“Charlie Foxtrot.” He muttered. Another typical Cluster Fuck. “They say we’re on the wrong bird, we’ll get it sorted out.”
Whatever the problem was, five minutes later the doors slammed closed, and we started rolling. Everyone cheered. The word got passed down that we should relax, and get settled in for a two hour supersonic flight. The pilot made an announcement when we settled into cruise speed, which was around Mach 1.4. Even having traveled faster than light, going through wormholes, and going down from, and back up to orbit in a shuttle, that speed impressed me. Then it hit me that the announcement was a human voice. I leaned over to a second lieutenant sitting next to me. “Sir, who’s flying this thing?”
He yawned. “Some Air Force pukes.”
“Uh, how much flight training did they get?” I asked slowly, not wanting to hear the answer I expected. On Earth, C-17 drivers had years of training before they qualified for even the right-hand copilot seat. No way could these guys have more than a couple weeks flying time. In a totally unfamiliar, gigantic aircraft.
“Nothing to worry about, sergeant,” he said, although I noted he wasn’t looking at me when he said it. “There’s a computer than does most of the flying, and a Kristang in orbit can take over and land this thing remotely if needed. The guys up front are there to make coffee.”
I didn’t laugh.
The flight was uneventful, except it ended in a landing so abrupt it made me think the pilot was Navy, not Air Force, and he was trying to land our Dumbo on an aircraft carrier. Then I saw the ‘airfield’, which was a dirt field, a field that had contained some sort of crops recently, before the land was cleared for airplanes. Without much waiting around, we were marched across the field to a rank of waiting Buzzards. I was excited, eager for a ride in the unfamiliar aircraft. Thirty of us crammed into a Buzzard. I wanted to sit in the doorway, legs hanging out into the air, rifle on my lap as the Buzzard roared low across the landscape. The copilot quickly straightened me out. “This bird isn’t a Blackhawk, sergeant, we cruise around four hundred miles an hour when we get to altitude. If you want to hang out the door, go ahead, but shut it behind you.”
I found a seat, a staff sergeant was grinning at me, but he later told me he'd been thinking of doing the same thing. The flight in the Buzzard was also uneventful, much smoother than any helicopter I’d flown in, and we flew across endless farmland and scattered forests and lakes, until we circled a village and set down.
When the door of the Buzzard popped open, we smelled it. You know the scent of new-mown hay, or, if you’ve lived in the suburbs, freshly-cut grass? That clean, fresh, invigorating scent, a scent of nature that reminds you of childhood, of running barefoot across a field, under bright blue heavens, with big puffy white clouds piled high in the sky? Yeah? This was not like that. The scent wafting from the hamster’s field of, whatever the hell they ate, smelled vaguely of-
Baker sniffed, and wrinkled his nose. “Damn. What is that?”
It wasn’t right there, in your face, it was more something at the back of your mind, or the back of your nose, a scent that makes you stop and try to identify it. I had a good memory for scents, but it took me a moment to figure it out, because it was close, but not quite right. “Parmesan cheese.” I announced.
Not parmesan cheese as in, a big hot bowl of spaghetti on a cold winter night, with a couple juicy meatballs on top, and you’ve been smelling that tantalizing tomato sauce simmering on the stove all day, and you’re sitting down with a slice of garlic bread and a glass of hearty red wine, and you sprinkle fresh parmesan on top, and it kind of melts into the sauce? Not that. This was parmesan cheese as in, you’re already sick with like the flu or just an epic hangover, and your stomach is already on the edge, and you smell parmesan cheese that’s been out of the fridge too long, and you know you’re going to hurl. That’s the parmesan cheese we smelled, coming from the fields.
“Parmesan- goddamn, it smells like Sanchez’ feet!” Chen said disgustedly.
“My feet? You ever smell your own?”
“I wash my feet!”
“Once a year, maybe.”
“All right, pipe down, you two.” I ordered. “Maybe it’s a chemical they spray on their crops, and it’ll go away. Or we’ll get used to it, and not even notice it anymore.”
“Shit.” Chen spat. “I been bunkin’ with Sanchez for weeks, and I ain’t got used to his stinky feet yet. If this whole planets smells like that, this is gonna to be a long deployment.”
The rest of our platoon was already there, they’d set up a base in tents around a barn, the hamster town was half a kilometer to the east. I got my fireteam sorted out, and the first sergeant of the platoon told me to report to Lieutenant Charles in a tent.
I saluted smartly. “Sergeant Bishop, reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Bishop, I expected your team this morning.” He gave me a casual salute back, he seemed to be distracted. Establishing a platoon base on an alien planet had to give a guy headaches.
“Charlie Foxtrot loading the dropships at Alpha sir, the Kristang put us on the wrong starship. We're all here now, sir, Sergeant Agnelli is getting us squared away”
"Yeah, UNEF is scattered all over this planet. You made it here, that's what matters." He pointed to a map laid out on a table, a real map, printed on some sort of plastic. It showed about a tenth of the main continent, the part where we were right then. It was mostly farmland, flat farmland, with some low ridges running north-south, rivers and lakes here and there. The seacoast was off to the west, the space elevator base station somewhere off the map to the southeast. “We’re here in this region,” he circled a finger around a gray shaded area, “the Ruhar call it, some damned thing,” he pointed to the markings, which were in Ruhar script, “but we’re calling it Butt-scratch-istan.”
“Buttscratchistan?” I laughed.
He smiled. “The region to the north of us is Back-scratch-istan, so, to the south here must be Buttscratch, right? Your fireteam will occupy a village about a hundred kilometers west of here,” he pointed to a tiny dot on the map. “The hamsters there are all farmers, population around two fifty if you count the surrounding farmsteads. There’s a school, barns, a grain storage building, some houses, and that’s about it.”
One fireteam of four soldiers against over two hundred hamsters? I didn’t like those odds. A fireteam didn’t usually operate alone, two fireteams belonged to a squad, with a staff sergeant in charge. “Sir, how is one fireteam supposed to keep control of that many hamsters?”
“You’re not. This is an experiment,” he grimaced, “a bright idea from Division. We have company-size quick reaction teams scattered around, with Buzzards and Chickens, backed up by Kristang firepower in orbit,” he glanced at the ceiling of the tent. “There’s plenty of firepower available if we need it, what Division wants is to avoid needing it.”
My shoulders slumped. “Hearts and minds?” That was the Army term for attempts to get the civilian population to cooperate with us, or at least not actively resist us. It had started in Vietnam, and continued in various forms and terminology in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and pretty much every place the US of A had gotten involved. We built schools, roads, water and power distribution systems, and helped plant and harvest crops. Long-term, it was cheaper and more effective to avoid making more enemies, than it was to kill enemies. Especially since the enemy you killed was someone’s relative, and they, and probably their entire tribe, then became your enemy. If you know anything about history, you know these kinds of hearts and minds campaigns have, let’s say, a mixed record. A month after we pulled out of a third world area, the schools got burned out, the water system blown up, and the power lines stolen for scrap copper. Our politicians declared victory anyway, and moved onto the next crisis. Hooah.
“More like soft power, Bishop. We’re not going to build schools for these hamsters, we just want to keep things peaceful until they take the trip offworld. Think of it as your own little slice of Paradise
.” He added with a grin.
“Sir, I’m a new buck sergeant-“
“You’re also a farmer, you grew up on a farm. Sanchez and Baker did too. These aliens may be hamsters, but they work the land, I’m hoping that gives you an understanding that some of our city boys won’t have. This region is in the middle of the line to be evaced offworld, so there’s more time for things to go wrong.” He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “You don’t have to be nice to these hamsters, but don’t try to intimidate them. They’ve already agreed to leave the planet, the deal they have with the Kristang allows them to continue raising and harvesting crops right up until the evac is complete; the Ruhar are paying the Kristang to transport their crops. I know, it sounds crazy, but the Kristang have been fighting this war for a long time, and they know what they’re doing. The Ruhar here want to keep those food shipments flowing, they should be well motivated to cooperate with us. If you get into trouble, whistle us on your zPhone, and we’ll bring in the air cav. If it gets bad enough, the Kristang can hit any site you want from orbit, and the hamsters know it.”
Again, I wasn’t filled with confidence.
"Agnelli will be taking the other half of the squad to a village north of where you'll be. You're not an occupation force, UNEF is calling these units Embedded Observation Teams. G2 wants to know what's going on with the hamsters, at the local level. All the satellite and airborne surveillance in the galaxy won't tell us what's really happening on the ground, and a recon team passing through once in a while won't tell us enough. We need people on the ground, living among the hamsters. There's a complete set of guides for EOTs on your tablet. It would be best to get you some training, but Division wants everyone in place ASAP to establish a presence, before the hamsters get any stupid ideas that UNEF can be pushed around."
"Yes, sir. We've got this." I didn't have to like it. That's why they are called 'orders' and not ‘suggestions'.
When I got to the area the platoon was using as a motor pool, my confidence dropped even lower. “What in the hell is this thing?” I asked.
“It’s a hamvee, Sergeant.” The grinning mechanic announced.
“A what?”
“We call it a hamvee, it’s like the old humvee on Earth, only it’s leftover hamster vehicles. We take any type of hamster truck, glue composite panels on for hillbilly armor, and you get a hamvee.” He looked proud of the piece of crap he expected us to patrol around in. Barney’s ice cream truck looked more capable. If you took an SUV, added big but flimsy looking tires, thick screens over the windows, and multicolor panels attached haphazardly here and there, you’d have something almost as ugly.
“Glue?”
“Yup. Can’t weld it on, ‘cause it’s not metal. We use this Kristang glue,” he held up a caulking gun like you’d find at any hardware store on Earth, “apply the panels to the hamvee with this dingus, then use this fancy Kristang doodad,” it looked like an iron, “to set the glue. Incredibly strong stuff.”
“Dingus? Doodad? You're not impressing me.”
He shrugged. “The Kristang have names for all this stuff, but it’s hard to pronounce.”
“Is there anything heavier?” I asked, as I skeptically ran my fingers over the farmer armor panel, which felt like Styrofoam to me. It was about four inches thick, tapering down at the edges of the doors, which had to be a weak point. If Styrofoam had a strong point anywhere.
“We have hamtraks, kind of like a Bradley, or a Stryker ‘cause it has wheels, they’re hamster military personnel carriers. Those are for company level use. Don’t worry, I’ve seen a demo of this armor,” he rapped the Styrofoam with his knuckles, “and regular bullets only dent the surface. You have to hit it in the same place a couple times, with an explosive round, to punch through. Tough stuff. We should bring some of this shit back to Earth with us.”
“A demo? Are you joining us on patrol, the first time we get shot at?”
He shook his head and grinned. “Not my MOS, Sergeant. You guys have fun, and don’t scratch the paint. Private Ringold here will show you how to drive them, and keep the powercells charged.”
After we picked up our pair of hamvees, we went over to the supply depot to get all the equipment we would need for our EOT assignment. The 'supply depot' was in what looked like, and smelled like, a former chicken coop. First, we got personal gear; extra uniforms, body armor, all the crap a well-dressed human soldier occupying an alien planet needs. Next, ammo and heavy weapons, which meant Javelin Bravo missiles, and our old familiar light unguided anti-tank weapon, the 84MM Swedish AT4-CS. Here we were, on an alien planet, bad-ass conquerors, and we were equipped with weapons I'd used against militia nutcases in Nigeria. This was unsat, in my opinion. Nobody asked for my opinion.
The next morning, we were ready to depart. First Sergeant Mitchell came to see us off. "You squared away, Bishop?"
"If I said this was November Golf," which was No Go in Army slang, "would it make any difference?"
Mitchell laughed. "The LT wouldn't send you out if he didn't have total confidence in you, Bishop. So, Alpha Mike Foxtrot to you." Adios Mother Fucker, is what he meant. I didn't reply.
We rolled toward our assigned village, trailing a cloud of dust that drifted high in the breeze, giving away our position to anyone who cared to look. As we approached the village, we came to a low rise, and I called a halt to our column. 'Column' was an exaggeration, we had two hamvees, me and Sanchez in front in a sort of SUV thing, and Baker and Chen behind in a pickup truck. Both vehicles were loaded with gear, including what the platoon thought was enough consumables (meaning everything from food and medicine to toilet paper) to sustain four men for a month. We also had a standard load of rifle ammo, both regular and explosive-tipped. Plus two Javelin Bravos and a pair of AT-4s. No mortars; if we needed any sort of stand-off weapons, we were supposed to call the air cav. The first sergeant assured me we'd get regular visits from the platoon HQ, and supplies every two weeks. If the first sergeant was as skeptical about this 'soft power' concept as I was, he kept his feelings to himself. Personally, I gave this experiment less than a month before Division, or UNEF HQ, came to their senses. Having part of our forces thinly scattered across the planet was inviting the hamsters to defeat us in detail, which means each small unit could be overwhelmed piecemeal. If that happened, the hamsters would eventually get pounded from orbit by the Kristang, but that would be of little comfort to any dead humans.
As pre-arranged, a pair of Chickens flying overwatch buzzed the village low and fast, to get the attention of the resident hamsters. The Chickens had their weapons pods open, and after they buzzed the main street, they broke formation and climbed, with one providing cover to the north and one hovering over us. I glanced once more at the intel package on my lap. Satellite photos, reports from a recon column that had passed through the village two days before, and records from the hamster regional government. According to their records, the current population was 178 hamsters, down from the estimate of 250 I'd gotten from the platoon. Our arrival should have been no surprise, as the hamster government said they'd contacted the villagers to alert them to our approach, and to urge cooperation. We also had plastic-laminated sign boards, printed in Ruhar script, that we were supposed to post in prominent locations around the village. The signs, supposedly, listed regulations like curfew hours, prohibitions against carrying weapons, and what the hamsters were to do in order to accommodate us. The idea of putting up posters made me uncomfortable, it felt vaguely like some heavy-handed thing the Nazis or Soviets would do when they occupied a village.
I signaled the Chicken pilot we were ready, and told Sanchez to get rolling. Our bad-ass hamvees cruised into the village on nearly-silent electric motors, tires crunching on dirt and gravel, slowing down as we reached the first building, the official start of the village. The village wasn't much to look at, although being from a small rural town myself, I appreciated that the buildings, both houses and barns, were neat and in good order. Ho
uses had shade trees, shrubs and flowers, fences and barns were well-kept. I'd have expected the hamsters to let things slip, forget about maintenance and things like planting flowers, since they were all going to be evacuating the planet. I expected graffiti, like 'humans go home' or something like that. Instead, I saw signs the hamsters were planning to be here for a while, including a barn that was in the process of having the roof replaced. Were the Ruhar unable to accept that they'd lost the planet, or did they know something UNEF didn't know? Either way, it was going into my first sitrep back to platoon HQ.
Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) Page 11