Daedalus Combat is a fitting conclusion to and culmination of the other three stories in Williscroft’s action-packed, hard science-fiction series, The SWIC Daedalus Files. When Pirates snatch a U.S. Senator and probable next President from a ship and hold him for one hundred million dollars ransom, the Navy SEALS quickly move to rescue him. Once again Derek “Tiger” Baily’s six-man SWIC squad is featured, only this time, the operation is “dramatically different from anything any warrior had ever done before.” Why? Because it’s the first time anyone has ever “dropped from LEO [Low Earth Orbit] into a combat scenario.”

  It’s the full nature of this combat scenario that is the real “Wow” factor here. All the different units of the military machine must work together if the mission is to succeed. The action and suspense are intense, and they kept me turning the pages until the very end.

  — Professor John B. Rosenman, Norfolk State University Former Chairman of the Board, Horror Writers Association Author of The Inspector of the Cross Series

  The test and training runs are over; now it’s time for the SWIC to see real action. Williscroft’s latest, Daedalus Combat, literally starts with a bang and keeps on going...

  — Alastair Mayer

  Author of The T-Space Series

  This final short story by author Robert Williscroft brings Lt. Cdr. Derek “Tiger” Baily into a rescue mission with no margin for error. Sporting the newest version of the fully-armed wingsuit (the Gryphon 10 Mk 4), Tiger and his squad must rescue a U.S. Senator—and presumed future President—who is being held for ransom by pirates.

  Each of the Daedalus adventures, told through the voice of Tiger, is a short story, and I’d encourage fans of sci-fi and military thrillers to read them in the order they were published—they stitch together smoothly into a comprehensive tale of adventure and suspense. In Daedalus Combat, author Williscroft demonstrates his knowledge of military tactics and equipment to paint an all-too-realistic picture of what could be tomorrow’s headlines. This is an exciting, hard-charging read that is sure to satisfy thriller and sci-fi readers.

  — Dr. Dave Edlund

  USA Today Bestselling Author –

  The Peter Savage Thrillers

  Clandestine military operations depend on the element of surprise; Navy SEALS fast-roping from a helicopter, or exiting a submarine in the middle of the night. But the ultimate surprise would be dropping a combat team on an unsuspecting enemy from low earth orbit (LEO). Not LEO of a spaceship, or spaceplane, but of actual combatants, living, breathing human beings, armed to the teeth, crossing oceans in minutes, and pouncing as a team of flying, fire-breathing dragons.

  Who would have thought?

  Well, that’s exactly the point. No one would…except Navy SEAL “Tiger” Bailey, Commanding Officer of SEALS Winged Insertion Command Three (SWIC-3).

  Robert Williscroft places you inside the action, inside the incredible space launches, the orbital rendezvous, the almost flaming reentry, the on-the-fly change of plans, attack under hellacious conditions, and egress from the combat scene.

  Like any combat operation, there are risks at every step of the way, and Williscroft brings you, the reader, along for the ride of a lifetime.

  At the end of this short read you’ll breathe a sigh of relief, let out a little cheer for our unsung heroes, and then wonder—could this really happen?

  Don’t ask this reviewer. I’m sworn to secrecy.

  — Dr. John R. Clarke

  Author of The Jason Parker Series

  Daedalus Combat:

  SWIC Combat Drop from Low Earth Orbit

  Copyright © 2019

  by Robert G. Williscroft

  All rights reserved

  Fresh Ink Group

  An Imprint of:

  The Fresh Ink Group, LLC

  1021 Blount Avenue, #931

  Guntersville, AL 35976

  Email: info@FreshInkGroup.com

  FreshInkGroup.com

  Edition 1.0 2019

  Images by Robert G. Williscroft

  Book design by Amit Dey / FIG

  Cover design by Stephen Geez / FIG

  Associate publisher Lauren A. Smith / FIG

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 and except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, no portion of this book’s content may be stored in any medium, transmitted in any form, used in whole or part, or sourced for derivative works such as videos, television, and motion pictures, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Daedalus LEO is a work of fiction. It contains real science and engineering, but the author makes no claims for the authenticity or accuracy of these elements. Any reference to individuals, governments, corporations, or entities is purely the result of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or governments, corporations, or entities, past or present, is entirely coincidental.

  Keywords: Airlock, Amelia Earhart Skyport, Baker Island, Fred Noonan Skyport, Free Fall, Gryphon, Hawaii, Houston, Howland Island, Hypergolic, Jarvis Island, Kiritimati Island, Launch Loop, NASA, San Diego, Space Suit, Wingsuit

  Cataloging-in-Publication Recommendations:

  FIC028020 FICTION / Science Fiction / Hard Science Fiction

  FIC002000 FICTION / Action & Adventure

  FIC028010 FICTION / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019915669

  ISBN-13: 978-1-947867-65-9 Papercover

  ISBN-13: 978-1-947867-66-6 Hardcover

  ISBN-13: 978-1-947867-67-3 Ebooks

  This story is dedicated to all of the Teams, all of the U.S. Navy SEALS, who put our safety ahead of theirs world-wide.

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Cast of Characters

  Daedalus Combat

  Mozambique Channel—200 km Northwest of Mayotte Island

  Amelia Earhart Skyport—Prelaunch

  Amelia Earhart Skyport—Launch

  Slingshot Rail

  LEO

  LEO—Combat Drop

  Mayotte Island—CS Platypus

  Mayotte Island—Doujani Reservoir

  Doujani—Snag

  Mayotte Island--Lagoon

  Daedalus Combat—Finale

  Post a Review

  Excerpt from the first chapter of Slingshot

  Words of praise for Slingshot

  About Robert G. Williscroft

  Other books by Robert G. Williscroft

  Connect with Robert G. Williscroft

  Daedalus Combat Glossary

  Several people contributed to the creation of this series.

  Most significantly, my wonderful wife, Jill, whom I first met when I returned from a year at the South Pole conducting atmospheric research, and who finally consented to marry me nearly thirty years later, pored over this story with her discerning engineer’s eye. She kept my timeline honest and made sure that regular readers could understand fully the arcane details of the Launch Loop and the Gryphon.

  Hard science fiction authors Alastair Mayer, John Clarke, and Prof John Rosenman, and USA Today bestselling author Dave Edlund reviewed the manuscript and offered their editorial insights.

  Lauren Smith from Fresh Ink Group applied her professional associate publisher’s eye to improve the story.

  It goes without saying that any remaining omissions, errors, and mistakes fall directly on my shoulders.

  Robert G. Williscroft, PhD

  Centennial, Colorado

  October 2019

  Slingshot is my novel about constructing the world’s first Space Launch Loop. The book was launched August, 2015, at the International Space Elevator Conference in Seattle, and resides on the desk of every Space Elevator scientist in the world. Space Launch Loops appear in the subsequent books in The Starchild Trilogy, and anyone familiar with my Trilogy knows all about these commercial space launch systems.

  When I discovered the Gryphon rigid wingsuit, the SWIC Daedalus Files stories pushed themselves into my consciousness. The first story, Daedalus, is a consequence of Slingshot’s skyports effectively being 80 km tall wingsuit base-jumping towers. The second story, Daedalus LEO, follows naturally from the first—a drop from Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The third story, Daedalus Squad, is a consequence of the proof-of-concept LEO drop. In the third story, an entire SWIC squad drops from LEO together, in preparation for this final tale, an actual combat drop.

  SEAL derring-do is real, the science and technology are real, the Gryphon rigid wingsuit is real, and I suspect that something like SWIC will become part of the U.S. Navy SEALS in the relatively near future.

  Robert G. Williscroft

  Centennial, Colorado

  October 2019

  SEAL Winged Insertion Command (SWIC)

  Navy Capt. Brad Nelson—Commanding Officer SWIC.

  Lt.Cdr. Tom Spitzer—Executive Officer SWIC.

  Mother—Controlling computer synchronized across each unit in an operation.

  Max—Full-size Gryphon-10 simulator

  SEAL Winged Insertion Command Three (SWIC-3)

  Lt.Cdr. Derek “Tiger” Baily—Narrator, Commanding Officer SWIC-3.

  Navy Lt. Jim Fox—Executive Officer SWIC-3.

  Master Chief Jerry Boldt—Master Chief SWIC-3.

  Senior Chief Bob Baxter—Master Chief Boldt’s second.

  1st Squad—SWIC-3

  Navy Lt. Roger “Rog” Brook—Squad Leader

  Chief Douglas Slade

  Pe tty Officer 1st Class Francisco “Jerico” Rodriguez

  Petty Officer 1st Class Ronald “Cappy” Caplan

  Petty Officer 2nd Class Peter “Pete” Farwall

  Not participating in the drop

  Petty Officer 2nd Class Benjamin “Benny” Williams

  Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher “Piggy” Pigwell

  Petty Officer 3rd Class Clyde “Cowboy” Horseman

  Launch Loop International (LLI)

  Sam Davidson—Slingshot Director.

  Apryl Searson—Chief Diver EMT.

  U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules

  Lt.Col. Randal Dorsey, U.S. Air Force—C-130 Hercules pilot

  U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Fighter Squadron

  Lt. Joe “Happy” Snider–U.S. Navy fighter pilot

  Lt. Bob “Borax” Johnson–U.S. Navy fighter pilot

  Tasmanian Ocean Cruises

  Capt. Mansur Darusman—Captain of the CS Platypus

  Senator Jack Manfred—Wealthy scion of the American East Coast Manfred political family. Personal friend of the President and likely to be the next U.S. President.

  MOZAMBIQUE CHANNEL—200 KILOMETERS NORTHEAST OF MAYOTTE ISLAND

  The explosion showered Capt. Mansur Darusman with thousands of tempered glass shards as the windscreens on the bridge of the Tasmanian Cruise Ship CS Platypus burst inward. Darusman slammed to the deck bleeding from dozens of cuts on face and hands, the front of his captain’s uniform shredded. As he painfully raised himself to one knee, his undamaged eyes, shielded by cracked but still intact glasses, sought the source of the explosion. In good weather, he kept the weathertight doors to the flying bridges latched but not sealed. The explosion had blown both open. He got to his feet and turned to his right.

  A dark-skinned man wearing a white turban-like headcloth, blue tee-shirt and khaki trousers, shod in ragged sneakers, and carrying an AK-47, stepped through the door and fired a burst of three shots, striking the captain’s right arm and shoulder. Darusman dropped back to the deck as the pirate swept the bridge with his fire, killing everyone but the captain.

  “Senator…senator!” the Pirate screamed, pointing his weapon at Darusman’s head.

  Darusman got to his feet slowly, left hand in the air, right dangling uselessly at his side.

  Another pirate entered the left bridge door and pointed his weapon at the captain. He also wore a headcloth, but his tee-shirt was pink with black trousers. His sneakers were even more ragged than the first pirate’s. The first pirate waved the other one down and screamed again, “Senator! Senator!” Then he commenced pushing and prodding the captain toward a door at the back of the bridge.

  “No! No!” Darusman said, trying not to sound challenging. He reached for the mike to the general announcing system and held it up in his open hand.

  Both pirates pointed their weapons at his head.

  “The Senator,” Darusman said, waving the mike. “Senator Manfred…”

  The first pirate nodded with a grin displaying several missing teeth.

  Darusman pressed the General Announcing call button with his thumb, “Senator Manfred, Senator Jack Manfred, your presence is requested on the bridge. Senator Manfred, please come to the bridge.” Then he surreptitiously pressed a second button on the mike. “Mayday, Mayday…Tasmanian CS Platypus hijacked…Mayday… Mayd…”

  Both pirates fired, splattering Capt. Darusman’s brains all over the bridge.

  A young airman in AFRICOM Mozambique headquarters intercepted a Mayday message and passed it to his supervising sergeant.

  A Navy Radioman in Diego Garcia intercepted a Mayday call and passed it to his Chief-of-the-Watch.

  A Radioman on a U.S. Navy cruiser patrolling the Gulf of Aden picked up a distress call and passed it to his Officer-of-the-Deck.

  Within fifteen minutes a tanker aircraft was dispatched from AFRICOM Mozambique, two Navy jet fighters were scrambled from a U.S. Carrier on patrol near the Gulf of Oman, and SWIC-3 was mobilized at its newly established base on Howland Island in the equatorial Pacific.

  Ten minutes after this, Lt.Col. Randal Dorsey was located on leave in Germany on a Rhein River cruise. He was picked up by helicopter from the river cruise ship, whisked to Ramstein Air Base, and from thence to a supersonic executive jet belonging to Ramstein’s commanding general.

  Two-and-a-half-hours later, Dorsey stepped onto the tarmac at Antsiranana International Airport on the northern tip of Madagascar…just as SWIC-3 skipper Lt.Cdr. Derek “Tiger” Baily, with paramedic Apryl Searson and the senior five members of Squad One, arrived at Amelia Earhart Skyport eighty kilometers above Baker Island.

  AMELIA EARHART SKYPORT—PRELAUNCH

  I pulled myself away from Apryl and jumped out of bed to get dressed as I took an audio call from SWIC Commanding Officer Navy Capt. Brad Nelson. SWIC-3 was being mobilized, he said, and we had to get to Amelia Earhart Skyport as quickly as possible.

  “I’ll get the Team moving, Brad, and call you back,” I told him.

  I put a Link override call to Lt. Roger Brook. “Mobilize the Team,” I told him. “You, Slade, Jerico, Cappy, and Pete will fly with me. Assemble a support team and meet me topside.”

  I called Nelson back. “Okay,” I said, “we’ll be ready to launch in thirty minutes or less.”

  “Here’s the situation,” Brad said. “Senator Jack Manfred…”

  “The one who’s likely to be the next President?” I asked, interrupting.

  “The same,” Brad said. “He, his wife, and daughter are on vacation in the Indian Ocean on the Tasmanian cruise ship CS Platypus—or I should say, were. Platypus has been hijacked in the waters north of Madagascar. We don’t know much yet, but the French government tells us that pirates are operating out of Mayotte Island.”

  “Mayotte Island?” I had no idea where or what it was.

  “Used to be a French Insular Department, like Hawaii to us, but a decade ago rebels overran the island, and France decided it was not worth recovering. Mayotte has been sustaining itself through small-time piracy.”

  “Looks like they graduated to the big time,” I said.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Nelson quipped. “Your job is to rescue Senator Manfred and get the ship back.”

  “Lethal force?” I asked.

  “Authorized,” Nelson answered.

  I headed out the door with Apryl in my wake.

  “A couple of Navy fighters will locate Platypus,” Nelson told me. “Dorsey will arrive at Antsiranana on the northern tip of Madagascar by the time you launch. We got him because of his previous aerial pickup experience. The Madagascar Air Force has agreed to let him fly one of their C-130s.

  “We assume the pirates are taking the Platypus to Mayotte. It has the largest lagoon of any island. We expect them to dock at the Port of Longoni on the northern side of Mayotte. We’re redirecting a surveillance satellite to get you the best possible intel. By the time you are ready to drop, we will have uploaded all the details into Mother.”

  Apryl and I climbed aboard a waiting Chinook and departed for Baker. We kept the Gryphons in ready storage on Baker to enable more rapid deployment. The Team landed at Baker a few minutes following my alert and had checked out each wingsuit by the time we arrived. Both Rog and Slade had checked my unit out, so I held off checking it myself until our arrival at the skyport.

  Our capsule arrived at Amelia Earhart Skyport, tilted to horizontal, and sealed against the skyport lock. After the door opened inward, Apryl and I stepped into the reception area to join my guys.

  “Everyone okay physically?” I asked.

  “I got a bit of an earache,” Jerico said.

  Slade glowered at him, but Apryl walked over to him and inserted her otoscope into his left ear. Then she pulled it out and kissed his ear. “Is that better?” she asked to the howls of the other guys.

  “I think my right ear’s hurting now,” Jerico said, but shut up when Slade slapped the back of his head.

  “This is for real, guys,” I said as they formed up loosely in front of me. I told them about the Platypus, the pirates, the Senator, the Senator’s family, and Dorsey. “Here’s how we’ll do it,” I said. “Jerico and I will head inland on Mayotte Island to coordinates Mother will receive just before we drop and maybe even during our drop. The four of you,” I indicated the others, “will take the ship, take out the pirates, and get the hell out of Dodge.”

 

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