"Damn it. I've been trying to think up a better idea while you've been blabbering on and on, and, no, I don't have a better idea. Crap. All right, fine, yes, I can put something together to deliver supplies to you. Maybe I'll get lucky, and it will land on your stupid monkey head."
"Excellent! Knew I could count on you, Skippy."
"All I can say is, there better be a huge freakin' tip for this delivery."
"Yup," I decided to push my luck. "If the delivery is late, do we get it for free?"
With the food situation temporarily solved by Skippy’s Pizzeria, we turned our attention to other logistical issues. "Captain Smythe,” I said, “I need you to plan the route from here to the scavenger base, especially the route for driving the RV."
"Skippy already mapped out the fastest route," he tapped his iPad, and the screen showed Skippy's suggested route. "Also two alternatives," two more lines appeared on the screen, "one slightly shorter, and one that stretches out the caravan's power to get us the furthest, before we have to get out and walk." Being British, he called our salvaged vehicle a 'caravan' instead of the American term 'RV'.
"Smythe," I said, "I'm sure Skippy has mapped out mathematically perfect routes, and we can't hope to improve on that. However, I know that little shithead beer can, and one variable he won't include in the billions of calculations he ran, is anything practical. Fastest, shortest, and, uh, stretchiest are all fine, in theory. What we need is the route that gets us to the scavenger base by the target date, with the least risk. For example, on this route here," I tapped the shortest line, "Skippy takes us straight through this big swamp. Sure, the RV can supposedly crawl, or swim, through a swamp. What happens if a tread gets stuck, or a pontoon gets punctured, or a motor burns out, and the RV is stuck in a swamp? Then we might have to walk out of the swamp, carrying all our gear, in freezing cold water over our heads. We can't take that risk. Skippy won't take that sort of possibility into account. He also won't consider that we're inexperienced drivers, so he may plan a route that takes us along a narrow cliff. Got it?"
"Yes, sir," Smythe said, looking chastened.
Wow. For the first time, I felt like a real officer.
Smythe called me over the next morning, he pinged me while I was helping Simms load supplies into the RV. I took a welcome break and went into the cavern to where Smythe was working in a tent. A heated tent. It felt good to step inside and unzip my jacket. "What do you have, Captain?" I asked.
"Several possible routes for us to reach the scavengers' base within 30 days, with minimal risk, we think." He pulled up the first of three routes on his iPad, and explained how the route avoided, as much as possible, swamps, driving across mushy ice fields, and steep terrain where the RV might slide down or tip over. "After we cross this river, we should have enough power left to get here, these grasslands are relatively flat and dry. We'll have to walk from there, the good news is we'll only need to detour forty kilometers to go around this swamp, and once we're past that, it's a straight shot, and, well, Bob's your uncle, we're there."
"Bob's my uncle?" Neither of my three uncles was named 'Bob'.
Smythe chuckled. "It's an expression, sir, it means it's easy."
"Oh. Bob's your uncle, huh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Show me the other alternatives." He did. Each of the three possible routes had advantages; the first didn't get as far before the RV ran out of power, its advantage is the walking part was over easy terrain. The second route stretched out the RV's powercells to cover the maximum distance, minimizing the distance we would have to walk, however, the walking route went through a region of hills and one swampy area. And the third route took the absolutely safest path for the RV, minimizing the possibility it would get stuck somewhere, and the walk would be through relatively flat, easy terrain, the disadvantage was the walking section of the route was the longest of the three alternatives. "Hmm, all the routes require we cross these three rivers?"
"Yes, there's no way around them, literally," Smythe explained. "We've mapped the easiest crossings we can get to along the route, where the river current is slowest. Here for example," he pointed to the first river crossing, which was the same on all three alternatives, the three routes diverged after that. "If we cross up here instead, the river is only half as wide, however, your chap Skippy tells me the current is more than twice as fast in this area, and there are large rocks just under the surface. Down here, where we plan to cross, the current is more manageable, and the river bottom is sand, there are no underwater obstacles the caravan could get stuck on."
I nodded. "Makes sense. Good work."
"The sticky point is that last river. This nasty bugger here," he tapped the iPad screen for emphasis, "is going to be a problem. The glacier that feeds this river is breaking up quickly, there are large chunks of ice floating in the river, we'll need to steer around them. The river channel is narrow almost the whole way down to the sea, it would be hundreds of kilometers out of our way to find an easier crossing. And the river banks are steep. The only place we can see for a crossing is here. The bank on the far side is less than half a meter tall, Skippy tells us the caravan treads can climb that easily, and by the time we get there, with the summer coming on, the river level should be higher as the glacier melt accelerates. The bank is steep on this side, we'll need to create a ramp down into it, lots of work with picks and shovels, nothing the lads can't handle."
He made it sound easy. Maybe to SpecOps types, hacking out a ramp large enough for an RV to drive down was a fun couple hours in the great outdoors. Right then, I had an idea. "Captain, we can use armor to clear a ramp. With those suits, it won't take long at all."
"Do we want to use the suits for this, sir? We'd need to recharge the suits' powercells from the caravan, that will drain the caravan faster."
Not such a good idea after all. I was still thinking of what was now the good old days, when we had nearly unlimited power from the Dutchman's reactors. That mindset needed to change, fast, before I made a stupid mistake and got people killed. "You're right. Sore muscles are a problem we can deal with, more easily than draining power from the RV. We need to be very careful with the RV's powercells. Route Two, I think, is out, I don't want us walking through those hills. The extra gravity, the low oxygen level, and the heavy loads we'll be carrying will make the hike tough enough already. Route Three you say is the least risk for the RV, but the walk is longer, how much longer?"
"An additional sixty kilometers, roughly a day and a half, sir." He didn't point out that information was clearly displayed on the side of the map, I should have noticed that.
Sixty kilometers, was, to Captain Smythe of the British Special Air Services, a trek of a mere day and a half. He was assuming we would be walking forty kilometers, or twenty seven miles per day. Walking twenty seven miles each day, with heavily overloaded packs, in gravity fourteen percent greater than we were used to on Earth. "Sixty klicks in a day and a half? You're not being a bit too ambitious, Captain?"
"No, sir, don't worry sir, the lads can handle it. We'll check in every two hours, and you can track our progress through the satellite."
"I'll be tracking your progress closer than that, Captain. I'm going with you."
"Sir?" He asked, surprised.
"I know I'm not one of you SpecOps people, but I can handle a walk. There may be crucial decisions to be made, real-time, when we raid the scavenger's base, I need to be there, right there."
Smythe avoided my eyes. "Sir-"
"Why else do you think I've been busting my ass training with you? I'm going along. Don't worry, I'll stay out of your way during the assault. We're also bringing two civilians with us, doctors, medical doctors."
"Sir?" Smythe's face revealed his anguish. Three of his precious twenty eight billets would be taken up by noncombatants, that reduced his striking power to only twenty five. It was bad enough that I would be going with them, Smythe having to deal with his commanding officer looking over his shoulder and sec
ond guessing him in real time. At least I was a soldier, and had been in combat. Including killing a Kristang warrior with my bare hands, or at least, with the butt of a rifle. Bringing two civilians along would be nothing but a headache for him. "We have qualified medics." His roster of twenty eight SpecOps troops included four people with medic certification, in addition to the battlefield first aid training that all special forces soldiers had taken.
"Qualified medics, yes. These two doctors are experienced surgeons, they both did a tour with Doctors Without Borders, they've operated in primitive field conditions. This is not open for discussion, Captain, I am not going into combat against Kristang without means to keep wounded people alive, until we can get them back to the Thuranin medical facility aboard the Dutchman."
"Yes, sir," he said tightly.
I could tell he thought I was endangering the primary mission, assaulting the Kristang, in favor of a dubious secondary objective. In combat against Kristang, both sides having equivalent technology, wounds were very likely to be fatal, any medical assistance might well be a useless waste of resources. It may have been my lack of experience as a senior commander that caused me to bring two civilians along, a real colonel may have looked at the problem more objectively, been more coldly calculating about the lives of his soldiers. That wasn't me. Also, I figured that if needed, I could fight, and if two less soldiers were the difference between success and failure, then this entire mission was far too much risk, and I should call the whole thing off right now. "The two doctors, X and Y, have been running and marching with us, you've met them."
Smythe gave a curt nod, unconvinced. What he didn't say was that going out for a run or a long march was one thing, knowing a warm, dry cavern with a meal and hot chocolate was waiting for them at the end of the exercise. Being out in the field, one day after the next, marching with a heavy pack, in the chilly rain, with only maybe a tent roof as comfort at the end of a long day, was a very different test of human endurance, mental endurance. A civilian who had not actually experienced such bone-weariness for days on end, could not say with certainty they could stand up to such strain.
He was right, I was taking a gamble that our two civilian scientist doctors could keep up with us. The SpecOps troops, and me, would be carrying food, clothing, part of a tent and other personal gear, in addition to weapons and parts of disassembled armor suits. The two civilians would only need to carry food, personal gear and medical kits. One way or another, they would be keeping up with us, we weren't leaving anyone behind, unless injury absolutely forced us to do that. “That leaves twenty five billets for combat troops,” he mused.
“And five nationalities. Choose five people from each nation,” I ordered, “we can’t have anyone thinking we’re playing favorites.”
"Oh. My. God." I was stunned. There, attached to the front of the RV, just below the left windshield in front of the driver, was a stuffed Barney, about a foot tall.
"Sir," Captain Gomez, the leader of our Ranger team, said, "I categorically deny any and all knowledge of this outrageous act. That is, unless you like it."
"Like it? I love it! Damn, reminds me of my old hamvee back on Paradise. I'll ask you the same question I asked then: how the hell did you idiots get a Barney?"
Gomez coughed. "Someone may have listened to your debriefing, and you may have mentioned your personal hamvee then. And someone may like to be prepared. I'm speculating, of course."
"Of course." I stood back and admired it, then turned to the assembled team, my team, and saluted. "Thank you. This means a lot. I used to hate that Barney shit. Now, ah, it's part of me, I guess."
Gomez smiled. "Instead of a Winnebago, this is our Barney-We-Go."
"BarneyWeGo," I laughed. "I like it. Captain, let's get this thing loaded, and on the road, ASAP."
Oh, man, I should have put some thought into what a road trip, in a stolen RV, across an alien landscape, with a crew of high-speed SpecOps people, would be like. Our BarneyWeGo lurched into movement, everyone inside gave a hearty cheer and waved to the assembled crowd outside, and we were off. When we splashed across the stream and the canyon veered to the right, so we went out of sight of the cavern that had been our home, Smythe broke into song. Pumping his fist in the air to encourage participation, he sang "The wheels on the bus go round and round-"
I joined in. It was fun, it built a sense of camaraderie, it set a good tone for the beginning of what was going to be a long, arduous journey.
However.
When the first song was done, the Indian team, who likely had been trying to think of a song most people in the RV knew, or was simple enough to learn quickly, launched into "Ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall-" And that was fun, for a while. Let me tell you, SpecOps people are hyper competitive, none of them wanted to stop. The singing went on and on, to where we got down to seventy three bottles of beer on the wall, and I for one was heartily sick of it, and of course none of the SpecOps people wanted to be the first to stop, they were way too damned competitive. The responsibility fell to me, as the commander, to mercifully kill the singing. "Stop! Quiet! What was that?" I stood up and walked behind the driver, using as an excuse a clanging sound against the bottom of the RV.
"Oh, sir, we're kicking up rocks here," the driver explained, pointing out the windshield to the layer of rocks in the streambed we were following down the canyon. There was another soft 'clang' noise as the forward treads caught another stone, and tossed it against the bottom of the RV. The plating of the BarneyWeGo was thicker on bottom to protect against impacts, it also had kind of a skid plate, for when the RV needed to slide over an obstacle.
I called a brief halt, and ducked outside to check the RV's skin, partly out of genuine concern. There were some new scuff marks, no additional dents, nothing to worry about. When I got back inside, I was relieved to see people had broken out decks of cards, and two games were getting started. Card games, even having nothing to gamble with except small pieces of candy people had smuggled in their personal gear, would keep people occupied. Occupied was good. The driver, a Chinese soldier named Zhang, put on some pop music, the rule being whoever was driving controlled the music selection. I couldn't understand the words, and remarked that pop music all over Earth sounded pretty much the same, so it didn't matter that I couldn't understand the lyrics. Captain Li shrugged. "That song is Korean, sir, K-pop, we call it. We don't understand the words either."
Damn, what an interesting international crew we had, aboard our BarneyWeGo, bouncing and lurching our way across the surface of an alien world, almost two thousand lightyears from home. It made me feel proud.
Our first stream crossing was uneventful. Before the RV drove down the bank into the water, I ordered a halt, and for everyone to get out, so Skippy could drive the RV across remotely. The middle of the stream was just deep enough that the RV needed to deploy its floatation pontoons, they worked perfectly. The RV got to the other side, Skippy turned it around and drove it back to us. Then half of us got back aboard, and our Chinese driver carefully took us across, he reported the transition between the RV driving on its treads to floating and using water jets was seamless, the RV's computer knew what to do, based on the driver's inputs to the controls. Captain Giraud drove the RV back to get the rest of us, then we proceeded with an Indian soldier driving. That way, we now had three people with some experience. Damned good thing, too, because we had to cross our first major river in two days. After a couple hours, we stopped at a convenient place to switch drivers. Captain Smythe saw me looking longingly at the driver's seat. "Would you like to have a go at it, sir?" He asked.
"Captain, I would love to drive this thing. I am not going to be some shithead officer who takes fun away from the troops. We'll be driving this RV for days, I can wait my turn."
My policy that whoever was driving picked the music, or no music at all, led to an, let's say, interesting variety of musical styles. The first Chinese driver, a guy named Zhang, had played pop music I didn't recognize, i
t was at least recognizably pop. The second time a Chinese came up in the driver rotation, it was a guy named Chen. The music he played sounded like a cross between wind chimes, the kind of new agey thing I expected people listened to at a yoga spa, and someone unsuccessfully trying to tune a guitar. After a while, I looked at Captain Li, who shrugged, rolled his eyes, and we put headphones on to listen to our own music selections. After Chen it was the turn of an Indian paratrooper named Sharma, who liked to sing, loudly and badly, along with his music, and his fellow paratroopers often joined in, off key but with enthusiasm.
When one of our SEALs named Garcia started driving, it was across a relatively flat field, when the treads automatically adjusted themselves to be almost round, and we were making good time. The treads soaked up a surprising amount of bumps, so the jostling and bouncing in the cabin was a lot less than I'd expected. Garcia must have been feeling good, rolling happily along across an alien landscape in our stolen RV, because he changed his music selection in the middle of a song, to go old, old school with Coolio. When the first notes of the song came over the speakers, the Chinese soldiers looked at each other and muttered something, and the Indian soldiers looked at each other and muttered something, and for a split second I feared we were going to have a problem, then the Indians, Chinese and French all stood up, mockingly flashed gang signs, and sang along. Badly, with enthusiasm. "As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I look at my life and realize there's nothing left-"
"Holy shit," I said under my breath. "Does everybody know that song?"
Then Captain Smythe got up to join in, and soon everyone in the RV was going "They been spending most their lives livin' in the gangster's paradise-"
High fives went all around when the song ended. Damn, I thought, we really are one bad-ass international team. Hopefully, we could bring that cooperative team spirit back to Earth one day.
SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Page 30
