Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4) Read online

  “Ohhhhh,” he said with an amazed whistle. “I see what you did there, Joe. This isn’t so much you being a clever monkey, you were using just your memory. Although that was pretty clever. The answer is yes. According to the Thuranin records, three transport ships were left behind, because everyone aboard was dead. And more importantly, they were left behind because the jump drive systems had been partially removed from those ships, in a desperate attempt to get one other ship to a habitable planet. The three ships were in bad condition even before they were overloaded with refugees.”

  “Understood. Would it be possible to fix those ships, even if we have to cannibalize two of them to get one in flyable condition?”

  “I, hmm.” Skippy when silent for a moment, and his avatar froze for a moment. “I do not know, Joe, the Thuranin did not bother to record that data. Even if they did, it doesn’t matter. Didn’t you listen to me? Those three ships had the jump drives stripped out. Before you ask a stupid question, no, I can’t use three busted jump drives to make one good one.”

  “The Q-ship only needs to make a single jump, Skippy. It needs to jump in near the Ruhar negotiators’ ship, launch an attack and then get blown up, or self-destruct. One single jump. There is no way to do that?”

  “With what? Despite what you hairless apes think, you can’t make everything with mud and sticks.”

  “What about if we add duct tape?”

  “Oh, well, then, in that case, NO! A jump drive is an incredibly-”

  “Yeah, blah, blah, monkeys can’t understand technology, blah, blah,” I waved my hand dismissively. “Look, Skippy, all I’m asking is, can we take a couple jump drive coils from the Dutchman and install them in one of the Kristang ships?”

  “No, of course you can’t do- Hmm. Maybe. Shmaybe, let me- Damn. Yes. Yes we can. We can, but we shouldn’t. Joe, we do not have an unlimited supply of jump drive coils. Quite the opposite. The quantity aboard is severely limited and cannot be replaced.”

  “Hey, you know what else can’t be replaced, Skippy? Earth. It does us no good to preserve the Dutchman’s jump capability, if the Ruhar go to Earth and tell the whole galaxy that humans are flying around with a device that can control Elder wormholes.”

  “It’s not so easy, Joe. No, I can’t simply use some of the Dutchman’s drive coils to jump a Kristang ship. We would also need to install capacitors to provide power to the coils. And the Thuranin coils leave a jump signature that is distinctly different from that of Kristang coils.”

  “Oh,” I stuck out my lower lip and frowned in feigned disappointment, hoping Skippy would be clueless about me manipulating him. “If it’s too difficult even for you, then-”

  “Hey!” Skippy said indignantly, his avatar’s hands on its hips. “I didn’t say that I couldn’t do it. It’s me, Joe; expect the impossible.”

  “Expect the impossible?” I asked with arched eyebrow. “Is that going to replace ‘Trust the Awesomeness’ as our unofficial unit motto?”

  “Sadly, no. All right, yes, we can remove drive coils and capacitors from the Dutchman and install them in a Kristang ship, and I can monkey, pun intended, with the signature of our coils to make the jump drive appear to be a genuine Kristang piece of crap . For control, control, hmm, I need to think about that, hmm. Kristang jump computers are notoriously crappy. No, I’ll need to control the jump remotely from the Dutchman.”

  “Excuse me,” Sarah interrupted. “Those Kristang transport ships; are they abandoned, or did the Kristang blow them apart? You said the Kristang self-destruct the ships if they have to abandon them.”

  Oh, crap. I hadn’t considered that. My whole plan could fall apart right there. Fortunately for me and my image, Skippy rescued me. “Nope,” he assured us, “those ships did not get blown up. Ordinarily, you are correct, those ships would have been destroyed, even after they had been stripped of everything useful. The Thuranin did not allow these particular ships to be destroyed, because of their location. The place where the Thuranin dropped those ships is close to a strategically important wormhole cluster, and experiences heavy traffic. While drifting ships can be tracked and avoided, having debris floating around unpredictably creates a serious navigation hazard.”

  “Huh.” A thought popped into my head. “Is that why the Elders put their wormholes in deep interstellar space; because there is not a lot of space junk floating out there?”

  “That is one reason, yes. Ships emerging from a wormhole are temporarily blind and their shields are disrupted by passing through the wormhole’s event horizon, so they are vulnerable to impacts with, as you said, space junk,” Skippy explained with the tone people use when talking to small children. “There is a more important reason the Elders put their wormholes in deep interstellar space; being far away from gravity wells reduces the power required to keep a wormhole stable.”

  “I will keep that in mind when I’m building my first wormhole,” I chuckled. “We have a plan, then; we will jump to the location where the Thuranin last reported those ships. You can predict where the ships have drifted since then?”

  “Easy peasy, Joe. They didn’t travel far from where the Thuranin left them, I can predict their current locations within three kilometers, and the Thuranin attached navigation beacons to each of them. The ships have drifted apart, it will require our dropships to fly between them.”

  “Drifted?” Sarah asked. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t the Kristang ships leave the area after they had been stranded by the Thuranin?”

  “To go where?” Skippy asked sarcastically.

  “They couldn’t go anywhere,” I explained, shooting Skippy an unhappy look. If it entertained Skippy to insult me, I was Ok with that. Berating my crew was not Ok. “Kristang ships can’t usually travel between stars; their jump drives take so long to recharge, they overall travel slower than light.”

  “Yeah, and their crappy jump drives would wear out long before the lizards got halfway to a star,” Skippy added.

  “Yes, but,” Sarah held up her hands. “They did not even make an attempt?”

  “Oh, I assume ‘they’ did,” I made air quotes with my fingers. “Right, Skippy?”

  “If by ‘they’, you mean the crews of all the ships, then yes, they did,” Skippy confirmed. “The crews, all males, of course, stripped critical components from the other ships to keep a single ship functioning. They left the passengers of all other ships, mostly females, to die when the environmental systems failed. Their plan, if their comrades failed to come up with payment for the Thuranin, was to take that one ship through the nearby wormhole and attempt to reach a habitable planet. To do that, they would have needed to replace their jump drive components many times, which is why they stripped the drives out of the other ships. Personally, I think that one ship would have failed along the way, and those hateful, cowardly MFers would have died in deep space like they deserved. Instead, their clan paid the Thuranin just enough for one ship, and their ship got picked up by a star carrier. Their cowardice allowed them to survive, while the others died.”

  I could see Sarah’s knuckles grow white as she squeezed her fist in anger. “We can make Q-ships out of these transports?”

  “Hopefully more than one,” I replied.

  “I wouldn’t count on more than one, Joe,” Skippy cautioned, “but we can try.”

  “Great! Even Count Chocula can’t argue with this plan,” I was gloating. “We jump in, cobble together one or two Q-ships, take them aboard the Dutchman’s hardpoints, and intercept that Ruhar negotiation team.”

  “Yes!” Skippy agreed. “Except for, you know, the teensy weensy little complication.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “What complication?”

  “Well, heh, heh, Joe, there are so, so very many complications,” Skippy chuckled.

  Complication Number One was, of course, Hans freakin’ Chotek. While he wasn’t quite as stiff as when he came aboard, he was still ate up with following UNEF Command’s orders to the letter. I wonder if he wa
s more concerned about getting blamed for taking initiative, than he was about aliens raining hellfire down on our home planet. “Q-ships?” He asked skeptically, after we discussed the plan with Skippy, in exhaustive detail.

  “Yes, Sir. This is much less risky,” I cringed as the words came out of my mouth. I should have said picking up the stranded transports represented no risk at all. Since my idiotic brain had told my mouth to say the wrong thing, I had to do damage control. “There is almost no risk to this proposed operation. These transport ships have been abandoned; they are hanging dead in space, in the middle of nowhere.” That was not quite true, as the ships had been stranded near an Elder wormhole cluster. “We do not know their exact condition, however Skippy is confident he could bring one or more of them back to operational status.” I was using big words to conceal my nervousness. “Skippy has completed most of the necessary repairs to the Dutchman; he can work on the remaining issues while we are under way. We should depart immediately.”

  Chotek gave an exaggerated sigh. Whatever new perspective he found while gazing down from the lip of that crater on the Dead Star had not made him any more trusting of me. “Colonel Bishop, I am aware of the expectation that once a mission has begun, it acquires a momentum that becomes impossible to stop.”

  “Sir,” I held my tongue from the acid remark I wanted to say. “At this point, all I am asking is that we proceed toward these abandoned transport ships. You can abort the mission at any point. If we think of a better plan before we arrive at the transports, I will be very happy to turn the ship around. If we do not leave soon, we could be wasting valuable time we cannot get back later. As you mentioned, the clock is ticking.”

  Chotek frowned, looking at the outline of my plan on his tablet. “This is a rather complicated operation, simply to pick up three abandoned, unarmed ships.”

  “The complications are Skippy’s contribution, and he assures me they are all necessary.”

  Count Chocula surprised me again. “Very well,” he pushed his tablet face down on the desk, “we will proceed toward the objective with all possible speed. Colonel, I wish for your rather,” he searched for a word, “inventive mind, to continue searching for alternatives.”

  “Yes, Sir. I will inform the duty officer to break orbit.”

  Damn it, I hated when Skippy did his weaselly ‘well heh heh’, because I knew it meant nothing but trouble for me.

  When he said ‘many complications’, my Spidey sense tingled, and for good reason. Complication Number One, Hans Chotek, I had been able to deal with. The rest were going to be a problem. “There is no other way to do this, Skippy?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “There are many other ways to do this, Joe, and I know that because you and Chocula and the usual gang of idiots made me go through every freakin’ possible option in nauseating detail, before our friendly Count reluctantly approved this forehead-slappingly obvious plan. There is no other good way to do this, Joey.”

  “Well, crap. Pilot, are we ready?”

  Captain Desai didn’t even bother to turn in her seat. She was standing by, but for this maneuver, she was letting a Chinese act as Pilot In Command. “Affirmative. Everything is green across the board, Colonel.” Desai acknowledged calmly, but I could see the tension in her shoulders.

  The ‘complications’ Skippy mentioned were serious problems. Any thought I had of easily swooping in, taking up two or three abandoned transport ships, and jumping away to some place where we could take our time working on them, went out the window when Skippy dumped his gloomy info on us.

  Those Kristang transports were drifting near a strategically important wormhole cluster that was closely monitored by the Thuranin. Two Elder wormholes materialized in that area regularly, providing the Thuranin with quick and easy access to far-flung points across the sector. The transport ships were stranded in deep space, but not in the middle of nowhere, the entire area was covered by a sensor network. There was also a lot of Thuranin traffic coming in and out of the two wormholes. Worse, there would be starships hanging around, waiting for the wormholes to open. Hanging around, with nothing better to do than to scan the area, and see an unusual-looking, unidentified Thuranin star carrier that would certainly be worth investigating.

  We could not do what I wanted; jump in near the wormholes, take the three ships aboard and jump away quickly. Skippy explained that a ship jumping in near the wormholes, hanging around for a while and then jumping away without going through one of the wormholes would be very suspicious. And we could not go through either of those wormholes to the other ends, especially not in our unique star carrier, and not with three battered Kristang transports on our three hardpoint docking platforms. The other ends of those two wormholes were deep inside Thuranin territory, and near star systems with heavy military presences. There was too much risk of us encountering Thuranin ships on the other ends of those wormholes. The last time we encountered Thuranin ships had not been healthy for the Flying Dutchman.

  So, we needed to come through the wormhole from the other side. Then we could jump away without exhibiting odd behavior. Except, the other sides of those wormholes were in territory too dangerous for us. That left us the option of Skippy using our Elder wormhole controller module to get us through the wormhole from another point in space. “Skippy, are you sure this won’t cause us more trouble than we’re already in? You warned us against monkeying with wormholes unless we absolutely have to. If the Thuranin notice either of these wormholes are behaving strangely-”

  “That will not happen, Joe, I explained that to you.”

  “Yes, but you also said these wormholes see a lot of traffic, and there could be many ships on the other ends, waiting to go through. That might be too many witnesses.”

  He sighed. “All that is true, and all that is irrelevant. I told you, I will temporarily adjust the connection of one wormhole, during a gap in its sequence. By the time the wormhole is supposed to resume its sequence, I will have magically restored its function. You are welcome, by the way.”

  Skippy had explained that, because the area of space near the stranded Kristang transports had two wormholes whose patterns overlapped each other, the wormhole network coordinated the actions of that pair of wormholes so they did not interfere. Avoiding interference required one or the other wormhole to pause between emergence points, during which time the wormhole was temporarily dormant. It was normally temporarily dormant, except this time Skippy was going to wake it up and make it connect to a different wormhole where the Flying Dutchman was parked. “Ok, I trust you the Thuranin on the other end won’t notice a gap in the sequence-”

  “And it is unlikely there will be Thuranin ships hanging around the target end of the wormhole, Joe. They expect that wormhole to be temporarily dormant at that location, to there is no point to a ship waiting there. Any ship desiring to go through the wormhole will jump to the next emergence point.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Chill! Joe, take a chill pill, please. Nothing in life is without risk. The risk in this case is minimal. For going through the wormhole, I mean. A whole lot of bad shit may happen after we go through, as I warned you.”

  “Yeah,” I took a deep breath to calm myself. Everything our friendly beer can said made sense. Then why did this feel like we were jumping into another ambush? Hell, I couldn’t run the ship based on my feelings, and this wasn’t my Spidey sense tingling; it was more of a nagging fear. “Pilot, take us through the wormhole,” I ordered in a voice that was not as confident as I intended to project. “If we detect anything squirrely on the other side, you punch it and jump us away, don’t wait for me.”

  “Understood,” Desai nodded without turning to look at me; she was still stiff with tension.

  My shoulders were knotted up also.

  The Flying Dutchman went through the wormhole, emerging from the far side event horizon almost blind and with our defensive shield and stealth field temporarily weakened. We had our sensor field set on maximum rang
e, not that it mattered. The sensor field was so distorted by passing through whatever weird physics happened inside a wormhole, that it could not have detected a battleship right in front of us. All ships were briefly defenseless and blind after emerging from a wormhole; fortunately, we had a chrome-plated beer can on our side. “No enemy ships in range,” he reported after a brief pause. Even Skippy could not shrug off the effect of going instantaneously from one point in space to another.

  “No enemy ships?” I asked, confused. Confusion about the punchline of a joke could be awkward. Confusion about the tactical situation could be fatal. “There are no friendly ships anywhere, Skippy.” Saying that gave me a pang in the pit of my stomach, thinking just how totally alone we were in the galaxy.

  “Uh, sorry about, Colonel,” he replied, chastened. Skippy could be completely serious when he wanted to, and when he was paying attention. That rarely happened. “Perhaps I should have said no ships which represent a threat, or a concern. I do detect the three Kristang transport ships, close to where I expected them to be.”

  “That fast?” It seemed suspiciously quick, even for our magical beer can.

  He sighed. “Technically, I do not yet detect them; they are too far away. What I did was query the local sensor network; they accepted our identifications codes, and responded to my question about potential navigation hazards in the area.”

  “Oh.”

  “Joe, you complain when I give you too much detail, then you complain when I skip the details,” he said with a sniff. “Make up your mind, please.”

  “My fault, Skippy. I’m a little, uh,” it would not be good for the captain of the ship to mention his fears aloud. “It’s a tense situation.”

  “The quicker we get to it, the quicker we can get out of here,” he reminded me.

  “Agreed. You can reset the wormhole back to its original connections?”

  “Doing that now,” he replied, and the wormhole symbol on the main bridge display blinked out. “Done. It will proceed to the next emergence point without any change in timing. The Thuranin should not notice anything strange happened.”