by Marc Neuffer
I had more study to do. Sargent Reeves tossed me a tablet. “This has all the current lessons learned from covert ops. The school curriculum hasn’t caught up yet.”
Taking the tablet, I retreated to my stateroom, humbled and appreciative of the old hands, willing to pass along their experiences.
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Three months later, we were part of an intervention force in another galaxy. This time it was an advanced race grinding against a barely experienced race who had only a century ago conquered their solar system. They found themselves in the path of a harshly expanding species; conquerors and slavers.
We’d brought in the fleet. Several of the behemoths were configured to provide post action support for the ground dwellers on two planets of this system. Ten others held large Marine detachments; one of our designated Peacekeeper Divisions. Six more were set up for space defense, with ninety wings of manned fighter craft.
Later, after pacification, we would enforce anti-slavery policies, with a heavy hammer if need be. From experience, races like the one we now faced, needed a lot of continual learning reinforcement before they saw the light; the light of six hundred other species. Our end goal was to return conquered planets back to their rightful owners, as well as return scattered slaves back home. Phase two was to assist them in rebuilding in the manner of their choosing.
The action, we were involved in, was the only, currently hot, land-side combat zone. Several covert teams were going in first, while the space boys kept the opposing force’s ships dazed and confused. To limit friendly fire and to keep the planetary natives out of our projected landing and attack lanes, we were going in to make contact.
All the prep work had been done. Each covert team had a native who had been briefed and educated about our mission. Talking with the two we had embarked with us, I could tell they were still amazed, at what they had seen and heard while on Congress World. We had to go in person. All radio coms the natives could receive were also being monitored by the enemy. Each of the ten Ops teams also included two diplomat Bears.
We’d scanned the area before landing. There was a large population in and around a huge cave system. Reactive guerrilla forces were arrayed at the perimeter for protection. The best place to land Charlie, was on the reverse slope of a mountain that held the caverns, away from opposing forces, one-hundred twenty kilometers away. We had two fighters flying top cover with orders to shoot down anything that came within fifty kilometers.
We landed cloaked, disembarked and humped it across and around the face of the mountain. Our forces were cloaked, the two natives were not. We wanted their sentries to see them as soon as possible. Using our Q-inserts we could see representations of each other in our heads-up displays. To everyone else we were invisible. We still had to be cautious about twig snaps and creating brush movement. Moving vegetation, when there’s no wind, is a big tell for a trained sniper.
Overhead the navy had sequestered the enemy ships, four of them were stocked to the ceiling with natives to be sent as workers in ag fields on faraway planets. They weren’t going anywhere; their ship’s AIs were under our control and being maneuver for a hand-off of the captured population for repatriation.
Jasper had point, Reeves behind him. He called a halt. I was running the forward outrigger position to the left of our line. Seven others finished off the box formation, with the two Accieans in the middle. We’d had left the Bears on the ship. They would join us after we had made contact and assessed the area as safe.
Just where we expected them, sentries had spotted our two companions. One made a cautious approach. I could see five others; a thirty-yard line spread directly ahead of us. In my ear, I could hear the conversation. The sentry wanted to know who they were, where they’d come from, where they were going. The sentry force was hyper vigilant; this could be a trap. The two at the extreme ends made a wide flanking move. These guys were silent as snakes. In this enemy-hostile environment, you either learned to be stealthy or were dead. One passed so close I could have tapped him on the shoulder; he had four of them.
A runner had been sent with the information. Our overflight informed us he, or she, was headed to their command post, up slope and further around the mountain. They didn’t trust wire-laid coms and certainly not radios.
After a twenty-minute wait, the runner returned with orders to escort the two for a meeting with the area commander. We waited for the sentries to settle back into their previous positions, then slipped off down slope to continue our trek. We would approach the cavern entrance from an oblique angle, passing between two sentry groups. There we would wait for a Q-com signal from our envoys.
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Everything ran as planned, contact made. We were received cautiously but with graciousness. There we stood, uncloaked; two humans, two Surrons, and three Deqovians. The Dees, as they were called in the Marines, were the biggest and baddest that Mom had in her corps. You couldn’t piss them off, but given a mission, they were fast and deadly; hell on wheels, and very, very smart. I like having them on our team, they couldn’t play cards worth a damn; no poker faces, plenty of tells.
Over flight gave us a warning, a troupe of fifty of the enemy was making a fast land transit to the base of the mountain. We had no intel on their mission, but we sure weren’t going to let them blow past the weak guard deployment below.
Reeves gave the order to saddle up. With two native guides, we ghosted down the slope through the thick foliage. We didn’t want to scare the bejesus out of the sentry posts by coming up from their rear, unannounced. Our guides went first, arranging for us to transit their line. We were headed for a meeting.
We arrived at a ledge, overlooking four large armored and weaponized ATVs. It looked like the opposing force was getting organized for a recon in force. The ATVs would have to remain behind. We had no ground support other than the poorly equipped natives. It was too soon in the schedule for troop landings.
Reeves gave us our op orders:
Don’t disclose our presence as anything other than as a native guerrilla force.
Prevent the invaders from crossing the sentry line
Disable the ATVs and their coms.
We weren’t going to be using any advanced weapons other than hand held brain-scramblers. The settings had been pre-programed for their physiology. I was assigned to take out their coms in the ATVs. The others melted up slope to form an ambush.
Sneaking in was simple; just don’t make a sound. I made a recon around the area where the ATVs were parked. Sensors told me that the stiff, upright wire rods were the com antennas. My plan was to snip them off, one vehicle at a time. Four of the interlopers were outside, gabbing with one another; the drivers I presumed.
Ten others were hidden in the bush, acting as a protection force for the area. The four gabbers were making enough noise to cover my approach to the first vehicle. Up I climbed. To me, the click sounds of my cutters seemed like I’d thrown a rock at a metal trash can. I looked around. No sign of a response. I put my cutters back in their pouch and used some putty to stick the severed antenna next to the stub. My scanner told me this vehicles coms were now dead.
I looked up slope, wondering how my comrades were doing. Climbing down, I approached the next ATV. Up, done and down; EZ. I looked ahead, the next two were near the drivers. I mounted the third very cautiously, examining and testing every foot and handhold. On top, I used my free hand to muffle the cutting sound. I held the thin rod in place, not wanting to create motion that might be seen peripherally. I wanted to ‘wave’ the drivers, but that might alert the widely disbursed and hidden guard force.
This was harder than I’d thought it would be. I’d been through infiltration training, but being so exposed, even cloaked, gave me a few chills. Climbing down the way I’d come I was finally at ground. Slowly, I move forward to get access to the final vehicle. I was ghosting along the side of the third ATV when I heard the crunch of gravel coming my way. I crouched down against a mid-wheel.
One of the drivers appeared around a corner, loosening his belt. It was obvious what he was going to do. Our stealth gear could hide the sound of my breathing, and I hope the sound of my heart.
He stopped right in front of me, facing away. Thank God for small miracles, I wasn’t going to get pissed on. He’d lowered his pants a bit to do his business. Fastening them back up he stumbled slightly, lost his balance and fell on me. Cloaked or not, he knew he’d fallen on someone, not against the tire he’d expected.
My knife was out, my fast-twitch engaged. I wrapped my hand over what passed for a mouth to keep him from alerting his buddies. I’d made my first kill. I lowered him quietly, then quickly made my way to the last vehicle. I was going up. If the others found my work, I would be above them.
I received a q-com ping from Gypsy One, our overflight. The natives had finished dispatching the ten guards in the bush. I hadn’t heard a thing, even with augmented hearing. Mom might want a few thousand of these guys in her corps. I snipped the last antenna. From my perch I leaned over and wave-scrambled the last three.
The natives must have seen them drop. Two of them appeared, as if by magic. They walked over to the unconscious bodies, dragging them behind the last ATV. I uncloaked and hopped down. Four others emerged from different spots. No talking, no sounds. These new arrivals took the driver positions, cranked up the engines and drove them away. In the process, the last one had run over the bodies of the three drivers. Judging by the sunken tire tracks, those ATVs were very heavy.
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Our job was done, at least the covert part. We were ordered to stick around to play taxi for the native mucky mucks.
In two weeks, it was over, at least on this planet. The admirals, generals, and diplomats had done their jobs. Bivouacked near a major roadway between cities, we’d claimed an abandoned barn for R&R and sleeping. Staying aboard ship was comfortable, but nothing beats the great outdoors in good weather. We’d had more than our share of shipboard time.
Sitting on a hay bale, sharpening my knife and shooting the breeze with my comrades, I heard a loud “ATTENTION ON DECK,” bellowing from Reeves’ mouth. Automatically, we scrambled to our feet. I’d dropped my knife in the process.
In strode General Bonner, or as I call her, Mom. “At ease, everyone, at ease. Master Sargent Reeves, I think you’ve got the loudest mouth in my Marine corps.”
Grinning ear to ear he replied, “Yes ma’am, I certainly do. How can we help you, General?”
“Well I came planet-side to pass out some medals and shake a few hands.” She walked up and eyeballed Reeves. As close as she was, it was a long look up. “Anybody here deserve any medals?”
“No ma’am, nobody here did anything but their job.”
“Thought so.” Tossing him a small blue box, she said, “Here, pass these around anyway. I’d like a word with my daughter.
Sargent Reeves snapped to attention, loudly he proclaimed, “D-O-H, front and center!”
“Very funny Reeves, if you weren’t in Covert Ops, I’d bust you down to private.”
Still at attention, still grinning, “Yes ma’am, I know you would.”
Walking towards me, she said, “A little privacy please.”
Reeves yelled, “PT, outside, back of the barn.” Everyone left quickly.
Mom waved her hand at her adjutant, “You too, I won’t be long.” As soon as he was out of sight, she dropped her hard-as-nails posture.
Walking up to me, she glanced down. “Dropped your knife sweetie.” Then she laughed, “I haven’t said that to you since you were eight.” She gestured for me to sit and joined me.
“I watched the videos. Couldn’t have done better myself. How are you getting on? Want to stay at this, or move on?”
Her question was a mother’s question, not a general’s.
“You know your father will see the vids at some point. He might bring you in closer to home. He misses you. I do to, but know that, if you’re called back, it wasn’t my doing.”
“Mom, I’ve found what I need to be doing, at least for now. How’s Noah? Has he cured anything yet?”
“Well the only cure he’s looking for right now is for a broken heart. His girlfriend called it quits. Said he was spending too much time in the lab with the Bears.”
“Well, I didn’t think she was good enough for him anyway.”
“And what about you? There aren’t many eligible men for you to rub elbows with in your profession, being gone so much.”
“Well, you heard Reeves; Daughter of Hornblower is not a name that brings them in for a closer look. Everyone’s scared to death of him. And I know for a fact that it’s you they should worry about. Dad’s a teddy bear.”
Mom chuckled, “Yeah, you got that right.”
32 Introgression
Introgression: The movement or spread of two or more genes which control the same characteristic of one species into the gene pool of another through repeated backcrossing of interspecific hybrids with members of one of the parental species.
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We have not encountered any species with higher levels of technology than we have. In most tech areas, everyone is well behind. The paradox explanation is that there hasn’t been enough time, and there has been too much of it.
Over two-billion years ago, the Big Wipe, had eliminated all higher-level sentient species. Time had erased most evidence of their ever having been. Planets suffer natural geological cataclysms, stars age and swell, taking their goldilocks zone children with them, and the simple macro-physics of entropic decay does the rest.
Non-natural forces allowed Mom and Dad to find the last three remaining Surron repositories. From there, the only Mintic redoubt had been discovered. Other races had no shoulders to stand on; there were none to be found, except for shattered and degraded curious fragments; of no technical value.
Evolution creeps along at a meandering pace, often stopping and redirecting species development, sometimes doubling back, blocking a direct line between lower order life forms and the stars. Every species leap in a different manner, under the same laws of physics, nature, and time.
There had been four Big-Wipes in the past. We’d confirmed that by stealing the Zee’s records. Four gradual holocausts, spaced two to three billion years apart. My way-back-when ancestor, Riley Patterson, had forever stopped that cycle.
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As a child, Mom taught me the universe is a big place. I’ve had that nailed in my brain over the last eight years as a covert ops specialist. We were more of a recon unit now. Jacks of all trade. Special investigators. The powers that be had the war-interdiction process down to a quick science. Not much call for cloaked angels up high or dirt-side ghosts anymore.
I’m not quite settled about calling the universe a place; it’s more like an idea. Universe is simply a word we use to fence in the un-fencible; our collective heads are too small to wrap around it. Defined words imply limits. Limits are comfortable concepts, at times.
In this bigness was found a large sphere-ship, creeping along, between galaxies, heading nowhere in particular. The biggest ship ever discovered, the size and shape of a small moon. Since it was well outside any galaxy’s gravity well, it took a few hours to just determine its mass.
A member race, of the Congress of Species, had found it during a sponsored voyage of astrophysics study; a look-back at their own galaxy, charting and mapping. Congress has a strong ‘look but don’t touch’ policy. They had reported the find immediately.
The ship wasn’t under acceleration, wasn’t radiating any emissions or heat; no signs of activity, or life. We were here to take a sanctioned look. A Traveler-clone ship, with a diverse staff of scientists and engineers, was standing by. No Marines. We were the authorized boarding party.
Knowing the mass and size was the smallest bit of knowledge. The interior could be a void, encapsulated by a very dense or thick outer shell, or it could have a huge lightweight sponge-like structured interior wit
h a thinner outer shell; or anything in between.
I sat at the sensor board while we conducted close-in scans from 50 klicks out. Considering the diameter of the sphere is 1132 kilometers, we felt like we were skimming just above the surface.
This was turning out to be an interesting construct. The hard, outer shell is twenty-three kilometers thick; a metallic, almost ceramic-like, crystalline-carbon-iron composite. A fifteen-hundred-layer sandwich.
The remaining volume is mostly open space. An eleven-kilometer thick layer, of less dense material coats the inner hull; sensor returns classified that layer as a combination of ice, organic laced rock, and soil; common dirt. If anything was alive in that ground, it was too small to pick up with exterior scans. The inside was at interstellar ambient temperature.
Covering the soil was a layer of frozen gases. Nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane, and a few others; an meter deep in places. A thin gaseous atmosphere of Helium and hydrogen kept the interior from being a complete vacuum. This place had been a planetary biome, turned inside out.
Eighteen, half-kilometer-wide, triangular shafts connected the outer sphere to the center; a fifty-kilometer diameter sphere. Those shafts were marked on the outside by huge hatches, outlined as thin lines on the hull surface.
It would take a long time to explore; the internal surface area was just shy of four-million square kilometers.
Survey bots had landed then returned to Avalon, carrying hull scraping samples. It was time for us to do a little EVA. Lacking data, as good as AIs are, organic sentients are better at on-the-fly evaluation of environments ... and skullduggery ... AIs don’t make intuitive leaps.