“But you don’t hate fighting. This is the army; you know how paperwork is.”
Smith reported to the duty sergeant. “I need you to keep an eye on these two men. I need them in different rooms with a pad and pencil.”
“Will some sort of computer do?” came the bored reply.
Smith turned to his detail.
“I can run a computer,” said Willy.
“¿Eintende español esta computadora?” teased Chuy.
“Funny,” added Smith. “Computers will do. I want them in separate rooms. Make it quick guys. I expect the Company Commander will want to talk to me, and the CO is one of them.”
“I’m glad I ain’t no corporal,” said Willy as he went off to the room the duty sergeant had indicated.
“Ayi chihuahua, I never should have swum across the river,” added Chuy in a totally hammed up accent. He went off to find a computer to write his report.
Smith turned to the sergeant, “Can you send me a copy of their reports as soon as you get them on my com? Here is the number.”
“Will there be anything else?” came the snide reply.
“Look pal, next time why don’t you go over to the arrogant space cadet side of the base instead, huh?”
With that, he walked out. He had cargo to deliver and hell to pay.
It did not take long. When he got to the warehouse drop off, there was a detail of MPs waiting. “I guess you boys are here to help with the unloading.”
They weren’t.
“Thought not. Can I, at least, let the sergeant know I’m here with the cargo? It’s supposed to be important.”
“Our orders are to bring you to HQ.” The huge military policeman was not a man of good humor.
“Look, just let me tell the supply sergeant I’m here with the shipment. Then I’ll go peaceably. Else I might have to hurt you.”
“Hurt me? Hurry up and don’t try to run away.”
“Where would I run to? Have you forgotten where we are?”
* * * *
“Smith, I’m busting you one rank.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I saved my stripes for just such an occasion sir.”
“Don’t get smart with me soldier.”
“Sir, permission to ask a question, sir?”
“Don’t get smart with me,” replied the Captain. The company commander had wanted to be a spacecraft captain, but he was not the best nor the brightest. Somehow, he ended up commanding a company of monkeys from down-earth. He did not need this trouble. He had already applied for a transfer to space command.
Suddenly the sergeant called, “Ten-hut!”
For Smith, it was no problem. He had been standing at attention for some time now, and it had gotten sort of comfortable in the way that a bad situation one had gotten used to was comfortable.
The CO along with everyone else in the room snapped to attention. The base commanding general entered the room followed by Lieutenant Commander Fitzpatrick.
“As you were,” said the general returning the salute.
“So this is Smith,” began the general. “Commander, I believe you want to deal with this?”
“Yes sir,” replied Lieutenant Commander Fitzpatrick. “Smith, come with me.”
Smith about faced, saluted the general, and followed the naval commander into a small adjacent room.
Once Fitz closed the door behind him, he rubbed his forehead with his right hand pushing his cap up “Okay, what happened?”
Denver related the story including how they had driven through the gate. Fitz waited patiently as the story ran out and exhaled for almost a half-minute but said nothing.
“Boss, this is a problem; it could be our Achilles heel.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Denver; you don’t know the half of it.”
Chapter 13: Secret Mission
The Captain turned to Sergeant Jones. “I need these people to fall out with me.” The sergeant came to attention, saluted, and took the note.
“All right, the following men fall out. Jones, Willy; Rodriguez, Jesus; Smith, Denver; Jones, Tyron take your kit outside on the double.” The men grabbed what they had with them, put on their cover, and double-timed outside. They formed a line at attention.
Captain O’Brien turned to meet them. “Men, you’ve been picked because of certain attributes each of you has. Get in the back of the truck and you’ll be briefed when we get to ops. Go.”
“Sir, yes sir!” Off they went. They exchanged glances when they got to the truck, but no one spoke until they were moving.
The small vehicle did not look like a truck at all, but it had wheels and was open in the back with seats down the side. Someone had put a canopy over it, so it vaguely resembled a truck.
“Anybody got any idea what this is all about?” asked Willy.
“Not me,” answered Tyron, “maybe Chuy screwed something up.”
“Don’t blame me,” replied Jesus. “You’re the one who claims to be such a great shot on the sims; maybe you got someone’s attention.”
“If we were in trouble, the sergeant would have chewed us out; he’s perfectly capable of it,” added Smith.
“Well Denver, you’re such a big hero now. They just probably want to pin some more medals on you.”
“Hero my back side. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right piece of hardware.”
“That is one heck of a weapon.” It was Willy again. “It’s like the Vulcan my granddad told me about. Only every tenth round has a camera in it, and it directs the next nine.”
“Yeah, just point and take their picture,” added Tyron. One hundred twenty mm with a shaped charge in each round. What’s not to love?”
They all laughed at that.
“It’s only got one problem,” added Denver.
“What’s that?” asked Chuy.
“It always sends the rounds to dead center mass. They need to modify it to shoot where you point so you can blow the cockpit out if you want. I put that in my report,” said Smith.
They pulled up in front of the Operations Center and came to a stop. None of the men had been here before. “Do you think they got any aliens here?” asked Chuy.
Tyron hit the ground and looked around. “I don’t know; I ain’t seen any.”
The captain came around, “All right men stand at ease and follow me.” He led them into the building and to the briefing room. The flight crew was already there, and Denver saw an old friend.
Fitz was behind the podium listening to one of the pilots. Conversation broke off when they entered. The captain saluted. “Commander, these are the men you wanted.”
Commander Fitzpatrick returned the salute. “Thank you, Captain. That will be all.”
“Sit down, we start the briefing immediately. We don’t have much time. You people have more experience in the modified attack and landing craft than anyone else, and we borrowed the most experienced crew chief we could find. The men who just arrived have seen combat during the attack on the training camp. They’ve completed their basic, weapons, and equipment training. We don’t have time for anything else.”
They quickly glanced at each other.
“Smith, you were chosen for obvious reasons, and as of now you are promoted to corporal. You will rank just under the crew chief.”
Denver started to make a smart remark but thought better of it.
“Private Jones, Tyron you are camp high scorer on the video game, ‘Tail Gunner.’ You should be at home in the gunner’s chair. You all have done well in your weapons training and performed with distinction during the Reptilian raid on the training base.
“Private Willy Jones, I hope you don’t mind the use of your first names since there are two Jones. You took out most of a Reptilian troop carrier with a light machine gun.
> “Private Rodriguez, you were on the skirmish line that stopped the Reptilians plus have an interest in electronics. We are not picking on anyone, we didn’t have time to ask for volunteers, and you men are accustomed to working together. Something has happened, and we need to go to work right now.
“Briefly, we have been capturing signals from a system that lies near the Reptilian region of space. What’s unusual is there are no habitable planets in that system. We have not seen them set up in places like that. So about twelve hours ago we sent in a craft that the Greys use within a star system, to check it out. It was dropped off and has not been heard from since.
“The Reptilians are still using rocket power within the system. We certainly don’t want them to get their hands on our solar system range technology.
“I’m personally leading this strike team to find out what happened to the spacecraft, rescue the crew if possible, and if not, blow the whole thing to kingdom come with a tactical nuke.”
The holographic image arose from the raised platform. “We will depart as soon as the star drive craft arrives. It will drop us off here and wait for our signal at the edge of the system. We will get in here, through this area.” He pointed with a light pointer.
“We think the ship disappeared around here. This small planet has two moons. These are low gravity worlds. We don’t know what the enemy would be doing here. Get in, record what you can for Intel, and see what we can find out. There is one other thing. Since the missing crew is Grey, a Grey will be joining the mission. He will probably stay in his quarters until needed. None of you have experience with them and have a lot to learn in a very short time. Let’s get going.”
* * * *
“These star jumps still make my stomach queasy,” complained Tyron as they got used to their new surroundings in the spacecraft. This spacecraft will be tucked inside a jump ship and dropped off after they entered the system.
“Tyron, I think we’re going to have to get used to them,” chimed Willy.
Smith, sporting his new corporal stripes, could hear the others as he came in. “Hey, look who it is,” joked Chuy. “We don’t have to stand up when you come in the room do we?”
“Can I kiss your brass?” chided Willy.
“Oh boy. No, just learn to shoot straight. Here’s what I’ve gotten so far. We meet the alien at 1500, so that gives us time for target practice. This intra-star system craft has been modified to accommodate gunners’ stations. Look here.”
He set the hologram projector on the small table and clicked it on. Instantly a diagram of a craft sprang into being above the table. He wiggled some controls, and different views of the craft came into view. First it went end over end then turned around.
“You sure you know how to run that thing?” It was Tyron with another joke. The rest laughed as Denver finally got the layers of the ship to disappear.
“Ha, there smart ass.” The green image floated in front of the men of the strike team showing the outline of the superstructure while revealing the inner layers. Another control input and a second craft appeared above the first, this time with yellow gun turrets.
“No wonder they made you a corporal,” kidded Chuy.
“This is the modified one. It has a gun turret on the top and one on each side, like this.” He rotated the image.
“Now, all the positions are the same, and the game so many of you love was actually adapted from the simulation. Instead of pulses of light, it actually fires rockets, very small and very fast, one every one point five seconds.”
“Annoyingly slow,” added Chuy grumpily.
“Now make sure you got the crosshairs on the target because these things take a picture of the target and go after it, even if it jukes or rolls, or, at least, that’s the idea.”
“In ‘Tail Gunner’ I can lead the target. This might screw that up.”
“Well, they don’t think they are as maneuverable as in the game.”
“And if they are?”
“Just reach down here and pull this circuit breaker right there, see it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Don’t use it unless you have to. Okay, here is the firing sequence, and how you maneuver the bubble. Just point and the gun turret takes care of the rest. Pull the trigger when you get the crosshairs set where you want them.”
“Does it still go for dead center mass without regard to where you point?” Tyron was getting into this. There was a reason he was the camp champ.
“You know, I didn’t think to ask. Maybe the simulator can show us. It is supposed to respond just like the real thing. Come on, enough talk.” He led them into the improvised simulator lab. Wires were running everywhere; screens set up at different angles in completely random order were the firing stations.
“Grab a headset, and plug in. By the way, just keep the headsets. We’ll need them.”
“Where you going to sit?” asked Willy.
“Here in the command chair.”
“Ain’t you going to get to shoot?” asked Tyron.
“Oh yeah, I got real missiles to fire.”
Willy made himself comfortable. “Are the pilots going to hold this thing steady or are they going to be hooking and weaving?”
“That’s an excellent question. I’d better find out and coordinate with the flight crew. Okay, everybody in?”
One by one, the others checked in. “Okay, I’m going to run training protocol number one.” Whatever that is, he added under his breath. He hit the icon, and everybody’s screen came alive. From their position, they were sitting upright, and every enemy craft came right at them. It was easy work.
After the first session, he checked in with everyone. “How was it?”
“Too easy,” piped up Tyron, “even Willy got some.”
Willy smiled. “It was easy.”
“Now let’s try the next one. As you know the field generator that allows this thing to fly through space also keeps us pointed in an up-down direction. However, in space up and down have no real meaning. So the targets can be doing anything from our perspective, making them hard to hit. Therefore, let’s try number two.” He hit the button.
Targets came and went from every possible direction, not just dead ahead. The scores fell off substantially. They ran the sim again. “Let me try a couple of these rockets,” he said aloud to no one in particular. This time they did better. After the third run, he brought them together to talk.
“What we shooting anyway?” asked Chuy.
“Yours are rockets automatically loaded into a firing chamber from a big ring. Each is about three feet long and…”
“Feet?”
“Sorry, Willy, almost a meter long and about 20 cm across. Each carries its own television-like targeting system, which follows the target. The tip is loaded with about 10 kilos of high explosives in a shaped charged configuration. They accelerate very fast and then adjust until they find their target or self-destruct after a certain time.
“They seem to think that one should penetrate the skin of enemy spacecraft, but put three or four in until we are sure.”
“Should?” queried Willy.
“Yeah should.”
“Well, we knocked down their landing craft with a lot less.”
“What are you using?” asked Chuy.
“These are some new rockets they’ve come up with. We just don’t have many of them. They are almost three meters long and fifty cm across. They have a lot more range, but don’t get the acceleration of the smaller ones.”
“I know it’s off the subject, but why are we fighting in their ships. Don’t they have their own gunners in their flight crews?” Willy had been thinking again.
“I guess not, or we wouldn’t be here.”
“Well, what’s going on? They’re just making this up as they go along or what?” Tyron demanded.
“Look, I don’t know more than you do. They’ve got a problem, possibly a major one, so they are responding as quickly as they can with what they’ve got.”
“We’re the best they’ve got?” asked Chuy with a grin.
“We’ll soon find out won’t we?” said Willy.
Everybody laughed at that one, but it was a nervous laugh.
Tyron piped up. “I do have one question. Are we going to get fighting suits? We’ve been fitted for them.”
The armored exoskeleton fighting suit with the strength multiplying technology would make a human hard to beat. Unfortunately, powering it had proved a problem.
“I don’t think so. Look, something’s gone wrong. We’re being sent in to fix it. My instructions were to get the team proficient on the weapons as quickly as possible. You all bring up some good questions, and I have a few of my own, but, for now, we need to practice.”
“Problems with the team, Corporal?” It was Fitz.
“Ten-hut!”
“No sir, the men are just anxious to kick a little lizard tail.”
“They’ll get their chance. Stand at ease. How’s the training coming?”
“We were just going over our last session.”
“Which one are you on?”
“Two.”
“Two? Let’s try three.”
“Okay people, you heard the man, back to your positions. Here we go.”
This time the ships juked and maneuvered making very hard targets. The men swore and tried again. Denver got off several missiles as well. His had better success.
Smith switched to the private channel. “Commander, are you plugged in?”
“Yes Smith, I’m here.”
“Can they really maneuver like that?”
“We don’t know. We are really flying into an unknown situation.”
“Then we are writing the tactics as we go along.”
“It would seem that way.”
“Do we have any cameras aboard?”
“I’ll have to check. There might be, why?”
“Well, we should make a copy of everything we do and beam it out of here in case we don’t make it back.”
“I see; you may have something there. Stand by.”
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