A little later, the Gunny came to the table and said, “You are worthy. Have that delivered to the Armory and I will engrave it for you.”
As we sat there, I looked at the Skipper and said, “At a command beach party, a bunch of officers are standing around talking.
An LT said, “I feel that making love is 80% fun and 20% work.”
A Commander responded by saying, “No, I think that making love is more work than that. I would say that it is 60% fun and 40% work.”
Then the Commanding Officer says, “No, making love is definitely way more work than that. I would say that it is 20% fun and 80% of work.”
They are all contemplating the conversation when the Command Master Chief (CMC) walks by. The officers call the CMC over to ask his opinion.
The Commanding Officer says, “CMC, we are having a discussion and would like your input. The LT says that making love is 80% fun and 20% work. The Commander says that making love is 60% fun and 40% work. I say that making love is 20% fun and 80% of work. What is your opinion?”
The CMC responds with a grin, “Sir, you are all wrong. Making love must be 100% fun because if there were any work involved, you would have a Chief doing it for you!” Everyone at our table laughed.
32. Rou
tine
“It seems the two of you raiding my coffee pot in the morning is now part of my morning routine,” I said to Kevlar and Var as they stood there staring at the coffee maker.
As they turned to look at me, Melissa slipped past them to get a cup of coffee. As they turned to look at Melissa, Daniela slipped past them to grab her own cup of coffee. Kevlar and Var looked shocked as I moved past them to pour them the rest of the pot into my cup, replacing the empty pot back on the burner. Kevlar and Var looked dejected as they realized they would have to wait to for the next pot to brew. Daniela, Melissa, and I laughed.
I thought to myself, “I need to get a bigger coffee pot, or there will be a fight one morning.”
It didn’t take but five minutes for another pot of coffee to brew, but by the looks, on the faces of Kevlar and Var, you would think it was taking hours. Soon we all had coffee, and we were all content. It was a typical morning routine; PT followed by breakfast and morning briefing.
The Skipper began the briefing by announcing the names of our fallen brothers “Never forget,” he said.
We all responded with “Never forgotten” there was a moment of silence then the Skipper began the briefing,
“The dungeon master and his geek squad are working on system upgrades so that they can locate our next target. Right now, it looks like it is somewhere in the jungles of South America, but it may take as much as a week to get an excellent location on the target. The Doc and her team are working on new cyber implants for the entire TEAM. The implants will put your battle computers in your heads. Alpha platoon’s first squad will be the first group of volunteers.
While we are waiting for the geek squad to get us the information we need, we will be having a wedding between our own Master chief and Doc Melissa. I will be meeting with the Chief of the Seminole nation to set the time and day. The support staff will have logistics for the wedding.” Then the Skipper nodded to me and sat down
“Gunny is working on a new Sniper Rifle that is a rail gun so he will be contacting all of the unit snipers to upgrade as he finishes them. When you get one schedule some time on the range with it. Alpha platoon will be returning tomorrow and will get a day of stand down before working back into the watch rotation by order of the Doc Delta is on stand down for the next 2 days take this time to speak with a counselor if you need to. Everyone make sure your gear is clean and ready to go. We should be in a holding pattern for the next few days but keep an eye open for Murphy; he can be a real sneaky bastard.” I said, then dismissed everyone.
After everyone had left the Skipper said to me, “I talked with your sister last night she said she would stop by this afternoon to help work out the details for the wedding. I cleared Aunt Mary to see the footage of the fights with the demons take it by to her today and show her and get her feedback on the demons.”
“Roger that, I will head over to her place from here and I will call Alley and find out what time she will be here and let you know,” I said.
Holly and I drove over to the coffee shop to meet with Aunt Mary. When we got there, she already had coffee for our team and us.
“You have the video?” she said with excitement in her voice as we walked in. I smiled and told her yes. She had us grab our coffee and lead us into the conference room. “Well, what are you waiting on, let’s see the video.” She said to me. I laughed and hooked my command pad up to her holo-table and play the video.
This was the first time I had to watch the video of the fight with the demon. “You know that demons are immortal souls and while you killed their bodies you just sent their souls back to their dimension, so I’m guessing you just made a few new enemies,” She said to me.
“Should I be worried?” I asked.
“Not for at least a few years, it takes them a while to regrow bodies and gain enough strength to cross over again. Their boss won’t care about you; he will be more focused on punishing them for failing. He has a massive ego and feels that the only way a demon could be defeated by a human is if the demon really screws things up,” she said to me.
“That’s good to know,” I said.
“Alley will be by today to help Melissa and the Skipper plan the wedding we are going to have it sometime in the next few days,” I said.
“Well tell them they can meet here at my conference room and I will help with the planning. It’s the least I can do for my favorite nephew,” She replied.
“I do have a favor to ask of you, I need a larger coffee maker maybe something with a built-in burr grinder. Maybe something like what you have here. My kitchen seems has become a place for everyone to gather in the morning for coffee,” I said to her.
“Oh, no problem I will have my maintenance guy come by and install one for you this afternoon he will bring coffee and filters also,” She said.
“Great just let me know the cost, and I will take care of it,” I told her.
“oh, don’t worry about it, consider it a wedding gift.” She said with a smile on her face. I got up, walked over, and gave her a hug.
“Thank you, Aunt Mary. We must get back to work. I will try to bring the gang by to meet you tonight after dinner.” I said to her then we headed off to the Hanger.
When I walked into the Hanger it looked like a computer scrap yard. There were computer parts everywhere.
“Good you’re here hand me your command pad,” John said to me as I walked through the door. I looked at him cautiously.
“Umm, why?” I said as I glanced around at the remains of once working computers. John looked at me then looked around then began to laugh.
“I won’t break it; we have a new chip to put into it that will allow you instant contact with any military or civilian satellite in orbit at any time, and it doesn’t matter which country it belongs to or what type of security it has. I will also be upgrading the software on it.” I removed my command pad out of my cargo pocket and handed it off to John.
“How long?” I said.
“About an hour. Meanwhile, go see Melissa and Daniela they have a software upgrade for your head,” He said.
As I started to walk to Melissa, I notice Holly talking with PO Wonder. They both approached me.
“The Skipper wants me to meet pick up Alley at the gate and take her to the Grinder and work with her on the wedding details Wonder here is your new shadow when you’re done here you and Melissa come to The Grinder,” Holly said. I looked at her then at PO Wonder
“Your new call sign is Piper.” Then I turned to Holly and said. “Roger that, we will see you there.”
We walked up to Melissa and Daniela, and I introduced them to Piper.
“So, what is going on? John said you had a new software upgrade for me.” I
asked them.
“Yes, it will allow you to access all the data and feature from your command pad through the chip in your head across the new and improved battlenet. It will still be compatible with all the devices on the old battlenet. Once all the devices are upgraded to the new battlenet, it will allow for global comminutions. After your wedding, we are going to be replacing your chip with a new one, and then you won’t need a command pad at all. Your internal chip will do it all.” Daniela said to me.
A smile came across my face, and she could tell I was excited. You see I grew up in the generation of gamers and the cyberpunk games were my favorite. When I was young, I dreamed of the day I would have a fully functional computer built into my head. For me, this was a dream come true. This was awesome.
“Just have a seat here, and we will get started. Just like before there will be a couple of restarts and it should take about 45 minutes; it will all be done wirelessly but stay seated because we don’t want you falling over during a restart.” Melissa said to me.
“There are drinks, and snacks in the conference room help yourself; we are going to be here for an hour or two,” I said to Piper.
“Sure, thing do you want me to grab you anything while I’m in there?” She asked me.
“If there are any doughnuts in there bring me back a couple,” I said.
Forty-five minutes later, I heard a voice in my head, “Updates complete Go-go.” RANDI said to me.
“Do you have a connection to my command pad yet?” I asked.
“No, it is offline at this time,” RANDI said.
I got up and walked over to where John was working. “Done yet?” I asked.
“Almost just about to boot it up and run a final check on it.” He said as he pushed the power button on the command pad in his hand. It only took a few seconds for it to boot up and run a self-check before it was at the login screen.
“I have established a connection with your command pad, and I am logging in,” RANDI said.
“You can now operate your command in three different ways the first is to interface through me by just thinking about what you want, and I will provide it. The second is for me to provide you with the display from the command pad to your Hud, and you can use thought interface directly with the command pad. The third is to use it as you always have.” RANDI said to me.
“Wow, this should be really nice.” I thought to myself.
I let Melissa know that I was finished, and we loaded up and headed over to the Grinder to meet with the others.
33. Wed
ding Planning
We arrived at the grinder to find Alley, Hicks, Holly and Aunt Mary in the conference room together in discussion rather than join them. We walked up to the counter and order coffees. Piper and the other members of my detail took up a table with the Skippers detail and Melissa, and I joined the others.
“You must be Melissa; I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” Aunt Mary said as she stood and came over and wrapped Melissa in a hug. We took a seat and join in the conversation.
“So, the big question is, where do you want to have the wedding here or at the Tribal Longhouse? Even though you are not the ruling Chief of the tribe, you are still a member of the Tribal council, so the Tribal Elders want your wedding to be on tribal lands. Your Skipper here wants to have the wedding here on the base because Of security concerns.” Alley said.
“There is a simple solution we have it at the Longhouse and our team can provide security. If we invite the SECNAV and the CIC, they will bring additional security, and we will be covered. We have the wedding on Saturday so they will have time to get the Secret Service down here.” I said.
The Skipper looked at me and thought for a few minutes “That will work if you’re ok will all the extra security.” He said to Alley
“You realize that you have to let the Elders know that Melissa is an Elven Princess, so our wedding will be a formal joining of our Nation and her world. Her father formally acknowledged our marriage.’ I said to Alley.
“You’re joking, right?” she asked me.
“Nope,” I replied. She looked at me then shook her head.
“You can’t make anything simple, can you? I will have a formal treaty drawn up and ready for the two of you to sign at the wedding.” She said.
“Email it to me as soon as it is ready, and we will send it to the king for his approval,” I said to her.
I turned to the Skipper and said, “We should see if the CIC wants to sign on to the treaty also. It would be a good chance to formalize our relationship between the three nations.”
“I will contact him and the SECNAV when we are done here ask Var to have the com gear ready in case, they want a face to face with the King we will schedule it for 1300 if they want it.” He said to me.
The Skipper and I left Alley, Melissa, Holly and Aunt Mary to work out the rest of the detail. I knew Aunt Mary would help to make things perfect for Melissa as she loved to plan weddings in her free time. The Skipper and I headed out to take care of our parts and set up the meeting between King Johnathan, the CIC, and the SECNAV. I headed to the Hanger to get with Var while the Skipper headed to his office.
I had just stepped out of the Hummer when I saw the flash. I dove tackling Piper on my way down as the impact of the round from the Steyr IWS 2000 Anti-Material Rifle impacted into the spot on the Hummer where my head had been in front of it just seconds ago. I know what you are thinking, “how did he know it was a round from an IWS 2000. Well, the IWS 2000 shoot a 15.2 mm fin-stabilized discarding-sabot type projectile with armor-piercing capability. No other gun in the world shoots that type of ammo. It has a unique sound, and punches holes in an armored vehicle like no additional rounds do. I moved around to the back of the Hummer and pulled out the case that contained my sniper rifle just as a second-round enter in through the rear passenger window hitting PO Adams as he tried to exit the vehicle. I used the rear axle as cover and took aim at the Sniper. With a standard M82, my chances of hitting the Sniper were low, but thankfully I didn’t have a standard M82, I had the new M82rg that could easily out range any other rifle on the planet even the elusive IWS 2000. I took aim and fired. I love to tell you that I made one of those mythical shots where the Sniper shoots the enemy sniper through his scope and kills him but the possibility of a shot like that only succeeding in destroying the enemies scope and not killing the Sniper was too high so I shot him in the head. It was Piper from her position at the front of the Hummer that shot the Sniper through his scope just a millisecond after I fired. I turned and looked at Piper.
“It was the only shot I had, and I figured it would at least get the sniper to stop shooting and maybe give me a better target for the second shot, but I see I don’t need to take a second shot,” Piper said to me with a guilty look on her face.
We moved to pull Adams from the Hummer to discover the round had hit him in the left shoulder taking his entire arm off. Miller had already applied a quick clot to the wound stopping the bleeding.
I put out a call for medial and Daniela and the medical team came running out of the Hanger with a stretcher. They loaded up PO Adams and took him inside, everyone had come out and taken up defensive positions. I sent Piper and Leroy to take up an overwatch on the roof of the Hanger. Once they were in place Kevlar, Var and I headed over to where the Sniper lay dead to investigate. As we were headed out, I heard the Skipper dispatch Charlie platoon to our position. The Sniper was nearly three miles out if it had not been for my cyber eye and the recent upgrades to my chip, I would not have had a chance of spotting the Sniper before he killed me. Even then if my reflexes at been a millisecond slower, my brains would be spread all over the Hummer. How Piper had done it, I had no idea. When we finally arrived at the Sniper
Var was the first to speak “Gnomes, I hate freaken gnomes. They are the scum of the Universe; they are evil little bastard who will work for anybody and do anything for the right price.”
“I hear you brother they cree
p me out,” Kevlar said.
The creature that lay dead on the ground was not what I would have ever called a gnome, it looked nothing like the cute garden gnomes you see everywhere. The creature was four-foot-tall with pale orange skin; its hands were clawed, and it had two rows of shark-like teeth in its mouth. The only thing these gnomes had in common with our friendly gnomes, was I kid you not, the creepy red hats. Oddly this one was wearing one of those shirts that said, “Gnomes Rule.”
“Who the hell makes a shirt like that?” Kevlar asked.
It was something I was sure I didn’t want to run into in the dark. Hell, I don’t even think I would want to run into one during the day, Kevlar was right these bastards were creepy. We searched the body and found a leather pouch with 500 gold coins and a picture of me in it.
“The only except gold for payment, normally half in advance the other half upon completion and normally work in teams of three to five.” Kevlar said.
I quickly called the Skipper and told him that there were likely others around. He then sent out a signal putting the entire base on maximum alert. We left the gnome where he was and began to backtrack his entry to this position. His trail was easy to follow; it seemed as if he made no effort to hide it on his way in. We found where he had cut through the fencing. The nearby cameras were all on loops, and jumpers wires had been used so that the alarm would not detect the breach in the fence. We found no signs that anyone other than the Sniper had entered this way. Because the cameras were on a loop, this told us that someone on the base had helped him get in. We passed the word on what we discovered to the Skipper, and he sent two squads out to repair the fence and scout the area. When they arrived at our location, we headed back to the Hanger.
On the walk back, I filled in Kevlar and Var at our meeting this morning. He said he would contact the king and set up everything for the meeting then he was going to work with John and upgrade the base’s electronic security, so this didn’t happen again. Kevlar said he would check the computer records and see if he could figure out who looped the cameras and from what workstation on the base, they did it.
Strike Force 11 Page 13