"In each compartment is a set of magnetic pads; set your tablet on it, and it'll charge. It's like a charging mat, and it senses what kind of juice your tablet needs, so it won't burn it out. Thuranin devices are smart."
"What’s a Thuranin, sir?”
The captain shook his head. “The Thuranin are a very advanced race, they lead the coalition that the Kristang belong to. I'm told they look a bit like aliens in sci-fi movies; short and skinny, with big bald heads.”
Now I was completely confused. “The Kristang aren’t in charge?”
“As far as we humans are concerned, yeah, anything to do with Earth, the Kristang are in charge. The Thuranin are the Kristang’s, patrons, is maybe the right word. Anyway, all you need to know is, traveling from one star to another is a slow process in a Kristang ship, so they latch onto Thuranin motherships for the big jumps. And before anyone asks, no, I’ve never actually seen a Thuranin, we stay aboard the Kristang ships.”
“This is getting complicated, sir.”
He nodded sympathetically. “Think of it this way: the Thuranin are the major leagues, the Kristang are, ah, the triple A farm team. And we, well, we’re kind of the semi-pro local league right now. We’re hoping to get promoted to single A ball, but we need to prove ourselves first, and we’ve got a hell of a long way to go. Get back to your bunk, soldier, we’re boosting out of orbit soon. You'll get a briefing later.”
After an hour of gentle acceleration, boosting away from Earth, and ten minutes of what I guessed was preparation for the jump, our transport ship jumped. I couldn’t see anything, strapped into my bunk. When the ship jumped, it felt like static electricity crawling on my skin for a split second, then it was back to floating in zero gee. I kept track of time on my watch, it took eight hours, twenty one minutes between the first and second jumps. Later, I learned that Kristang ships are powered by fusion reactors, and their jump engines take about eight hours to build up enough power for a jump. That time lag between jumps can be a major tactical liability for an attacking force; the attacking ships, which have just jumped into combat, mostly can’t jump away immediately if they get into trouble, whereas a defending ship, with fully charged engines, can pop to a different location, if it has a swarm of missiles incoming. In actual battle, the time lag between jumps is not so much of an issue. Warships always maintain reserve energy for a short emergency jump. Ships can’t safely jump in or out of hyperspace near a large gravity field such as a planet, the jump field can get distorted and tear the ship apart. So an attacking force needs to come out of hyperspace away from a planet, and travel through normal space to get into orbit. Once the attacking ships get close enough to a planet to use weapons, they are so far within the gravity field that even ships with fully charged engines can’t safely jump. Defending ships, which never know where an attacker is going to pop out of hyperspace, tend to hang close to planets, and then move out to intercept. If that sounds too much like a game with lots of rules to memorize, it is. Lucky for us humans, we don’t have to think about it. We don’t have any starships, and the Kristang aren’t giving us any. We’re infantry, we fight on the ground. The Kristang get us there, and we'll take care of the fighting. That's what we all thought then, anyway.
Between jumps, the ship boosted for about two hours, then we had free time, when we could be out of our bunks. Everyone experimented with moving around in zero gee, I could see after only a few minutes that we should have been issued helmets. Sergeant Raynor came in to yell at us for stupidity, but mostly let us get bumps and bruises. Experience is the best teacher.
One of the show-offs was Jeff Murdock, he came into our platoon in Nigeria halfway through my tour there, so I didn't know him that well, but, man, he took to zero gee like a dolphin takes to water. He was doing flips that would have made me dizzy, and he could push off a wall and float across the compartment to wherever he wanted to go, swimming through the air. He hung from a bunk upside down, using his feet to hold himself in place, with a huge grin. "Man, this is great! I can't wait to get some of that Kristang biotech. I'll be a super soldier, man!"
The rest of us weren't so enthused about watching him fly around like a giant squirrel.
"Murdock, you don't need advanced alien technology to be a soldier, you need a freakin' miracle." Garcia laughed.
"Yeah, man, what you need is a brain, and you better talk to the Wizard of Oz about that." Was Thomson's comment.
"Hey, fuck you guys!" Murdock shot back, and flew across the compartment, spun and landed gracefully on the opposite wall, he didn't even bounce. "You'll see."
We were brought to the Kristang version of a chow hall or Dining Facility, or maybe it's called a galley since it's on a ship? Our experience with zero gee in our bunk compartment helped, when we had to pull ourselves along corridors through the ship. The chow hall held almost a hundred people, and had tables and chairs, what made it different is those chairs were solidly attached to the floor, and had seatbelts. Lunch was MREs; humans couldn't eat Kristang food, and the Kristang didn't want us screwing with their kitchens in zero gravity. MREs reminded me of camping when I was a kid, and they weren't bad, but I'd eaten too many of them in Nigeria, and I glumly ate my food, swapping stuff with the people around me. Cornpone was extra hungry, he gulped down his MRE, and bummed a pack of crackers off me. Halfway through the meal break, an Army major came floating into the compartment, expertly flew across to the opposite wall, and hooked his feet to a strap. He made it look easy. "Is everyone enjoying their astronaut food?" That drew a laugh from the crowd. "I understand there is a lot of bad intel going around, so I'm going to set you straight. First, we will not be in zero gee the whole way. This Kristang ship will latch into a Thuranin star carrier for the majority of the journey. The hardpoints on the star carrier are platforms that have artificial gravity, so after we're attached, we'll have the eighty five percent gee that is normal for the Thuranin. Second, this journey will not take four years, and you will not be frozen. So, you'll have to listen to your bunkmates snore." Another chuckle from the crowd. "The Thuranin star carrier will be jumping to an artificial wormhole, and then passing through the wormhole to the other side, which is hundreds of lightyears away. The star carrier travels between wormholes, and lets the wormholes take us most of the way to our destination. It's going to be seventeen days from Earth to our first destination, a planet we're calling Camp Alpha. That's a training base where you'll receive your new weapons and equipment, and learn the rules of engagement. The Kristang are sticklers about us adhering to the ROE, so pay attention while you're there. We are not going to cause problems for our new allies. As for Camp Alpha, I have been there, and all I will say about it now, is that is an excellent place to focus on our training mission."
That drew a knowing groan from the crowd. We all understood that was Army speak for a hellhole where there was nothing to do but work and train. I looked at Cornpone, and we shrugged. We'd seen worse, and we weren't out in space for a pleasure cruise. The major didn't take any questions, and left the chow hall when he was done with his brief speech. I felt a lot better, knowing we wouldn't be stuck aboard the ship in zero gee for four years.
After the Kristang ship made a fourth jump, we had to stay strapped into our bunks, as the ship maneuvered to latch onto a Thuranin mother ship. There was a clanging sound, and a vibration, as our ship attached itself to the star carrier. Gravity slowly came back, to cheers from everyone I could hear. Especially when it was announced that we'd have hot food for dinner, now that the kitchens had gravity. It was beef stew, with a lot more potatoes and veggies than beef, but it was a promise that we wouldn't be surviving solely on MREs for the next three weeks. And the biscuits were hot and fresh. Good chow is important for good morale, the Army sure knew that.
I like fresh, hot biscuits.
In case you were wondering.
The Thuranin star carrier, mothership, whatever you call it, then went through a series of jumps I lost track of, because some of them happened while
I was asleep. Some people aboard the ship were trying to keep amateur records of all the ship's maneuvers; jumps, time between jumps, time and force of acceleration. Personally, I lost track after the second jump, and I figured we had qualified people keeping track for us. The loudspeakers woke us up around 0300 one night, when the ship was approaching the wormhole, and I wished I had more warning, because my bladder already was sending me warning signals. The idea of falling into a wormhole, having my atoms ripped apart and reassembled, or whatever it was that happened, had me scared. I was laying rigid in my bunk, waiting for the unknown, when the loudspeaker announced "Wormhole transition complete. Secure for normal space maneuvering." Damn. Not only did I not need to have worried about the wormhole passage, I didn't even realize when it happened. There were more jumps, more waiting between jumps, and lots of boredom. We exercised in shifts, using equipment brought from Earth, including treadmills and exercise bicycles. I liked running, but hated treadmills, it was so boring. Even competing with the guy on the treadmill next to me didn't help, after the first couple days. We played games on our tablets, and exercised, and read books and watched movies. Being aboard the ship was kind of what it must have been like for soldiers in WWII, crossing the Atlantic and Pacific in slow transport ships. Except, on a WWII transport ship, those guys had been able to go up on deck, get fresh air, and see the sun, and the horizon.
We had decent chow, and enough room to move around on the ship, except for the areas off-limits to humans. What we didn't have was anything to look out the window at, if there had been windows. And we didn't have any news from, or contact with, Earth. In Nigeria, I'd been able to get onto the internet, and send emails, and video chat with my folks and friends, at least most days. Here, we were out of contact until we came back, a long, long way. One thing we'd learned, is that not even the technologically superior Thuranin had faster than light communications, except for drones which carried messages by jumping. Kind of like a high-tech carrier pigeon.
After a while, I felt like we were low budget tourists stuck aboard a crappy cruise ship, it didn't feel like being in the Army. After a bunch more hyperspace jumping, that I didn't even bother trying to keep track of, the star carrier arrived outside some star system, or so we were told. The Kristang ship went to zero gee again, detached, and jumped four times. Finally, we maneuvered into orbit at our destination. All in all, my first interstellar voyage consisted mostly of being stuck in a windowless compartment. I wouldn't recommend it for a vacation, unless you're desperate.
We did get a look at the planet below, and it wasn't inviting. Earth from orbit looks blue, and green, and tan where there are deserts and grasslands, and white ice at the poles. This place looked brown, and red, and even the places that had water weren’t a nice blue. The one pole I could see had an anemic layer of dirty white, like snow beside the road in April, when it's all dirty and crusty and everyone wishes it would just freakin' melt and go away, damn it.
In groups, we packed into the mess hall to get a briefing, Lt. Gonzalez stood on a chair, and waited until everyone got settled into the compartment. “Welcome to Camp Alpha! The Kristang didn’t want to tell us their name for this planet, so it was just ‘Alpha’.”
Some guy at the front asked “But we know where we are, right, LT? I mean, somebody has figured it out?”
“Yeah,” Gonzalez smiled, “the advance team took pictures of the night sky, and astronomers on Earth calculated where the view must have been taken from. I think the Kristang were having fun with us, keeping it a secret, they must have known we’d be smart enough to discover this planet’s location. We are still in the Orion Arm of the galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, about twelve hundred and twenty three lightyears from Earth. That's far enough that you can’t see our sun from here, without a telescope. I’m told our sun is an unremarkable star anyway."
“Has everyone been to the window, and seen where we’ll be training? Camp Alpha is not the kind of place you would go on vacation. It is the kind of place where soldiers are trained, and formed into an army the Ruhar will learn to fear. The Kristang have set aside this planet as a training and staging base for humans, for three reasons. First, nobody else wants this place. It’s dry, I'm told that it can be 110 degrees in daytime, and down to 20 below at night. And that’s the nice part of the planet, where the training base is located. The sunlight is a funky blue-white color, and it will peel the skin off your bones if you aren’t protected. Second, because this place is so damned nasty, it’s a great place to train. Not every planet we’ll be going to is like Earth, here you will learn to use the equipment the Kristang provide, and to survive in harsh conditions. If you can’t be combat effective here, we don’t need you. And third, the Kristang chose this place because they think the Ruhar don’t know about it. Yet.”
"Sir," someone asked, "why is the planet all brown and burnt looking?"
"The star here is a slow variable, it hiccups every once in a while and increases its output. When that happens, it scorches the entire system, then it settles down again."
Hiccup? That sounded like one hell of a hiccup. The crowd of us shifted uncomfortably on our feet, and a low murmur went around.
"Don't worry about it, the Kristang know the star's schedule, it won't flare up again for another ten to fifty thousand years." Gonzalez added hurriedly. A range of ten to fifty thousand years sounded like the Kristang should have just told us they had no freaking idea when the star would next blow up. "Your briefing packets have all the info you need about this planet, so I'm only going to cover the high points. There is life down there, the biggest animal is an insect about three inches long. It has sharp pinchers and it's venomous, but the venom isn't fatal to human biochemistry, it only causes a mild rash sometimes, as an allergic reaction. Most people don't react to it at all. The only things that are dangerous to us down there are the climate, which can get really hot and really cold, and our own stupidity. Use common sense, remember you're here for training, and read the regs; they're written to keep you alive and combat ready. We will assemble into units when we get dirtside, until then, follow instructions."
CHAPTER THREE CAMP ALPHA
There was no space elevator at Camp Alpha, so we made the trip to the surface on a Kristang shuttle. Only, I learned, it wasn't called a shuttle, or a dropship, or a lander, which were other terms I'd heard people use. The Army term was Surface To Orbit Craft, or STOC. In practice, we called such ships either dropships, or STOCers, pronounced 'stockers', like stock car, only one word. STOCers could reach orbit by themselves, not needing booster rockets, and some of the larger types were capable for interplanetary flight, if you had plenty of time on your hands and got along really, really well with the other people you were squeezed in with. The Kristang, and other species, did have craft they called something like 'dropship', but dropships were used for large-scale invasions, to ferry lots of troops and equipment down to the surface, a one-way trip. Technically, a dropship was like a WWII glider, they could survive entry into an atmosphere, maneuver a bit before landing, and land vertically, but once down, they stayed there. Dropships were one-shot craft, whereas a STOCer could climb back into orbit, and make the trip multiple times. The distinction didn't matter much to me, as I would only ever be a passenger, but it was cool knowing how our senior partners did things, it made me feel part of the team, not just a cog in a machine.
The dropship I squeezed into held 220 people and our gear, it was the size of a 747, roughly, most of it being engines and fuel tanks. The ride down was rough, we hit the atmosphere and it felt like I had a sack of concrete on my chest. Then it got worse. Man, I was glad when the ship leveled out and flew like an airplane for a short time. We all cheered when that happened. The actual landing was uneventful, I realized we were down only when the engine sound cut off.
Me. Landing on an alien planet. Who'd have thunk it, huh? "Lieutenant," someone asked, "do you know who was the first human to set foot an another planet?"
"Probably General Meer
s." A soldier behind me said. Meers commanded UNEF.
"Nope." Gonzalez shook his head. "It was a female British Army captain, part of the multinational advance team. It was supposed to be a Chinese Army colonel to go first, but this British captain was seated next to the door, and when they landed, the Kristang pilot told them to get out, pronto. The Kristang didn't see humanity's first landing on another planet as a big deal, they wanted them all off the ship quick so it could go back up and pick up the next group."
Damn. I'd been hoping the first person was an American. Well, we still had Neal Armstrong, and old Neal had done it with good American technology. This Brit only hitched a ride on an alien space bus.
My own first footstep on another planet was almost embarrassing, I was used to the 85% gravity of the Thuranin star carrier, and then zero gee again, and Camp Alpha's gravity was 107% of Earth normal. The unfamiliar weight caused me stumble down the ramp. Lt. Gonzalez hadn’t been joking about the heat, when we got off the dropship, I was hit by a furnace-like blast of heat. And humid, too, none of that bullshit about it feeling cooler because it’s a dry heat. And bright, I had to shade my eyes and squint to make it the hundred meters to where the transport vehicles were parked. Everything smelled burnt, like the aftermath of a fire. The oxygen content of the atmosphere was supposed to be only a bit lower than Earth normal, it sure felt like my lungs were sucking air and not getting a whole lot of benefit. Maybe the landing site was at high altitude. I had almost reached a transport truck, and was waiting in line to board, when a woman behind me swayed, and began to slump to the dusty ground. My own head was swimming from the sudden heat, like a head rush when you stand up too suddenly at the beach. She protested and tried to push me away, but it was clear her knees were wobbling. “Listen,” I checked the name above her left pocket, “hey, Miller, we are Army Strong.” I repeated a US Army recruiting slogan, “We don’t let each other down, not in combat, and sure not in this stinking heat, you got that?”
Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) Page 5