AL:ICE-9 (25 page)

Jake tested the unit in the hangar, first dropping dead loads from the trusses supporting the ceiling. Once he was satisfied the thing worked, he strapped one on, and with everyone watching, jumped from the same height.

At first, he fell quickly, but within 20 feet of the floor, he felt the unit brake dramatically until he all but floated to the ground at the last minute. With that experience under his belt, he tuned the unit until he was satisfied with its performance.

He also tinkered with a combat mode, one that allowed the soldier to operate at a diminished body weight. It acted similar to the exoskeleton, in that it made the wearer feel lighter, jump higher and run faster, all without the need of the ridged suit. After his experience with the suit testing outside, he needed his people to start thinking in 3D, not just 2D.

Wearing the backpack version, he was currently running around the hangar, jumping over vehicles and onto the upper frameworks of the hanger. That option would have to wait though, as he wanted to work on it. He felt more field-testing was needed, as it might prove unruly for the wearer. For now, it was strictly a drop support unit.

Satisfied all was proceeding at a reasonable pace, he shut down for the night and went to bed, alone for once.

----*----

Sara’s last set of tasks had been setting up the initial training schedules and organizing the transfers of personnel for basic training. That included both the newly acquired patrol members and other internal recruits. Once she was able to start everything in motion, she passed on the care and feeding to others.

That left her free to investigate Sandy’s latest excursion to the continent down under. How she managed to pull that off without tipping her hand, to even Jake, was beyond her. Still it had proven a solid mission with tangible results.

She went over all the data, thankfully recorded by ALICE and not Sandy. The first contact communities were all costal and reasonably sized. Once they established a more permanent relationship, the recruiting there looked promising. Usually the responsibility of all recruiting in an area was up to the closest ALICE location.

As it turned out, the Lanai facility was the closest, covering about 5,000 miles of ocean between the two. Technically, that made recruiting there Jacob’s task, but she figured that was more of a guideline.

Besides, if it meant she had the opportunity to spend some quality time on the island retreat Sandy had established, she was sure she could justify her involvement. As she flipped through all the images ALICE had captured while supporting Sandy’s group, the clear water and white sand mesmerized her. San Nicolas had been nice, but this was pure paradise. Jake didn’t know what he had started when he introduced the idea of tropical vacations.

Chapter 25

Chris had been getting that feeling that trouble was brewing in the neighborhood. Ever since their adoption into Jake’s earth recovery program, there had been very few disturbances for them to deal with. The destruction of the stadium, with its troublesome occupants, had dissuaded any hostile activity by the lesser gangs in the area.

However, nothing ever lasts, and memories are short. The latest group of refugees Chris had processed for transport to the farming communities indicated a large group of rowdies were gathering in the south. Evidently, they were painting Chris’s compound as a treasure trove of advanced weapons and supplies.

That description wasn’t actually too far from the truth. With all the support from Jake’s crew, they had stabilized their dietary needs and equipped them with enough advanced firepower to repel all but a modern army. That’s what worried Chris, as the reports indicated the southerners had breached a military armory near San Diego. 

The word was it was mainly small arms, but they were all functional and there was enough to arm several hundred fighters. That was trouble in anybody’s world. He needed to get a little more information and then confer with Jake’s people.

----*----

Sitting in the control room for ALICE-1, Jake sat working his way through the morning’s reports. He had been trying to get out of his room more as the isolation was making him feel more removed from the general staff. At least if people saw him performing similar tasks, they might find him approachable.

As he read, he was more than satisfied with the training reports he had seen from their boot camp. Both the patrol and internal recruits were progressing nicely. They were all coming up on graduation and so far, no one had either dropped or been found to be unfit.

Once graduated, he would have enough trained personnel to populate three full platoons. He thought it was unusual that not all the patrol recently recruited were found suitable for boot camp. Several were redirected to security work, and for future re-evaluation. Jake trusted ALICE’s opinion on this.

Separately Jake had been working with Patti and Sara on
military combat operations support. Combat operations require a lot of careful planning and coordination of combat resources. His goal
was
to lead from the front, so he needed combat mission support officers to ensure that everything
was
in the right place at the right time.

As mission support officers, Sara and Patti would provide battle management from an ALICE location while Jake led the troops on the ground. They, including ALICE, would feed him all the information he needed to make accurate decisions.

One odd development in the assignments
was
Patti refused to accept rank. She insisted that she continue as a civilian, working outside of the traditional rank structure. Jake pushed for an explanation, but all she would say
was
, no rank
could
trump being Jake’s granddaughter.

Anyway, once everyone passed basic, he intended to start advance-training programs, including both the advanced heavy weapons and jump school. He had continued to experiment with the repulser backpack, and felt the unit was dialed in for usage. He had even convinced Sara to try it once, though the experience was not to her liking.

The next report was from Brian. He had taken
Revenge
out to properly escort the returned battleship and it’s tender into a stable Earth orbit. At that very moment, both were orbiting over the west coast of the US, while Seven had bots and humans installing all the upgrades required. His report noted the extra changes Jake had asked ALICE to include were on the punch list.

Jake laughed aloud, causing some of the staff to turn in his direction, curious. Apparently, Brian had shuttled over to the battleship, in one of the many shuttles provided by the Wawobash at no extra charge. Jake remembered Brian to be a somewhat mild mannered fellow, but the language he used to describe the size of the battleship, both inside and out, would make a sailor blush.

He toured the entire ship, sending back several images. Jake was impressed with the attention to detail the Wawobash provided in their work. He now understood why the NeHaw had used them to build their ships. As much as Jake would love to shoot up and tour the ship himself, he was more interested in the special upgrades he had asked ALICE to install.

If things panned out, their crew problems would be a thing of the past.

----*----

Jake was in the new combat planning room, as they called it, when the call from Chris came in. Just one of the small conference rooms off the control room, they had stocked it with enough equipment that allowed it to act as a mini control room. Jake’s thought was if or when they went into combat, this room would act as combat command central.

“Jake, we have a call from LA. It’s Chris, and he says it urgent,” ALICE announced.

“Put him on,” Jake replied, while moving to the display.

Chris appeared, apparently sitting in an office of his own, “Hey Jake, I think we may have trouble brewing here.”

“What’s up?” Jake asked.

“We have been getting hints of a large force building in the south. Word is they found an armory and are looking to run the place, us being the first on their list to displace.”

“Do you have any idea where they are at the moment?” Jake asked while pointing at Patti and one of her analysts.

“Not specifically, the last group of refugees said they skirted a very large band of men near Santa Ana. They were shooting at anything that moved and taking what they wanted,” Chris supplied.

Jake turned to Patti, who shook her head no. Jake assumed that indicated no sign of them.

“Here,” Her analyst suddenly blurted out.

Hitting several keys on her terminal, the image appeared in split screen for both Jake and Chris.

“See that bunch right there?” the analyst said as she highlighted a section of the screen.

On the display, Jake could make out what looked like a pile of ants. As she zoomed in, it had to be five or six hundred men, all moving on foot and destroying everything in their path.

“Yup, that’s them,” Chris said, “I’d appreciate it if you could take care of that before they get here.”

Jake almost laughed aloud, “I bet you would,” he replied, and then added, “don’t worry about it Chris. We will handle this. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would never ask someone else to deal with.”

As Jake watched the display, it reminded him of the stories he had read about Genghis Khan. The reports of wholesale massacre of populations and laying waste to the lands always seemed fanciful, until he saw this.

“Ok Chris, we will keep you posted. This will be dealt with before they can do much more damage,” Jake stated.

“Ok thanks,” Chris finished, and then cut the connection.

At that, the display went to full screen. As Jake watched, the mob seemed to move aimlessly yet with purpose. Several times he saw one of the men shoot someone unlucky enough to be in their path. With the last execution, he stated, “Patti, get everyone on alert. It’s time to see what they have learned.”

“Jake, they aren’t finished yet, graduation isn’t until Friday,” Patti replied.

Jake turned and thought for a moment, it was Wednesday, “Guess what they are getting for graduation?”

----*----

For the rest of that day and half of the following, Jake had the combat planning room packed with personnel. Outside, in the full command center, he had Linda direct her analysts to extract every piece of relevant information on the armed mass heading north.

In the combat planning room, he had Sara and Patti working on readying the entire graduating class. Jake was preparing to take almost 130 newly trained combat troops up against nearly 600-armed men. They were to be fully suited up with a standard combat load. He had ordered two of the new Lanai transports as his delivery vehicles. His only regret was they hadn’t even started jump school, so they would have to land. That limited his LZ choices.

While the possibility of his troops being shot and injured was low, the real danger of being overrun was extremely high. If the experience with Sara and the stadium had taught Jake anything, it was that superior numbers still mattered. She killed three of the seven that came for her, but they still overwhelmed her in the end, suit or no suit.

This time Jake planned to take his trained and disciplined troops against the superior numbers of an undisciplined mob in a methodical fashion. They would work as a coordinated team, with air support and limited heavy weapons.

Jake had kept the 10
th
Cavalry out of the general combat pool. They were his special forces, separate from the regular units. There had been some grumbling initially, as they were all well qualified to be platoon leaders. However, once Jake explained their roles in the big picture, they were content to continue to work outside the mainstream.

His biggest struggle was what to name this unit. His personal bias was to tag his organization as Marines and Space Marines at that. However, he was identifying them as his primary ground forces, and that was an Armyfunction
.
Whereas
Marines are trained and equipped to be the first into battle, the Army is organized and prepared for long-term combat. Considered a force in readiness, the Marines have the ability to
quickly
respond to crises, and gain and defend footholds until supporting troops arrive.

To add to the confusion, most of his fighter squadrons
had
either Marine or Navy designations, skipping the 1
st
Air Cavalry and the 10
th
Cavalry Special Forces. The Army didn’t have much if any in the way of fighter aircraft.

In the end, he settled on calling them the 1
st
Space Marine Expeditionary Force, ready for land, sea, air and space. The final tiebreaker
was
the fact that the unit’s intent as a quick strike and then pack it up unit. Jake
had
always associated the Army as a more permanent presence, come in and stabilize things type of force.

In real numbers, his SMEF
was
woefully undersized compared to a true MEF.
However
, he
was
more than happy with the numbers they
had
been able to field considering the circumstances.
Besides
, what they lacked in size they more than made up for in sheer firepower.

Rather
than issue the standard 5.56mm rifles they
had
all been using, he went ahead and jumped into one of the combination weapons he
had
asked Kola to provide after the first NeHaw engagement. That experience
had
found him relying on spear guns for use in space. These
were
5.56mm on top with an under barrel of NeHaw energy blaster.

This model had a second barrel fixed under the original. The barrel guard enclosed both barrels so only the ends protruded. Right in front of the trigger guard was a circular opening where the power cell went. There was a fire select switch to allow thumb activation. It flipped between safe, single 5.56 fire, automatic 5.56 fire and energy discharge. It was ambidextrous, for both right and left-handed shooters.
As Space Marines, the addition of the blaster
was
a critical one.

The energy weapons tended to fall into two categories, concentrated beam or, what Jake called, an energy ball. The cannons on the hover cycles were energy ball weapons. He liked the option for the marines, as it functioned similar to a shotgun. The great part was you really didn’t need sights for a shotgun, just point and fire.

Fortunately, Jake had also included limited heavy weapons training in the basic program. They had a heavier version of the 7.62mm rifle that had either a bipod or vehicle mount. He had them work from both a fixed positions and vehicle mounts in training.

For the LA trip, he had several jeeps with guns mounted for mobile firepower. That wasn’t his only surprise.

----*----

As Jake walked into the planning room, Sara and Patti both turned from what they were doing and greeted him. Turning back to their work, Sara asked Jake while not looking at him, “Why are we going to all this trouble? Can’t you just send in the 10
th
like last time and we can be done with them? Isn’t this a more dangerous option?”

Without answering, Jake walked over to one of the displays and using the controls, started wandering all over the target area until he apparently found what he was looking for. Magnifying the image, he zoomed into a spot where four women were huddled over a cooking fire. Beaten and battered, they cowered in fear, every time one of the men passed close by.

“I’m not killing off a bunch of hostages, just to avoid the risk,” he replied.

Sara nodded in understanding and went back to her previous activities.