SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  After it took off, Skippy followed its flight by satellite, we were able to watch it every second. The Kristang were being cautious with their beat up aircraft, they could have come to get the fake Elder power tap the day before, but the weather had been bad, with low clouds and rain. The day the aircraft left the base, the weather was patchy clouds and cold, with only light winds. Perfect for landing a poorly-maintained aircraft in an unfamiliar area.

  "What do we call it?" Smythe asked, while we watched the aircraft cruising along high above the clouds, it was headed straight for us.

  "The aircraft?" Adams inquired. "On Paradise, the Ruhar had a similar vertical lift transport that we called a Buzzard. This is the lizard version, we can call it a Luzzard for now. Or something like a crow, maybe."

  "Luzzard is good enough for now," I said, I didn't want us to get distracted by a discussion that wasn't relevant to the operation. "Skippy, what are they saying?"

  "The pilots haven't communicated with their base since the aircraft reached cruising altitude. I can't hear them talking inside the aircraft. Hey, I can relay their transmissions to you, and translate it," Skippy offered.

  "That would be great," it would be useful to hear what the pilots were telling their base, in real time. "Relay it to the Zinger teams also."

  "Affirmative."

  We expected the Luzzard to overfly the bait, our fake Elder power tap, it made sense they would want to thoroughly check out the area. What we did not expect was for the Luzzard to fly over the area, at high altitude, several times, and then fly in a wide circle three times. It was a damned good thing it had rained a lot recently, the rain covered up the fact that the area near the caverns had been well trampled by humans. We had gathered grasses and shrubs from other areas and scattered them over places where we'd walked often enough to create a path through the mud, the rain couldn't hide those tracks by itself. Except for the Zinger teams and spotters like myself, everyone else was waiting deep in the caverns, with all power shut off, and no artificial heat sources. We were as prepared as we could be, given the circumstances.

  Desai, who was with me, told me the pilot likely circling the area to look for a low-risk place to land. The Luzzard was flying slowly, cruising around, and it was a tempting target, although it was within Zinger range, it was not comfortably within Zinger range. If the pilot detected a Zinger immediately, and the missile for any reason missed on its first intercept attempt, the Luzzard could have flown out of range, and that would be a disaster for us. We stuck to the plan, and waited for the Luzzard to descend. The Luzzard teams remained under cover, maintaining discipline, waiting for Smythe's signal.

  Descend it did. Through Skippy, we heard the pilot call back to his base, announcing that he was making one more pass over the bait, at low altitude, and that he intended to land on top of a canyon ridge, rather than risk landing at the bottom of a canyon and not being able to fly back out in the aircraft he didn't completely trust. There was apparently some protest about that idea from the other Kristang aboard the Luzzard, it meant they would need to climb down the canyon, then all the way back up, lugging the precious power tap with them.

  The Luzzard approached from the south, with the sun behind it and not interfering with the pilot's vision. It descended rapidly at first, then went into a shallow dive. The pilot was going to fly over the canyon where the bait was located, and land atop the canyon wall to the north. I gave the 'Go' signal to Smythe, and he took it from there.

  An Indian paratroop team got lucky, or unlucky, they were in the perfect position as the Luzzard approached. Just as the Luzzard cleared the south canyon wall, the paratroopers rippled off a pair of missiles, and they were on the unfortunate Luzzard in the blink of an eye. Both Zingers impacted the Luzzard's starboard engine nacelle, drawn in by the glaring heat signature of the straining engine. Those Zingers were smart, they knew that while the engines were vulnerable, and easier to target in any aircraft surrounded by a stealth field, the most vital part of the aircraft was its power center, where energy for the engines was generated and stored. That is where the Zingers would normally have targeted themselves, which would have been no good for our purpose; we needed the Kristang to see a Luzzard that fell out of the sky because an engine exploded. For them to fly over the crash site, and see that missiles had ripped holes in the body of the aircraft, would have screwed up all our plans. That is why the SpecOps Zinger teams manually targeted the starboard engines, and locked the Zingers' seekers there before launch.

  Without a stealth field, without the pilots taking any precautions against an enemy they didn't even know was on the planet, and with the pilots flying low and slow over the canyon, searching for the bait we'd planted, the Luzzard was a sitting duck. The first missile destroyed the starboard engine, the second missile impacting a split-second later obliterated what was left of the engine, plus most of the sponson it was attached to. Missile warhead debris and engine turbine blades splattered the fuselage, ripping it apart like tissue paper. The Luzzard staggered in the air, spinning rapidly to the right, its nose in the air, then it flipped over on its back and fell straight down. The tail clipped the lip of the north canyon cliff, shearing part of the tail off, and sending the Luzzard tumbling end over end, bouncing off the canyon wall on its way down to a violent crash on the canyon floor, where it rolled over several times. What was left, which was surprisingly intact, came to rest with the back half partly submerged in a stream.

  "Alpha teams, hold position," I ordered. Captain Xho, I knew, was itching to get into real action with his Alpha team in powered armor suits, and I couldn't blame him one bit. The Kristang we'd seen boarding the Luzzard had been wearing typical cold weather gear, no armor and no weapons that we could see. It was possible one or two armor suits were inside the Luzzard, and the Kristang had donned them in flight, that seemed unlikely. From the intel Skippy had gathered, access to the armor was restricted to the high-ranking Kristang, it was intended for them to keep their forced labor under control. Considering that, I couldn't see their leaders allowing the laborers in the Luzzard having access to any type of weapon.

  I also couldn't see how anyone, even genetically-perfected super warriors like Kristang, could have survived the crash. The super-tough composites of the hull structure had held together, in conditions where a human-built craft would have been flaming chunks. For all their enhancements, the Kristang were biological, with the limitations of biology. The extreme g-loads of the crash must have snapped necks, crushed rib cages, torn limbs off. There was no way, I was sure, any of them could have survived that.

  I think I was sure. "Alpha team, hold position," I ordered, "repeat, hold position."

  "Acknowledged," Xho replied tersely.

  "Skippy, you feeding our cover story in the video?"

  "Affirmative," Skippy said with uncharacteristic brevity.

  Our friendly beer can, controlling data feeds through the Kristang’s' two satellites, was the key to our entire plan to knock out the scavengers' advantage of air power, and whittle down their numbers. What we saw, on the ground, was a Luzzard flying slowly over our fake Elder treasure, and a pair of Zingers racing up from the ground to blow up the Luzzard's starboard engine. We heard, through our zPhones, the pilots shouting a warning about missiles, then the Luzzard fell out of the sky and crashed to the bottom of the canyon.

  If the Kristang at their scavenger base had seen the same thing, it would have been an absolute disaster for the Merry Band of Pirates. The Kristang would have been alerted to the presence of a hostile force on Newark, they likely would have overflown us to recon the area at high altitude with their dropship, keeping above Zinger missile range. They could have used the dropship to follow us on our march to their base, dropping off armor-suited warriors to harass us, and they would have prepared defenses around their base so that it would be extremely difficult if not impossible for us to successfully attack. Their leaders could, likely would, even have taken the dropship, with their precious Elder arti
facts up into orbit, or to another part of the planet that we couldn't get to by walking. And, when their retrieval ship arrived, the scavengers certainly would have told the ship about an unknown hostile group on Newark, and that ship would have pounded our positions to dust from orbit.

  Bottom line: we needed to shoot down the Luzzard, and make the Kristang think it was an accident, completely conceal out presence on the planet.

  Enter the magic of Skippy the Magnificent.

  Through his complete control of the two Kristang satellites, he was already assuring that the scavenger lizards did not see any sign of human activity on Newark. The satellites edited the images and sensor data they transmitted down to the scavengers, so they saw only what we wanted them to see. They hadn't seen our dropships making multiple trips to bring people and supplies down to Newark. They didn't see humans walking around, they didn't see the solar panels we set out, they didn't detect increased infrared radiation from the heat human activity generated. When the Kristang looked at satellite images, if they ever bothered to look at our area of the planet, all they saw was grasslands, low-growing shrubs, mud and rocks. Oh, and streams and rivers here and there. No humans. No sign that Newark was inhabited by any other sentient species.

  With Skippy in complete control of the audio, video and sensor data feeds through the satellites, what the Kristang at the scavenger base saw and heard was their Luzzard hovering over a priceless Elder artifact, then the pilots shouting a warning that the starboard engine was overheating. The engine then tore itself apart, and the Luzzard crashed down, the pilot's last words were to curse the scavengers' leaders for ignoring his warnings about neglecting engine maintenance. The video feed through the satellites did not show humans approach the wreck, with some of those humans in Kristang powered armor. All the video feed showed was the busted Luzzard laying dead on the floor of the canyon, with no movement in or around it.

  And the video feed showed a priceless Elder artifact, still there, still exposed in the patchy sunlight. Still tempting, too tempting for the scavengers to ignore.

  The scavenger leaders may not have cared about the Kristang who died in the crash. they may have written off the Luzzard as a cost of doing business. There was no way they were going to ignore a priceless Elder treasure that could make their entire miserable expedition pay off for them. What I was counting on was that the scavengers still had air transport, their dropship. And they would be coming for our decoy in that dropship, coming unaware their Luzzard crash had not been an accident, unaware that humans inhabited Newark. I was counting on greed, I was counting on desperation, and more importantly, I was counting on Kristang being Kristang. When their starship arrived to retrieve them, if that ship detected the Elder artifact still sitting exposed in the open, far from the scavenger base, the captain of that ship would be strongly tempted to land in his own dropship, and take the artifact for himself.

  No way would the scavenger leaders risk that, they were coming again for our decoy. Of that, I was certain.

  After ten minutes, with no movement from the crashed Luzzard, I gave Smythe the go ahead to send in the Alpha teams. Two Chinese were closest, when they got the signal, they popped up from the covered hole they'd been concealed in, and quickly raced across the muddy grass to the crashed Luzzard. Those two soldiers had way more discipline that I could have managed under the circumstances, in powered armor I would have rocketed out of that hole thirty feet in the air, and leaped halfway to the target in a single bound. These soldiers used the advantage of their suit's power in a controlled fashion, sticking close to the ground, rifles always fixed securely on the back ramp door of the Luzzard. The rear door had popped open in the crash, the force of the impact wrenching the top of the ramp loose from its latching mechanism. One of the soldiers held a zPhone up to the gap so we could get a view inside the Luzzard, while the other soldier covered him.

  "I don't see anything moving in there," Xho declared.

  "Agree," Smythe said, "wait for the French Alpha team, then we go in."

  The two French soldiers in powered armor, who had been concealed a half kilometer down the canyon, were almost at the crash site, approaching from the front of the Luzzard. Through the feed from the zPhone network, we could all see inside the busted ship, it was chaos in there. The Kristang had exercised poor discipline in securing items inside their ship, the crash had caused all kinds of equipment to break loose and fly around inside the cargo compartment. The occupants may have been in more danger from their own gear, than from falling two hundred meters straight down. Whatever caused the damage, they appeared to be all dead, there wasn't anything moving inside the main compartment of the Luzzard. Two lizard bodies were visible in the narrow view provided by the zPhone, their legs were at awkward angles, and dark red blood was seeping onto the floor.

  When the French arrived, one of them slung his rifle, and jumped easily up on top of the Luzzard near the front, then lay down and crept forward to peer in the cockpit windows. "They're both dead up here," he said, holding a zPhone so we could all see the carnage. I recognized the voice; it was Renee Giraud. And if I had been paying attention, there was an icon at the bottom of my zPhone screen, telling me the view I was watching was from 'Giraud, R (FR)'. The Kristang were hateful lizards, but they made good phones. Especially after Skippy replaced the original software with something of his own creation. "They must have been hit by shrapnel from the warheads," Giraud reported, "the windows have holes in them. The cockpit is shredded. It's, it's ugly," he said softly.

  "Should we check inside, sir?" Smythe asked.

  "Yes, if we can get the back ramp or a side door open, I don't want us to cause any damage that doesn't look like it was caused by the crash," I said. "We need to maintain our cover story as much as possible."

  The side door had a recessed handle, with instructions written in Kristang, that Skippy had the visors on the suits translate for the Alpha team. It was simple; in case of emergency, the door was supposed to be easy for rescuers to open, just like a human aircraft. One of the Chinese got the side door open easily, and panned his zPhone around. There was still nothing moving in there. Because the armor suits were bulky, the four Alpha team members waited for the Indian team, without suits, to arrive from up the canyon. The four Indian paratroopers quickly entered the Luzzard, and within thirty seconds, reported that the Kristang inside were all dead.

  "Understood," I said, "all teams, pull back, cover our tracks." That was the signal for the Alpha teams, weighed down with armor, to leave the area first, and for the people not wearing armor to sweep the embedded footprints and cover deep, muddy footprints with grass we'd collected from other areas. When they were done, it was hard to tell anyone had been there, and as heavy rain was expected that night, all signs would be securely washed away by morning. I called that a success. Phase One, complete.

  When I'd explained my Phase Two plan to deal with the scavengers' second aircraft, a dropship, and destroy the scavengers' remaining air power, Smythe had not been enthusiastic.

  "No good," Smythe had said, pointing at the map, "too many possible landing sites for us to cover. We only have six Zingers left."

  "Captain," I asked, "tell me, where would you land that dropship?"

  "That's the problem. I'd touch down here," he indicated a spot far to the east of the site where we had placed the fake Elder power tap, "or here, or here, or here. Touch down, drop off a three man team in armored suits, then drop off another three man team in armor somewhere over here," to the west of the crash site. "Then the dropship would fly high cover, out of Zinger range, while their two teams approach the target from opposite directions."

  I nodded. "That's what I would do also. That's not what these Kristang will do. Dr. Mesker, could you come here, please?"

  "Certainly, what is it, Mister Bishop?" Mesker didn't get the nuances of military rank structure.

  I pointed to the crash site on the map. "This is the decoy landslide site, you're familiar with the area? We
put our bait there, the fake Elder power tap? It's in that canyon behind the cathedral complex."

  "Yeah, sure, I've been there. That's a steep canyon."

  "Right," I tapped the crash site on the map. "If you were flying in to examine the decoy site, where would you land?"

  "Uh," he tapped the map to bring up a satellite picture overlay, then back to the map. "Here, the canyon widens out and the floor is big enough to land on this side of the stream, plus it's an easy walk up to the crash site. Except you'd need to cross the stream here, it hugs the canyon wall."

  I smiled. "Thank you, Dr. Mesker. Captain Smythe, that's how a civilian thinks, and that's how the Kristang here think also. These scavengers are civilians, they're not soldiers. You're used to planning to counter a military opponent. Remember, these particular Kristang have no reason to think the Luzzard crash was anything but an accident, they think they're alone on this planet. They're going to land that dropship as close as possible, to reduce the distance they have to walk to get our decoy, and the distance they have to carry anything they salvage from the crash. Mesker is right, they're going to land on the canyon floor somewhere, likely further down than he said, because their pilot doesn't want to take any risks with their one remaining aircraft, he'll want a clear path for a takeoff if he's fully loaded on the return. Somewhere in this area," I pointed near where that canyon opened into a broad, shallow canyon. "Your Zinger teams can take position above the canyon here and here, and on the canyon floor here. That dropship will likely overfly the crash site before selecting a spot for landing, you can hit him as he's over the canyon, minimize the pilot's reaction time."

  Captain Smythe thought for a moment, then nodded.

  "What do you think," I asked, "two Zinger teams on the canyon floor, covering the best landing site, and one team on each side of the top of the canyon?"