Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) Read online

  Try selling that to people who already considered me woefully unqualified for command.

  One of my interrogators, a real Army colonel, was somewhat sympathetic when he talked with me during lunch one day. “Bishop, I read your mission reports, all of them, starting with your escape from Paradise. The brass could forgive you being away longer than we planned, we all started getting panicked when you had been away two months longer than expected, but that is understandable given all the shit you went through. They can forgive you getting the lizards into a civil war, from what I’ve read the Kristang have an internal dust-up every hundred years or so, and the lizards already hate us about as much as they can. The beer can going on vacation is a problem, the brass expects you to keep the AI in line. You accomplished a lot and we are grateful, but you also are responsible for the Maxolhx sending ships to Earth. You do understand we can’t let that go?”

  “I do understand, Sir.” In the military, we use the term ‘OBE’ for Overcome By Events. All the good and even incredible accomplishments of the Merry Band of Pirates had been overcome by the knowledge that an aggressively hostile senior species was sending ships to our planet.

  “Good. Bishop, no way is UNEF going to let you command another mission. You might go back out as an ‘advisor’ or something similar, if you cooperate and keep your nose clean.”

  There was no point to me arguing about how I was being treated, because I agreed with the people who considered our last mission an overall disaster. Anything else would be like asking Abraham Lincoln’s wife if she enjoyed the play, except for that last part.

  As rotten as my first week home was, I drew comfort from knowing that Hans Chotek was having an even more super-duper delightful time. We were able to talk on the phone, once, and he sounded thoroughly miserable. Shockingly, his colleagues in the diplomatic community did not consider his planning and starting an alien civil war to be a sterling example of their profession. Go figure, huh? Hansie was not likely to be invited to any swanky dinner parties for a while. It made me happy that he-

  No, damn it, it did not make me happy to hear he was miserable. It should have made me happy, but it didn’t. Truth is, we had kind of rubbed the rough edges off each other, and developed a good working relationship. During debriefings, I found myself actually defending the guy, pointing out that he had been right about a lot of stuff I disagreed with at the time. Most importantly, before we jumped to the Thuranin planet we called ‘Bravo’, he had insisted we perform a recon jump. I wanted to jump right into orbit so we could get in and out fast as possible. If I had gotten my way, the Dutchman would have been trapped by a damping field near Bravo and sliced apart, or seized by a Thuranin task force that was waiting for us. The Merry Band of Pirates owed our lives to Hans Chotek, and I learned new respect for his calm judgment.

  I hoped he was saying good things about me too.

  No offense to the United States Air Force, but being at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base again sucked even more than it had the last time. Before I could ask, Skippy gleefully told me that Rachel, the woman I met during my last luxury vacation at Wright-Pat, was now living in San Diego and she had a steady boyfriend. No, I was not expecting to hook up with her, but talking with her over a cup of coffee would have been nice. My zPhone had been confiscated and that sucked because while the Army allowed me to talk with my parents, and I briefly talked with my sister and a couple friends, the calls were awkward because I knew someone was listening in.

  At the end of eight days, the Army sent me home on leave for two weeks, with instructions not to go anywhere without reporting my plans, and a warning they might recall me at any time to answer questions. The government also showed how much they cared about me, by sending a security team of feds to follow me everywhere I went. Apparently, one qualification for being assigned to a security detail is a complete lack of humor, because those people were incapable of cracking a smile.

  With the veil of secrecy about the Merry Band of Pirates breaking down as it inevitably had to, my little hometown was crowded with reporters looking for a story, and people who were just curious, or who hoped I had news of their loved ones on Paradise. There were also the usual conspiracy theory whackos, they were really scary. I won’t bother telling you some of the truly whack-a-doodle ideas about me floating around on social media. Both ends of the road to my parent’s house were blocked, at first by black SUVs with unsmiling guys who politely but firmly made people turn their cars around unless they lived on that road. Then some group of drooling morons tried to go around the barricade of SUVs with their jacked-up Jeep, and when they skidded in the mud and hit a tree, they got into a brief firefight with the security team. The nutcases had AKs but the security team tossed a grenade into the Jeep and ended that nonsense real quick. After another incident where a group of people tried sneaking through the woods behind my parent’s house, the SUVs were replaced by Strykers equipped with 30MM cannons and a non-lethal crowd-control weapon that used some sort of microwave or electrical beam that made the target’s skin feel like it was on fire. In a gesture that got me choked up, security in the two-mile perimeter around my parent’s house was provided by the 10Th Infantry Division, my old outfit. Not all the soldiers assigned to the detail knew the real story about the Merry Band of Pirates, but they did all know I was a former Mountain soldier and they were all determined not to take any shit from crazies. After a fireteam subdued one group of nutcase trespassers with, how about I call it ‘persuasive non-lethal force’, things quieted down. I guess TV images of people being carried out of the woods on stretchers tended to discourage all but the most hard-core looney tunes.

  Two days after I got home, I drove into the next town to get some groceries for dinner. Technically, I did not drive, what I did was request to go into town, then wait for the security detail to clear that idea with their superiors. Then they drove, with me sitting in the back seat of a black SUV between two guys who had not been trained in the art of conversation. I was not a prisoner, no way. I could not go anywhere without asking permission, and I had to be escorted any time I left my parents’ property, and I was not allowed to use a zPhone so the government could listen to all my conversations, but I was not a prisoner. I know that because the security detail told me I was definitely not a prisoner. That was good, because before they told me, it sure felt like I was a prisoner.

  At the grocery store, a woman in the produce aisle looked up from squeezing the unripe tomatoes to glance at me and my handlers. She looked back at the tomatoes then her head snapped back to me, staring at my face, he eyes narrowing. I knew that look, she was trying to decide whether she recognized me. Being out of uniform helped a bit to make me anonymous, plus I was wearing an old baseball cap. However, it was hard to be inconspicuous with four guards in dark suits escorting me. We don’t see a whole lot of dark suits and ties in my part of Maine, so they really stuck out, plus they were all wearing earpieces with the curly cords hanging down into their collars. The security guys behind me tensed as the woman dropped her basket and strode toward me, with me waving the guys away. Did I recognize her? The population of our county is small, but a lot of people moved to rural areas when the cities emptied out after Columbus Day. She did not look familiar. I smiled at her anyway.

  She wasn’t smiling. “I saw you on TV,” she declared in an unfriendly tone, her face red. “You were on that alien ship.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I groaned to myself. The government had mostly kept the media away from me, other than two carefully scripted interviews at Wright-Pat. Senior officers like Simms, who were more trusted, had to do a lot of TV interviews, giving the official cover story. The cover story about the Merry Band of Pirates being passengers on a Thuranin ship for a training mission was running thin, most people at Wright-Pat knew the truth, and rumors were rampant on social media. The truth was out there and it would be revealed soon, the world’s governments could not keep such a big secret forever. The Keepers we brought back were being held somewhe
re, all I know is they were marched away from my dropship when I landed us at Wright-Pat. “I was aboard the ship, we were training for-”

  “For what?” She glared at me. “You aren’t doing anything up there! My boy went to that planet Paradise, and he is stuck there forever, and you people aren’t doing anything to bring him home!”

  Oh, shit. I couldn’t say we had been to Paradise, I couldn’t even tell her we had communication with that planet. The government had a cover story for that also. “Paradise is enemy territory controlled by the Ruhar and their allies, Ma’am,” I said softly. “We can’t go there. I’m sorry.”

  “The Thuranin brought you out there, and abandoned you?” She was wringing her hands in front of her chin with anguish, tears forming in her eyes.

  “Your son, what’s his name?”

  “Gary Dell. He is with the Third Infantry.”

  “I was with the Tenth Infantry,” I pointed to myself. “I’m sorry, I don’t know him. We left Paradise before the hamsters took it back. It was supposed to be a quick training mission, and,” I balled up my fists to show my own anger, “we never got back. We, the crew, all of us, have been with the Thuranin, because if there is any chance we can get back to Paradise, any chance at all, we don’t want to wait. We want to be out there, ready to go at any moment.”

  “The Thuranin are powerful, that’s what the government tells us. They can’t even get a message from Paradise?”

  “The ship up there is a star carrier, it’s basically a big truck, Ma’am-”

  “Mary. Mary Dell,” she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “Ms. Dell, the ship,” I pointed to the ceiling, “isn’t a warship. It’s just a space truck, it can’t go deep into hostile star systems or it would risk getting trapped, something about the gravity well,” I gave her a dopey smile. “The Ruhar are jamming signals from the planet, the Kristang who are trapped there with our people can’t get a message out either. All we know is, the Ruhar have set aside an area of Paradise for humans, and our people there are growing their own food.”

  “You were there? On Paradise?”

  “I landed in the second wave,” I nodded. “Ms. Dell, I wish I knew your son Gary, he must have been-”

  She sobbed and her knees slumped and I caught her, holding her and patting her back. My eyes welled up with tears too, and we stood there in the produce aisle, two strangers, comforting each other. It sucked that I couldn’t tell her the truth, but maybe it was a blessing also. Would she prefer to hear that we had the means to bring her son home, but we couldn’t risk exposing our secret? If I had a loved one on Paradise, I would hate to hear that. Better to think we couldn’t do it, than that we wouldn’t do it.

  That night, I felt something hard and flat under my pillow when I went to bed. It was a zPhone, with a text message flashing ‘put in the earpiece’. So, I took the tiny earpiece that was taped to it, and it wriggled into my ear.

  “How you doing up there, Skippy?” I whispered with my head under a pillow.

  “Ah, Ok, Joe. You can talk safely now, I disabled the microphones in your bedroom.”

  “The feds planted bugs in my old room?”

  “All over the house, actually. Plus some in the trees outside, in your parents’ cars, all over. There are cameras and motion detectors covering the property and the adjacent homes.”

  “Goddammit, they are listening to everything we say, even my parents?”

  “They think they are listening, but a beer can I know hacked into their comms immediately. Anything you or your family say that is sensitive, I intercept and replace with something boring. The feds never know they’re not hearing the real deal.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “Joe, I have some good news. That woman who confronted you in the grocery store today?”

  “It’s not her fault, Skippy. She’s right, we aren’t doing anything to bring our people home. I can’t tell her why, that’s what sucks.”

  “If this helps, I searched through the Ruhar database about humans on Paradise. Gary Dell has left the Third Division, he is a civilian now. He’s a farmer and part-owner of a boat that brings cargo up and down a river to the seacoast. Compared to most guys on Paradise, he is doing reasonably well, although if Mary Dell is hoping for grandchildren she will be quite disappointed. Gary is not married and I don’t have any record of a steady relationship with a woman.”

  “There are not a lot of women on Paradise, Skippy. I wish Gary the best of luck. Thanks, that was good to hear. It would really suck if her son was dead out there.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  The tone of his voice didn’t sound like the usual asshole. “You sound bummed out. What’s wrong?”

  “Ah, I started a business venture, and now it looks like a failure right from the start.”

  “Uh, what? You started a business? How did you start a business? You’re a beer can.”

  “Oh, I have lawyers handling everything for me. The business is registered under the name Magnus Skippton, in the Cayman Islands. Hey! Get it? Magnus Skippton? Magnificent Skippy?”

  “Yeah, that’s very clever. Pray tell, why did you start a business?”

  “I’m trying to go legit, because you whined so much about me stealing money from mob-controlled banks and ripping off casinos.”

  “Allegedly. Allegedly doing those things, remember?” I lifted the pillow to make sure no one was watching me and listening.

  “Oh, Yeah. Totally. Hee hee, as if I would leave any evidence behind.”

  “What was this business?” I had no idea what kind of business a beer can would find interesting.

  “The first rule of business is, you find a need and fill it, right? Aboard the Dutchman, I noticed people, especially women, used lots of lip balms like Chapstick, because the air inside dropships and spacesuits is dry. That Ranger Lauren Poole was unhappy when she ran out of the cherry flavor, she only brought enough for six months but our mission lasted you know, a lot longer.”

  “Your business isn’t, um, selling Chapsticks aboard the ship, is it?” There were only a couple people acting as a skeleton crew, although I heard UNEF Command wanted to start sending technicians and scientists up there to restock supplies and make repairs ASAP.

  “No. Although, hmm, let me make a note of that for later. Yeah! I could use one of the cargo bays as Skippy’s Emporium, or Skippymart! I could sell all kinds of stuff people need, like ammo, spare parts for weapons, hmmm. That is a great ide-”

  “No, that is a terrible idea. What is this business you had?”

  “Have, Joe. It’s not dead yet. I bought a company that makes lip balms and-”

  “Where did you get the money to buy a company- Oh, forget it. I don’t want to know.”

  “Probably a good idea. So, I bought this business, and I thought, hey there are lots of lip balms on the market, right? Mine need to be different.”

  “I am afraid to ask, but, different how?”

  “The flavors, Joe. Everybody has cherry, and mint and other boring flavors like that.”

  “And you made which flavors? Like, banana?”

  “No. I should have tried banana. Monkeys do love bananas.”

  “We do.”

  “Instead, I made stuff like garlic, onion, and jalapeno-cheddar flavors.”

  Under the pillow, I had to put a hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter. “You, uh, didn’t foresee any problems with those flavors?”

  “No! People love those flavors for stuff like nachos, and pizza. Humans love nachos and pizza. Now I have a warehouse full of Chapsticks I can’t sell. Stupid monkeys.”

  “Clearly the whole thing is the fault of monkeys. Sometimes flavors can be, like, contextual?” I wasn’t sure if that was the right word. “I mean, onions are good on pizza and burgers, but not in ice cream, you know?”

  “Great. Now you tell me. Well, I am shipping the cabbage flavor ones to Eastern Europe, hopefully I can sell them there. Unless you have a better idea.�
�

  “Cabbage flavor? Skippy, I think your only hope is if somehow those flavors become some ironic cool thing with hipsters.”

  “How would I do that?”

  “I’m not an ironic hipster, so, um, I’d have to guess. Make them think your stuff is so uncool that it’s cool. Try to start a trend on Facebook or something?”

  “Oooooh, yeah! I can use all the psychobabble crap I learned about how to manipulate, I mean, understand monkeys.”

  “Riiiiiiight. Because manipulating people would be bad.”

  “Really? I mean, um, yes. Of course.”

  “Well,” this time I stifled a yawn. “Good luck with that, Skippy. I had a long day, I’m gonna get some rack time. Talk with you in the morning?”

  “Sure thing, Joe. I’ll be busy doing research about marketing up here. Hey, better hide that zPhone so the prison guards don’t see it.”

  The next morning, I was washing up breakfast dishes after my parents had gone to work, when I felt a vibration from my zPhone. Before taking it out of a pocket, I went down the steps into the basement, then looked at the screen. There was a text message from Adams. Can you talk?

  Could I talk? Hell yes! My hand holding the phone was shaking, it surprised me how eager I was to talk with her, and how nervous I was about it. “Skippy, am I clear to talk with Adams?”

  “Go ahead, Joe. There are three listening devices planted in the basement, but I’ve got you covered.”