The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (15 page)

When Rael looked confused, he smiled and said, “We have a saying…Heroes happen when things go wrong. If a unit is working smoothly, has a good plan, and nothing goes wrong with it, then heroics shouldn’t be needed. A hero generally
shows up just after Mr. Murphy’s already made a mess of things.”

Rael, of course, completely missed the implied joke, so Eric immediately had to backtrack and explain.

“Sorry, Admiral,” he said with a smile, “Murphy is the name we give to bad luck. The kind of luck that invariably happens when you take a group of very complicated people, equip them with equally complicated weapons and equipment, and set them on a mission that’s probably a lot more complicated than you realized when you gave them the plan.”

Tanner smiled dryly, recognizing that form of luck a little too well. “Such as when the enemy attacks just before your shipyard facility is able to release its first warship.”

“That would be a visit from Mr. Murphy, yes, Admiral.” Eric grinned.

“And, as you said, heroes showed up just after.” Rael nodded, understanding. “Yourself, Captain, and your ship. You are certainly heroes to my world. However, if things had gone right, then you would not have been needed as such. Yes, I can see what you mean. I am grateful for your help, but I remember at the time being…
frustrated
that it was required. We don’t have a tradition of ‘heroics,’ as you put it.”

“Exactly,” Eric said, then, “but there’s another aspect to it as well. In a regular military unit, the first thing you do is try to hammer down any people who actually aspire to heroics. Irregular units, on the other hand, will often enshrine them.”

“So we would be doubly benefitted by training regulars, then, having the ‘advantage’ of lacking your people’s enshrinement of the heroic ideal,” Admiral Tanner said with a wry smile. “I believe I understand you, Captain.”

Eric grinned. “Good, ’cause I was starting to forget where I was going there.”

Rael laughed, his small frame shaking with the chuckling motions. “I feel quite certain that you would have eventually found your way.”

“One would hope, Admiral,” Eric replied. “Otherwise, I’d make a poor ship captain, I’d say.”

Tanner nodded. “Indeed. Indeed. Very well, Captain. I thank you for your insight. With some luck, Central will accede to the request, and things will progress quickly. Perhaps we will be able to start within a week.”

“That would be welcome, I’m sure. Colonel Reed is undoubtedly itching to get started,” Weston said with a thoughtful smile. “Admiral, I was wondering…Would it be permissible to see Central?”

Tanner shrugged. “Of course. Though, there is little enough to see, Captain. Merely a stone wall. Central is completely sealed.”

“Even so, I have to admit that I am curious.”

“Then I invite you.” Rael shrugged and nodded deeply. “Officially, as it were.”

“Thank you, Admiral.” Eric nodded in return. “I accept.”

“Good.” Rael’s eyes danced with amusement. “Though, I fear you will be sorely disappointed. There is really very little to see.”

“I’m sure it’ll be worth my time, Admiral.”

Colonel Reed scowled as he poured over the list of five hundred men his staff had compiled from the thousand put forward. Each file they had been given by the commander of the local ground forces was…
Thorough
was the best word he could use to describe it.
Information overload
was a close second.

The mass of information on each of the five hundred was compounded by the fact that each file had to be dictated by one of the locals so that the computer systems Reed and his men had brought with them could compile a half-decent database. The result was extremely slow going as they worked through the files, Reed trying to get a sense of what kind of men he was going to be training.

“Look at this one.” Master Chief Wilson snorted. “He was some kind of lumberjack or something.”

“We’ve trained worse than that, Chief,” Reed said flatly, reminding the former Navy SEAL that the actual training would begin with the Special Forces detachment. Besides, he didn’t want the staff members who had chosen the men getting any flack.

Reed also knew that the skills the men began with weren’t as important as their motivation, not by a long shot. And a man defending his home and family…Well, that was a powerful motivation. “What’s his physical shape?”

“Looks good, near as I can tell,” Wilson replied. “Big guy. But most of these guys are.”

Reed nodded as a murmur of agreement passed through the group.

“They are from the outer colonies.” The men looked over when the “naval attaché” assigned to them by the commander spoke.

“What?” Reed asked her.

She was a small woman, decidedly unlike the men they were trying to filter through, an “Ithan” in the local military command structure. Reed had given up trying to puzzle out the exact rank structure that predominated here and supposed that his was as confusing to them. Her name was Milla, which he’d thought was rather nice and easy to pronounce
compared to a lot of what they had run into lately. As a bonus, she’d also spent time on the
Odyssey
, and while he’d never run into her, she was more comfortable with the translators and technology than someone right in from the cold would be.

“They are from the outer colonies,” she repeated, as if it were obvious. “The colonies are—were—not easy places to live.”

Reed exchanged glances with Carson, a moment of communication passing between them. The combat engineer nodded after a moment, with a shrug of his shoulder.

“Makes sense in a way, Colonel,” he replied. “A new colony would probably select for hardier stock, and only the hardiest is gonna volunteer for this shit.”

Reed nodded. “I suppose.”

“I think we need less data, Colonel, not more,” Wilson spoke up then.

“Excuse me, Chief?”

“This”—Wilson widened his arms to take in all the work they were doing—“I think it’s a mistake.”

“What part?” Reed asked, curious. The master chief was an expert in some very technical fields and, despite how his size and twice-broken nose made him appear, not given to rash action or judgement.

“We should just get Commander Jehan to give us the basic information, not the full files,” Wilson said. “It was a good idea, don’t get me wrong, but the truth is, we don’t have time to determine who’s best suited for what. We have to trust Jehan.”

Reed leaned back, interlacing his fingers, and considered the chief’s statement. After a moment, he sighed and looked around at the other two. “Opinions?”

“I concur,” Carson said, tossing a data plaque to the table. “It’s a hopeless task to try and shift all this data over to our system, and they don’t seem to even record all the same things we would.”

Randal Scott, former Marine Corps captain, nodded in agreement. “I guess I have to agree, Colonel. This is just a mess. I think we should trust them to know their people.”

Reed took a moment, then nodded reluctantly. “Agreed.”

He turned back to the young woman who had been assigned to help them and smiled a little ruefully. “I think we got a little too big for our own good, here, Milla. Do you think you can ask your people to give us just a few individual pieces of information about each that the master chief will provide to you? It’ll make things better all around, I think.”

She bobbed her head in agreement. “I can have that for you immediately, Colonel.”

Reed raised an eyebrow, amusement flickering in his eyes. “You have it already prepared?”

She flushed a little, not meeting his gaze, but nodded. “The commander…”

Reed responded with a tight smile. “That’s fine, Ithan. Could you get the list?”

“Of course.” She nodded, then rose to her feet. “I will return.”

After she had gone, Reed glanced at the others who were looking about as ruefully amused as he felt. “The commander seems to have already thought of it. I wonder if he meant to drown us in information.”

The dry, self-effacing humor in the statement drew some chuckles from the others.

“Well, sometimes you want to test the people training your irregulars, Colonel,” Wilson said in a dry tone. “See how many piles of bullshit they’re willing to climb.”

“At any rate”—Reed flicked off his data plaque—“now we just need the space, and we’ll be ready to get started.”

“Oh, joy,” Wilson muttered, but smiled slightly to take the edge off his comment.

“By the way, Colonel, have you heard about the maneuvers?” Scott asked.

“No.” Reed shook his head. “What maneuvers?”

“Brinks asked the captain to get clearance for some training maneuvers while they were in orbit,” Carson told him. “The brass loaded them up with so many new faces and gear that Brinks wants to make sure it all works the way it should.”

Reed snorted. “Can’t blame the man for that.”

The others agreed as Reed thought about it, then slowly smiled. “You know, we can use that.”

“What’s that, sir?” Wilson asked.

“Think about it, gentlemen.” Reed smiled. “A live-fire exercise is damned impressive, even if a few people foul up. Could be a good way to get our recruits’ attention.”

The others considered that, then slowly began to nod.

The ambassadorial suite was one of the nicer workplaces LaFontaine had ever worked out of, which was saying something, all things considered. She’d done her time in the less impressive, meaning
hellhole
, spots, but much of her latter career was spent in upscale residences and offices, and this one beat them all.

“What do you think of the city, Daniel?” she asked her aide.

The two were sitting in the large and spacious “housing” they had been provided, drinking one of the local beverages that tasted like a strong fruit juice, though they weren’t able to pin down the precise fruit in question.

“It’s impressive, Madam Ambassador,” Daniel Kane told her. “I haven’t seen much of it, of course, but I get the impression that a person could spend a lifetime exploring just this one city.”

Julia nodded in agreement, thinking about what she’d seen of the great metropolis in which they were located. It was a unique place, to be sure. There were signs of a conventional city in the area around them, including immense skyscrapers that were so large and tall that they seemed to defy the laws of physics; however, the main populace was located in three massively large pyramidal “supercities.”

With over forty billion people on the planet, Julia supposed that the Priminae had to have some very impressive cities to house them all, but what was really impressive was how
few
people she’d seen. She could walk the corridors outside her rooms all day and run into no more than a handful of people, if that.

Public transportation appeared to be not only the norm but the only way that the average person could get around, and the transport was integrated so tightly into the design of the cities that it was virtually invisible. Within the immense pyramids were equally impressive habitats, suspended in a grid of tubes and supports, in which Julia had been informed a billion people could live comfortably.

The number was boggling, especially when you consider that there were two other pyramids just like it as part of the same metropolitan area.

Combined with the city that existed around the three immense habitats, there were over three and a half billion people in this one city alone.

That was over a third the population of the entire Earth, and Julia had seen the orbital images of Ranquil in her briefings. The Priminae people used less than 10 percent the land area that Terran humans did, the rest being a wild preserve devoted to the natural world.

There’s just something about these people
, she thought with a smile.
I just don’t know how to react to them, though. They just don’t…fit
.

LaFontaine put that thought out of her mind, trying not to dwell too much on it. It was her job to figure out where and how they fit, after all. To place the people here in a framework that made sense to people back home so that some form of communication could be effected beyond the simple exchange of words.

Julia LaFontaine smiled, looking out on the incredible vista beyond her suite.