SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (40 page)

“Yeah, you’re welcome. No problem.” He sounded like he
felt the conversation was lagging too.

Before it got any more awkward, I said “Well, I’ll let
you go-“

“How did the day go? I’ve been tracking your progress.
Your group is making impressive progress.” It seemed Skippy wanted to keep
talking.

“We didn’t roll or sink an RV today, that’s progress.
Everyone here is sore, not that the SpecOps people will admit it, our muscles
have adjusted to the extra gravity, our joints and tendons are slower catching
up to the extra strain. I stepped in a hole and twisted an ankle yesterday
morning.”

“Did you talk to one of the doctors about it?”

“No, I taped it up myself.”

He sighed. “Joe, you brought two civilians with you,
to have doctors on the team. You’re making them walk all this way, for
nothing?”

“Skippy, they didn’t come with us for something as
simple as someone tweaking an ankle, they’re here to take care of combat
injuries. There’s not much to be done other than taping my ankle, I can’t stop
walking. I don’t want to waste their time, and I don’t want SpecOps people to
think I’m weak.”

“Joe, Joe, Joe. Once in a great while, you have a good
idea, the rest of the time, you are dumb as a rock. Surely you are not the only
monkey in your party with an injury that is being either ignored or attended to
amateurishly?”

“Probably not,” I thought of the various people I saw
moving around stiffly in the mornings.

“And by not seeking the best treatment available, they
risk becoming combat ineffective? As the commander, shouldn’t you be setting an
example?”

Crap. “Skippy, you not only can build a starship out
of moon dust, you know more about monkey, damn it, human psychology than I do.
I should know that. You’re right, I will talk to one of the doctors tonight.”
And soon, before they fell asleep. “That’s enough about me, how are you doing?”

“Good enough. I’ve been monitoring the progress of the
archeology team, they have found a new chamber behind a wall, it was buried in
a rock fall, perhaps at the same time when the main part of the cavern washed
away, and the roof collapsed. Anticipating your question, Colonel Chang is
making certain they are being safe, and not taking unnecessary risks with the
project. The team is very excited, they haven’t told you about it yet, they
have found fragments of bronze plates with what appears to be writing. Colonel
Chang hopes to find more writing samples, buried further down. This new chamber
overall is shallow, whatever is in there will not require a deep excavation.”

“Wow. Writing? That’s awesome.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, Joe, this writing, if that’s
what it is, looks like nothing but scribbles. The only way we will ever be able
to read any of it is if we find more samples, a lot more, with pictographs.”

“We can hope, though. How are things going with you,
up there?”

“Good, good enough. No new setbacks to report. While I
have you, Joe, I’ve been thinking about that favor you asked.”

“Huh? What favor?” He already delivered the pizza.

“The favor about you and me riding off into the sunset
together. Remember? You’re studying up on how to fly ship, so the two of us can
drop the crew off at Earth, after I contact the Collective.”

“Oh, yeah,” I tried to keep the hopefulness out of my voice.

“I thought about it, and I can see why you think it’s
a good idea. I am willing to give it a shot. Unfortunately, my analysis has
determined the scenario is extremely unlikely. As you know, my memory is vague
concerning the Collective, one thing I am certain about is that once I make
contact, I will no longer be able to help you. I might not even be able to
communicate with you in any way. I may, very suddenly, simply be gone.”

“Oh, I hear you, Skippy. Thanks for telling me.”

“Sorry.”

“Skippy, you saved our entire home planet, you have
nothing to apologize about. We all knew the risks when we came out here. I’m
going to,” I yawned, “talk to one of the doctors about my ankle. You have a
good night, Ok?”

“You too, Joe, sleep well.”

From the pizza delivery site, we got two solid days of
walking over rolling hills in a steady, cold, dreary rain, with wind blowing
straight into our faces. For meals, we had cold rehydrated sludges. At night,
we collapsed in our tents and sleeping bags, with wet clothes hanging on a line
from the tent roof, dripping on us all night. In the morning, we got up and did
it all again. The novelty of walking across an alien landscape, being the first
humans wherever we went, was wearing off. Every single one of us wanted to get
to the scavenger base, get the attack over with, and get back aboard the
Flying
Dutchman
. Apparently I had earned a measure of grudging respect from
Smythe, he had taken to walking with me, once he had demonstrated that I could
keep up the pace. And I could, simply by concentrating on putting one foot in
front of the other, hours after hour, day after day. What I could not do very
well, would be to carry a heavy pack all day, in fourteen percent higher
gravity and oxygen equivalent to high altitude on Earth, and then go directly
into combat. The SpecOps people could, they'd trained for it, mentally prepared
for it. At the end of a day, all I wanted to do was gulp down a nutritious
sludge and sleep.

A swirling gust of wind blew fat, cold raindrops right
into my eyes, I wiped my eyes and lowered goggles from atop my head to protect
from the stinging spray. They were fancy high-tech Kristang goggles that
repelled water and didn't fog up inside, even so, they were goggles and wearing
them constantly grew tiresome after a while. "Lovely weather here,
Captain," I said to Smythe, who had put his own goggles on. "Is this
what Scotland is like?"

"No," Smythe looked surprised at my
question. "Scotland is ruggedly beautiful, most times of the year. If you
like the outdoors, it's a wonderful place. It is mostly open country like
this," he swept his arm across the eastern horizon, partly obscured by
rain and low clouds, "and it can be wet," he admitted. "No more
so than the rest of the island, of course."

It took me a moment to realize that by 'the island',
he meant Britain. As an American, I thought of Britain first as a country, not
an island. When I hear the term 'island', I think someplace tropical, with palm
trees and coconuts. And tropical drinks. With little umbrellas. And slices of
pineapple. "That's where you train? The SAS? In Scotland?"

"Scotland? Sometimes. 22 SAS is based in
Hereford, near the Welsh border. Part of our selection training takes place in
the Brecon Beacons of Wales, that area is somewhat similar to this here, the
weather can be very unpredictable, with wind coming off the Irish Sea."

"That's one advantage of Newark, I suppose, the
weather here is predictable, lousy all the time. My hometown in Maine can have
bad weather, at least there the whole area is mostly covered with trees, it
cuts the wind. And you have plenty of fuel for a campfire there."

"Have you ever been to Britain?" He asked, I
shook my head. Smythe went on. "You would like the walking trails in
Britain. In the States, your walking trails are mostly in the woods, I
understand, and you cook your meals over a fire, and sleep in tents. In
Britain, we have walking trails that go from one village to the next, you can
stop at a pub for lunch and dinner, and stay in a guesthouse overnight. It's
very popular, particularly in areas such as the Cotswolds and the Yorkshire
Dales."

"That sure sounds tempting right about now. The
trails go right into a village?"

"Yes. The difference is," Smythe explained,
"most of your trails in the States were set up by governments, on public
land, or on private land where the owner allows access? In Britain, the public
has access across private lands, because for thousands of years, peasants had
right of access to get water, to drive their animals to market or to pasture.
The current landowners can't block the public from walking across their land,
because of the historical right of access. There is a group which organizes
what they call a mass trespass once a year, to walk all the trails in Britain, in
order to maintain the public's right of access."

"Huh." I said. "Man, that would piss
off a lot of people back home."

"America hasn't been around for long, compared to
Britain. Different standards," Smythe concluded. We stopped talking after
that, as the path took us up a long, steep hill, and I couldn't manage more
than grunts.

Even Smythe appeared winded from the climb, we paused
at the summit. "The mountains of Afghanistan are like this. At altitude,
you get to the top of a climb," he said, gasping, "and you want to
catch your breath, but you can't."

I nodded. "I was with the 10th Infantry Division,
the division used to specialize in mountain warfare. Then they sent me to the
jungles of Nigeria. And then to Paradise. The first place I was stationed on Paradise
was so flat, it looked like Kansas."

The rain stopped in mid-morning the next day, there
was a strong, constant wind, from the southeast this time, that seemed to
literally blow the clouds away. By early afternoon, the wind dropped to a
pleasant breeze, the sun came out, and the temperature soared high enough that
I stripped down to a long sleeved shirt. People's spirits rose with the
temperature, grim faces replaced by grins, grunts replaced by laughter. Taking
advantage of the break in the weather, I unrolled my damp sleeping bag, turned
it inside out, and tied it to my pack so it could dry. Also, I hung wet socks
from my belt. Everyone did something similar. The sunshine on my face actually
felt warm, even a little hot at times. "Captain," I said to Smythe,
"Skippy tells me this nice weather is going to last until around midnight,
then we're getting rain showers. We're still ahead of schedule, I want a two
hour break for lunch. We'll get the tents set up with flaps open so they can
dry out. And we can string clotheslines from those rocks over there. We will
walk a bit later into the night to make up the time, the ground ahead is pretty
flat and there's no large streams to cross until tomorrow."

To my surprise, Smythe didn't protest the delay. We
got tents and clotheslines set up quickly, and we all took a nice break in the
sunshine, sitting or laying on dry rocks.

"It's not so bad now," I mused to Tanaka and
Zheng. We were sitting on a flat rock with our boots and socks off, rubbing our
feet. The two civilians had held up very well to the rigors of our grueling
hike across Newark. "You know, I wonder what this area was like
before?"

"Before?" Zheng asked.

"Before Newark got pushed out of its original
orbit," I explained. "We're seven hundred kilometers from the equator
here, this must have been, what? Jungle? Desert? Something hot. People, the
natives, they might have come here on vacation."

"I don't think their society had vacations, they
probably didn't have the technology for leisure travel," Tanaka said.

"They had the wheel, that means roads," I
pointed out defensively. "Anyway, you know what I mean. This was a nice
place back then." I looked around at the low, rolling hills, valleys
crisscrossed by streams that sparkled in the sunlight. "Like that hill
over there," I pointed to the south, "it has a nice view of that
lake, it would have had nice breezes for cooling. I wonder if anyone lived up
there?"

Zheng shaded her eyes and looked around. I couldn't
tell whether she was irritated that I'd disturbed the rest she'd earned.
"Most of this landscape was carved by glaciers, when Newark was frozen
solid, before the orbit became elliptical. That lake, even that hill, may not
have existed back then. That will be a big problem for archeologists, much of
the evidence of civilization here; cities, buildings, roads like you said, will
have been scoured away by glaciers. The glaciers, even here, could have been
substantial. The science team is having a debate over whether Newark's surface
froze completely over, or whether there might have been a strip of open ocean
near the equator, during summers." Perhaps because she saw the crestfallen
look on my face, she quickly added "The natives didn't deserve what
happened to this planet. No one does."

"Except maybe the people who did this. What are
the odds Newark is the only planet they threw out of orbit?" I asked
bitterly. My nice sunny good mood was fading. "If I ever find those MFers-"

"Colonel," Zheng said, and tapped my
shoulder gently. "We have a nice day here, a nice afternoon. Let's enjoy
it while it lasts, Ok? Enjoy it for the natives, because they can't? No more
talk about glaciers, I promise."

Not thinking about glaciers for a while was nice.

"Uh oh, Joe," Skippy called me while I was
wading across an icy cold stream that was up to my chest. Making the situation
extra special was that, because the water was deep, I had to make two trips
across, to carry all my gear high over my head so it wouldn't get wet.

"Give me a minute, Skippy," I said with
almost a gasp, the cold was taking my breath away. Of course, he called when I
was in the deepest part of the stream. "Kinda busy here right now."