SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (41 page)

"No immediate rush, Joe," he responded with
a peevish tone.

When I got to dry land, I set my gear down on a rock.
On top of me being soaking wet from wading the stream twice, it was raining, it
was always freakin' raining on Newark. Following the example of the SpecOps
people, I did squats with my rifle over my head, then dropped and did fifty
pushups, to get some warm blood into my chilled muscles. There were only five
people still in the process of crossing the stream, and they didn't need my
help, so I turned my attention to our annoying AI. "What is it,
Skippy?"

"A potential problem, Joe. A few minutes ago, I
overhead the scavenger leaders talking, two of them are taking a group of
laborers out in a truck, to a site where they previously found parts of the
Elder starship buried in the ground. They are loading the truck now."

"Damn it!" This was the last thing we
needed; if the scavengers were in two places, we would need to plan and
coordinate two simultaneous attacks. Depending how far the Kristang drove in
their truck, it might take us a long time, walking night and day, to catch up
with them. Although we were still slightly ahead of schedule, we couldn't delay
an attack for very long, because we couldn't risk the Kristang ship arriving
early and spoiling all of our plans. "This Elder site they're driving to,
how far it is from their base? And do you know if they're planning to stay
there overnight?"

"They are planning to stay overnight, one night
only. This particular site has been picked over pretty thoroughly, Joe, it is
quite desperate of them to go back there, hoping they can dig up something of
value. Without air transport, or their RV, they can no longer travel far from
their base, this limits them to sites within roughly eighty kilometers. The
leaders know that an extended excursion away from the base would make them
vulnerable to attack by their laborers, without air power, the leaders are
feeling very vulnerable. They are absolutely right to be concerned; their
workforce is extra unhappy with their leaders, they've lost both of their
aircraft, and their RV, and they let what they think was an extremely valuable
Elder power tap get away. The Elder artifacts they have recovered so far are
not valuable enough to pay much more than the costs of the expedition, so the
laborers know there will not be much, if any, profits to be shared. The
workforce is ripe for a violent mutiny, Joe."

"That's good for us. Where is this Elder site
they're going to? Can you show me on my zPhone?"

"There is a map on your phone now."

"Huh. Damn, that's almost between us and the
scavenger base." Skippy had put a blinking dot for the Elder site, on top
of the map we used to guide us to the scavenger base. Our route passed within
twenty kilometers of where the scavengers would be staying overnight. "Do
you know the route that truck will be driving?" I asked, and immediately,
a series of red dots appeared on the map, outlining the route the Kristang were
planning to drive. The last forty kilometers of their route overlapped the
route we planned to walk. It made sense, we were now approaching the scavenger
base from the south, and there was only one good route that avoided going up
and down hill all day; we would follow a river valley. The Kristang in their
truck understandably planned to do the same thing. "Skippy, thank you, I
need to think about this. We can watch their truck from the satellite
feeds?"

"You won't normally be able to do that through
the thick clouds you have overhead now, I'll add an icon on your maps, so you
can see where they are. That truck is leaving the base right now. No one aboard
is singing the Kristang version of 'Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall',
Joe, these lizards are not a crew of happy campers."

"Got it, thank you."

I went over to Smythe, who was checking that everyone
was ready to move out, move out quickly, before our half-frozen muscles
stiffened up. Explaining the situation, I showed Smythe the map on his own
zPhone.

"Bloody hell," he said, "this
complicates things somewhat, doesn't it?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"Although," he mused, scratching his two-day
growth of beard, "it could be an opportunity."

"That also," I agreed again. "I see
this as more risk than opportunity. For opportunity, you're thinking we can
take out this excursion party of Kristang, steal their truck, ride it into
their base compound, and take them by surprise?"

"Essentially, yes. It is tempting, surely. That
sort of plan depends on our spy in the sky intercepting communications from the
excursion party, then faking signals from them. Can Skippy do that, do you
think, sir?"

"Captain, that would not be a problem for Skippy.
The problem is, the excursion party will be overnighting only seventy
kilometers from the base, that close, they can use simple radio to communicate,
not route the signal through a satellite. When they send signals through one of
their satellites, Skippy can intercept and squelch or alter the signal. He
can't do anything about radio transmissions through the air."

"Bollocks," Smythe declared. "That's
out, then. Unless we take them all out at once, we'd risk cocking it up. The
timing would be too dicey, too many ways it could go pear shaped in a
hurry."

"Uh, yeah," I said, not completely sure of
his British slang, I understood the basics. "How about this; we proceed to
here," I pointed to the spot where the Kristang truck would intercept our
planned walking route on their return journey, "and we wait for them to go
by. Then we can follow their truck. We can't go ahead of them, they'd see our
footprints. And that river valley is the only practical way to get from here to
their base, unless we go all the around these hills, way to the east. I don't
like that option."

"As much as I hate to pass up this opportunity,
sir," Smythe observed sourly, "we're not out here to defeat them in
detail any longer, we already knocked out their air power. Now, we need to hit
them all at once. Rubbish. We'll need to explain to the lads why we're not hitting
them."

The lads weren't the only ones who needed to be
reminded not to shoot, as we watched the Kristang truck slowly lurch by a
couple days later. Smythe, Giraud, I and a few others lay belly down behind
rocks on the reverse slope of a hill, as the Kristang truck drove back down the
river valley below us. It was tempting, almost too tempting a target. With our
Kristang rifles, we could easily have knocked treads off the truck, then picked
off the Kristang one by one. If the Kristang in the truck were the only ones on
the planet, that would have been a viable plan. In reality, we had to watch,
silently, as the truck passed our position. As an extra precaution, none of us
had brought weapons to our observation post. I wasn't worried about someone
losing discipline and firing off a shot, I was worried about a weapon
discharging accidentally. Yeah, it was a small risk, it was also a risk we
didn't need to take. The Kristang in their truck didn't know we were there,
couldn't see us, were not a threat to us.

Their truck reminded me of the US Army's M977 heavy
truck, except instead of eight wheels, the Kristang truck had four flexible
treads like our sunken RV. The cab had a flat front, with large windows,
through my zPhone camera I could clearly see the two Kristang in the cab.
Behind the cab was a canvas sort of cover, two more Kristang were sitting with
their legs hanging over the tailgate, looking very pissed off.

When we first saw the truck, rolling along beside the
river, it was moving fairly quickly over flat ground. Now, right below us, the
river made a series of lazy bends, and the truck had to slow down to splash
across streams. Skippy told us that truck didn't have swim pontoons, it
couldn't float like the RV had, it was just a truck with fancy treads. On a
planet crisscrossed with rivers swollen with snow and glacial melt, a vehicle
that couldn't cross a significant body of water was severely limited in where
it could go. That explained why the Kristang had chosen to go out to an Elder
crash site they had already explored; there weren't many places they could go,
now that we had destroyed their aircraft and RV.

The truck was driving back over its own muddy tracks,
returning to the base the same way it had come out. In several places along the
river, there was only one place to go, without driving through water deep
enough to submerge it completely. It went through a stream and I found myself
holding my breath, the truck was submerged almost up to its hood, and the two
Kristang in the back were now standing up, keeping their feet out of the icy
water. Even from where we were hiding, I could faintly hear the truck's motors
whining. One of the left treads spun freely, then caught, and the truck waddled
up the other side of the stream. The truck stopped, the left door opened, and a
Kristang got out to inspect the front left tread. Then the other Kristang in
the front got out, and the two of them talked, while pointing at the tread. One
of the laborers in the back poked his head around the side, and the first
Kristang pulled out a pistol and gestured for the laborer to get back in the
truck. The two in the front kicked the tread, and clods of mud fell out. After
peering at the tread a minute and discussing something, the two leaders got
back in the cab, and the truck lurched back into motion.

After a while, watching the truck drive on became
dull, when it became clear the Kristang had no idea we were there, and only
wanted to get back to their base. My attention wandered away from the truck to
Captain Smythe, I wondered how many times, in how many Godforsaken places,
Smythe had done this exact same thing; lain in wait, observing an enemy,
deciding when and how to strike. 

Within ten minutes, the truck went out of sight around
a bend in the river.

"Skippy said there are six of them in the
truck," Smythe said quietly, "the most we could have taken out at one
time were three. No go, it wouldn't have worked anyway."

"And we couldn't have walked all the way to where
they camped overnight, in time to hit them when they were sleeping," I
added. "We stick with the original plan, let that truck drive back to
their base. Give it twenty minutes to get well ahead of us, then we'll go down
there and follow it. We should be within striking distance of their base tonight."

The big unknown in my plan to assault the scavengers'
base was whether we could get close enough to launch a surprise attack, or
whether the Kristang would see us coming far away and prepare their defenses.
If the Kristang had made even a minimal effort at external site security, such
as scattering a few cameras around the base perimeter, they could have ruined
all our plans. A couple cheap cameras were a simple precaution, that could have
forced us to fight a pitched battle against Kristang with equivalent
technology, with them in prepared positions. While we marched toward the base,
Smythe and I discussed how to approach the base from multiple directions, using
one group as a decoy, before the main assault team swept in from another
direction. Neither of us liked the odds of that plan succeeding.

To my surprise and delight, back when I was dreaming
up the overall plan against the scavengers, Skippy confirmed the scavengers had
made zero effort at protecting their base from external threats, the leaders'
only concern was security inside their base. They only threat they foresaw was
from their own forced laborers; the base inside the fence was riddled with
cameras and other sensors, and doors were locked with codes that only three of
the leaders had access to. On an uninhabited planet, a planet without land
animals larger than a tiny insect, the leaders must have figured cameras
outside the base were not necessary. They were wrong.

After the scavengers saw from Skippy's faked satellite
data, that they weren't alone on the planet, that other Kristang had been
there, had even shot down their air power, you would think the scavengers
leaders would have done something, taken some steps to prevent hostile forces
from sneaking up on their base. They did absolutely nothing. After seeing the
fake satellite of the other Kristang having flown up into orbit, and then
jumping away, the scavenger leaders once again thought they were safe. Stupid
civilians.

That was great news for us. The day before we were
scheduled to reach the base, I asked Skippy to confirm there were no cameras,
motion detectors, or other sensors outside the base. He replied that, as far as
he could tell, and he was tapping into all their communications, there were no
sensors of any kind outside the fence.

As far as he could tell.

That was the problem. While we could plan for the
best, we had to account for the worst.

It was a judgment call, and as the commander, I had to
make it. If there were in fact no cameras or sensors outside the fence line, we
could wait until daylight to attack, because my plan relied on the Kristang
being awake. If there were sensors of any kind outside the fence line, then it
would be best for us to approach the base and launch the attack at night, to
catch the Kristang as off guard as possible. If I assumed there were no sensors
and I was wrong, our daylight assault could get difficult very quickly. But if
I assumed there were sensors and we launched a night assault, instead of
sticking to my original plan, I would needlessly be putting human lives at
risk.

What I decided on was a compromise. We approached the
base from two directions, at night. One team of six people came in from the
east, as a decoy force. Once they were within half a kilometer, the rest of us,
including an Alpha team of two men in armor suits, ran toward the base from the
west. If we were detected, the base would sound an alarm and Skippy would tell
us right away. At that point, we were committed to hit the base as fast and
hard as we could, there was no going back, nothing to go back to.

If our night approach was not detected, and we got to
the ridge two hundred meters west of the base, we would hide behind the ridge
until daylight, as implement my original plan. To my original plan, I added a
silent prayer before we crossed the start line. We each took with us weapons,
water, a sludge, and first aid kits. Our two actual qualified doctors remained
at the start line with the rest of our equipment, a kilometer from the base,
under a bluff. Part of my prayer was that we wouldn't need the doctors. The
weather was cold but clear that night, our local TV weatherbabe Skippy said
skies would remain mostly clear until the following afternoon, I took that as a
good omen. Unfortunately, I mentioned my thought of omens out loud while Skippy
was listening, and was subjected to a scathing lecture about ignorant,
superstitious monkeys. It's a good thing he didn't know I was also wearing my
lucky underwear.

Yeah, lucky underwear is a thing.

Skippy's intel was right. No alarm was sounded, we got
to our initial hold position two hundred meters from the base, spread out to
give good coverage, and we lay prone on the ground behind a ridge that was
maybe five meters tall at its highest point. Just enough to give us cover. We
set up zPhones sticking just above the ridge as cameras, and monitored the view
from our own zPhones. We waited throughout the night, silently, communicating
by hand signals. As dawn approached, lights came on inside the scavenger base,
and Skippy told us the Kristang were engaged in mundane tasks such as eating
breakfast, showering, and arguing with each other. In two hours, two of the
leaders planned to go out to the Elder crash site with six laborers, to resume
digging. Once they were outside the base, there was a strong chance they would
see us, so I launched Phase Three of the plan.

Phases One and Two of my plan relied merely on the
Kristang's strong desire to possess an Elder power tap, and Skippy's ability to
control the data feed through their satellites. Phases One and Two did not require
the Kristang to do anything specifically Kristang-like in nature; any species
would want an Elder power tap. Perhaps the fact that the scavengers were
especially eager to grab it as soon as possible, before the starship they were
expecting could steal it and jump away, was a particularly Kristang
characteristic, but no species would leave such a valuable object laying
exposed on the ground for long. Of course they would send an aircraft to pick
it up. And of course, after the aircraft crashed, they would send their
remaining air power to get the power tap. Humans would have flown a dropship to
the crash site, out of concern for any survivors of the crash, or at least to
investigate the cause of the crash; the Kristang likely wouldn't have cared
about any of that. Probably they'd consider such actions a sign of weakness.

No matter what their motivations, the Kristang had
fallen for our traps, Phases One and Two, that wiped out their air power
advantage, and reduced the Kristang we potentially had to fight by eleven. I'd
been hoping one, or both, of the air sorties the scavengers sent out would
contain at least one powered armor suit, to reduce the number of those we had
to face. Sending an armored suit seemed to me to be a blindingly obvious part
of any plan to pick up a priceless Elder artifact; someone in armor could more
quickly and easily reach the site in the rough terrain of the canyon lands.
Someone in armor could more easily, and more important, safely, bring the artifact
back to the aircraft. Crossing freezing cold, fast running streams, walking
over broken rocks and smooth, wet, slippery muds, sliding through mud, would
all be safer in a powered armor suit that had gyroscopes and
computer-controlled stabilizers.

Unfortunately, although the Kristang would probably
have agreed with me about the wisdom and practicality of sending armor to pick
up the Elder power tap, they had a uniquely Kristang factor to consider: they
couldn't trust their forced labor with powered armor. Even one of the six
high-ranking Kristang, who had armor, wouldn't risk being away from the base,
surrounded by forced labor. In the close confines of an aircraft, or hemmed in
by canyon walls, a Kristang in armor would lose much of the advantage of wearing
armor, and be vulnerable to a concentrated, planned attack. The result, which
sucked for us humans, was no armor was in either of the aircraft. That meant
the scavengers, at their base, had four functional sets of armor that we would
have to deal with. Too many Kristang, four of whom would have armor, against
our human SpecOps team, and we had only two sets of Kristang armor with us.

Phase Three of my plan was to deal with the
scavengers' numerical and armor advantage, and the advantage they had of being
in defensive positions. I had thought long and hard about how we could defeat
the scavengers, that's a nice way of saying we needed to kill them, all of
them. Because I couldn't think of any way for to kill them, given their
advantages of numbers, technology and being on the defensive, I decided the
only solution was for us to outsource the job.

We would get the Kristang to kill each other. That's
why my plan relied on them being awake and up before we launched Phase Three.

I contacted Skippy. "Hey, Skippy, you
there?"

"Of course. How's your back feeling, Joe?"

"Better" I admitted, "now that my pack
is lighter." My pack was lighter, because I was no longer carrying a
section of powered armor, and because I'd eaten most of the food we started out
with. Dehydrated sludges didn't weigh much, even in fourteen percent higher
gravity. The armored suits were now assembled and ready for use in combat. My
hope, if my plan worked, was we wouldn't need our Alpha team with two sets of
armor for a while yet. "You ready for Phase Three?"