Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

“It’s taken care of,” she said. She wondered what he was doing there; his assignment, in scan, wasn’t needed at the moment.

“Lieutenant Bondal sent me down here to see if Major Pitak had decided where to put the new RSV units,” he said, anticipating her question.

“She hasn’t told me—but I’ll check for you. Have you heard anything about Bloodhorde ships coming in?”

“No . . . and I’m sure I would have, because . . . well, anyway, I would have. But I do know that Sting and Justice have jumped out.”

“Why?”

“They delivered Wraith . . . and they’re supposed to be patrolling out wherever they were. Maybe they thought they’d spot anyone following Wraith ’s trail in.”

Gar-sig (Packleader) Vokrais woke to the bustle of a medical ward; when he turned his head, he saw his pack-second Hoch staring back at him.

“What happened?” he asked, in his best Familias Standard.

“Effing sleepy gas,” Hoch said. “We got hauled in as casualties . . . I don’t think this is the same ship.”

They lay, listening to the chatter around them.

“We’re on the DSR,” Hoch said finally, with a wolfish grin. “Right inside.”

“All two of us,” Vokrais said. He lifted his head cautiously since no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. He was wearing a clean pale blue shift of some crinkled fabric, and all up and down the rows of beds were the rest of his assault team dressed the same way. Most of them, anyway. He counted only twenty-five of the original thirty, and Tharjold wasn’t there—their technical expert, the one who knew most about Familias technology. Nor Kerai, nor Sij . . . his mind ticked off the missing, and consigned them to either of the two possible eternal destinations. The rest were there, all butt-naked in hospital gowns . . . but all awake now, staring at him in wild surmise.

Before he had time to worry about how he was going to get his team clothed and out of medical, a heavyset man with a scowl worthy of a Bloodhorde senior sergeant bustled down the aisle between the beds.

“All right, sleepyheads,” he said. “You’re awake, and none of you got worse than a dose of trank. Come with me—I’ll get you clean clothes and put you to work . . . we’ll need your help to get Wraith repaired.”

“Our IDs?” Hoch asked. He sounded half-strangled, but it was probably just his attempt to control his accent.

“I’ve got ’em—already passed on the stats to Supply, so you’ll have something close to fitting.”

Vokrais rolled out of bed, surprised to find that he wasn’t at all dizzy. The others followed; he saw arms twitch as the automatic habit of saluting conflicted with awareness of their position. Their guide didn’t notice; he was scowling at a list in his hand.

“Santini?”

Vokrais scrabbled through his memory of the alien vocabulary, and finally remembered that the nametag on the uniform he’d stolen had been something like that, in their misbegotten tongue. “Uh . . . yes, sir?” Someone sniggered, three beds down, to hear him say “sir” to a Familias enemy. Someone would feel the lash for that later.

“Wake UP, Santini. Listen—says here you were a specialist in ventilation?”

“Sir,” Vokrais said, wondering which of several meanings he knew for that word mattered here. Ventilation? As in, artificial breathing? As in, perforating?

“That’s good—I’ll send you over to Support Systems as soon as you’ve got your gear. Oh, and Camajo?” Silence again. Vokrais prayed to the Heart-Render that someone would have the sense to say something.

After too many heartbeats, Hoch coughed—an obviously fake cough, to Vokrais’s ear—and said, “Yes, sir?”

“I guess you’re all still a bit dazed—they told me to give you another hour, but we need help now. Camajo, you’ll report to Major Pitak, in H&A. Now, let’s see . . . Bradinton?”

This time, the others caught on quicker, and someone said “Yes, sir,” almost brightly. Vokrais wondered if the others remembered the names on the uniforms they’d stripped from dead men, or if they were just answering blind. It probably didn’t matter. Supposedly the Familias ships had a fancy way of figuring out who was really one of their own, but so far he hadn’t seen any sign of it.

Eventually all of them had answered to their new names—names which felt uncomfortable even held so lightly, names with no family chant behind them. For a moment Vokrais wondered if the strangers had families . . . if those families had chants of their own . . . but this was not the right kind of thought for the belly of an enemy ship. He pushed it away, and it fell off his mind like a landsman off the deck of a dragonship in rough seas. Instead he thought of the battle to come, the hot blood of enemies that would soak his clothes, not cold and clammy this time but properly steaming. He had not minded stripping the dead and putting on their blood-soaked uniforms . . . not after the rituals of the Blooding . . . but it had been distasteful to feel it already cold.

His pack followed him through the enemy ship; he could feel their amusement even as his own bubbled just beneath the surface. The enemy . . . more like prey than enemy, like sheep leading a wolf into the fold in the mistaken notion that it was a sheepdog. Even as he accepted a folded pile of clothes, he was sure that his pack could have taken this ship bare naked, with only their blood-hunger. Instead . . . he dressed quickly, carefully not meeting anyone’s eyes. He had worn Familias clothing before, in his years as a spy . . . the soft cloth, the angled fastenings, felt almost as familiar as his own.

The lack of weapons didn’t. He missed the familiar pressure of needler and stunner, knocknab and gutstab. Familias troops carried weapons only into battle . . . and DSRs didn’t fight.

The helpful enemy had leapfrogged them over the first two phases of the plan, handing them the chance to disperse throughout the ship. With any luck at all—and the gods definitely seemed to be loading luck upon them—no one from Wraith would notice that the men wearing the uniforms of shipmates were not shipmates at all.

Vokrais followed the route displayed on the palm-sized mapcom, sure that he could deal with whatever he found when he arrived.

“No, I’m not going to send anyone from Wraith back over there—not after they’ve been knocked out for a week or so with sleepygas. Their cogs won’t be meshing for another two shifts, and we don’t want accidents.” Vokrais heard the end of that and wondered whether feigning mental illness would do anything useful. Probably not. They might send him back to the medical area, where he could end up in bed with no pants on. Better to seem dutiful but slightly confused—the confusion at least was honest enough.

Familias technology impressed him as it had before—so much of it, and it worked so well. No familiar stench of sweat and gutbreath. Clean air emerged from one grille, and vanished into another; the lights never flickered; the artificial gravity felt as solid as a planet. The little communications device and the data wand he’d been given were smaller and worked better than their analogs on the Bloodhorde ships.

This was what they had come for, after all. The technology they had not been able to buy or steal or (last and least efficient ploy) invent. Bigger ships, better ships, ships that could take on Familias and Compassionate Hand cruisers and win. The technicians to keep the technology working . . . Vokrais eyed the others around him. They didn’t look like much, but he had somewhat overcome the prejudice of his upbringing; he knew that smart minds could hide in bodies of all shapes. But hardly one in fifty looked like any kind of warrior.