“Ouch again,” Mike said, rubbing his chin. “There’s better stuff for fighting ACS than has ever been produced. We looked at it a long time back, but there were heavy grav rifles specifically designed to crack armor. Producing it, though, requires… Indowy.”

“You begin to get the picture,” Tam said. “You’re the best combat technician we have, period. That’s the first reason you’re going to be involved if it comes down to a full-up firefight with these human Bane Sidhe. What we have here on Earth is a reinforced platoon of ACS for heavy defense and training. If it comes down to using ACS, that’s all you’ve got to work with. DAG had fifty people and there’s an unknown larger group of humans that has some combat capability. Couple that with really heavy weaponry and one platoon of ACS might not do it. You, however, are a force multiplier. The second reason is that you know the full political background. It might be that you’ll have to throw some or all of the fight. It might be that we need some of these guys to survive. But it can’t appear that we’re in collusion with them. That would mean the Darhel would take Strike apart like a chicken.”

“Well, that’s a lovely set of parameters I’ve been handed,” Mike said.

“That’s why you get paid the big bucks,” General Wesley said.

“And all to keep the Darhel swilling at the trough.”

“The alternative to which is mass civil war,” Wesley said. “Try to break the Darhel in all seriousness and they’ll use human surrogates against any rebel group. We, that being people who believe in freedom and the right of people to choose their own masters, might win in the end but in the meantime the casualty levels will be astronomical and it gives the Posleen a chance to regroup.”

“It’s going to have to be done someday,” Mike said. “Humans aren’t going to just take Darhel hegemony forever.”