Free Sunset of the Gods by Steve White

could all be used as legs, propelling their quarter-ton mass faster than a cheetah. The forward pair could also be used as arms, the middle pair as relatively clumsy ones. The saberlike claws, the whiplike tail, and the tusklike fangs were, on some basic level, more frightening than the proficiency that the beings had acquired with captured and copied firearms. The colony had survived, thanks to imported professional soldiers who had inculcated the natives with a certain respect for the human race. But it had been too close for comfort, and an accommodation had been worked out under which human developments were restricted to geographically and ecologically distinct enclaves. By all accounts, the natives were now avid customers for the products of human civilization, and would soon be as peaceable and corrupted as one could wish.
    During the fighting, though. . . .
    “I’ve read some pretty harrowing accounts of that fighting,” said Jason. “Some of them were almost unbelievably so.”
    “You can believe them, sir.”
    “You say that like a man who knows whereof he speaks. And I seem to recall a couple of comments in your record. . . .”
    Mondrago’s features remained immobile, and his eyes stared fixedly ahead. But they burned. “They used a captured M-47 AAM launcher to shoot down one of our transport skimmers. Some of the men survived and were taken, including a couple of friends of mine. We did a search-and-rescue sweep and found them . . . or what was left of them. I won’t try to describe what had been done to them. Another time, we were a little too late responding to a distress call from a terraforming station. These weren’t soldiers like my friends. There were women and children—although you could barely tell. We made those filthy alien vermin pay the next time we hit one of their villages.”
    A quaver had crept into Mondrago’s tightly controlled voice by the time it reached the word alien .
    “Yes,” Jason nodded. “All this was touched on in those comments I mentioned. There were other comments in later stages of your career, whenever your duties brought you into contact with nonhumans. Never enough to actually get you in trouble, but. . . .” Jason met Mondrago’s eyes squarely. “There’s always been a possibility that we’d encounter aliens on this expedition. On the basis of what’s just happened, I’d say that possibility has to be upgraded to a strong probability. Are you going to be able to handle that in a disciplined manner?”
    The fire had gone out in Mondrago’s eyes, and the stiffness had melted from his expression. He spoke with his usual insouciance, something short of insolence. “I was under the impression that protecting this party from aliens was what I was here for, sir.”
    “Wrong! You’re here to protect the party from whatever I tell you to protect it from. And I have no intention of provoking any unnecessary conflicts with anybody, human or otherwise. That’s not our purpose.” Jason spoke quietly, but Mondrago unconsciously came to something resembling a position of attention. “Compared to some of the outfits you’ve served in, I’m sure the Temporal Service seems like a mildly well-supervised excursion agency. But you’ve read the Articles, including the provisions concerning the authority of a mission leader.”
    “I have, sir.”
    “Good, because it’s not just boilerplate. Let me explain a little history to you. On Earth, about five and a half centuries before our time, a sailing ship or a military unit overseas was effectively out of communication with its home base. The commander therefore had to be granted a very high degree of authority to act on his own initiative—and to enforce discipline. Then electronic communications came in, and brought with them—”
    “Micromanagement.”
    “No argument. But now the pendulum has swung back. With no such thing as faster-than-light ‘radio,’ messages have to be sent on ships, and a captain in