John Ringo - Eye of the Storm

“ Glasshoppah ?” Chan repeated as the team continued down the corridor.

“How can Master Chan be terminated?” Pawle asked as he hurried to keep up.

“Is it possible?” Master Sergeant Jesse asked. The third stick NCOIC was not a fan of his ‘principal.’ “It’s possible. This is designed as a hard run. You and Dust-devil are on your own.”

“There is… ” Dust-devil said then paused. “Oh… that is not fair.”

“Master Chan is… playing the… Imeg,” Pawle said, panting. “He is attempting to shut down your weapons and prevent our movement.”

“Well, you two had better fucking keep him from doing it,” Hooter said. The second stick NCOIC looked back at Dust-Devil. “How’s it going?”

“He’s a seventh level sohon ,” Dust-Devil snarled. “It is not going well. Now let us concentrate!”

Payback laid a strip of cutting paste on the hatch and hit the igniter. It didn’t flare.

“What the fuck?” he snarled.

“Master… Chan,” Dust Devil said from across the compartment. “Wait… ”

The paste suddenly ignited, flaming even hotter than normal.

“Sk… Pawle,” Dust Devil said through clenched teeth. “Hold… reality.”

“I am holding,” the fifth level said, gritting his teeth. “I think I… ”

Suddenly the heavy duty fire-fighting sprinklers cut on, dousing the team in a spray of water like a firehose.

“What the… ” Moustache snarled as they cleared the far compartment.

“My visor just went down!” Mangler snarled, ripping the VR goggles off.

“Fuck,” Buster shouted as his weapon was ripped from his hand.

The walls of the compartment deformed, closing in on the assault team.

“Hold… reality,” Dust Devil said. “Damnit, I can’t fight him and the walls at the same time!”

“I… have it,” Pawle said. The walls had stopped closing in and the water shut off. “Holding. Go, Moustache!”

“Payback,” the team commander said, pointing at the next hatch. Which slid aside.

“We don’t have time,” Pawle said. “MOVE!”

As the team entered the final compartment they found Master Chan seated in a lotus, eyes closed and a faint smile on his face.

“Securing team,” Moustache said.

Alpha’s One and Two darted forward and bounced off a field that was clearly invisible.

“That is not reality,” Pawle said, his eyes closed. “Dust… ”

The second level mentat was suddenly lifted off his feet and slammed into the bulkhead.

“Dust Devil is graded as injured,” Daisy Mae said. “Up to you, Skank.”

“I cannot… ” Pawle ground out.

“You’d better do something fast,” Cheeto shouted. The shooter from Charlie was covering the door of the compartment. “We got Glandri moving in.”

This is not a fair test, Pawle thought. The Imeg would be dealing with the other sohon at the same time. In this case it is only you.

I have factored for that , Chan thought. Don’t think this is the all of my ability, young one. But it is what I would have left if I was also attempting to destroy the attacking ship. And, think, there may be more than one. The reality is that there is no shield about me. Establishing reality is easier than changing it. Establish reality. And if you are talking you are not fighting.

Fine , Pawle thought, savagely.

“Field’s down,” Spice said. He was ignoring the blood running down his nose from impacting the field. “So, do we get to taser Master Chan? Please?”

“Terminate exercise,” Daisy Mae said. “And, no, don’t taser Glasshoppah.”

“Grasshopper?” Master Chan said. “That wasn’t even the name of Kang’s master. It was Kang’s apprentice name!”

“And your point?” Mosovich asked.

“It’s just… wrong,” Chan said. “And, I might add, mildly insulting.”

“That’s the other point of team names… ” Mosovich said.

“So when do I get a better team name?” Pawle asked. “I mean I did defeat Master Chan.”

“You don’t,” Hooter said, shrugging. “Look, once you get a handle, well, getting it changed, like, takes an act of congress.”

The team, less the bosses, was having a bit of down-time. A bottle of high-grade moonshine had appeared from somewhere. The adepts refrained but they were still hanging with the SRS team. Which was a change. Normally they would have been back in their quarters doing whatever it was adepts did to blow off stress. Fucking meditating or making up koans.

“That doesn’t seem… fair,” Pawle said. “I mean, Adept Hoover gets Dust-Devil and I get… Skank?”

“Adept Pawle, my team name is Lieutenant Penis ,” Master Sergeant Field pointed out. “I knew a colonel one time whose team name was Buckbreath. Which, trust me, was worse than Skank. And practically nobody used it to his face.”

“See, the thing is, you got to make it your own,” Redman said, shrugging. “You go complaining about a team name, well… ”

“… it shows you’re not confident in yourself,” Mosovich said. “Special operations, submariners, firefighters, they all have team names, they all play practical jokes and they all push all the time. If you can’t handle the pressure, you’re a pussy and don’t belong in the unit. It seems stupid but it’s a constant method of testing to ensure mental readiness to sustain the pressure of high-intensity combat. If you can’t handle a little abuse from friends, you’re not going to be able to handle the abuse from an enemy. The enemy is not going to care about your feelings, they’re not going to let you hold up a stress card. They’re going to try to kill you as hard as they possibly can so that you don’t kill them. Horrible team names, practical jokes, psychological and verbal abuse, they’re all methods that small high-intensity groups use to constantly test for the weak link. Most of them don’t realize it, not intellectually, but they do it. The harder the job, at least ones that require team-work, the more you find people constantly testing. This completes your lesson for today, Glasshoppah… ”

“Skank, toss me a water,” Adept Hoover said, not looking up from the schematic he was studying.

The captain’s cabin, not particularly generous in space, now had eight bunks arrayed in it. There was very little room to raise so much as one’s head. To study the paper schematic, Dust-Devil had it plastered to the underside of the bunk above him and was moving it around using sohon disciplines. He had the schematic for the ship already stored in his nannites but looking at the paper, for him, made it more real.

Pawle, without looking at him any more than he’d looked up, pulled a bottle of distilled water from the compartment behind his head and shot it across the room at very nearly the speed of sound.

Dust-Devil just held out his hand and caught it.

Doesn’t it matter to you that he calls you that… name? Adept Sissy Harris asked. The sixth level sohon adept was the lead for the sohon support team that was going to be staying on the ship. Their primary job was to be making sure the Hedren ship didn’t escape the trap rather than engaging the Imeg directly.

No , Pawle thought back. You either live up to it or you’re not good enough to be on the team. Even if you live up to it, you might not be good enough. But if you can’t take a little pressure like an embarassing team name you shouldn’t even bother.