by James Rosone
What did you do in the regular Army? Royce asked, his interest piqued now.
I was a supply clerk, if you can believe it. I wanted to cross-train into anything I could, but I was stuck, Crocker explained. The only way I could get out of supply was to go officer. But being a senior NCO, there weren’t many officer billets I could go into. My options were either supply, which I said hell no to, maintenance, which I thought was just as bad as supply, or Special Forces. They told me if I washed out of the program, I’d at least be sent to an infantry unit, which suited me fine. I mean, at this point, I could either stay an E-8 for another ten or more years or rise to be a captain or even major in that same time. It was a pretty easy decision. What about you, Brian? You thinking of making the switch? Oh, and just call me Aaron in private chat.
OK, Aaron. No, I have no intention of being an officer. I like being an NCO. What I’d really like to do is get back into JSOC. I spent ten years in the Unit. I miss it.
I didn’t know you were part of JSOC, Brian. What happened? Why are you in a regular SOF unit, then?
Ah, that’s a long story best told over a beer or something strong, Royce replied. Let’s just say I had a mission that didn’t go so well. It wasn’t my fault or anything, but sometimes things happen that are out of your control. In my case, I had to leave the Unit for a little while. I was told after I completed my tour with First Group, I could apply to get my slot back. So, we’ll see.
I think I heard Hopper mention something to me about you having a background in some secret squirrel stuff. He said that was why the admiral had picked my platoon to lead this particular mission. You were some sort of SpecOps badass or something, Crocker joked.
Royce snickered to himself. You remember hearing about some international incident on Mars with the Asian Alliance?
I think so. Some black ops mission that went south. I think I remember hearing about it at the Officer Basic Course at Fort Bragg.
Yeah, that was my team. We were on loan to the Agency to carry out an infiltration mission to retrieve some intel from one of their sources. The only problem was the source was working at a facility that didn’t exist, protected by a group called South Sword. Something went sideways, and we ended up getting detected. I guess you could say the rest was history, Royce explained.
Damn, Hopper wasn’t joking. I heard you guys held your own against a force three times the size of yours and had to spend more than a day alone ducking and dodging enemy patrols six hours after your oxygen should have run out.
Yeah, something like that. Let’s just say we found ourselves in a tough spot. In moments like that, you have to figure out how to survive, or you’ll die, Royce said somberly.
How’d you guys survive beyond your oxygen limits?
You know we lost a few guys on that mission, right? asked Royce.
Yeah, I heard you lost three soldiers, but wouldn’t their tanks have been depleted if their EVAs had been penetrated during the fight?
They were, so we couldn’t scavenge much from them. We also killed seven South Sword soldiers, but we had the same problem.
So what did you do, then? Crocker asked.
Royce sighed briefly. I had six guys still functioning, but a few had also been wounded, so they were already short on oxygen. What the reports omitted was that we also had eight prisoners. When I realized we’d need to E&E out to our alternate rendezvous point, I knew none of us would make it on the oxygen we had left, especially my wounded guys. Our lieutenant was killed, so the decision fell on me to get my remaining guys out alive and get our intel to our Agency handler. I had a make a tough call, but it was the right call if my men were to survive and complete the mission.
You took the prisoners’ tanks? Crocker asked. Even over the neurolink, it was apparent that his voice was rising in shock.
A moment passed before Royce responded, I did. I swapped out their tanks with ours. We had ’em tied up, but I placed a knife nearby and told them by the time they eventually reached it and cut themselves loose, we should be far enough away they wouldn’t be able to follow us. If they used the remaining oxygen from our tanks, they should be able to make it back to their base. If they chose to follow us, then they’d die.
Damn, Brian. That was a tough choice. Did they follow you guys?
If they did, we didn’t spot them. Twelve hours later, we made it to the rendezvous and got picked up, Royce explained. Privately, they gave us a medal for our actions and then dispersed us out of the Unit and back to Special Forces. For the time being, travel was undesirable. We couldn’t evade detection, not after what happened went public. That’s how I ended up in a training battalion at Benning.
Well, I’m sorry about how things shook out for you, Brian. But I’m sure glad we have you in our platoon and company. If things go to crap out here, your additional JSOC skills will come in handy, Crocker said.
It’s OK. The training battalion wasn’t too bad of a gig. Heck, a couple of our newest members were some of my recruits from a few years ago. Good people. I suppose we should get back to watching and waiting, Royce said, and they went back to listening to some of the idle chatter among the platoon.
*******
The longer the soldiers sat there, the more anxious they got. They knew at least two alien species were down here, and they were pretty confident they should have seen them by now, but they hadn’t, and the sun looked to be nearing its zenith.
Just as Royce was about to suggest to the LT that they start using the drones to snoop around the area more aggressively, maybe even follow the trails back to where they led, Sergeant Wagner sent him a message.
Master Sergeant, I got activity on the trail…holy crap, you aren’t going to believe this, he said as he piped in the video feed to Royce’s HUD.
Royce’s eyes went wide as saucers. Captain, Lieutenant, you’re going to want to see this, he said as he patched them in to the video feed of the drone.
There was some silence on the other end for a moment as the captain and lieutenant watched what Wagner and Royce were seeing. At first, no one was sure how to respond. This wasn’t what they had seen on the drone footage on the Voyager. It was a lot more than a small gaggle of prisoners and a few guards.
That looks to be more than a hundred prisoners and at least two dozen guards, Lieutenant Crocker said over the NL.
Um…this is a lot bigger operation than we first thought, sir, Royce replied.
I’m going to let the admiral know what we found and see how she wants us to proceed. Any ideas or suggestions from either of you? Hopper asked.
Royce thought for a moment. I think we move forward with the initial plan. We collect as much video and audio of these two groups as we can, and we go find the base or camp they’re operating out of. Clearly, there’s a relatively large contingent of them somewhere around here. The bigger question is, how are we going to approach them and where? Here at the mine, or at their camp?
I agree with Sergeant Royce, sir, Lieutenant Crocker added.
OK, Master Sergeant, when the admiral gives the go-ahead to start searching for their base camp, you take Third Squad and find it, Captain Hopper ordered.
Sitting there watching the prisoners and guards, the Deltas couldn’t help but notice how the smaller prisoners looked exactly like humans. It was one thing to see them on a drone video, but seeing them in person, just a hundred or so meters away, was completely different. There was virtually nothing distinguishing the prisoners from their platoonmates. The guards, on the other hand—well, they were a completely different story.
Those have to be the ugliest and scariest-looking things I’ve ever seen, commented Sergeant Wagner to Royce over the NL.
Stay frosty and out of sight, guys, we don’t want a fight with them, Lieutenant Crocker said to the platoon.
The tension was palpable as they waited for word on what to do next. They had visions of snatching one or two of these aliens and bringing them back to the Voyager or a controlled place so Ambassador Chap
man could speak with them. But with a gaggle of more than a hundred of them down there—well, that wasn’t in the cards now.
What are those human-looking things doing? Captain Hopper asked.
It looks like they’re filing into that mine, Royce replied.
As far as any of them could tell, the majority of the prisoners were issued a pickaxe tool or a shovel. Every fifth or six person carried a backpack instead, presumably to carry rocks out in. Once a prisoner had received whatever the guards gave them, they were motioned into the mine.
Not wanting to waste any time, Royce pulled his M85 up and aimed it at one of the guards. He made sure the safety was on and then turned on the video and the parabolic mic. Next, he synced it with the drone, providing overwatch for them. This would relay the images to the Osprey, which would beam it back to the Voyager.
Looking through the weapon’s optical targeting scope, he got his first good look at this alien creature. It was wearing something that looked almost like a ball cap to keep the sun out of its eyes. It had a uniform on with a vest that had some equipment attached to it. It pretty much looked just like the image they had seen on the Voyager.
Once Royce had annotated the outerwear of the guard, he transitioned to the guard’s physical features, mostly the face as that was the one feature they couldn’t make out on the ship. He felt stupid calling all of these little details and items out, but he knew the intelligence weenies on the Voyager would look for all these minutiae.
He toggled a button on his targeting scope, which gave him the alien’s height. The creature stood three meters tall. The beast’s skin had a bluish tint to it and was covered in thinnish black hair on the exposed parts of its four arms.
From underneath the cap, Royce could see a lock of long black hair that flowed behind its body. It looked like it was braided, but Royce couldn’t tell if there was anything interwoven in the braid. The creature’s eyes were weird to look at, like cat’s eyes, with the pupils running vertical, almost like slits. There was a third eye higher on the forehead, in between the other two. It had high cheekbones, and when it talked, you could see both top and bottom rows of teeth, all similar to canine teeth, which meant whatever type of alien life form they were, they most likely ate meat.
Just as Royce had finished videoing and describing the aliens, they received a message from the Voyager. The brass had finally made a decision. They gave them the go-ahead to pursue Royce’s plan. They wanted him to take his squad and go search the alien camp and see what he could find and report back.
Finally, time to get moving, Royce thought.
Switching to the NL channel between himself and the captain, Royce said, I’m going to take my squad and backtrace this trail and see where it leads. When we find their base camp, I’ll get some surveillance drones up, and we’ll get a better picture of what we’re dealing with.
That’s a good copy, Master Sergeant. If you think you may run into some trouble or get spotted, try your best to withdraw as silently as possible, Captain Hopper instructed.
With their new orders in hand, Royce collected his squad. They withdrew from their current overwatch position and made their way as stealthily as possible to a position parallel to the trail down which they had seen the guards and prisoners travel earlier.
They moved through the underbrush slowly, cautiously since they didn’t know what to expect. Everything inside this forest was new. New birds, new animals, new flowers and underbrush. It was all so foreign that it was taking an incredible amount of concentration to stay focused on the task at hand and not get distracted by it all.
After they crept through the woods for two hours, the trail they had been following veered off into what could only be described as a camp. From their current position, they couldn’t make out all the details of it, but what they did see was a guard tower, a gate, and the outlines of a fence.
Continuing to use the neurolink, Royce sent a quick message. Captain Hopper, we’ve found the encampment. I’m going to have my guys work the perimeter and try to get us a better visual of what we’re dealing with. Stand by for a video link from our microdrones once we launch them.
Royce motioned for Sergeant Wagner to take his fire team and move to one side of the camp while he took a team and checked the other side. Just before they moved out, he ordered one of the specialists to go ahead and launch one of their microdrones.
Seconds later, the drone flew across the perimeter wall and into the compound. Its microburst radar gave them a great display of what was beyond their line of sight and beyond the perimeter wall. Royce needed to know how big the camp was, and hopefully how many prisoners and guards were inside.
Once Sergeant Wagner and Royce’s fire teams got set up in a good overwatch position not too far from each other, they settled in and examined the drone footage more closely, trying to figure out what else they should focus in on.
One of the first things they saw was a couple of guards overseeing a group of human-looking prisoners working on what appeared to be a foundry or smelting machine. It was unlike anything Royce had ever seen in pictures or history books, and nothing like what he thought a foundry should look like. He had envisioned a factory where large buckets of ore were dumped in and then melted down into a liquid form. Not this thing, apparently. It looked to be five meters in height, about the size of two Tesla Cybertrucks parked end to end. On what might have been the front side of this machine, a group of prisoners took bags of small chunks of rocks and dumped them into the device.
A different group of prisoners pushed a levitating cart that looked like a floating pallet jack, which had a series of empty rectangular molds on it, toward the other side of the machine. Royce wasn’t sure what to make of it at first. Then they pushed the cart toward what seemed like a spigot. Another prisoner worked a lever on the machine, and out came glowing red-hot liquid that poured into the molds.
When the molds were full, the prisoner on top of the machine turned the spigot off. Another prisoner sprinkled dust on top of the liquid ore, and then the two of them pushed the floating pallet jack to another spot in the camp.
Interrupting his viewing, Captain Hopper asked over the NL, What do you think they’re doing with that stuff, Master Sergeant?
Royce snorted. If I had to guess, sir, they’re refining whatever the prisoners are mining. It looks like they’re building up a big pile of these blocks on the far side of the camp, near that other entrance that leads out to that open field.
Sit tight and keep observing the camp, Hopper replied. See if you can’t use the drone to get us a better view of the buildings in the camp. Specifically, see if you can find a coms room or anything that might indicate this base is communicating with others on the planet or off-world. Hopper out.
Royce passed along the instructions to Sergeant Wagner as he continued to observe the camp and started counting the guards he could see. So far, they’d counted fifty-two. Back at the mine, they had counted two dozen, so that pegged them as having seventy-six guards give or take. That doesn’t seem like a lot of guards for this many prisoners, Royce thought. Next, he began counting the prisoners at the camp and the mine. They had a total of three hundred and forty-two prisoners.
One of the corporals crawled over to Royce. Master Sergeant, I don’t think these aliens are from here, he said over the neurolink.
Royce’s left eyebrow rose. Explain.
Sure thing, the corporal replied. He went on to describe how a foundry and smelter back home would work and how this large machine appeared to function as both. He added that the levitating pallet jack device was something similar to what he had used when he’d worked a summer loading transport crafts for UPS. The absence of a city on the planet meant all of these things had probably been brought here from somewhere else.
Looking at the young man, Royce calmly replied, You’re probably right, Corporal, but right now, I need you to crawl back to your position and keep observing. I know it’s exciting to think about the possibility of m
ore worlds populated by these aliens and stuff, but I need you to stay focused on what’s in front of us, OK?
Eh, yes, Master Sergeant. Sorry, that must have sounded stupid what I said, didn’t it? the young man stammered.
Placing his hand on the younger man’s shoulder, he replied, It’s OK, Corporal. We’re all excited. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about all this stuff once we’re back on the Voyager, all right?
Copy that, Master Sergeant, the corporal replied and crawled back to his position.
The kid had been so excited about this discovery that he had to tell someone, and Royce just happened to be the closest person.
Royce told Sergeant Wagner to steer one of the drones in the direction a building he thought looked a little out of place. Sure enough, as the drone got closer, they spotted what looked like a directional antenna on top of it.
That must be the communication building.
As the drone approached, they saw several guards near it. One of the guards unsealed a door and started to walk in. As the door opened, Wagner made sure the drone was able to grab some video of the inside. They’d play the video back and analyze it frame by frame to see if they had gotten any images of possible electronic equipment inside.
Something wasn’t adding up. The more Royce thought about that communication building, the more his spider senses were telling him they’d missed something.
Why didn’t we detect any electronic transmissions or activity on the planet or during any of the drone or satellite overflights of this position? he wondered. The aliens could be using some sort of advanced communications equipment that couldn’t be detected by their sensors—if that was the case, the fleet in orbit could be in trouble.
As Royce sat there trying to figure it all out, he got a radio transmission from the fleet above.
“This is Admiral Halsey. Master Sergeant Royce, we’re seeing what you’re seeing. The intelligence shop wants you to run a full spectral analysis of the camp like we talked about during the briefing. These guys have to be communicating somehow. We need you to try and find out what band they’re operating on. Out.”
