SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

sky for Skippy to stomp the Kristang like bugs, maybe
the SpecOps people would have at least tried to hit the Kristang. It would have
been a futile gesture to attack the Kristang in their bunkers, and impossible
to attack them aboard their ships in orbit. Any SpecOps action would have been
a measure of pure desperation, to make a last stand, for the sake of human
honor and nothing else. I didn't often think about what life had been like for
people on Earth while I was offworld. It must have been horrible, terrifying.
On Paradise, we'd dealt with the reality that all of our supplies, especially
food, had to be brought from Earth by the Kristang, and we'd seen supply
shipments getting thin toward the end of my stay there. That had been bad
enough, to gradually come to the realization that we were fighting on the wrong
side of the war, that our 'allies' were oppressing our home planet, that if
UNEF didn't follow the Kristang's every command, the lizards could starve us by
halting food shipments.
    It must have been worse, much worse, on Earth. On
Paradise, we had been worried about the survival of the Expeditionary Force.
People on Earth knew the stakes were much higher, not only the fate of billions
of humans, the survival of our entire species could have been at risk. When we
went offworld with UNEF, we hadn't known what we were getting into, but we
expected it to be bad, very bad. On Earth, people at first considered the
Kristang to be saviors; aliens who looked like big, ugly lizards, still, our
saviors from the invading Ruhar. The Kristang had saved Earth from the Ruhar.
So when the Kristang began pushing their weight around, interfering in human affairs,
taking territory, taking rare minerals and other materials, at first people
figured that was the price of supporting the war effort, the price of keeping
the Ruhar from conquering our home planet and enslaving humanity. When was it
that most people on Earth gotten the uneasy feeling that they'd made a bad
bargain, that the Kristang, who by then had total control of the planet, were
as bad as we'd imagined the Ruhar would be? I didn't know, that was something I
should ask the new crew about. They probably wanted to talk about it, needed to
talk about it. Needed to talk about it to someone who hadn't lived through it.
    "You're right, Skippy, I should have thought of
this. I'm the commander, I'm supposed to know what's on my people's minds. I-,
hey, wait a minute. How do you know what they're thinking?"
    "From listening to them talk, duh. Damn, you're a
dope sometimes."
    "Skippy, you can't do that. People need
privacy."
    "Joe, I can't not do that. I monitor every
system on this ship in real-time, that includes video and audio inputs. You
already know I watch you sleep, I watch you in the shower, I watch you
eat-"
    "Yeah, I know. Kinda creepy there, Skippy."
    "Uh huh, as if I care what you monkeys look like
naked. You're just as ugly with your clothes on."
    "Fine. Whatever. What you can't do is tell me, or
anyone else, what you heard people say in private. We must have at least the
illusion of privacy aboard the ship. If people know you watch everything they
do, that's something they can deal with, because you're an alien AI, and to
most people you're part of the furniture, an invisible ship system. If people
know their fellow crew members, or their commander, are spying on them, using
details of their private lives for gossip, that could destroy morale. Do you
understand that?"
    "I don't see what the big deal is, Joe. Sure, I
won't tell you or anyone else what I see or hear. One question: what if I find
out someone is planning to do something stupid that would harm the ship, or the
mission?"
    "In that case, you do tell me, only the details I
need to hear. Got it?"
    "I think so, yes. Damn, you monkeys have such complicated
social rules, for a species so low on the development scale."
     
    I just got to my office, a converted storage closet
close to the bridge and Combat