Diplomacy snippet 1

Okay, so, I goofed, I'd planned to post snippets Friday and through the weekend and forgot. Oops? No excuse (and yeah, I know that's an excuse.)

I should be sending this off to Goodlifeguide for final formatting today... with or without the borderline sinus migraine I'm currently fighting.

Anyway, here is the first.

Chapter 1

Virgin's Holes Pirate base

Commodore Obadiah Rogers checked his force as they recovered from the jump and then nodded quietly to himself. He listened with half an ear as his staff reported on the status of the task force. So far, everything was running smoothly and according to plan.

He had twenty ships in his force, far more than what had been used against Dead Man's Hand. From the look of things, it was indeed overkill but the Neodog wasn't going to complain.

He had four Mark III CEVs, including the Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, his flagship. There were four Resolution II class heavy cruisers, four North Hampton II class light cruisers, one tanker, one tender, two Drua class transports for the Marines, one personal transport, a Liberty class freighter, and two couriers.

Judging just from the neutrino and grav emissions that were coming in there weren't a lot of opposition in the star system to have to deal with. He was fairly confident most of them would run the moment they realized he was there.

All part of the plan he reminded himself.

He nodded and signalled assent when his chief of staff inquired about the next phase. As he silently watched, recon drones were deployed ahead of them. Only when they were six million kilometres out did the task force shake down and begin to move out with the cruisers taking point.

The two couriers, tanker, tender, freighter, and one CEV remained behind to watch the Cenarius jump point. No self-serving pirate would be going back that way.

As he watched, Vertigo peeled off as planned to cover the Tau-OX22 jump chain to Federation space. That meant the pirates had only two choices left to run to.

He frowned ever so slightly, not at what was going on but in brief reflection of switching from one hot seat to another. He still missed being in command of a ship like his beloved Remarkable. Being a flag officer meant even more headaches and paperwork. It also meant a lot more responsibility. If he got this wrong, a lot of people were going to die.

Fortunately, he had Belfast's detailed scans of the star system to work from. They were years out of date, but they were a starting point. Combined with intelligence gathered from prisoner interviews and captured database mining and they had a pretty good picture of what they were up against.

His mind turned to another concern. Once they completed the capture of the base, they would only have two pirate groups left to nail down. That inevitably brought him back to the bane of any flag officer's existence. Well, other than paperwork.

Politics he thought with a pang. He had thought he'd had enough of it as a skipper, interacting with internal navy politics while dealing with the Admiralty as well as external politics with interactions with civilian and the occasional civilian government in the star systems he visited. Politics were the bane of any serving military member's existence. There was a reason they all tried to steer well clear of such things.

Of the original expedition force, he and Janice Yu were the only ones to reach the exalted flag rank. They'd had a bit of a wrestling match to get their star, neither one of them had been aware of it at the time. Admiral Logan had been bumped to vice admiral, and Helen Richards had gotten her second star to be promoted to rear admiral. After that the brass had been ready to balk at anyone else getting a star in their command area. After all, the two ladies had gotten their additional stars well out of the zone—Helen for her work with stamping out the plagues, Shelby for her tireless work as the circus ringmaster.

They'd imported over twenty thousand people in two drafts from Rho sector. Unfortunately, they were not going to get anymore or any new warships for some time in the future. In fact, he was secretly worried that they might become victims of their own success. With the capture of this base, the powers that be might order a cutback on construction, especially after the disaster in Horath.

He grimaced. He'd lost a lot of good friends there. People who he'd gone to school with, people he'd served with. The pain was an old wound but still there.

But, with the disastrous end of the battle of Horath had come the need for the fleet to rebuild. The fleet was still reeling. Second Fleet was still in the process of rebuilding after the disaster of Horath so Tau had been thrust to the back burner.

This mission was long overdue. But even though it felt like they were finally getting down to it, he still didn't quite feel like it was over.

At least, not yet anyway.

“Forty ships are getting underway at the pirate base­­—correction, forty-two. Only seven had warm nodes.”

“Nice. And no picket either,” the commodore murmured. He assessed the situation and nodded. He could of course try to race for the other jump points in order to cut off their escape. That would force them into a running battle around the star system. Some of the ships might even jump out randomly in their desperation to get away.

Can't have that he thought. Besides, they can run but they were just going to go down tired in the end, one way or another.

“~~^V^~~”

Lieutenant JG Clay Petrov nodded to his squad of Raiders as they settled down for the briefing. He had recently been promoted off of the heavy cruiser Marlin when she'd gotten to port. He'd taken his squad with him.

They'd run all of the sims on the base on the way out. The Drua class ship they were on was nicely outfitted with sim rooms to be used as shoot houses. It also had extensive and some would say lavish computer support to allow them to run virtual sims and intelligence processing activities.

He looked over to Sergeant Jared Morales. The Neochimp Marine crossed his arms and wiggled his lips slightly as if he was suppressing a smile, which he probably was. Everyone was excited and eager.

“Okay, by now you've all read the plans and could probably navigate them in your sleep,” the lieutenant said, surveying the group. There was a chuckle from the assembly. “Tough.” That earned a groan. “We've got three days to practice and prep, and I'm going to make sure we got it down cold. Now …”

“~~^V^~~”

Sparks and Diplomacy

First up, I hope everyone had a great 4rth. Mine was... annoying since we had so much fireworks. Don't get me wrong, I love fireworks, or at least, I used to. Now that I'm older (and hopefully wiser) and I see it's effect on my pets, I get annoyed.
Having them go off from April until well, now, July 10th is... exasperating. As early as 8am until 3am. A guy down the street would come out of his garage, toss an M-80 into the street, set off every car alarm in the area, then drink a beer and go back inside. he did this like clockwork from April until July 4rth at 8:30. Poor Lil Red would scurry and dive under the bed.

Anyway, I'm sorry, I'm also a bit grumpy at the heat. 100F here, which sucks to do anything. I finished the rough draft of Sparks last week so this is my week off. Cover is here...

   Yes, that is the latest version of my Stargate. I combined 2 gates, 1 from Renderosity, another from CGtrader.
The ships are from Renderosity. I also got a fighter to play with for the cover to Inferno. You may or may not see the Xenos on the cover of the next book. I've already picked out what I'm going to do. 😀

   I have already started outlining the next book, Inferno since I can't do my usual time off stuff like work on models, etc. GRR. I have 3D printed a cool Starcraft II Terran Battle Cruiser and I'm trying to get the lighting done in it, but again, heat. It is almost done!
   And I also bought a cool dragon figure, and 3D printed Jaxom to turn them into an approximation of Ruth and Jaxom from Anne McCaffrey's White Dragon cover. I used my dremel to grind down the scales so he's roughly smooth. I went to use some heat from my stove top to bend the tail a moment ago... and accidentally chared the wing. Oops? Guess I'm not doing that!
  I plan to use my 3D pen to add the straps and bulk up the muscles and add ridges, add the heart to the tail, then putty, prime, and paint...
  But, I can't work on either of those except for a narrow window in the morning or in the evening... depending on if something is going on or if the workbench is in use by someone else. Don't get me started on my R2. Or the Reindeer, or other projects... sooo frustrating!

  And no, playing MarioKart Double Dash (thanks for getting me back into it Dev) is not helping pass the time much. (mainly because I have a furry blond wanting attention every dang time she hears it turn on! If I have to have a blond demand attention and do a lap dance on me, why can't it be the 2 legged kind? Seriously!)

   Oh, and I can't do the model work inside, if someone sees me with a pen (Loki) he goes bandannas to get his cheeks rubbed. Kinda hard to do with a hot 3D pen or soldering iron bub! Not unless he wants his whiskers curled or scorched...

Okay, hopefully I got the rant out of my system... maybe... hopefully... ugh.

  Diplomacy:  I got the book back from Rea on the 7th. I'm sitting on it through the weekend to give any last minute Betas time to get their last 2 cents worth in. We should see it published at the end of this month. That means I'll be posting snippets um... tomorrow... (weak) maybe?

That's about it for now.

SpecOps is publishing now!

Yup, I got it in and here we go!

SpecOps is a series of 10 short stories in the Reborn Federation time period. Rangers, Delta, SEALs, even the Cadre are visited.

Ahem:

   "For thousands of years military forces of many species had an elite unit of some sort. Terrans had many branches of elite units that served a special purpose or mission type that regular units would have been hard pressed to perform.

   When the Federation was formed the Terrans became the model for many things, including the Special Forces units. Some became legends in short order. Others were quite secretive, preferring to do their work in the shadows without being noticed or acknowledged. During the Xeno war they fought the Xenos hard and worked to pass whatever intelligence they could back to command.

   In the Reborn Federation, Admiral Irons passed an order to begin training these elite units once more. The Marines started the process with the Force Recon Marines. The process was carried up to the greatest of all, the Federation Cadre.

                                                  Here are some of their stories."

On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089MWVYNL
On B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/specops-chris-hechtl/1137125106?ean=2940162837114

Diplomacy Cover

  So, while we're still waiting for SpecOps from the formatter (she's super busy) I thought I'd post the cover to Diplomacy that I've been working on.

  It was a little bit of a pain to render, the lighting kept washing everything out. Now it is a bit darker than I'd intended, but at least it's not a white wash.
I also did character renders. I'm going to see if we can put those up on the Wiki sometime soon.

  I'm trying to take some time off to decompress but I'm jumping around, adding scene bits to Shelby 4 and the next book up, Sparks. Oh, and free writing nonsense too. I did get my haircut this morning finally! Six months is waaay too long a wait! I feel sooo much better!

Anyway, that's it for now!

SpecOps Snippet 5

Okay, Getting there with the cover.

Here is the latest snippet:

Rangers Lead the Way

Dead Drop

=@=

Captain Aldo Grape smiled ever so slightly as Lieutenant Jorge Nameth entered his command center and came to attention briefly.

“At ease. Jorge, we've got a mission for the Rangers,” the blue ape stated.

“Yes, sir. The mountain one?”

“Yes,” the ape replied, passing on a memory chip. The human took it and then palmed it to read the contents into his implant memory.

“What is our target?”

“Greektown. Start there and set up a base of operations. Get to know the locals. Standard ROE applies. Go door-to-door for weapons and combatants. Once we free up some manpower, we'll send it in to hold your firebase and free up your platoon to do roving patrols in the area.”

“Roger that.”

“You'll be on your own for a while, Jorge; don't make any enemies. We need to get these people on our side so things can settle down and we can finish the job here,” the ape warned.

Jorge nodded. “So the usual security and helpful balance applies?”

The ape studied him but nodded slightly. “Use your best judgment but yes.”

“ETA on support and relief?”

“I'll have support lined up for you within three days. At least construction gear to build a firebase. Lend it out at your discretion afterward if you think it will help cement local support. Intel believes the militias have fled into the mountains in that area. It is riddled with caves and hollers. By taking the towns and valley, you'll cut them off from easy access to the outside world. They'll have to take the mountain trails to get out.”

The lieutenant nodded. It meant that things would settle down outside the area and thus free up troops to come in and secure the firebase while his troops were sent into the caves to root out the enemy.

In other words, the same job they had done for the past six months.

“Any surprises?”

“At the moment, no. No sign of radar or power sources. No signs of SAM units or heavy weapons. But you know the drill there.”

“Don't take the lack of intel for granted. Otherwise, you get bit in the ass by seeing what the enemy wants you to see,” Jorge replied with a nod and grimace.

“Bingo. So, watch your ass. Now get moving. Night drop. Tonight.”

“I'll brief the troops then. We've been getting prepped in anticipation of this.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

=@=

Lieutenant Nameth nodded to the platoon as they settled in to the MPR. It was tight but they managed to fit all one hundred of his platoon into the room. He would have preferred to hold the briefing in the hangar, but the mechanics said they needed it to work on the birds. He didn't want his people seeing a teardown in progress just before a jump.

He stood at the head of the platoon with a map board of the drop zone, AO, and other details. Each soldier had access to the information in their briefing documents in their implants, but he wanted to be sure they were all on the same page.

Hence the traditional briefing before a drop.

“Okay, our target is Greektown. It was settled by people from …”

“Let me guess, Greece?” a whit in the back asked.

“And people from Greektown in the USA. Hold your questions until the end, Igor,” the lieutenant said.

“How'd he know it was me?” Specialist Igor Bordeski stage whispered as he elbowed his neighbor.

“Because, Igor, there are no stupid questions, but there are inquisitive idiots. Do you want to know which one you are?” Staff Sergeant Edith “Yippee!” Ripee said from her place near the front of the group. That generated a laugh from the platoon.

The lieutenant snorted softly but didn't say anything. A little levity was good. It broke up the tension, and it made them feel more like a unit. Not that they needed anything like that.

The 2-3-2-2, Second Division, Third Bat, Second Company, Second Ranger Platoon, was the second Ranger platoon of the entire army. Each division currently only had one. He had cut his teeth in First Platoon before he'd been promoted to Second Platoon.

He glanced at the “old lady,” the platoon sergeant Edith Ripee. Edith was also an old hand from First Platoon. She was from Nuevo like a lot of army grunts these days. She had been a smoke jumper and active duty in the army until her husband had been killed by the worms. She'd moved to the reserves to raise their family alone. She had lost their only son to the worms several years ago and had opted for a fresh start on Agnosta and the full anti-geriatric package in order to help her move on.

“Settle down,” the woman growled. The group settled down instantly.

“Greektown has a high percentage of goats and sheep. Don't get any ideas, Igor,” the lieutenant growled, looking directly at the joker in the deck.

Igor closed his mouth with a loud clop and then shook his head.

“Yeah, that's what I thought. And don't get too friendly with any of them either,” the lieutenant said.

The specialist's eyes went wide as the group whistled and cat called. He ducked his head and put his hands up in token surrender. That earned more chuckles.

“Great, now that we've got that out of our system, the locals are fairly remote with a series of mountain ranges nearby. We're going to drop in and secure the town and bridges connecting them to the neighboring communities. Command believes there are partisans hiding in the mountains and surrounding area. By taking the town, we will be forcing them to use the mountain trails to get around and will be cutting them off from easy supplies from the town.”

A few of the sergeants nodded.

“We have no enemy activity according to the latest drone and satellite passes. No sign of SAM or heavy weapons. No signs of large troops. They have most likely gotten smart; they don't want a rock dropped on their head so they've dispersed.”

“That just makes our job a little harder,” Edith murmured. “We'll get it done anyway.”

The lieutenant nodded. “Standard ROE when engaging with civilians applies. Don't get trigger happy, but don't get killed either. You'll piss me off, and you know how much I hate paperwork.”

There was a general chuckle from the group again.

“We will be in country for several weeks so pack accordingly. “We may be there for a month, Command isn't sure at the moment.” He turned to Edith.

She nodded. “Weather is clear, clear viz and no storm fronts or thermals. Stay clear of the hills. Winds south by southwest. This is a night drop, people; we're landing in farmland not on the airstrip …

=@=

SpecOps Snippet 4

I'm working on the cover of Diplomacy as well as some character shots. Getting the lighting right has turned into the usual pain.

And on to the next story snippet!:

The Long Day

Rho Sector, Garth

Cast:

Delta Force

 

Viscount Trevor Van Pelt stood at the balcony and looked out to his domain. He ran a withered but still strong and capable hand through his thinning brown hair. The hair color was one of the signs of his vanity; he had gotten a treatment to prevent it from going gray.

He wore his favorite khaki hunting outfit. The blouse shirt accented his trim figure nicely. He even wore his army rank insignia from his time in the army on his collar. He had retired as a captain and had been given a courtesy bump in rank to major upon his exit.

He never liked being called by his rank though; Major Van Pelt made him feel like a piker, like a staff officer, and not someone who had been in the field. He had been in the field for years even if it had been training or as an occupational officer on Finagle, Garth, and finally Dead Drop before returning to Garth.

He didn't like his title either. The Horathian House of Lords had accepted his application to the peerage after considerable politicking with some of his clients, but they had seen fit to only give him the title of Viscount, the lowest rank. His lip curled ever so slightly in disdain over that. It had allowed him a seat, one for which he had traded the voting rights to. It had also given him title to the lands as well as a chunk of wealth from the orbital industry in the star system.

He had never seen the asteroids as his true wealth however. His major investment had been in what was tangible to him, his lifelong dream of creating and running a private hunting retreat for the exclusive rich. His reserve was the place for advanced hunters to go to have a real challenge. That was why he went by his last name.

He had animals in pens and cages, all geared to be hunted. His staff included Malakili, an accomplished beast master, and Professor Heinrich Isben, a former medical professor from Horath. The duo not only bred animals and others but worked on improving the prey to improve the experience for the hunters.

He offered private hunting to an exclusive list of clientele. He owned the entire mountain range and valley in between. The entire area was set up to cater to special rich guests with the main mansion set up as a hunt club. The spouses not interested in hunting could play pool or whatever while the rest were out in the field.

It wasn't a canned hunt either. Yes, he had tracking devices on the animals, Neos, the occasional human criminal or other, and alien prey but only to keep them within the boundaries of his lands. Each was always well cared for before the hunt and given a head start of some sort before the hunt began. He relished those that were a true challenge—those made the ultimate victory all the sweeter.

Of course the hunt included hunting Neos and aliens, he liked having prey that could think and fight back. The Dilgarth acted as hunting dogs or prey if he wished. For some who sought a truly thrilling adventure he could have the Dilgarth act as the predators, either hunting Neos or aliens, or the odd human who had pissed someone off … or, the hunters could get a visceral experience by going up against something truly dangerous.

He knew who would win out in the end though. After all, he was still there, and the rest were heads and other body parts mounted in his trophy room. He loved to sit in his trophy room and admire his work while sipping his scotch. He had his gun camera footage playing in the background from time to time. Such things usually impressed his clientele.

He took a stroll around the mansion grounds. He did it twice a day when he wasn't hunting, rain or shine. It was to make sure in his own mind everything was in order and a way to emphasize to the staff to get it right. They had discerning clients after all or had.

Now all that had changed. The Federation had occupied their world. He had slowly changed from thinking of them with hate to his usual adversarial approach. He had considered luring them to his lands but knew that it would just draw down Kinetic Energy Weapon strikes on his own head. Therefore, he waited like the patient hunter he was.

Well, waited, planned, and prepared. It wouldn't do to be caught off guard when his new guests finally arrived.

---@---

The Dilgarth subpack quivered in the individual cages in the kennel. They were not fully sentient; a lack of certain nutrients denied to their mothers as well as to them had turned them into feral beasts. Their bodies were driven by hormones and lashed by crude but effective cybernetics connecting their brains and bodies to the reserve's wireless network.

Each sat or laid in place, unable to move while they were under tight control. They would be taken out by Malikili daily and fed commands while they were exercised. They were rewarded with pleasure stimulation and punished with jolts to their body and pain centers. They each saw him as the beta, the pack second-in-command. They were below him in rank. The males wished to rise up the hierarchy but couldn't.

They all knew who the alpha of the pack was.

Each of the Dilgarth were outfitted with cameras so their controllers could see what they saw. The cameras had video recorders for those times when Van Pelt wanted to see the thrill of the chase and the end of the hunt from the perspective of the beasts.

They were all ready to fight. They had been on half rations for some time, fed a pungent protein paste that made them nearly ravenous. Now that the enemy was coming, the food was cut off. They would be whipped into frenzy, even more dangerous than before.

---@---

Second Lieutenant Norman Halligan checked his team with trained eyes. He had a triple squad with him for the operation given the ground they were going to have to cover. He had been denied the full platoon. He'd considered sitting out on the sidelines in Command One but had wanted to shorten the communication loop.

Besides, he liked to get some exercise now and then.

This place was going to test them all. Fine with him, he was from Nuevo and had been a smoke jumper and firefighter along with his army reservist position. He'd gone on to the army and Agnosta to help set up things there before he'd gotten pulled into paratrooper training, the Rangers, and then Delta Force.

Delta Force was one of the quietest of Special Forces in the SpecOps community. They didn't advertise their accomplishments like SEALs Team 6 or the Cadre occasionally did. Their tradition was to work from the shadows, get the job done, and then fade back into the shadows.

His thirty-five men and women were all experienced in such operations by now. Some were from Nuevo like him, but they had all fought on Protodon, Nuevo Madrid, Dead Drop, and now Garth.

He scratched behind one ear with a finger. He was one of the few humans in the group; the majority were Neos with one Gashg and one bug thrown in for good measure. Two of their number, Nitro and Earnesto Riceti, were former Marines who had seen the light and transferred into the army.

Sergeant Nitro was a Neodog Alsatian and the most cybernetic augmented of the group. He had lost a leg, part of his arm, one eye, and a lot of fur to plasma fire on Nuevo Madrid. He had disdained cloned replacements in order to get back into the fight. He had just rejoined the unit. The lieutenant was relieved to see him; the dog was their most experienced explosives tech. He led squad Alpha.

Squad Baker was run by Sascha Romaine, another native of Nuevo. He was good troop, quiet and damn good at his job.

Sergeant Merv Drummond was his antithesis. He was loud and loved to prank people. His Charlie Squad was starting to pick up some of his bad habits.

Delta had a fair amount of noncoms in the unit since everyone had to have some sort of experience before getting into Delta. Not many understood that you didn't just try out for Delta, you were invited. He was pushing for command to take on only veterans after the Horathian campaign. That was going to keep their numbers low however. That could be good or bad depending on how you looked at it.

---@---