John Ringo: Eye of the Storm

Intel had shown no Posleen moving on the surface since the redoubt was invested. So everything had to move around underground. The problem was, there were a billion ways to defend a position like this. God-Kings in sealed bunkers barely scratched the surface.

However, they were inside. They’d keep digging until all the rats were gone.

Ceel Banash looked at the encoded message and then took a deep breath, calling upon a calming mantra to keep from becoming too angry or excited.

Banash was a Darhel, the most politically powerful race in the Galactic Federation. Like all other races but humans, the Darhel were quite strictly non-violent. However, unlike the bat-faced Indowy, the crab-like Tchpht and the elusive Himmit, the Darhel were not pacifists by choice. Long before, they had entered an agreement with a god-like race called the Aldenata. In exchange for being lifted from their nuclear scarred homeworld, the Darhel would renounce violence. The Darhel had agreed immediately, knowing that any agreement is worth exactly the value of the paper it’s written upon.

The Aldenata, however, were ancient and, while aggressively idealistic, well aware of the concept of treachery. The agreement said that the Darhel would be non-violent and the Aldenata made them that way. If any Darhel became excessively violent, even became over-excited much less killed another creature, a chemical switch went off, effectively lobotomizing them. The effect was called “lintatai” and every adult Darhel struggled against it every day. For Darhel were inherently violent, a warrior race that had been thrust into passivity will they, nil they.

The Darhel, however, had learned to channel their focus and fury. Unable to conquer through force of arms, they had taken to politics and business like a buzz-saw. Over a bare five hundred years they had gained absolute control over the workings of the Federation, to the point that nothing happened without their approval.

However, every power has its weaknesses. Ceel was only a junior Darhel executive but he knew a few of them. The Epetar Clan-corp had only recently been utterly destroyed by a group of lucky human rebels who managed to catch them on the wrong side of a leveraged investment. He had, however, just been apprised of a very crucial weakness, one so dangerous it could spell the end of all Darhel power. And he’d been handed the slippery end of the stick.

His first thought, once he assimilated the mess he’d been dropped in, was to wonder who hated him enough to do this to him. Darhel were the essence of acooperative; business among the Darhel was if anything slightly more abusive than the Darhel practiced on other races. Darhel could not kill but they were more than happy to contract out the occasional assassination. Back-stabbing and character assassination were considered simply good business. Banash, therefore, had to assume that someone had it in for him.

He had been told he was being sent to this dirtball to make the arrangements for rehabilitation of the planet. That was good business, short-term and minor costs for very long-term high-profit annuities, and he would have both personal gain from it and enhanced status in his clan-corp. When he’d been given the position he’d nearly had lintatai from surprise. He should have known it was a trap. An ancient bit of Darhel folk wisdom was virtually identical to a human one: If it’s flat it’s mined, if it’s rocky it’s covered by fire and if it’s easy it’s a trap. It said much of Ancient Darhel that this was only three words.

Steps must be taken and they had to be taken fast. But, however much control the Darhel exercised on a strategic and political level, they had far, far less when it came to military operations. And the worst was Fleet Strike. Fleet had been quite thoroughly suborned but Fleet Strike continued to act as if the universe cared about things like Justice and Honor. And then there was the Agreement with the military. Violating the Agreement was guaranteed suicide. So direct methods were out.

That left subtlety. But first to lay the groundwork.

Mike silently cursed as his AID pinged a message from Admiral Suntoro. The admiral was in charge of Task Force Induri, the fleet of ships that had assaulted the world. But unlike previous battles in history where “navies” had transported forces to a world to establish a beachhead, and kept control until the beachhead was well established, he was not and never had been in command of the ground forces. Mike was his military equivalent and senior to him by about ten years. Fleet Strike had established that dichotomy long ago. The Fleet carried Fleet Strike to a world, hammered the hell out of it and then dropped them. After that, the admirals could twiddle their fingers, thank you very much. On the other hand, he had most of Mike’s supplies and fire support so Mike had to be marginally nice to him. Like taking his calls in the middle of a battle.

“Connect,” he said. “O’Neal.”

“General O’Neal, this is a disaster ,” the admiral said without preamble. “Seven SheVa tanks destroyed and over a hundred ACS suits permanently out of commission!”

Mike noted for the future that the admiral had put it in terms of materials, not the hundred plus dead and scores of wounded. Fleet could care less about casualties; soldiers and sailors were scum and more than disposable. His jaw worked for a moment as he imagined strangling the fat little prick. One of these days he was going to get into a position to screw all the brass in Fleet, and about half the brass in Fleet Strike, extremely hard. And when he did they were going to feel the screwing.

“Actually, admiral, this is a battle ,” Mike replied. “A destroyer moronically bumbling into ground fire it knew was there, on the other hand, is a disaster. When you find an infection you have to cut it out. This one is just particularly deep and hard.”

“I have arranged a conference call in fifteen minutes,” the admiral said, angrily. “You will be there.”

“I’m in the middle of a murthering great battle, admiral,” Mike snarled. “You have got to be fucking shitting me.”

“The Darhel Ceel will be included. You will be there.”

“Holy fuck,” Mike muttered as the admiral cut the connection. He slid his dip over to the far side of his mouth then back then spat it out into the underlayer. “Raw, anything deadly about to happen?”

“We’ve got security both ways,” the sergeant said, nervously. “Why?”

Mike popped his helmet and took a breath. The O2 sensors had said there was enough oxygen and while carbon dioxide, monoxide and various trace poisons were high, the air was breathable. He didn’t take a big deep breath, though, because it was only barely breathable. What he did get was filled with the incredibly noxious smell of roasted Posleen. Posleen could eat humans but that didn’t mean they had terrestrial body chemistry, just a very bizarre one. And when it got cooked it smelled like a burning chemical factory. When it decayed it smelled worse.

He spit the last bits of chewed-out dip into his helmet, the underlayer gleaning it happily, then pulled out a can of Skoal. There was underlayer gel still coating his head. Once upon a time it would have been crawling back into the helmet but these days it had gotten smart enough to know he was going to put the helmet back on as soon as he had a fresh dip. It stayed away from his face, though, giving him the appearance of wearing a silvery, rippling skull-cap.