It was a good day, away from the base, out in the bush, exploring something new, nobody shooting at me. A canteen full of bug juice, a peanut butter sandwich, a Hooah! bar and a little bag of dried fruit. What else could a guy ask for? Rumor had it chicken was on the menu at the DFAC tonight, and I planned to take a swim in the base pool, maybe play basketball or softball later.
Shading my eyes, I looked up to check the position of the sun, or local star, or whatever the correct term was, and saw the distinctive twinkling light of a starship jumping into normal space. Another Ruhar transport ship? We'd been seeing those regularly enough. It still fascinated me, the idea of ships traveling faster than light.
Another twinkle. Not unusual, Ruhar transport ships sometimes came in multiples, and they were always escorted by Kristang ships, usually frigates, not that I could see the difference in one ship to another from dirtside. Hmm. More twinkling lights. And more.
A lot more.
"Uh, hey, guys," Pope pointed at the sky. "That's a lot of ships up there."
Was the Kristang task force back?
My zPhone gave a strangled squawk and went silent. Oh shit. That wasn't anything good. I tapped the icon for the command channel, and all I got was static. I was already trying to get anyone, anyone at all, on my phone, when there was a burning streak of light down from the sky and a massive explosion in the direction of Fort Arrow. A fountain of dirt exploded upward on the skyline, evolving instantly into a mushroom cloud. We'd all seen that in training videos; a railgun strike. A small, dense dart of tungsten or more likely some exotic alien material, boosted to a significant percentage of lightspeed, burning a hole through the atmosphere and slamming into the planet. Into Fort Arrow. As I watched uselessly, mouth gaping, there were more contrails zipping down to impact the base, these contrails curved as they flew. Hypervelocity smart missiles, following on the heels of the railgun darts. There were more explosions, all coming from Fort Arrow.
Everyone had the same reaction that I did. First, holy shit. Second, what the fuck do I do now? Without orders, we all scrambled down off the crashed ship. I looked around in case something had changed in the minute since I'd last checked, but the situation was the same; seventeen people, and between us we had precisely one weapon, unless you counted knives. My sidearm wasn't going to be much use against the Ruhar.
"Sergeant, what's going on?"
Sergeant. Every face was turned toward me. Shit. Everyone else was a private or specialist. Damn it, I was a sergeant, wasn't I? This morning, I was supposed to be just another guy on a hike through the woods. Now the chevrons on my uniform top, and my sidearm, meant I was supposed to do something. Anything.
"You know as much as I do. Anyone got a signal on their phone?" People shook their heads negatively. At least everyone had the sense to check their phones after the base was hit. "Ruhar must be jamming us, I'm not even getting a navigation signal." I also couldn't use the proximity feature, to see on the map the phones of people right around me. The whole system must be dead. "All right, people, the network is down, turn your phones to receive only mode." That supposedly prevented the zPhone from transmitting any signal, even location; UNEF suspected the Kristang had a way of tracking us even if the phone was in stealth mode but we didn't have much choice. The last thing we needed was hamsters tracking us, hopefully they couldn't tap into Kristang technology. With the base likely knocked out, a cluster of seventeen humans would be a nice secondary target. "Grab your gear," I said automatically, ignoring that gear at this point was backpacks and canteens. "We're going back to base, ASAP."
"Base?" Private Collins pointed at the pillar of smoke, and as he said the word, there was another explosion from that direction. "There's no base! There can't be anything left of it."
"We don't know that. We're sure as hell not hiding here in the jungle. We're going back to base because there may be people there who need our help, and because it's our job, our duty. If you need more motivation, the Kristang are our only ride home, and our only way to get food shipped in. If the Ruhar get established here before the Kristang come back, we're all in deep shit."
"If the fucking lizards come back," Collins grumbled. "How are we going to stop the hamsters from setting up camp here again? We don't even have weapons."
"We're going to keep them busy and off balance and hit them whenever we can, buy time for the Kristang task force to get back here." I looked around at a group of people I knew only vaguely, people from multiple convoy escort teams. I didn't even know all of their names, we'd only met when we assembled at the DFAC that morning. "I don't know all of you, some of you I've been on convoy duty with, and some of you told me you didn't come all the way out here to play nursemaid to a bunch of hamsters," a common complaint within UNEF, "this is our chance to hit back."
"Sergeant, I'm all for duty," Pope said, "but Collins has a point, what are we supposed to do without weapons?"
Specialist Amaro spoke up, I swear she stood on tiptoes and raised her hand like she was in elementary school. "There's an ammo dump outside the base, it's in a hamster storage depot, built into the hillside along the access road that runs along the Launcher track. I delivered supplies there a month ago, I think it's still there?"
"Manned? There are guards?" I asked. If not, we'd probably have no way to get the bunker door open.
"Two guys, the day I was there. There's a big heavy door at the entrance, and kind of a little shack we put up for the guards, the hamsters didn't have anything like that, they left it unmanned. It's maybe, I don't know," she looked at the map on her zPhone, "shit, without the GPS feature I don't know where it is. Not far? You can see where they cut into the hill for the access road." She pointed up to the west, to a horizontal scar along the mountain. Only a section of the cut was visible through the trees or whatever they were. I'd seen the access road briefly on my flight into Fort Arrow. The maps said there was an access road running along both sides of the Launcher, with side roads going to the Launcher tube itself about every kilometer or half mile or something like that.
"All right, anyone else been there? No?" Head shakes all around. I was tempted to climb on the ship to get a better view. "Can we go straight to the access road from here?"
Amaro looked stricken. "Um, I don't know, Sergeant?" In the military, 'I don't know' is a perfectly acceptable answer, much better than trying to bullshit your way through a situation. Usually 'I don't know' is supposed to be followed by 'but I'll find out'. "I think there's a cliff between here and the road, I can't, uh, damn this thing." She tapped the screen of her zPhone.
"That's all right, Amaro, we've all gotten too reliant on fancy technology and let our basic navigation skills go soft, I know I have." Which was true, since without the GPS I had no fucking idea where we were. I tugged the straps of my pack tight and looked at the faces who were looking at me. Sometimes all people needed was to hear that someone, anyone, had some sort of a plan. "People, let's get weapons and ammo. Amaro, you lead off, set an easy pace, this could be a long run."
It was a long run in the heat, at least three, maybe four miles, and it seemed like a mile of it was uphill. It got easier when we got to the access road, Amaro recognized a rock slide and figured out which way to go along the road. We picked up the pace despite the increasing heat and our canteens now being out of water, it was easier to run on the road and we had the added incentive of seeing Ruhar attack ships buzzing overhead. Whenever we spotted one of those dropship attack birds UNEF called Vultures, we dove off the road under cover. Hiding under trees made us feel moderately safer, my guess was with their technology, the Ruhar knew exactly where we were. A small group of primitive humans without weapons weren't worth expending ammo.
We came upon the side road that led to the ammo dump, we ran only a quarter mile along the access road before a voice called out from under a bush beside the road. "Halt! You stay right there!" The voice was shakier than I hoped to hear, when the speaker was pointing a rifle at my head.
"S
ergeant Joe Bishop, 10th Infantry. Who's in charge here?"
"You are." Another voice spoke, and a guy stepped out from behind a tree. "It's just us here, Sergeant. I'm Specialist Rogen, and that's Private Wayne under the bushes."
Shit. I'd been silently hoping someone of higher rank was at the ammo dump, to take the responsibility off my shoulders.
Rogen tapped the zPhone on his belt. "Our comms are down." I noticed Rogen still had his rifle pointed in our direction, barrel slightly down but with his finger properly poised next to the trigger. He and Wayne were in uniform, the rest of us were in T-shirts and shorts, and they didn't know the new guy claiming to be a sergeant. Rogen looked over my shoulder. "Hey, you're Miller, right? You're on convoy duty."
"Yeah." Miller acknowledged. "You're on a baseball team, shortstop?"
"Second base." Seeing a face he recognized seemed to satisfy Rogen, he nodded to Wayne and they secured their weapons. "What's going on, Sergeant?"
"We know as much as you, we were out for a hike to that crashed ship when all hell broke loose. Either the Ruhar are taking a very broad view of their cease fire agreement, or they've decided they want to take this planet back." I thought back to what I'd overheard Captain Price saying. It wasn't sensitive intel anymore. "Last week, I heard the Kristang pulled out their air cover except for a single frigate, some kind of fleet action was going on upstairs. I think the Ruhar hit Fort Arrow with a railgun strike and missiles." You couldn't see the base from the ammo dump, a shoulder of the mountain range blocked the view, except for the still thick smoke. "We don't have comms either, set your zPhones to receive only mode, so the Ruhar can't use them to track us."
Wayne shot a look at Rogen, like they'd already had that discussion and Wayne had lost. "They must know about this place," Rogen pointed to the heavy doors at the entrance to the ammo dump, "the hamsters built it. And they'll see we added a guard shack, so they know we're using the place." The guard shack was a structure that, on Earth, would be a small tool shed people would have in their backyards, it kept the guards out of the afternoon tropical rains and that's about it.
"I don't see a vehicle," Pope noted, "you guys have a hamvee?"
"No," Wayne shook his head, "we're supposed to be relieved in two hours, and the guys coming on duty arrive in a truck that we'll drive back to base."
"You can open those doors?" I pointed to the entrance to the ammo dump.
"We have the code," Rogan said, "but we're not supposed to-"
"Rogen, if you've been keeping those weapons for a rainy day, that's now." He knew what I meant despite the mostly cloudless sky. "Fort Arrow got hit, as far as we know we're the only organized resistance around here right now. We need weapons. Open that door."
We were in luck, there was mostly weapons in the ammo dump, but also a small store of water and food, which we raided. No salt or electrolyte tablets, unfortunately, I made sure everyone ate some salty peanuts or pretzels to replenish what we'd lost through sweat. "Everyone grab an M4 and ammo, take extra ammo, and get the good stuff, not the standard rounds." Everyone knew how to identify clips of Kristang ammo. "Pope, Stallings, uh, Newman, and uh, Wayne and you," I pointed to the five biggest guys in our group, "take Javelins. Everyone else takes an AT4, we don't know what we'll need, so let's bring it all." I hefted a Javelin onto my shoulders to set an example. It was heavy, especially on top of the M4. Thinking a moment, I took off the holster for my sidearm and left it on a shelf. No point bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Rogen helped Wayne pick up a Javelin. "Hey, are you the Joe Bishop that-"
"Yeah, Rogen. I'll tell you all about it later, promise." If there was a later.
"Body armor, sergeant?" Pope asked.
I frowned. "Uh, I'll leave that up to you," I said, and as I said it, realized how cowardly it was of me to not make that decision, "wait, no, no body armor." That was totally against Army regulations. "We need to move fast, and we're already overloaded." People nodded, it surprised me, I'd expected resistance to that order. Everyone must have figured that Kevlar wasn't going to be much use against Ruhar infantry weapons like particle beams. Body armor was mostly to protect a soldier's torso from shrapnel damage, not direct hits; body armor had saved me from serious injury in Nigeria, as much as I'd resented its weight in the heat. If I survived, I'm sure I'd catch hell for violating regs in combat. If there was a UNEF left to reprimand me. We were geared up, people were looking at me again. What next? Jogging back down the access road to the base, in full sunlight, was a suicidal idea. If the Ruhar gunships hadn't cared about us before, they sure as hell would when we got closer to the base, carrying weapons. Seeing Ruhar aircraft in the sky told me they hadn't only hit Fort Arrow, they had landed troops to take the Launcher base complex. That meant Ruhar troops on the ground, and if they were on the ground, we could hit them. If we got close enough. "Anybody got a map of this place, the Launcher complex, the whole thing?" I had an idea of the area immediately around Fort Arrow, that's all. Since I'd been there, the Launcher had shot cargo into space only three times, all when I'd been away on convoy duty. The closest I'd come to seeing it in action had been a contrail streaking into the sky and a low rumble of sound from far away.
“I do, Sergeant,” offered Amaro. She jogged over to me and held out her zPhone. I took it, and scrolled through the plans she'd downloaded, refreshing my hazy memory. It wasn’t much help. The launch tube had a single parallel maintenance access tunnel on the south side, and side shafts connecting to the surface roughly every kilometer. We were on the south side, getting to the access tunnel meant climbing the mountain over the buried Launcher tube. Not an option, with Ruhar gunships buzzing around. I looked up from the zPhone, looked at the soldiers who were waiting for my orders. We could try to hold part of the Launcher, fight a battle of attrition which the Ruhar would win, hold this position until we were all dead. Trade lives for time, in what I knew was a hopeless battle. That didn’t sound like a good plan. The Ruhar could simply wait us out, or deploy some type of gas and immobilize us. I reviewed the schematic again, trying to find inspiration. In battle, decisions needed to be made on the spot, and my brain was already slowed by fatigue. I saw many small compartments off the tunnel, where electrical or other equipment was housed, they were dead-ends, which would become death traps if the Ruhar caught our soldiers in there. “Wait, what is this?” I held up the zPhone to Amaro. There was another tube, a small one, parallel to the Launcher tube, on our north side.
She squinted in the dim light, then announced “That’s the conduit for the plasma from the fusion plant, it provides the juice for the Launcher magnets.”
“How do you know that?”
“Before the war, I was planning to be an electrical engineer.” She said. "It interested me, so I got a tour while the Launcher when I first got here.”
Nobody had offered a tour to me. “This conduit, it's filled with plasma? That’s a superheated gas, right?”
“Close enough, plasma is a fourth state of matter, it’s not a gas, liquid or solid. But it is damned hot.”
“Still?” An idea was forming in my head. “The Launcher hasn't fired for, what, three days now? They wouldn't be feeding plasma into the conduit unless they're charging up for a launch, right?"
“Ah, yeah, the next launch isn't scheduled for next week, because there isn't a Ruhar cargo ship upstairs to collect it,” she stared at me, eyes wide. Must have guessed my crazy idea. “The conduit is probably cool by now, but-“
I looked around the vast cavern that had been excavated by the Ruhar, only a small corner of it was being used by UNEF as an ammo dump. The far end of the space was hidden in an ominous red gloom of emergency lighting, because power had been cut soon after Fort Arrow was hit. “We’ll need more flashlights.”
The conduit led straight into the heart of the fusion plant. Like the launch tube, the conduit had many access points for maintenance. The nearest access hatch was less than a kilometer away, back up the road, we'd passed it on ou
r way to the ammo dump. I led my impromptu squad along the road, all of us struggling with the heat, the extra load of weapons, ducking off the road when Ruhar aircraft flew by, and the shock of a nice morning turned to horror. When we got to the access tunnel, I left the others safely outside and took Amaro with me to check out the hatch. It had all kinds of electronic controls and sensors, all of which were currently dead. And it had a wheel. A simple, big metal wheel. I set the Javelin on the ground, gripped the wheel, and turned. A dozen turns, and the hatch cracked open with a puff of air. No inferno of plasma to burn my feet off. “Huh.” I said as I stuck my head in. I was a dark tube, stretching off as far as my flashlight could shine. About three meters in diameter. I flicked off my light, and peered into the darkness. No lights shined back from the other end. There were light panels set into the ceiling of the tube, they were dead.
She stuck her head in the tube. "Huh. So this is what it looks like. Bigger than I thought. Power's cut here too, Sergeant, the fusion plant must have gone offline. Or got hit.” Amaro guessed.
“The Ruhar would have been careful not to hit the reactor, they need the Launcher intact. It probably shut down automatically when Fort Arrow got it.” Fort Arrow had been created from part of the town the Ruhar had built for hamsters who worked on the Launcher complex, it was to the north of the fusion reactor. There were still a lot of Ruhar living in the town, they operated and maintained the launcher and reactor, our technical people weren’t capable of doing anything useful with the complex alien technology. Fort Arrow was separated from the town by a fence, and the Ruhar were restricted to their own areas. I’m sure the Ruhar fleet had been careful not to hit the Ruhar part of town. I pulled myself back out of the conduit, and waved the others forward. “Here's the plan; we’re going to counterattack. This conduit tube leads all the way to the fusion plant, we can get out along the way. We’ll follow it, pop up in the enemy’s rear, and cause some chaos. Let’s kill some kill some hamsters this morning.”
Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) Page 17
