly, Bell Toll asked, "Tirdal, how are you managing?"

  "Fine," Tirdal replied. "How long is this phase?" There was no strain at all in the Darhel's low, steady voice.

  "About another nine minutes," he replied, while pulling up the physiological monitors for the team and glancing at them. Everyone was stressed and elevated. Gorilla was doing his usual confined spaces panic: Pulse, 125, respiration 41, all other readings showing clear pain or stress. It wasn't pain. But Gorilla was used to it and knew how to manage it so Bell Toll paid no further attention. The Darhel's readings were also very high but they were in the clearly marked "normal" zone. Heartrate was 186 and that was considered "low normal." His alphas were . . . really strange. But also considered "normal." If those were normal, then Tirdal wasn't the slightest bit bothered. Or maybe Darhel didn't react physiologically. That had to be it. No creature could suffer through such an unnatural state and not react somehow.

  Without warning the braking thrust ended and they were in microgravity. The cocoons retracted to the standby position again and everybody except Tirdal moved around within their couches. The couches flattened and conformed to the sitter and Ferret brought up an entertainment package that involved, based on the sound escaping from his helmet, lots of loud shooting and screaming. Gun Doll started nodding her head and making other movements, some of them a tad suggestive, as she twitched to her music. Shiva wondered, not for the first time, if she'd aspired to be a dancer before her body grew too tall and rangy. She wasn't bad looking, but with her height she'd never have the balance to dance—too much hip and shoulder for those long limbs. She obviously found the couch confining.

  "Watcha reading, Thor?" Shiva asked, needing a break from the silence.

  "Devi Weaver's new one, Dust of Success," Thor replied enthusiastically. "Intergalactic space fleet warfare. National politics, unit wrangling, assorted government idiocy and exploding spaceships. Some of it's based on Napoleonic naval warfare and World War II from old Earth."

  "You like it?"

  "Generally," Thor said. "The politics I can take or leave. But I like exploding spaceships."

  "Ever read about the ancient Greek sea battles with rowed ships?" Shiva asked.

  "Nah, sounds boring," Thor said.

  Shiva sighed and tried to think of another tack. As the only two readers, they should have some common ground.

  Even Dagger gave up his blank stare and brought up a shooting game. His was different from Ferret's, the shooting being more deliberate and more widely spaced. The screams were just as ugly, and Dagger had a grin on his face in short order. His wiry body tensed occasionally, unconsciously working the muscles for a crouch or a run, but they were barely perceptible. He moved very little without conscious thought.

  There was no set schedule here. The troops needed time to flake off and be ready for whatever followed, so they napped as they wished and sucked paste meals in their couches. Latrine facilities were plumbed into their suits. The routine was practical, covered the essentials and was mentally draining.

  "Shiva," Bell Toll said, interrupting his thoughts, "let's run through the scenario again, then the troops can look at the maps as we get them and prepare to unload."

  Glad of something to do besides wait, Shiva said, "Yes, sir!" and brought up a tactical screen.

  Tirdal simply waited, as he'd done for hours so far.

  Some time later, after the troops had reviewed rough maps built from flybys and everyone except Tirdal had complained, the ship came round on its second pass, ready to drop them onto the planet. The pod was in a launcher that was mounted perpendicular to the "line" of the ship's movement. The pilot cut in on everyone's screen and gave them a trajectory chart, with the release point marked with a classic red X. The closure was shown by a blue dot on a curve, while the upper right corner of their visors had a countdown running. The couches enveloped them again, and everyone tensed up. Almost everyone.

  As the ship came opposite the insertion point, breaths were
held and muscles were taut. There was no real significance to this stage of the insertion, but it was a vector change, and thus of note to the human mentality. And, of course, an error would cause them to crash or whip past into nothing. Recovery in the latter case was iffy. In the former, impossible.

  As the timer hit zero and the blue dot hit the X in the display, a WHUMP! sounded through the pod as compressed hydrogen and magnetic flux tossed them from the stealth ship onto a new trajectory toward the planet proper. The felt Gs were extreme but brief, perhaps ten G for two seconds, then microgravity returned.

  The pod entered an elliptical orbit that should coincide with a proper entry angle into the atmosphere, at which point flight could begin. Until then, there was nearly an hour of microgravity. Games and music resumed with varying amounts of attention paid to them. No DRT troop would admit to being scared on an insertion, but most were.

  The first touches of atmosphere whispered threateningly against the field around the pod, and insertion proper began. The flight through atmosphere was the kind to cause newbies to wet their pants. Even experienced troops found them disorienting. Because of the need for stealth, no powered maneuvers were allowed. The result was a literal tumble through the atmosphere, the forcefields in close to protect the ship and within the atmospheric plasma caused by friction between the craft's "surface" and the rarefied atmosphere. From outside, the craft resembled a meteor. From inside it was a roller coaster crossed with a nape-of-the-earth flight by an insane pilot on drugs. The pod flipped from side to side, barrel-rolled, pitched and cocked in various attitudes and at differing speeds. It tumbled, rolled like a die and occasionally bucked. The internal temperature rose steadily as they dropped deeper, since there was no way to radiate the incoming energy. The occasional dense pocket of atmosphere caused jarring, teeth-clattering jolts. Space inside was at a premium to start with, and the maneuvers made helmets bash into bulkheads and knees into gear. No one spoke, though there were grunts and other utterances at the painful jolts. Occasional curses shot out. The troops mostly kept their eyes closed, not from fear, but to reduce the disorientation. It was the type of ride adrenaline-junkie civilians would pay big money for, and experienced professionals could take or leave, preferably leave.

  But it was nothing compared to the finale.

  Below the cloud layer, the "wings" melted out and back into brakes to slow the vehicle to a "reasonable" speed. Were it not for the inertial dampers, the crew would have been squashed by the violent deceleration. As it was, only long practice prevented them from heaving their stomachs. It was a harsh change of orientation, the pod being upside down and rolling at better than five thousand meters per second, then suddenly nose down and steady at barely sub-Mach speed for the local environment. The pod was above ocean, and splashed into waves in an angry hiss of steam. It was not a landing per se, but rather a controlled crash and a big splash.

  The brakes shifted again in their forcefields and became small fins, and low-power impellers started up. Most of the remainder of the insertion would be under water, and slow. The process was semiautomatic, Bell Toll indicating a route and the craft's AI handling the trip from there. That saved having personnel pilot the craft, to be left stuck during the mission, or having to risk a takeoff and another landing. Besides, most of the procedure was either too complex for a human pilot—like the insertion and braking—or too simple and boring to bother with a pilot.

  The pod wasn't streamlined, though it could morph quite a bit. Its forcefields could assume any shape needed. That wasn't an issue. But the speed of sound is much lower in water than in air, and sonic shockwaves under water are rare and almost never a natural phenomenon. Stealth predicated slow, cautious travel. After crossing light-years in days and thousands of kilometers in minutes, the last leg would be hundreds of kilometers in long hours.

  Special warfare troops get long, boring training followed by long, boring practice in the art of staying sane while doing nothing. Each has his or her own particular coping mechanism. Good teams are those in which the members have learned not to drive each other to violent rage with annoying quirks, like breathing in an unpleasant fashion or shifting a leg in that manner that makes another want to crack his head after the ten thousandth time. Tirdal was the odd troop in this equation, and the others shifted unconsciously in slight but real bother at the disruption of their familiar relationship.

  The pod used propulsion that was as close to silent as was possible for Republic technology. As the ocean grew shallower and the coast approached, the speed would slow even more and even slight noises would become more of a risk. To that end, silence reigned until everyone had triggered isolation circuits in their helmets. At this point all talk was through an intercom circuit, connected by wires, not an RF net, to further reduce stray emissions.

  Talk picked up, everyone glad that particular ordeal was over, and wishing to escape from considering the pending risks for at least a few moments.

  Almost everyone. Dagger and Tirdal were silent.

  "We're down," Gun Doll said.

  "Cheated death again," Thor added.

  "Yeah," said Gorilla, his pulse dropping below 120. With a screen before him not showing the confines of the pod, and voices in his ears backed up by natural sounds, he could handle it. He could also handle it inside a box if he had to; he had in training. But if the technology was available to be less uncomfortable, he'd use it. "We got a count on how long to shore, Captain?"

  "Thirty-seven hours," Bell Toll replied. "Here's the map," he continued as he displayed it for Gorilla and left the link open for anyone else. "We go down around this peninsula, up into this bay and get out near the river delta. Hopefully, it won't be too swampy. We'll move around to here, upriver about twenty klicks, and that's where we start working." The site in question had been known beforehand, but the exact approach hadn't been decided until they were in-system and could get a good view of the terrain.

  "Lots of walking," Thor said. It wasn't a complaint, merely an observation. "Gorilla, can you handle that crate of bots for that far?"

  "Sure," the hulking troop replied, unconsciously flexing his rock-hard shoulders. The bots weren't light, and were bulky, but his load would decrease as they traveled and the 'bots were deployed.

  "Who's on point?" Gun Doll asked. She always asked for details.

  Shiva replied, "I figure to put Ferret up front again, to cover Tirdal in second, you behind him for firepower, Gorilla, the captain, Dagger, me and Thor watching our asses."

  There were murmured assents and a "Yes," or two.

  "Okay," he continued, "I'll hit you up with individual notes. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves."

  Moments later, his voice came through Tirdal's earbuds. "Tirdal, you hear me?"

  "I hear you, Shiva," he replied. "What do I need to know?"

  "A lot. Keep in mind, you're number three in the chain of command. If I go down, you take my slot. That's not going to be easy with this audience."

  "As a specialist, I'm not usually one to take an active leadership role," Tirdal said. His voice was even more inhuman and sonorous through mikes and filters.

  "You've got the rank, you've got the training. You'd better be able to take that role," Shiva said urgently. He didn't need the damned Darhel wimping out on them.

  "True. I can handle it if they can," Tirdal said. It wasn't exactly an accusation, more of a caution.

  "They'll do it," Shiva said, hoping Thor and Dagger wouldn't cause any hassle. He made a note to remind them. "If we lose the captain, too, you have to run the mission." It was clear from his voice he wasn't very happy with an unknown, an alien, a Darhel in that position. But realistically, none of the others would be better. Gun Doll was a social flake, as technically competent as she was. They wouldn't listen to her. Dagger was a nutcase, or at least pretending to be. He'd scare the troops worse than the Blobs. Thor and Ferret lacked the experience and Gorilla had the bots to worry about.

  "If I have to, I'll do it," T
irdal reassured him. "I know all the basics. Tactics. Gear. Leaders should be self-secure and give orders, not take votes. I did take the NCO leadership course."

  "You maxed that, too, right?" Shiva asked.

  "Yes."

  "Well, maxing the course doesn't indicate talent or experience. So review anything you need to now in case you're needed."

  "Yes, Sergeant," Tirdal agreed.

  "One other issue," Shiva said, grimacing to himself. This wasn't an easy one to broach. "Darhel don't think like humans."

  "We don't," agreed Tirdal. "What are you referring to?"

  "Humans and Darhel have coexisted for a thousand years, and in that time, we've learned almost nothing about you," Shiva said, warming up. "We were damned near your slaves for a hundred years. You're generally much more mercenary and individualistic than humans, correct? And we don't get along well. No insult, just an observation."

  "That's generally correct," Tirdal agreed, his voice even flatter.

  "What you have to keep in mind is that we're running this on human terms," Shiva said cautiously. "You have to try to operate as we would, not as a Darhel."

  "What specifically?" Tirdal asked. It sounded like he was probing.

  "Ah, hell, I can't find a diplomatic way to say this . . . our experience says that Darhel are more willing to draw back when things get tough." He didn't use the word "cowardice" but the thought hung in the air. "Darhel don't risk themselves for the group. Darhel aren't willing to go the last yard unless something is in it for them. For humans, when we're in the bad and the scary, we do it for each other. So, I've got to ask: What are you going to cling to when the lives are flushing down the disposal chute?"

  "I am here for a mission. I will do what is called for for that mission," Tirdal said. If he was offended, he didn't let it slip into his inflection. "It is hard to explain to a human. For Darhel, to be in a place such as this, doing this, is a philosophical choice. If I was capable of turning against that philosophy, I would not be here in the first place. I am not here for you. Nor for Gun Doll. I am solely here to perform the mission. And I will do that to my utmost."