SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  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 the
y 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?"

  "More than ready! I'm eager to see if this works. It will be an interesting experiment in Kristang social dynamics."

  "Uh huh, sure thing," I agreed. "Activate Phase Three whenever you can."

  "Done. If you're right, we'll know pretty quickly."

  "Yup, that's what I hope. Let me know soon as anything changes over there."

  Phase Three was simple; it didn't involve any decoys, any manipulation of satellite data, any shooting down aircraft, or any elaborate cover-ups of human involvement. The essence of Phase Three was that the truth shall set you free. Only, in this case, the truth was being given to the Kristang forced laborers, and the 'you' really being set free was the human assault force. Free, hopefully, from having to engage in a protracted firefight with the Kristang.

  The 'truth' part of Phase Three was, in fact, truth. What Skippy did was grant the forced laborers access to secure communications of the six Kristang leaders, not a hundred percent exactly what the leaders said to each other, Skippy spiced things up a bit to get the laborers' attention quickly. Skippy made the breakdown in communications security seem like a system glitch, and it took the laborers a while to notice, even longer to take advantage of their surprise access. The data they had access to was, in essence, all truth; the food supply at the base was dwindling, and the six leaders planned to either kill or abandon their labor force on Newark when the starship arrived. While maybe the laborers suspected that was going to happen anyway, getting smacked in the face with it certainly made them hopping mad. Anger is a useless emotion unless it can be channeled into action, and that was where the other data Skippy gave them access to came into play. He gave them access to the base physical security systems, like the doors that kept the laborers locked in when they weren't working. And the doors in the entire base, including the high security area where the six leaders lived. And, most especially, the locks to the armory building, where the leaders kept almost all the weapons, and three of the four working armored suits.

  Sentient beings, whether they are human, Ruhar, Kristang or any other species in the Milky Way galaxy, tend to avoid risk, and tend to hesitate when presented with new information, particularly when that new information makes them question things they previously believed. Fortunately, most groups of sentient beings have one or two members who do not hesitate, who take decisive action, and those dynamic individuals usually bring the group with them. In the case of the laborers, there were three Kristang who didn't hesitate, who boldly and angrily took action. These three Kristang were younger sons, who were not technically prisoners or slaves, they were younger sons of impoverished subclan families, who had volunteered to join the scavenger expedition in a desperate attempt to improve the fortunes of their families back home. These three felt especially betrayed that their leaders planned to abandon them on Newark with the criminals and slaves who made up most of the work force. The first thing the three did, was verify the access codes truly could open the door that kept them trapped in their defacto prison. When that door opened with a metallic click, they moved out immediately. The laborers knew their leaders were watching them, knew the leaders had seen the laborers becoming agitated and angrily arguing amongst themselves, and knew the leaders would be notified as soon as the door was unlocked without the leaders' authorization. So, as soon as that door opened, the three bold laborers moved quickly, and the others followed.

  The others followed, because they knew their leaders would punish all the laborers equally for attempted rebellion, knew they faced death whether they actively participated in the mutiny or not. It was all or nothing, and such clarity is a great motivator. The entire group of laborers raced through the camp toward the armory, while the six leaders hesitated, stunned, for crucial seconds.

  When the six leaders finally faced their shocking new reality and roused themselves to action, the first thing they did was argue amongst each other. The primary leader, the one who had funded the scavenger expedition, knew that only he and two others had codes to unlock the armory door, yet he could see on the security system display that the laborers were confidently racing toward the armory building, and had already unlocked the gate to the electric fence th
at surrounded the armory. The primary leader instantly drew only one conclusion from what he was seeing; one of the other two Kristang with the codes had given them to the laborers, in an attempt to take over the base and steal the precious Elder artifacts for himself. Accordingly, the primary leader took out of its holster the pistol he constantly kept on his belt, and shot the other two. Now there were four leaders left. And one armor suit available, in the primary leader's cabin, the other three functioning sets of armor were in the armory building. After killing two of his fellows, the primary leader, with his pistol pointed at the three others, backed into his personal cabin and locked himself in. He came out four minutes later, in an armor suit, and led his three fellows toward the armory. On the video screen, the leaders could see the laborers had reached the armory and had already unlocked the outer door. A minute later, as the leaders reached the fence that surrounded the armory, shots rang out from both sides.

  It was a chaotic, bloody mess, a pure fire fight without any planning, tactics or coordination. The primary leader charged directly toward the back door the armory building, he must have known that if the laborers got the other suits on, it was game over. The other three leaders poured fire into the open doorway of the armory, cutting down laborers as they came out, firing blindly. The laborers numbers began to tell, as one of the leaders went down, and the other two pulled back around the corner of a building for cover. Three times Smythe reminded the team not to fire, regardless how tempting the target was, and to keep down and out of sight. Our Alpha team, the two men in suits, were particularly itching to get into the fight. Keeping our heads down was a good idea not only so the Kristang didn't see us, but also because there were explosive-tipped rounds flying thick through the air all around the base. The leaders had a few heavier weapons, and explosions sent shrapnel everywhere, the laborers responded with improvised explosives they'd taken from the armory.