John Ringo: The Hero

Bringing warnings of the Posleen, voracious interstellar beings who stripped planets as locusts do fields, the Darhel had provided technology and weapons to humanity in exchange for human strategic expertise. That technology had been rationed out in such a fashion that, while the Posleen had been stopped, casualties among the inadequately equipped human forces had been horrific. The Darhel always insisted this had been unavoidable and due to logistical issues, but no one could miss that the end result was a loss of eighty percent of the human race and nearly a century of the remainder being used as mercenaries and pawns, while those “relocated for safety” during the war had wound up as scattered refugees assimilated into alien societies, with a near total loss of their human thought processes. The Darhel, of course, had graciously helped humanity rebuild and resettle Earth, at “reasonable cost,” said cost being set by the Darhel. It was not a history to inspire trust. Nor had they actually shared technology — most of what humans had acquired had been reverse engineered from the little that had survived the war.

In the end, of course, it had turned out to be a grievous mistake on the part of the Darhel. They should have either left humanity to its own devices or dealt with it fairly. When it became clear that they had done neither, humanity’s response had been… human. Some of the Darhel had survived the sporadic programs of extermination practiced by the survivor states. Some.

This Darhel was pale and translucent of skin with cat-pupilled eyes. Most had green or purple irises, this one’s were purple with a bare turquoise tinge at the edges. His face was typical of Darhel, narrow and reminiscent of a fox’s. His hair resembled that of humans and was the usual silvery black rather than the metallic gold tones seen more rarely. “Gold” and “silver” regarding Darhel hair meant exactly what the words said; the hair was not blond. Darhel had pointed ears that tended to twitch under stress, and sharklike teeth. They didn’t smile much. They looked, in fact, like classical fantasy Elves. This one wasn’t twitching in stress, and bore a practiced closed-lip smile of greeting. By its eyes, the smile could mean anything… or nothing.

To make matters worse, the Darhel wore gunny’s stripes. The question was, had he earned them from politicking, as a reward to his Shylock skills, or the hard way, from operating in the field? Almost unnoticed amid the other shocks, he wore the badge of a sensat above his left pocket.

After thousands of years of striving, humans were finally starting to make actual strides in extrasensory perception. The military, especially, had started using them for a variety of purposes. Very few could “read minds” but many of them could sense emotions even at a distance. A few could get a vague sense of the future.

There were the expected prejudices against them. Despite the fact that few could sense, much less decipher, actual thoughts, everyone feared them for that potential ability to delve into the private recesses of the mind. Every sentient being that the humans had met had thoughts that they preferred not see the light of day. Thus, most found sensats uncomfortable companions. Most sensats, in fact, could just barely sense emotions and occasionally very strong and focused thoughts. They might get a vision of the last thing a dying person saw for instance. That didn’t make people any happier.

A few were found on the Deep Recon teams. Generally they were empaths who could do things like spot an ambush by the “lying in wait” emotions of the attackers. The Blobs were detectable by the sensats. Indeed, because sensats could detect a Blob kilometers away, the Tslek apparently used extrasensory perception as a normal means of communication.

“Welcome back. I hope it was a good exercise?” the captain greeted them. There was an automatic but halfhearted flurry of mumbles and “sir"s as the team all but ignored him to stare at the Darhel.

The captain had been prepared for that response, and rather than waste time, said, “Let me introduce Tirdal San Rintai.” The Darhel nodded at the introduction and waited patiently. “Tirdal is a limited empath, a Class Two, and has completed the qual course for DRT sensat with a secondary skill of medic. He will be accompanying you on the upcoming mission.”

There were mutters and barely audible comments, which reached the surface when Dagger said, “No offense, sir, Tirdal” — with a faint nod at the Darhel — “but we’ve been a team for a long time and operate well together. We don’t need unfamiliar personnel in our ranks at the start of a mission, with no prep or training time. It’s more likely to screw things up than help.”

The captain fixed Dagger with a stare. “You think so, do you? You know what the mission is, then?” Before Dagger could even shake his head, he continued, riding over any other arguments that lurked beneath the surface. “Well, here’s the facts: We have a warning order for an insertion on a possible Blob planet, to recover intel and possibly artifacts and prisoners. The only team that ever made it back from one of those had a sensat along. So we are taking a sensat. Period. Tirdal is available, trained and has Level Four sensat scores. He’s going with us. Is that all right with you, Sergeant?” His emphasis while staring at Dagger made it clear he was tiring of Dagger’s questioning on every mission order. The man could shoot like nobody’s business, and outstalk a cheetah, but his regard for authority left much to be desired.

Dagger stared back, firmly though not obviously defiantly, and said firmly, “Understood, sir. Tirdal, welcome to the team.”

At that, Tirdal finally betrayed action, stepping forward to shake hands. “I greet you, Dagger. I’m sure we can work together.” His voice was sonorous and deep and his grip solid as Dagger took it. Then it was more than solid, a strong, crushing grasp, accompanied by a violet and cyan stare that locked with his eyes and seemed to look through them into the brain behind.

Dagger pressed down on the hand, hard. Besides being a multiplanet-classed shot he was one of the strongest men on a team of very strong men. But he couldn’t budge the Darhel’s grip. After a moment he felt the Darhel start to press down and it was like having his hand in the grip of a mechanical press. After a moment’s struggle his face finally betrayed a flicker of pain and the Darhel, smiling again, faintly, released the pressure.

Dagger didn’t betray any surprise outwardly, despite what he felt inside at Tirdal’s disturbing presence and strength. “Yeah, no problem,” he muttered, trying not to shake his hand in reaction to the pain.

“I look forward to working with you,” Tirdal said with a nod, his vertical-pupilled eyes never leaving the face of the sniper.

The others shook hands and introduced themselves. Tirdal nodded to each in turn, saying almost nothing else.

The premission briefing bore no shattering surprises. There was fuzzy vid from a probe flyby, with scientific data on geology and meteorology, botany and zoology. They were fuzzy because the probe was the size of a basketball and had whisked through at meteoric velocities, then done a datadump; anything larger or less covert would have given away the fact that someone was interested in the system.

Mission gear was listed, some as required, some optional. Another list had forbidden items. No shocks there, either: nothing that could give away the location of an inhabited planet, no tech gear that didn’t include a self-destruct, nothing personal that was indicative of culture or language, etc. Also tediously routine for the team was the situation: Enemy forces: unknown. Friendly forces: none. Attached assets: none. They were needed at once and had only minimal prep time. There was never time to rehearse it properly, but there was always time to waste a team or two. They would at least get two days to shake down with their new member. The military was generous in its own way. Day One was today, all talk. Day Two would be a field exercise.