Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4) Read online

  The Thuranin would be reeling, both from their crushing defeat, and from the certain knowledge that the Jeraptha had somehow known exactly when and where to attack. Tashallo burned with curiosity to know how Fleet Intelligence had acquired such accurate information about enemy plans. Who had betrayed the Thuranin? Was it their rivals the Bosphuraq? Or could it have been the duplicitous Maxolhx? Tashallo knew finding the answer to that question would consume Thuranin intelligence officers.

  No one considered that the information may have come from a shiny beer can.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Of the current Merry Band of Pirates, only me, Chang, Giraud, Desai, Simms and Adams were from the original crew that escaped from Paradise. In the operation to seize the Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory, Desai had piloted our stolen Ruhar ‘Dodo’ dropship, and the other five of us had been in the boarding party. Because we had lost the Flower on our second mission, many of the current crew had never been aboard a Kristang frigate, and I wanted our boarding party to know exactly what the interior of a frigate looked like. We could not afford to have our supposedly Kristang boarding party stumbling around in front of the Ruhar, not knowing where to go on one of their own ships. We also needed the boarding party to be comprised of tall people, who would be believable as members of the Kristang warrior caste. That should have excluded me, as I am only six feet three inches tall, but no way was I sitting this one out. Technically, I was sitting during the operation; unless something went very wrong, I would be remaining aboard the dropship as Desai’s copilot, and hopefully I would not be leaving my seat until the Ruhar crew had left. One way I justified going on the away mission was that I was one of a handful of people qualified to fly a Kristang frigate, even though my skills were probably marginal.

  Chotek did not argue when I told him I would be in the boarding party; he was likely thinking that, as the lunatic plan was mine, I should take the risk personally. He may also have been happy to see me away from the ship for a while.

  Anyway, the boarding party was me and Desai as pilots, with Smythe, a Chinese and a Ranger actually going aboard the ship. If everything went according to plan, we would never meet the Ruhar crew. Because we were the Merry Band of Pirates and therefore almost nothing ever went exactly according to plan, we were prepared for problems. Chotek had laid down the rules of engagement: if the Ruhar crew resisted or threatened to blow up the ship, we were to back off. The only way we would be authorized to shoot is if we were already aboard the ship, and the Ruhar shot first.

  We had no way to confirm the To Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious was at the rendezvous point, we had to trust Skippy’s data was accurate. The pilots had the Flying Dutchman on a hair trigger to jump away, in case Chotek’s suspicions were correct and the Glory was being used as bait to lure Kristang ships to their doom. We jumped in, immediately reestablished our stealth field, and Skippy did some magic to make it appear as if our ship was an unstealthed Kristang battlecruiser. It had something to do with projecting an image through our field, and Skippy warned the effect would not be convincing if the Ruhar had good sensors. Since the Ruhar were aboard a beat-up Kristang piece of junk, I thought it probable their best set of sensors would be eyeballs looking out a porthole.

  “How’s it going, Skippy?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice calm. I was sitting in the copilot seat of a Kristang dropship, wearing a powered armor suit, and sweating enough the suit was having to chill the air to prevent trickles of sweat from dripping down my back.

  “Okey-dokey, Joey. I’m talking with the Ruhar now.”

  “Are they planning to give us any trouble?”

  “Nope. No, I tapped into their internal communications, and they just about peed their pants when they saw our bad-ass battlecruiser jump in on top of them. All four of them are eager to get off the Glory, particularly since the ship’s environmental system is going haywire. Parts of the ship are below freezing, and other compartments are uncomfortably hot. The oxygen recycling system is broken, so the Ruhar are wearing breathing masks. Also, interestingly, these four are all civilian contractors. The admiral in command of the battlegroup stationed at Paradise wanted to keep the Glory as a prize, or use it for target practice. When he learned some jackass at Fleet headquarters wants to bring to Glory to their home planet, the admiral refused to assign any of his personnel to the task. His people checked that the Glory’s reactor and jump drive met minimum safety standards, and that’s it. So Fleet headquarters had to contract with civilians to bring the ship out to meet a Jeraptha star carrier.”

  “Cool!” I gave a thumb’s up to Desai. “So, these guys don’t want any trouble, and they will leave the ship to us?”

  “They are not all guys, Joe, two of them are female hamsters. They most definitely do not want any trouble; one of them is former military, and she was the first to say they should hand over the ship to us.”

  “But?” Something in Skippy’s tone told me there was more to the story.

  “But what, Joe?” His fake innocent voice wasn’t convincing anyone.

  “There is always a but, Skippy. Nothing we do is this easy. There has to be a catch.”

  “Oh yee of little faith. Why does there have to be a catch? Once in a while, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rain- Oh, forget it. Not even I could sell this line of BS. There is a teensy weensy complication. The plan was that we jump in, the Ruhar get scared by our super duper battlecruiser, they fly off in their dropship and leave the ship to us.”

  “Yeah, so? You said the battlecruiser image did impress them, and they want to leave. What is the problem?”

  “The problem is, they don’t have a dropship.”

  “What the f- How can they not have a dropship? Ruhar Fleet protocol requires all crewed ships to have- Oh, damn it. These guys aren’t part of the Fleet, they’re civilians.”

  “Egg-zactly, Joe. Thus, the teensy weensy problem.”

  “Crap. Hold a minute, I need to call Count Chocula.” Oh, this was sure to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Once again, I had to tell my boss that a plan I developed had run into a problem. I pressed a button on the copilot console to call Chotek. “Sir, we have a problem. The Ruhar want to leave the ship peacefully, but they don’t have a dropship with them.”

  I could hear Chotek give a weary sigh. “Of course they don’t have a dropship! Can we, can we give them one of ours? We have plenty of them.” He meant we had removed all the dropships from the two transport ships we salvaged. Most of them were junk, but Skippy’s bots were able to cobble together enough parts to make several flyable units. We had plenty of space in the Dutchman’s docking bays, and I felt better having more equipment that less.

  “We shouldn’t do that. Those dropships are covered with human DNA inside and out, from us working on them,” I explained. “Trace amounts of our DNA might be explainable, now that we know the Kristang took Keepers away from Paradise, but we can’t give the Ruhar a dropship coated with human DNA. We have to go with Plan B.”

  “Do what you think is best. We’ve come this far, and the Ruhar are willing to leave the ship to us.”

  “Yes, Sir.” My finger poised over the button to end the conversation.

  Chotek had other ideas. “Colonel? Please remind your team that I will not tolerate any itchy trigger fingers.”

  “Understood.”

  The Ruhar opened the doors to a docking bay for us, and Desai flew us in, with me in the copilot seat calling out fore and aft clearance. Since we were in the smaller Dragon-A type of Kristang dropship, we had plenty of room. We used the landing skids to secure the ship to the floor of the docking bay, but did not engage with the clamps on the cradle. If we had to get out of there in a hurry, I didn’t want balky clamps slowing us down.

  The large doors cycled closed slowly, with one of them sticking halfway and needing to be pulled back before it slid into the fully closed and locked position. A light came on, indicating the doors were locked, and our ship’s sensors detecte
d air being pumped into the bay. “I think we keep our suits on,” I said to Smythe. “There is a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. And I don’t trust the seal on those doors.” Air pressure in the bay was increasing much less quickly than normal for a Kristang frigate; either there was a leak somewhere, or the air pumps needed servicing. My suspicions were confirmed when air pressure reached normal, but the pumps had to keep running.

  The airlock door opened, and a female Ruhar peeked her head around the door. She was wearing a soft-shelled spacesuit, but rather than a helmet she wore an oxygen mask, and waved hesitantly. “Hello?” In the enhanced view from our Dragon’s cameras, I could see her hand was shaking slightly.

  “Major, put her at ease,” I ordered. “I don’t want any misunderstandings that lead to a firefight.”

  “A firefight in a confined space would not be my first choice, Colonel,” Smythe acknowledged. I watched through his helmet camera as he opened our airlock doors, leaving both of them open in case his team needed to get back aboard quickly. He stepped down the set of stairs that extended from the bottom of the airlock, trying to walk softly in his heavy armored suit, with his boots adhering to the deck in the zero gravity. Although a distinctive Kristang rifle was slung across his chest, he held up both hands and turned to face the Ruhar woman. Through my console, I heard the translation of the Ruhar words that issued from his helmet speakers. “Hey, how you doin’, huh? Ah, excuse me, I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that burrito this morning.” Smythe’s voice said. “I just flew here from Rigel, and boy are my arms tired.”

  “Skippy! What the hell?!” I shouted. Our beer can was supposed to handle the translating for us, rather than trusting the limited abilities of the suit computer.

  “Ah, relax, Joe. I was spicing it up for your benefit. All Smythe said was ‘hello’. Damn, I try to inject a bit of fun into this job, and I get yelled at.”

  “Just the straight translation, please,” I said through gritted teeth, while to my left, Desai was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes.

  “Ok, Ok. Fine.”

  “-harm us?” The Ruhar was saying.

  In his armored suit, Smythe was a good six inches taller than the hamster woman, he leaned forward to tower over her menacingly, as a Kristang warrior would. “If we wished to harm you, you would already be dead. Our assignment,” he said as he took a step backward, “is to recover this ship, which our brothers the Swift Arrow clan disgracefully lost.”

  “Oh,” her eyes grew wider, and she peered at the clan insignia on Smythe’s suit. “You wish us to report which clan recovered this ship, to atone for the disgrace? We can do that. You are welcome to have this ship. It is not in good condition.”

  “It does not have to be,” Smythe declared, and waved his team forward. They walked around to the back of the Dragon, where the back ramp was lowering. When it was fully down, they unstrapped a bulky package and wrestled it into a clear space behind the dropship. The package was a Kristang emergency shelter that had been aboard our former frigate the Flower. Smythe instructed the woman to bring her companions into the docking bay, and to don their spacesuit helmets.

  Plan B was for us to inflate the portable shelter, put the four Ruhar in it, and push it out of the docking bay. Push it gently to avoid jostling the occupants, push it hard enough to drift away before we fired up the Glory’s engines and flew far enough away for a safe jump.

  It was a minor miracle that nothing further went wrong with the operation. The four Ruhar were visibly nervous, even with Smythe’s repeated assurances. When two of them hesitated to enter the inflated shelter, Smythe became slightly exasperated. “I told your companion that, although I would be pleased to kill your entire dishonorable species, that is not my purpose here today.”

  “You want us as witnesses?” One of the Ruhar squeaked, cowering away from Smythe. “You only need one witness.”

  “That is correct,” Smythe patted his rifle. “I suggest you enter the shelter immediately, as I do not need all four of you alive.”

  That settled the issue, the two lagging Ruhar fairly dived into the shelter. Smythe’s team got the shelter sealed, confirmed the air inside was breathable and the shelter functioning optimally.

  “We are ready,” the hamster woman said, and in the cockpit, I pressed a button to suck air out of the bay, then cycle the big doors open. One of the damned doors got stuck, I had to cycle it back and forth until it finally slid out of the way. The three SpecOps men gently picked up the shelter and tossed it out the door.

  “Skippy, cut their comms,” I ordered.

  “Done. They can’t see or hear anything outside that shelter. Their suits will run out of oxygen in ten hours, the shelter will keep them alive until well after the Jeraptha star carrier is scheduled to arrive. I suggest you get moving, hint, hint.”

  We did not need any urging to move as fast as we could, none of us wanted to be in a beat-up Kristang frigate if a Jeraptha or even a Ruhar warship jumped in unexpectedly. Skippy ran diagnostics on the jump drive, while Desai and I hurried to the bridge. We moved the Glory away from the drifting shelter, first using only thrusters until we were far enough away to fire up the main engines.

  “Hoo, boy, this thing is a total POS,” Skippy announced with great disgust when he completed his analysis. “How the hell did the Kristang almost sneak up on Paradise in this thing? That does not say good things about Ruhar sensor technology. And it is a miracle this shitbox managed to jump all the way out here without exploding. Anywho, thanks to the magic of Skippy the Magnificent, you can use the drive for a single jump; I have it programmed into the nav system. After we get this hunk of junk on one of the Dutchman’s docking platforms, my bots are going to be super busy getting this ship ready for a mock attack on the Ruhar. It is a damned good thing you aren’t counting on this piece of crap to make a real attack.”

  “Thank you, Skippy, that is great,” I replied while I tightened the straps on the couch I was in. “Desai, jump us when ready.”

  “You should do it, Sir,” she said with a smile.

  “You sure?”

  “This may be our last opportunity to perform a jump in a Kristang frigate,” she noted. “The honor should be yours.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, you’re just thinking that if this thing breaks, you don’t want the blame.”

  She grinned back. “That, too.”

  A Jeraptha fast packet ship jumped into orbit of the Glark system’s largest gas giant planet, where the main spacedock servicing facilities floated. The ship’s unexpected arrival, far inside the legal inbound jump zone, set off alarms on every ship and station in the immediate area, and nearly resulted in the fast packet ship being blown to dust by the Strategic Defense satellite network. Only because the ship broadcasted very high-level authentication codes was it allowed to survive, although it was not allowed to approach the spacedock which included the 98th Fleet Command offices.

  “Admiral Tashallo,” Communications Specialist First Class Hanst Bo’s voice was shaky as he approached the Fleet commander. “The ship that just arrived is transporting an Inquisitor. She is requesting,” Bo checked the message flimsy, “demanding, clearance to dock immediately.”

  “An Inquisitor?” Tashallo’s antenna stood straight up and turned red. “What- did the message say why she is here?” All of his wagers were within the rules, he was certain, and his behavior was exemplary. He had acted in the best interest of the Jeraptha, regardless of the consequences to the positions he had taken on various wagers. Why would an Inquisitor venture all the way to the Glark system? Tashallo’s mind was racing through possibilities, including whether he could book a quick prop bet on the purpose of the Inquisitor’s visit, when he realized Bo had asked him a question. “What?”

  “Sir, I asked whether I should signal clearance to the Inquisitor.” Bo thought the answer was fairly obvious, as no one stood in the way of an Inquisitor.

  “No,” Admiral Tashallo declared with a combination smile and grimace. �
�Signal that ship to hold position at the inner marker. It is not to approach this facility. Also signal the Ready Guard force to send two ships to escort that fast packet back beyond the outer markers. Please tell the Inquisitor that if her mission is urgent, a dropship would be her quickest option, regardless.” Seeing the shocked and questioning look on Bo’s face, the admiral leaned back on his couch and added “If the Inquisitor finds fault with my actions, it is not because I allowed a strange ship access to a critical Fleet facility.”