VIPER One

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