John Ringo - Eye of the Storm

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 concentrate 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.”