SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Read online

"You can't?" I managed a hint of a smile at that.

  "That would be a solid no, Joe. Remind me to keep you away from the galley."

  We waited. We waited, and we made plans, we hastily threw together plans to attack the Kristang and recover the landing party. We waited another five minutes, then ten. At the twelve minute mark, Skippy announced the four dropships had split up into two groups of two, with a gunship and a troop transport in each group. They had split up; their apparent courses were taking them to approach the Elder base from two directions. "It now appears very likely," Skippy said sadly, "that they intend to land and practice a full combat assault on the Elder base. This is very unfortunate. I still believe the Kristang do not know anything about our landing party, the Elder base is merely a convenient place to practice an assault. As you said, that hardly matters now."

  "It doesn't matter. If we have to fight, I want to do it when we choose, not wait for them to force our hand. I am not letting those dropships get close enough to that Elder site to threaten our people down there. Major Simms, get the ready bird warned up," we had two pilots in a dropship, prepared to launch on a two-minute notice. "Skippy, show us our best options again."

  "As none of our options are good, not one of them could be considered 'best', Joe. The option you liked best is- wait, I'm intercepting a message from the cruiser. Yup, I was right, this is an exercise, the captain of the cruiser is bragging about how well the exercise is going, and he is requesting permission for the dropships to engage stealth for the final approach to the Elder site. The task force commander apparently denied use of stealth so far, because he didn't trust the dropship pilots not to crash into each other if they can't see each other. It will take several minutes, of course, to receive a reply from the task force."

  "Let's use that time wisely, then, I don't want those dropships to be stealthed when we have to target them. We're going with Option Bravo," I ordered. "Pilot, orient the ship and bring us about, accelerate to match speed with target. Major Simms, tell the ready bird to open the bay doors and prepare to launch."

  Option Bravo was the least bad of our bad options, in my inexperienced opinion. We were going to accelerate the Dutchman out of the planet's magnetic field, to match course and speed with the moon, and at the last minute, turn the ship so it would be sticking straight up and down in relation to the Elder base. Straight up and down, with the engines pointed down, so that when we emerged from jump, the Dutchman would be falling in the moon's gravity well rear-end first. Our plan was to launch the ready bird as soon as we came out of the jump wormhole, and send a signal to Desai. Hopefully, Desai would get our signal and climb up to rendezvous with the Dutchman, while our pilots tried to balance the massive, awkward ship on its tail. According to Skippy, our star carrier didn't have enough thrust available to maintain altitude, or it did have enough thrust, but we couldn't use it in a gravity well without snapping the ship's long spine. So, the ship would be falling, tail first, toward the surface of the moon, and Desai would need to precisely match our speed and acceleration, and fly her dropship into a landing bay. While she was flying up to us, we would be hitting the four Kristang dropships with maser cannons, and the ready bird would be flying down to hopefully recover Chang's landing party. There would not be enough time to recover the ready bird before the Dutchman had to jump away, we could only fall a certain distance before we had to jump, or crash. When we jumped, the plan called for us to engage the Kristang cruiser with missiles, then jump away again. The ready bird would need to recover Chang's landing party, fly some distance away from the Elder site, engage stealth, and wait. Wait, for possibly a long time, because even if we got lucky and knocked out that cruiser, the rest of the Kristang task force and their friends now just outside the star system, would be buzzing around the moon like angry hornets.

  It was not a good plan. It was the only plan we could think of in the short time available. It would have to do; I was not leaving the landing party down there. It may sound heartless, but if we couldn't recover the landing party from the Elder structure they'd taken shelter in, I would have to order a missile strike on them, to hide the fact that humans were out here.

  "Whatever happens, Joe, this will be a first in galactic history," Skippy announced. "No one has ever done this with a star carrier."

  "Something to look forward to, then."

  "No one has done this, because this is mind-bogglingly stupid!"

  "Hey, Skippy?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Hold my beer, watch this."

  "What? Hold your- damn it, whoever put a redneck in command of a starship?"

  "You did."

  "Oh." He thought about that for a moment. "Damn! I guess I did."

  The time for joking around with Skippy was over. Grimly, I took one last look at the main display, and ordered "Pilot, initiate jump countdown. Major Simms, don't wait for a signal from me, your team is weapons free. Take out those dropships quick, they'll go into stealth mode if we miss with the first shot." There were four enemy dropships racing low and fast barely above the moon's surface, and the Flying Dutchman had only two rear-facing maser cannons. We had to make every shot count.

  "Aye, aye, sir," Simms acknowledged.

  I saw the pilot press the button to initiate the programmed jump, and she counted down, "Jump in ten, nine-"

  In a few seconds, I was going to take a new, untested crew, and a ship never designed to engage in direct combat, into desperate combat. Everyone aboard the ship could die, and it would be my fault, entirely my fault. My right hand was shaking so badly, that I put it in my lap and squeezed it with my left hand, which was not much better. And I needed to pee, again. Waiting for combat to begin, the anticipation of danger, was almost worse than combat itself. Once the shooting starts, my mind attains clarity and focus. Before the shooting starts, my mind raced over every horrible possibility of things going sideways.

  "-four, three-"

  "Belay that!" Skippy shouted, and I saw on the display that he'd cancelled the jump on his own. Also he'd cut power to the engines, we were no longer accelerating.

  "Skippy, what the hell-"

  "Battlecruiser just jumped in, near the Elder site! They are targeting the four dropships with low-power masers. This must be another part of the exercise. Oh! Two destroyers just jumped in near the cruiser on the far side of the moon, they are engaged in a mock battle. Joe, trust me on this, those four dropships have been declared dead by the task force commander, they have changed course and are climbing for orbit. They are no longer proceeding toward the Elder site."

  "Oh, thank God," I let out a long breath and slumped in the chair. "Pilot, bring us back into the magnetic field, gently, please, we don't want to be seen."

  "Wow," Skippy grunted.

  "What is it?" I asked fearfully. Right then, I didn't think I could take any more bad news.

  "Oh, nothing that affects us directly, Joe. Man, the mock battle between that cruiser and those two destroyers is not going well for either side, all three ships are shockingly clumsy. The task force commander is pissed, he is bitching at them in the clear, not bothering to encrypt the transmission. I think he wants the rest of the task force to hear, to embarrass those three ship captains in front of their peers."

  "Clumsy, huh? You, uh, think they're clumsy enough that we could take them in a fight, if we had to?"

  "Hahahahahaha!" Skippy laughed. "No way, dude! Damn, when I say clumsy, I mean clumsy by the standards of a hateful warrior species like the Kristang. Joe, the Dutchman is a big, long, spindly monstrosity that would handle like a drunk pig even if I were flying it, and our ship is flown by unskilled monkeys. No offense to your pilots, but the Thuranin designed this ship to be controlled by cyborg implants. Using the manuals controls on this backup bridge slows reaction time down by a factor of like ten. Those three Thuranin ships would fly circles around us. Our weapons targeting is way too slow for us to have any confidence of hitting a moving target."

  "Thank you for the vote of con
fidence in us monkeys, Skippy," I said, putting as much sarcasm into my voice as I could right then. My hands were still shaking. Although I no longer needed to pee immediately.

  "What? That wasn't intended to be a vote of con-, oh, I get it, you were being sarcastic. Ha, ha, very funny. Stupid monkeys," he grumbled.

  Beginning at the twenty three hour mark, I relieved the duty officer, and took back the command chair. The twenty four hour mark came and went, with no sign of the Kristang going anywhere. They were still fully engaged in exercises, although they had now gone back to the basics of ship handling, the task force commander was very unhappy with the lizards under his command. None of the Kristang ships were anywhere near the moon with our trapped landing party, and I was tempted to order Desai to try sneaking away. Skippy strongly advised against it.

  Shortly after the twenty five four mark, we took a slight risk and shot a tight-beam burst message to Chang and Desai, assuring them we were still there, that we would pick them up as soon as we could.

  Twenty five hours, thirty minutes came and went, and the Kristang were still there.

  Twenty six hours. The Kristang were still engaged in ship handling exercises. Anxious, I pulled up the combat options again and reviewed them. None of the options had a decent chance of success. I was staring at the cold, hard fact of abandoning Chang's team, in order to preserve the ship, and continue the mission.

  Finally, Skippy spoke. ''Uh, oh, Joe, bad news. I'm intercepting a ship to ship transmission, the task force commander is declaring the exercise over, and ordering the task force to jump out to rendezvous with the star carrier."

  A glance at the display showed that it was twenty six hours, twelve minutes since the Kristang had jumped in. "I don't get it, Skippy, why is that bad news?" I asked, it sounded like good news to me.

  "The bad news is that only four of the task force ships will be departing, three will remain here. The commander is not happy with the performance of two of the ships, the destroyers, he has ordered them to remain behind with his battlecruiser, for remedial training. The full truth, which I just learned, is that one of the destroyer captains is a younger brother of the task force commander. As is typical with Kristang, the two brothers absolutely hate each other. Why this matters to us is, the commander intends to keep those destroyers here until he is satisfied with their performance, even though that will mean they miss the original rendezvous with the star carrier. The next star carrier to pass by this system will not arrive for another seven days."

  "Seven days?"

  "Seven days," he repeated gravely.

  "Two destroyers and a battlecruiser?"

  "Yes. That battlecruiser is a formidable warship, for the Kristang. It is a relatively new design, being less than thirty years old, and contains weapons that could certainly threaten our ship."

  "The landing party can't wait seven days," I said, stating the obvious.

  "Correct," Skippy said quietly. "I do not currently have any useful solutions to the problem, Joe, I am sorry."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There were eighteen people in the landing party. Of them, Desai and her copilot, Lt. Devereax, were aboard the dropship, and had plenty of oxygen. Hopefully by now, the four people who had been exploring outbuildings were back aboard the dropship also. That left the twelve people in Chang's party, who were in armor suits, with a limited supply of oxygen. Twelve people who could not wait seven days.

  Twelve people trapped on the moon. Compared to fifty two on the Flying Dutchman. Twelve people in certain peril, against the lives of fifty two I would be risking, if I ordered our star carrier to tangle with three Kristang warships. It was not as simple as Thuranin technology versus Kristang; the Kristang had stolen and adapted Thuranin technology over the years, and in terms of weapons and shields, the ships were not far enough apart for my comfort. Also, the Kristang ships were dedicated, true warships, designed for space combat, while our Dutchman was basically a truck. Star carriers were not supposed to engage in direct combat with other ships, they were supposed to use their superior jump capability to run away, and let other ships handle the fighting for them.

  Twelve lives, against fifty two. The math wasn't that simple, because if the Dutchman were disabled or destroyed in combat, the entire landing party would die, including Desai's people aboard the dropship. Then it would be all seventy people dead.

  The Dutchman could jump away safely, saving the fifty two lives currently aboard, and continuing the mission. If at some point, the Kristang ships were busily engaged in wargames, and far enough away from the moon, it might be possible for Desai to bring the dropship up from the surface, trusting the dropship's stealth field. We might be able to time her climb from the surface, with a precise jump by the Dutchman, for us to pick up the dropship and be on our way before the Kristang could intercept us. That would save an additional six lives.

  Twelve, against fifty eight, then. In a military sense, it was twelve people, against the continuation of the mission. If math were the only question, my decision would be easy. Since I was a monkey, and not a cyborg, raw numbers were not the only consideration.

  The real question was whether we could destroy, or at least disable, those three Kristang warships, long enough for us to retrieve the landing party and escape? We needed a plan, and for that, we needed information. We needed greater situational awareness.

  "Skippy, where are those ships in relation to us, distance, I mean. Can you show that on the display?”

  Skippy sighed. "It is on the display, if you weren't such a dumb monkey, you would see it. Fine, here, I added lines showing the distance in lightseconds."

  Yellow lines and numbers appeared on the display screen. "See how easy that was, Skippy? This is great, thank you. The battlecruiser is thirty seven lightseconds from us, and the two destroyers are another sixty eight lightseconds beyond the battlecruiser."

  "Correct! Do you want a prize for reading the display, Joe?"

  "Huh? No, uh, I'm thinking."

  "Ha! I find that unlikely."

  “Skippy, I'm trying to be serious here, the landing party is running out of oxygen. Three ships, huh? Can you do the trick again that you did when we got to Earth? Take over those three ships with the nanovirus?” Skippy had learned, after we spilled blood and lost people capturing our Kristang frigate the Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory, that the sneaky Thuranin had planted a nanobot virus aboard most Kristang ships, the ships became infected when they hitched a ride on a Thuranin star carrier. Better than a simple virus hidden in computer code, the nanobots could quickly assemble and take physical control of Kristang systems. Since the Kristang, long wary of their systems being infiltrated by their Thuranin patrons, had designed their ship computers to resist digital hacking, a physical takeover was the only option.

  “No. I wish I could, Joe, the situation is not favorable for me to repeat that particular action. Because you are going to ask me a bunch of ignorant questions about why I can’t do it, I will save both of us the time and explain now. You will hopefully remember me telling you that I need to be relatively close to a Kristang ship to make that trick work?”

  Although I did remember him telling me something about the subject, I did not remember exactly what he said. “Something about lightseconds?"

  “Something like that, yes. The Thuranin developed the nanovirus to protect their star carriers from attempted takeover by Kristang ships that were being transported, it is a short range technology, not intended for fleet actions. I can somewhat extend the range at which the nanovirus can be activated and controlled, but not far enough to reach any of those three ships from our current location.”

  “Whoa, hey, wait a minute, I call BS on that. You took over those two Kristang ships at Earth, and one of them was on the other side of the planet.”

  “Yes, duh, Earth is a small ball of dirt, and both of those ships were in low orbit, well within my envelope of influence. Do I have to remind you what an enormous distance a lightsecon
d is? Larger than you apparently think.”

  "All right, is there any chance our fancy stealth technology will let us sneak close enough to that cruiser?"

  "No."

  I waited for him to say more, he didn't. "No? Could you tell me a bit more?"

  "Why? You don't understand anything about the technologies involved."

  "Skippy, don't be an ass. Fine, yes, I do not understand the technologies-"

  "It's not only you, Joe, don't feel bad about it, none of you grubby monkeys have the slightest clue as to how any of this high-tech stuff truly works. Before you stumble over an attempted snappy reply, I have applied my incredible resources to war gaming how we could deal with those three ships, and I do not see any reasonable possibility of success. We can handle either the battlecruiser, or the pair of destroyers, not both. Whichever target we do not engage first, will certainly jump away, to the outer edge of the system, and bring back the full Kristang force. There are an additional thirteen warships out there, waiting for a star carrier. Those thirteen ships, even though they are Kristang ships of considerably lesser technology, would make it impossible for us to retrieve the landing force. I am sorry, Joe. There is simply no way to do this."

  Major Simms spoke up from the CIC. "This may be a stupid question, but, we are in a Thuranin vessel. Could we simply order the Kristang to jump away, jump to the edge of the system?"

  "That is not a stupid question," Skippy answered, "Major Tammy, and Joe, you could learn from her how not to ask stupid questions. Unfortunately, the answer is no, the Kristang are unlikely to obey such an unusual order from the Thuranin, they would find it highly suspicious. For a star carrier to enter the gravity well of a star system is unusual enough, the Kristang would also find it highly unusual that our star carrier has only one ship attached. What the Kristang would very likely do, by very likely I mean I am one hundred percent certain, is make only a short jump, to keep eyes on what the Thuranin are doing here. As soon as they saw Thuranin activity near a moon which contains an Elder site, they would jump one ship away to get reinforcements, and jump the other two ships in close enough to see what we're doing. There is no trust between the Kristang and the Thuranin."