SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  “Joe, Joe, Joe. Once in a great while, you have a good idea, the rest of the time, you are dumb as a rock. Surely you are not the only monkey in your party with an injury that is being either ignored or attended to amateurishly?”

  “Probably not,” I thought of the various people I saw moving around stiffly in the mornings.

  “And by not seeking the best treatment available, they risk becoming combat ineffective? As the commander, shouldn’t you be setting an example?”

  Crap. “Skippy, you not only can build a starship out of moon dust, you know more about monkey, damn it, human psychology than I do. I should know that. You’re right, I will talk to one of the doctors tonight.” And soon, before they fell asleep. “That’s enough about me, how are you doing?”

  “Good enough. I’ve been monitoring the progress of the archeology team, they have found a new chamber behind a wall, it was buried in a rock fall, perhaps at the same time when the main part of the cavern washed away, and the roof collapsed. Anticipating your question, Colonel Chang is making certain they are being safe, and not taking unnecessary risks with the project. The team is very excited, they haven’t told you about it yet, they have found fragments of bronze plates with what appears to be writing. Colonel Chang hopes to find more writing samples, buried further down. This new chamber overall is shallow, whatever is in there will not require a deep excavation.”

  “Wow. Writing? That’s awesome.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Joe, this writing, if that’s what it is, looks like nothing but scribbles. The only way we will ever be able to read any of it is if we find more samples, a lot more, with pictographs.”

  “We can hope, though. How are things going with you, up there?”

  “Good, good enough. No new setbacks to report. While I have you, Joe, I’ve been thinking about that favor you asked.”

  “Huh? What favor?” He already delivered the pizza.

  “The favor about you and me riding off into the sunset together. Remember? You’re studying up on how to fly ship, so the two of us can drop the crew off at Earth, after I contact the Collective.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I tried to keep the hopefulness out of my voice.

  “I thought about it, and I can see why you think it’s a good idea. I am willing to give it a shot. Unfortunately, my analysis has determined the scenario is extremely unlikely. As you know, my memory is vague concerning the Collective, one thing I am certain about is that once I make contact, I will no longer be able to help you. I might not even be able to communicate with you in any way. I may, very suddenly, simply be gone.”

  “Oh, I hear you, Skippy. Thanks for telling me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Skippy, you saved our entire home planet, you have nothing to apologize about. We all knew the risks when we came out here. I’m going to,” I yawned, “talk to one of the doctors about my ankle. You have a good night, Ok?”

  “You too, Joe, sleep well.”

  From the pizza delivery site, we got two solid days of walking over rolling hills in a steady, cold, dreary rain, with wind blowing straight into our faces. For meals, we had cold rehydrated sludges. At night, we collapsed in our tents and sleeping bags, with wet clothes hanging on a line from the tent roof, dripping on us all night. In the morning, we got up and did it all again. The novelty of walking across an alien landscape, being the first humans wherever we went, was wearing off. Every single one of us wanted to get to the scavenger base, get the attack over with, and get back aboard the Flying Dutchman. Apparently I had earned a measure of grudging respect from Smythe, he had taken to walking with me, once he had demonstrated that I could keep up the pace. And I could, simply by concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, hours after hour, day after day. What I could not do very well, would be to carry a heavy pack all day, in fourteen percent higher gravity and oxygen equivalent to high altitude on Earth, and then go directly into combat. The SpecOps people could, they'd trained for it, mentally prepared for it. At the end of a day, all I wanted to do was gulp down a nutritious sludge and sleep.

  A swirling gust of wind blew fat, cold raindrops right into my eyes, I wiped my eyes and lowered goggles from atop my head to protect from the stinging spray. They were fancy high-tech Kristang goggles that repelled water and didn't fog up inside, even so, they were goggles and wearing them constantly grew tiresome after a while. "Lovely weather here, Captain," I said to Smythe, who had put his own goggles on. "Is this what Scotland is like?"

  "No," Smythe looked surprised at my question. "Scotland is ruggedly beautiful, most times of the year. If you like the outdoors, it's a wonderful place. It is mostly open country like this," he swept his arm across the eastern horizon, partly obscured by rain and low clouds, "and it can be wet," he admitted. "No more so than the rest of the island, of course."

  It took me a moment to realize that by 'the island', he meant Britain. As an American, I thought of Britain first as a country, not an island. When I hear the term 'island', I think someplace tropical, with palm trees and coconuts. And tropical drinks. With little umbrellas. And slices of pineapple. "That's where you train? The SAS? In Scotland?"

  "Scotland? Sometimes. 22 SAS is based in Hereford, near the Welsh border. Part of our selection training takes place in the Brecon Beacons of Wales, that area is somewhat similar to this here, the weather can be very unpredictable, with wind coming off the Irish Sea."

  "That's one advantage of Newark, I suppose, the weather here is predictable, lousy all the time. My hometown in Maine can have bad weather, at least there the whole area is mostly covered with trees, it cuts the wind. And you have plenty of fuel for a campfire there."

  "Have you ever been to Britain?" He asked, I shook my head. Smythe went on. "You would like the walking trails in Britain. In the States, your walking trails are mostly in the woods, I understand, and you cook your meals over a fire, and sleep in tents. In Britain, we have walking trails that go from one village to the next, you can stop at a pub for lunch and dinner, and stay in a guesthouse overnight. It's very popular, particularly in areas such as the Cotswolds and the Yorkshire Dales."

  "That sure sounds tempting right about now. The trails go right into a village?"

  "Yes. The difference is," Smythe explained, "most of your trails in the States were set up by governments, on public land, or on private land where the owner allows access? In Britain, the public has access across private lands, because for thousands of years, peasants had right of access to get water, to drive their animals to market or to pasture. The current landowners can't block the public from walking across their land, because of the historical right of access. There is a group which organizes what they call a mass trespass once a year, to walk all the trails in Britain, in order to maintain the public's right of access."

  "Huh." I said. "Man, that would piss off a lot of people back home."

  "America hasn't been around for long, compared to Britain. Different standards," Smythe concluded. We stopped talking after that, as the path took us up a long, steep hill, and I couldn't manage more than grunts.

  Even Smythe appeared winded from the climb, we paused at the summit. "The mountains of Afghanistan are like this. At altitude, you get to the top of a climb," he said, gasping, "and you want to catch your breath, but you can't."

  I nodded. "I was with the 10th Infantry Division, the division used to specialize in mountain warfare. Then they sent me to the jungles of Nigeria. And then to Paradise. The first place I was stationed on Paradise was so flat, it looked like Kansas."

  The rain stopped in mid-morning the next day, there was a strong, constant wind, from the southeast this time, that seemed to literally blow the clouds away. By early afternoon, the wind dropped to a pleasant breeze, the sun came out, and the temperature soared high enough that I stripped down to a long sleeved shirt. People's spirits rose with the temperature, grim faces replaced by grins, grunts replaced by laughter. Taking advantage of the break in the weather, I unrolled my damp sl
eeping bag, turned it inside out, and tied it to my pack so it could dry. Also, I hung wet socks from my belt. Everyone did something similar. The sunshine on my face actually felt warm, even a little hot at times. "Captain," I said to Smythe, "Skippy tells me this nice weather is going to last until around midnight, then we're getting rain showers. We're still ahead of schedule, I want a two hour break for lunch. We'll get the tents set up with flaps open so they can dry out. And we can string clotheslines from those rocks over there. We will walk a bit later into the night to make up the time, the ground ahead is pretty flat and there's no large streams to cross until tomorrow."

  To my surprise, Smythe didn't protest the delay. We got tents and clotheslines set up quickly, and we all took a nice break in the sunshine, sitting or laying on dry rocks.

  "It's not so bad now," I mused to Tanaka and Zheng. We were sitting on a flat rock with our boots and socks off, rubbing our feet. The two civilians had held up very well to the rigors of our grueling hike across Newark. "You know, I wonder what this area was like before?"

  "Before?" Zheng asked.

  "Before Newark got pushed out of its original orbit," I explained. "We're seven hundred kilometers from the equator here, this must have been, what? Jungle? Desert? Something hot. People, the natives, they might have come here on vacation."

  "I don't think their society had vacations, they probably didn't have the technology for leisure travel," Tanaka said.

  "They had the wheel, that means roads," I pointed out defensively. "Anyway, you know what I mean. This was a nice place back then." I looked around at the low, rolling hills, valleys crisscrossed by streams that sparkled in the sunlight. "Like that hill over there," I pointed to the south, "it has a nice view of that lake, it would have had nice breezes for cooling. I wonder if anyone lived up there?"

  Zheng shaded her eyes and looked around. I couldn't tell whether she was irritated that I'd disturbed the rest she'd earned. "Most of this landscape was carved by glaciers, when Newark was frozen solid, before the orbit became elliptical. That lake, even that hill, may not have existed back then. That will be a big problem for archeologists, much of the evidence of civilization here; cities, buildings, roads like you said, will have been scoured away by glaciers. The glaciers, even here, could have been substantial. The science team is having a debate over whether Newark's surface froze completely over, or whether there might have been a strip of open ocean near the equator, during summers." Perhaps because she saw the crestfallen look on my face, she quickly added "The natives didn't deserve what happened to this planet. No one does."

  "Except maybe the people who did this. What are the odds Newark is the only planet they threw out of orbit?" I asked bitterly. My nice sunny good mood was fading. "If I ever find those MFers-"

  "Colonel," Zheng said, and tapped my shoulder gently. "We have a nice day here, a nice afternoon. Let's enjoy it while it lasts, Ok? Enjoy it for the natives, because they can't? No more talk about glaciers, I promise."

  Not thinking about glaciers for a while was nice.

  "Uh oh, Joe," Skippy called me while I was wading across an icy cold stream that was up to my chest. Making the situation extra special was that, because the water was deep, I had to make two trips across, to carry all my gear high over my head so it wouldn't get wet.

  "Give me a minute, Skippy," I said with almost a gasp, the cold was taking my breath away. Of course, he called when I was in the deepest part of the stream. "Kinda busy here right now."

  "No immediate rush, Joe," he responded with a peevish tone.

  When I got to dry land, I set my gear down on a rock. On top of me being soaking wet from wading the stream twice, it was raining, it was always freakin' raining on Newark. Following the example of the SpecOps people, I did squats with my rifle over my head, then dropped and did fifty pushups, to get some warm blood into my chilled muscles. There were only five people still in the process of crossing the stream, and they didn't need my help, so I turned my attention to our annoying AI. "What is it, Skippy?"

  "A potential problem, Joe. A few minutes ago, I overhead the scavenger leaders talking, two of them are taking a group of laborers out in a truck, to a site where they previously found parts of the Elder starship buried in the ground. They are loading the truck now."

  "Damn it!" This was the last thing we needed; if the scavengers were in two places, we would need to plan and coordinate two simultaneous attacks. Depending how far the Kristang drove in their truck, it might take us a long time, walking night and day, to catch up with them. Although we were still slightly ahead of schedule, we couldn't delay an attack for very long, because we couldn't risk the Kristang ship arriving early and spoiling all of our plans. "This Elder site they're driving to, how far it is from their base? And do you know if they're planning to stay there overnight?"

  "They are planning to stay overnight, one night only. This particular site has been picked over pretty thoroughly, Joe, it is quite desperate of them to go back there, hoping they can dig up something of value. Without air transport, or their RV, they can no longer travel far from their base, this limits them to sites within roughly eighty kilometers. The leaders know that an extended excursion away from the base would make them vulnerable to attack by their laborers, without air power, the leaders are feeling very vulnerable. They are absolutely right to be concerned; their workforce is extra unhappy with their leaders, they've lost both of their aircraft, and their RV, and they let what they think was an extremely valuable Elder power tap get away. The Elder artifacts they have recovered so far are not valuable enough to pay much more than the costs of the expedition, so the laborers know there will not be much, if any, profits to be shared. The workforce is ripe for a violent mutiny, Joe."

  "That's good for us. Where is this Elder site they're going to? Can you show me on my zPhone?"

  "There is a map on your phone now."

  "Huh. Damn, that's almost between us and the scavenger base." Skippy had put a blinking dot for the Elder site, on top of the map we used to guide us to the scavenger base. Our route passed within twenty kilometers of where the scavengers would be staying overnight. "Do you know the route that truck will be driving?" I asked, and immediately, a series of red dots appeared on the map, outlining the route the Kristang were planning to drive. The last forty kilometers of their route overlapped the route we planned to walk. It made sense, we were now approaching the scavenger base from the south, and there was only one good route that avoided going up and down hill all day; we would follow a river valley. The Kristang in their truck understandably planned to do the same thing. "Skippy, thank you, I need to think about this. We can watch their truck from the satellite feeds?"

  "You won't normally be able to do that through the thick clouds you have overhead now, I'll add an icon on your maps, so you can see where they are. That truck is leaving the base right now. No one aboard is singing the Kristang version of 'Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall', Joe, these lizards are not a crew of happy campers."

  "Got it, thank you."

  I went over to Smythe, who was checking that everyone was ready to move out, move out quickly, before our half-frozen muscles stiffened up. Explaining the situation, I showed Smythe the map on his own zPhone.

  "Bloody hell," he said, "this complicates things somewhat, doesn't it?"

  "Yes," I agreed.

  "Although," he mused, scratching his two-day growth of beard, "it could be an opportunity."

  "That also," I agreed again. "I see this as more risk than opportunity. For opportunity, you're thinking we can take out this excursion party of Kristang, steal their truck, ride it into their base compound, and take them by surprise?"

  "Essentially, yes. It is tempting, surely. That sort of plan depends on our spy in the sky intercepting communications from the excursion party, then faking signals from them. Can Skippy do that, do you think, sir?"

  "Captain, that would not be a problem for Skippy. The problem is, the excursion party will be overnightin
g only seventy kilometers from the base, that close, they can use simple radio to communicate, not route the signal through a satellite. When they send signals through one of their satellites, Skippy can intercept and squelch or alter the signal. He can't do anything about radio transmissions through the air."

  "Bollocks," Smythe declared. "That's out, then. Unless we take them all out at once, we'd risk cocking it up. The timing would be too dicey, too many ways it could go pear shaped in a hurry."

  "Uh, yeah," I said, not completely sure of his British slang, I understood the basics. "How about this; we proceed to here," I pointed to the spot where the Kristang truck would intercept our planned walking route on their return journey, "and we wait for them to go by. Then we can follow their truck. We can't go ahead of them, they'd see our footprints. And that river valley is the only practical way to get from here to their base, unless we go all the around these hills, way to the east. I don't like that option."

  "As much as I hate to pass up this opportunity, sir," Smythe observed sourly, "we're not out here to defeat them in detail any longer, we already knocked out their air power. Now, we need to hit them all at once. Rubbish. We'll need to explain to the lads why we're not hitting them."

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  The lads weren't the only ones who needed to be reminded not to shoot, as we watched the Kristang truck slowly lurch by a couple days later. Smythe, Giraud, I and a few others lay belly down behind rocks on the reverse slope of a hill, as the Kristang truck drove back down the river valley below us. It was tempting, almost too tempting a target. With our Kristang rifles, we could easily have knocked treads off the truck, then picked off the Kristang one by one. If the Kristang in the truck were the only ones on the planet, that would have been a viable plan. In reality, we had to watch, silently, as the truck passed our position. As an extra precaution, none of us had brought weapons to our observation post. I wasn't worried about someone losing discipline and firing off a shot, I was worried about a weapon discharging accidentally. Yeah, it was a small risk, it was also a risk we didn't need to take. The Kristang in their truck didn't know we were there, couldn't see us, were not a threat to us.