SpecOps Snippet 3

Hi,
Okay, so, I've been playing around with stuff while working on the cover to Diplomacy. I'm awaiting additional feedback on that before I call it good.

Oh, did this guy over the weekend:

That is Lil Red's box in the background. lol

Anyway, on to the snippet!

Fear the Reapers

Charlie Squad, Third Platoon, Second Battalion of First Division, was grateful when they finished clearing their third station of the week. They were fortunate; there had been no casualties, at least on their side. No one was crying crocodile tears for any enemy breakage. That made the paperwork simpler to deal with.

They had managed to rescue the hostages, though many had been in bad shape. The surviving pirates had paid for their pleasures. Koji had let the surviving victims point them out and then put each of the offenders in an airlock. The victim had been shown the controls and then he and his squad had taken a brief stroll.

It was like flushing a toilet, or at least, that was how the Marines put it whenever the subject came up. The other euphemism was taking out the trash.

Koji just hoped that it was a step in the right direction for the victims. Every one of them deserved a little payback, and he fully intended to give them whatever he could. The lost looks were hard enough. Some begged them for confirmation of something as simple as the date. The hurt looks when he or his people gently confirmed that the sleepers were time lost was hard to bear. They had lost everything, woken up in a nightmare after fleeing another one. To many it didn't seem to end. They'd had the corpsman sedate a half a dozen people who had broken down mentally.

He climbed into the shuttle and then sat down, resting his helmeted head against the headrest. “Another one over and done with,” he said, closing his eyes.

“All in. Time to DD. We've got another date,” the cargo master said, slapping the close switch on the lock. There was a collective groan from the Marines.

They didn't even feel any satisfaction as they drifted away from the station a moment later. The lights blinked a warning. The last sailor out had set up a program to vent the station to space and booby trap it so the pirates couldn't use it again as a resupply base.

Staff Sergeant Koji Kuan wasn't the only one to grumble about the navy and how they needed to stop farting around with the dancing and just end the frackers once and for all. He just didn't gripe out loud like the rest of his squad.

The medium-sized Neocat flicked his ears and then checked his HUD. He had plenty of mail to sift through, but he just didn't care to catch up with old friends at the moment. He had no idea who had lived and who had died and didn't want to play Russian roulette with the mail. He was bone tired and didn't want to lose the glow of a job well done. He skipped to the mission brief for their next mission. He might as well get it over with.

The next mission brief was a bit of surprise. He'd already had six missions in the past twelve days. Five of the missions had been deemed successes. Technically, they were all successes in that they had fulfilled most of the mission objectives. He hated that on mission three the bastards had executed the hostages; that was the biggest blemish on his record.

None of the pirates had survived his squad's wrath to surrender. Pity about that.

Not.

Each of the other missions were deemed partial successes because they had also taken the station or platform offline and out of service for the enemy. Which was a very good thing. Each station that the enemy couldn't fall back on for supplies or use as a staging point to relay supplies to their elusive fleets was considered a good thing. The noose was tightening around them ever so slowly.

“Change in plans, boys and girls, or I should say, change in targets,” he said as his golden feline eyes scanned the document.

“Ship?” Lance Corporal Newt Kershaw asked. Newt was a character, a Neochimp and one of the three scroungers in the unit. Koji had given him some rank to keep him out of trouble. That had turned out to be a mixed blessing. Newt used his extra stripe to get more out of whatever he was after. “Purely for the good of the unit” or so he insisted.

Usually with a wicked grin and wink.

“Bite your tongue,” the puma retorted. “Try an honest to goodness lunar colony of all things,” he said with a brief smile.

There were a few groans but others gave tired cheers.

“Why are you so happy?” Newt demanded, looking at Patch.

Private First class Patch, “just Patch,” was a spotted Neodog. Somewhere in his genes was a mix of spaniels and other breeds. His fur was white with patches of black and brown, hence the name. The Neodog waggled his dangling ears at him.

“Because we get some skies. We get to have some big spaces, not just endless corridors,” the dog said.

“You are just hoping for a tree to do your business on,” Gaylore teased.

“That too,” Patch replied with a canine grin. There was a chuckle from the group.

“Well, before you can take your wiz, we have chores and some work ahead of us,” Koji said, bringing them to order. The compartment quieted. “We've got …” he checked his HUD and the ETA, “twenty minutes before we reach the ship. We have two hours and six whole minutes as the ship shifts orbits and then we load up again. So, in that time we need to get the maintenance and resupply done.”

There were fresh groans.

“Including,” his voice rose in tone and pitch as he pitched it to get over the chatter. “Settle down,” he yowled, getting them to quiet down. “Better. As I was saying, we're going to need to resupply in that time period, plus service our suits and plan the mission. So, Newt, Jedi, and Sammy, get into the ship's net and requisition what we need. Don't get cute but don't hoard either. Get what we need and what we may need. Anything we have that won't fit this mission needs to be turned in.”

The trio nodded. They were good at logistics, which was why he'd handed the assignment to them. Newt thought of himself as a player and good at scrounging. Jedi usually quietly did the real work of getting something the squad needed.

“The rest of you are on suit and weapon maintenance.”

“Are we debarking?” Gaylore asked.

“Hell no, we're not even going to get out of the suits if we can help it,” the puma replied. “It's a little tight in here, and I'm not interested in seeing your furry ass floating around here,” he growled.

There was a general chuckle from the group. Gaylore shot him a modest glower and then gave him a slow one-finger salute. He even rotated it for effect.

Koji snorted.

“Here's the thing. If you get your suit sorted out properly and I sign off on it, you can get some rack time.”

“A whole what, hour?” Patch growled. “In the suit?”

“Some time is better than none. Take what you can get,” Newt replied, hands out as he worked a virtual keyboard. The other logistics experts were doing the same.

~~{*}~~