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  “Well, Corporal Kelly and Chak-tar Sligo should have the engine and tranny out that LMTV and ready for recycling later this morning.”

  “Ripping the heart out of my effing children. I swear to God, if those shitheads back on Earth don’t send us some spare parts soon, we’re going to be walking everywhere.” He sat down at the desk and started going through paperwork, powering up the laptop on his desk. “Gimme the bad news.”

  “Well, Hoppers got into Echo Five Seven and ripped up the wiring harness. We MIGHT be able to get one out of Delta Six Two and get it going, but not for another forty-eight hours.”

  He banged his fist down on the desk. “God DAMMIT! Why the HELL do they only go after the running vehicles? Why don’t they frigging go after power lines or computers? Or even the junk heaps? I’d have less frigging paperwork.”

  “If I knew, I’d be a scientist, not a wrench monkey. Maybe it’s a combination of grease, oil, copper, plastic, and still-live electrical current. They DO love to eat plastic, though. I dunno, just be glad they leave the dead vehicles alone. I have Johnson working on it right now. Chief, you know as well as I do, even without the wildlife getting in and screwing things up, most everything is worn out.”

  Chief Grozen put his head in his hands and slowly ran them across face. Jimenez was right. Most of the Regiment’s equipment was excess that had first seen duty in the rocky hills of Afghanistan and the sands of Iraq back on Earth, forty something years ago. “OK, so what does that leave us for tomorrow’s swap out at the firebase?”

  Jimenez turned back to the board, moving magnets around. “Four Strykers, of which three are troop carriers, and one’s a gun carrier. Fire Control is down on the gun, though. Manual aiming only. Two LMTVs and three up-armored Humvees.”

  “And Echo Five Seven was a gun carrier, too, right? Well, same number of troops, just less firepower. McClellan is going to flip his shit, but not much we can do about it.” He tapped his fountain pen on the desk, thinking. “Do we have another up-armored that isn’t scheduled for anything?”

  Looking at the board again, Jimenez moved another marker. “Yeah, HHC Six Six. It has a working turret; the grunts can mount a 40 mike mike on there.”

  “That’s the Regiment commander’s truck. No way.”

  “OK, then. Your call. I have a soft skin, HHC Two Five. We can slap some armor plate on it, have it ready before they roll out. It’s preset for it, and we can bolt a pedestal mount for a 240B on it.”

  The chief grunted. Replacing an armored personnel carrier with a 105mm cannon on it with a truck that had some sheet metal and a light machine gun on it was going to piss off the grunts, and he couldn’t blame them. Machine gun ammo was in very short supply anyway, so they probably wouldn’t even take that. Pretty soon they’d be down to frigging bows and arrows themselves if this kept up. If those fat-assed politicians on Earth could get their appropriations shit squared away—but news was the latest government shutdown had no end in sight. Didn’t matter anyway, ACECOM was at the ass-end of priority for the Army, with things heating up in the Pacific.

  “OK, do it. I’ll deal with the Firebase commander. The day I can’t handle a young punk like that is the day I go home to Old Earth.”

  “You wish.” Jimenez grinned.

  “Yeah, I do. Now go check on Johnson and get the other guys working on the soft skin. Also, find out why the dogs let the hoppers into the yard, soonest.”

  “On it, Chief. Call me if you need me.”

  His boss heard about the dogs sooner rather than later. Walking down the fence line that separated the motor pool from the seawall, a roving patrol came across both of them. One was dead, his jaws locked around the head of the sea snake that had torn a hole in the fence. The other was dying, twitching in agony from the poison running through its veins. One of the privates tried to comfort the dog as he held it to himself and slit its throat with his short sword. He wasn’t so far from the playground that he didn’t feel a tear start as the dog shuddered and went still, though more than half of his eighteen years had been spent on Alpha Centauri. The other soldier called it in to the sergeant of the guard over the landline, who sent a runner over to the motor pool office to let the chief know.

  “Hell of a start to the day. Hell of a start.” The chief put his boots up on the desk and watched the dull red disk of Proxima Centauri set over the ocean to the east, point two light years away and slowly dropping beneath the horizon. His double shadow from the rising twin suns of Alpha Centauri slowly shortened. Sipping his coffee, he muttered out loud, “Now where the hell am I going to get more dogs?”

  Chapter 4

  Seaside

  “It really is a beautiful place you know, General.”

  “Please, for the millionth time, call me David,” said Halstead as he strolled along the seawall with Doctor Fitzpatrick. The xenobiologist had invited him out to walk with her once a week when he’d first arrived, and he’d tried to keep the commitment. Sometimes the colony governor walked with them, sometimes others in the leadership of the city, but mostly they walked by themselves.

  Behind them, the city of Seaside stretched up the hillside in a series of terraces topped by a large crumbling tower. The centuries since the destruction of the native Alphan society had been harsh on the structures, but Halstead liked it. Reminded him of Rome and Athens.

  She laughed, saying, “OK, general.” Fitzgerald was what was called Black Irish, with flashing blue eyes and deep black hair, an attractive woman. What intrigued him, though, was her mind. Two divorces and a long military life had soured him on relationships, and there was way too much to do. Still, walking with a beautiful, intelligent woman and watching a double sunset was always a nice way to spend time.

  “OK, be that way, Doctor.” He smiled back at her. “I’ve been studying up on your work; do you really think the Alphans were related to humanity?”

  She shrugged and said, “A little bit further from us than, say, Neanderthals. The DNA matches though, and points to an evolutionary split about maybe two hundred thousand years ago, possibly earlier, maybe a bit later. Like the Denisovans, but later. They only got here maybe ten thousand years ago. Possibly a remnant population, like Homo Floresiensis. ”

  “Ah yes, the ‘hobbits’ isolated on that island off Indonesia. See,” he exclaimed at her delighted expression, “not all soldiers are directly related to Neanderthals! And when are you going to drop THAT bomb on some obscure science journal?” It was a subject they’d discussed before, but he enjoyed the abstract thought, as did she.

  “When I have enough evidence that I can shove it in everyone’s face. DNA sequencing should be done in a few weeks.”

  “You know the implications, right? That some space-faring race came along and removed their ancestors from Earth before Homo Sapiens Sapiens wiped them out, like every other branch of humanity, and dumped them here, where they evolved a basic industrial society and were then wiped out by the actual native population, the Gvit.”

  “Actually, no. The Gvit aren’t native here, either.”

  That made him stop. Halstead stood, watching the twin suns fall into the sea, lighting the ringed planet overhead, and sending bright rays across the violent, turbulent waves. “You know, Miranda, you should write science fiction. That’s some pretty amazing speculation.”

  “I have my evidence. Come to my lecture a few weeks from now.”

  “Care to tell me now?” he asked with a little bit of a dare in his question.

  She shook her head. “No, still testing evidence. You know us scientists, gotta have proof of everything.”

  He started walking again, thinking about the implications from a military point of view. If what she was saying was true, humanity was dealing with at least one alien species who’d had star travel more than ten thousand years ago. And now his main enemy, the Gvit, weren’t native either. Curiouser and curiouser, and not for the first time, he felt the call to be an explorer, not a soldier. What secrets did this planet hold?<
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  His thoughts were interrupted by her pointing out to sea. “Another idiot, here from Earth to catch the ‘ultimate wave’.”

  They watched as a surfer, clad in bright orange, dropped from an oil company helicopter into the waves. He bobbed to the crest of the next giant one and tried to climb onto his board. The waves themselves had hundred-foot-deep troughs, even this close to land, and broke with the force of a falling skyscraper. It was only in the last half mile that they slacked, piling straight from the depths onto a shallow shelf. It was hell on the oil platforms; they’d been moved back on land, and only one survived on a rock outcropping in the middle of the bay. When they rushed along the seawall, the promenade—fully two hundred feet above the water—was often soaked.

  “He’s got it!” said Fitzpatrick, excited despite the danger involved. For a moment it seemed like the surfer did, in fact, have it, though whether it was a man or a woman was impossible to tell.

  They watched breathlessly as the figure cut up the face of the wave, split over the top, and dropped back down again. The surfer had gone perhaps a thousand yards when he turned back up again, sheer delight obvious in his motions. At the top of the wave, he turned to head back down, and an enormous green and black form crested the back of the comb, fit both surfer and board in its mouth, then slid back down into the depths. Not a trace of the man was to be seen, though they both stared at the spot for a while.

  Finally Fitzpatrick spoke, “That was both beautiful and tragic at the same time. Though I’ve never seen a tolimanus orca in action before.”

  “What were we saying about evolution?” said Halstead. He’d witnessed stupid death many times, but at least the guy went out on top, so to speak.

  “I’m saying that maybe we’ll breed idiocy out of the human race eventually, but it just seems to crop back up in every generation. Very strange mutation.”

  “Well,” he mused, “this planet is going to do a hell of a job of natural selection on whomever settles here, at least for a while.”

  Though he was a soldier and she a scientist, both used to how brutal nature was, the casual death of the surfer left a cloud over their conversation, and they walked slowly along for a while. Finally Fitzpatrick broke the silence.

  “How are things on your side of the house?” she asked, meaning the Regiment.

  “Getting back to the basics of soldiering. Road marching, marksmanship, defensive digging, etc. A shortage of spare parts, worn-out equipment, and overconfidence in technology means, if the shit ever does hit the fan, we might be screwed, so we’re coming up with some old-school defense.”

  “How so?”

  “The Gvit are pretty much keeping to their side of the Davis,” and he motioned to the highlands to the east, “but that can change at any moment, and I’d hate to destroy the bridge to stop them.”

  “I appreciate the information your scouts have brought back. Maybe someday I can go with them? Do some observations?”

  He shrugged; there was no way he was going to allow one of his teams to be compromised by a civilian blundering about looking at wildlife and ruins. She knew that, and let it rest.

  “Well,” said Halstead, “north is the ocean, and to the west and south, we really have no idea what’s out there. Overflights to the British colony at Albion show populations with at least an agricultural level of tech, but we can’t fly below ten thousand feet to get a look; you know the rules. Lots of ruins, too, probably from your Alphan Denisovans.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him and said, “Like Denisovans, not actually the same sub-species.”

  “Whatever.” He laughed. “Once things settle down back home, we can ask for permission to go on an exploration up river, or along it.”

  Mention of home, of Earth, brought up thoughts of her husband, a scientist at the CERN research lab. A touchy subject, and another reason Halstead never let their walks be anything more than shooting the breeze.

  He quickly changed the subject, like most deployed people did when talking of ‘back home’. “Do you know what the city reminds me off? Minas Tirith, except without the tower.”

  “Minas what?” she asked.

  “It’s from an old fantasy series called The Lord of The Rings. Minas Tirith was the last city of man, holding out against the encroaching darkness. I have a copy of it in my locker; I’ll give it to you. Anyway, the city was constructed in concentric circles rising up a hill, just like this one.” Seaside followed the pattern of the ruins found on the island/peninsula, depending on the tide, the settlement sitting on top of the remains of an earlier Alphan city.

  “You know, we really could start over here,” she said wistfully. The sky was beginning to grow red as Proxima rose and the primaries fell, and the stars were coming out. “Learn from our mistakes.”

  “Tell that idiot surfer that,” said Halstead, who understood human nature far better than she did.

  Chapter 5

  ACECOM Inprocessing, Gate Crash minus three weeks

  “Welcome to Alpha Centauri Command, abbreviated “ACECOM”, for all of you who’ve ignored everything on the internet for the past three years. Next slide, please.”

  On the screen, the image changed from the ACECOM crest, with its crossed M-14 and spear, to a map of the immediate area. The briefer, a dull eyed staff sergeant who looked like he should have retired twenty years ago, launched into a brief he must have done a thousand times before.

  “ACECOM HQ is colocated with the 9th Regimental HQ here at Fort McHenry, just south of the causeway entrance. The base walls are the final defense of the city, so most of the Regiment is garrisoned here.” His laser pointer jumped around the screen as he pointed to various features on the map. Seaside, the main city of seventy thousand people, occupied most of the southeast portion of the island; Gate Control on the west side; Hunter Airfield to the north; the logistical supply point on the southwest corner; and the dump between the airfield and the city.

  “Looks like humanity’s shitting all over this planet already,” muttered a young man in the back.

  The soldier next to him leaned over and said, “Cadet Walters, I think you should’ve learned by your fourth year at school to sit down and shut up. You’re here to spend six weeks learning, not commenting.”

  “Yes, Sir, Captain Papadatos. Shutting up.”

  The incoming commander of Charlie Company, Second Battalion, Ninth Infantry Regiment smiled inwardly but kept a serious look on his face as he continued to listen to the briefing. Damn PowerPoint; all this info was in their packets anyway.

  “Oil fields are to the west; rare earth mines are located about two hundred kilometers to the northeast on a large island; no military threat, so you won’t be seeing that,” he droned on. “Firebase Glory to the south-southeast, two batteries of 6-8 Field Artillery Regiment, 105mm, and one of the Regiment’s battalions for forward defense.”

  “Defense against what? The Gvit?” asked Cadet Walters.

  The briefer actually woke up for second and looked at him. “Not for you to worry about, Cadet. That’s real soldiering business.”

  “Like your fat ass ever looked down the barrel of a gun,” muttered Captain Papadatos, then instantly regretted it. Much as he disliked pogues, he needed to set a good example for the Cadet and the half dozen other replacements in the briefing room. The sergeant gave him a glare, and Papadatos squished down his temper, the thing that always got him trouble. Chance to start over, he thought to himself.

  “Rorke’s Drift is manned by one platoon on rotation. It controls the western side of the Great Bridge across the North River.”

  “That’s a hell of a name for an outpost,” said the cadet. When Papadatos glanced at him again, Walters simply said, “Military History major, minor in Xenopology.”

  “Have fun finding a job outside the military,” the older man said with a laugh.

  “GENTLEMEN!” said the briefer, and both fell quiet. “As I was saying, to the east, on the other side of the Davis Highlands, is the G
vit Confederation. Six months ago we spanked their asses hard just over the bridge. Since then, they’ve kept to their side of the pass, so you don’t need to worry about them.” Papadatos doubted the “we” part of the man’s statement; he looked like a friend had been pencil whipping his PT test for him for the last ten years.

  The sergeant briefly brought up a slide with what was obviously an autopsy picture of a Gvit warrior. Before he could say “Next slide”, which was obviously about to come out of his mouth, Papadatos help up his hand. “Sergeant, please don’t skip this part. I’ve studied the Gvit and their tactics, but the others might not have. All our orders were rushed.” The man sighed as if the captain’s request was the most unreasonable thing in the world, and Papadatos really hoped the NCO didn’t work in the S-1 shop. Paperwork would never be seen again.

  “Well, since you asked nicely,” was the answer, sarcasm dripping out of his voice, “the Gvit are on average three meters tall and weigh between six hundred and eight hundred pounds. Some more.”

  The picture on the screen showed a creature that looked like nothing so much as a rhinoceros on two legs, lying on its back with a large caliber gunshot wound to the neck. There were two horns, one blunt and large in the front, the other needle sharp. Lying to one side was an actual steel sword broken halfway down the blade. If the briefer was right about their height, almost ten feet, the sword would have been about five feet long, but only had a room for a single hand on the grip. Papadatos could tell because the creature still gripped the sword hilt.

  “What are those other marks on the hide?” asked Cadet Walters. He was referring to a number of scores and star-shaped patterns.

  “Those are impact marks from 5.56 rounds, kid,” said the sergeant. “Unless you hit them in a joint, M-4 rounds bounce right off. You better hope you’ve got some 7.62 in your hand when you face off against them, and even then, that might not be enough. See that big chunk blown out of the shoulder?” He danced the laser pointer around a large hole. “That’s a .50 round this big bastard took early in the battle, probably fifteen minutes before a 7.62 caught him in the throat.”