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.
She was as aware as Mentat Chan of Pawle’s problems. He had always been brilliant at the theory of sohon, but unconfident of his ability to execute it. She had seen vast improvement in the last week and considered his answer carefully.
Do you feel ready to face the Imeg? she asked.
I don’t know, Pawle replied. We don’t know their power. If they are no more powerful than Master Chan, then yes. Especially if you guys give us cover fire.
She could feel the doubt in his answer but it was not the usual self-doubt she had come to expect. It was simply rational unsurety based on their lack of knowledge of the enemy. It also lacked his usual arrogant tone.
The Indowy trained on the basis of interest. They used the open hand, from it you could take what you wished or were able. They encouraged, they praised but they never pressed or stressed. Pressure was anathema to their methods of training.
She was forced to wonder if that was the best way to train humans.
Or at least human males, come to think of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Is the force going to make the schedule?” Mike asked, looking up at his daughter.
“Yes,” Michelle said, looking at him carefully. “The actions should be in close time proximity.”
“Then we’d better start shifting,” Mike said. “You said four days, right?”
“Yes,” Michelle said. “But, really, we won’t know what the true capacity of the Imeg are until the attack on the transport.”
“Never give cousel of your fears,” Mike said, picking up his AID. “AID, I need General Tam, Tir Dal Ron and Rigas.”
“I’m going to go join the assault force,” Mike said as soon as the three-some had joined them.