The team had their part of the base fully set up and were policing the piles of packing materials when Perkins arrived with Nert, to tour the new base camp. She had a hundred other things to do that were more important, but she also had to show her newly expanded team that she cared about their efforts, and was involved in day-to-day operations. Led by Jates, she was given a quick tour of the base and she actually was impressed, especially by the tall, stout wall that ringed the huts, with two gates guarded by autocannons. “Very well, Surgun,” she said while checking the time on her zPhone. “Good work.”
“Ma’am,” Jesse lowered his voice. “These fancy apartments are all real nice, but putting so many people close together could turn this place into Mortaritaville.”
“Mortarita-” Nert was confused.
“He means this place could be a real tempting target for the enemy to hit with a mortar attack,” Dave explained.
“That’s why the camp is tucked right up against the cargo Launcher tube,” Perkins pointed to the long ridge that loomed east to west behind the camp. “The Commissioner figures the lizards won’t risk damaging that big, expensive asset they paid to build.”
Jesse raised an eyebrow. “I don’t see the Commish sleeping in one of these huts.” Knowing Perkins was not free to express her personal opinion about their fearless hamster leader, he added “I can understand the lizards won’t hit this site with railguns or maser cannons, but a ground team with rockets or mortars could saturate this area with antipersonnel rounds. A couple air bursts would ruin everyone’s day.”
“The nanofabric of these huts is smart,” Nert observed with optimism. “It can sense an approaching projectile and-”
“Cadet,” Perkins cut off the alien teenager without turning her head to look at him. “We all saw the demonstration,” she meant when the Ruhar had shown the huts could deflect or absorb an explosive-tipped rifle round. The demo had been impressive, right up until the Ruhar instructor flipped his Kristang rifle to full auto and sprayed a hut. The nanofabric stiffened and flexed appropriately, protecting its interior as best it could, until the cumulative effect of kinetic energy became more than the nano particles could coordinate to counteract. After that, the hut’s walls were holed and gaping tears appeared. She knew Jesse was correct, a mortar attack by air burst warheads packed with antipersonnel submunitions could rip the huts to shreds, and kill everyone inside the barriers. Ironically, the tough barriers would actually concentrate the force of an explosion inside the walls. “Colter, we’re taking a risk anywhere we set up camp on this rock. Legion leadership thinks the size of this camp is the best trade-off. If everyone is in small camps, they will be too scattered and isolated to support each other in case of attack, and logistics of distributing gear across a wide area is not practical. Camps that are bigger than this, you’re right, they would be a tempting target for a lizard commando team packing mortars close enough to hit us. We have a solid perimeter all around this site, out past the effective range of Kristang man-portable artillery. Their air power could get within range to launch stand-off weapons, but they would pay a heavy price, and I don’t see the lizards risking precious air assets to knock out a dozen huts. We’ll live with it.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Jesse had made his point and he knew the Mavericks commander had little flexibility to change the situation. He expected that most of the time, she would be sleeping on a cot in her command tent anyway, more exposed than anyone getting rack time in a nanofabric hut.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dave, Jesse, Shauna and Nert had been surprised and pleased to see Surgun Jates when he arrived to help set up their camp. The two men had been less thrilled when Perkins announced she was assigning them to bring their new recruits up to speed. The idea of getting up at zero dark thirty to run with an out-of-condition group of former soldiers made both of them groan. Worse was hearing that, because he knew Verd-kris doctrine and tactics, Surgun Jates would be leading the training.
There were only two pieces of good news about their undesirable assignment. First, the Ruhar had promised to supply skinsuits for the entire unit within twenty days. While Jates was annoyed by the delay, Jesse pointed out that the recruits would not be ready to work with powered armor until they had restored themselves to a basic level of fitness anyway. The other good news was that Nert had also been assigned to the training unit, so he could gain experience in human and Verd-kris doctrine and tactics. Of course, the teenager was bubbling with enthusiasm
Since the latest group of recruits had not arrived until after midnight local time, Jesse and Dave discussed with Jates that they would get a good night of sleep and start fresh at a reasonable hour. Dave, but not Jesse, was therefore startled when a shrill whistle blew what seemed like minutes after his head hit the rack. “Oh, damn it,” Dave’s jaw stretched with a yawn. “Up and at ‘em, huh?”
Jesse blinked at Dave, blinking with a total lack of comprehension. “Oh!” He heard the whistle blowing and swung his feet over the side of the rack and right into the wide-open boots that automatically closed and formed themselves to his feet. Dave tugged his bootlaces tight and hustled out the door behind Jesse, adding ‘high-tech self-lacing boots’ to his wish list.
Outside, the two sergeants formed up on opposite ends of the recruits, who were still stumbling out of their huts. As bleary-eyed men and women jogged past him, still half-asleep in the darkness, Dave saw Nert jogging slowly past. The cadet barely acknowledged Dave, while covering his mouth with both hands to stifle a jaw-stretching yawn.
Dave had just gotten the last of his charges properly lined up, when the floodlights on poles around the camp snapped on, and Jates stomped to the front of the formation and opened his mouth to bark orders.
His mouth snapped closed with an audible ‘clack’ sound. “Czajka,” he growled. “You care to explain this?”
Dave, bewildered, had no idea what the alien meant. The people in his formation began laughing, quietly at first with their shoulders shaking. Then they broke into tears of laughter. “Surgun!” He glanced down at his uniform, fearing he had something amiss. Snapping to attention because he didn’t know what else to do, he stared straight forward. “Explain what?”
Jates shook his head slowly in disgust, striding over to Dave gesturing with a finger for him to follow. They walked over to where Nert was standing at attention, looking straight ahead.
Someone had crudely drawn the outline of a dick on the right side of the cadet’s face. “Uhhhhh,” Dave sputtered.
“What is the problem?” Nert asked fearfully.
The other people in the formation were still laughing uncontrollably. “Cadet Dandurf,” Jates spoke slowly, his voice strained with the effort of keeping himself from laughing. “If you want to advertise your services,” he paused and made a choking sound, barely able to speak. “You can do that on the planetary network.”
“What?” Nert pleaded.
Dave touched the right side of his own face. “You got a, um, here, I’ll show you.” He used the front-facing camera of his zPhone as a mirror, for Nert to see his face.
“Oh!” Nert was stricken with embarrassment and Dave felt terrible for the young person, but then the cadet began to giggle. “That is funny! Hee, hee, I feel like a dick! My people do the same sort of thing to our recruits. Of course, we would draw the outline of a Ruhar penis, which is much bi-”
“OK!” Dave slapped Nert on the back. “We don’t need an anatomy lesson right now, Nert. Go scrub that off your face, and join us when you can.”
“But,” the teenager was crestfallen. “I don’t mind. I will miss our morning exercise.”
“Nert,” Dave laughed, relieved the cadet was taking the joke with good humor. “We’re only going on a five-kilometer run. I’m sure you could catch us,” he gave the humans in the formation the stink eye. “Even if you gave us a four-kilometer head start.”
Nert did wash the dick off his face, and he did catch up to Dave after his group had covered less t
han two kilometers. “You Ok, Nerty?” Dave inquired from the back of the formation, holding out a hand so Nert would not pass him.
“Oh, yes, Mister Czajka. Thank you for asking. I am fine. The people in my squad did that to welcome me, to show they consider me part of the team,” he was beaming with happiness.
“Um, yeah, about that,” Dave lowered his voice. “Listen, not all of it may have been exactly friendly. These people are new, you don’t know them. Some of these jokers,” he watched recruits stumbling and struggling to maintain what should have been an easy pace. “Might be jealous of you.”
“Why? Because we are friends?”
“No. Because you’re still just a cadet, and you have already done more than they might accomplish in their lifetimes. You helped kill a Kristang commando team, and you were with us when the Ruh Tostella got blown apart, and on Camp Alpha.”
“Oh. I did not think of that.”
“Plus, you can run way faster and jump higher than any of us puny humans.”
“I am also much smarter than the average human,” Nert added helpfully.
“You, uh, see what I mean?”
“Oops,” the cadet looked down at his boots. “I do see what you mean.”
“Just try not to show off, and you’ll be fine.”
After a very long and hard day of training, during which it became clear that many of the recruits needed time to regain a basic level of physical fitness, Jates decided the group needed some inspiration. He gathered the humans in the prefab structure that served as the dining facility, and gave what he intended as a rousing speech, exhorting the team to work harder. “Many of my people think you humans are weak, soft, primitive,”
“He needs to work on his compliments,” Dave whispered to Jesse.
“-because you do not have the advantages of genetic engineering, or nanotechnology implants, or, really,” Jates looked around at the blank faces and realized he was losing his audience. “Any kind of useful technology of your own. But, I know you humans can fight! I had the privilege of serving in combat with Sergeant Colter-”
Jesse sat bolt upright at hearing his name. “Oh, shit,” he groaned.
“You’re a gen-u-ine he-roh, brother,” Dave teased.
“- on the world your species calls ‘Camp Alpha’. I saw him fight by my side. He fought bravely and well, despite the obvious disadvantages of your human physiology.” Faces stared back at him. Most were blank, some were becoming hostile. “Sergeant Colter, come up here and tell the team about your experience, how you fought against terrible odds, and killed the enemy.”
“Uh,” Jesse laughed nervously. “It wasn’t nothin’, just doing my duty, that’s all.”
“Nonsense,” Jates declared. “You fought Kristang, and you did it with courage and determination. Your fierce warrior spirit is a shining example to all humans.”
Jesse had been glancing back at the kitchen area nervously, and checking the clock on his phone while Jates spoke. “Um, I, uh,” he stammered as he stood up.
“Don’t be shy, Sergeant Colter,” Jates urged. “Come up here and tell us about-”
There was a quiet, high-pitched ‘ding’ sound from the kitchen area. Followed by a persistent beeping.
Jesse’s head swiveled toward the kitchen, then back at Jates.
“What.” Jates asked slowly, “Is. That?”
“I’m, uh,” Jesse shuffled his feet. “I’m um. I’m baking cupcakes.”
“I love cupcakes,” one solder announced unhelpfully, followed by approving murmurs from the others.
“Cup.” The tone of Jates’s voice matched his withering glare. “Cakes.”
“Yeah, uh,” Jesse felt his face burning red. “I thought, uh, it would be nice to- To, uh.”
Jates just glared silently, slowly shaking his head.
“They’re going to burn unless I, uh-” Jesse’s voice trailed off. “I’m just going to,” he began inching toward the kitchen. “To get them. Ok?”
Jates hid his face behind one three-fingered hand and mumbled “Maybe the Kristang will go easy on us, if we just surrender right now.”
“Colonel?” Irene approached her commanding officer with all the enthusiasm of a dog getting a bath. While Perkins was a good officer, her team had learned she sometimes did not take hearing bad news well. “Ma’am, we have a problem.”
Perkins pushed herself away from the table, happy to have an excuse for a break from endless status reports, but weary of hearing about one thing or another going wrong with their mission on Fresno. “We have a problem? The Mavericks, or the Legion? Or UNEF?”
“It will be General Ross’s problem soon enough, we all know he’s going to ask for your input before going to the hamsters about it.”
“Oh Christ. Spit it out, Striebich. Ah, I didn’t mean that,” she added, knowing she had been unfair to her pilot. Sitting up straight in the chair, she tried again. “What is the problem?”
“Keepers. What else?”
“Keepers? Oh, hell,” Perkins slapped her forehead. “Have the lizards formed their own Alien Legion with those idiot fanatics?”
“That might be better, because then we could shoot them and be done with it. No, I just heard from our friendly lizard liaison that there are over seven hundred Keepers on Fresno.”
Perkins gasped. “What the hell are they doing here?” Seven hundred was a significant portion of the force that had left Paradise with the Kristang, when the battered remnants of Admiral Kekrando’s task force accepted defeat and were escorted out of the star system. Intel from the Ruhar said most of the Keepers had been purchased by major clans and transported to their stronghold planets, to be used as status symbol slaves, or for sport such as prey for hunting or sparring with much stronger Kristang warriors. She could not imagine any reason why so many Keepers would be on a backwater world like Fresno.
“There were some here already, a couple dozen maybe, before the agreement to turn this star system over to the Ruhar. The rest were shipped in recently.”
The tone of Irene’s voice made Perkins, the former career intelligence officer, take notice. “How recently?’
“Like, just after the hamsters assigned the Alien Legion to take this place over, and before the hamster fleet arrived to officially take control of the place.”
“Shit!” Perkins exclaimed, then she used a string of other curse words that had Irene blushing. “God damn it! I knew it. I knew it! Someone in the hamster government has been feeding info to the lizards. This mission was snakebit before we ever got here. This is a damned set-up.” She had a sinking feeling that Irene Striebich had been right back on Paradise, when she predicted the Legion mission on Fresno would be a deathtrap.
“It sounds like it. Ma’am, what are we going to do? The lizards have been hiding the Keepers from us, but now they are out in the open.”
“Do? Striebich, we’re not going to do anything. Neither is UNEF or the Ruhar.”
“Ma’am?” Irene had not expected that response. “Our friendly hamster liaison told me the lizards might be planning to use the Keepers for hunting. As prey,” she shuddered with revulsion.
“Captain, the lizards are doing this to drive UNEF into doing something stupid, some action that will drive a wedge between us and our Ruhar patrons. The rules, the overall treaty that governs transfer of worlds like Fresno, are set up to protect the losing party. They do that because they figure the party with the firepower in orbit doesn’t need rules for protection. The hamsters have abided by this set of rules because they want protection for their own people the next time the Kristang take over a world held by the Ruhar. With this new offensive by the Bosphuraq and Thuranin, that is happening right now, on several planets up there. The hamsters can’t have us doing anything here that violates the rules of engagement and puts their population on other worlds at risk. Listen, Captain,” she used Irene’s rank to remind the woman that she was an Army officer on a military mission. “One of the rules is that inhabitants of a planet t
hat is changing hands have basically two options. They can stay here, be disarmed and continue their lives with restrictions and a limited set of rights. Or they can choose to evac, take a ride off world aboard an unarmed transport. The Ruhar provide transports, but their shipping capacity is strained right now, so they are allowing Kristang and even Wurgalan and Torgalau transport ships to participate in the evac here. The rules for evacuees are generous, because as you can imagine, the occupying power wants to get filthy and troublesome aliens off their shiny new world. That means there is a generous allowance for evacuees to take stuff with them, and the definition of ‘personal property’ is very broad.”
“Oh my God,” Irene’s hands flew to her mouth.
“Yeah. Shocked the hell out of me when I heard it, too. Striebich, those Keepers absolutely and thoroughly screwed themselves when they declared allegiance to the lizards and left Paradise with them. According to the rules of the game, those idiots became part of the Kristang Dominion, and are subject to the rules of that society. Officially, the Keepers are property of their ‘patrons’,” Perkins made air quotes with her fingers. “We can’t interfere. Anything we try to do will be a violation of the treaty and the Ruhar will crack down on us, hard.”
“I understand that, Ma’am, no direct action. Can we negotiate?”
“With what? Captain, we humans are not a party to the treaty. It applies to the Kristang and Ruhar, we are only hired hands here. We have nothing to bargain with, and the lizards know that. They want us to pester the Ruhar into making concessions the lizards otherwise would have no prayer of getting. Those Keepers were brought here to dangle in front of our noses, to get us to piss off the Ruhar, or to annoy the Ruhar into giving away the store. Either way, that is the last time the hamsters will trust the Alien Legion with a mission. All the Kristang have to do is put Keepers in our faces and make us lose focus.”
Deathtrap Page 16
