Free Their Master's War by Mick Farren

messdeck listening to scuttlebutt. Rance had worked them close to the point of exhaustion. The intake had gone through one more training session together, and then each group of five, four in the case of Hark's, had been integrated with the twenty to which they had been assigned. From that point on, the long-timers and the recruits had trained together as a complete combat team. Working alongside the veterans had at first filled Hark with a deep depression at how little he knew. As the sessions progressed he was quite amazed by the speed at which he was picking up the rudiments of ground fighting. On the other hand, he still had grave doubts as to whether he would ever be good enough to survive the real thing. The recruits' off-duty time was almost nonexistent, but the gloom on the messdeck was so deep that it couldn't help but affect them. They caught the longtimers' dread of the jump and amplified it with their own fear of the unknown. About an hour before jumptime, Rance visited the messdeck. He made a point of always being there just before a jump. The purpose was to reinforce control and authority at a moment when the men were at their most
    angry. The noncoms in the Alliance were never allow, to forget that the great trooper uprising of a quarter of century earlier had exploded immediately before a jump. The revolt had spread through almost half the ships * the fleet and had come close to crippling the campai^_ against the Yal. The presence of the new intake just made the situation more delicate. The longtimers, if they hadn't actually been telling horror stories, would at least have dropped a few sinister hints. He decided that the recruits could probably use a few reassuring words.
    "I won't lie to you. The jump is one of the most unpleasant experiences that a man can go through. While it lasts, you may think that you are actually dying. Get one thing straight. You will not die. The jump's awful, but it will do you no permanent harm. It's just one of the things you have to live with. By now, you've probably heard all kinds of wild tales about how bad the jump can be. I want you to put them out of your mind. It's bad, but you'll get over it. Someone may have tried to tell you that men have gone mad during their first jump. That's bull."
    A couple of the recruits looked up sharply. Rance cursed himself. They apparently hadn't heard the story, j He silently cursed again as Dacker raised his hand.; Dacker, along with Renchett, was one of the main trou-j blemakers in Elmo's twenty. He was undoubtedly trying to pull something.
    "Permission to speak, Topman Rance?"
    When Dacker was polite, it always meant that he was looking to score off a superior. It was a kind of reverse insolence.
    "What do you want, Dacker?"
    "Begging the topman's pardon, but the stories about rookies going mad during a jump isn't all bull. When I was back on the Yalna 7, there was this recruit who—"
    "Shut up, Dacker. Whatever you've got in your mind never happened. It's a mess monkey's tall story." "I saw it with my—" "Shut it, Dacker!"
    Dacker shut up, but the damage was done. The recruits looked green. There was one consolation. The newcomers' fear might provide sufficient amusement to the longtimers that it would take the edge off their resentment. Rance always felt like a fraud after these speeches. He hated the jumps as much as anyone, and he also hated lying to his men. Individuals did go mad on their first jump. Some not until their second, third, or twentieth. The idea that the jump was ultimately harmless was a heavily promoted piece of fiction. The truth was that the Therem had been frequently approached to try to get something done to mitigate the pain of the jump. They claimed that it was impossible. The pain wasaside effect unique to humans. No other species suffered anything like it, and there was nothing that couldbedone. Rance's last job before he sealed himself in his coffin was to check in with his immediate superior, his line