0529 GMT February 12th, 2002 ad
“Well,” said Sergeant Major Mosovich after he read the e-mail from Special Operations Command, “I thought this mission was going too easy.”
The team sat around the tiny table in the Himmit ship’s lounge drinking hot liquids and waiting for the shower. The team had been on Barwhon for nearly a year, resupplied twice by the Himmit, and it showed. The initial quick in and out had been expanded and expanded again until the hard, hand-chosen warriors of yore became a group of near automatons. Gone were the jokes, the kidding, the asides. Every member of the team had lost weight, become pared down to the point that each looked anorexic. The constant cold and damp, and the anxiety of the penetrations were dragging down even the hardest members of the team. Tempers were frayed. Mosovich thought about that as he read the flimsy Rigas had handed him.
Not even the Galactics could drive a message through the maelstrom of hyperspace, so ships would carry burst packets of electronic mail from warp point to warp point. At most of the major warp nexi, deep space satellites would receive the compressed bursts of data, sort them and store them for transfer. As other ships happened by, the bursts of mail would be routed to those going in the right direction. Finally the mail would reach its destination, slowly or fast depending on the vagaries of the intervening ships. In the case of this missive, it had been burst transmitted to a dedicated Himmit ship shuttling between the nearest surviving beacon and the Barwhon system. The Himmit courier picked up data bursts like it from Earth and returned the team’s data. That way whether the team survived or not the data would make it back to Earth. Rigas had received the most recent transmission shortly before the team made it back from Objective 24, a fully functioning Posleen city.
Mosovich thought about it for a moment more as Mueller stepped out of the shower stall.
“Next!”
“Hold it, Richards. Park it.” With a frown Richards sat back down again in the uncomfortable chair. It had to be bad news, every time they received orders the situation just got worse.
“Okay, first the brass is muchem happy with the take from the entire mission. We’re really here to confirm Galactic intelligence and to see if there’s anything other carnivores can figure out about the Posleen that the Galactics can’t. But they’ve also come up with another tasking. We need to get a Posleen, dead or alive, to be returned to Earth for study. They actually say a group of Posleen.”
“Oh, joy!” exclaimed Ersin. “How the hell are we supposed to collect Posleen covertly? What the fuck happened to a reconnaissance? For that matter, what the fuck happened to a recall order?”
“This clearly states that a snatch is now the primary mission, reconnaissance is secondary,” said Mosovich. It was just another wonderful example of how Washington considered special operations troops expendable. He was beginning to wonder if the brass had decided to just leave them on this ball until they rotted. And if he was thinking it, he knew the others were. So far they had not been detected and had not lost anyone. That was bound to change.
“Who’s the signature?” asked Mueller, toweling his head.
“General Baird, COS-JSOC — Chief of Staff, Joint Special Operations Command — he’s apparently filling in for General Taylor,” answered Mosovich, glancing at the bottom of the flimsy. Tung held out his hand and Mosovich passed it over. After a moment’s perusal Tung handed it back expressionlessly.
“Baird’s Air Force. See any para-jumpers doing this shit?” snorted Trapp.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Mosovich, “it’s an order. Fortunately they don’t say how to do it, or what kind of Posleen. Himmit Rigas?” he asked in a raised voice.
“Yes, Sergeant Major,” the Himmit responded from the intercom.
“Can the backup ship land here?” asked Mosovich. There was plenty of room in the clearing.
“They could but they won’t. They are here purely for support and would not experience this particular event for all the stories in the Galaxy,” responded the Himmit.
“Okay, the rest of the mission is off. We are going to perform our snatch and get the hell out of Dodge. Himmit, how many Tchpth can we cram in this tub, and can we cross shift after the first transfer point? For that matter will Hiberzine work on a Tchpth?”
“I see your objective, but your orders do not mention Tchpth. I read them.”
“Fuck my orders,” snapped the pissed off NCO. He was as tired as the rest of the team and even more unhappy about the orders. He personally thought those orders were a death warrant. “We’re supposed to collect Posleen; do you see room for adult Posleen? I don’t. So we collect nestlings. And since the nestlings are right there by the Tchpth…”
“We pull out as many Tchpth as we can,” finished Ersin.
“Right.”
“Tactically wrong. Morally right. Can we do it?” asked Tung. His midnight face was as still as stone. With nearly as much experience as Mosovich, he was just as aware of the impossibility of their current orders.
“Getting back’s gonna be a stone bitch,” said Trapp. “They’re gonna be all over our ass.” He pulled out his Bushmaster and started sharpening it.
“Lambs to the slaughter,” murmured Ellsworthy, taking a quick buff at a nail.
“Lotta damn lambs,” pointed out Mueller, “with a lot of damn weapons.”
“So, we gotta get in and out without being noticed,” said Richards, shrugging his shoulders.
“Diversion,” stated Tung.
“Oh, now I know why you brought me!” laughed Mueller, “I’m supposed to die heroically planting the explosives! I saw the movie. Now, it was a good movie, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure I want the part.”
“Nail the God Kings,” said Richards.
“That would be me,” smiled Ellsworthy, dreamily. She held her hand out at arm’s length and examined what was left of her nails. “Damn, I wish there was a nail shop on this ball.” She buffed another rough edge.
“Mine the far approach, and the buildings,” stated Tung with a shake of his head at the marine. Ellsworthy seemed to spend most of her time on another plane, but it only seemed to make her more effective when it dropped in the pot. “Come in in the dark, set the charges, hit them from the flank at BMNT.” — Before Morning Nautical Twilight — “Most of the team pulls out the nestlings and the Tchpth while a group draws the Posleen on a wild goose chase.”
“We don’t know that they don’t have vehicles other than the God Kings’ capable of negotiating this muck,” Mosovich pointed out. “Mostly good, but we need to avoid being chased at all. If we are chased, then we split off a team to lead them away. Let me work this over. Tung, Ersin, my cabin. The rest of you get a shower and some rest, I’m going to commune with higher and come up with an op-order.”
Sandra Ellsworthy was in her element. Wrapped in rags of burlap, she nestled into the lower branches of a Griffin tree and plotted targets. As the first faint purple light of Barwhon dawn began to shade the horizon, it degraded the light enhancements built into her scope. However, since the Posleen had a higher body temperature than humans, and far higher than the semi-isothermal Tchpth, the thermal imagery enhancements picked them out like beacons against the cooler backdrop.
There had been changes since the team was last here. There were now seven complete pyramids, each surrounded by several pens. The causeway on the west side had been completed and the bunkers to either side, nearly a kilometer from Ellsworthy’s hide, were complete. On the north and south sides trees were being cleared and it looked like a drainage project was under way. Fortunately clearing had not started on the west side, where the team waited, but the unexpected open area had slowed the diversion team’s entry and would make its retreat less survivable. There were also nearly twice as many Posleen moving around as there had been at the time of the first recon. If anything went wrong with the snatch it looked like it would be a short, sharp shower of shit.