Date Point: 16y10m1d AV
Starship Silent But Deadly, Hell system, Hunter Space
Tooko, Brother and Stud of Clan Firefang
To Tooko’s mild surprise, Ten’Gewek did not, in fact, stink. Oh, sure, they had a certain… physicality that extended to their aroma, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Just…
Well. Strong. Strong enough that the scent still lingered in the main cabin even though most of their cavemonkeys had been safely in stasis for a couple of weeks. It had quickly become apparent to Tooko that carrying them as cargo was best for everyone’s sanity: They did not respond well to being cooped up indoors for prolonged periods. All they did was eat, wrestle, lift, and sleep. And eat. Ample stores or not, nobody had quite figured on just how much food they’d go through in a routine like that, so…
Ferd was up and about, though. He wanted to be, for this bit. And it was an opportunity to learn.
“We don’t have to be quiet?”
“The ship is being quiet for us. All the sound stays inside.” Tooko had taken a strange shine to Ferd. Teaching him was a fun challenge, something like a young eager cub who had an adult’s quickness of mind. He couldn’t fit his shoulders through the cockpit hatch, but Ten’Gewek had excellent eye-vision, so he could see everything Tooko was doing.
“Clever!”
Tooko debated whether to tell him that it was kind of automatic that sound didn’t propagate through a vacuum, but decided against it. Too much groundwork involved. Instead he duck-nodded and indicated the instruments above him and to his right that comprised the cloak panel.
“It’s even more clever than that,” he said. “If you were outside the ship right now, you could touch it but not see it.”
“Yeah, why is that?” Wilde asked. He was in the copilot chair, not actually doing anything but content to listen and chat. “It’s not like we’re getting within visual range anyway…”
“The cloak makes us transparent to nearly all of the EM spectrum, and the visible wavelengths are a tiny, tiny part of that,” Tooko said. “It’d be more work not to include them.”
“Wave-length.” Ferd muttered, clearly memorizing the word.
“The color of light,” Tooko translated. “It’s just that there are way more colors than anyone can see. My people can see some colors, Humans can see more. Yours can see at least as many as they can, but machines can be made to see all of them.”
“Maybe, we see more. We notice, some fruits Wilde not see difference. And sometimes, we see in water what he not see.”
Tooko shot a look at Wilde. “Put that in sky-people-speak for me?”
Wilde grinned and winked at Ferd, who grumbled in a placid, satisfied sort of way. “They might be tetrachromatic and maybe even perceive polarization. We don’t know yet. Possibly that’s why they’re so sensitive to bright light. Might be why their pupils are slotted, too.”
“I like my Oak-leys,” Ferd declared, happily. “Keep too-bright shimmer out of face!”
“They have words to describe different kinds of shimmer, which is why we think they might be able to see polarization. That and the water trick…” Wilde shrugged. “Damn useful, at any rate. Too bad they don’t much care for wide open skies.”
Tooko duck-nodded and glanced up at his in-system map. “…Three minutes to the debris field. Frasier, you ready?”
Frasier was on the upper deck, watching SBD’s sensors. His voice floated down the ladder. “Aye!”
“Just like we discussed, I need a low-power ESDAR pulse for debris tracking, three minutes.”
“Already set it up!”
“Thank you!”
Ferd, of course, had questions. “Ess-star?”
“ElectroStatic Detection And Ranging.” Tooko slowed their warp approach. He had a rough estimate of the Ring debris field’s scope and boundaries from the passive telescopes, but flying into it was not on his to-do list. Yet. “You know forcefields?”
“What they do, yes. The magic is many paths away to me.”
“Fine. Well, one of the things they can do is ‘feel’ things a very long way away. Even quite small things.”
“…Space, have no up, no down, no gravity. And everything black, black, black. Small things, can’t see, don’t fall down.”
“Well… no, but they do move. And so do we. And we move fast enough that if we hit one then…”
“Like Base-ball throwing baseball. Very bad for Ferd.”
Wilde chuckled, and Tooko chittered. Ferd really was very clever, in a very Humanesque sort of way.
“Something like that. So the ESDAR lets us see things and avoid them. Speaking of which… Frasier? Stand by for my mark.”
“Ready!”
“….Mark.”
Frasier had done a decent job of following the settings Tooko gave him. The pulse was brief and low-powered, and hopefully therefore short-ranged enough to go unnoticed. Active sensor pings were always a calculated risk, but sometimes they were absolutely necessary. Especially when maneuvering into the glittering remains of a smashed megastructure.
Okay, the pieces were still hundreds of kilometers apart, but it paid to know where they were. Ferd’s analogy had been a long way short of what would actually happen to them if they hit even a modest chunk at orbital velocities.
Tooko found one of the bigger bits and matched orbit with it, trailing by about seventy kilometers. The local gas density was marginally higher than vacuum, which was perfect for their needs.
“Rees? Launch one.”
Rees was in the cargo bay. His voice came over the comm net. “Launching one.”
There was a loud BANG through the hull as a pressurized air cylinder blasted a spy satellite out of SBD’s rear. Ferd jumped and looked around, tail lashing in alarm.
“We’re playing a strange game of hide-and-seek,” Wilde commented for Ferd’s benefit. “Remember how space has no air? That bang just now? It’s air that can be seen, so Tooko’s put us somewhere where that wouldn’t be noticed.”
“And, big enemy can’t hear?” Ferd seemed suspicious.
“Naw mate, hearing things is like stones rippling in water. You need air or something for sounds to ripple through.”
“So…no air, then no sound.”
“Exactly.”
Tooko accelerated a little, pushing them into a slightly higher orbit. It wouldn’t take much: they could actually launch the spysats quite close together and then just let orbital dynamics play out to spread them across the whole of Hell’s sky.
But speaking of which… the first satellite was already giving them some good telemetry. And Tooko had never imagined a planet could look so sick before.
“Gour’s stolen nose…” he muttered. Wilde just let out an ‘eeurff’ sound and shook his head.
“…Is bad?” Ferd asked.
“Guess that’s what a nuclear winter looks like…” Wilde muttered. “Uh… we know lots of things fell down on this world. It must have put lots of dust in the air. Enough dust to cut the ground off from the sun a little, make everything colder.”
“And a lot of what fell would have been deadly poison, too,” Tooko added grimly. “It’s going to be a long time before life gets back on its feet down there…”
“…Daar did this?” Ferd asked, quietly.
“He delivered the weapon that did it himself. And fired it. So… yes.”
“…Godshit. He killed a world?”
“Not killed,” Tooko said, feeling it was his duty to stick up for the Great Father. “But it is very, very sick, yes.”
Ferd stood and watched the diseased yellow continents and the leprous seas for some silent moments. His whole body had gone uncharacteristically still—Ten’Gewek rarely stopped moving when they were standing. Now, he was a statue.
“…I was wrestled by a god. And lived.”
“The Great Father is not a god.”
Ferd looked down at him, suspiciously. “…You sure?”
“He’s wrestled me and I lived. Barely. Also, I don’t imagine a god would be quite so fond of fart jokes.”
“Or bloody stupid songs about digging a hole,” Wilde added.
Ferd didn’t look perfectly convinced, so Tooko sighed. “He’d say he isn’t,” he said. “And the Great Father doesn’t lie. Good enough?”
“…If he’s not a god, then this is people-work,” Ferd fretted. “Can… can people really kill a whole world?”
“All too easily, mate,” Wilde told him, grimly.
Ferd’s tail twitched, once, then he turned away and returned to the back of the cabin. “…I think,” he rumbled. He slumped down onto the floor matting next to the beds, pulled a blanket over himself, and thereby gained some privacy to be alone with his thoughts.
Tooko traded a worried look with Wilde, then a mutual shrug, and decided that the time had come to launch the second spysat.
A few hours and several more compressed-air hammering sounds later, their flyby of Hell was complete, and Frasier had come up empty on the one thing he’d been specifically looking out for: any evidence of sapient-made fires. Their presence would have indicated even rudimentary settlements or dwellings, but it was pretty clear after several orbits and plenty of observation that If anyone was alive down there, they didn’t even know how to light a campfire.
As far as Tooko was concerned, that was enough to write Hell off as a graveyard.
The spysats did return some signs of life: Hunters, picking over the wreckage of the Ring for salvage and materials. They weren’t trying to be stealthy, but their presence made Tooko even more cautious in his egress than he had in his approach.
Only once Hell was a long way behind them at the fastest warp he dared set did he breathe more easily and rise from the pilot’s chair. Their next destination was a few days away in a straight line, but he’d chosen an evasive course rather than the direct one. He wasn’t willing to get them all killed out of laziness.
Wilde had fallen asleep in the copilot chair. Tooko left him alone, wandered back down the cabin, and sprang onto the bed next to Ferd.
“…You okay?”
The blanket shifted. For a second, Tooko doubted he’d get a reply, but after a second Ferd twitched it back from his head, down around his shoulders. “…Big thinking.”
“I bet. Play a game to take your mind off it for a while?”
“Hmm… No.” Ferd shook his head. “I want to lift.”
Tooko chittered resignedly. “Of course you do…”
“No hunt, no trees, need to keep strong.” Ferd loudly slapped his ridiculous abdominals, then suddenly turned his full attention on Tooko. “You should do like us! Work hard, so body always ready! You not do anything but sit, play Ta-shen, eat like lazy bibtaw!”
He stood, and a hand like a leather-upholstered hydraulic clamp closed around Tooko’s wrist. “Come, we do workout now.”
“Now?!” Tooko complained.
“You sit too long, no move! Have twig for arms, no meat on ass! Need to hunt more, like me!”
“You know that’s not how our culture works…” Tooko objected, knowing full well it was futile.
Sure enough, Ferd was having none of it. “You teach me many things, very smart-strong. I teach you this. Maybe, help you fuck many pretty women!”
“I do that anyway!!”
“Always room for more!”
And with that, out came the cleverly hidden-away resistance training equipment that folded up and slotted into the walls and floor, and Tooko was subjected to the indignity of being educated by an iron-age tribesman on how to work very hard and very long at doing nothing.
He got wrestled by Ferd, too. That was mostly an education in just how many ways the giant cavemonkey could squash him like a bug, tie him in knots, or pull him apart like tissue paper. To his credit he seemed to know exactly how strong he was, and exactly how strong Tooko wasn’t. That also meant Ferd knew just how far he could push things, and how painfully.
He even let Tooko turn the tables now and then. Somehow, that didn’t feel at all patronizing. Surprisingly, getting tossed around by a stone-hard and floor-bendingly heavy cavemonkey wasn’t quite as awful as he might have worried. It was…playful. Well-meaning. Fun, even. He’d ended up irrevocably marinated in Ferd’s sweat, and his everything was going to be sore…but he couldn’t dispute the point. These long missions tended to bring out his lethargy a little too much. He’d be quite content to just curl up and hibernate while he waited for the next time he was needed, but there was a certain satisfaction to using his body. Even if he admitted it only grudgingly.
Ferd had also decided to provide Motivation, or at least his idea of it, anyway. Motivation, in this case, meant showing off his preposterously huge muscles whenever Tooko took his turn exerting himself, whenever Ferd could stand up proudly and flaunt his Keeda-tale brawn like a guileless brownie…
Tooko tried very hard not to enjoy himself, and failed. Ferd’s cheery attitude was infectious.
That evening, the Given-Man decided not to go back into stasis. Instead he built himself a nest right in the middle and pulled Tooko close, wrapping him up not-quite-uncomfortably tight in those thick legs, arms and tail. It was a gesture simultaneously friendly, protective…and one that would brook no arguing. Pecking order inescapably established, it seemed.
Wilde gave him a grin, and curled up on his own sleeping-spot. Humans were a bit standoffish about sleep, but they all bed down pretty close together anyway…
Tooko was the last to fall asleep, even despite Ferd’s rather fierce body heat doing its best to lull Tooko into a deep slumber. He usually lay awake for a while before sleeping anyway, putting his thoughts in order, and today had come with more mental filing to do than most. Foremost of which was an honest appraisal of his own… happiness.
It was a strange thing to feel, when he was the only one of his kind on a ship full of aliens, hurtling stealthily through the most fearsomely dangerous region of space in the known galaxy, under the very real threat of immediate and hapless death… But Tooko was forced to admit to himself that he truly was happy with his life at that moment.
It was only once he accepted that fact and curled up a little closer to the giant brute he’d unexpectedly become friends with that he finally fell into a deep and restful sleep.
Date Point: 16y10m1d AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha) Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Jack “Two-Seventy” Tisdale
Jack had a hangover.
That part wasn’t new, really. He never listened to good advice about drinking some water before he went to bed. And it wasn’t a bad hangover this time… a four out of ten. Mild headache, dry mouth, feeling… fragile.
…Naked in not his bed, with his best friend cuddled up to him, also naked.
Fuck.
Well…apparently, yeah. Fuck!
Rhi had finally got her way. Said the right thing, plied him with enough drink… he didn’t remember exactly, though memories slithered into his awareness as he blinked blearily at her face and tried to put the events of last night in order.
So: What had Jack learned?
Well, firstly, that practice did, in fact, make perfect. She’d been very understanding. And then he got better. Apparently he got pretty damn good at it, after the first couple of tries!
The second, was holy shit he needed to piss.
The third was that he was a lot closer to the edge of the bed than he’d thought, and the floor wasn’t very friendly.
He groaned, rolled across the carpet, and lurched up to his feet. The loo. Yes. Where was it?
Rhi had woken up in response to his crashing exit from her bed, and blinked at him: her expression looked like he felt for a second, but then it warmed. She lay back down again and stretched, and Jack forgot his pressing need for a second.
“Hmm…mornin,’ studlet.”
“Hmnngh….” he shambled zombie-like towards the loo. “Why does that feel like a backhanded compliment?”
“‘Cuz you’re cute as hell and insecure as fuck. Which is a weird thing for a guy who’s been out-lifting ‘two-seventy’ for a long while now…”
Jack had never been good with any kind of compliment, really. He blinked at her, then blundered out of the room. If he was gonna think, he needed his bladder to stop screaming at him.
She got out of bed and went to the kitchen while he was enjoying the best piss ever, and he heard the sound of pans and plates. He drank a few cupped handfuls of water after washing his hands, shook them dry, and then wasted a couple of minutes searching around her bedroom for all his clothes. He found his jeans, socks and underwear easily enough, but his T-shirt was…
…Right.
Sure enough, his T-shirt was clinging wonderfully to Rhi’s curves when he checked.
“…Uh…” he began.
“Mine now.” She shot a grin at him, then nodded her head towards the table and a bottle of orange juice.
“What about me?”
“What about you? This way, I get to look at your abs, hottie. Now go make me coffee.”
Jack, being much too tired, too tender and too lost to argue, just blinked at her and then did as he was told.
Bacon, eggs, coffee, juice and toast took the edge off last night’s alcohol, and freed Jack’s head up to wonder how the hell he even started the conversation he wanted to have.
Then again… Rhi was a boisterous and cheerfully straightforward personality, but she knew when to get serious when it was important. She let him eat for a minute, then leaned forward over the table.
“…You’re quiet. C’mon Jack, think out loud. You’ll just over-think if it you keep it in.”
Jack sighed and put his fork down. “…Last night was great. I keep wondering when I’m gonna get scared or nervous about… I don’t know. I don’t think I’m thinking, really.”
“Well, that’s about as clear as mud,” she smiled, then scooted her chair around to sit next to him rather than opposite. “Seems to me like we work well enough. There’s no need to think too hard about it. Just… enjoy. That’s what I wanna do.”
“…I’ll try.”
“That’s all I’m asking for.” She leaned up, kissed his cheek, and that… seemed to be that. Why overthink it? Jack kissed her, she made a pleased noise, and then they ate breakfast. It… really wasn’t as complicated as he’d worried it would be.
She did give him his t-shirt back so she could get dressed and they could go to work, though. They jogged up to the base, which was a shorter run from her apartment than from his house, signed in, and Jack tried to mentally put the whole subject of them aside in a different box for the day.
He failed for one simple reason: the walk of shame was impossible to avoid.
All the HEAT were in for alert today; intel had been skittish lately, so they were crowded together in the barracks at THREATCON 3. That was Jack’s downfall, because there was something…irredeemably primal about the Lads. They knew, before he had said anything, before he’d even taken two steps into the building—
“Eyy! Two-seventy finally got lucky!”
Godsdamnit, Adam.
“Mi amigo,” Adam grinned. “Finally got your brain to work, huh?”
“Pff,” was about all the retort Jack could muster.
“More like got his dick to work,” Coyers rumbled happily. It wasn’t high wit as far as Jack was concerned, but it got an avalanche of well-meaning jeers from the others.
That would have been bad enough, but of course the Gaoians had noses like dogs—better, in fact—and were immediately sniffing out details that frankly defied belief.
“Oh, you were up late last night,” chittered Thurrsto amusedly. He’d chosen to stand watch for this first go; Gaoians led from the front, he’d said. “Putting that strength and legendary human endurance of yours to the test, eh?”
Jack wanted to sink right through the floor. Especially because Rhi thought shame was for other people, and happily caught the ball that Thurrsto threw.
“Oh, my little stud here sure did! We had hours of fun, didn’t we, Jackie-boy?”
“Yeah, but no tacos for dinner?” Regaari asked. “Smells like you just had cheap kebab! From the bad vendor, too! What kind of uncivilized savages are you?”
“Says the man who keeps replacing his robot paw even though he could get a better living paw in about an hour…” Akiyama commented. “One o’ those days you’re gonna regret that.”
“My robot paw can do things that flesh and blood can’t, thank you!” Regaari retorted, primly. “Besides. The Females love it.”
“Why, does it vibrate?” Rhi asked.
Regaari instantly flattened his ears; the truth was out, now. A flurry of laughs, chitters and rapid Gaori that Jack couldn’t quite follow flowed from every be-fanged mouth in the room. And plenty of the Human ones too.
With the shame now firmly transferred, he took the opportunity to escape into the locker room and change into his uniform. And grab a quick shower.
When he emerged a few minutes later, Rhi had changed too and the Lads had swung into one of their disturbingly well-coordinated and efficient inspection-order cleaning blitzes. ‘Horse and Coyers simply picked up the (probably) bomb-proof Couch and hoisted it overhead so Sikes could vacuum under it. Shim and Ergaan had their sticky-pad gloves and footwear on, and were using them to walk along the cinderblock walls and clean the light fixtures. Blaczynski vanished in a blur of a dead run to deliver the garbage bags to the dumpsters around the corner.
Murray was dusting. Quietly. Ninja-dusting.
“What’s with the sudden barracks party?” Jack asked.
“Update from Powell. Intel’s gotten way nervous, and First Fang’s leadership is going to be showing up pretty soon. That probably means our favorite VIP is gonna visit, too.”
Sure enough, not fifteen minutes later…he showed up, trundling up the stairs with his usual floor-shaking happiness. And before they could even see him…
The Great Father chittered somewhere in the infrasonic, “Eyy! Smells like two-seventy finally fucked his first Female!” he boomed as he rolled into the room, all swagger and smarmy amusement. “‘Ya didn’t break ‘em too much, did ‘ya Miller?”
“Not for lack of trying!” She traded a high-five with him, then massaged her hand and grimaced once he’d moved on.
“So yeah! Anyhoo, business first. First Fang’s packin’ up in the warehouse next door. An’ I’m here with ‘em on a full deployment, so you know intel’s gettin’ jumpier an’ jumpier…”
“They do that, though. Worrying is what intel people do.”
“Fuck, it’s what they’re for—”
The alert went off mid-sentence. It was basically a fire alarm, high on the wall, but a different colour. It did the exact same job of letting everyone know to get up and get their arses in motion, though.
“…Gods, I must have a fuckin’ superpower,” Daar grumbled, as well-practiced motion exploded around him. The Gaoians flowed over the couch and furniture and were out the door first.
Jack and Rhi were the slowest. Of course they were, anybody would be versus a team of supermen and muscled-up alien warhounds. Even at a dead run, they were left behind as they pounded down the hall to the suit room, but they were among the first Techs to arrive, and pounced on Moho’s station and started the pre-wear checklist on his suit as Deacon, Doyle, Hargreaves and all the others piled in around them. On the other side of the room, the operators stripped single-use undersuits out of their packaging and got changed.
“Thank fuck we shaved down yesterday,” Adam grumbled as he stepped into his undersuit. Like always, his needed to squeeze the hardest and was a little bit past too small for him, but the material was just strong and stretchy enough to stand up against his body’s demands.
It’d be fine once he was properly suited up.
Jack always listened to the briefing when he could. It told him a lot about what kind of action his friends would be going into, and that usually helped him pick out a few little things that Moho might want tweaked on his suit.
Powell was suiting up too, this time. Powell, The Great Father, Champion Thurrsto and Fiin, in the other building… And Daar’s huge, wolf-like ears were very, very still as he listened intently to what one of his aides had to say.
The seriousness of it hit Jack suddenly. And Rhi too, to judge from the way she paused for just a second. Of course, these weren’t just operations any longer, were they? This was a war, now.
Not that it had ever not been a war. But… it was hard to put his finger on, but there was a feeling down Jack’s spine like things had maybe shifted up a gear.
Over by the lockers, Powell kept the briefing quick.
“We’re scrambling to assist an aid convoy en route to that Guvnurag planet I can’t fookin’ pronounce,” he said. “Hunters are hittin’ ‘em. Hard. The Guvnurag need that convoy, an’ there’s a lot of good people on those ships. We’ll be boardin’ the freighters first to save civilian lives, the broodship second. Boarding and capture is all per SOP, you know how it goes.”
Daar jumped in once Powell had said his bit. “I’ll be with First Fang aboard th’ Destroyin’ Fury. Our primary focus is gonna be an offensive smash-an’-grab against th’ Hunters. Rescue’s a bit o’ a more ‘delicate’ kinda can-opening, yijao? First Fang’s mebbe not quite the right asset ‘fer that. Fleet command’ll be mine, Powell an’ Fiin are in charge of y’all.”
Powell nodded. “Suit up. We jump to Cally as soon as you’re sealed and checked.”
And that was it. Straightforward.
Getting Moho into his rig was a well-practiced dance for Jack and Rhi now. They were a “sub-two” team, capable getting their operator suited, booted, sealed and heated in under two minutes. They flew through the checklist with both speed and precision, missing nothing, and were the fourth or fifth crew to call clear.
As usual, Doyle and Hargreaves, Adam’s techs, finished first, even if squeezing him into his undersuit took longer than anyone else. But they had the advantage that their operator was absurdly strong enough to take on half the hard work all by himself. That advantage was dimmed a bit by all the extra kit the Protectors wore, and him in particular: additional armor plates, medical equipment, heavy weapons and so on.
Moho was pretty straightforward. Moho carried things that went boom. That was why Rhianna was on his crew: she’d been an ammo handler before transferring to the SOR.
So, while she grabbed Moho’s grenades, C4, breaching charges and all the other party tricks, Jack sealed up the toolkit and “travel pack.” Most of what they needed was up on Caledonia already, but there were always a few things—calibrated tools, up-to-date data, the day’s intravenous package freshly delivered by Medical—that had to go with them.
Jack and Rhianna wouldn’t be going with. The HEAT didn’t need all the suit techs along for the ride, and space was at a premium on Cally anyway. So once they’d delivered their Operator and his luggage… that was it. Their work was done. They’d clean up and reset their station, and after that they’d be on alert and on base until Coyers came back.
Adam had a spare moment for Jack before he thundered out of the bay with the rest. “Yo. You take care of Miller, got it? I think this is gonna be a rough mission. For everyone.”
It was more a gentle command than anything else, but it came from a man who towered over nearly everybody, and who was encased in a personal armor system so heavy and effective, he was more a living tank than anything else.
Jack nodded, a bit nervously. “I will.”
Adam gave him a smile. “I know you will. You’re in the fight, too. Remember that.” And with that bit of encouragement he was gone, shaking the building with his every step.
The Great Father was the last to leave. He’d watched the exchange, flicked an ear in a gesture Jack couldn’t interpret, then stampeded off with even more ground-shuddering speed.
From the moment the alert sounded to the moment the building thumped faintly in sympathy with the Array firing to send them off, fewer than ten minutes had elapsed. The silence was… heavy.
Rhi broke it. “…Whew.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed.
“You’d think we’d be getting used to this, huh?”
“Some things, you don’t get used to I guess…” Jack indicated the bench. “Let’s clean up.”
She nodded, and started slotting her tools back into their rack. “You gonna cast a spell for ‘em?”
“I always do. You gonna pray for them?”
“I always do.” She paused, then looked at him. “…You ever cast one for us?”
“…I think I might have to change it now.”
“Heh. Yeah.” she laughed softly, then stooped to take an inventory of the single-use items they’d expended. “Uh…can I help?”
…Yeah. They were going to be great together. Jack smiled at her, and finished cleaning up his half of the workbench.
“I’d like that,” he said.