John Ringo: The Hero

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.