“So much for our day off today, have the team do maintenance on their gear and get the gear bags restocked. Package up the gear we got from the enemy and get it shipped out asap to Gunny then we will put everyone on stand down for the rest of the day and full day tomorrow. Have senior personal turn in their after-action reports to me by 1700 today for my call with the Skipper tonight.” I said to Holly.
“Aye, Master Chief,” she replied.
“I’m going to take a shower then I am off to the Chief Mess for Coffee,” I told her before I headed to my room.
I reached my room and headed straight to the shower. I heard a voice from the other room, “How did the implant preform?” She asked.
“Better than I had hoped. It seamlessly integrated all the data from the Battlenet and allowed for a near-instant response to the changes on the battlefield. The AI in the chip was great at controlling the drones and using them to provide support where needed without my guidance allowing me to concentrate on the ground operations. There was no more loss of life after our team arrived, and we were even able to capture an enemy tank.” I told her.
I got out of the shower to find my summer whites hanging on the door. It was then that I knew I had to marry Melissa. After getting dressed, I went in and got the small ring box out of my flight bag where it had been stored. I walked out to the living room where she was sitting, kneeled in front of her, opened the ring box, and asked her to marry me. A tear rolled from her eyes as she said yes.
8.
Engagement
About an hour later, Melissa joined me when I went to the Chief’s Mess, where she announced to everyone present our engagement. “When will the wedding be?” Holly asked.
“We figured we would keep it simple and have the Chaplin marry us once the rest of the unit is here and settled in,” Melissa responded.
“Who would have ever guessed an old salt like you finding a woman who would marry you.” One of the Chiefs said, and the room erupted in laughter and congratulations.
“I guess it just took a brain surgeon to finally figure me out,” I replied.
A short while later at 1400, the kitchen staff had a light, late lunch ready for all of us. Even though we had eaten before we left Homestead AFB one thing you would discover after spending any amount of time around a squid is that they were always hungry, and SEALs were worse than most.
When you’re in the Navy and part of a SEAL Team, you learn to eat when you can because you never know if your next meal will be an MRE in the field or a protein bar on the run. With the time I was off for recovery, it had been quite a while since I was forced to endure an MRE. The last time the government had updated battle rations was when they changed from C Rations to MREs back in 1980. The only change in MRE’s since then was that the chocolate bar was replaced by a protein bar therefor rendering everything in them unfit for human consumption. Therefore, in the pack of most soldiers, you will find some type of sauce or seasoning to be used to hide the actual flavor of the MRE. For me, it is a bottle of hot sauce and some Everglades seasoning.
After lunch, I went back to my quarters to find a box sitting on the table with replacement ammo, grenades and a collection of gun cleaning supplies all of which I had requested from our platoon supply Petty Officer before lunch. I brought my combat harness out and began reloading clips and attaching the replacement grenades into place. I spent what seemed like an hour just cleaning the dreaded Florida sand out of every nook and cranny of my gear. This stuff could screw stuff up worse than a junior officer on his first deployment. When I was done execrating the sand from all my gear and my BDU’s I looked down at the pile on the floor and wondered if there was enough to build a sandcastle. I then began to break down my weapons and clean them. I started with my sidearm a .357 Magnum Desert Eagle. The Desert Eagle is not a standard-issue firearm for the US Navy or any branch of the US Military. To my knowledge, you will not find a single person outside of our unit that carries one, and within our unit, there were only two people that carry them, the Skipper and myself, and while I carry the .357 magnum, the Skipper prefers the more substantial penetration power .50 caliber. My Desert Eagle weighs in at nearly five pounds when fully loaded. I owned two of the Desert Eagles, this is the one that I use on combat missions which is matt black, I have a second one that is nickel-plated and has “Go-Go” engraved and filled with gold on the upper action. That I wear whenever I am on base. Both of which have been hand-tailored to me. The nickel-plated one was a gift given to me by Admiral Bates when he was the Skipper of Team 11 after I pulled his half-dead body out of a burning building in Colombia after the building we were in had been hit by three plasma rockets killing half our team. I had cleared the building of hostiles and rescued all the living member of our team using only a .357 desert eagle that I had picked up off the dead body of a drug dealer. I carried that baby around with me until Desert Eagle came out with the current model that has a built-in wireless-link (WireLink) designed to link with targeting glasses, combat helmets or in my case my cyber eye. While the WireLink system is standard on all current Military and Law Enforcement weapons nowadays, I had to add an external unit to my nickel-plated pistol.
Next, it was time to clean my M-46 Rail gun. The M-46 is the most advanced assault rifle in the world, it fires 4 mm steel slugs at speeds more than 5000mph the slug turns into molten steel by the time it leaves the eighteen-inch titanium barrel. This causes the round to explode when it encounters its target due to the temperature difference. The rifle uses a battery that can fire 100,000 rounds before requiring recharge and each clip holds 100 rounds. Through the WireLink the rifle provides advanced targeting, friend or foe identifier (FOF), ammo count and battery level. The FOF system prevents friendly fire by not allowing the accidental firing on friendly targets. The M-46 didn’t suffer from the flaws of its predecessors, the moment you got one of the previous models dirty or wet the best you could hope for was that they wouldn’t fire in a worse case the full charge of the battery was discharged either blowing up or electrocuting the user. All my weapons were biometrically keyed so that they would only allow members of our team to use them. This allowed for any member of our team to pick up the weapons of one another and fire them while preventing anyone else from using them. All guns now days were required to have biometric locks and WireLink. The WireLink system we had in our gear would allow us to override all biometric in any weapon.
9.
Elves, Trolls, and Orcs
I remember when we first found out that aliens were real, and they had been spying on and visiting us forever. In the early days, the aliens appear as a ghost, shadow creatures, poltergeist, and other human type paranormal beings, and were the results of them trying to interact with our dimension. As their gate technology improved, they were able to enter act with our world even more. Not too long ago, they reached the point where they were finally able to cross over to our society, and that was when the war began.
The gate jumpers as we called them, have one goal, and that is to destabilize our civilization to the point where they can invade and take over. One of the side effects created by them opening gates is that it is weakening the barrier between all the dimensions allowing creatures such as Demons, Skinwalkers, Trolls, Orcs, Goblins and even Elves, to name a few to randomly appear on our world. It also caused people from our world to get randomly transported to other dimensions. In most cases these creatures are dangerous, and we are called in to capture or kill them. But in a few instances, they become our allies and begin to integrate with the members of TEAM 11 and help us battle the gate jumpers. One such example is Master Gunnery Sergeant (MGySgt) John Easter, who just happens to be the biggest, baddest Orcs I have ever met. He comes to us from a world of warring tribes of advanced Orcs. He brought us Plasma weapons and person rail guns.
The Elves have discovered a way to track dimensional tears, and about three years ago, a small group of elven doctors and scientist crossed over. Their goal was to help us capture a gate and r
everse engineer it to control the dimensional tears that were occurring. Melissa was the head of this team, and it was her knowledge of Cybernetics that saved my life after my head injury. If it were not for elven technology, I would be in a coma right now with no hope of recovery. While both the elves and orcs look like what you would see in a video game such as World of Warcraft. They were very different; both races were highly intelligent and lived to be about 350 years old.
After spending hours in conversation with the Gunny I’ve learned that Orcish society is what you would get if you gave 22nd century weaponry to Medieval Europe, and while an Orcish soldier would have rail guns and plasma grenades, they also wore armor so thick that often combat came down to energy blades.
Elves were completely different from both humans and orcs. They had achieved Global peace almost two hundred years ago. Only the planetary defense force could have any weapons other than bows or blades. They had a global VRMMORPG where people could let their violent side run wild, even conflict between nations was settled within the virtual world. They had solved the issues we face, such as global warming, pollution, overcrowding, homelessness, and world hunger. They didn’t have prison people who committed crimes were put in a POD farm and would serve out their time in a prison planet in the virtual world.
One of the problems that faced all of us was that until we were able to capture a working gate, anyone who came through a dimensional tear to our planet was trapped here. Melissa and her team came across, knowing that they would be stuck here. Her group asked to stay with our team, feeling that we had the best chance of capturing a gate. With the existence of large enough gate to bring tanks through we had to find it and catch it before it made the dimensional tears much worse and larger allowing a more powerful creature to be able to cross over. The last time a significant demon had passed over it took out half of our team before we were able to take it down, and even then, we were not able to kill it. The tear it had come through was still open, and we had forced it back into it before the tear had closed. With the addition of plasma weapons and rail guns to our arsenal, we should be able to take the next one down. I would say that the odds were at least in our favor but who’s to say what horror could come through a dimensional tear that we have never seen before. The Skipper had once joked that if dragons start coming through the dimensional tears, he is retiring because “I never signed up to fight dragons.” He would often say. We all knew that if a Dragon did ever come through a tear, he would be the first to charge out and attach it with the hope of killing it before I got to it so he could. I can hear him now saying, “I killed a dragon, what have you done lately?” I would have to go kill Cthulhu or something just to shut him up.
10. Whi
te Tree
It was 0800 the following day when I got a call from the base commander, “I have a Chief Alice Osceola of the Seminole Nation here in my office asking for you.” The Admiral said.
“Tell her I will be right there,” I replied.
As I walked in the room, Chief Osceola stood bowed her head slightly and said “Istonko, big brother,”
“Istonko, little sister, how may I serve the tribe?” I replied.
“It’s been too long since I have seen you.” She said as she embraced me in a hug.
“Aye, what brings you here, and how did you know I was here?” I asked.
“Well, I got a call from Terry telling me that the Admiral had requested the use of ten of his fastest airboats and that you had requested that one of them be yours. I thought that it could not be by sheer luck that just yesterday one of my patrols saw evidence that someone had recently been camped out at White Tree. So, I thought I would hook your boat up to my truck and bring it by personally to find out if you were here or if the Admiral had called in a favor from you,” She said.
“Ok, Alley why don’t we head over to the Chief’s mess and have a cup of coffee, you can tell me what your boys found out, and I will tell you what I can about what I am doing here,” I replied.
I knew right away that she was on to something because it was too damn hot out for any of the locals to be out near White Tree. Even when I was a young dumb teenager, we never went out to White Tree during rainy season so I was guessing this might just be a group of gate jumpers. On our way to the Chief’s Mess, I sent a message to Holly and Melissa to meet us there.
Once we arrived at the Chief’s mess, I introduced Alley to Melissa and let her know we were engaged. “You’re the bravest woman I have ever met, marrying my older brother. I never thought I would see this day.” Alley said to Melissa.
“So, are you going to tell us the story about the two of you?” Holly asked me.
“Well it simple, Alley’s father was my father best friend, and when my father was killed in action, he decided that the Seminole Nation would become our family and support us. A few years later he married my mom and Alley became my little sister officially,” I said.
“Now, about the reason, you are here?” I said askingly.
“Well, yesterday Billy was out on patrol and decided to swing by White Tree and see how it had fared this season. He figured that if it needed repairs, he would get some guy out there to fix it before the kids started using it again. He said he saw signs that the camp had been used within the last couple of days by about ten men traveling heavy based on the depth of the footprints. His first thought was that it was a group out of this base. He said that the men left a trail headed deeper into the swamp but because of recent rain he wasn’t able to follow them very far,” Alley told us.
I thanked Alley for the information as I walked her back to her truck. “There are some dangerous people out there in our swamp you might want to advise people to stay a little closer to the home until we root them out,” I told her.
“Will do, and if you need a few good scouts, let us know. The Johnson brothers are all home on leave, and they know the swamp as well as you and I.” She said.
“Good to know. Let the Johnsons know that I will send a message to the Johnsons CO and have them temporarily assigned to me and that I will be in contact with them by the end of the week.” I replied. All four of the Johnsons were part of the 3rd Ranger Battalion and would be a great asset to our team.
“Looks like we need to get a squad out to take a look at the campsite at White Tree,” I said to Holly. “Get me a dozen volunteers to be ready to head out at 1300 between now and then get my airboat equipped with a GAU-19/A with some basic armor around the gunner stand. The tripod that is already mounted on the boat should hold the gun, and it has a universal military-grade gun mounting system. Have my boat and a second one on trailers ready to move out,” I said.
“Right I’ll let squad 1 know and grab a few from squad two. And we will get ready to go,” Holly said.
“We will have the officers of Alpha Platoon arriving around 1000. I will let Lt Rogers know that the Platoon is on stand down for the day and we should return around 1800,” I replied.
I finished my cup of coffee and headed over to the landing pad to meet the officers that were arriving. A Defiant landed on the pad, and Lt Rogers, Ensign Briggs, and Ensign Miller were the first out of the helicopter followed by dozen enlisted support personal. I saluted Lt. Rogers and updated him and the other two officers on what was going on while I led them to the officers’ quarters. Petty Officer Anderson took charge of the enlisted arrivals and got them moved into their berthing.
“Ok Master Chief the Skipper said you were in charge here and sent us to help out with wherever you need us to,” Lt. Rogers said.
“I am about to lead a couple of squads out on a recon mission and plan to be back by 1800, but we may be gone all night so I will take you over and introduce you to the Admiral and let you run the show here. I will have PO Anderson meet up with you and catch you up on everything that is going on so you can take charge of the transfer,” I said.
It didn’t take long before the officers were settled in and had taken charge of the operations on the base, al
lowing me to focus on the recon mission. I grabbed a half dozen ultra-sonic mosquito barrier generators that would repel all but the largest of the mosquitos for which we could use our sidearms or blades. After lunch, we loaded up into the two ARQUUS Fortress APC’s hooked to the front of the two Airboats.
It didn’t take long before we reach a little know hidden Airboat launch dock and then moved the boats into the water and headed off to the White Tree camp. The trip was not an easy trip to the camp from our location. We would have to cross the saw grass plains, and currently the saw grass was tall green and as thick as trees, it scratched deeply into the paint on the hulls but due to the thickness of the paint and the layer of liquid armor that was applied between the primer and paint level, the metal was not exposed. It took us an hour to make it through the saw grass plains and another thirty minutes to reach the camp. When we arrived at the camp, we could clearly tell that a group of around ten people and moved through within the last five days, if it had been any longer than that the rains would have already washed away any trace that someone had been through here. After a careful search of the area, we found what we had come to label as the packaging of alien MRE’s this packaging was biodegradable and would completely dissolve in about a week. This confirmed that the groups that had passed through here were aliens or someone working with them. It didn’t take long after the aliens had arrived, that they had discovered they could always find human groups that were unhappy with their government and were willing to work with them. The aliens found that it was easier to bring stuff like precious metals and gems through the gate and pay to build some of the things they needed here. They did bring their own food with them rather than eat ours. Our scientist seemed to believe that this was because their food contained some nanites that were not found on our world and we’re not sure what they did, they thought that maybe they were similar to vaccines.
Strike Force 11 Page 4
