SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  “Uh huh, so, you learning about monkey, I mean, oh. Damn it! Now you’ve got me calling us monkeys. Info about human social customs doesn’t take up a significant part of your memory, so what’s the harm?”

  “The harm? What’s the harm in a few worms in an apple, Joe? What's the harm in a few bacteria on your food? It’s the contamination that I’m worried about. Come on, it wasn’t that long ago that the social customs of your species were limited to picking lice out of each other’s fur. And, eating the lice, yuck.”

  “Hey, those lice have got to go somewhere. They’re loaded with protein.”

  “Oh. My. God. See? It’s having that kind of thinking, anywhere in my memory, that worries me. To have monkey ideas in my-”

  “Hello, Mister, or is it, Captain,” Venkman knocked on the frame of the door to my office, “or Colonel, Bishop? They didn’t give us a briefing on military protocol before we left.”

  “Hello, Doctor,” I said, rose from my chair, and gestured for her to sit. “My rank is colonel, my position aboard the ship is captain, I guess you call me Colonel, that’s the easiest, I think.”

  “Very well, Colonel.” She glanced around my office, nothing more than a Thuranin storage closet that had been emptied out, and outfitted with a desk and three chairs. And a small cabinet that, so far, didn’t have anything in it. The only items I had added were a laptop that I rarely used, an iPad that I used all the time, and a coffee mug that I’d taken from the galley and not yet returned. No paper, no pencils or pens, no calendar with pretty landscape photos. Not even a photo of my family. I should have brought one, there hadn’t been time before we left. “I’m told that you have ordered the ship to prepare to leave this star system," she said, "to proceed to the next target, because we did not locate an Elder communications node here. The science team, myself included, would like you to reconsider. We would appreciate an opportunity to collect more data about this system. We have been using this ship’s extraordinary sensors, and have gathered valuable information, however, the data we’ve collected to date presents an incomplete picture. Without a complete data set to analyze, we won’t be able to draw any conclusions. And none of the science team has been aboard the alien station yet. We've seen the video sent back by the special forces teams, it is not the same as being there.”

  This was a conversation I didn’t want to have, shouldn’t need to have. We had covered this subject already.

  Before we left Earth, I wrote down our mission objectives, so everyone who signed on would understand exactly why the Dutchman was going back out. And so they were completely, one hundred percent, aware of the risk they'd be taking by coming aboard. My hope had been to discourage people from coming aboard. It hadn't worked. Here the objectives are in easy-to-read bullet format, something I'd seen recommended in officer training somewhere.

  1) Prevent other species from discovering humans had stolen a starship, and were involved in shutting down a wormhole

  2) Where it doesn't interfere with item 1 above, keep Skippy satisfied that we are making a serious effort to help him contact the Collective

  3) Where it doesn't interfere with Items 1 & 2 above, return the crew safely to Earth, someday, if we can. Like that's ever going to happen. That last sentence wasn't actually part of the written objectives; it was my own comment.

  You might think the order of the first two items were reversed, that the whole purpose of the Dutchman going back out, was for Skippy to contact the Collective. You would be correct about the purpose of the trip, however that was not the primary objective for the crew. We owed Skippy our loyalty. We didn't owe him so much loyalty that we would risk the safety of our home planet and our entire species. Humans stealing a starship was bad enough, the Thuranin would be immensely pissed, but starships being destroyed or captured, even by lesser species, was not all that unusual. If the Maxohlx or Rindhalu ever learned humans had a way to manipulate wormholes, a technology even they could only dream of, they would rip our planet apart to get our secret.

  And you might think objective 2 should be simply 'help Skippy contact the Collective'. You would be wrong there. We didn't know whether it was possible to contact the Collective, even whether they still existed. Or had ever existed, Skippy's memory in that area was not the greatest. All we could do is make Skippy happy that we were keeping up our end of the bargain, until he either contacted the Collective, or gave up. Keep Skippy happy that we were making a sincere effort to help him, whether we actually were able to usefully help him or not. In the back of my mind was a time limit, of maybe a year, that we would devote to helping Skippy. If we hadn't found a way to contact the Collective by then, my plan was to gently convince Skippy to give up that particular quest. How I could convince a stubborn alien AI, who could devote a thousand years to a task without thinking about it, was something I'd figure out when we got there. For me, this constitutes fairly advanced planning, compared to the way I normally do things.

  The most important objective for prospective crew members to read was number three. Not so much the text of that objective, but its position in the mission objectives order of priorities. Our return to Earth, our survival, was third in line. Everyone needed to understand that. If they didn't believe it, they could go stare at the collection of self-destruct tactical nuclear devices in one of our cargo bays.

  Perhaps even more important for prospective crew members was objective Four. Oh, there is no objective Four on the list, you say? You are correct. There is no fourth objective like 'learning important sciency stuff', or 'exploring the galaxy', or 'getting intel about our potential enemies' or 'gathering useful advanced technology equipment', or even 'engaging in special operations warfare against the enemies of mankind'. If we could do any of those not-one-of-our-objectives-things without interfering with the three stated objectives, then great. If not, that's tough. I was not going to risk mission success, or lives, to make our science team happy. And I sure as hell wasn't going to approve any combat operations unless we absolutely had no choice. Or, I guess technically, not unless engaging in combat was a better option than not engaging in combat. If that meant our gung-ho special forces and brainy science team were unhappy and bored, so be it. In fact, I would consider our mission a complete success if we were able to return to Earth safely, without a single dangerous or interesting thing happening. Semper Taedium could be our motto: 'Always Boredom'. I'd be happy with that.

  Which is why I was mildly irritated that Venkman brought up the subject now. Actually, not irritated that he raised the question, he had a right to ask, just as I had a right to say no. What irritated me was his attitude, that I had ordered the Dutchman to prepare for departure, only because of my ignorance, I couldn’t see the potential for important scientific discoveries right where we are. What I wanted to do was tell him flatly no, hell no, and not to question my orders again. Doing that would have only proved his point that I was too young and inexperienced to command a starship. Or, for that matter, a rowboat. Slapping him down would have felt good. Commanders don’t often get to do what feels good, they have to do what is good for the mission, and sowing dissension among the crew would have hurt morale. No matter how large the Flying Dutchman was, we had seventy people living in a limited space, seeing the same bulkheads every day. At least I, and most of the soldiers and pilots, had been able to get off the Dutchman, go over to the Kristang space station, and look at something different for a while. The science team had been stuck inside the ship since they came aboard.

  I tried to let her down gently. “Doctor, I appreciate your eagerness for scientific inquiry,” I said, surprising myself at using such fancy words, “and I need to balance that potential gain in humanity’s understanding of the universe, against the risk of us being discovered here. The longer we remain here, the greater the risk to the overall mission, and to all our lives. This star system, particularly, because it previously had a Kristang presence, has an unacceptably high risk that enemy ships could jump in here at any moment, and w
e can’t risk that. I’m sorry, Doctor. You may use the ship’s sensors, as long as you do not interfere with the crew, until we are ready to jump.”

  “Captain, perhaps we- “

  “Doctor Venkman,” I waved a hand to stop her from talking, “you may be used to an academic setting, where discussion and debate are encouraged. This is a military vessel, a warship. As the commander, I welcome advice from my staff, however, once I have made a decision, it is final, and not open to debate.” We might be traveling between the stars together for a long time, I thought it important to lay the ground rules early, and avoid problems later.

  I was a hundred percent right. I still felt like a jerk.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The abandoned space station was somewhat of a disappointment, in terms of our not finding an Elder communications node there. Thinking longer term for the mission, it was a great success in my opinion. All of our pilots had opportunities to fly during a real mission, and all of the SpecOps troops gained experience with powered armor space suits in a real operation. All of the troops, by the time we left the space station behind, had experience free diving in space. Other than a few very minor incidents that were dealt with quickly and professionally, I felt everyone had passed the test to be a space diver, and I asked Skippy to fabricate a special badge to wear on their uniforms. The badge was based on the US Army’s Freefall Parachutist badge, with the difference being we replaced the tail feathers at the top with an arc of three stars. Pilots received spaceflight wings, similar to the Army Aviator badge, with the center shield replaced by a five-pointed star.

  Sure, the new badges were not official, and UNEF may frown at the idea if we ever got back home. In the meantime, the crew were thrilled to be wearing badges that no other humans had qualified for. My awarding badges began the process of Lt Williams warming up to me, slightly. After the award ceremony, we had a party in the galley, a party that spilled out into the corridor because our galley wasn’t large enough. The strongest beverage available was iced tea, I took a tall, cold glass and made my way over to Williams, who was talking with his four-man SEAL team. Pointing to the Navy Special Warfare insignia he wore, I said “Lieutenant, we need to change the acronym for your team.”

  “How’s that, sir?” He asked warily.

  “SEAL is SEa, Air, Land, right? After today, it should be SEALS for SEa, Air, Land and Space.”

  “I think you’re right about that, sir,” he said with an ear-to-ear grin.

  Garcia asked “What would the plural of that be? SEALSes?”

  “Oh, man,” Skippy interjected. “Do not ask Joe anything about grammar, he butchers the language horribly. Lieutenant Williams, sincere congratulations to you and your team.”

  “For realz, Skippy?” I asked, figuring he was inevitably going to add a disparaging comment about monkeys.

  “For realz this time, Joe. Considering that you are, after all, a barrel of primitive monkeys, this crew has accomplished a lot in a short time. I have to give you props for that.”

  I am not a morning person. I am not even a mid-morning person. As a soldier, I have to get up early, and I manage to do it, it still doesn't come naturally. Because of the crew schedule that some idiot put together, an idiot whose name rhymes with 'Shmoe Bishop', my duty shift on the bridge started at 4AM ship time, so I dragged my ass out of bed an hour early. Time enough for a shower and a cup of coffee. Without coffee, I was mostly nonfunctional in the morning.

  What had caused me to wake up an hour early wasn’t an alarm, or Skippy, it was anxiety. We had gotten lucky checking out the abandoned space station, lucky not in the sense that we found something useful, lucky in that we had found the entire star system abandoned, and that we hadn’t gotten into a fight, or had to plan some sort of risky combat. The potential for combat had gotten the special forces keyed up and kept them focused, and gave them experience using powered armor space suits. In zero gravity and hard vacuum. That was all good.

  What wasn’t good was, our next target was still way too dangerous. When we left the abandoned space station behind, we had set course for the second target, because we didn't have an alternative. The advantage of the second target was that Skippy knew for sure there was a comm node there. The disadvantage of the second target is that the whole area was closely monitored by the Maxohlx and by Sentinels. “Skippy, I got a question.”

  “Good morning, Joe, I’m going to ignore your poor grammar for the moment."

  "Poor grammar?" I asked, surprised.

  "You have a question, Joe, you don't got a question. At least you didn't say that you gots a question. Damn, you already butcher the English language enough with your terrible accent."

  "Accent? What's wrong with the way I talk?" I talked the way every native New Englander north of Boston talked. Normal. Everybody else had a terrible accent.

  "What's wrong? Let's start with the way you pronounce 'car' like 'cah', you leave the Rs out of everything. Tell me, Joe, were your ancestors so poor they had to sell all the letter Rs?"

  "No, Skippy, we save all those Rs so we can use them on words that should have an R at the end, but don't. Like, my uncle Norm retired to where?" Which I pronounced 'Nahm' and 'way-uh'.

  "That's easy, he's in Florida."

  "Wrong! See, he lives in Florider. And the capital of Maine isn't Au-gust-a, it's Auguster."

  "Wow. Incredible. How did you and your buddy Cornpone ever manage to communicate? With your Maine accent and his Southern drawl, it's like neither of you is speaking English."

  "We don't speak English, Skippy, we speak American. And we managed to communicate just fine, thank you."

  "If you say so, Joe. I have noticed you tone down your accent around most people. Like, at home you say 'Ayuh', but here you say 'yes' or ‘yeah’ or 'uh-huh'. When you visited your parents, before we left Earth, you were all like 'Ayuh' and 'wicked pissah' and your 'fah-tha' shot a 'de-ah', and your mother was cooking 'pah-ster' for spaghetti. Most of it was utterly incomprehensible to me."

  "Ayuh. You gots to pay attention they-uh, Skippy-O."

  "Oh, forget it. What is your question?”

  “We started looking for this comm node dingus in places where some database said it should be, right?”

  "Ayuh," Skippy said with a chuckle, "don’t you usually look for something in a place you know where it is?”

  “Duh, yeah, that’s not my point- “

  “You so rarely have a point, I felt safe to assume this time was no different.”

  My sleep-addled brain being not ready for snappy comebacks, I ignored his trying to bait me into an argument. “My point is, we hit that asteroid base, because you knew that place had a comm node. There are other places that have a comm node for sure, we decided those places are too risky, too tough for us to hit.”

  “In your opinion, they are too difficult,” he said sourly.

  Ignoring him, I continued. “Next you looked at places that might have one of these Elder comm node thingies, because the place is known to have a bunch of other Elder crap, right?”

  “If this conversation is going to be you telling me a bunch of obvious stuff I already know, I’ll tune out for a while and let you talk. Wake me when you’re done.”

  “Can we go one step further?”

  “Damn it, now you have my attention, on the infinitesimally tiny chance you might say something monkeys consider intelligent. Go ahead, amuse me.”

  “The first step was to look where we know there is a comm node, because somebody found an Elder site, got a comm node and logged it in a database. We already did that, when we raided the asteroid base. The second step is to look where there might be a comm node, because somebody found an Elder site, got a bunch of other Elder stuff, and logged that other stuff in it a database.”

  “So far, I am not blown away by your logic.”

  “So, step three,” I continued to ignore him, “is for us to look in places that should have comm nodes, but they aren’t in a database, because nobody has fou
nd those Elder sites yet.”

  “Huh? I’m not following you. How are we supposed to look in a site that hasn’t been found yet?”

  “By you figuring out where the Elders would have put stuff, comparing it to a map of Elder sites the Thuranin and Jeraptha know about, and determining where there should be Elder sites that nobody knows about.”

  “By how? Guessing?” He snorted.

  “No, by,” I searched for the right word to use, “I don’t know, extrapolating, inferring, deducing, predicting? Whatever you want to call it. You know the Elders better than anyone in the galaxy today. You can figure where they would likely have had colonies, space stations, that sort of thing, right?”

  “Huh.” This time, his ‘huh’ wasn’t a question.

  “You have a map of Elder sites the Thuranin know about, and sites the Jeraptha know about, right?”

  “Yes, the two mostly overlap, there isn’t much either side knows about, that the other side doesn’t also know. This war has been going on for a very long time, much territory has swapped back and forth several times.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “You want me to predict places where we, in this one ship full of monkeys, will find Elder sites that have not yet been discovered, by advanced species who desire nothing more than to find technology the Elders left behind? Species who have entire fleets of ships searching for Elder technology.”

  “That’s about it, Ayuh. You told me the galaxy is vast, bigger than I can imagine, that even now, most of it is unexplored.”

  “It’s unexplored, Joe, because most of the galaxy isn’t worth exploring. Or it’s too far from a wormhole.”

  “I notice you haven’t answered my question. Can you do it?”

  “I’m thinking!”

  “Think faster.”

  “Joe, this is actually not a one hundred percent completely awful, terrible, stupid brainless idea. Hmmm. Very likely, very, very likely, this is a tremendous waste of my time. However, I am intrigued about how much this will test my analytical capabilities, so, I’ll do it. This is going to take a while; I’ll need to run simulations.”