VIPER ONE
RICHARD SWAN
Copyright © Richard Swan 2016
Cover illustration by Maung Thuta
All characters in this publication are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Foreword
This is a standalone novella that can be enjoyed by all fans of military science fiction, although it is set in the same universe as the Art of War Trilogy (chronologically, it would fall just after the events of Reclamation, roughly six months before the beginning of The Ascendancy War). By way of context, VIPER One (Very Important Person Recovery) is an experimental special forces unit tasked with recovering abducted human politicians, diplomats and military personnel from the alien provar. The unit was formed during the Ascendancy War, and disbanded at the end of it, to be reabsorbed back into EFFECT, the United Nations’ existing counter-terrorism wing.
The Ascendancy War itself was a six-month-long total war between the United Nations, the largest human civilisation in the galaxy, and the Provar Ascendancy, a larger and militarily more powerful alien empire and a longstanding ideological enemy of the UN. The events which gave rise to the war are documented in Reclamation, and are not relevant for this novella.
Below is a glossary of slang and acronyms which should be useful, but by no means a requisite for the genre-savvy reader.
Enjoy!
Richard
Select Glossary of Terms
2ic – Second in command
APR – Assault Plasma Rifle, a squad-level anti-materiel directed-energy weapon
Arty – artillery
Ascendancy – the Provar Ascendancy, a powerful alien empire and a longstanding ideological enemy of the UN
Ascendancy Roster – a kill-or-capture list of political, military and diplomatic targets drawn up by the provar at the inception of the Ascendancy War.
The Ascendancy War – the current galaxy-wide total war between the Ascendancy on one side and the UN and its allies on the other
Casevac – casualty evacuation
Civs – civilians
CO – Commanding Officer
Cob – slang term for a provar
CQC – Close Quarters Combat
Danger close – a last-resort artillery fire mission within close range of friendly forces. Different munitions and yields have different “danger close” minimum distances
Deadzone – an area of terrain impenetrable to conventional military scanners; generated by an EWP
DZ’d – deadzoned
EFFECT – Exigency Force For Electronic warfare and Counter-Terrorism, the United Nations’ counter-terrorism arm
EOD – Explosive Ordnance Disposal
EWP – Electronic Warfare Pod
FID – Fleet Intelligence Division
Fireworks – slang term for shelling
Fleet – the body encompassing all United Nations naval forces
FMS – Fleet Medical Station, a military teaching hospital in Arrengate, Vargonroth
FTL – Faster-Than-Light
HUD – Heads-Up Display
HVT – High-Value Target
IFF – Identify Friend-or-Foe, a coded electronic signal indicating whether a cloaked or concealed unit is an ally or an enemy
IHD – Implant Hard Drive, a neural interface implanted into every UN citizen from birth
JIC – Joint Intelligence Command, a quasi-political UN body formed of senior representatives from UNIS, EFFECT, FID and SPECTRECOM
LOAS – Low Orbit Artillery Support
LRIS – Long Range Invasive Scanning, a destructive form of electronic warfare used for sensing cloaked enemies
Mantix – Mantix Advanced Infantry Protection and Performance Enhancement Suit (MAIPPES), a standard-issue networked infantry protection suit of armour made of multiple layers of nanofibre weave, diamond filament, spider silk and a shock-dissipating nanogel layer, and supported by an exoskeleton.
Micromortar – a handheld, disposable, single-shot mortar with a high-explosive yield
MOP – a Mobile Offensive Platform, also known as a “dog”; a robotic, four-legged attack platform employed by Ascendancy forces
OC – Officer Commanding, the senior commanding officer of a given military unit
OCT – Officer Commanding Theatre, the highest ranking officer on the battlefield with overall responsibility for the operation
Outer Ring – any non-Veigis UN world, traditionally poorer, astrographically distant, and with production-focussed economies
Provar – an alien, a citizen of the Provar Ascendancy
Railgun – the standard-issue weapon of choice for UNAF, it uses electromagnets to accelerate a 2mm caseless slug of tungsten steel alloy at up to hypervelocity
Refrac – slang term for refraction shielding, a form of optical camouflage in which the user is rendered invisible from the electromagnetic spectrum
REMF – Rear Echelon Motherfucker
RRG – Rotary Railgun, a heavy, multi-barrelled, usually vehicle-mounted railgun
SIGINT – Signals Intelligence
SPECTRECOM – Special Reconnaissance Command
SPECWAR – Special Warfare Division, the military black ops arm of UNAF
Tier Three – a diplomatic, political and trade alliance formed of six advanced races, including the UN and the Ascendancy. The other races are the Zhahassi Commonwealth, the Golgron Alliance, the Quorl and the Kaygryn Federacy.
UN – the United Nations, the largest human civilisation in the galaxy and one of the most powerful and influential races in the galaxy
UNAF – United Nations Armed Forces, a generic term for the UN military
UNIS – United Nations Intelligence Service
Veigis – a reference to the Veigis worlds, a handful of old, wealthy, industrialised planets that contain the influential metropolitan population of the UN and the majority of its state apparatus
VI – Virtual Intelligence, a powerful computing entity one level below full AI
VIPER – Very Important Person Recovery, an experimental special forces unit formed at the inception of the Ascendancy War to recover high-value targets abducted following the publication of the Ascendancy Roster
VL – Visible Light
Xeno Division – a wing of the UN’s diplomatic arm, responsible for official relations with alien species
VIPER ONE