A Hymn Before Battle lota-1 Page 5

  “The reason the Federation avoided contact before this is obvious: they might be trading one devil for another. But, again obviously, this faction has gotten permission to enlist us.

  “The reason is, they are losing, badly, and they finally had to fish or cut bait. We’re the next planet in line. According to the Galactics four or five large invasion waves are headed for Earth. The first one will be here in only five years.”

  4

  Ft. Bragg, NC Sol III

  1824 March 19th, 2001 ad

  “Mueller.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  The most far-ranging reconnaissance mission in Terran military history was starting with two experienced NCOs and a sheet of lined paper. Over Mosovich’s kitchen table, he and Ersin, a tall, slim, dark-haired master sergeant with faintly Eurasian features, were assembling a combined service team of the best people they could think of for the mission. Inevitably there were disagreements.

  “You have to be,” said Mosovich. “First, he’s inexperienced as hell. Second, he’s a goddamn loudmouth; the bastard can’t figure out when to shut the hell up.” He got up and went to the refrigerator and extracted a beer bottle. He held it up in question and Ersin nodded. Jake pulled out another for himself, popped the top on both, nailed the trash can and came back to the table.

  “Except for that, he breezed Q course,” continued Ersin, doggedly, “and he’s got a great record before he joined special forces. But the real reason I want him is his terrain analysis background. We’re going to need that know-how, since the whole damn planet is apparently one big swamp and I don’t know a field soldier who can match it. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a goddamn pack mule, either.”

  “What about Simmons?” asked Mosovich, taking a pull on the beer.

  Ersin pulled his head back and twisted it in a motion that was faintly ratlike. “He moves like a fuckin’ yak in the bush,” he spat in distaste.

  “You’ve worked with Mueller,” said Mosovich. It was a statement.

  “Yeah,” admitted Ersin, swirling the beer around and taking a sip. He preferred a more cultured brew than the sergeant major had to offer, but free beer was free beer. “He used to hang with Harold. We did some pellet work and I ran him through the SOT course a couple of times. He’s a good guy with his hands.” In the Special Operations community the phrase carried a special panache. It meant a person who was weapons deadly.

  “Well, God knows I’ve pissed enough people off in my time,” admitted Mosovich, reluctantly.

  “He’s a know-it-all, but the real problem is he’s usually right.” Ersin dropped the argument as won.

  “Well, that’s Ops, Weapons, Commo, Demo and Medical. We need an Intel with a double up in medical. You.”

  “Okay. Mueller can double O and I and so can you.”

  “I’ll double commo, Walters doubles demo and we can all double weapons in a pinch. Besides, it’s a recon not a raid, who needs weapons?” smiled the scarred veteran.

  Ersin snorted. “So, you’re going unarmed?” It was not an unknown technique on a lone recon, but taking a team was another thing.

  “Bet your ass I’m not. I hope we never fire a round, but I’m going to pack the heaviest hardware we can manage. I hope that Trayner comes through with those blanket requisitions. We’re gonna need some special weapons. That reminds me, we need a couple of other slots.”

  “Let me guess. One wouldn’t be Trapp, would it?” Ersin smiled at a memory and wiggled his fingers in front of the sergeant major’s eyes, like someone doing magic.

  “Yeah,” smiled Mosovich. “We might need somebody to do close-in work. Speaking of which, we need better information on those things’ physiology before we land. Who else?”

  “I don’t know. Another engineer?”

  “What happens if we have to break contact?”

  “Oh. Okay.” Ersin thought for a moment over another malty sip of beer. His whole face twitched like a rodent flicking its whiskers. “Sniper?”

  “Yeah. But who?” asked Jake raising an eyebrow. He obviously had someone in mind.

  “Fordham,” said Ersin, instantly.

  “Nah. He’s good but you ever heard of Ellsworthy?”

  Ersin looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know, Jake, a woman?”

  “You ever seen that bitch shoot?” Jake smiled. His scars pulled the grin into something from a nightmare.

  “No, I’ve heard about her though. Bannon met her at Quantico. They call her ‘The Spook.’ ” Ersin’s face twitched again. He did not like the idea.

  “I can’t think of anyone I’d less like after my butt. There’s a bunch of people that seriously tried to take me that I’ve never lost sleep over, but if that chick ever got pissed at me, I’d just dig my own grave.”

  “You’re the boss, boss,” said the sergeant first class, with obvious reluctance.

  “Betcher ass.”

  * * *

  Seven men and one woman sat or stood in a small, poorly-lit room located in the bowels of the John F. Kennedy First Special Warfare Command Headquarters, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They wore four different uniforms and a multiplicity of unit patches. Each of them was experienced in their own specialty. Most of them had combat experience. None of them were currently married. They represented the Marines, Army and Navy. Only one of them had any inkling of the mission. Sergeant Major Mosovich wandered in a minute late and headed to the top of the conference table. As he sat, the rest began to pull out chairs around the old wooden conference table, several of them continuing conversations.

  One of the talkers was a blond bear of a man wearing the uniform of a Special Forces staff sergeant from 7th group. Well over six and a half feet tall, he filled his BDU uniform like a human tank. He was debating knife fighting techniques, complete with gestures, with a short, wiry chief petty officer sporting a SEAL badge. The petty officer was laughing through snaggly teeth, obviously unimpressed. The PO’s forearms looked like his role model was Popeye from their thickness, and his hands and wrists were heavily scarred.

  A tall, soft-looking Special Forces sergeant first class with a van Dyke beard was carrying on a one-sided conversation with the sole female. She was good looking in a long-faced way with thick, short auburn hair and dark green eyes. She wore the carefully tailored uniform of a Marine staff sergeant. Her unadorned jacket was cut almost skin tight and made of such a lightweight fabric that every movement of her small but firm breasts was clear. Likewise, the skirt had been cut to accentuate her figure and, unless Jake was mistaken, was at least two inches short of regulation. Her shoes, while a regulation black, were a nonregulation patent leather and had a sharply spiked four-inch heel. Between the uniform and the scent of heavily musked perfume that hit him like a sledgehammer as he entered the room, the staff sergeant was an incitement to riot. She also had the stillest features that Mosovich had ever seen. Her hands and arms remained motionless at her side throughout the entire conversation and her head never swiveled. Her eyes were fixed on a point on the wall, thousand-yard stare firmly in place. The bearded staff sergeant continued his monologue, totally oblivious.

  Besides those four there was Ersin, a gigantic ebony master sergeant with a Special Operations Command patch, and a rotund black staff sergeant from 1st Group.

  “Okay, let’s get this started,” Mosovich said as the group settled in and quiet fell. “First introductions. On my right is SFC Mark Ersin, 7th Group. He will be the Intel sergeant for this little op.” He gestured to the ebony master sergeant. “And this is Master Sergeant Tung. He’s sort of an odd jobs man at JSOC.”

  Several of those present chuckled. The master sergeant, a long-time instructor as well as field soldier, was as much a legend in the special operations community as Mosovich. “Oh, some of you know Master Sergeant Tung. Good, that will save no end of problems. Master Sergeant Tung will be handling operations.” He gestured at the large blond staff sergeant. “Staff Sergeant Mueller comes to us from 7th Gr
oup also. Don’t be confused by his looks, he’s not just big and dumb: he’s big, dumb and mean. Petty Officer Trapp,” he gestured to the SEAL, who gave a friendly snaggle-tooth smile and comic wave, “comes to us from SEAL Six.

  “Sergeant Martine,” Jake waved to the stocky black sergeant, “from 1st Group is an excellent commo tech and general fixit man. Sergeant First Class Richards,” he gestured to the staff sergeant with the van Dyke who had been chatting up the female marine, “is an extremely experienced canker mechanic.” The sergeant gave a grimace at the old-fashioned term.

  “Sergeant Ellsworthy,” Jake continued, gesturing at the female marine, “comes to us from Marine Sniper School. Gentlemen, and I do not jest this time, do not get on this young lady’s bad side; she’s even deadlier than she is pretty. Now, you all are probably wondering, ‘Yeah, sure, why me and what the fuck?’…”

  “ ’Scuse me, Sergeant Major,” the female marine said in a little girl’s voice, nearly a whisper, “but did you know there’s some sort of thing perched on the wall behind your chair?” She had a thick southern accent; the words flowed like honey.

  The talk stopped as six sets of trained eyes started scanning the indicated area; one by one they settled on the appropriate spot.

  “Yeah,” said the SEAL, “I see it now you mention it. Looks like a octopus.”

  “No,” said Mueller. “More like a camouflaged frog. What the hell is it? It looks real.” He leaned forward, curiosity written all over his face.

  “It’s real,” said Ellsworthy. “It moved one of its eyes.”

  “So,” Tung rumbled, “what the fuck is it, and how the hell’d it get in here?”

  “I don’ know,” said Trapp, a knife mysteriously appearing in the SEAL’s hand, “but iss’ one frog’s about to be gigged.”

  “Hold it,” said Mosovich, “it’s friendly. Himmit Rigas, you weren’t supposed to attend this meeting.”

  “First meetings are always so revealing,” said the Himmit, shifting from the color of the wall to its natural gray-purple then back. It appeared to be agitated.

  The group of special operations personnel reacted with mixed but muted reactions. Only the black commo sergeant got up and stepped away.

  “Siddown Sergeant Martine, it’s harmless,” snapped Mosovich.

  “Da-da-da-hell! Wha-wha-isit?” Martine stammered. His stutter was as well known as his ability with code.

  “ET sure as hell,” stated Mueller, examining Rigas with interest, no sign of fear or horror on his face at all. He turned to Mosovich with a quizzical expression. “Alien, right?”

  “It’s part of the reason for this briefing. It was supposed to wait to be introduced, dammit!” Mosovich snapped.

  “Where’d it go?” whispered Ellsworthy. “I only took my eyes off it for a second.” She began a centimeter by centimeter scan of the wall.

  “I don’t know,” said Mueller, snapping his head back around, “it just disappeared.”

  “Shit-fire,” said Trapp, knife flipping agitatedly, “where is the lil’ toad?”

  “Calm down,” said Mosovich, “it won’t reappear until it’s comfortable. It’s a Himmit. You want to know, shut the hell up and listen…” Slowly they regained their sense of discipline and turned their attention back to the sergeant major, not without some covert glances at the walls.

  “We’ve been tasked by SOCOM to do a deep penetration of an enemy planet. Yeah, ‘an enemy what?,’ right? Okay, here’s the background.”

  He covered the high points about the contact from the Federation and the approaching Posleen threat.

  “The bottom line is that we don’t have enough information about the Posleen. Intelligence is one of the keystones of military operations and it’s one we ain’t got. The Himmits are like ghosts, they’ve been all over the Posleen planets, snoopin’ and poopin’. But the problem with them is that they won’t go into places that they might come into contact, which means that they haven’t been able to do close recon, and they don’t look for the sort of things we do. Last but not least, sorry Rigas,” he nodded towards where he supposed the camouflaged alien lurked, “higher, which in this case means the President, wants an independent evaluation. Right now all of our information is based on intelligence fed to us from the Darhel and Himmits. The Pres. wants human eyes on the problem, and we’re the eyes.”

  Jake consulted his notes and hoped that his selected professionally paranoid individuals were listening; he could almost taste the unease in the air. They mostly seemed to be scoping out the walls trying to find the invisible Himmit. Having been through the same exercise several times, he was fairly sure they would fail. Ellsworthy had surprised him again by spotting the alien at all.

  “Our mission is to proceed with Himmit Rigas to a Posleen-held continent on one of the planets that is about to get our close personal human attention in the form of the First MarDiv and sundry other units. There we will conduct order of battle and doctrine intelligence gathering on the Posleen. We will ramp up here on Earth, spend about four months on a ship and then perform a covert insertion.

  “If we insert undetected we’ll be able to use the Himmit ship for extraction and movement. If not, we can wait until another Himmit ship is scheduled for pickup four months after landing. If we miss that pickup we are SOL folks; the next boat is the expeditionary force and it ain’t expected for a couple of years.” He paused and considered the rough notes he and Ersin had sketched out. They were not in detail; with a team like this one you solicited input as the training and preparation proceeded.

  “A couple of notes. We’ll be loading heavy. The food on the planet will not be edible but we’ll have personal processors to convert the plant and animal matter if we have to forage.” He smiled at the various grimaces on the team members’ faces. Every one of them at one time or another had dealt with “foraging” on the run, and it was not a pleasant experience. Ellsworthy wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something awful. “If we can work from the Himmit stealth ship as a base it won’t come to that.”

  “Nonetheless, on each insertion we’ll have to carry certain items that the science types tell us are unconvertible like vitamins and specific amino acid combinations along with our converters. And although those don’t sound very heavy, they are when you’re carrying a five months’ supply. Second, we don’t want to have any contact at all if possible, but we’re not going to plan that way. You’re all big boys and girls, so decide what you want to pack as we prepare. Think heavy: an M-16 will not cut the mustard with these things.

  “That’s it for now, we’ll be meeting tomorrow morning to start training and issue. See Ersin for billeting and training schedule.” With that he simply stood up and walked out of the room. They could stay and try to figure out if the frog was still watching.

  * * *

  High lust and froward bearing,

  Proud heart, rebellious brow —

  Deaf ear and soul uncaring,

  We seek Thy mercy now!

  The sinner that forswore Thee,

  The fool that passed Thee by,

  Our times are known before Thee —

  Lord, grant us strength to die!

  — Kipling

  5

  Ft. McPherson, GA Sol III

  1115 EDT March 18th, 2001 ad

  As the buzzing mass of uniforms and their civilian cohorts stood up to exit the auditorium, General Horner waved Mike back into his chair. He waited until the babbling crowd cleared out of the large room and looked around. Several other team chiefs had pigeonholed members of their teams for hasty conferences and he grinned internally. The flag officers one and all, himself included, found themselves out of their depth to an unpleasant degree. Prepared as they were to battle humans, none of them had ever seriously contemplated fighting nonterrestrial forces. The very concept was absurd, or so they had thought, an outdated scenario sitting on a shelf in the Pentagon, dreamed up by a wild-eyed Cold War brain-trust weenie.

  But now they had to
learn, had to dust off that ludicrous scenario, and he was uncomfortably aware of the adage about an old dog. The science fiction nuts like the troglodyte he had called upon might be pie-in-the-sky dreamers, but they had at least thought about this type of emergency to some degree and were suddenly worth their weight in gold.

  He only saw two team chiefs talking to military personnel — the others were talking with civilians, so at least most of them knew where the meat was going to come from.

  When he was sure they had a comfortable privacy zone he turned to the former NCO. Mike had been flipping through the issued briefing papers. The clean white incandescent lights on the high ceiling glinted off the laminated pages’ images, bringing out the Top Secret stamps liberally imprinted on the pages.

  “Well?” The general gestured with his chin at the papers. “What do you think? I want to get a feel for your impressions before we meet the rest of the team.”

  “Off the top of my head?” asked Mike, examining the schematic of some type of vehicle.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re fucked.” The former NCO slapped the notebook closed and met the general’s humorless smile with a somber gaze. He looked slightly more upset than normal, which the general knew from past experience could mean nothing or everything.

  “Would you care to be more specific?” Horner asked, smiling tightly and steepling his fingers.