Deathtrap

by Craig Alanson

  “Yee-ha!” Jesse shouted, and exchanged a high-five with Shauna. None of them liked the standard Ruhar infantry rifle, with its pulse maser. In the opinion of the humans, that weapon was too finicky in field use, and lacked stopping power. The powercells required to feed the maser beam made the rifle heavier and bulkier than its Kristang equivalent. In training, wargame exercises and actual combat, the Mavericks had experienced too many cases of searing maser pulses being attenuated by forest foliage and even heavy rain. Even a dense fog could cause a noticeable decrease in energy delivered on the target. “Give me good old-fashioned kinetic energy every day. The Ruhar can keep their fancy phaser beams for themselves.”

  “That does make logistics simpler,” Shauna noted. The Legion logistics team already had to maintain a list of beans, bullets and Band-Aids to cover the entire force. Food and medical supplies could not be shared between humans and Verds, but having one set of weapons and ammo would simplify the task.

  “Ma’am?” Irene asked. “We’re using Kristang gear across the board?”

  “Striebich, you’re asking if you have to fly some lizard piece of shit? The answer is no. The Ruhar will be landing aircraft for the Legion, at least to cover the first wave. We won’t have time to sort out whatever gear the lizards are leaving behind. I’m sure the Ruhar will be giving the Legion second-hand aircraft, but you will be flying a Buzzard again.”

  Irene shared a grin with Derek. They were not rated to fly any Kristang aircraft, and did not want to rush through training and take an unfamiliar aircraft into combat.

  Dave had another question. “That is one bit of good news, Ma’am. Um, we’re getting Kristang rifles, but Ruhar skinsuits? Not Kristang hardshell armor suits?”

  “Correct,” Perkins replied with a tight smile. “The logic is the Ruhar have captured plenty of rifles, rockets and ammo from the lizards, but armored suits, well,” she flashed a grin. “The captured ones tend to have sustained battle damage. Plus spare parts for hardshell suits are in short supply. The Ruhar assured both UNEF and the Verds that their skinsuit software will integrate seamlessly with Kristang weapons.”

  “Fuuuuuck,” Dave groaned. “Have they tested that integration in the field?”

  “Czajka,” Perkins wished Dave had not been so pessimistic. On the other hand, she agreed with his concerns. “The Ruhar are experts on their electronic systems, we are not.”

  “So, we’re getting a Dash Ten,” Dave meant the user manual, “on the new software, when?”

  “When the Ruhar provide it to us,” Perkins was growing irritated with the team’s ‘support contractor’. “In due time. We will adapt.”

  “Colonel,” Jesse came to the defense of his friend. “The Ruhar sprung this on us, and it sounds like it’s a rush job for them. Throwing all this untested gear and units together, that’s a huge damned soup sandwich.”

  “Consider it on the job training, Colter. We need to focus on the big picture and not get wrapped around the axle.”

  “Ma’am,” Irene hesitated to further annoy her CO, then decided to plunge ahead. “I know the Alien Legion is your baby and all, but,” she looked to Derek for support. He nodded for her to continue. “But this assignment sounds like somebody is so desperate to get the Legion into action somewhere, they called in the Good Idea Fairy. This is busywork, because the Ruhar don’t know what else to do with the Legion.”

  Privately, Perkins agreed with her pilot. She had expressed the same reservations to General Ross. Officially, she had accepted the assignment and now was obligated to support the operation to the best of her ability. “Striebich, when we find a unit that only takes missions that sound good, let me know. Until then, Feznako is our mission.”

  Irene took a breath. “Yes, Ma’am. At least this time,” she scuffed her boots on the soil of Paradise, “we’re going in with our eyes open. We won’t have to guess who the real enemy is.”

  “Colonel,” Shauna had another question. “How closely are we working with the Verds? We don’t know their organization and tactics, and they don’t know ours.”

  “Good question, Jarrett, I like to focus on practical issues. The answer is UNEF and the Verds will have separate zones of responsibility when we land. However,” she held up a finger, “soon as we get set up, I will be setting up a joint human-Verd unit for cross-training.”

  “You are?” Jesse expressed surprise.

  “Not me personally, Colter, but under my command. I’m getting a headquarters staff.” That had been forced on her by UNEF HQ, over her objections. “Also, the Mavericks are being assigned a full platoon to round us out.”

  “A platoon of battle-ready Quick Reaction Force soldiers,” Jesse asked warily. “Or a full company of POG farmers we have to bring up to speed?”

  Perkins cocked her head. “What do you think, Colter?”

  “Sheee-it,” Jesse groaned. “Join the Army, they said,” he muttered. “It’ll be fun, they said. Fucking liars.”

  While most of the UNEF portion of the Legion shipped out aboard a pair of Ruhar transport ships that had to be attached to a Jeraptha star carrier, General Ross’s headquarters unit, plus the core group of Mavericks, took passage aboard the Deal Me In. That ship had accepted a contract offered by the Alien Legion partly because they needed the funds to complete repairs, but mostly because while the ship was under contract, a long string of criminal charges against them were put on hold. That did not mean the Deal Me In’s crew was happy to be transporting a group of smelly, primitive aliens on a drunken joyride across the galaxy, they just hated that somewhat less than they hated the idea of languishing in a prison cell.

  “Sir, I’ve been reviewing these OPORDs we got from the hamsters,” Perkins said during her daily meeting with Ross. She could talk freely aboard the Deal Me In, which carried no Ruhar. “They make no sense. The Verds will have almost three times the numbers of boots on the ground, but all the high-value targets are assigned to UNEF? We don’t have the manpower or air transport to cover all these sites.”

  Ross pursed his lips and pressed a button on a wall panel to slide the door closed. When they were alone, he leaned the chair back, stared at the ceiling and let out a long breath. He began speaking with his head tilted back. “How much to you know about Quadarra?”

  She searched her memory before replying. “I’m sorry, Sir. Quadarra? Never heard of it.”

  “I’m not surprised you don’t know about it, the Ruhar consider it a secret. They only told me about it three days before we left Paradise,” Ross explained as he let the chair flop back down, and thumped his elbows on the desk. “Three hundred or so years after the first Kristang world converted to the Verd-kris philosophy, the Ruhar captured another former Kristang planet called Quadarra. It was a sparsely-populated, marginally habitable place. The Lizards had owned it for millennia and never established much of a presence, because pretty much nobody wanted to live there. The star system’s biggest asset was a gas giant for refueling, Quadarra was settled only to grow food for the fuel-processing crews. Anyway, when the Ruhar captured that rock, most of the ten thousand Kristang inhabitants didn’t want to accept the offer to evac. They were part of a subclan that had attempted to double-cross a major clan, and the residents of Quadarra didn’t have any good options for resettlement. The Ruhar landed and set up shop with about a thousand people, mostly civilian support staff and their families. To provide security, somebody in the hamster government had the bright idea to bring in Verds.”

  “Oh, shit,” she groaned. She figured she knew where the story was going, and she wasn’t going to like it.

  “You got it. For a dozen years, everything was reasonably peaceful. The local Kristang were not buying the philosophy the Verds were pushing, but they were keeping their distance from the hamsters, and that’s all the Ruhar cared about. Then, the Thuranin made a push to capture a strategically vital wormhole from the Jeraptha, and they sent the Kristang in to take Quadarra back. The Ruhar knew they needed to hold that refueling ba
se, so there was a minor space battle that dragged on. What matters is the local Kristang saw the opportunity to hit the Ruhar on Quadarra, and they were joined by some of the Verds. Either the Verds figured they were screwed if the Kristang came back and were only saving their own asses, or their whole change of heart to the ‘True Kristang’ philosophy was bullshit all along. Most of the Verds fought to protect the hamsters, but enough Verds switched sides that a third of the Ruhar were slaughtered before the Ruhar fleet arrived. The fleet commander took no chances, her ships wasted every lizard on the planet, except for those Verds who were actively fighting to protect Ruhar lives. When the battle was over, the Ruhar pulled their people out and left the Verds there to run the place.”

  “The Verds are still there?”

  Ross responded with a curt nod. “The Ruhar still control the star system, and Verds provide support to the refueling facility. No hamsters live on Quadarra, and the Verds there are not allowed any weapons. Every couple of decades, the Kristang send in a ship to raid Verd settlements on Quadarra, to make a point that’s how they deal with traitors. So, the answer to your question is: the Ruhar do not trust the Verd-kris, especially Verds with guns. That’s why the Operations Orders assigned all the critical sites to UNEF, while the Verds get stuck with the shit job of clearing Kristang towns house by house.” He lifted an eyebrow to forestall her protest. “That is not going to change, Perkins.”

  She knew it was useless, even counterproductive, to argue. The Verd-kris would have to earn the trust of the Ruhar, and doing that required them to suck it up and do whatever the Ruhar ordered. “Roger that. Drive on, Sir?”

  “The joys of life downrange, Colonel,” he didn’t smile as he said that.

  “The Verds know about Quadarra?”

  “If the Verds assigned to the Legion don’t know about Quadarra, then I seriously question their S-2,” he referred to an intelligence organization.

  “Hmm,” she grunted. That meant when the Verds complained to her about their OPORDs, they knew why the Ruhar had assigned all the high-value sites to UNEF. It also meant Verd leadership was trying to use her for their own purposes.

  That, she decided, was not how to get people to trust you.

  In her prefab office, which had been set up in the humid equatorial region of Fresno, Perkins was reading that morning’s Intelligence Summary, which was mostly a list of all the things that were scheduled to happen the previous day, and didn’t. Five days after landing, the Legion was already two days behind schedule, and falling further behind every hour. Virtually nothing was happening as it was supposed to. Units were landed in the wrong place, or landed at the correct location, but the enemy units they were assigned to contact were nowhere to be found. Supplies for humans were dropped in zones controlled by the Verds, and there was not enough air transport available to shift everything around to where it was needed. One Verd-kris unit opened crates to find a large oversupply of rockets, but no extra rounds for their rifles. An already-overtasked dropship had to be diverted to relocate ammo. An airbase discovered that the mountain of spare parts piled up at the edge of the landing zone did not include a vital gearbox, for the turbine engines of the particular type of obsolete Buzzard assigned to that base. The first platoon of Verds to probe into a Kristang town found themselves trapped after the rickety bridge behind them collapsed, and they had to be pulled out by air after dark. The next morning, their abandoned vehicles had been stripped of everything useful and left to clog the main road.

  Overall, the operation on Fresno was going much better than she expected.

  She was startled by a deep voice from the door of the tent partition. “Colonel Perkins? Surgun Jates, reporting as ordered.”

  “Jates?” She flung her tablet on the folding table that served as a desk, delighted to see the Verd-kris soldier. “Come in,” she stepped around the desk and lifted a box of supplies off the only other chair. “Please, sit down.”

  “Thank you, I would rather stand, Colonel.”

  She waved a hand to take in the sagging tent that served as her headquarters. “We’re not formal here, Jates.”

  “It’s not a matter of formality, Colonel,” he replied with a grimace. “My unit HALO jumped from orbit for the landing here, and my balloon malfunctioned. It was a rough landing, I injured my back.”

  “Oh, sorry to hear that. What are you doing here? I didn’t know you had signed up for the Legion.”

  “I have been assigned here as your liaison officer,” he announced with stoic lack of expression, his gaze fixed on the featureless tent wall above her head.

  “Lia- Damn it, I don’t need a liaison. General Ross already has a whole liaison team assigned to his staff.”

  “Those were my orders, Colonel.”

  She frowned. The Verd-kris apparently had their own version of the Good Idea Fairy. Someone in their leadership decided that, because Jates had served with the Mavericks before, he was the best person to work with them. And maybe spy on the humans. “Fine. We’re happy to have you here, but I do not have a staff billet available for you to ride a chair. What I do need is someone to train my shiny new platoon of POGs in a common set of infantry tactics.”

  “Pogue?” Jates’s eyes shifted rapidly side to side as he listened to the translator whispering in one ear.

  “Sorry. US Army slang, it stands for Persons Other than Grunts. I shouldn’t have said that,” she admitted. On Paradise, that term had evolved to refer to soldiers who resigned from the service to try civilian life, then re-upped for the Legion. “UNEF sent me a platoon of people who have spent the past year or more growing potatoes on Paradise. They need refresher training, and I want to take the opportunity for them to train with a Verd team. I need someone who knows Verd tactics. You,” she jabbed a finger toward Jates, “are perfect for the job.”

  Jates maintained his stoic blankness, except for a muscle near his left eye began to twitch. “Colonel, I have never served in a training capacity.”

  “Exactly,” she grinned. “You’ll be making it up as you go, so you won’t have any bad habits to unlearn.”

  The muscle near his eye twitched harder, and one of his feet scuffed the floor. “I must be honest, Colonel Perkins. We Verd-kris have the advantage of greater numbers here on Fresno,” the Verds had adopted the human name for the planet as a sign of their disdain for the local warrior caste Kristang. “However, we do not have much actual combat experience. Your people have served in combat, even if that was on your home world before you left to fight out here. My people have not been,” the hard line of his mouth broke and one side turned down. “Allowed to participate in military actions by the Ruhar.”

  “The hamsters still don’t trust your people. Yeah, I know all about that. This is an ideal opportunity for you, then. The platoon assigned to me are thirty-two soldiers, humans,” she clarified. “They all have some level of combat experience.” She needed to check the personnel files of the people in the platoon. Some of them had Combat Action Badges noted in their files, but she didn’t how much real direct action they had seen. “What they lack is recent experience, and their fitness level needs a refresher. I’ll contact the Verd leadership to get a couple sections assigned here, for joint training.”

  Jates knew he was not being given a choice. He snapped to attention. “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Outstanding,” she grinned, and stood to offer a handshake to the tough alien. “Glad to have you aboard, Surgun. We just got a shipment of supplies dropped from orbit early this morning, and my team is setting up a base camp. Go over there and get them organized. Sergeants Czajka and Colter are-” She remembered once again that Dave was no longer a soldier. “Anyway, they are at base camp, I’m sure they will be happy to see you.”

  Jesse and Dave were having tremendous fun trying to get their new squads squared away, which is to say they were not having any fun at all. Whatever military experience the recruits had before they signed up for the Legion, they had apparently forgotten all about it w
hile growing potatoes on Paradise. Privately, Dave told Jesse that he thought the group assigned to Perkins were the people nobody else wanted, and Jesse had to agree. They did the best they could before Jates strode over to dress them down for not having equipment ready, for their squads milling about aimlessly and for any other infraction, real or made up.

  “Damn,” Dave muttered from the corner of his mouth. “Jates has got a real hardon to bust our balls today.”

  Jesse tilted his head in agreement. “I just hope he-”

  “What’s that, Colter?” Jates’s head snapped around, and Jesse had a sickening feeling that he’d forgotten how good the hearing of advanced aliens could be. “You have something you’d like to share with the class?”

  “Uh, no, Surgun. Eager to get the job done, that’s all?”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Colter. Were you a dumbass in a previous life, too? Because no one could manage to get that stupid in a single lifetime.”

  Dave made a snort as he tried to swallow a laugh. Jates spun to turn his anger on a different target. “You think this is funny, Czajka? You and Colter, I want you to get twenty envelopes, and have each person in your squads address one for their parents back home. Then,” he continued as Dave and Jesse shared a look of raised eyebrows, “I will take a dump in each envelope and send it to their parents, to pay them back for the shit they sent to me.”

  That did it. Jesse and Dave struggled mightily not to laugh, but they were losing the battle. Their shoulders shook while they bit their lips and stared straight ahead.

  Between Jates, Jesse and Dave, they got their squads straightened out and in some semblance of order. The main contribution of the Verd-kris was to shout insults so inventive and memorable that Dave wished he had time to write them down. He and Jesse found a minute alone with the Surgun, while they reviewed their plan to conduct a house to house search of the village. “Uh, hey, Surgun, I was wondering-”