First, a belated Happy Memorial Day.
Second, I goofed with Joshua Lyon. He was promoted to Brigadier General in Blockade but I didn't keep my notes up to date. Oops? I've corrected it in SpecOps and I'll go back and correct it in PE and J6 later.
Third, I received SpecOps back from Rea last week but sat on it since I was neck deep in finishing Diplomacy. (I finished it over the weekend! Yay!)
Anyway, I'm about to go through it and add all the front/back matter and then send it off to Goodlifeguide.com for final formatting later today. So, now we get to play catchup.
About the book:
Each story is from a branch of the Special Operations or Intelligence community. There are... 10? Yes, 10 stories. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the WTF?? (grin) If this goes over well I may do a sequel with even more branches and points of view. And yes, some of the characters and events cross over into the main books!
Ah, a note. I tried something different with this book. I'm going to leave it under wraps for you to discover.
So, that out of the way, first story on deck!
So, you want to be a Force Recon Marine?
Tau-G946 Long Sands
Cast:
Alpha Fire Team
Staff Sergeant Henry Uhas, “Skipper:” Neogorilla male.
Charlie Fire Team
Corporal Chen Fenrick: Fenrick fox sniper. Nicknamed
Bugs. Verpine desert species, small but with very large ears. Male. Has superb
hearing. Can hear a heartbeat and shoot someone based on that. One of four
Recon trained snipers in the unit.
PFC Roger Woof: Spotted African dog shooter. Male
spotter for Chen. Nicknamed Mickey due to his ears.
PFC Austin Wolf, “Weenie:” Gray and brown Neowolf
male. Also went to Force Recon training. Lost rank stripes due to a couple of barroom
brawls. (Struck an officer in each while both were inebriated.)
Private Zha-Zen Staple: Female Neochimp spotter for
Austin. Nickname “Secretary”
Robotic "Pack mules” to haul gear.
Civilians:
Baron Smite: Necron hermit.
Mayor Jinn: Mayor of Mos Epsa. Black human. Bedouin
style dress. Tall and thin.
Takkako: Civilian guide. Local to area.
Russell
“How are we with the oil, Bugs?” a familiar voice asked
humorously. Chen dodged a familiar finger pinch to his ears and continued to
work on his rifle.
“Fine,” he said when Austin continued to clear his
throat and then threw a rag at him. He batted the rag out of the ear. It was a
familiar game to irritate each other in some small way. He didn't care for the
distraction but it was good training and he knew better than to complain.
“You've got to do better than that to catch Bugs off,”
Roger said with a sniff.
Chen swiveled a long ear to his partner and then went
back to focusing on the project in front of him. Everyone had to clean and
service their rifles. He took special care of his since he was top score in the
squad. He had a reputation to maintain after all.
Corporal Chen Fenrick was in command of fire team
Charlie by rank. PFC Austin Wolf was second in line and sometimes forgot
himself.
Technically, the Neowolf could have run the squad if
he'd kept his nose clean. But he had a thing about getting into trouble in bars
while off duty. He usually got hammered and got into a brawl. He had lost a
stripe twice after “accidentally on purpose” punching an off-duty officer who
was in the fight and also inebriated.
PFC Roger Woof was a spotted African dog and Chen's
spotter partner.
“Yeah, right,” Austin sniffed. “Bugs Bunny got caught
out quite a few times. See him hauling that thing around in the field and you'd
see what I mean,” the Neowolf replied as he took a seat on a stool.
Chen was used to being teased about his long ears.
Austin was the one who had compared him to Bugs Bunny. He'd been the culprit in
saddling the annoying nickname on him. “Wrong species, shit for brains. Is that
all you watch? Ancient cartoons?” Chen asked as he used a brush to gently clean
the ring before inserting the seal delicately with his fine fingertips.
He wasn't known for being delicate with Austin. They
had a weird pack alpha-beta relationship going where Austin kept challenging
his authority in slights and small ways. That usually irritated Chen, but he
didn't often let it show.
A team was constantly testing each other, needling,
pranks and the likes. It was a way to make sure they could handle the stress of
combat. It could be fun, though the constant testing had its breaking point for
some. Chen had learned to roll with it for the most part, ignoring the stupid
nickname.
His one attempt to retaliate with “microweanie” tag on
Austin had made him go through a counseling session with the skipper. He still
wasn't sure if that had been the skipper's idea or Austin's whining. Either way
he'd dropped the tag. Roger and some of the others hadn't. They'd shortened it
to Weenie, and it had more or less stuck much to Austin's annoyance.
Bugging Chen while he was in the process of servicing
his baby though and all bets were off. Weenie knew it so he desisted when he
saw the look of concentration on the fox's face.
“Hey! I'll have you know it's educational!” the wolf
said in mock ire, directing that to Roger and Zha-Zen.
That earned a chuckle or snort from the rest of the people
in the armory.
Private Zha-Zen Staple, aka “Secretary,” was Austin's
spotter partner. He never let the Neochimp forget the pecking order between
them, constantly sending her on stupid errands or whatever. She just grimaced
and bore it as her lot in life as the noob in the squad.
Chen put the retaining clip in and then looked up with
a snort. “Are you serious?” He stared at the Neowolf.
“Yes! There is a class on it. The history and
evolution of Terran cartoons. Antigua,” Austin stated.
Chen just stared at him. The wolf had tried a staring
contest with him and had finally given up. There was something to be said about
beady eyes and the shark look Chen could effect if he put his mind to it that
gave the wolf the willies.
There were four fully-trained Force Recon team members
in their oversized squad of sixteen. Chen and Austin were two such members and
were unfortunately stuck on the same fire team. The other members were all
sniper qualified Marines.
Austin was competitive as hell and kept Chen on his
toes. Chen privately admitted it was a good thing; the competition didn't allow
him to slack off. It could get a little carried away though, and there were
times he just wanted to relax.
Not that relaxing before an OP was considered a good
thing. They needed to start putting their game faces on.
“Yeah, okay, it is an elective. I thought it'd be
fun,” Austin said defensively. Chen continued to stare at him. “Okay, I was
interested in the coyote. There, you happy?” he growled looking away and then
up to the bulkhead. “I thought he was smarter than that. Stereotypes,” he
grumbled.
Chen snorted after a moment and then returned to
cleaning his weapon.
The planet they were going down on was called Long Sands
for a reason. It had a desert belt around the equator, which was contrary to
normal ecology. Most planets had a wet equator since it was usually hot and wet
there—not Long Sands. The storm systems were on the poles leaving a wide area
with very little rainfall along the equator.
It had something to do with the terraforming but the
science was over most of the Marine's heads—not that they cared other than
academically. It was just a point to gripe and grumble about.
For Chen, the desert was home. He was most comfortable
in the desert environment. He could tolerate plains and fields that the Taurens
loved, arctic regions, but he was the odd being out since he didn't like urban
settings or forests. Both had too much audio pollution for his tastes.
That and smell pollutants he thought in annoyance as Austin
lit one off. He wrinkled his muzzle.
“Ripe one,” Austin muttered, shifting on his stool and
thrashing his tail. “Must have been that burrito last night.”
“Something like that,” Chen said, then carefully
picked an errant hair that floated from the canine's tail to his scope. His claws
acted like tweezers to get the thing off his scope before it contaminated it.
“Are we really going into the desert?” Austin whined a
few minutes later.
“Looks that way,” Chen replied as he worked. He looked
over to Roger. Roger didn't mind the heat but wasn't keen about the long
stretches of endless sand dunes.
“Great. I'm going to be shedding something fierce,”
Austin grumbled.
Roger had big Mickey Mouse ears which came from his
species. Austin had nicknamed him Mickey. He flicked his right one to Chen in
humor. Chen smiled ever so slightly and flicked his ear in a twitch back.
“You two are teasing me again, aren't you?” Austin
accused.
“Now, why would we do that?” Roger asked carelessly as
he finished cleaning his spotter scope. They each had enhanced vision but it
paid to have extra eyes. “Scope is clean.”
“Right,” Chen said as Roger went to pack it away. “You
realize we're going to have to do this nightly, especially with the sand,” he
warned.
Roger and Austin both sighed. “I know,” they said in
unison.
That earned a snort from Chen.
“The sands suck. Can't we trade with Delta? Go south?”
Austin grumbled.
“Quit whining. We drew the short straw, deal with it.
Besides, I'd rather be hunting this so-called ghost then running around in a
town.”
“A town is cooler,” Austin said. “I'm going to be
panting my ass off.”
“Better make sure you are stocked up in supplements
and water. Stay hydrated. Wear a hat,” Chen said as he finished the job with
the rifle. He pulled it up to port arms, then leveled it to sight down the barrel.
He tested the trigger action with several soft clicks and then lifted the
barrel again.
“Looks good,” Roger said.
“I'd like to test it but we can't. Once we're in the
field, I plan to zero her in again. We all need to do that,” Chen said, looking
off to the side to Austin. “We need to adapt to the changing wind and heat.”
“Right,” Austin sighed. “Frack me.”
“No thanks,” Roger chuckled. Chen snorted.
“Everyone's a comedian these days,” Austin sighed.
“Finish prep. We are wheels up in ninety,” Chen warned
as he packed his gear.
“So much for whining your way out of this,” Roger
teased Austin.
Austin turned a glare onto Roger as if he'd love to
have him in his sight picture. Roger held his look but his eyes fell first.
Austin slapped the bolt a little harder than he needed to in order to make his
point about dominance.
Roger's ears went back and he turned away, refocusing
on his own gear.
!<o>`^`<o>!
