Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  Great. I had three volunteers, all I needed was twenty more. Twenty strangers, who would be asked to trust me after our Dodo fell out of the sky into their laps. I was going to need backup. "Hacker instructed me not to give a full briefing until the team has left orbit, because if this op goes south, we can't risk the lizards knowing UNEF, humans, were involved. I'm going to trust you this far; if we're successful, we're going to shut down the wormhole that gives the lizards, and the Thuranin, access to Earth. That means Earth will be back in Ruhar territory, and too far from a wormhole for either side to bother sending ships." I saw how shocked everyone's faces were, I knew the feeling. "This mission isn't about hitting the lizards, it isn't about payback," I watched Desai's eyes when I said that, "it's about rescuing Earth."

  "Shit," Adams breathed softly.

  "We can do that? You have a plan?" Chang asked.

  "There is a plan, yes. We wouldn't have gotten this far without the means to hack into enemy systems, and one of those systems is the wormhole network."

  The rest of the short flight was without incident. While the autopilot was on, Skippy tried to familiarize Desai with the controls, and the rest of us explored the ship for anything useful. We cleared out three bins that contained hamster food, to dump after we landed. "You understanding how to fly this thing, Desai?"

  She looked up at me and held her thumb horizontally, neither up nor down. "Pilots have a saying, sir, 'if I can get it started, I can get it in the air'. That's supposed to be a joke. Hacker explained the basic controls to me, but I would probably have crashed it if we weren't on autopilot."

  "Can you get us in the air again?"

  "I did it once." She said without confidence. The autopilot handled the landing perfectly, while Desai watched and pantomimed using the controls.

  "Damn it, the hamsters are here already, sir." Adams reported from glancing out the window. "Six hamsters with rifles, waiting for us."

  It wasn't surprising the Ruhar had occupied a major UNEF supply base. Over a zPhone I said "Hacker, we have unfriendly company here."

  "Roger that, Planter, they're expecting a squad of hamster soldiers on your Dodo. There are only six Ruhar on base currently. Be advised their weapons are now disabled, over." Skippy was enjoying himself.

  We started the rear ramp lowering as a distraction, then popped the side door open and the four of us poured out, guns blazing with stunner shots. All six hamsters went down quickly, completely caught by surprise. We kicked their weapons away and were tying them up, when a group of unarmed humans approached us. Their leader was a female US Army Major, Simms according to her nametag. "What the hell are you doing? We have a truce with the Ruhar!"

  I stood up and saluted. "Colonel Joe Bishop. Yes, the Barney guy." Man, that was getting old. "We're not fighting the Ruhar, we commandeered one of their ships," I pointed to the Dodo, "and we need to load up on supplies. Without stupid questions from the hamsters here."

  Simms cocked her head. I was still wearing Kristang pants with black and yellow stripes, and my uniform top was still splattered with dried Kristang blood. Adams and Desai were similarly mismatched, and wore rags instead of shoes. Chang's face was bruised, with cuts the Ruhar had hurriedly attended to. And I had two sprained fingers. Maybe broken. "Colonel Bishop, sir, last we heard you were a prisoner of the Kristang."

  "They let me out early for bad behavior. It's above your pay grade, Major. We're a special forces unit, we need supplies and volunteers for a raid on the Kristang."

  "Raid the Kris- sir? I haven't received orders from UNEF HQ about any special forces unit."

  "How did you hear about a truce?" I asked. I hadn't heard anything. Of course, I'd been in prison, again.

  She tapped her zPhone earpiece. "Announcement from UNEF last night. We can't get through to confirm, and these Ruhar arrived here yesterday and rounded up our weapons."

  "Check your messages again, there should be orders for you to assist us." Skippy was listening, if he was as fast and powerful as he boasted, Major Simms would soon have such a message.

  "Sir?" She looked up from her zPhone screen, surprised. "I do have orders. How did-"

  "Explanations can wait, we're on a tight schedule. How many people you got here?"

  "Sixty two, mostly supply corps. Eighteen of them infantry, of all nationalities."

  "Good. I need twenty or so volunteers, preferably with combat experience, for a special forces mission offworld. And supplies; weapons, ammo, food, medical."

  Simms didn't appear to be totally convinced yet. "This is highly unusual. You're going to attack the Kristang, not the Ruhar?"

  "Major, we're ground pounders on an alien planet that changes management based on who has the bigger fleet in orbit at the moment, and the part you think is unusual is a special forces mission? The orders you got from UNEF HQ, they contain the proper authentication codes, right?" Of course Skippy had that covered, somehow. "Yes? Then you can get on board, or get out of the way." I turned to my companions. "Colonel Chang, Staff Sergeant Adams, see what supplies they have here, get us loaded ASAP. Captain Desai, continue your flight, uh," it probably wasn't a good idea to use the word 'training' in front of people who I hoped would volunteer, "preparations." She knew what I meant. I paused a moment while Skippy spoke softly into my earpiece. "And these Ruhar rifles," I nudged one with my foot, "are operational again, so we'll be taking them with us. Major Simms, assemble your people."

  To her credit, Simms adapted quick. She gave me a crisp salute and trotted off, shouting orders. Within five minutes, most of the people on the base were milling around behind the Dodo, I stood at the top of the ramp so people could see me. The base wasn't large, consisting mostly of two long warehouses of a type of precast concrete stuff, a couple outbuildings, tents for the humans stationed here, landing pads, and a single long runway. This wasn't one of the huge UNEF supply dumps that were clustered around the base of the space elevator, this was a regional logistics hub. It suddenly dawned on me that I had to give the speech of my life, and I hadn't prepared anything to say. "Good morning!" I said in a loud voice. "I am Colonel Joe Bishop. Some of you know who I am. For those of you who don't know me, I captured a Ruhar soldier at my hometown in Maine, shot down two Ruhar Whales at the Launcher, and recently was a prisoner of the Kristang because I refused their orders to murder hamster civilians." In this situation, a bit of bravado and reminding people why I was famous worked to my advantage. "We thought the Kristang were our saviors, our allies, when they chased the Ruhar away from their raid on Earth. We now know that the Ruhar only hit our industrial infrastructure because the Kristang were on their way to conquer Earth, and the Ruhar wanted to sour the prize for them. You've all heard rumors about fortune cookies from Earth, well, I don't know what you've heard second or third hand, so I'm giving it to you straight here. The lizards are raping our home planet. I don't know if the Ruhar are potential allies, or neutral, or as bad as the Kristang, but I do know this: the lizards are our enemies." That brought loud muttering from the crowd. "When I was promoted, I went upstairs to meet the lizards, one them got drunk and told me, and Lt Colonel Chang, exactly what they think of humanity. The lizards think we're weak, that we're soft, that we're ignorant cavemen who are good for nothing but grunt work and slaves. UNEF had me planting potatoes, because the lizards don't want to spend any more money on bringing supplies from Earth, because we're disposable. The lizards had me and Chang scheduled for a firing squad. The women, you've heard what Kristang think of females, our women were tortured and about to be hanged, when a Ruhar raid freed us from prison." That remark caused Simms' eyes to harden and her mouth to draw into a tight line. I knew right then that she was sold on whatever I wanted. Adams came trotting through the crowd and up the ramp to me, giving me a firm salute.

  "Supplies are thin, sir, but adequate."

  "Good. I see you found boots."

  She glanced at her feet with a grin. "And pants, sir," she added with a meaningful look at my baggy Kristang trou
sers.

  "Listen up, people!" I addressed the crowd again. "This isn't another Ruhar raid, the hamsters are here to stay this time. We have solid intel that the Ruhar and their allies defeated a combined Thuranin-Kristang battlegroup, and that the Thuranin are pulling out of this area; they're no longer supporting the Kristang effort to keep this planet. That means the mission UNEF came here for is over, and that we have no way to get supplies from Earth, or get back to Earth. We're cut off. UNEF's new mission is survival; we plant and harvest crops, or we starve. Humans on this planet are farmers now, not soldiers." This being a logistics base, people here likely had seen the effects of our dwindling shipments of supplies before anyone in the field noticed.

  "UNEF is putting together a rush special forces mission to hit the Kristang, we need volunteers. Some of you saw that the hamsters here were not able to use their weapons when we landed. That's UNEF, they have a way to hack into Ruhar and Kristang systems." True enough, I was part of UNEF, and my way of hacking was to ask Skippy to do it. I had to be careful what I said about the mission, the Ruhar would be questioning very closely the people we left behind. "We commandeered a Dodo and spoofed Ruhar air traffic control systems so they don't see us. UNEF doesn't know how long this window of opportunity will last, so we're on a tight schedule. Here's what I can tell you about the op: if this works, we're going into orbit, or beyond, to hit the Kristang hard. Those people who come with us will get a full briefing once we've left the atmosphere. This is an opportunity to make a real difference in this war." If I had sprouted wings and flown into the air, people might have been less surprised. "The combat mission here," I pointed to the ground, "is finished, if you want an opportunity to hit back at the lizards, it's with us."

  I paused to check faces in the crowd. This was all too much, too fast. Not long ago, we were all blissfully alone in the universe, then Earth was attacked, and UNEF formed and we were quickly whisked away to another planet. Until a few months ago, we thought we were performing well on a tough mission for our allies, then the fortune cookies arrived and we discovered the Kristang were no friends of humanity. And after the big Ruhar raid when I was at the Launcher, we knew the Kristang weren't able to ensure our security on Paradise. Just yesterday morning, the Kristang were still firmly in charge of the planet, now I was telling them that was over, permanently. And that UNEF was stuck here for a very long time. And that, somehow, as a suspiciously well-timed miracle, I had a way to get us off the planet and hit back. If I was in the crowd, listening to some joker telling me all this, I would have called bullshit on it. I could see people were shuffling their feet, whispering to each other, trying to decide what to do.

  A loud voice called out in Chinese, or I assumed it was Chinese; Chang had returned from the warehouse. Three soldiers in Peoples Liberation Army uniforms turned when Chang spoke. Right then I realized they might not have understood a single word I said. Chang made his way through the crowd to them, they spoke Chinese for a moment, then the four of them walked to the base of the ramp. "Three more volunteers, Colonel Bishop."

  That put me in an uncomfortable situation, I gestured him to walk up the ramp. "Colonel Chang, this is a volunteer mission, I don't want you ordering people to go. What did you say to them?"

  Chang blinked, surprised. "I told them this mission will be their only opportunity to do their proper duty and serve the people of China. They all volunteered."

  Oh, what the hell. He'd told the truth. The mission was important, and we needed soldiers. "Good enough."

  "Shit." Adams said loudly. "Sir, we need to go to a base that has real soldiers and Marines, not these paper pushers."

  Maybe my speech was good, and people were feeling trapped on Paradise and wanted a way to do something, and the crowd only needed an extra push. Maybe seeing all three Chinese join up motivated them. Maybe all they ever needed was a Marine to shame them into moving.

  "Oh, hell no. I'm not standing in line behind a jarhead." Major Simms stepped forward. After her, we got a flood of volunteers. Of the eighteen infantry, seventeen volunteered; one had a sweetheart on Paradise and didn't want to leave him to the unknown future here. I took all seventeen infantry, plus three more, that made our ad hoc special forces unit twenty four people strong. Twenty four people, and one shiny talking beer can.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN AWAY BOARDERS

  Standing in the cockpit doorway while Desai ran up the engines to test for takeoff, I scanned the faces of our task force, or whatever we were. We truly had an international, multiracial rainbow group. In addition to me, there were nine US Army, which included Major Simms, a Sergeant, three Specialists and four privates. Staff Sergeant Adams was our lone US Marine, and we had one US Air Force Sergeant who handled Buzzard maintenance on Paradise, I figured he may come in handy if something on a ship needed fixing. Four Chinese including Lt Colonel Chang. Three Indian Army including our only pilot. Four Brits including a Sergeant; one of the British privates had taken flying lessons in a single engine plane, so logically I assigned him as copilot to Captain Desai. He had looked terrified when he took the right-hand seat in the cockpit. Oh, and one French Army, a Lt. Renee Giraud. Giraud was attached to a parachute commando unit, and was kind of like a French version of an Army Ranger. I’d worked with French special forces in Nigeria, and those guys are serious bad-asses, I was happy to have Renee on the team. When he signed up, he told me he wasn’t sure whether my speech was a complete line of bullshit, but he wanted action and there wasn’t any on Paradise. I appreciated the honesty.

  Twenty four people, hastily pulled together. Five women, nineteen men. Five officers, five sergeants, fourteen enlisted. Five nationalities, which in some cases was a bit of a vague definition. One of our US Army Specialists was an Indian American named Randy Putri, and if you looked at him you’d think he belonged to the Indian Army contingent, but he spoke zero words of Hindi, and he talked with the Cajun accent he’d grown up with in New Orleans. Our US Air Force Sergeant was named Chung, and she was Chinese American. Chung did speak a bit of Chinese, but the little she knew was Cantonese, not Mandarin, so she couldn’t communicate with the Chinese nationals any better than I could. Sergeant Reginald Thomson of the British Army had the dark skin of his Kenyan grandparents, but when he opened his mouth he spoke like Sherlock Holmes or one of those upper-crust royalty on a BBC TV show. One of the other Brits had an accent so thick I wasn’t sure at first that he was speaking English at all; their slang is totally incomprehensible. Captain Desai for some bizarre reason seemed to understand his accent Ok, she could act as interpreter if needed. On the subject of interpreters, Lt Colonel Chang and one of the other Chinese spoke English, the other two were going to rely on their zPhones as translators. Skippy, of course, spoke every human language perfectly, that annoying little beer can.

  Twenty four people, several nationalities, genders, specialties and experiences, and I had to make them into an effective fighting force, quickly. Without knowing exactly what the mission was.

  Most worrying was that not one of our twenty four people was a medic. And the medical supplies we'd taken aboard were pretty basic. Things could go south, real fast, and there wasn't much we'd be able to do for the wounded.

  Captain Desai got us off the ground safely, and the autopilot took over from there, lifting the Dodo on its tail out of the atmosphere. Gravity gradually dropped away, and people adjusted, popping antinausea meds as needed. Skippy, I mean to say, 'Hacker', had Desai reprogram the autopilot several times to avoid flying near Ruhar spacecraft, there was a lot of traffic around Paradise. According to the cockpit displays, and Skippy whispering in my ear, we slid right through a Ruhar frigate squadron without them investigating, challenging or even noticing us, their sensors had been infiltrated by Skippy and instructed to ignore us. However he did it, it worked, impressively. When Desai reported that we'd exceeded escape velocity, left orbit and were comfortably on our own in interplanetary space, I decided it was time to address the crew, who were looking anxiously at me
. I floated in the cockpit doorway, so everyone could hear me.

  “Full disclosure time, everyone. I couldn’t brief you on our mission until we left orbit, because we can’t risk either the Kristang or the Ruhar knowing what we’re doing. The truth is,” I gave Adams a guilty look, “I haven’t been completely honest with you, for operational security reasons. Hacker is not a code name for a UNEF cyber outfit. Hacker is, uh, here, I’ll show you.” I pulled Skippy out of my pack and made the mistake of holding him up for view without first looking at him.

  Big mistake.

  That smart-ass little jerk had transformed his surface from shiny chrome to a full color imitation of a Bud Light Lime can. I didn’t know he could change his appearance! Except for not having a pull tab on top of his lid, and his bottom being almost flat, he could have fooled me.

  The faces in front of me changed in a blur from wonderment to amusement to horror while I watched in my own horror, as they realized they’d gone into space with a raving madman. A madman who had an imaginary friend in the shape of a beer can. “No no no no no!” I waved my left hand while frantically shaking Skippy with my right. “Skippy, damn it, this isn’t funny!” Adams was bracing to fly across the compartment at me, and the look on her face was anything but friendly. “Skippy, damn it you little asshole!”

  “Hahahahahahahahahahaha!” Skippy laughed maniacally, and changed his surface so he was now a Coors Light silver bullet can. “Heighdee-ho, everyone! I am Skippy the omnipotent. Hahahahha! Oh, man, you should have seen your face, Colonel Joe. That was priceless.”

  I took a couple deep breaths, staring at Adams, who was still trying to decide whether to choke me. “For all his intelligence, Skippy is a hundred percent asshole.”