SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  "Two on the canyon floor, yes, I'll want them able to cover each other. One on top of the canyon wall as you said, the south side, and I also want one team up here, on this hilltop. A team up there can cover the whole area. The hilltop doesn't give the best angle for a shot, we'll keep that Zinger team in reserve in case things go very sideways."

  I, of course, approved the SpecOps team leader's plan, because he knew a lot more about clandestine operations than I did. To my surprise, when the dropship arrived, Smythe wanted me atop the hillside, instead watching the action from inside the cave. Of all the people on Newark, Smythe explained, I was the only one who had fired a Zinger in combat. The SpecOps troops had trained with a simulator aboard the Dutchman, but they all had much more extensive experience with whichever model of Man Portable Air Defense missile their country's military used on Earth. Smythe was concerned that, in the tension of combat, Zinger teams would be subconsciously thinking in terms of the MANPAD missiles they were familiar with on Earth, and not the much more capable Zingers on their shoulders. He wanted me, essentially, acting as a spotter on the hilltop for the primary Zinger teams below on the canyon floor. That was much better than what I expected him to want me to do, which was to sit in the cave and watch the action on an iPad or zPhone screen. He even went so far to suggest that, if the hilltop team, our reserves in case things went squirrelly, needed to shoot at the dropship, I personally should fire the missile. "You have experience shooting a Zinger, sir," Smythe explained. "Your report from Paradise says you got off a snap shot, at a Chicken that was aware of you and about to shoot back. That's one less variable to worry about, if we truly need it."

  "I appreciate your confidence, Captain, I will be on the hilltop." While Smythe was on the valley floor, where we expected the dropship to land. "There shouldn't be anything to be concerned about, these Zingers are extremely easy to use." I certainly hoped I was right about that. Until Smythe mentioned it, I hadn't even considered our team's lack of live fire experience with Zingers to be anything to worry about. That's where Smythe's greater experience and training showed, against my own. He considered anything that could go wrong, I'd only thought of things likely to go wrong. That was one difference with elite soldiers; they left almost nothing to chance.

  Phase Two didn't work exactly as I expected. Again, the Kristang waited until there was clear weather over both their base and our area, a delay of two days. We watched the dropship being loaded, taking off, and cruising toward us. The dropship didn't bother to overfly the crash site; they must have thought they had plenty of intel from the satellites. From listening in to the dropship pilot's communications with the scavenger leaders back at the base, we knew the leaders were extremely anxious not to take any risks with their last functional aircraft, they ordered the pilot to land in an open area, and to stay away from narrow canyons. Instead of overflying the Luzzard crash site, the dropship came straight in from the southwest. My services as a spotter for the Zinger teams were not needed, because the dropship flew directly over a site we thought was a likely place for the Kristang to land. The British SAS had a Zinger team there, they hit the dropship as it flared to go into hover mode, the pair of Zingers streaked up in the blink of an eye and both hit the dropship's starboard engine pod. If that dropship had been at higher altitude, it might have had a chance to recover. It didn't. It flipped over and hit the ground hard, almost nose-first into a big boulder on the canyon floor. The force of the impact pancaked the front quarter of the dropship like an accordion, no way anyone inside had survived the crash.

  Smythe held his Alpha teams, the people in armored suits, back for ten minutes to be sure no angry Kristang came out of the wreck. And to be sure the whole thing didn't explode on us. I didn't waste any time, as soon as the dropship hit, I left the Zinger team on the hilltop and ran to the new crash site. It was downhill almost all the way, it still took me over an hour to get there, that was frustrating because from the hilltop, I'd been able to see the crashed dropship, and it took me freakin' forever to get to it. In defense of my fitness level, Newark's gravity had me weighing fourteen percent more than Earth normal, and the low oxygen level had me breathing hard simply when walking around. While running relatively easily down a gentle slope, I checked in with Skippy. "Hey, Skippy, how are your Oscar-winning special effects going?"

  "Oh, Joe, this is truly an epic Hollywood production. It has chills, thrills, shocking surprises, and pulse-pounding plot twists that leave the audience gasping. I laughed, I cried. It's the feel good movie of the year! Well, unless you're the scavenger Kristang here, in which case, it's the feel bad movie of the year. Maybe the century."

  "Uh huh. They buying it, then?"

  "Hook, line and sinker, I believe that is the correct expression. Yes, they believe everything they see and hear through the satellite feed, there is no reason for them to doubt the data."

  What the scavenger leaders saw, through the manipulated satellite feed, was their dropship getting shot down by a pair of Zingers, Skippy hadn't edited that part at all. This time, we wanted the scavengers seeing their aircraft shot down with Kristang portable anti-aircraft missiles. After the dropship hit the ground, Skippy had faked the imagery. The scavengers didn't see humans approach the scavengers' crashed dropship, instead they saw Kristang on the ground take the camouflage netting off a concealed dropship, then get aboard that dropship, fly over to the Elder power tap, pick it up, and fly into orbit. The mysterious second group of Kristang, having taken the big prize, then rendezvoused with a ship in orbit, a ship that lowered its stealth field long enough to take the dropship aboard. The ship then climbed out of orbit, out to safe jump range, and when this nonexistent shop was on the other side of the planet from the scavenger base, it jumped away. The satellite data feed included the tell-tale gamma ray burst of a starship jumping. It was all, Skippy assured us and we hoped, very convincing.

  The remaining scavengers had to be hopping mad by now. Not only did they now not have any functional aircraft, they had lost the priceless Elder power tap, lost it to a rival, unknown group of Kristang. A group that got away cleanly, and was now on its way back to civilization, with an Elder artifact that was worth more than many habitable planets. The scavengers were now effectively stuck at their base, with whatever less valuable Elder trinkets they'd recovered, waiting to be picked up.

  If that happened to me, I would sure be hopping mad. From Skippy tapping into their communications, he reported the scavenger leaders were swearing vengeance, arguing and fighting amongst themselves, and generally expending a whole lot of energy uselessly.

  Phase Two, I judged, was a complete success.

  To avoid utter humiliation at my lack of fitness, I stopped for a minute in a stream bed near the crashed dropship, hidden from the SpecOps teams' view, and sucked in air until my pulse stopped racing. The commander showing up, collapsing on the ground and puking after what should have been an easy downhill run, was something I very much wanted to avoid. When my hands stopped shaking, I stepped out of the stream bed, and jogged slowly toward the smashed dropship. Two dozen or more people were standing around it, rifles slung over shoulders, the guys in armor suits had their helmets off. They had gotten a side door open easily, the door frame wasn’t even warped in the crash, Kristang built their ships tough, that’s for sure. There were four Kristang bodies laying on the wet grass outside their crashed ship, three of the bodies were broken and mangled, one appeared to merely be asleep. I looked away, uncomfortable that these Kristang had died because of a sneak attack on my orders.

  Captain Smythe saw me coming and saluted. "Colonel, you need to see this, we have a surprise. We're clear here, the Kristang are all dead."

  When we shot down the Luzzard, I had stayed away from the crashed ship, because it brought back too many bad memories. Memories of the two Whales my team had shot down on Paradise. Memories of the Chicken that the Kristang had deliberately crashed there, because the human pilot refused to fire a missile at a school full of chil
dren. I had those memories inside my head, they haunted me every day, I didn’t need a reminder. That’s why I had remained away from the crashed Luzzard. Now, I couldn’t avoid seeing the dropship we had shot down, and Smythe expected me to go inside it. Steeling myself inwardly, I nodded silently to Smythe and grabbed the door frame with two hands to pull myself up and into the dropship.

  Inside was less of a shambles than I expected, there was some blood and debris had been thrown around in the violence of the crash. When I turned to look toward the rear, I got a surprise. "What in the hell is this?" I asked. The back two thirds of the dropship were stuffed with some sort of, thing. It looked like a big, rounded RV, a long tube specially designed to fit inside a dropship, it barely cleared the walls and ceiling. Straps held it securely in place.

  "We think it's a vehicle of some kind, sort of a caravan," Smythe explained, "what you Americans call a Recreational Vehicle."

  Why in the hell had the Kristang brought an RV with them to Newark? We hadn't seen them loading it into the dropship at their base, it must have already been in the ship. It seemed like an awful lot of weight to carry, unless they really needed it. Or maybe they did really need it? An RV would be useful for driving up the canyon, to recover items from the Luzzard crash site, and to get the precious Elder power tap. For use on Newark, the RV would need to be capable of operating over very rough, unimproved terrain. From satellite images, we hadn't seen evidence that the Kristang had built roads anywhere, not even around the widely-scattered Elder starship crash site. Although having an RV would have been a great help in exploring, rather than walking, or having to fly everywhere. "How does it move? I don't see any wheels."

  Skippy sighed into my zPhone earpiece. "So impatient, you monkey. You can't see the treads because they're retracted, to fit inside the dropship. You will need to get the dropship mostly upright, remove the cargo straps from the RV, and lower the rear ramp, then I'll get it started and drive it out for you."

  The dropship was huge, almost the size of a 737 airliner. It was laying on its side. "How are we supposed to get it upright? This thing must weigh a couple tons."

  "It does. You can rig up cables, and, I really shouldn't have to remind you dumdums, you have powered armor suits with you, duh."

  Duh was right. I hadn't thought about the armor.

  Powered armor did help, we needed to tell people to go slowly and be careful, as they almost used too much force and flipped the dropship over on its other side, instead of on its bottom. We gave the dropship a good ten minutes to settle on its bottom, I didn't want to risk anyone going inside, until we were sure its structure wasn't going to collapse on us. When I gave the go ahead, two soldiers went in the side door, and after a few minutes, the rear ramp cracked open, lowered about halfway, and then got jammed in that position. It was amazing the thing worked at all, I suppose. After screwing with it for almost an hour, after which it was still stuck two thirds closed, we gave up and cut through the lift mechanisms on each side. With the supports cut through, the ramp crashed down and bounced on the ground, bent a bit but functional. Next, the team released the straps and latches that held the RV in place. Once freed, it shifted to slide against the port side of the dropship. "All right, Skippy, let's see you drive that RV out of there."

  There was a whining sound of electric motors. Skippy had to wiggle it, with a lot of scraping and some tearing sounds, as it slowly extracted itself from the dropship's distorted fuselage. The RV was surprisingly intact; dents and scrapes here and there, nothing that prevented it from running properly. Out of the dropship, we could see its true size, it was as big as a city bus, or a really large RV. What it ran on was interesting; it had wheels, but wheels made of treads like a tank. The treads could be adjusted to be round for speed over good terrain, or oval shaped for crawling along like a tractor. Skippy said the part of the treads that stuck out for traction could be retracted, or extended for use in thick mud. Along each side were inflatable pontoons so the RV could cross rivers, swamps, or even lakes, there were water jets built into each pontoon for propulsion in water. "Damn, Skippy, this is a hell of a vehicle," I had to admit.

  "Everything you need for a fun-filled family vacation, Colonel Joe!"

  "Yeah, except for a couple sullen teenagers, and a solid week of rain. And bugs." That's what I recall of many fun-filled vacations in my family. "Any chance we can drive this thing all the way to the scavengers' base?"

  "Unfortunately, no. The powercells only hold enough charge to get you about forty percent of the way there."

  "Crap. Ah, hey, that's forty percent of the way that we don't have to walk. Hey, pop the door open, will you, I want to see inside." We were all eager to see inside our new RV, I went in last, to give everyone a good look at our prize. It was well-worn, and smelled funky. There were no frills on the inside; two seats up front, then a dozen more seats that converted into bunk beds. No kitchen or other provision for cooking, no bathroom, I suppose the Kristang expected their crew to take care of those activities outside. In the back was a large, separate bay for cargo, sort of a garage. It was empty.

  Rubbing my chin while looking around the Spartan RV interior, I asked "We can fit, what, twelve, fourteen people in here?"

  Smythe shook his head, I took that to mean no special forces soldier would think that way. "To hit that base, against Kristang, maybe against six sets of powered armor, we need numbers. Two people will be up front driving and navigating. We can fit twenty passengers back here, rig up extra seats, I figure we'll be driving through the nights until this thing runs out of power. Another two people, we can rig up seats in the cargo bay, we won't be bringing enough gear along to fill it. There's a cargo rack on the roof, we can set up a tent or some kind of awning up there for protection against bad weather, we can fit another four people. That gives us twenty eight. In this terrain, we won't be driving fast, we might be able to have more guys running alongside it, in shifts."

  "No," I shook my head, "last thing we need is somebody spraining an ankle along the way. I don't want any driving at night either, too risky. Twenty eight, huh? That evens the odds somewhat. The more people we bring, the more supplies we need to take with us."

  "That is a problem. We can look at some people going only part of the way, as pack mules, carrying weapons so people going into the fight only need to carry their weapons part of the way. This is a logistics problem, sir. We need to think about this, having an RV does solve a whole lot of problems."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Having an RV helped, we still needed to carefully plan the logistics. And it wasn’t easy. Smythe had been working with Simms, and some problems remained. Serious problems. "Sir, even with the RV getting us most of the way there, we still have the problem that we can't carry enough food both to get us to the scavenger base, and back here."

  "No,” I said, “but we can lessen the problem, if we only need enough food to get there," I explained, "and we don't plan to come back."

  "Sir?"

  "After the assault, we're not walking all the way back here, there's no point. And if that Kristang ships shows up early, while we're walking out in the open, we'll be totally exposed. What we're going to do is, after the attack, we hole up here," I zoomed the map out and scrolled to the west of the scavengers' base. "There are caverns here, in these hills. They're cramped, it's not going to be comfortable. This site is seventy kilometers west of the scavengers' base, we'll be closer to it on our way in, I think we may stop there and drop off any supplies we don't need for the assault. before we launch the attack."

  Smythe tapped his iPad, examining the caverns I mentioned. "That could work. I've holed up in worse places, in the mountains of Afghanistan. We still won't have enough food. We won't even be able to carry enough food to get to the scavengers' base, if we're going to be hauling armor with us."

  "That will not be a problem," I said with a wink. "I know a place that delivers." Tapping the transmit icon on my zPhone, I called the Flying Dutchman. "Hey, is thi
s Skippy's pizzeria?"

  "Um, Ok, sure, I'll play along." His voice changed to a stereotypical New York accent. "Yeah, this is Skippy's pizza, what can I do you for?"

  "Do you deliver?"

  "Depends. Youze got a coupon or somethin'?"

  "Seriously, Skippy, we need a delivery of food and medical supplies, the first aid stuff we brought from Earth, not the fancy nano gizmos that we don't know how to use." I explained how we planned to get to the scavengers' base by driving the RV, then on foot. "By food I mean sludges, dehydrated, we need maximum nutrition in minimum weight and volume. Can you send a couple shipments down to us?"

  "Oh, sure, no problem, it's not like I'm busy. You moron! I'm building a freakin' starship out of moondust up here!"

  "I know you're extremely busy. We can't carry enough food with us to reach the scavengers' base, not with all the weapons and gear we need for the assault. Can you put together something simple, to drop supplies to us? It will have to be capable of a soft landing, oh, and it has to stay out of sight of the Kristang here. We can't have them seeing a contrail coming in, or parachutes."

  "Simple? Something simple, to fly all the way across a star system, enter the atmosphere without leaving a contrail the Kristang could see, and land a package without damaging it? Simple, he says."

  "Uh huh, yeah. Can you do that? We don't need the first shipment today, we'll need it probably a couple days, maybe a week before we reach their base, I sent our timeline to you."

  "I'm supposed to drop everything I'm doing up here," Skippy complained, "to design, test and build a drone delivery system, from nothing."

  "It's kind of important, Skippy. Unless, you know, you don't want us to recover that AI for you. Or you have a better idea."