John Ringo - The Hero

Not being homesick young troops, and far more savvy and sophisticated than anyone might think at their ripe ages of twenty or so, they walked right past Soldier Row and paid no attention.

“Dancing,” Gun Doll insisted. She was made up in electric blue, including a dye for her bobbed hair. She wore a long overtunic to hide her shoulders and hips. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, but her proportions were unusual, with her height and solid skeleton. Men were intimidated, and even more so when they found out she was a DRT. It was exasperating, and she tried to play it down. Instead she played other things up — the garment was slit down to below her navel.

“Drinking,” said Gorilla. It was a long-standing argument between them. He wore a jacket and tie over his shorts, trying to look casual from his lofty height. Gorilla never wore makeup, because he felt it looked stupid on his craggy face.

“Drinking and dancing, and lots of chicks,” Thor said. Thor had strange styles of fashion, wearing a synthleather jacket at least ten years out of date over striped tights. His bulging thighs and broad shoulders were obvious, he hoped.

Gun Doll said, “Drinking and dancing, hold the chicks.”

“Oh, I will,” Thor agreed, grinning.

Ferret, wearing jeans and cutaway tunic to show off his pecs, made up lightly and relaxed as always, asked, “Same place as last time, or someplace new?”

“Who got laid last time?” Gorilla asked.

“I did,” Gun Doll admitted, “but I had to pimp myself to do it. How about somewhere less snooty?”

“Yeah,” Thor agreed, “somewhere where we’ll be recognized for the cold, calculating killers and human sex machines we really are.”

“So, Thor wants to go to Fantasyland.” Ferret grinned, elbowing him.

“Yeah, whatever, there’s a bus,” Thor said, pointing. “We can get sweaty after we find the chicks.”

They boarded the bus just in time to be hanging at the door as it sought cruising altitude of ten meters. The driver gave them a dirty look, because they were violating the law and it would be his ass if anything happened to them. It was obvious from the clash of styles they were military. Their casual attitude about the height said they were some kind of commandos, as did the cropped hair and thick necks and shoulders. Already they were getting looks, and that suited this group fine.

They didn’t care about ugly looks or amused glances. All they cared about was attention from other young people, preferably attractive, though “attractive” was a slippery term when alcohol or other intoxicants, their other desire, entered the picture. And all of it would make for great stories later.

As their profession required utter secrecy and low profiles, they made up for the lack of attention when not working. They were loud and brash on the trip, and though they gave no details, that being a prudent standard, there were enough varied commandos stationed there that no one had any doubt they were some of them. That, and the heavier than usual sidearms they carried.

While having guns didn’t of itself attract favorable attention, competence combined with them did. When a feral Posleen might trot down any street, suddenly charging to the attack if the urge and voracious appetite tickled its semisentient fancy, the presence of professional killers was a welcome thing. The troops were therefore popular, no matter their young, smartass attitudes. None of the passengers complained about the noise, and a few kept close. Islendia might be urban and modern, but Islendia was also raw and savage. It had been wrested from the Posleen at great cost, and scars across the landscape and crashed Posleen landing craft attested to a generous use of antimatter weapons, when the human settlement had been reinforced.

Being fecund egg layers, the Posleen had been defeated but not wiped out. They came in two classes. “Normals” were semisentient, just bright enough to swing a rock, or, if so equipped, pointshoot a weapon. “God Kings” were larger, sentient and scary. Each God King could control up to fifty or sixty normals, running them around like tabletop gaming counters through a handful of Superior Normals. Posleen were parthenogenetic carnivores that looked like a cross between centaurs, crocodiles and ponies. Their defining attribute was their voracious appetite. Their enemies and prey became sushi and jerky in short order.

When they’d arrived in the sector, armed with star drive and advanced weapons, they’d proceeded to wipe out every planet they came to, like locusts in a field. Then they’d met humanity. Most of the human race had not survived, but, on the other hand, most of the Posleen advance hadn’t either. And as the old joke said about “the unstoppable force hitting the immovable object” there had been a lot of side effects. One was “tamed” Darhel. Another was the Tular Posleen.

The Tular Posleen were a settled, trustworthy race who only rarely ate sentient creatures, and even then only other Posleen, and kept to their own planets. The ferals left behind on a hundred planets were simply ravening beasts to be exterminated. And anyone on such a planet who didn’t carry a weapon stayed close to those who did.

That had been part of what pushed Islendia, her thirty-odd republic planets and similar number of colonies over the edge to rebellion. Earth had wanted to resume the strict weapon controls and environmental standards it had been working on before the Posleen invasion. At which the blighted and struggling worlds of the Fringe had screamed bloody murder. Not drain a swamp because it might “damage the natural balance,” when such balance was already screwed by the presence of Posleen in the bog? Not bloody likely. And suggesting one seek permission for an AI guided autocannon with antimatter shells to deal with said Posleen, just because some Earth bureaucrat thought they were “inappropriate” for civilians wasn’t a concept to win the hearts and minds of the Fringers.

Which was why there was now an Islendian Republic. And a rump group of worlds, old, sophisticated and highly developed, seething in the background.

The bus trip wasn’t long, only about two hundred kilometers, through the light of a falling sun and then into the domed warren of the city proper. Islendia was actually an Earth-like moon of a monstrous gas giant, debatably a brown dwarf, that had been christened Juliana. Juliana was coming into full phase as Isel, the system’s star, set, the planet a fluffy wash of colors on the horizon, seeming to stretch endlessly. Juliana would rise to show dun and ochre bands punctuated by bright red roils of reacting hydrogen. Its ring formation and myriad satellites made it a rare sight for those tourists who could afford the steep transit fees, and the complex rotation of it and Islendia around Isel led to very strange day cycles.

The troops paid little attention. Not only had they grown up with that tangerine monster hanging over them, they’d seen far more exciting things, from their viewpoint, on other planets. Dagger was from far out on the Fringe, and would likely find it interesting, if he were along and if he were disposed to admitting to a human esthetic weakness. They, who had traveled far, kept their attention focused down at the seething fleshpots below.

The fleshpots were another of Islendia’s appeals for the prudish but wealthy residents of the SSA. The lax laws and taxes of Islendia had permitted the relatively poor former colony to build a hefty trade surplus with the more settled inner worlds. Tourists, however, were becoming less common as Earth and its leechlike dependents became more insular.

Something was happening to the inner worlds, something that was rarely spoken of and poorly understood. The visitors, generation by generation, were becoming less and less interested in “Fringer” delights and more and more introspective and studious. On the other hand, that was also easing the political tensions.