SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Read online

  That wasn't reassuring. Without Skippy controlling the data feeds, the bridge and CIC displays didn't contain the helpful color coding designation for Thuranin, Maxohlx, Jeraptha, Kristang, Ruhar and unknown ships. No matter in this case, there was absolutely nothing on the scopes within a quarter lightyear. We'd deliberately jumped from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere, and we'd only jumped the distance from Earth's Sun to Jupiter, a small test for a first jump. If there had been anything dangerous in the area, Skippy would have told us, he was unhappy, not suicidal.

  We had jumped only a short distance, and still missed the mark by over half a million kilometers. No way could we jump anywhere near a planet with that lousy accuracy, we needed to get better, a lot better, or the Dutchman would be spending a lot of time crawling through normal space. And we didn't have the time, or fuel, for that. We also had a limited supply of fixings for critical cheeseburgers in the galley. Our first jump wasn't an acceptable effort; the crew knew it. "The ship didn't explode," I observed, "we didn't break the jump drive, and we didn't emerge in the middle of a planet, or next to a Thuranin battlegroup. Good enough for a first jump. We'll debrief tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Skippy, can you program the next jump? We need to get moving."

  "Whoa, whoa, slow down, monkeys. Have you analyzed the jump drive system? Are the coils calibrated and ready for another jump?"

  "Pilot?" I asked. The drive charge indicator on the bottom of the main display read 87%. Good for several regular jumps, or one really long jump, with the magical modifications Skippy had made to the Thuranin's crappy jump drive.

  "It looks like it is Ok?" Desai answered slowly.

  "It looks like it's Ok?" Skippy scoffed. "Ok? Such a precise term, I am completely impressed by your professionalism. Consider that if it's not 'Ok', as you say, another jump could rupture spacetime and destroy the aft part of the ship, leaving us stranded here in interstellar space. Forever. By 'us', I mean me, because you air breathers will be out of luck, once the backup power fails. Yup, I'll be here, alone, surrounded by the dry, dusty corpses of monkeys. My only hope then will be that, in four billion years, the collision of the Andromeda galaxy with the Milky Way will throw some solar system's orbit to intersect with wherever I'm drifting at the time. Considering that, I'll ask again; and I'll speak slowly this time. Is the jump drive ready for another jump?"

  "You made your point, Skippy." I said with a touch of anger, I didn't appreciate him bullying Desai. "How about this, Mister Smartass; you need to show us how to analyze the status of the jump drive. We're not doing that now, unless you want another delay. Is the jump drive ready?

  "Of course it is. You never let me have any fun."

  "You can find some type of fun that doesn't involve talking about the ship exploding. Program the autopilot for another jump, and let's get moving. Also, put together a briefing for us tomorrow, about what we did wrong, and right, with that last jump."

  "Aye, aye, Captain. You will be dazzled by the brilliance of my PowerPoint slides."

  When we left the now-dormant wormhole near Earth, Skippy had programmed a course to bring us to an abandoned Kristang space station. The Kristang had built a space station in orbit around the innermost planet of a red dwarf star, not because the planet or the star were in any way interesting. What was interesting were the shattered remains of an Elder starship in orbit around the innermost planet, a treasure trove well worth the expense of the Kristang building and maintaining a space station to establish a permanent presence there. Sometime around three hundred years ago, there had been a fight between the Kristang there, or a rival clan had raided the station, because a major battle had damaged the station badly enough for the place to be abandoned ever since.

  The abandoned space station was both the closest, and easiest, site for us to investigate. Closest, because of the roundabout journey we had to take through multiple wormholes, still meant we wouldn't reach the first site for thirty eight days. Thirty eight dull, boring days cruising through isolated interstellar space, jumping, recharging engines, jumping again. And occasionally transiting wormholes.

  The first two weeks after leaving Earth behind were reasonably stimulating, with our new merry band of pirates getting used to being in space, being aboard a starship, being aboard a captured alien starship. Setting up a training routine kept people interested, which was critical for keeping special forces types sharp and focused. The first two weeks included a first-time jump for most of the crew, their first wormhole transit, a lot of first things. Firsts were good, firsts were interesting, firsts held people's attention and kept them from getting bored.

  Then the tedium set in. Even the pilots, the only people aboard who needed to actually do anything other than eat, exercise and sleep, got bored with their regular duties. Mostly the pilot duty consisted of waiting for jump engines to recharge, Skippy to program a jump into the autopilot, and the chief pilot on duty pressing a button. There was always at least a little tension following a jump, when the Dutchman's sensor net determined whether there were other ships around. The crew on duty in the CIC scanned the sensors, the two pilots had fingers poised next to buttons for triggering a preprogrammed emergency jump away. Then, when nothing was detected, after five minutes the All Clear signal was given, and everyone went back to the tedium of routine.

  The pilots spent most of their time, unless they were sleeping, but often including while eating and running on a treadmill in the gym, learning how to fly first our Thuranin star carrier, then our beat-up Kristang frigate and finally Thuranin dropships. One of our new pilots, a hotshot French flyboy who came to the Dutchman from serving as a test pilot for the Rafael fighter, told me the training was beyond tough, it was crushing, impossible. And he was one of Desai's best students. I told him that Captain Desai had flown a dropship, then a frigate then a star carrier, with zero training, in combat. The guy did have a point, I talked to Desai and Skippy about adjusting the tempo of the flight training. After the first two weeks, the new pilots adjusted to drinking from the fire hose. Desai started sleeping more than four hours a night.

  Boredom was bad for regular people. Boredom for gung-ho elite SpecOps people could be deadly. The third week of our pleasure cruise, two Indian paratroopers suffered broken bones in a training accident. Thanks to Doctor Skippy's magical use of Thuranin medical technology, their broken bones would heal fully in two weeks, unfortunately they couldn't resume normal training until they were fully healed. When we arrived at our first target, those two paratroopers would be unable to join their fellows in any action, they'd either be staying aboard the Dutchman, or operating combots.

  I went to the ship's sickbay, nobody wanted to call it an 'infirmary', as that implied a special forces soldier could be infirm. Which was unsat. The two mildly chagrined paratroopers were sitting on the too-small Thuranin beds, not actually beds, they were some sort of form-fitting gel. Both already had their broken legs encased in hard sleeves, with thin tubes connected to the beds. The tubes provided nutrients, and nano machines that knitted the bones and tissues back together, all controlled by Dr. Skippy the mad scientist. Both of the injured men were eager to get mobile as soon as possible, of course, I'd already talked to Skippy to assure he didn't release them from sickbay until they weren't likely to further injure themselves by overdoing their rehab exercises. Sickbay was crowded, with me, the two injured men, and six scientists, who were trying to understand the Thuranin technology Skippy was using.

  "Are you learning how all this equipment works?" I asked the doctors.

  "No!" Said Skippy before any of the doctors could reply. "That would be a huge waste of time, I've told you that. You don't need clumsy monkeys poking around your insides with crude knives, when Doctor Skippy can fix everyone up with medical magic. Real medicine, not the idiot guesswork you monkeys use."

  "Yes,” I said, irritated at having this conversation again. “You have told me that, and I've told you that if, or I should say when, you find the Collective and
leave us, our own doctors need to be able to use this equipment to care for the crew."

  "Never going to happen."

  "That is unsat-"

  "For crying out loud, stop flapping your jaws for a minute and listen to me, you might learn something. I doubt it, but miracles do happen." Skippy sounded peeved, more than usual. "This equipment relies entirely on nanoscale technology. I'm able to control the nano machines by the picosecond, and they can move individual atoms around to assemble, or disassemble, molecules as needed. The equipment was designed to be controlled by Thuranin cybernetics, through their medical AI. It's a particularly stupid AI, even you may be able to beat it at chess, wait, what am I saying? No, that's crazy talk, don't know what I was thinking. It's a limited AI, and the system architecture doesn't have the capacity for me to load anything useful into it. It barely has the memory to store details of human anatomy and physiology. Real physiology, not the ignorant guesses you monkeys have in your medical journals. Without me controlling and coordinating the nano machines, the whole system doesn't work. Since your doctors don't have cybernetics, and Thuranin cybernetics can't be adapted to humans, there is no way you monkeys can use any of this equipment by yourselves."

  "You done?"

  "Barely got started, but that's enough explanation for you."

  "Fine. You are, arguably, the most intelligent being in the galaxy right now. That we know of, right?"

  "I am by far the most intelligent being in the galaxy. It's about time you gave me the respect-"

  "Since you are so incredibly smart, then you should be able to figure something out, for us to have even some limited sort of control of this medical equipment, at least enough for basic medical care. Consider it a challenge, Skippy."

  "A challenge? Building an escalator to the center of the galaxy would be a challenge. Teaching monkeys to use real technology? Impossible." He complained.

  "Impress me, Skippy." I knew he couldn't resist that. "I'll give you mad props if you can do that."

  "Great. Fine. You want the impossible. What am I supposed to do, build a really, really tiny pair of tweezers, so you can move molecules around by hand? Stupid monkeys. Damn it, I hate my life. I should have stayed on a dusty shelf in that warehouse."

  "Bye, Skippy, have fun." I left him grumbling behind me.

  When I was done in sickbay, including listening to the two paratroopers apologize for having rendered themselves temporarily combat ineffective, and me assuring them that accidents happen, I hurried to the galley for dinner. Tonight's meal was meatloaf or salmon, and I was eager to get there before all the meatloaf was gone.

  There was enough meatloaf, what there wasn't much of was lively conversation. Everyone was beginning to get bored already with the routine, the time and vast distances we had to travel had sunk in to people's minds, and the crew were subdued. That, and the training accident had put a damper on morale.

  "Ugh, this room is totally dead. Why all the gloomy faces?" Skippy's annoying voice came out of the speaker in the ceiling.

  "It's been a tough week, Skippy," I grumbled while staring at my plate. The meatloaf had gotten slightly cold, serves me right for showing up late for dinner, and then spending too much time chatting instead of eating. It was Ok, it had some strange spice in it that I was trying to figure- nutmeg. Yes, nutmeg. Not a lot of it, but who puts nutmeg in meatloaf? Looking across the table at Lt Hendrick's salmon in a maple and ginger glaze, I was beginning to regret my dinner choice. Tonight's dinner had been cooked by our US special forces teams, the Rangers and SEALs. "And we've been cruising in interstellar space, in total darkness, with nothing to look at. We could all use a change of scenery." Skippy had a point, though, I needed to do something to boost crew morale. Maybe I should assign someone to be the ship's morale officer. One of the PowerPoint decks, that I was supposed to study, probably had some advice about maintaining unit morale. How did a crew keep up morale on a nuclear missile submarine? Those boomers were submerged and silent for months at a time. Like us, they didn't have anything to look at. Unlike them, we had windows.

  "I know what your problem is, Colonel Joe," Skippy announced, "you need to get laid. Hey, Major Tammy, you should mate with Joe."

  "Skippy!" I almost choked on meatloaf, and Major Simms, who had just taken a sip of water, spewed it across the table in front of her. The soldier seated next to her had to pat her on the back, to keep her from choking.

  "What? You're a male, she's a female, and for a monkey, you don't smell too bad-"

  "Stop it!" I shouted. Everyone in the galley was staring at me.

  "Hey, you know you need some sweet lovin' soon, Joe. Major Tammy, you should have seen the raging boner he had in the shower this morning-"

  Now Simms had gone from shocked to amused, her shoulders shook as she tried to suppress a laugh. Everyone was now trying not to look at me, and laughing.

  Putting my head in my hands, I banged my forehead on the table. "Skippy, this is private stuff. You don't talk about it in public. I am Major Simms' commanding officer."

  "What, because you're a colonel, you can't bang anyone in your command? Like that matters way out here. Well, you could mate with one of the science team. This is good timing, because most the women are ovulating this week, so they're extra horny-"

  I saw all the women's faces register shock. "Skippy! Shut! The! Hell! Up!" I shouted.

  "Man, talk about ungrateful. I'm trying to get you laid, you're sure not doing well on your own. Don't ask me to be your wingman again."

  "I didn't ask! And you're a wing nut, not a wingman." In the future, maybe I needed to consider taking all my meals in my cabin or my office. "Major Simms, I apologize-"

  She shook her head, still trying not to laugh. "Colonel, we all know Skippy by now, no need to apologize for him."

  "Thank you. Everyone, I'd appreciate it if this stayed between us," meaning the roughly twenty people in the galley. "And since I know that's not going to happen," I added honestly, knowing this was way too juicy not to quickly spread throughout the ship, "keep in mind Skippy said it, I didn't." Dammit, after that I was never able to look at Major Simms without wondering, you know, what she'd be like in bed.

  I didn't need any more distractions.

  Jump, recharge, jump again. It was monotonous, and we had a long way to go to our first target. When we left Earth to find Skippy's magical Elder radio, or whatever the hell it really is, we still had the same problem that made us go to Earth in the first place. When we raided the Kristang asteroid research base, we'd found an Elder communications node, the thing Skippy thought should allow him to contact the Collective. It hadn't. The stupid thing didn't work, or Skippy didn't know how to make it work, or it worked fine but there was no Collective to talk to, or it worked, Skippy had contacted the Collective, and they'd decided he is an asshole and ignored him. I was betting on that last one.

  Since the first comm node didn't satisfy Skippy, he had wanted to check out the two other sites he knew for certain had intact Elder comm nodes. The two other sites, I had told him even before we went to Earth, were impossible for us to raid, forget about it, not going to happen. The first site was on a heavily populated Thuranin planet. The second was nine and a half thousand lightyears from Earth, at an installation controlled by a species with technology superior to the Thuranin. Neither site was remotely possible for us to raid, even with the Dutchman now crewed by bad-ass special forces. Maybe, maybe, by some combination of luck, Skippy magic and a random miracle, we might succeed in raiding one site. The odds were heavily in favor of us failing, our enemies discovering humans had stolen a Thuranin starship, and Earth becoming the focus of some very pissed off aliens. That was not an optimal mission outcome.

  Before we departed Earth, we, meaning mostly me, had convinced Skippy to expand his search, beyond places confirmed to have his precious comm node, to places that were likely to have a comm node. Sites that were known to have a substantial collection of Elder artifacts, even though the Thuranin da
ta base Skippy downloaded didn't list a comm node in the inventory, could very possibly have a comm node; Skippy said that before the Elders ascended or beamed up or whatever the hell they'd done, comm nodes were scattered all over the galaxy. Skippy had grumbled about trying to predict the location of comm nodes being a waste of time, and that such an analysis would take forever, in this case 'forever' took him seven minutes and twelve seconds in meatsack time. After completing his analysis, he had admitted that there were two very promising sites within three thousand lightyears of Earth, that were much easier and safer to approach, investigate, and if needed, raid.

  The first site was another Kristang research base, the space station that had been abandoned, after a fight between two or more Kristang factions left it damaged beyond repair. According to the data Skippy had access to, the space station had held a variety of low-value Elder artifact and various devices and doodads from higher species that the Kristang there had been trying to reverse engineer for their clan, without much success. What Skippy hoped was the Dutchman’s sensors could scan the debris field around the station, and our merry band of pirates could board it to see if one of his magic radios were there. Since the wormhole shift, that star system had been ignored by the Kristang, and Skippy thought we wouldn’t find anyone there. He thought that, anyway.

  The second site was going to be a bit tougher for us to investigate, tough enough that I hoped to find an alternative. The good news is that it was a known Elder site that had been located by the Maxohlx themselves, but barely explored by anyone. It was a large site, it had been a substantial and busy facility back when the Elders were using it, so Skippy was highly confident we found find a communications node, multiple communications node, there. The bad news was very bad. First, it was a long distance from Earth, a journey of four months to get there from our current position. The journey was longer than it strictly needed to be, because we had to avoid several wormhole clusters that were heavily used by the Maxohlx. The first part of the bad news was merely inconvenient. The second part of the bad news was dangerous, extremely dangerous. When the Maxohlx found the Elder site, they had not been looking for nice toys like communications nodes. They had been looking for weapons, Elder weapons. Devices the Elders may not have built as weapons, devices that could be used for incredible destructive effect. Devices, that, according to Skippy, could make stars explode. And exploding a star was a simple trick, compared to some of the technology the Elders routinely used.