MV6 Snippet 3

 Sitrep: So, I have a naughty rambunctious hellion on my hands. She is getting into stuff she isn't supposed to, loves to destroy paper products, toilet papered my bedroom this morning (again), and also ripped my nose open trying to jump me while I was walking down the hall. (she can really leap!) 

She was trying to tackle us this morning. (We're over 6 foot kitty, not gonna happen!) I got her back by scarring her so she wanted revenge. She ran across the living room as I was going down the hall, leapt over the couch and was I guess aiming for my shoulder but I turned and she got my nose and chest instead. Lucky me.

So, yeah, we have our hands full. She just turned 6 months. I'm shuddering to think of what she is going to be like at Christmas! If you hear me whimper it's probably because she knocked the tree over one too many times. sigh. 

I finished the Roo book so I'm waist deep in the cover art for it.

Anyway, on to the snippet!

The Stray

Premise: This is the first story (there is a second in MV 7) of a new side group that may or may not play a role in Expanding Horizon. (whenever I get around to writing it!)

Endor XXIII, Beta Sector

 

Chief Petty Officer Joe Thompson finished shutting the systems down in the shuttle and then checked on the others as he climbed out of the pilot seat. Ben had already abandoned the copilot seat to get busy with overwatch. He had to squeeze past PO Sia Clarkson as she finished gearing up. She had been helping him with shutting the bird down and setting up the satellite relay. They only had a few more minutes in the window before they needed to be on the move.

PO Randy Guetta had already wrestled the camouflage net out of the bird through the rear hatch. Joe grabbed his bag and gear and checked his weapons before holstering his pistol and putting his vest on. He finished gearing up silently, checked with a bounce to be sure nothing jingled and then went out to lend a hand.

The tigress was already outside helping Randy pull lines to get the camouflage nets over the bird. The bird had a smart skin to help camouflage it but it wasn’t enough. The nets helped to break up the shape. The engines and landing spot were cooling; in another hour it would be down to ambient.

Well, not quite. The nets helped to bring the reflective heat from the bird down a bit too but it wasn’t quite perfect.

He was tempted to burn the time to add some tree limbs and brush over the bird but held off. They needed to get going. They had a tight window to get to the port.

The more he thought about it the more he thought the mission was a fool’s errand. They were supposed to do a snoop and poop, just get to the outskirts of the port and then snoop around. Try to access any data remotely, plant some bugs, gather intel, and then back to the ship if they didn’t pick up anything of value intelligence wise.

He had already nixed Randy’s idea of hitting the bars. Endor had only the one space port and the forest moon wasn’t heavily populated. No doubt the locals knew each other. The pirate cruiser about to make port in orbit may or may not be a known regular customer.

Either way their boss First Lieutenant Jordan Peal had nixed going into the port and being seen. This was just a basic recon, nothing more.

Their team had been assigned to look for a way to get into pirate ports as well as monitor their space traffic. He had a single fire team with him; the rest of the squad were on their Meridian class Prowler running the ship with their AI and the boss.

Jordan was ambitious; she hoped to be the one to get her hands on a complete Horathian navigational database from a ship. That was their ultimate goal, to find the pirate’s “El Dorado” and cut off the head, their so called “Pirate Empress.”

So far, no such luck though. Which was why they’d been dispatched to the border of Sigma Sector and Beta to try looking for clues in that direction.

What they had found was that the pirates had been fleeing in that direction. Sigma, Beta, and Alpha sectors were wastelands. The Xeno war had gutted the three sectors worse than any other. That meant stops like this one, on a habitable moon, was highly prized. There were few places a ship could go to get provisions and fuel.

Technically they had pushed their orders. The LT thought of it as using his initiative to try to find the damn base and put an end to them once and for all. The team backed the play but they were a long way away from support.

He wordlessly shouldered his rifle with the sling and then grabbed a line that Randy tossed over the nose of the bird. He walked the line back to a tree and tied a rock to the end. He whirled it a few times and then tossed it over a branch and then the rock dropped down. He untied the rock and then yanked on the rope. The net was pulled over the bird and his end was in the air above to help give the shame more of a natural texture.

It was something that SEALs trained for, to be out on their own running missions in enemy territory. But it was still a new experience for some people. If a pirate ship came around, they could only run. If the team was on the moon, they’d have to go to ground and hide until the prowler could come back for them.

There was a pirate ship coming he reminded himself. That was why they’d pushed the mission. The LT wanted them to get in and then out. But it was turning out to be easier said than done.

Obviously, they couldn’t land their shuttle at the port without being noticed. That meant they’d had to come down like a meteor and land in a clearing in the otherwise dense forest a hundred kilometers out from the spaceport.

He tied the line off and then looked around. The trees were massive, towering-like skyscrapers. They were covered with moss. The ground had ferns and overgrowth.

There were stands of various tree species. The big boys were truly massive though, over ten meters in diameter at the base. The moon’s light gravity allowed the trees to grow big and tall. Obviously, no one had been interested in doing any wood cutting for some time.

Either that or they just lacked the tools to do the job, he thought absently as he unslung his rifle and nodded to Randy.

The other human nodded back and examined the area. The tigress triggered the hatch to close and continued to work on covering the tire tracks from their landing.

Joe had put the bird down in the clearing but he’d then gotten the bird under as much cover near the edge of the clearing as possible. That way it wouldn’t stick out. He’d managed to get the shuttle’s nose almost completely under cover.

The Tigress hand signed a question about moving out. He held up a fist to wait and then scanned the area as he got his bearings. There was no need to report in; he’d already done that upon landing with a burst transmission.

His implants allowed him to identify magnetic north as well as the direction of the spaceport and the nearest town. There was a trail road connecting the two. They would have to travel on the trail for some point in order to pick up speed and stay on mission.

Randy scanned for PO Ben Sully in futility before ruefully giving up. The chief could have told him it would have been a wasted effort. Ben was damn good at hiding.

The team had read the ansible dispatches many times from across the sector before they’d gone on the hunt in the jump line up into Beta sector. They knew they were years out of date though. The last reports were that an old SEAL team had been found in Pi sector and that Admiral Horatio Logan had taken command of that sector. He was building a Stargate there and another was under construction in Sigma and a third in Tau. Supposedly there were matching gates under construction in some secret site in Rho to connect them all.

Second Fleet was still puttering around in the core of Sigma Sector, locking it down and trying to run the damn pirate battle moon’s location down. Admiral Montgomery was their nominal boss in ONI for the sector. He’d dispatched them on a long-term mission. For all they knew, they might have found it by now and they were on a fool’s errand.

Then again, the enemy had taken a lot of precautions to protect the location of that base. So, it might still be hiding somewhere.

This then was on them. Everyone else was making their mark on the growing Federation and the return to civilization in the galaxy. This was on them then.

He hand signed to the team and pointed. Randy grunted as the tigress took point. Randy took rear guard since he was the biggest and had the most gear. The chief took the center spot and they moved out.

Ben would catch up and cover them from the flank as he usually did.

As they moved, their gear began to adapt and change to the colors of the forest around them. Their implants began to alter their personal smells to blend in. Occasionally one of them would pick a piece of moss or fern and add it to their gear in passing.

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