Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

dampening suits, taking it all in. Then he spoke loudly for everyone to hear. “Captain Wit O’Toole has assured me that the next seven weeks of training will be the most grueling, most painful, and most challenging of your lives. After tonight’s exercise I believe him. In the morning, I intend to forget that I saw a hundred men in their underwear, standing around a fire like a pack of cavemen.” He paused here and looked pointedly at a few of his own men. “But since this is your last night before our hellish training begins, I will turn a blind eye.” He smiled now. “You will forgive me if I keep my uniform on.”
    The men laughed.
    “As you were,” said Ketkar.
    They went back to their drinks and mingling.
    Ketkar turned to Wit. “You owe me two new cars, Captain.”
    “You’ll be reimbursed, sir. Forgive me if we took the game too far.”
    “And damage to one of my trucks, which proved to be a lousy roadblock.”
    “We’ll cover the damage to that as well, sir.”
    “You will do no such thing,” said Ketkar, waving a hand. “Nor will you pay for the cars. I don’t want to have to explain to our vehicle quartermaster how the MOPs made us look like bumbling idiots. I’ll file an accident report instead.”
    “We didn’t win, sir,” said Wit. He reached down to his red suit, removed the flag from the back pouch, and handed it to Ketkar. “Our suits were hit. We were disqualified.”
    Ketkar studied him, suspicious. “And if I were to interview all of my men and ask them which one of them took down the famous Wit O’Toole, someone would step forward?”
    “Many men shot at us, sir. It was chaotic there at the end.”
    Ketkar smiled. “Yes. And somehow with inflated suits you managed to get all the way back to camp. Most impressive.”
    Wit motioned to the flagpole, where a red sheet posing as a flag flapped in the wind. “You have men in your vehicles who are still in the game, sir. If you’d like to take our flag, you won’t meet any resistance. All of us are out of the fight.”
    Ketkar smiled. “I think it best if we call this a draw and leave it at that.”
    “Good idea, sir.”
    Ketkar saluted and got back into his vehicle, and the convoy drove away. Deen and Averbach stepped out of the woods once the convoy was out of sight, their dampening suits still operable.
    “I figured you two would be riddled with spider rounds by now,” said Wit.
    Deen looked offended. “A little confidence, Captain. Averbach and I don’t give up that easy.”
    “I don’t suppose I want to know what you did with the cars.”
    Deen patted him on the arm and took a drink from the cooler. “Nothing a good motor sergeant can’t fix.”
    He and Averbach moved over to the pile of suits and added theirs to the heap.
    “I have to admit this is not what I expected, sir,” a voice said.
    Wit turned. It was Lobo, there beside him in his undergarments, staring into the firelight, soaking wet and holding a vitamin drink.
    “Will the training be as grueling as Major Ketkar says?” Lobo asked.
    “You’re in MOPs now, Lobo. I shouldn’t have to answer that question.”

 
    CHAPTER 8
    Glaser
    The archives room on Makarhu was a dark, claustrophobic space filled with rows of blinking computer systems and humming servers. Lem was floating in the shadows back near a corner with his holopad plugged into one of the server inputs. A video of the attack on El Cavador played in the holospace above his pad. It showed a laser cutting through a pebble-killer on the hull of the free-miner ship. As Lem watched, the severed PK spun away and struck one of the free miners on spacewalk. Lem moved his hand through the holospace to stop the video, then he wiggled his fingers in the right sequence to rewind the video and play it again in slow motion. He couldn’t be certain, but it looked like, as he had feared, he had killed the man.
    The bump with El Cavador had been far more violent than Lem had anticipated. It was one thing to talk of lasers cutting through sensors and equipment. It was quite another thing to see it all unfold before your eyes as Lem had done—the entire attack had been recorded by several cameras and projected on the big holospace on the helm.
    No, he mustn’t use the word “attack.” That sounded incriminating and prosecutable. “Attack” implied wrongdoing and sparked headlines on the nets like: LEM JUKES ATTACKS FAMILY OF FREE MINERS . Or: HEIR TO JUKE FORTUNE ATTACKS CHILDREN . No,