by John Ringo
“Works,” Mosovich said. “Questions.”
“We’ve got pics of the Kotha and the Snakes and the Porkies,” Moustache said, rolling a ball of Redman in his cheek. “What’s an Imeg look like?”
“The Himmit don’t know,” Mentat Chan said. “They have no images of one. Because the Himmit do not or cannot use sohon, they cannot approach an Imeg without being detected. They assume that some of their lost scouts did so but that is an assumption. We are going to be the first beings outside the Hedren Tyranny to see one. From Himmit accounts, even the Kotha rarely if ever see one in the flesh. They are very secretive. Equally, no one knows what the Hedren look like. But let us first examine the Imeg before we consider facing their masters.”
“We board the Des Moines tomorrow,” Mosovich said. “We’ll hash out the details and routes there and work on our situational awareness. The Des Moines doesn’t have the same configuration but we can work with it in VR. Start getting it on.”
* * *
“Mentat Chan,” Captain McNair said as he greeted the party at the boarding tube. “Welcome, again, to the Des Moines.”
“Captain,” the mentat said, bowing slightly. “I believe I should ask for permission to board.”
“Y’all come ahead,” Daisy Mae said, grinning. “We ain’t particular round here.”
“That means permission for your party to come aboard is granted,” Captain McNair said, rolling his eyes. “Mentat Shaina, I see you.”
“Captain McNair, I see you,” the Indowy said, nodding his head. “Entity Daisy Mae, I see you,” he added, actually adding a slight bow. As he bowed he saw a small carnivore, brown and furry, stropping the legs of the entity called “Daisy.” Shaina filed that information away for future analysis.
“Y’all’s set up in a section of the officer’s quarters,” Daisy said. “Put in some appliances for makin’ y’all’s food and a supply for about a week. All the room there was. Y’all need anything, you just announce it. I can ignore things if you don’t want me to see but seein’ as I am the ship, any time you talk to me I’ll hear it.”
“The point to this is that you should require minimum interaction with the human crew,” Captain McNair pointed out.
“My thanks, Entity Mae, Captain McNair,” the mentat said, nodding his head again.
“I’ll lead y’all to your quarters,” Daisy said. “Pretty sure you know the way but it’s fittin’.”
“I cccoulllddd llleaddd thththemmm, Dddaisssy,” said the small carnivore.
Fascinating, though Shaina.
* * *
“Daisy Mae is an interesting entity,” Mentat Chan said as the captain led the way to his quarters. He’d been installed in the captain’s cabin. There was, in addition, a small captain’s day cabin near the bridge which McNair would use for the trip.
“She’s a handful,” McNair admitted, while thinking, Actually, she’s at least two handfuls. “But it makes running the ship easier that’s for sure.”
“I think I was actually referring to her entire being,” Chan said. “The reality of it approaches, if you do not mind my saying so, the metaphysical. She is more than just an AI that took on the appearance of a minor actress and her being infuses the ship far more than the nannite systems can account for. In a way, it seems more that the ship infuses her.”
“Ships have souls,” McNair said as he opened the hatch to the cabin. “All good ships and certainly any that have been used for long enough. Daisy doesn’t talk about it much, but the AI she used to be got… changed by being hooked into the Des Moines. The original one that is. I hope that making this new one hasn’t… killed something.”
“I do not think it did,” Chan said looking at the small cabin.
“Sorry it’s not larger,” the captain said, shrugging. “But, you know there’s only so much room on a ship.”
“I was actually thinking how wasteful it was of space,” Chan replied. “Humans who are not Indowy raised are simply used to so much room. I will probably share this with my students.”
“Well, we’ve got bunking for them, too,” McNair said, looking at the cabin. He always found it mildly claustrophobic.
“No, this is sufficient for all of us,” Chan said. “I’m sure that someone has been discommoded by our presence. Since we will be comfortable sharing this room, it is better to let them have their space back.”
“I’ll leave you to get settled in, then,” the CO said. “We’re breaking dock right away. We’re on tight time to make the intercept.”
“Indeed,” Chan said. “Haste is an unfortunate necessity.”
* * *
“Hot bunking,” Mueller said, grumpily.
“It’s a warship,” Mosovich replied. “We’re going to need to start work-ups as soon as the mentats are ready. I’m not sure they’re up to keeping up with us.”
“That’s going to be fun,” Mueller said, grinning.
* * *
“Y’all don’t do a whole bunch of physical training, do you?” Mosovich said, frowning, as the junior mentat bent over and threw up.
They had started, he thought, with the easy stuff. There was a route in the Des Moines which was pretty close to the route they were going to have to take to get to the place they thought the Imeg might be. So with all the blast doors open they had hoofed it from the notional entry point to the target compartment, working on coverage and general movement.
The SRS team was loaded for bear with leopard-suit space gear, heavy body armor, cloaks and full load-out. The mentats, after Chan’s assurance that they could prevent injury from random shrapnel and bullets, were just wearing cloaked leopard-suits.
About half way to the compartment, Mosovich had had to slow down to let the mentats catch their wind. By the time they got there, two of the junior mentats were pretty much useless. And even Chan wasn’t looking all that hot.
“We do, yes,” Chan said, breathing heavily. “But it is… spiritual based and… very low impact.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Not very aerobic come to… think of it.”
“Reality is we’re probably going to have to be stopping to burn doors,” Mosovich said, not even breathing hard despite wearing better than a hundred pounds of armor, ammo and battle-rattle. He figured that, all things considered, they were more or less going to have to think in terms of clearing the whole ship. He was not going to run out of ammo. “So you’ll get a chance to catch your breath, then. But I bet you’re not much use sohon wise at the moment.”
“No, we are not,” Chan admitted. “And, yes, we must get in better shape. Fortunately, there are excercises we can perform to enhance our advancement in that regard. By the time we reach the target we will be prepared. You have my word.”
“Uh, huh,” Mosovich said. “Hope you’re right. Cause it’s gonna be all our asses if you’re not.”
* * *
“Cutting paste.”
The hangar bay was the only place large enough to hold the training facility. Even with VR gear it helped to have a mock-up of an assault area. A series of light walls had been installed indicating the bulkheads of the area they believed the Imeg to be quartering. Heavier doors had been carried along to simulate the hatches they’d have to breach. In some cases they were planning on burning through the bulkheads but most of the time the hatches were a better bet.
Payback, the Alpha Demo specialist, pulled out a length of what looked like silver rope and put a man-sized oval of it on the hatch. The cutting paste was self sticking so he just laid in a detonator and rolled to the side of the door, holding up the activator.
“It may be possible, depending upon many factors, that we will be able to override the hatch controls,” Chan noted on the command frequency. His left hand was gripping the back of the harness of Master Sergeant Field, the Charlie second stick NCOIC who was called, for reasons that even a mentat could not comprehend, Lieutenant Penis. Each of the mentats had a designated SRS lead. It was anticipated that they were going to have to concentrat
e on controlling the Imeg and couldn’t be expected to also figure out where to go. So they just held on and went.
Sergeant First Class Arden Dugmore and Sergeant Charles Basmanoff, Dumbo and Friday respectively, were covering his back. Behind them two more sticks managed the lower level mentats.
“Better to train as if you can’t,” Mosovich said as Payback fired the charge. The high-energy paste cut through the plasteel as if it were so much paper and as the door began to sag a breaching charge went off, blasting it into the compartment. The Alpha first stick, Recto, Mangler and Sugar Plum, burst through the smoke and cleared the compartment in a buzz of flechettes.
“Clear,” Master Sergeant ‘Recto’ Owen said in a laconic voice. “Unknown alien entity, tentatively identified as an Imeg, in the room. Entity is active.”
“Take down team,” Mustache whispered.
The two and three stick charged through the door and there was a buzz of static on the radio.
“Imeg immobilized. Bagging and tagging.”
The take-down team came through the door with a large Tigger dummy wrapped up in rigger-tape. The stuffing of the dummy had been replaced with sand and it was clear that they were struggling.
“This was fucking Mongo’s idea, wasn’t it?” SFC Sullivan said.
“Yes,” Mueller replied. “And your point, Altar Boy?”
“Exercise terminated,” Mosovich said, looking at his Buckley. “Fifteen minutes twenty-three seconds from entry to take-down. No way it’s actually going to go this smooth, but that’s not bad. Break it down for institutional scab-picking.”
* * *
“We don’t have any idea how big these guys are?” Recto asked.
“No clue,” Colonel Mosovich replied. “They could be heavier than the Tigger dummy. They could look like Yoda. No fucking clue.”
“What if they’re, like, beings of pure energy?” Sergeant Alton ‘Sugar Plum’ Sutton asked. The electronics and communications specialist shrugged at the looks. “Dudes, we’re working with wizards. It’s not a stupid question.”
“It is unlikely that they are quantum state entities,” Adept Elijah Hoover said. The sixth level sohon adept was part of the sohon assault trio and, thus, included in the entry team debrief. “Not impossible but the attainment of such an evolved state is one of the goals of the Way. You speak of a species as advanced as the Aldenata. If they have attained such advancement, it is unlikely that even fourteen adepts can contain one of them. In which case, we will find ourselves in a difficult condition.”
“I’ve got a team nick for Hoover,” SFC Cribbs said. His team name was Meister but Chan had already learned that it stood for ‘Drunk-Meister.’ The mentat had been studying the SRS in fascination since the voyage began and was pleased to finally have an opportunity to examine the assignment of such team-names. “I say we just call him Understatement.”
“Whirlwind,” Mangler said.
“Why Whirlwind?” Recto asked.
“The Book of Kings,” Adept Hoover said. “The Prophet Elijah was said to have been taken to heaven on a whirlwind, a dust-devil.”
“Dust-Devil,” Recto said to nods all around.
* * *
“Are you going to need to be physically present to control the Imeg?” Mosovich asked, looking at the results of the training so far.
“It is unlikely but possible,” Chan said. “I think that we should be able to control them from practically anywhere on the ship. It is possible, however, that a closer presence may have enhanced effect.”
“Then we’re going to need to work on methods of inserting you into the room,” Mosovich said, nodding but not looking up. “Doors are always crowded places in one of these things. And dangerous places too. Are you going in first or one of your juniors.”
“I think Hoo… Dust-Devil is the better choice,” Chan said. “He has shown the most promise in sohon… control techniques. He seems, in fact, to have much more of a flair for them than construction.”
“Yeah,” Snake said, nodding again. “For all he’s like ‘Me Monk’ he’s got the warrior look. Don’t know if you consider that good or bad.”
“For these conditions and necessities, it is alas good,” Chan said. “I am fascinated by the assignment process of team names. It would be considered the height of insult for a junior to call a senior Lieutenant Penis among the Indowy or those raised by them. I was interested to see the process for assigning one to Adept Hoover.”
“Team names are a sign of acceptance,” Mosovich said, finally looking up. “More than that, really. They’re very complicated. The official reason for them is that they reduce confusion in communication. Everyone has a unique name with no ambiguity. Pilots really started it. But there’s more to it than that. Although everyone recognizes that there are higher and lower ranks on the teams, the necessity is for a sort of fluidity that recognizes that while ignoring it. Master Sergeant Owen, Recto, may give an order to Mangler and it will be obeyed. But in more formal units, Mangler might pass information to a higher authority and then be questioned about it. By eliminating the base thought about who is the higher from a certain portion of the consciousness, by eliminating the ‘Dad’ aspect of ‘Master Sergeant’ from that bit of brain, when Mangler makes a motion for six Glandri, Master Sergeant Owen accepts that data as Recto, a near equal to Mangler, instead of Master Sergeant Owen having to consider the validity of the information Sergeant First Class Dale has passed to him.”
“Interesting psychology,” Chan said, frowning. “One thing that it has been hard to explain to the Indowy, and that even we humans raised by them often forget, is that being superior in position is not always the same as being superior in concepts or current knowledge.”
“Mentat Chan, Adept Hoover, master, student, yada, yada, yada,” Mosovich said, nodding. “There’s a time and a place for hierarchy. In the middle of an entry is not necessarily one of them.”
“We do not normally do… entries,” Chan said.
“It’s going to be a long war,” Mosovich replied. “Better get used to them.”
“I notice that there is no suggestion that I be given a team name,” the Mentat said, smiling slightly.
“You’re heap big mojo,” Mosovich said. “Way too big mojo to think about insulting you. I didn’t, by a stretch, get into the full psychology of team names. But that’s part of it. They don’t want to offend. Another part of it is that while Hoover is also heap big mojo, he just has the… feel of wanting to be part of the team. And since they know they’re going to be depending on him, they’re willing to accept him even though he’s not really ‘one’ of us. He’s a respected associated specialist. They work with them from time to time. Bane Sidhe specialists in one thing or another. Commo, hacking, whatever. So there’s a mental slot for him. Now, Pawle, he’s got less interest in being one of the boys. So they haven’t suggested making a team name for him. Oh, they’ve got one, they just don’t use it around him.”
“Are they aware he may know it anyway?” Chan said, frowning. “Even for a fifth level your communications are not terribly hard to intercept.”
“Wasn’t aware of that,” Mosovich said, shaking his head. “It’s always something. I don’t know if he knows or not.”
“What is his team name?” Chan asked.
“Skank,” Mosovich said.
“Hardly a pleasant name,” the mentat said, his brow furrowing.
“Pawle’s got a real holier-than-thou attitude,” Mosovich said. “If I thought it was going to interfere I would have brought it up. But he does his job, presumably. We won’t really know until we get to the intercept.”
“I hesitate to discuss the issues of junior adepts with you,” Chan said. “They are… complex.”
“And you haven’t noticed that teams are?” Mosovich said, raising an eyebrow. “Just because you guys have got bulging foreheads, doesn’t mean you’re not human with human foibles. Small teams have been working the psychology of that for forever. Want my read
on Pawle?”
“I will accept your input,” Chan said, gravely.
“Fine,” Mosovich said. “All you mentats are bright. It’s a necessity. Everybody’s figured out that you’ve got to juggle quantum mechanics in your head while doing whatever it is you do. That takes big bulging foreheads. Pawle was, however, brighter than the average growing up. Which meant that, due to very basic human nature going back to the way that primates in the wild act, others tried to pull him down. Knowing the fact that he grew up in an Indowy environment, my guess would be passive aggressive techniques and occasional mildly aggressive. He probably just got shunned and ignored a lot. He ended up knowing he was smarter than everyone around him but with a massive inferiority complex. He’s apparently arrogant because he’s lacking self esteem. Or am I wrong?”
“You are a student of human nature,” Chan said.
“I’ve been commanding small units of very elite troops for a very long time,” Mosovich said. “I had a lot of classes once upon a time and I think I’ve surpassed most of them.”
“And what would your recipe be for improving Adept Pawle?” Chan asked, honestly interested.
“Pressure him,” Mosovich said. “He’s bright but lazy which, believe it or not, is good. But he’s also very unsure. Put him under pressure so high it either kills him or cures him. If he fails all you have is a guy stuck on stupid at fifth level. If he passes, he’ll gain confidence from it. There are guys I’ve commanded who had esteem problems, but they generally get over them after whatever entry program is used by the group. The problem is that with his attitude he’s a weak link. But sohon’s your side of this op.”
“The problem is the nature of the mission,” Chan said, frowning. “The essentially violent nature of the operation is… very much anathema to most of the Indowy raised. The positions are voluntary. Of my students, only Pawle and Hoover volunteered to enter the enemy vessel. I am, I admit, unsure of the concept of pressuring sohon adepts to exceed their level of comfort.”