Alien hostiles, p.27
Alien Hostiles, page 27
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“Okay. Go back and enjoy your movie.”
Duvall waved a dismissive hand. “Nah, I know how it turns out, CAG. Spoiler alert: the humans come out on top.”
Hunter chuckled. “Good. That’s my kind of movie. I always love a happy ending.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Nixon said that Star Trek was antiquated. He laughed and said, ‘Robert, we are so, so far advanced it would really take your breath away.’”
Nixon Undercover Operative Robert Merritt (Attributed), 1972
15 April 1943
They saw him off at the station.
Not a train station of course. Nor was it quite an airport. Sternhafen was an underground complex buried in the rugged tangle of mountains seventy kilometers south of Munich. There, a concrete hangar had been dug out of solid rock, invisible from the air, and a set of massive sliding doors separated the interior of the complex from the chill mountain air outside. On the tarmac rested one of Germany’s precious Haunebu saucers, manufactured with help and materials provided by alien Eidechse.
Kemperer stood at the bottom of the saucer’s ramp, a suitcase on the tarmac by his boot. Heinrich Himmler himself had come to Sternhafen to give him his final orders. A platoon of SS bodyguards flanked Himmler and stood at the entrances to the hangar.
“It is critical that the Ahnenerbe get your report concerning conditions at Paradies,” the SS commander told him. He handed Kemperer a manila envelope sealed with the Reich’s crest. “I want you to conduct a thorough inspection of the facilities there, then return and report to me in Berlin. Understood?”
“Jawohl, Herr Reichsführer!”
“I know we can rely on you. Your report on the alien incursion over Los Angeles was excellent, most enlightening. I expect to be similarly enlightened upon your return, particularly concerning the alien military strength and preparations, as well as conditions in the Deutsche Kolonie there. Pay particular attention to the base morale. Your objectivity, your healthy skepticism, shall we say, will stand us in good stead. We need to know that we can fully trust the Eidechse.”
“Ich verstehen, mein Reichsführer.”
“Good. I will expect to see you in six months or so.”
Kemperer saluted, right arm stiff and raised at a forty-five-degree angle. He glanced at Maria Orsic, standing beside and behind the Reichsführer, and saw her give him the slightest of nods.
So beautiful. A woman worth fighting for . . . worth going to the stars and back to win. She hadn’t exactly promised him, but she’d at least insinuated that they might become . . . more intimate upon his return.
Turning, he retrieved his suitcase, then strode up the lowered ramp. An Eidechse, identical to the one he’d seen off California, met him at the top; for all he knew it was the same one. The creatures all looked infuriatingly the same.
Just six months, and he would be home. . . .
The Present Day
The orders came down from Admiral Winchester the following afternoon. The 1-JSST would ready itself for a surgical strike against the Saurian command and control center on Daarish. The cruisers would cover the JSST’s approach to the planet and provide close fire support, including peeling open the control center’s domed roof.
Hunter had reorganized the JSST to incorporate the replacements. He’d decided to mimic the Army’s system when dividing his personnel. The unit now consisted of three strike platoons of thirty each, plus a smaller headquarters platoon of nine. He made certain that the newcomers to the ranks were spread among all four groups, so that they all would have steady, experienced personnel at their sides.
He gave Alfa Platoon to his JSST XO, Lieutenant James Billingsly, Bravo to Lieutenant Joel Foster, and Charlie to Lieutenant Frank Simms.
He assigned Minkowski as senior NCO to Bravo; Foster was an Army Ranger with plenty of combat experience in Iran and Afghanistan, but he was new to the JSST and Hunter wanted someone with space combat experience as his top kick. Same for Charlie, whom he assigned to Master Sergeant Bruce Layton. Billingsly was an old hand with the JSST, and Hunter had let him select his senior NCO from the pool—and Master Sergeant Coulter got the billet.
He wished he still had Chief Brunelli available, who’d been badly wounded at Zeta Retic and transferred to the military hospital at Dark Side when they’d returned to the Moon. He really wished he still had Grabiak, but the Marine gunnery sergeant was still unconscious, being treated for burns and radiation poisoning.
Hunter had been assigned an office space in an out-of-the-way corner of the hangar deck, and he’d mustered his platoon leaders and senior NCOs there to go over the plans for Push Back. The premission brief had gone down well so far, and Hunter was in the process of wrapping things up.
“In summation,” he said, pointing at the large, hand-drawn map representing the Daarish installations that had been taped to a bulkhead, “Alfa will take down the central command dome and I’ll set up my HQ there. Bravo will take down the spaceport over here. Charlie will set up a perimeter here, between the two, and act in support of both as needed. We will have three TR-3W shuttles for logistical support, as well as two squadrons of Stingrays. We move in hard and fast, we take out the Lizard leadership, their air force, and any heavy weapons we can find, and then we pull out while the command group negotiates with the humans. After that, we see about evacuations and putting someone in charge. Any questions?” He pointed at the Bravo Platoon commander. “Yes, Mr. Foster.”
“Yes, sir,” the hard-looking young man said. He gestured at the map. “I heard rumors that all of this intel came from some New Age woo-woo psychic. What gives?”
“Miss Ashley is not a psychic,” Hunter replied. “Not in the usual meaning of the word. She is a veteran remote viewer who has worked with both the Army and the CIA developing her skills.”
“So . . . a tea leaf reader? Sounds psychic to me.”
“You say psychic like it’s a dirty word, Lieutenant.”
“Isn’t it?”
“She is highly trained as a controlled remote viewer, meaning that what she comes up with can be verified with ninety-percent-plus accuracy.”
“Sir, my father was an engineer at Northrop, my mother is a professor of mathematics at UCLA. I can tell you straight out, sir, that woo-woo crap is bunk.”
“Then I suggest that you update your database. Telepathy and ESP have been recognized as genuine phenomenon for years now. The Army’s remote viewing program began at Fort Meade in 1978, and was reorganized as the Stargate Project in 1991. Do you really think they’d keep that program funded for so long if there was nothing to it?”
“It’s amazing what the government will fund when they’re spending other people’s money.” That raised a few chuckles around the table. Foster pressed on. “Besides, sir, I heard about Stargate. It was shut down in 1995, right? The CIA decided there was nothing to it. Mismanagement, falsified records—”
“First, Mr. Foster, we know the program continued under other names, including the unit Miss Ashley is with now. Second, quite a few former members of Stargate have retired from the military and gone on to start successful businesses based on controlled remote viewing—finding petroleum deposits and lost kids, stuff like that. They wouldn’t be able to do that if it was all bunk, as you say. Third, since when is anything the CIA says necessarily gospel?”
That raised more chuckles, and a guffaw from Minkowski. “He’s got you there, Lieutenant.”
“If using remote viewing offends your sensibilities, Mr. Foster,” Hunter told him, “I suggest you simply tag it as ‘intelligence from a reliable source,’ and let it go at that. I’ve seen Miss Ashley’s work, and I’m convinced of its accuracy.”
“Yes, sir. It’ll take some convincing for me to accept it, though. ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’”
“Thank you, Carl Sagan.”
“He wasn’t the first to say that, sir.”
“Maybe not. But the acronym ECREE is called the Sagan Standard, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hunter considered the Ranger for a moment. “Tell you what, Lieutenant. If it really bothers you to the point where you can’t carry out your duty, I’ll relieve you from this op. You can stand down.”
“No, sir! I’m not chickening out! I just wanted to know how we can trust this . . . this stuff.”
“I trust it, Lieutenant. And I expect you to trust me.”
“Sir. Trust has to be earned. Sir.”
“Hey, hey, Lieutenant,” Minkowski said, the humor drained from his voice. “That’s the skipper. We’d follow him to Hell and back. We did follow him to Hell and back at Zeta Retic!”
“Belay that, Mink,” Hunter said. “He’s right. I do have to earn his trust, just as he has to earn mine. Right, Foster?”
“Sir.”
“Other questions.”
There were none, and Hunter dismissed them.
But Foster’s reservations worried him. The US military was unusual in that it emphasized critical thinking and independent thought among both officers and enlisted personnel, but a breakdown of trust within the chain of command could be disastrous.
He decided he would have to keep an eye on Foster.
He wondered if the other newbies were half as jaded as this guy.
Lieutenant Duvall sat in the ready room one deck below PryFly, a compartment crowded now with forty-nine men and women of two squadrons, the pilots and the RIOs of SFA-03, the Thunderbolts, and SFA-07, the Firedrakes. Captain Macmillan stood in front of them, using a laser pointer on a map crudely sketched out on a whiteboard.
“Once again,” he was saying, “your primary mission is to protect both the ground troops and the Trebs going in. Secondary will be protecting the cruisers Inman, McCone, and Samford, which will be operating in close support of our boots on the ground. The Marauders will be held in reserve at Waypoint Foxtrot, while the remaining two squadrons, the Lightnings and the Night Wings, will be on CAP around the Hillenkoetter and the remaining cruisers, just in case the Lizards try to slip something through to nail home plate. The cruisers Carlucci and Blake will be held in reserve where they can support the Big-H. Clear?”
There was a chorus of assents from the audience, and Macmillan nodded. “Questions?”
Duvall had lots of questions, but none of them were the sort he’d care to air in a squadron briefing. Would two squadrons on ground support be enough, knowing that the bad guys had wiped the Starhawks out of the sky? How would the squadron leaders and cruiser commanders coordinate their runs to avoid scoring own goals with so many Stingrays in the air?
And would two squadrons be enough to protect the rest of the fleet assets?
Those were all questions, he knew, under the purview of the fleet’s space warfare officers, the CAG, Captain Groton and the other ship commanders, as well as Admiral Winchester and his staff. Duvall had been tacked on to the duty roster of the Thunderbolts, the lucky thirteenth pilot in the squadron. His RIO would be Lieutenant Thomas Martel, callsign “Marvel,” drawn from the reserve pool of flight officers.
“Sir!” A Thunderbolt pilot named Witkowsky had his hand up. Macmillan acknowledged him. “What if the Nazi saucers want to play? I mean, do we dogfight them? Or ignore them and stick to the primary?”
“We expect that the preliminary bombardment will knock out any reserve saucers at the spaceport. On the way in, the Marauders will be on hand to take out any saucers that might show up to block you from the planet.
“If enemy air assets do show up, however, you’ll all be free to defend yourselves—and to keep the saucers away from our ground assets. Just keep in mind that deception and decoy are always possibilities. Enemy forces might try to draw you away from the main action, allowing reserve elements to slip through and hit the ground units or the transports. We absolutely must prevent that. Other questions? No? Okay, boys and girls. Scramble. And good luck to you all!”
Duvall stood with the rest of the squadron personnel. He caught the eye of Lieutenant Commander Jason Blakeslee, the Thunderbolts’ squadron leader and drew him aside, as Martel joined them. “Sir . . . we haven’t had a chance to get squared away with the squadron yet. Where do you want us in formation?”
Blakeslee looked him up and down, and Duvall thought he detected just a whiff of disdain. “You and Marvel here can bring up the rear. Fill in where you can, but stay the hell out of the way of the rest of us. Clear?”
“Clear, sir.” He exchanged a quick glance with Martel. “Very clear.”
“You can keep Nazi saucers off the sixes of the rest of us.”
It was obvious that Blakeslee was less than pleased about taking on supernumeraries. Fighter squadrons trained together exhaustively as close-knit units, and it was downright dangerous to bring in extra hands who might unwittingly get in the way.
Back in elementary school, Duvall had been a skinny kid with no aptitude for sports. During recess softball games, the team that got stuck with him always put him out in left field, way out in left field, where he couldn’t do too much damage.
This felt like a recess ball game all over again.
But he was just grateful for the chance to strap on a fighter once more. Driving delivery trucks just wasn’t his style. With the other crews, he and Martel headed for the hangar deck.
“Okay, people!” Hunter bellowed. “Saddle up!”
The headquarters platoon fell in line behind Alfa, hiking up the ramp of the looming TR-3B with a thunder of boots on yielding steel. The Treb, as the huge shuttle had been nicknamed, was so much larger than the 3S—it was a bit intimidating walking into its shadow. Bravo and Charlie could have been packed into a pair of Trash-3s, but the thirty-three personnel of Alfa Platoon plus nine in the HQ unit were just too damned many to fit. Besides, extra space for a dust-off or a mass evacuation was always a good thing.
So, the 1-JSST was going in on three of the larger TR-3Bs, rather than one.
Originally, the working plan had called for the entire unit to go in on just one of the big transports. After all, there was enough room on board for the entire 1-JSST. Of course, they ran the risk of seeing the entire unit shot down in one go if they used one spaceship. That unpleasant detail had caused Hunter to use three 3Bs instead of one. He’d been overruled at first. The Hillenkoetter had only three of the TR-3B triangles, and Winchester hadn’t wanted to risk them all. But Hunter had pointed out that it was a hell of a lot simpler to deploy three ground units to three locations in three transports, than having one zig-zagging all over three hot LZs and taking fire. His persistence paid off.
Besides, that gave them a lot of carry room if they had to haul out a bunch of locals. At Zeta Retic, they’d been ferrying back and forth between the ship and the ground to get everybody off the planet.
But their success would depend on the fighters being able to cover all three transports as they went in. Unlike the smaller and more nimble TR-3S, the bulky 3Bs were unarmed.
The passenger space on board the Treb was sufficient for three times the number of JSST personnel coming on board, and the SAS-clad troopers had plenty of space for weapons and equipment. Hunter took a seat in the center section next to Billingsly. “Your people are looking good,” he said.
“Thank you, sir. They’ve been working hard.”
“You’re clear on the abseil? Three lines?”
“Yes, sir. And twenty-second spacing.”
“Keep in mind that we’ll be falling more slowly here. One third as fast.”
“Already taken into account, Commander.”
“Good man.”
“Commander?” a voice sounded in Hunter’s Bluetooth earbud. “This is Abrams, up in the ’pit. We just received permission to roll.”
“Copy that, Commander. We’re ready when you are.”
“Roger that. Shuttle Alfa, rolling . . .”
Hunter was glad that Abrams was in the left-hand seat topside. The man was a superb TR pilot, and they would need every bit of that skill for the complex assault on Daarish.
Monitor screens inside the passenger compartment showed an exterior view; the Treb was rolling along a narrow taxiway, threading its way across the hangar deck toward the barn door, the broad opening in the bulkhead leading to space. Shielded by the magnetokinetic induction screen that kept Hillenkoetter’s atmosphere contained within the ship, the shuttle’s own screens merged with the barrier and let the black triangle slide smoothly through. The screen would actually drop for a precisely timed instant as smaller, fast-moving fighters flashed through at higher velocities, but the more ponderous TR-3Bs needed to take the exit more slowly.
They dropped into open space. Hunter watched the stars wheel across the heavens as the shuttle lined up with the distant gas giant and its enigmatic moon, then gently accelerated. Aldebaran flared orange off to starboard as they emerged from the black shadow cast by the Hillenkoetter; schools of fighters slipped past, moving ahead of the shuttle to take up blocking positions ahead.
Operation Push Back had officially launched.
Übermensch Wachtmeister Dietrich Spahn reached the top of the spiral stairway and presented himself for inspection. A uniformed Unteroffizier met him there at yet another security checkpoint, where he showed his ID and gave handprints and retinal scans to prove that he was who he claimed to be. Spahn often wondered about this. The Meister could read minds after all. Were the security checks simply a means of reminding humans that they were in charge of every aspect of life? Did they serve a purpose other than to annoy?
The check showed green and the door to the central command center slid aside. Spahn was met by the Meister called Beobachter.
He saluted. “Wachtmeister Spahn reporting for duty, Herr Meister.”
Take your place at your usual monitor station.
The being’s words formed in his head, and he could feel its awareness moving through him, through his memories. He kept his mind very carefully blank, carefully devoid of emotion, of thought itself.
