SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (2 page)

"It had better be, I already forgot what the hell
I wrote in that report. First item in the crew roster is given name, so I'll
input 'Skippy'. Second item is surname-"

"The Magnificent."

"Really?"

"It is entirely appropriate, Joe."

"Oh, uh huh, because that's what everyone calls
you," I retorted sarcastically, rolling my eyes. Not wanting to argue with
him, I typed in 'TheMagnificent'. "Next question is your rank, this file
is designed for military personnel."

"I'd like 'Grand Exalted Field Marshall El
Supremo'."

"Right, I'll type in 'Cub Scout'. Next
question-"

"Hey! You jerk-"

"-is occupational specialty."

"Oh, clearly it should be Lord God Controller of
All Things."

"I'll give you that one, that is spelled A, S, S,
H, O, L, E. Next-"

"Hey! You shithead, I should-"

"Age?" I asked.

"A couple million, at least. I think."

"Mentally, you're a six year old, so that's what
I typed in."

"Joe, I just changed your rank in the personnel
file to 'Big Poopyhead'." Skippy laughed.

"Five year old. You're a five year old."

"I guess that's fair," he admitted.

"Sex? I'm going to select 'n/a' on that one for
you," I said.

"Joe, in your personnel file, I just updated Sex
to 'Unlikely'."

"This is not going well, Skippy."

"You started it!"

"That was mature. Four year old, then. Maybe
Terrible Twos."

"I give up," Skippy snorted. "Save the
damned file and we'll call it even, Ok?"

"No problem. We should do this more often,
huh?"

"Oh, shut up."

I thought that was the end of it, until five minutes
later, when Sergeant Adams called me. "Sir, I'm looking at the crew
training roster, and Skippy is now listed as 'Asshole, First Class'?"

"Oh, damn it," I hadn't thought anyone would
look at the stupid roster. "I'll change the darned thing."

"No need, sir, it certainly describes him,"
Adams laughed.

"That it does."

"Also, the required training schedule under your
name now lists 'potty training'. I thought you should know. Also it says you
need to learn about the 'bird and the bees'."

"Oh, crap. Skippy and I had a talk a few minutes
ago, it looks like I need another one."

"You think that's going to change anything?"
She asked skeptically.

"Not really."

It wasn't only me, every one of the original Merry Band
of Pirates was intimidated by our new all-star crew. The second night after we
left the now-deactivated wormhole behind, I'd gone into the galley at 4AM,
unable to sleep, wanting a cup of coffee and some human company. Before getting
dressed, I checked my iPad for the Uniform of the Day, posted by Colonel Chang
as the ship's executive officer. Most days, we wore cammies, and on Mondays, we
would be wearing dress uniforms to dinner. Today was the standard summer
service uniform, or whatever each country's military had as the equivalent.
When I got to the galley, to my surprise, I found Lt Colonel Chang, Major
Simms, Captain Giraud and Captain Desai sitting at a table, bleary-eyed and
drinking coffee. After I poured a cup for myself, Sergeant Adams walked in, and
I handed a cup to her.

There we were, the six of us, alone in the galley. The
six members of the original Merry Band of Pirates who were still aboard the
ship. We'd been through so much together, so much we hadn't expected to
survive, that I felt like hugging them all. I refrained, because Sergeant Adams
would have punched me if I tried to hug her. Instead, I bumped fists with
Adams, and handed her a cup of coffee.

"This is a coincidence," I observed.

"For you, sir, maybe," Adams replied,
sitting down across from Giraud. "My duty shift starts in an hour."

"Mine also." Simms said over a mouthful of
coffee.

"I couldn't sleep." Chang said simply.

"Same here," I said. I sat down next to
Desai and raised my cup for a toast. "To the original merry band of pirates.
Especially those who didn't make it home."

Coffee cups clinked together, and we all drank. The
cups didn't actually make a clinking sound, as they were plastic, but they had
the official UNEF logo on one side, and '
UNS
Flying
Dutchman
'
on the other. If by some total freakin' miracle, we ever returned to Earth, I
could definitely see these plastic cups getting smuggled off the ship and
becoming a much-prized collector's item. The six of us started catching up,
because most of us didn't see much of each other between the time we left the
Dutchman
,
and the few days before departure from Earth orbit. None of us had time to talk
much during those frantic days of loading and preparing the ship, after the
governments on Earth had finally made the forehead-smackingly obvious decision
to send the
Dutchman
back out. Every single survivor of the original
Merry Band of Pirates had volunteered to take the
Dutchman
back out
again; after a lot of discussion, argument and thinking, and a whole lot of politics
among the governments involved, I had only accepted the five sitting with me in
the galley. Although all the survivors volunteered to take the
Dutchman
back out, they didn’t all need to come with us, and their governments were keen
on having some of them remain on Earth, for the knowledge they had. Many of the
survivors had injuries, Giraud still had his arm encased in a Thuranin healing
sleeve, and Chang's ribs were still tender. Doctor Skippy’s prognosis was for
Giraud to have his arm out of the sleeve and fully healed in two more days;
that was not soon enough for the French paratrooper, because he said his arm
itched like a thousand ants were biting him. Skippy said that was all in
Giraud’s head.

This trip, I firmly believed, was a fool's errand, a
suicide mission. The original Merry Band of Pirates had pushed their luck to
the limit already, to expect more from them was crazy. I'd been forced to
argue, using, let's say, strong language, with Sergeant Adams, trying to
convince her not to come with us. She didn't have anything to prove, I'd told
her, she had sacrificed enough. What I didn't say what that, although we'd both
been prisoners of the Kristang and scheduled to be executed, she had also been
tortured. I'd seen her scars. Man, she laid into me for that, practically
shouting that I was only saying that because she is a woman, that if she was a
male Marine, I wouldn't pamper her. She was wrong about that, she also hadn't
let me get a word in while she berated me. "With all due respect, sir, you
wear colonel's eagles, but we both know you're a buck sergeant. You need
me."

She had been right, one hundred percent, and I was
damned glad to have her. I was glad to have all of them, people I knew and
trusted. Our new crew were all-stars, to be sure, they were also people I
didn't know. Before launch, I had deliberately avoided gathering just the six
of us, as I didn't want the rest of the crew to think I favored my old
comrades. Although of course I did. There were other pilots aboard with vastly
greater experience and qualifications than Captain Desai, pilots who had flown
the hottest jets, test pilots, top guns. And not a single one of them were
allowed to touch a single button of the
Dutchman's
controls, unless they
were under Desai's supervision. Any of them
might
be able to be trusted
to pilot an alien starship, Desai
was
trusted. Skippy felt the same way.
Regardless of each pilot's official callsign before they came aboard the
Flying
Dutchman
, Skippy began by calling all of them 'FiNG' for Fucking New
Guy, or Girl. We had to explain to the new pilots that Skippy was actually
being pretty nice, considering, you know, Skippy. One pilot, who I won't name,
pissed Skippy off enough that his new assigned quarters were an airlock. That
required me to intervene, although I could see Skippy's point. That pilot's new
callsign instantly became 'ALliGator' for Air Lock Guy. It's a pilot thing.

"What do you think of the new crew?" I asked
to no one in particular.

Chang spoke first, after diplomatically taking a pause
to sip coffee. "It will be an interesting exercise in international
cooperation."

Giraud nodded, then shrugged. "We will see."

Seventy people aboard the ship. Twelve of them were
scientists, civilians. Of those, seven were women, and five men, their specialties
covered everything from medicine and biology to physics. Competition for a
berth aboard the
Dutchman
had been fierce among scientists, a bit less
so after I explained that I did not realistically expect us to ever return. If
it had been entirely up to me, we would have taken zero scientists along. We
didn't need scientists to achieve the mission objectives, and they would be
only more people dead if we couldn't return to Earth. It had not been up to me,
governments around the globe had insisted we bring scientists along, the
original list had several thousand names on it. Limiting us to twelve
scientists had been the best compromise I could get, my final criteria for who
came with us, and who stayed home, was less about pure scientific ability, and
more about ability to get along with other people. What we did not need was a
bunch of genius brainiacs, or, as Skippy referred to them, slightly smarter
monkeys, who had massive egos and became a pain in the ass during a long trip
aboard the
Dutchman
. That was part of the reason we had more women
scientists than men, too many of the male candidates had failed UNEF's 'gets
along well with others' psychological tests.

"International cooperation." I repeated the
phrase slowly. "Our original crew cooperated well," I pointed out.

"We had to," Chang said, "and our
mission then was to rescue Earth. We were all highly motivated."

"Our crew back then was whoever was available,
right there," Giraud pointed out. "I was only at the logistics base
because my commander sent me, to find out why supplies were so slow getting to
us."

"We sent what we had at the time," Simms
said defensively.

Giraud nodded. "Yes, I realized that when I got
there, Major. My point, Colonel, is our original crew had a sense of great
purpose, we were thrown together, unexpectedly, to rescue our entire planet.
Our new crew has no such sense of purpose."

"And these special forces all think they are
special," Adams remarked sourly over her coffee. "No offense,
sir," she added to Giraud.

"None taken," he laughed. "Some of them
intimidate me," he admitted, and Renee Giraud had been an elite French
paratrooper even before we went to Paradise.

"You too?" I asked. "They all
intimidate me. My concern is these rivalries may get out of hand."
Rivalries not only between nationalities, I also had to worry about how US Army
Rangers and Navy SEALs would get along. Professionally, I hoped.

Adams bumped fists with Giraud across the table.
"Don't worry, sir, we'll get them straightened out." Chang had
assigned the experienced Giraud and Adams to get our new special forces units
squared away, and to set up a training regimen. The new people had to learn
about the
Dutchman
, the
Flower
and dropships for basics. Then
they would move on to familiarizing themselves with Kristang powered armor and
combots.

What I was really worried about was our elite,
gung-ho, intense special forces troops becoming bored. Before we departed Earth
orbit, I had assembled the entire off-duty crew and scientists in an empty
cargo bay to explain, once again, that my sincere hope was we saw zero combat
action. That we saw nothing interesting along the way, that a successful
mission, in my opinion, would be for us to find Skippy's magic radio, drop him
off somewhere, and for the
Dutchman
to return uneventfully to Earth. Or,
in the all-too-likely scenario of the
Dutchman
breaking down somewhere
after Skippy left us, of us being stuck in interstellar space, with food
running low, and me having to engage our self-destruct. When I told the crew
that, I could see special forces nodding grimly. I also saw in their eyes they
didn't fully believe it. They were trained for action, and action is what they
expected. I hoped to disappoint them.

Our new mission continued to use the UN Expeditionary
Force command structure, the scientists came from many nations, but the
military forces were drawn from only five countries; America, China, India,
Britain and France. Each country provided nine special forces soldiers, except
that America had only four Rangers and four SEALs, because an American
commanded the mission. Each country also provided two pilots. Giraud and Desai
were in the special forces and pilot count, that left me, Chang, Simms and
Adams rounding out the fifty eight military personnel aboard.

I drank the last of the coffee in my cup, and got up
for a refill. The coffee pot was almost empty, I drained the dregs into my cup
and got the pot started on brewing more. There wasn't any breakfast available
yet, other than do-it-yourself toast. "Whose turn is it in the galley
today?" Details like that were Chang's decision as the Executive Officer,
I should have known anyway. There was a duty roster somewhere. Like, on my
zPhone, that I was too lazy to look at.