SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (3 page)

"China." Chang replied. "We'll get
started in an hour or so."

"That's fine, I'm not hungry yet," I said.
What was a Chinese breakfast like? I was eager to find out. Our crew was
scientists, pilots and special forces. We had no cooks, no mechanics, none of
the usual support personnel. Each day, one nationality among the military
forces would handle cooking in the galley, with the scientists making up a
sixth team for cooking duties. The food situation was going to be interesting,
culinary skill had not been a prerequisite for assignment aboard the
Flying
Dutchman
, although I knew we could count on the hyper competitive
special forces to do their best. With a fresh half cup of coffee, I headed
toward the door. "I'm going to hit the gym," I announced. Getting
there early hopefully meant I would be working out by myself, without being
surrounded by SpecOps people who were all in better condition than I was. Maybe
I needed to be concerned about my own ego, too.

When I was done working out in the gym, I needed a
shower. It was a lung-burning, muscle aching workout that left my legs like
jelly and my arms shaky. Literally, my arms were so weary, my hands were
shaking. Even my fingers hurt. And the six Chinese SpecOps guys who were in the
gym while I was there had been doing a tougher workout. They were already well
into their exercises before I got to the gym, and when I left, they were headed
out of the gym to run sprints down the
Dutchman's
long spine corridor. I
felt like collapsing.

In the shower, I had to kneel down, because it was a
Thuranin-sized shower, and we hadn't been able to fix that when we refitted the
Dutchman
in Earth orbit. Beds had been lengthened to human size by
cutting away cabinets we didn't need, adjusting showers had not been on the
priority list, in the short time we had before our pirated star carrier had to
depart. My shaky fingers missed the shower controls several times, and I cursed
out loud.

"Something wrong, Colonel Joe?" Skippy's
voice had an undertone of genuine concern. "You seem especially clumsy
this morning."

"Especially? Thanks a lot, Skippy."

"I meant no offense, Joe. A clumsy monkey is a
dead monkey; when you're swinging from trees in the jungle, the clumsy monkey
falls and gets eaten by a leopard."

"Ha!" I had to laugh at that. "Not many
leopards in this part of the galaxy, Skippy. My arms are tired, that's all, I
did a tough workout."

"I know; I was watching you. Don't you think
you're overdoing it a bit, Joe?"

"Hell no. Those SpecOps guys, and the women,
hell, especially the women, are super high speed, Skippy. Damn it, I'm in good
shape, and I'm younger than most of them, and they're kicking my ass already.
I'd like to train with them, but the first time one of them throws me to the
mat without breaking a sweat, I think I'd totally lose their respect."

"Wow. You truly are a dumb monkey. How can anyone
be so clueless? Joe, those SpecOps people are completely intimidated by you,
they have a huge chip on their shoulders about you. And about the other members
of the original Merry Band of Pirates."

"What?" I sputtered under the cascading
water. "Give me a minute to rinse off." With a still shaky hand, I
pressed the button to shut off the water, and backed out to stand up carefully to
reach for a towel. "How do you figure that? Those people have gone through
the toughest military training there is, they're the best, they're all
completely, super confident."

"Super confident about most things, probably,
yes. About you, no. Think about it from their point of view, Joe. When UNEF
went offworld, they stayed behind. For one reason or another, they were left
behind, they missed out on all the action. Right there, they all think they
have something to prove, to you, Chang and the others."

"Huh. I guess you're right, Skippy, I hadn't
thought of that."

"That's just the beginning. You not only went
offworld, you captured two alien starships, brought back priceless intel, and
rescued your entire species from the Kristang. Joe, these SpecOps people are
completely in awe of you, you and all the original crew. Yes, they have passed
an extremely rigorous selection process that requires incredible physical and
mental toughness. However, what have they actually accomplished? What are the
odds, that, during their entire military careers, they will accomplish anything
anywhere close to what you did? The answer is about zero, Joe. And they all
know it. Joe, they all think
you
look down on
them
."

"Crap." He was right, I had been utterly
clueless. I'd been thinking only of myself, and not considering how the new
crew might think of their situation. Back when I was in the US Army 10th
'Mountain' Infantry Division, and our battalion first went into Nigeria to
boost the 'peacekeeping' efforts in that region, I had been in awe of the guys
in the battalion that was rotating out. They had been there, they had lived it,
they knew the territory, they had been in combat. They'd done it for real, I'd
only been briefed on it. You could see it in their eyes, too, they knew that
many of the guys in our battalion, including me, were green and had never
carried a rifle in a hostile area. It made a difference. And when it was our
battalion's turn to pull out and go home, we'd changed, all of us. We'd been
there. We knew.

The SpecOps people now aboard the
Flying
Dutchman
had not been there, had not been offworld, had likely never seen an alien in
person. They'd been put through hell on Earth by the Kristang, I'd been spared
that experience, still, I had served in UNEF on Paradise, and they hadn't. Many
special forces units had not made the trip to Paradise, the Kristang hadn't
especially wanted them, and governments on Earth may have been hedging their bets,
keeping most of their elite combat power close to home. At some point, if the
Dutchman
hadn't appeared in the sky for Skippy to stomp the Kristang like bugs, maybe
the SpecOps people would have at least tried to hit the Kristang. It would have
been a futile gesture to attack the Kristang in their bunkers, and impossible
to attack them aboard their ships in orbit. Any SpecOps action would have been
a measure of pure desperation, to make a last stand, for the sake of human
honor and nothing else. I didn't often think about what life had been like for
people on Earth while I was offworld. It must have been horrible, terrifying.
On Paradise, we'd dealt with the reality that all of our supplies, especially
food, had to be brought from Earth by the Kristang, and we'd seen supply
shipments getting thin toward the end of my stay there. That had been bad
enough, to gradually come to the realization that we were fighting on the wrong
side of the war, that our 'allies' were oppressing our home planet, that if
UNEF didn't follow the Kristang's every command, the lizards could starve us by
halting food shipments.

It must have been worse, much worse, on Earth. On
Paradise, we had been worried about the survival of the Expeditionary Force.
People on Earth knew the stakes were much higher, not only the fate of billions
of humans, the survival of our entire species could have been at risk. When we
went offworld with UNEF, we hadn't known what we were getting into, but we
expected it to be bad, very bad. On Earth, people at first considered the
Kristang to be saviors; aliens who looked like big, ugly lizards, still, our
saviors from the invading Ruhar. The Kristang had saved Earth from the Ruhar.
So when the Kristang began pushing their weight around, interfering in human affairs,
taking territory, taking rare minerals and other materials, at first people
figured that was the price of supporting the war effort, the price of keeping
the Ruhar from conquering our home planet and enslaving humanity. When was it
that most people on Earth gotten the uneasy feeling that they'd made a bad
bargain, that the Kristang, who by then had total control of the planet, were
as bad as we'd imagined the Ruhar would be? I didn't know, that was something I
should ask the new crew about. They probably wanted to talk about it, needed to
talk about it. Needed to talk about it to someone who hadn't lived through it.

"You're right, Skippy, I should have thought of
this. I'm the commander, I'm supposed to know what's on my people's minds. I-,
hey, wait a minute. How do
you
know what they're thinking?"

"From listening to them talk, duh. Damn, you're a
dope sometimes."

"Skippy, you can't do that. People need
privacy."

"Joe, I can't
not
do that. I monitor every
system on this ship in real-time, that includes video and audio inputs. You
already know I watch you sleep, I watch you in the shower, I watch you
eat-"

"Yeah, I know. Kinda creepy there, Skippy."

"Uh huh, as if I care what you monkeys look like
naked. You're just as ugly with your clothes on."

"Fine. Whatever. What you can't do is tell me, or
anyone else, what you heard people say in private. We must have at least the
illusion of privacy aboard the ship. If people know you watch everything they
do, that's something they can deal with, because you're an alien AI, and to
most people you're part of the furniture, an invisible ship system. If people
know their fellow crew members, or their commander, are spying on them, using
details of their private lives for gossip, that could destroy morale. Do you
understand that?"

"I don't see what the big deal is, Joe. Sure, I
won't tell you or anyone else what I see or hear. One question: what if I find
out someone is planning to do something stupid that would harm the ship, or the
mission?"

"In that case, you do tell me, only the details I
need to hear. Got it?"

"I think so, yes. Damn, you monkeys have such complicated
social rules, for a species so low on the development scale."

I just got to my office, a converted storage closet
close to the bridge and Combat Information Center compartments, when Skippy
gave me a warning. "Uh oh, Colonel Joe, heads up. Baldilocks is on his way
to see you."

"Baldilocks?" I laughed. "Who is
that?"

"United States Navy Lieutenant Williams," he
explained.

Williams commanded our four-man SEAL team, he had a
shaved head, hence Skippy's nickname for him. Also, I'd already determined
Skippy didn't like him. I knew that because Skippy told me so. Williams and I
were not best of friends so far either, my impression was he thought I was
completely unqualified for command of such an important mission, that I was
unprofessional, uncommitted, too young and inexperienced, not taking my
responsibilities seriously, and not much of a soldier. I disagreed with that
last one. "Thanks for the warning, Skippy." I straightened up in my
chair, and adjusted the iPad to the ergonomically correct position on the
table, rather than in my lap where it had been.

Williams knocked on the wall beside the door a minute
later, the door was permanently recessed into the wall, I wanted to literally
have an open door policy. "Colonel Bishop?"

At the time, I was pretending to read something on my
iPad, so he wouldn't know that Skippy had warned me he was coming.
"Lieutenant Williams. Come in, sit down. How are you finding the
Flying
Dutchman
?"

"It's still a bit overwhelming," he
admitted. "When we came aboard, I thought we would have somewhat of an
advantage, because SEAL teams are accustomed to being deployed aboard ships.
I'm finding that doesn't apply much here."

We chatted for five minutes, him talking about how
amazing it was to be in space, aboard a captured alien starship, me expressing
gratefulness for how we'd been able to modify the
Dutchman
before we
left Earth. Some of the ornate decoration in the bridge and CIC compartments
had been toned down, or painted over. We now had a galley; a place to cook,
serve and eat food, real food. And we had cargo holds full of food, enough to
last seventy people for years. Maybe the best modification was the beds;
sleeping compartments had been cut away so a full size bed fit inside; no more
trying to sleep curled up in a cramped Thuranin-sized bed.

Chang was supposed to come into my office soon, for
our daily meeting, so I decided to find out that Williams wanted. "What's
the issue, Lieutenant? I assume you didn't come in here to chat about the
ship."

"Sir, I appreciate the experience Sergeant Adams
brings," Williams said, "and I welcome her advice. However, she is
not familiar with SEAL, or Ranger, training standards. Or training methods of
the British SAS, French paratroopers-"

"You've made your point, Lieutenant," I
interrupted him. Chang was my executive officer, second in command of the ship.
Simms was in charge of logistics, and third in command. Desai was out chief
pilot. Giraud was part of the French paratrooper team. And Adams, at Chang's
suggestion, I had assigned to be in charge of training our SpecOps people about
the ship, and the fancy new alien weapons they would be using.

"You shouldn't be so cocky, Lieutenant Williams,"
Skippy added, "you weren't even the first choice to lead the SEAL
team."

Williams didn't flinch. "Sir," it wasn't
clear whether he was addressing that remark to me or to the invisible Skippy,
"I know I was the second choice-"

"Fourth choice, actually," Skippy chimed in
helpfully.

"Fourth?" Williams asked, startled this
time.

"Lieutenant Jerome Hansen was the first
choice," Skippy explained, "he turned down the assignment because he
did not want to serve under Colonel Bishop. Hansen felt you were too inexperienced
for such responsibility, Joe."

"That's understandable," I responded.
Probably most of the SpecOps people felt that way. Hell, I felt that way.

"Lieutenant Williams here agreed to serve under
your command, and was originally the second choice. However, he refused the
secret conditions your military wanted to impose."

"What secret conditions?" I looked at
Williams sharply.

Williams bit his lip, and explained. "The DIA
guys wanted me to take over the ship, if I felt it was necessary, sir. I refused."