A Hymn Before Battle

6 Orbit, Barwhon V 1530 GMT, June 25th, 2001 ad

As the ship dropped from trans-light, Barwhon opened up before them, a planet of purple vegetation and mists.

“We’re going in through an unsecured belt, an area that we think is still free of Posleen.” Sergeant Major Mosovich went over the mission profile one last time. The personnel of Eyeball 1, as the team was now officially designated, were gathered around a small table in the cramped Himmit ship eating breakfast and sipping their last real coffee for a while as the planet swelled in the view-screen. The atmosphere was stressed; a smell of tension hung in the air like a fog. Even though they were seasoned soldiers, they were very much aware they were going to be among the first humans ever to set foot on an alien planet, and their surroundings hammered that point home. Since they had taken their Hiberzine injections before the ship even lifted from Kwajalein Atoll there had barely been time to get over a simple feeling of alienation before the shots took them and they faded into sleep. Now, every item in view gave off a subtle aura of wrongness.

The lighting was deceptive. Indirect, it was neither incandescent nor fluorescent and seemed poorly designed for human eyes. There was a subtle hint that it was not dim, but that most of the light was in a spectrum invisible to them. Objects and markings wavered on the edge of vision, seen and yet unseen. The team’s woodland camouflage turned to odd flares of blackness and shimmering green under the strange illumination.

The colors of the decks and bulkheads were wrong, mostly muddy blues and browns. Again there was a hint that there were bright colors, simply not those that could be viewed by humans.

There were faint acrid odors, odd and having that same sense of alienness, neither discernibly organic nor mechanical, just other. Occasional chittering sounds echoed at the edge of hearing, nagging at their subconscious, possibly shipwide announcements, maybe subsystems kicking in, maybe ghosts of dead Himmit. Adding to the discomfort, the furniture was all wrong. The table was too high, the benches too low, the seats too short. The furniture was obviously made for humans, but not by anything that had to use it.

Everything around them screamed “alien” and they packed together all the tighter in the uncomfortable environment, shoveling down their food and, secretly, each to themselves, wishing just once more for honest greens and yellows.

Himmit Rigas was in attendance, but if there were other Himmit crewmembers present they were not making themselves visible. To the Himmit a predator was a predator was a predator, and Rigas had to be crazy to interact with them.

“The planet doesn’t have continents or oceans to speak of, just one continuous blend of jungle and swamp. We’ll be coming in through a region that is more swamp and less jungle, since the acoustic and thermal signature of a decelerating spacecraft are impossible to mask. Then we’ll swing over into this region.” Mosovich pointed at a spot on the view-screen for a change, just to drive the point home that, yes, it was almost show time! “This is the region the Posleen first invaded and where the assimilation should be well in hand. We will initially perform a simple sweep of the area, trying to get a feel for what the general activities of the threat are. If all goes well, and it seldom does, we will bounce to other sectors to check on different periods after conquest.”

As he talked, Ellsworthy carefully picked out all the meat in her stew and pushed it to one side, then separated out the potatoes, then the vegetables. The vegetables were further subdivided into green, yellow and orange colors. With a childlike grimace, she then separated out anything that was not clearly one of the major food groups. By the time she was done, everyone on the team had finished eating and sat back to watch the usual ritual. For nearly a month before lifting off in the stealth ship the team had trained together. They had time to discover each other’s strengths and weaknesses, pet peeves and idiosyncrasies. They had gone from being a superb collection of individual warriors into a well-coordinated team. Along the way they had become accustomed to each member’s little habits.

Now, bets were whispered on whether she would determine one or another bit as being real food or, in her terms, “icky stuff.” When she was done, she carefully scraped as much of the sauce off the meat as possible and ate it. She examined the other piles minutely, turning her head from side to side and lowering to sniff at them before finally pushing the rest of the plate aside. To Sandra Ellsworthy there were carnivores and herbivores and she knew which one she was.

At a waggling of his bushy blond eyebrows, she silently slid the remains of the meal across the table to Mueller. The huge NCO picked up the plate and shoveled into his open mouth all the leftover piles of individual components, including, and here she had to close her eyes, the “icky stuff.” When he was done his cheeks were stuffed like a chipmunk. He wiped a bit of sauce off his chin and waggled his eyebrows again.

“If you’re quite done.” Mosovich chuckled. The little ritual always served as an icebreaker when the tension got too high and in the alien environment of the Himmit ship it was more welcome than ever. He never worried about Ellsworthy knowing her part of the mission. If he asked she could have spit back the entire spiel word for word.

“Contingency extraction is by a second Himmit ship due in four months. Martine has the long-range communications equipment; if need be he can reach the courier standing by the jump-point. We have five months of supplies in mobile form and the ship stores when we’re in contact with the ship. Are there any questions?”

There were none; they had heard the same briefing at least a million times before.

“Okay, insertion is in one hour. Let’s get suited up, people.”

They shoved back from the table and started down the narrow hall to the Number One pressure hold as Rigas headed to control. Mueller picked up the last three slices of fresh bread and stuffed them into his mouth, bulging out his cheeks even further.

“I can’t believe how you eat,” said Trapp, the gold of a SEAL badge glinting from his beret.

“I goff a lotta maff. Nah lak you runfy guyf!” the huge NCO muttered around the mass of protein and starches.

In the cramped pressure hold of the diminutive ship the lockers of equipment and weapons were being opened by Sergeant Martine, whose stutter did not slow his actions at all. He began assembling his commo kit as Ellsworthy slipped past him to lay out the weapons. Mueller packed himself into the space, not much bigger than a closet, to open up his cases of survey equipment and explosives as Ersin and Richards began a final check of medical stores. In some cases the equipment was enhanced by Galactic technologies. The communications equipment used a subspace field that was supposedly detectable but untraceable. About the only major Federation technology that was not represented was AIDs, to the chagrin of the Darhel. They had been apologetic, but there were simply none available that had not already been bonded to another user.

As the rest of the team made some last adjustments to their rucksacks and combat harnesses, Mosovich slipped in the earpiece of the communications system and gestured for everyone else to slip theirs on. When everyone had complied he applied the throat mike to his Adam’s apple.

“Testing, commo check,” he subvocalized without opening his mouth or making more than a softly inaudible hum.

“Operations.” “Intel.” “Sniper.” “Point.” “Medical.” “Commo.” “Demo.” Mueller pulled out a couple of bricks of C-9 blasting explosive and did a quick juggle. Mosovich quelled him with a look.

“Command, good check. From here on out you only open your mouth to eat.” The system transmitted microbursts at low radiation levels that would be far less detectable than voices. If the Posleen were using detection equipment at all, the encrypted microbursts would appear as nothing more than the sort of subspace anomalies usually found on planetary surfaces.

Packs were rechecked, equipment reshuffled and finally everything was settled. Moments later, Himmit Rigas’ voice came over the system.

“We’ll be entering the atmosphere momentarily. Please assume landing positions.”

The team strapped on their packs and weapons then moved to the last hold area and clambered awkwardly into specially designed crash couches. Their packs, fitted into contours designed for them in the crash couches, remained on their backs. As each settled into place, a plasticlike substance extruded and filled in all the open areas between them and the couches then extended to cover their bodies, creeping up their heads and down their arms and over their strapped-on weapons, finally leaving them cocooned except for their faces. Once the smart-plastic shock cocoon felt it had a good fit, it shrank and applied pressure along the extremities. That way if there were a severe inertial event, the team had some chance of survival. Each of them had practiced the maneuver in simulators at Kwajalein, but there was still a moment of panic as the strange substance began to creep across the face before settling alongside the eyes, nose and mouth. Just as the shock cocoons snapped into place the stealthed spaceship hit the outer fringes of the atmosphere and bucked like a bronco.

“Hey, Sarn’t Major,” Mueller grunted over the commo circuit. “Why the buffet? If they’ve got inertial dampers, we shouldn’t be feelin’ a thing.”

“Hell if I know, Mueller,” snapped Mosovich, “just shut up and hang on.” At the same moment the craft took another sharp downward lurch, combined with a hard bank and the sergeant major’s face went green.

Ellsworthy, the member with the least experience in rides like this one, suddenly belched vomit, an experience made all the worse for not being able to double over. The stink of regurgitated stew set off a chain reaction. Presser beams swept the cabin, catching the globules of muck and drawing them into the walls as nannites swarmed over crash couches and the team’s faces, cleaning every square inch. One unexpected benefit of the design was that the equipment and uniforms were protected from the ejecta.

“Sergeant Mueller,” the intercom chimed as spiderlike nannites swept his twitching face for debris, “this is Himmit Rigas. You are not experiencing the full effect of the maneuvers this craft is performing. We are following a path where the probability of detection is the lowest. The last bank was a real effect of two hundred of your Earth’s gravities. At the same time, since we cannot mask our thermal characteristics, we are attempting to mimic the flight path of a highly eccentric meteor. Now, as the sergeant major said, shut up and hold on.” Some of the team gave a grim laugh as the craft performed an erratic barrel roll followed by a tremendous downward surge.

“Thirty seconds.” The crash couches rotated upward on command then flipped, placing the team in a face-down position. Sections of the floor pulled back, leaving them staring through force screens at the purple trees of Barwhon. The primeval forest flashing by faster than a freight train seemed bare inches from their noses. The multicanopy jungle was the most dense in the known universe; suddenly the idea of making a combat jump into it did not seem like a good idea.

“Ten seconds.”

Mosovich drew a deep breath as the smart-plastic suddenly receded into the couch. He clutched his twelve-gauge Street Sweeper to his chest, preparing to place more faith in alien equipment than he had in himself. Suddenly the cabin was filled with a roar of air, the voice of JC well known to all Airborne units, and almost immediately Mosovich felt himself hurled downward. Dropping under the combined effect of the ejection system and gravity, there seemed no way the team would avoid being spitted on the Promethean forest giants. As the mantislike trees reached for them Mosovich heard a whine from his pack, and the rate of closure dropped. Without any sensation of slowing other than the testimony of his eyes he came to a halt in midair. Looking around he saw the rest of the team dangling from their harnesses as he was. With a gesture he cut in the drop circuit on the Galactic antigravity device and the Special Operations team began falling toward the alien forest.