Multiverse 2 snippet

   Okay, I just got the manuscript back from Rea this morning, and after a couple of hours I've gone over it, added the TOC and appendix, then uploaded it to Goodlifeguide.com for final formatting. We should be seeing it back in 10-14 days. If not sooner. :)

   In the meantime, here is a snippet to wet your appetite. There are 11 short stories in the book, 4 of them are from the Federation universe. 1 was supposed to be the short story at the end of Ghosts from the Past but I ran long on that book so I pulled it. Here is a piece of it...

Lewis and Clarke

On the trip out to Hidoshi's World, Second Lieutenant Craig Lewis and his people were too busy to get nervous. Every waking moment they were busy training, running sims in VR and in holds set up as shoot houses. The few officers and noncoms had created various contingency battle plans based on their limited intel and what the book had to offer. They did their best to simulate them, then critique the end results. “Get it right, people!” was a favored rant from acting E-5 Sergeant Padre Rutledge.

Padre was a father figure to the troops, but he could be a hard ass when required. Craig was fairly certain the admiral and Lieutenant Gustov would sign off on his bumping Rutledge from E-4. He needed an experienced noncom badly. He had three, one per ten-man squad; he had bumped Race Bannon from PFC to Lance Corporal and Hadji also to Lance Corporal to help fill the last voids in his command chain. Hadji's buddy John Quest would serve as a good PFC, though the young blond man had a bad habit of getting into mischief. Lewis shook his head. Race was right. Idle hands were at play there, though their training did keep everyone pretty damn busy.

He was still limited to himself and Ensign Sing Xe as officers, but he'd work with what he had available. It bothered him that if something happened to them the platoon would be up a creek. He had to remind himself he had a duty to everyone including the people on the planet to stay out of combat as much as possible and direct the various battles from afar. That was going to be a bitch. It would let him and Sing pilot the mechs and drones though, which was a small consolation prize.

Besides he mused, he was fairly certain both senior officers considered their mission a long shot. There would be a lot of people who wouldn't be coming back from it. Hopefully, not as many as he feared, he closed his eyes. One would be too many, too damn many. But he also knew that any one of his people would gladly give their lives to save the people on the world they were about to assault, to save people they had never met. And if they killed some of the bastards along the way, well, that was just gravy. His lips twitched in a small grim smile.

All of the marines and the liberated civilians they had along for the ride were crammed into Collier 2, formally known by the Horathians as Tender T12783, the Clydesdale freighter turned liberated collier. Lieutenant Herschel was a good captain though; he ran a tight ship. For him this wasn't just retribution and payback, it was coming home to liberate his homeworld. He kept everyone busy, too busy to worry about what they were up against. The other two ships were the tanker and Deinara. Deinara was outfitted with most of their support equipment as well as their rail guns. She was a medium-sized freighter though, far smaller than Collier 2 or Lassie.

Apparently the battalion had squeezed into the medium freighter and escorts by placing all of their shuttles and a good part of their cargo on the hull of the ships. To have that many bodies in such a confined space was still mindboggling however.

They had thirty marines including the two officers in a short platoon. Sergeant Bannon's squad was outfitted with powered armor. All the other marines were outfitted in standard armor. There were four heavy weapons teams and the rest of the marines were shooters.

To supplement their numbers, they had thirty mechs, android troopers that they were uncomfortable with using. There were also forty drones of various makes and models including four of Bounty's security dog drones. They had tons of gear, nearly a hundred tons of gear from Admiral Irons, not just for their use but to help rebuild the colony. They had to recapture it first. Lewis had also borrowed a half a dozen squids to act as corpsman and field medics for his short platoon and three techs to keep the machines in line.

They worked themselves twenty-hour days into exhaustion, then underwent sleep teaching at least three nights a week for six hours each time to supplement their training further. They kept training until they responded like veterans using muscle memory, the training to follow orders, and relying on their training instinctively to get the job done and stay alive. One half day a week they had off to get caught up on laundry, inventory, and other chores. Many did them as quickly as possible and then racked out to get what sleep they could.

They could only simulate explosives and weapons fire in both VR and in the shoot houses. Likewise the initial drop was to be made by their Skyhawk and three civilian cargo shuttles. Keeping one shuttle in reserve was prudent, but Xe expressed his doubts repeatedly. His theory was for them to hit hard with all six shuttles and then pull one back for the reserve later. They weren't even counting the two cutters Deinara had. They could land four people in a drop and needed a long runway to do it.

Those were worrisome holes in the plan; a lot could go wrong right from the beginning screwing the entire op up. Another problem was that they could also only simulate the usage of mechs and drones virtually. That was a major point of contention with the leadership, along with how to use them effectively. Ensign Xe wanted to keep them in reserve or have them fight on their own while Hadji wanted to use them as cannon fodder, to soak up the enemy's fire until the real troops landed and dug in at a different location.

Lewis on the other hand knew they had finite resources and knew he couldn't waste them. But he also knew they would be expended; that was a part of any operation. People as well, they were going to take losses; it was inevitable. He made himself face it. Just about every simulation confirmed that fear as well. They were using opposition forces that were as tough as they were now; his people were winning but taking loses. He tried to explain to them that it may be a game now, but they couldn't soak up that fire and win. They could win the individual battles yet still lose the war if they were cut to pieces by attrition. It was just one thing among a hundred that sometimes kept him up at night.

It had taken them seven and a half weeks to transit the 4.9 light years from B100 omega to the outskirts of Hidoshi's World star system. What a name, he thought, shaking his head. What a mouthful! Did the natives call it that he wondered? He snorted, finishing off his coffee. Training was over; they were now feverishly working on final preparations for the performance of their lives.

And now it came to this, Lewis thought as he stood watching the screen in his tiny cabin. They had just exited hyper two days ago and were cautiously entering the inner system, passing through the Oort cloud on their way in. Deinara was lagging behind with the tanker, but by design both ship's crews would be picking up a choice selection of rocks to be used later on. They would catch up soon enough.

It bothered him that they had so little intelligence. A Horathian battalion had been sent in led by a Colonel Wizenbek as the invasion commander with a Lieutenant Colonel Zin as his political advisor and battalion commander. A battalion could mean anything from nine hundred to twelve hundred soldiers. They had equipment; he knew that. How much was another question and in what quantity of each category and quality. Also, what they had captured on the planet.

He ran a frustrated hand through his short cropped hair. High and tight, just like the regs said. He'd come to realize it was the best haircut he'd ever had, easy to maintain, and hell, he looked good in it. He frowned as he looked at Zin's profile.

Commander Sprite and Lieutenant Defender had dumped a profile for him from the captured ship's computers. How Zin had tucked away an entire battalion in two colliers and a couple of corvettes … he shook his head. His intel specialist, Race, was going over the raw dump and assembling a better picture in his free time. Which wasn't much, Craig thought with a pang. Race had to be with his squad to train and oversee them since he was their noncom, but he was doing double duty like just about everyone else. He so wished the AI could have coded a dedicated intel AI for him. Some support, any support in that field would be nice right about now, he judged.

“If wishes were fishes,” Craig murmured, going back to the briefing. He studied Colonel Wizenbek; the stocky man was a by-the-book officer. He wasn't very flexible. But his XO and advisor was a different story. He looked at the cold eyes and the Asian male's overall look: blue burning eyes, high cheekbones, bald with liver spots, and thin almost skeletal hands. The colonel looked intimidating in his sharp black uniform.

He was fairly certain Wizenbek would be in the HQ, so he was confident they would decapitate his leadership in the initial strike. That left Zin to deal with, the greater of the two evils. He was tempted to hold off on hitting the HQ. Wizenbek might tie Zin's hands and bumble his way right into the marine's hands. But he couldn't count on that. He exhaled slowly, trying to cleanse his frustration. They'd just have to deal with it when the situation arose he thought.

Zin was some sort of zealot, also according to the short bio they had on him, some sort of doctor. He was a diehard believer, which meant he was most likely going to fight to the bitter end. There was no point giving him a heads up and a chance to surrender; that would just give him time to disperse his forces or do something drastic to the population.

Zin's second-in-command was a Major Alercon. There was little on him, not even an image of him. Nor of his any of his other officers, though one or two had names mentioned in the files. Apparently Race hadn't gotten that far yet.

He sighed and set the tablet down, then rubbed at his jaw, and then scrubbed his tired eyes with his hands. Probes had been sent out through the solar system and all three ships maintained a vigilant watch with their long-range sensors. The sensors were almost useless, however, since most of them were civilian grade. They just confirmed the basic information about the star system that they already knew. It was a G class star system, a couple of Jupiter class gas giants and the three planets, one of which was Hidoshi's World. The planet was an Earth class, 1.03 atmosphere, 21 degree axial tilt; she'd been terraformed at some point to be habitable. That might explain her orbit. She was in a wide orbit, in for a short brutal summer, long cooling-off autumn, then an even longer brutal winter according to the Galactic Encyclopedia entry. He shook his head. Well, this was the time to mount a campaign. He hoped it was short.

The probing did turn up a few minor treasures; the squids found a couple derelict ships and debris floating about the system. Apparently they were happy about that, though there was some doubt that any of the ships were salvageable.

“Sir, we're getting a signal from the planet,” a rating said over the intercom.

“Oh?” He looked up in surprise. “How did they know we were here?”

“I don't know, sir; we're still three AU out. Captain Herschel implemented op plan Trojan horse under his authority.”

Craig nodded. Trojan horse was simple; they would come in pretending to be more Horathians with additional troops and supplies for the garrison. That would make Zin's people relax and eager to meet and greet them. Every commander wanted more troops and equipment; there was never enough. And to pacify a planet? With a population in the low millions? With millions of places for people to hide? That took a lot of boots on the ground and a lot of work.

Most likely Zin's people had taken casualties as well, at least he hoped so. The population might have rolled over initially, but hopefully someone somewhere had put up a fight, even if it was brief one. A guerrilla campaign would also be nice. A nice sniper, maybe an IED.

Hell, technically he should be wishing Zin was complacent. It would make his job initially easier. In a way he was in the same role Zin was in less than six months ago. Hoping the planet was ignorant of his true intentions. What was that saying about surprise? He shook his head. He didn't have the time to look it up.

“Is the captain sticking to the plan?”

The rating cleared his throat in surprise. He had been about to cut the link, thinking the marine had forgotten about him. “Yes, sir, he is,” the rating replied.

“Good. We don't want them to recognize one of our own people, now do we? It's too early to give the game away.”

“Aye, sir. The skipper is sticking to audio only. He's using a scrubber to garble up the voice a little, and a healthy dose or two of static to cut the chatter down to a minimum.”

“Which will make Zin's people want to get more information once we're closer or in orbit. Tell them they can wait for news,” Craig said, then a thought hit him. “You know what, see if you can slip in there something about special orders for Colonel Zin on a flash chip. They are to be turned over to him specifically. That should put him neatly in the cross hairs.”

“Do you want us to get his location, sir?”

“Don't be too obvious about it. If he insists on a hand off to a subordinate at the spaceport, just say it's his choice to countermand orders or something to that effect. Don't get too cute or piss him off.”

“Aye, sir.” The rating paused. “Sir, we've backtracked the signal to its source. Sensors have found a ship in polar orbit of the planet.”

“Can you dump it to my screen?” the marine asked, now concerned. There had been nothing in the debrief about a ship left behind. If it was really a ship, they could be in trouble. The ship could run and possibly even slip past the admiral. Hell, most likely could slip past him if he'd already jumped! They could even radio a warning to Zin. That was a problem.

“It's odd, sir. Here is the image,” the rating said, sending the link to the marine's tablet. Lewis looked down at it, then picked it up as he frowned. The image was a spec but definitely a ship of some sort. It glittered; apparently, it had wings of solar panels. As he studied it, the sensor officer refined the image, putting up data in brief flashes of information around the ship. “According to this, no life signs have been detected within the ship? What's with the panels?”

“That is correct, sir. According to the spectrograph she's a cold ship. No outgassing, no signs of life. Her thermal signature is also too low to support life.”

“That is … odd.”

“It is too early to speculate, but the captain believes it is a derelict that has been turned into a space station by the natives,” the rating stated.

“But we don't know that for sure,” Lewis murmured.

“No, sir. Um, the captain asked if you wanted to dispatch a boarding party when we get into orbit.”

“Definitely. I'll alert my people. They've got six days to prep,” Lewis said grimly. “Ask the skipper if he or your communication's people can work out some sort of way to jam the ship's transmission without being obvious,” he said.

“Simulating a solar flare might work, sir. I'm not sure. I'm the acting communication's officer, sir. I'll look into it and get back to you.”

“Good man,” Lewis murmured, getting to his feet. He had orders to pass on. “You do that. In the meantime, I'll be with Ensign Xe.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

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