The Hero

by John Ringo

  "No offense," Thor replied. "Next time I'll camp us in a bog." His tone made it obvious he wasn't very bothered. He took a crouch near the middle, rifle cradled in his arms, and prepared to sit patiently. The rest rolled over to face outward, weapons inside their bags with them, and blanked their helmet visors against impending light. There was no way to make the wet go away.

  Thor sat still in the rain, hunkered under his poncho. Periodically he'd turn to take in the perimeter, after which he'd take a slightly different position facing a different direction at random. He kept the images from the bots in his view, with his sensors set to alert him if anything large moved. He had one tense moment as a pair of fat beetles waddled by, but was undisturbed otherwise.

  Two hours later, Bell Toll awoke and crawled out to relieve him.

  "How was sunrise?" he asked in a whisper.

  "Couldn't see much, sir," Thor replied. "Gray, then misty, then this," he said with a gesture that was almost a wave but only about a handsbreadth wide. "Rain stopped about an hour ago."

  "Good. I hope," Bell Toll said. "It's going to be hot and muggy." He looked around at the soft textures of lingering mist, trailing into wisps that split and wove wraithlike through the trees. "But we should dry as we get inland from these coastal swamps a bit. G'night, Thor. I relieve you."

  "G'night, sir." Thor crawled over to the vacant spot he'd prepared earlier and rolled out to sleep.

  The day passed fitfully, sleep aided by training and exhaustion, hindered by the itching damp, the bugs, the still, humid air, the bright light softened only slightly by foliage and atmosphere, and gravity different from those the bodies had grown used to. Still, it was rest, and if today was unsatisfying, perhaps the next would be better, with acclimatization and more arduous labor to drain them. Or perhaps they'd be dead. The philosophy of the soldier is one based on adaptation to the unpleasant.

  Tirdal's shift was as boring as the others, but Dagger watched him surreptitiously. Dagger still didn't trust the Elf, even if the others had accepted him. He held still and Tirdal gave no sign of knowing he was awake, though if he could sense as they said, he probably did.

  They all woke at dusk, Ferret on the last watch already up and ready.

  "You know the drill, folks," Shiva said. "Strike camp. Hygiene and prepare to march." Everyone used the slit, filling it in as they went, and Thor, last, tossed the saved sod back atop it, flattening it out with his heel. Bathing being out of the question, a quick wipe with spongy pads laden with activated nanos served to wipe grit from eyes and kill bacteria. Tirdal scurried around, scuffing and brushing at grass and bushes, until the very people who'd slept on an area couldn't see a worn spot. He also found three tiny slivers of plastic left from rat packs. There was grudging admiration for his work. "How'd you do that?" Thor asked.

  "It's a Sense," Tirdal replied. "The plants don't have emotion, but they have a . . . 'normalness.' I move them around until they seem most normal. That's the best I can describe it in English. It only works when very close."

  "However it's described, it works," Shiva commented. Even Dagger nodded appreciatively. The clearing looked untouched.

  The trash stowed and a final check made they moved out, Gorilla's bots leading the way. Their power packs would be good for at least a couple of weeks, and they could recharge somewhat in daylight, using nano-sized thermocouples under their outer shells.

  This night was much like the last, except that it was not raining and gradually dried out. The suits stuck to bodies, causing itching until the moisture capillaried out and evaporated. The permeability could be adjusted, but it still took time for moisture to vent. Heads itched under the web harnesses of helmets. The ground was drying as they rose from the coastal wetlands. The squelching goo had become sticky mud, now hard-packed earth.

  They'd only been hiking about an hour when Tirdal spoke urgently through his microphone, "Ferret, drop now!"

  Ferret's reflexes were good. He threw himself flat among stalky weeds as a large animal leapt through the space he'd occupied. He rolled and fired, missing, the weeds crackling and breaking as he tumbled. The creature dug in as it landed, spun and charged. Tirdal's shot was wide, the hollow poounk! of the punch gun resonating as the beam shattered plant stems. Then Gun Doll's autocannon spoke with a BRAAAPPP! that shook the ears even with its muffling. The heavy, hypervelocity needles tore at the insect, then their antimatter cores, just a spare few micrograms, blew it to slimy chunks.

  The troops were professionals. The rest were already in a perimeter, covering each other and prepared to fire.

  "Report!" Bell Toll snapped.

  "I sensed a sole predator form," Tirdal said. "I warned Ferret, who evaded it and appears unhurt. Gun Doll's fire killed it. No other senses, no immediate threats that I can tell."

  "Understood. Stand to until we make sure we're still secure," the commander ordered. The weapons weren't as loud as chemically driven weapons or explosives, but were loud and alien enough in this environment. Hopefully, either nothing had been around to hear, or the growth had muffled it down to distant thunder or other natural noises.

  For long minutes they were all but motionless, eyes and sensors alert for any hint of a threat.

  "I call secure," Bell Toll finally said. "Bring in the perimeter. The shot appeared strange, let's review the video."

  He scrolled through frames of the fight as seen on Tirdal's and Gun Doll's helmets until he found those he sought.

  "There," he said. "The darts didn't penetrate the carapace. The antimatter did all the damage." The frames showed gouges left by the projectiles, their velocity too high for them to be captured on this equipment. It wasn't until one of the explosive rounds caught the shell that the creature had really been damaged.

  "That's impossible," Dagger said. "I want a shot at a piece of that."

  "Actually, Dagger," Shiva put in, "that's a good idea. We better see how the weapons handle it. Keep a perimeter, folks."

  A plate-sized section of the carapace, still dripping with yellow insect goo, was placed against the base of a tree.

  "Punch gun first," Shiva decided. "Tirdal, give it a try."

  Tirdal nodded, aimed and fired. The poounk! of his weapon was followed by a clatter, and the section of exoskeleton jumped. It spun, landed flat and kicked up earth. Gun Doll walked over, held it up.

  "Nothing," she said. She replaced it against the roots. That was impressive. The energy toroid from a punch gun would drive a hole through most material, to a depth of several meters. It was a great area-effect and antipersonnel weapon. Apparently, its blast was too diffuse for this.

  Thor's rifle round, a standard one with no antimatter, ricocheted. So did Dagger's more potent round. His antiarmor round punched through. Gun Doll fired another short burst of just AP. Then another. After twenty rounds, she succeeded in smashing through. Shiva fired an antimatter round set to zero penetration, and the explosion tore the piece to shreds as it if were cooked crab shell.

  "Interesting," he mused, examining a scorched, steaming fragment. "It looks like we need to set for surface detonation."

  "What about the punch guns?" Bell Toll asked. "Any ideas?"

  "I guess we hope for a trauma effect or a stun," Ferret said.

  "Just keep in mind that a surface shot on a larger animal might not damage any vital organs," Shiva said. "Hell, we don't even know where their organs are, assuming they have any in the first place. So be very cautious."

  There were nods and grunts as weapons were adjusted, then the slogging continued.

  Another couple of hours passed uninterrupted before Gorilla said, "Hold."

  Ferret stopped, halfway forward in a crawl. It was a trained reflex, and he didn't flatten from that position until Gorilla said, "Secure," indicating they could get comfortable but not move from their positions.

  He fed a video to them, which he was getting from two of the bots.

  "Captain, check this out," he said on the open channel, so everyone could follo
w it.

  The scene was something from a horror show. A pack of small predators were attacking a larger herbivore, like carnivorous roaches atop a giant ladybug. The roan-colored domed plant eater was big enough to fill a small bedroom. The gray roachlike predators swarming it with angry, twitching antennae were the size of German Shepherds. Whatever their mandibles were made of was tough enough to shear chunks from the bulletproof shell of their victim.

  The team watched, still as dormant reptiles with fingers ready on triggers in case they were attacked next. The large creature galloped in a circle, knocking down saplings up to fifteen centimeters thick, and shaking the ground. One of the attackers tumbled underneath and was stepped on, convulsing into a ball around its middle. Fronds were torn loose from the trees, and the weeds and ground cover were plowed into confused furrows by kicking feet. The animal had insectoid legs that ended in what were effectively hooves of the same insane super-chitin, sharp as boar's tusks and with a sheen under the mud coating them.

  Even from more than a hundred meters away, the trees could be seen to whip back and forth from the melee, as the now wounded megabeetle bucked and kicked. Those hooves were vicious, but not really placed to help much.

  It was hobbling now, as one of the attackers had sheared off a leg. Then another leg on the same side was crippled and started to give. As its motions slowed, the slender killers concentrated on that side, snipping off an antenna, then another leg, a protruding piece of flank and the last leg on that side.

  "Gorilla, let's see that," Bell Toll ordered. The attackers were on the far side from them.

  "On it," Gorilla agreed, and the view shifted as the ambulating intel bots crept in a circle, scanners focused on the grisly scene.

  As the view shifted past the still alive and twitching bulk, Ferret said, "Oh, yuk."

  "Yeah," agreed Gun Doll. The rest were silent but agreed with the sentiment.

  The six surviving carnivores had sliced holes between the top and bottom shells, and were rapidly eating their way inside. As the team watched, one of them disappeared with a kick of legs, like a rat down a burrow. Only this burrow was into the tender flesh of the dappled, pretty and still squirming body of the beetle. The others followed suit.

  "I take back what I said about not being scared of bugs," Gorilla said. "If one of those gets me, shoot me decently."

  "Or just frag me quick," Dagger said. Even Dagger.

  "Right," Bell Toll said. "Gorilla, Ferret, let's detour way around there. And if those . . . things . . . come close, shoot first and tell me afterwards. Don't wait to ask permission."

  "Yes, sir," echoed gladly through the earpieces.

  Chapter 7

  They bivouacked again before dawn, and rose at sunset to keep moving. The local day was a little over nineteen hours, and at this latitude and season they moved for thirteen of it. That odd schedule also had a tiring effect. They went to sleep more easily, but it was neither comfortable nor resting sleep, merely a change of routine for the body.

  "Man, this sucks," Thor bitched softly as he leaned against a tree and tore at a rat pack. "Bites, stings, aches, scratches. You'd think they'd give us armored combat suits for something this long."

  "Good luck, Thor," Doll replied, also quietly. "We're lucky we've got chameleons. You know how rare the good stuff is."

  "Yeah," Thor said, darkly. "Too cheap to spend the money."

  "That's not it at all. Didn't you know?" Shiva said.

  "Know what?"

  "Ah," Shiva replied, settling into a squat over a stump of tree, after he'd poked it with a stick to ensure it didn't contain any squirming biters. "Listen, young student, to the history of our kind."

  There were snickers, but Thor and Doll paid attention. Gorilla finished messing with his controller and took two long, low steps over. From his outward perch behind a boulder, Dagger cocked an ear in, too. Bell Toll nodded assent to Shiva, and Tirdal sat carefully near Ferret.

  "First of all, all this technology is GalTech," Shiva began. "Some of it is Indowy, some Tchpth, some Darhel . . . and a hell of a lot of it Aldenata, acquired from caches and not understood. We can build this commo gear, but we still have no idea how it works, a thousand odd years after we first ran into it. Some we reverse engineered from what the Darhel sold us, because they won't tell us how it works. No offense, Tirdal."

  "None taken," he replied with a nod practiced to look human. "That's not my field, and they don't tell me about such things either. Our people are . . . castes? Sects? Regarding specialties. We do not do the communications gear that you speak of anyway. Darhel technology relates almost entirely to what you would call 'information technology.' "

  "I guess I knew that but had never put it in words," Bell Toll said. "Go on, Shiva."

  "So it's limited to start with," Shiva continued. "Then, things like the suits especially have to be grown in a tank with psi control. It takes a lot of mind power, which is where the Michia Mentat got their position." He paused for a moment, then said, "I suppose we're developing castes, too." He looked faintly disturbed.

  "Anyway, at the time of the Rebellion, we, meaning the Islendian Federation, before we became a republic, had settled a bunch of planets, mostly Posleen blight worlds, and were between the SSA and the Tular. Not an enviable position. Earth started this long-term disarmament, expecting us to follow suit. We didn't, because we still have Posleen to worry about. And now the Blobs, too.

  "So we had most of the military installations, a share of the GalTech weapons, and almost all of the weapons humans built. We were the perimeter, still are. Earth has the money and the politicians. And it's a good thing it worked out that way, or we wouldn't be here."

  "I could handle not being here," Thor joked, though he knew what Shiva meant.

  Ferret said, "Shut up, Thor, I want to hear this."

  "We had skirmishes for almost a hundred years, with the SSA on one side, the terrorists all over and the feral Posleen and some last holdout oolts along the border," Shiva continued. It was obvious that history was his specialty and passion.

  "The terrorist groups were mostly Fringer Freedom groups, people who wanted to separate off from the Core worlds with a smattering of local ethnic separatists. They didn't have a lot of general support, either group, but they scared a lot of people and made a lot of noise. And they forced more and more military to be diverted into the Fringe.

  "Finally, Earth began to realize it couldn't dictate terms to us; that was the time they were trying to impose martial law. Most of their ground combat forces were from Fringe planets. Virtually all of their officers were from Fringe worlds. A good bit of their heavy industry was in Fringe worlds. Damned near every single base was in the Fringe. We had the training, but they had the stranglehold on GalTech. The Michia kept neutral, of course, which is likely good, or we'd have human blight worlds, too. They would have been a powerful enough ally that Earth would have had to waste systems to stop them. And they would have scorched their own share.

  "Anyway, the Fleet commander in the Islendia sector was Patrick Sunday."

  "Him I've heard of," Thor said.

  "Who hasn't," Shiva smiled. "He was from the Core worlds and his family had been military for as long as the SSA had been around. But, despite that, he could see the way the wind was blowing. He made a deal with the SSA. The Fringe was in virtual separation from the Core. Taxes weren't getting paid, orders among the military were being ignored and planets were starting to figure they were 'on their own' and developing local militias. And in the midst of this were probes from the Tular, rising piracy and, of course, the odd terrorist.

  "The SSA finally gave up. Sunday convinced the majority of bomb throwers and their 'unaffiliated' supporters to come in 'hands up.' They were amnestied but prevented from taking office. The ones that didn't go for it were ruthlessly hunted down, by their former 'colleagues' among others. And Earth permitted the Republic to split off."

  "It couldn't have been as easy as that," Dagger said. "Where
's the money?"

  "It wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination," Shiva admitted. "But, on the other hand, no planets were turned into slag and no suns were detonated. Easy is a relative term.

  "And, really, Earth only relented because we had most of the regular hardware, but did not have GalTech in large quantities. We would have been a threat they couldn't ignore, and not been believable as allies. It was lucky, because we basically outgrew each other. Had we been weaker, or stronger, it would have been a fight."

  "So that's why ACS are rare in the Fringe," he said, looking at Thor, "and reserved for very special occasions, and be glad you don't have one, because usually when we toss them into the meat grinder, it means things are royally succulent and people die. Be glad you have that chameleon at least. And we're DRT because we're masochists. Not because we get to kill a lot of things. We're trip wires."

  "I guess that explains it," Thor said. He believed it, but he didn't like it. "But I got to wear ACS once, on Tenarif. It was wonderful."

  "Oh?" Bell Toll said. "I didn't see that in your file."

  "It wasn't official," he said. "And it was while I was still infantry. Remember, I qual'd DRT last year."

  "Yeah, so what about it?" Dagger asked.

  "Oh, damn," Thor said, a glazed look in his eyes. "The suit supports you. You want to sleep, you lie down. It can wake you or put you under. It gives artificial neural feedback like bare skin would. It does nanosurgery to fix small wounds." He held up his welted hands, scored with saw-edged grass and bites. It was easier to sense one's surroundings with bare hands than with gloved, but there was a price to pay. "It uses stasis for major wounds. The AID talks to you, feeds you info, cuts out the crap you don't need and prioritizes the critical stuff. It'll stop damned near anything incoming, and you have real antimatter beads for weapons, no powerpack needed. Hell, it massages tired muscles. It'll sing you a lullaby if you really want. I got to wear one for a week during an exercise, as a backfill."

  "I'd heard that about them," Gorilla said, scratching the grimy stubble under his chin thoughtfully. The suits kept hair groomed, too. "Be nice for sleeping." His length meant that he often woke with cricks in his neck on deployments, after squeezing into awkward little nooks to hide and rest.