Free SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) by Craig Alanson Page A

star.
    Sure, the new badges were not official, and UNEF may
frown at the idea if we ever got back home. In the meantime, the crew were
thrilled to be wearing badges that no other humans had qualified for. My
awarding badges began the process of Lt Williams warming up to me, slightly.
After the award ceremony, we had a party in the galley, a party that spilled
out into the corridor because our galley wasn’t large enough. The strongest
beverage available was iced tea, I took a tall, cold glass and made my way over
to Williams, who was talking with his four-man SEAL team. Pointing to the Navy
Special Warfare insignia he wore, I said “Lieutenant, we need to change the
acronym for your team.”
    “How’s that, sir?” He asked warily.
    “SEAL is SEa, Air, Land, right? After today, it should
be SEALS for SEa, Air, Land and Space .”
     “I think you’re right about that, sir,” he said with
an ear-to-ear grin.
    Garcia asked “What would the plural of that be?
SEALSes?”
    “Oh, man,” Skippy interjected. “Do not ask Joe
anything about grammar, he butchers the language horribly. Lieutenant Williams,
sincere congratulations to you and your team.”
    “For realz, Skippy?” I asked, figuring he was inevitably
going to add a disparaging comment about monkeys.
    “For realz this time, Joe. Considering that you are,
after all, a barrel of primitive monkeys, this crew has accomplished a lot in a
short time. I have to give you props for that.”
     
    I am not a morning person. I am not even a mid-morning
person. As a soldier, I have to get up early, and I manage to do it, it still
doesn't come naturally. Because of the crew schedule that some idiot put
together, an idiot whose name rhymes with 'Shmoe Bishop', my duty shift on the
bridge started at 4AM ship time, so I dragged my ass out of bed an hour early.
Time enough for a shower and a cup of coffee. Without coffee, I was mostly
nonfunctional in the morning.
    What had caused me to wake up an hour early wasn’t an
alarm, or Skippy, it was anxiety. We had gotten lucky checking out the
abandoned space station, lucky not in the sense that we found something useful,
lucky in that we had found the entire star system abandoned, and that we hadn’t
gotten into a fight, or had to plan some sort of risky combat. The potential
for combat had gotten the special forces keyed up and kept them focused, and
gave them experience using powered armor space suits. In zero gravity and hard
vacuum. That was all good.
    What wasn’t good was, our next target was still way
too dangerous. When we left the abandoned space station behind, we had set
course for the second target, because we didn't have an alternative. The
advantage of the second target was that Skippy knew for sure there was a comm
node there. The disadvantage of the second target is that the whole area was
closely monitored by the Maxohlx and by Sentinels. “Skippy, I got a question.”
    “Good morning, Joe, I’m going to ignore your poor
grammar for the moment."
    "Poor grammar?" I asked, surprised.
    "You have a question, Joe, you don't got a question. At least you didn't say that you gots a question. Damn, you
already butcher the English language enough with your terrible accent."
    "Accent? What's wrong with the way I talk?"
I talked the way every native New Englander north of Boston talked. Normal.
Everybody else had a terrible accent.
    "What's wrong? Let's start with the way you
pronounce 'car' like 'cah', you leave the Rs out of everything. Tell me, Joe,
were your ancestors so poor they had to sell all the letter Rs?"
    "No, Skippy, we save all those Rs so we can use
them on words that should have an R at the end, but don't. Like, my uncle Norm
retired to where?" Which I pronounced 'Nahm' and 'way-uh'.
    "That's easy, he's in Florida."
    "Wrong! See, he lives in Florider. And the
capital of Maine isn't Au-gust-a, it's Auguster."
    "Wow. Incredible. How did you and your buddy
Cornpone ever manage to communicate? With your Maine