John Ringo: The Hero

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 pick 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.”