Free Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad by John Ringo, Tom Kratman Page A

it spinning up toward the bridge.
    “I've got nine general purpose EVA suits,” Golo reported. “Shall I return with them now or continue my explorations?”
    Back on the Stalker, Tulo pondered. It would be nice to have a report of the task ahead, but if something goes wrong over there, and we lose the one suit, we're lost.
    “Come back, Golo. We need the other suits more than the information, at this time.” And we'll need you, too, old friend. Though I might not say so to your face.
    “As you command.”
    The suits were fine, once Golo had managed to move the bodies and crank open the door. They were just general things, large enough to fit the largest Posleen and simple enough for even a normal to use safely, provided a skilled cosslain or a kessentai dressed them.
    Hmmm. Check them here and waste time—never mind hanging around all those frozen eyeballs—or just load up what I can carry and bring them back?
    The sight of two eyeballs, bouncing off each other on the ends of their strings of nerves before bouncing back to the face of the dead Posleen who had owned them, then returning once again to bounce off each other, was the deciding factor. I think I'll bring these suits home. Do the others good to have something useful to do, anyway.
    The sphincter that sealed the tunnel leading to the Bounty closed without a sound. This, too, Goloswin found unsettling.
    “Thank you for ordering me back, Tulo,” Golo whispered. “That ship is . . . creepy. All that thresh hanging about, unharvested. All those souls waiting for release, caught between one universe and the next.” The Posleen tinkerer shivered, visibly. “It was almost as bad as being back on Earth, where the humans never had the decency to release the souls of our dead.”
    “Well . . . to be fair, Golo, the humans couldn't eat our dead. We carry a disease that's harmless to us but eventually deadly to them. And they couldn't let us have them, either, because that was fuel for our war machine.”
    “A fair word for humans? From you?” Goloswin asked, incredulously. “Maybe I should go back to the other ship; that's just too weird.”
    “I couldn't have fought them, even as poorly as I did, Golo, without trying to understand them.”
    Whatever else might be said of them, and perhaps little of it would have been complimentary, the Posleen were a remarkably resilient people. With the prospect of something to do, Binastarion completely stopped bouncing food- and shit-balls off the walls and weeping over his dead Artificial Sentience; Brasingala put up his boma blade and withdrew his reproductive member; the Rememberer started playing his game with Goloswin; and the sole awake cosslain grew distinctly less nervous.
    Tulo even felt comfortable taking the rest of his core people out of hibernation. Though he still took away their boma blades, for the nonce. He knew he'd have to give them back before the group continued with task one, the rendering of the thresh in the Bounty and the releasing of the souls of the dead. For now though, Let's just go with what we have, shall we?
    Golo had managed to bring back nine of the bulky suits. There were more, possibly hundreds more, on the other ship, but the tinkerer simply didn't want to go over again, alone, until some progress could be made towards clearing out the dead.
    Those nine, plus the suit Golo wore, cobbled together from the Himmit material, now held all the awakened ones except for the Rememberer, the cosslain, and Essthree.
    “The first job,” Golo cautioned, "will be to recover Artificial Sentiences to replace those we lost to the humans' eee-emm-pee. Not only can they tell us the damage to the Bounty, they'll be invaluable in helping us plan to fix that damage. Plus . . . they tend to be pretty good company.
    "Once every kessentai has acquired an AS, bring it to life—they'll have shut down to save power—and report in to Tulo'stenaloor.
    "After that, we'll collect the dead and begin to