Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4) Read online

  I looked up from my tablet, where I had been reading a report that, shockingly, was actually somewhat interesting. “Doctor Rose, thank you, please sit down.”

  She chose the chair closest to the door. “Please, Colonel, call me Sarah.”

  “Uh,” she was not military, so technically I could call her by her first name without breaking protocol. “Ok, Sarah. We haven’t had a chance to talk much since you came aboard.”

  “We have been busy,” she replied with a smile. “Especially you. I envy that you were able to land on Paradise, and especially on Jumbo. As a geologist, I would love to explore a heavy gravity planet.”

  I made a sour face. “If you enjoyed being on Jumbo, you would have been the only one.”

  “I meant the opportunity for science,” she explained, reminding me that she was on the ship’s science team. “And,” she grinned again, “when we get home, I would like to be able to say I walked on another planet.”

  “It’s not as dramatic as when the astronauts landed on the moon,” I assured her. “What do you think of the Merry Band of Pirates so far?”

  “They are, I think the military term is ‘high speed’?”

  I nodded ruefully. “I keep having to remind myself that, if it weren’t for Skippy, there is no way I would have qualified to be aboard this ship.”

  “When we first heard about Skippy, all we knew was bits and pieces of information; the cover story was that he was the AI for the Thuranin ship. For the first day, most of us thought ‘Skippy’ was an acronym for something.”

  “An acronym?” That surprised me. “What did you think ‘S-k-i-p-p-y’ meant?”

  “We had a pool about it going in the office. One of the more inventive guesses was ‘S-C-I-P-P-I, for Super Computing Intelligent Planetary Preservation Insurance.” We both laughed at that. “We knew he was an AI, and he was involved in saving our planet.”

  “Now that you have had a chance to know Skippy, you understand the ‘S’ in the acronym must be for ‘Shithead’.”

  “Hey!” Skippy’s voice boomed out of the ceiling speaker. “I heard that, you miserable baboon. Hmm, an acronym for my name, huh? It would have to include ‘awesomeness’ in there somewhere.”

  “There is no ‘A’ in Skippy,” I pointed out.

  “There is no ‘A’ anywhere in your school grades either, Joe, yet here you are in command of a starship. Thus proving that life is not only not fair, it also makes no sense at all.”

  “Thank you, Skippy. How about you go away and think up an acronym appropriate for your awesomeness, while I talk with Dr. Rose for a while?”

  “Gotcha,” he said, and the speaker made the faint clicking sound to indicate it was powered down.

  “Your message said you needed to speak with me?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes,” I put the tablet face down on the table and gave her my full attention, even pressing the button to close my office door so we would have privacy. “I need your expertise.”

  “In geology?” She asked, surprised. The Flying Dutchman was nowhere near any planet. The nearest rocky object was probably a rogue asteroid that orbited far from a star system, three lightyears away. “Out here?”

  “No,” I smiled in what I hoped was a friendly manner. “Your other specialty.”

  “Organic chemistry?” She asked uncertainly.

  “Your other other specialty, Dr. Rose.” I winked at her. “You know what I mean.”

  “Oh, fudge,” she frowned, then gave me a wry smile. “Did Skippy tell you?”

  “No, I figured it out on my own.”

  “Amazingly,” Skippy’s voice came from the ceiling speaker, “that is true. I wouldn’t count on it happening again, Joe used up all his brain power on that one.”

  “CIA?” I asked.

  She sighed. “There is no point in not telling you, so, yes. Colonel, can I ask when you learned about my, other career?”

  “I forget when exactly, it was before you came aboard.”

  “You knew the Agency planted me in your crew, and you approved me anyway?”

  “Yes. My thinking was, if not you, it would be someone else. The CIA, or NSA or DIA or somebody else, would try to slip an agent aboard. With you as part of the science team, the intel agencies would be satisfied and leave me alone. And Skippy told me you actually are a respected geologist. And you are somewhat of an expert in chemistry?”

  “Does Friedlander know?”

  “Not that I know of, and I won’t reveal your secret. Mr. Chotek also does not know yet. Although, it is going to be tough to explain why I will be including you in strategy meetings.”

  “I will tell Dr. Friedlander,” she said unhappily.

  “And I will inform Count Choc- Mr. Chotek. Before we start, how did you become a spy?”

  “We don’t call ourselves ‘spies’. We prefer ‘intelligence officer’. The Agency recruited me as an undergrad; they offered to pay for my graduate school. Being a geologist with a minor in chemistry, and specializing in petroleum geology, gets me into a lot of trouble spots around the world.” She bit her lip. “Around Earth. Earth isn’t the only ‘world’ any longer. Why do you need my, um, other expertise?”

  “Have you heard about our latest problem?” I almost rolled my eyes. With the Merry Band of Pirates, there was always a freakin’ problem. Skippy thought the official motto of the Merry Band of Pirates should be ‘Trust the Awesomeness’. Based on our track record, I thought a more accurate motto would be ‘Lurching from One Crisis to Another’.

  I know, as mottos go, it’s not inspiring.

  “All I heard was something about the Ruhar might be sending a ship to Earth?” Her wide-open eyes reflected her surprise. “I heard a rumor a few minutes before you called me. Why would the Ruhar send a ship to Earth?” She asked, baffled.

  “Because the Kristang are paying them to.”

  “Paying? Unbelievable,” she slumped in her chair. “I thought I left messy politics behind when we left Earth. This is worse than anything I’ve heard of in a long time. And, Colonel, I have dealt with some very unsavory characters in my career, especially when it involves the oil business. Please, explain why the Ruhar would agree to transport their mortal enemies all the way to Earth.”

  “Because the Fire Dragon clan of the Kristang will give the Ruhar a planet, or access to a wormhole, or something valuable, in exchange for the Ruhar transporting two Fire Dragons to Earth, and bringing back the senior White Wind leaders.” I explained the background briefly, and gave her access to a recording of the staff meeting that she could listen to later.

  “Bringing back White Wind leaders back from Earth is worth trading away an entire planet?” She asked incredulously.

  I nodded. “Or a wormhole. Skippy thinks a planet is more likely, although some wormholes are near only one habitable planet, so it can be sort of the same thing. I know we think of planets as something you can’t put a price on, but we humans haven’t been fighting a war for thousands of generations, and we don’t have multiple planets. Planets change hands regularly, like Paradise has done. The Kristang were there first, until the Ruhar fleet showed up and took it away from them. Then the Kristang muscled their way back in, and brought us there to handle the evac operation. Now the hamsters are back in charge of Paradise, and for the sake of UNEF, I hope the hamsters keep the place. What we’re up against here is really Kristang inter-clan politics. The Fire Dragons think their best hope to survive the next Kristang civil war, is to absorb the assets of the White Wind clan.”

  “I understand that,” Sarah agreed. “I read the report of your first mission-”

  “Second mission,” I corrected her. “The first mission of the Merry Band of Pirates captured this ship,” I pointed at the deck.

  “Second. Yes. I meant your first mission officially sanctioned by UNEF Command,” she held up her hands, showing she meant no offense. “You explained why the Fire Dragons were paying the Thuranin to send a long-range ship to Earth. That made sense. But, i
t is worth an entire planet?”

  “The Fire Dragons thinks so. If a civil war goes badly for them, they could lose several planets, so losing only one could be a bargain. And it doesn’t have to be a super nice planet, it could be just some marginally habitable place the Ruhar could use as a forward staging base.”

  “What I do not understand is why the Ruhar would want to do anything to help the Kristang avoid a civil war. Having their enemy fighting among themselves would seem like a major benefit to the Ruhar.”

  “It will be. The Ruhar have been around long enough to know a Kristang civil war is inevitable; all the Fire Dragons are hoping for is a delay while they build up their strength. The Ruhar don’t mind a minor delay in the timing of a civil war, if they can get something valuable in return.”

  “Whew,” she ran a hand slowly through her hair. “And here I was, thinking politics in the ‘Stans was complicated.”

  “Stans?” I asked.

  “Former Soviet republics. Kazakstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, the whole chaotic gaggle of them.”

  “Oh,” I laughed. “When I was on Paradise, our sector was called ‘Buttscratchistan’.”

  “That would be a good nickname for a lot of places I’ve had the misfortune of living in,” she made an unpleasant face. “Colonel, I now understand the situation. What do you need from me?”

  “I need ideas for a black op. The blackest, most covert operation in history. We have to stop a Ruhar ship, actually a Jeraptha ship, from traveling to Earth, in a way such that the Ruhar don’t know we stopped them. Or that we were involved at all. Or that there is any reason to think Earth is in any way interesting or worth the attention of the Ruhar, or anyone else. To be more specific,” I leaned back my chair and stared at the ceiling, “we have to prevent the Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth, because once a ship is on its way, we couldn’t stop it without the Jeraptha figuring there is something very suspicious connected to Earth. And, again, we have to prevent the Ruhar from sending a ship, in a way that they don’t know we, or anyone, did anything to stop them.”

  “Whoa,” she said very slowly, eye wide. “That’s a Level Three. Pitch Black.”

  “Level Three?” I asked, curious.

  “Colonel, this is my own personal way of thinking about things; it’s not official Agency terminology. Just a way of thinking I picked up during training.”

  “Understood. I’d like to hear it anyway.”

  “Where do I start? Level One is a black op where the enemy does not know an operation is being conducted, until it is underway and too late for the enemy to react in time to stop it. Like when the CIA got Bin Laden, if you remember back that far. Bin Laden had no idea we had any clue where he was, until SEAL Team Six’s helicopters landed literally in his front yard. We kept the subject entirely in the dark, until it was too late.”

  “Ok, yeah, I can see that. That kind of Opsec is good enough on Earth, but not for us out here. It wouldn’t do us any good for the Kristang, or the Ruhar, to find out what we’re doing when the op is underway, or even afterward.”

  “Right. So, Level Two is a black op where you put the blame on someone else.”

  “Like how?”

  She let out a breath. “Let’s say we wanted to conduct an operation against North Korea, but we arrange it so the North Koreans think the Chinese did it.”

  “That sounds dangerous, if there is blowback,” I didn’t like the idea.

  “It is dangerous, because the Chinese know they didn’t do it, so they’ll be pissed at us. You could, uh, I’m speaking theoretically here,” she said with an arched eyebrow.

  “Of course,” I said with amusement.

  “You could arrange the op so that if the Chinese dug into the details, they would be led to think the Russians were behind the whole thing. In fact, it might have been possible-”

  “Might? I understand,” I said with a wink.

  “That inside the Russian government, clues point to either a rogue FSB operation, or a Russian Army intel unit the FSB didn’t have control of.”

  “Wow.”

  “Theoretically.”

  “Of course. Yeah, sounds good in theory. Sounds kind of dangerous, for us to be doing out here.”

  “Yes, but Colonel, we have a major, major advantage.”

  “We do?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Out here, no one knows humans are players.” She let that sink in. “The Kristang, the Ruhar, even the Thuranin and up the chain, none of them have any idea that humans are flying around in a pirate ship. It’s like,” she stared at the ceiling for a moment. “It’s like, if someone sets off a nuclear test in the South Atlantic. Suspicion would fall on the usual suspects; America, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, maybe North Korea. If those countries were ruled out, you might start looking at a secondary list of countries such as South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, even Japan. But no one would suspect the nuke was an eighth grade science project by a group of kids in Baltimore. The idea of humans being involved in a covert operation is the last thing any other species would consider. We’re not on their threat board.”

  “So far.”

  “So far,” she agreed.

  “And we need to keep it that way, But you’re right,” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “Unless we really screw up, the last thing any other species would think of is us lowly humans being involved. This is a case where being primitive monkeys works for us. Ok, since no one would think of blaming us, the aliens will do the work for us of finding someone else to blame. This is going to be tricky,” I mused, “but we can work with that. What else have you got?”

  “Colonel, one of my instructors at Langley talked about the theoretically perfect black operation, he called it ‘Pitch Black’,” she said with an admiring smile. “You’ve already done that.”

  “I did? How? When was that?”

  “Colonel, you destroyed a Kristang battlegroup, and you got the Ruhar to station a battlegroup at Paradise, and no one knows an op was even conducted. That is awesome!” She beamed with admiration. “That is the ultimate! The Ruhar think that Elder power tap, and the pair of comm nodes, were the genuine article. It’s like running the perfect con,” she was bubbling with enthusiasm. “Even after you’ve taken the mark’s money, they never realize they were conned. Nothing is better than that.”

  “You’re a con man, now?” I grinned. “I thought you were a, what’s the right term? Intelligence officer?”

  She held out a hand and waggled it side to side. “Sometimes there’s a fine line.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said sarcastically. “In case you were wondering, talking about a con game is not encouraging me to trust you.”

  “I will work on that. It’s not like I can keep secrets from Mister Skippy anyway.”

  “True dat,” I laughed. “All right. So, tell me, how do we make these principles of black operations work for us? We need to prevent the Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth. In a way that they never know we were involved. Ideally, in a way that the Ruhar do not even know preventing a mission to Earth was the goal of the operation. We have to, I don’t know, make the Ruhar not want to send a ship to Earth?”

  “That is asking a lot.” She thought for a minute, while I did the same. “Colonel, I need time to think about this. This is,” she looked at the ceiling and blew her hair out of her eyes, “almost impossible.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sarah Rose needed time to think and so did I, which meant I needed a change of scenery; sitting in my office wasn’t inspiring any creative thoughts. So, I decided to take a dropship up to the relay station and check it out, part of the science team was going aboard and there was plenty of room for me to tag along.

  Skippy had another idea.

  “Oh boy,” Skippy groaned. “Joe, before you go to the relay station, I have to tell you about a, um, I guess it is best described as an unexpected development.”

&n
bsp; I froze in place. “Unexpected is not good, Skippy.”

  “Ugh. You got that right. Ohhhh, this sucks.”

  “What is it, Skippy?” Damn it, I did not need any more problems to deal with.

  “You remember I created a submind to handle communications aboard the relay station, while we were vacationing on Paradise?”

  “I don’t remember it being a vacation, but sure, why? That submind worked great, right?”

  “Too great, Joe. Technically, from my point of view, it got totally screwed up, but you backwards cavemen would think this is a fantastic development. Uh, listen, what happened was the submind, even though I totally dumbed it down, was too big and sophisticated to fit in the crappy Thuranin computer aboard the station. After a while, it was going to become unstable, so I allowed it to adjust; to reprogram itself as needed.”

  “I’m not seeing a problem yet, Skippy.”

  “That’s because you haven’t heard the problem yet, meathead. The, uh, submind rewrote extensive sections of itself, and, um, it sort of became semi-sentient.”

  “Sentient? Like you?” I laughed. “Is there a little mini-Skippy over there?”

  “Noooooo,” Skippy drew the word out in disgust. “Not a mini –Skippy. For one, this submind has adopted a female persona. I named her Nagatha Christie.”

  “Nagatha Christie?” I burst out laughing. “Why do you call her NAG-atha?”

  “Take a guess, genius. Oh, she is constantly nagging me to death. She won’t let me have any fun at all. She’s always like,” he switched to a falsetto voice, “you should respect the crew and call them humans instead of monkeys. Or ‘Don’t scare the humans by faking that Reactor Three is about to explode’.” He switched back to his normal voice. “Crap, that blew something I’d been working on for a week. You’d think-”

  “You were going to fake a reactor overload?” I demanded incredulously.

  “Uh, no. No, of course not, heh, heh. Although, that would have been freakin’ hilarious.”