Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) Page 6

  Eventually, I steered the conversations around to a topic of great interest to me; whether each person would be willing to rejoin the crew when the Flying Dutchman went out again, whenever and for however long that was. It did not surprise me that most people, with various levels of regret, told me no.

  Doctor Friedlander turned me down, and I completely understood. He had been on two missions already, both of which lasted longer than anticipated, and he simply could not subject his wife to another extended absence. The past couple of months before we returned, she had begun to accept that her husband might be dead, and she was not the only spouse or family member who had assumed they would never see their beloved Pirate again.

  The entire science team decided against another trip aboard the ship, and they had a very good reason for not signing on to another mission. With Skippy now beginning to share technology, the science team would be most useful to humanity by remaining on Earth and applying the shared knowledge. I agreed with that idea and did not press anyone to sign up for another voyage.

  Other people had their own reasons. Lieutenant Commander Williams had also been on two missions, the last as leader of our SEALS team, and after a rocky start to our relationship, we had worked very well together. Williams would not be returning for two reasons, one professional and one personal. Professionally, the Navy wanted Williams to remain on Earth so he could train SEALS in lessons and tactics learned aboard the Dutchman. Personally, he could not leave his wife and family again. His wife had given birth to a baby girl while we were on Gingerbread. He felt the need to justify his decision. “Colonel,” none of the Pirates called me by my permanent Army rank, “this last time, all we had to do was verify the Thuranin weren’t sending another surveyor ship to Earth. I figured it would be a quick recon mission, two or three months tops. That’s what I told my wife.”

  “Williams, stop right there. I thought it would be a quick mission also, you don’t need to justify anything to me. You and your family have sacrificed enough, and the Navy needs you here for knowledge transfer. I get it. Really.”

  Of our SpecOps team leaders, only newly-promoted Lieutenant Colonel Smythe was able or willing to sign up for another mission. All the others would be staying on Earth so their home outfits could learn from their experience, and all of them sounded relieved about those orders to remain dirtside for a while. Smythe was divorced and an adrenaline junkie, and when we talked via zPhone, he was determined to do everything he could to prevent the UN from deciding to contact the Jeraptha and surrender. I warned him not to speak too loudly on that subject, or he could find himself sidelined. A long conversation with our former fearless leader Hans Chotek had cautioned me against speaking my mind about matters of policy.

  It surprised me that Skippy had bothered to smuggle a zPhone to Hans Chotek, but the beer can had warmed up to Count Chocula, or at least developed a grudging respect. Chotek told me the UNEF member states were in a panic about the Maxolhx sending ships to Earth, and he expected there would soon be a vote in the UN General Assembly about whether to contact the Jeraptha. With deep regret, he told me there was nothing he could do about it, he had lost his official position and had no influence, not even within the Austrian government. I guess when you are a career diplomat, starting a civil war that will likely kill millions of sentient beings is considered an unforgivable sin. There was no point asking if he was willing to sign up for another mission, no way would the UN trust him to keep me in check again. We chatted a bit, with him thanking me for saying good things about him and his judgment in my official report. In turn, he praised me for never giving up on finding a way to fix Skippy while we were trapped in the Roach Motel. “I have to say, when I heard you were planning a golf course on Gingerbread, I had doubts,” I told him honestly.

  “Colonel Bishop,” he yawned, I had forgotten that it was the middle of the night in Austria. “Do you know why I was planning to build a golf course there?”

  “Because,” I answered slowly, “you like golf?”

  “No,” he laughed. “I planned it because making plans to build something so mundane and frivolous as a golf course would signal to people that life on Gingerbread was going to be normal and recognizable, if we were to be trapped on that planet for a very long time. You do not plan a golf course unless you are confident about your prospects for survival.”

  “Huh. I hadn’t thought about that. That was… clever,” I used Skippy’s highest word of praise.

  “My hope was, somehow, we would never need to use those plans.”

  “We did anyway,” I pointed out. During the long months when dropships were flying around scouring the junkyard for parts Skippy could use to kludge together a working starship, half of the crew was on Gingerbread at any time. To avoid boredom, we had built a soccer field, a cricket ground, and a very rudimentary twelve-hole golf course. Technically, the course had twelve greens but we set it up so each green had multiple tees and approaches, giving us a back and forth thirty six holes that could be played. After my down months on Gingerbread, I was in good shape from racing around the soccer field, I still sucked at golf, and I still did not understand the inscrutable rules of cricket even after playing dozens of matches. “I’m glad we did, it gave us something to do. Kept our minds from worrying Skippy couldn’t fix the ship.”

  That conversation gave me a new level of respect for the guy, although I still thought of him as ‘Count Chocula’.

  One loss that really hurt, more than I expected, was Jennifer Simms. Our logistics officer, also newly-promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, told me that after two very long missions, she would not be returning to the Merry Band of Pirates. “I never expected any of this,” she explained even though I assured her no explanation was needed. “Colonel Bishop, I want to get married someday. I want to start a family. That won’t happen while I’m flying around the galaxy. The ship will be in good hands, we know now how to use the hydroponics to grow fresh food, and I worked out the logistics requirements to support the crew on an extended mission.”

  “You want to start a family, even with the Maxolhx sending two ships here?”

  “Yes Sir. Think of that as a big vote of confidence that, somehow, you, Skippy and a barrel of monkeys will think of something to keep the bad guys away from Earth.”

  Crap. If there wasn’t pressure on me before, there sure was after that conversation.

  Hearing that if I took the Dutchman out again, it might be with almost an entirely new crew, had me depressed. No, the important question was not when the Dutchman would be going out again, that was pretty much a guarantee. The important question was whether I would be going with the ship- No, that wasn’t right either. I could not imagine UNEF Command sending the Flying Dutchman on any sort of mission without Skippy, and despite that little shithead being untrustworthy, he would demand that I go with him. As I had been told at Wright-Pat, no way would UNEF Command give me another shot at commanding a mission, so the best I could hope for was to serve as an advisor to a new captain. What made it worse was the prospect that the next mission might be one I absolutely disagreed with, even though I had nothing to offer as a realistic or even far-fetched alternative.

  It never occurred to me that UNEF Command might be planning to send the ship out on a mission without me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The alarm on my zPhone woke me up at 0430, at the latitude of northern Maine the sun rose just after 0500 that time of year, and I wanted to be on the road before first light. My breakfast and lunch were in the fridge and all my other gear was in a duffel bag, so I stuffed the food in the duffel and quietly went out the back door, walking carefully around puddles so my boots would not squish on the soggy back lawn. It wasn’t quite drizzling and the droplets of water in the air sticking to my eyelashes were larger than typical fog, by the faint light shining through the woods from the McCarren’s house I could see the moisture in the air. Fifty three degrees was exactly what the weather forecast had predicted, it was going up to nearly s
eventy if the clouds burned off, which I wasn’t counting on. In northern Maine, when the weather forecast is wrong, it is always wrong in the crappy direction.

  I did not care.

  There was a light on in the trailer parked beside the barn, when I was in the kitchen I could see lights in the RV parked out front also. That didn’t worry me, Skippy had disabled the motion sensors and invisible lasers or whatever the security team used to keep track of me. In the wee hours of the morning and in the crappy weather, no one expected me to be out of bed, because sleeping is what normal people do. The security team assured me they were for my protection and not because the government didn’t trust me, and I figured they truly were there partly to keep nutcases away from my family, so I didn’t protest.

  When I got into the woods behind my parents’ house, I could walk faster because the ground sloped up and there were no puddles for me to squish in and make noise. In my foolish confidence, I assumed I could walk through those woods in the darkness, because I had been there so many times and knew that path so well I could have walked it blindfolded. It was a surprise when I had to hold up a hand to push clusters of wet branches away from my face, and when I bashed my forehead into a tree limb. While I had spent many, many hours in those woods, none of those hours had been recently and by ‘recently’ I mean since before I shipped out to Nigeria. Even in the dark days after Columbus Day and before the ExForce went offworld, I had been serving with the National Guard and only visited my parents once or twice. It was a surprise to me how much those woods had changed, many of the large trees had been cut for firewood, leaving gaps in the canopy for new growth to spring up in the sunlight. There was a lot more underbrush than I remembered and I stumbled often, feeling fortunate that most of the dead branches had been picked up by my parents to use as kindling, so I didn’t step on anything that would make a loud noise when it snapped.

  My gloves were in the duffel bag and I did not feel like fumbling around for them in the dark, I endured the occasional scrapes and scratches on my bare hands and kept going. The underbrush was sopping wet from overnight rain, and my pants were soon soaked from slogging through that damned invasive Japanese stilt grass that was growing everywhere because the deer didn’t like to eat it. By the time I got through the woods and onto the old farm road, my socks were wet inside my waterproof boots from water dripping down my drenched pants legs. On the old road which had ruts and potholes that had not changed, I picked up my pace and soon stepped onto the paved road where my friend Tom Paulson had parked his old Jeep, with the keys under a rock behind a tree just where he said they would be. It was an old YJ, the kind with the unfortunate square headlights. The roof seams leaked, the driver’s side window rattled unless you pressed your elbow against it and the shocks needed to be replaced. But it was available and Tom had tied a canoe to the roof, so it looked great to me. It looked like freedom.

  Tom had warned me the starter motor made a grinding noise and the last thing I needed was to make noise. Releasing the parking brake and putting the gearshift in neutral, I pushed it out onto the road and when it got rolling down the hill by itself, I hopped in and popped the clutch to start it. The engine fired right up! Until I got to the bottom of the hill and made the turn to the right, I kept the headlights off and just coasted along.

  The headlights illuminated two glaring cones through the mist, the droplets were so big I could see individual spheres of condensed water vapor dancing in the light, moving randomly until the flat front of the Jeep disturbed the air so they zoomed up to splatter against the windshield. When the weather was warm, Tom liked to fold down the windshield and drive that way, although one time I was with him when he did that and he got smacked in the face with a big Junebug that must have weighed five pounds. I kept the windshield right where it could fulfill its purpose of shielding me from wind, rain and bugs.

  Watching the mist was hypnotic, I had to be careful not to get distracted by the brightly shining pinpricks of light that swirled and rushed toward my eyes. It was still mostly dark and the last thing I needed was to hit a deer, or a moose. With one hand I dug into my duffel for a thermos of coffee, unscrewed the top and drank, it was still hot.

  Life was good.

  When I got the canoe out on the lake, the mist had changed into a steady drizzle, and gray fog lay low on the water. I paddled away from shore then drifted, watching raindrops gently dance on the surface as I drank from the thermos. The light drizzle fell so softly upon the surface, the ripples on the calm water merged before I could follow them with my eyes. Shaking my wet jacket sleeves sent large droplets into the water, I watched those circular ripples spread out, slowly fading away as the drizzle wore them down. Because I was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, I could eat the muffins my mother baked without getting them wet, and I knew to tuck my hands under my chin keep them dry.

  There I was, sitting in a canoe in the rain, the sun barely lightening the gray sky in the east, my breath visible in the wispy fog. A few feet away, there was a splash much larger than a raindrop, where a fish broke the surface. Dark pine and fir trees lined the shore, interspersed with maples whose branches hung out over the water. I could not remember the last time I had felt so peaceful.

  Before I was in high school, my father took me on a canoe trip along the Allagash river, and the chain of lakes up there. We went with a group, I remember there was a moose standing in the water close to shore and we got too close, my father and I had to paddle like hell to get away from the enraged moose while people in the other canoes laughed at us. That was a great time, even the day when the wind blew hard right in our faces and all the other people pulled their canoes along the shoreline in the shallow water. Not my Dad and me, we stayed out there and paddled one stroke after another, barely making headway against the gusty wind. When we got to our campsite for the evening, half an hour ahead of everyone else by the way, my arms were like rubber but I felt great.

  Remembering that day, and fishing trips with my father, I ate the muffins, drank hot coffee from the thermos, and watched the rain fall silently all around me.

  “Flying Dutchman, this is resupply flight Uniform Sierra Niner Seven,” the pilot concentrated more on keeping his tone of voice casual than the instruments in front of him. He was fully, supremely confident in his ability to fly the Kristang Dragon-A dropship up to the pirate starship in low orbit, less than five thousand miles above the Earth’s surface. On training flights and then missions to ferry equipment and scientists up to the captured Kristang troopship Yu Qishan, the pilots had flown most of the way to the Moon, so low orbit was not much of a challenge. The UN had a major project to move the Qishan into low orbit, to make it more accessible for study, but the science and engineering teams aboard that captured ship were still trying to understand how the reactors worked. Until the Qishan could move under its own power, it would be staying right where it was, the UN would not risk bringing the precious ship near the planet if there was even the slightest chance it could crash and be lost. Any possibility for loss of life on Earth, if the ship fell out of orbit, was a minor concern compared to the vital technology aboard that ship. “Reporting as fully ready for departure.”

  In the Combat Information Center of the Flying Dutchman, currently high over the Texas Gulf coast and headed east-northeast, the flight operations duty officer’s shoulders tensed when she heard the code phrase ‘Reporting as fully ready’. There was no need to say ‘reporting as fully’ and it was not standard communications procedure for a ground-to-orbit flight, the phrase had been chosen because it was unlikely to be used except as a code, but was ordinary enough not to raise suspicions. That was the hope, anyway. The duty officer at the flight ops station had learned that the alien AI seemed to see, hear and know everything that went on aboard and around the pirate ship. “Roger that, US Niner Seven,” the duty officer forced a somewhat bored tone in her voice. “No other traffic in the area. We have you cleared all the way in for Docking Bay Two.”

  “Cleared all
the way in for Bay Two, understood. Niner Seven is rolling, we have your guidance beam five by five,” the pilot lifted his right thumb off the control panel to indicate the ‘Go’ order to his copilot. The phrase ‘all the way in’ was the proper response code for the operation. If the flight ops officer in orbit had not responded with that code phrase, the pilots of the Dragon had been instructed to fake a mechanical problem with their dropship and abort the assault. If the Merry Band of Pirates were expecting trouble, the Dragon did not have a chance to get the assault team aboard the ship successfully. The payload would be unloaded and replaced by innocuous supplies needed for a deep-space mission, and the Dragon would innocently perform its official resupply function. A later flight would attempt the assault later.

  That was the original plan. Now, the timeline had been accelerated for reasons the pilots had not been told, they needed to go now, right now. Turning in his seat while the copilot continued preflight procedures, the pilot gave a thumbs up to the payload.

  The payload leader gave a silent thumbs up to acknowledge the signal, all communications were conducted by hand signals in case the AI above was listening. Instead of supply crates requested by Lt. Colonel Simms, the Dragon was loaded down with a seven-man assault team wearing Kristang powered armor. The assault team, part of Delta Force from nearby Fort Bragg, had loaded aboard the Dragon in its special hangar under Pope Army Airfield, away from sight and hopefully even away from the all-seeing senses of the alien AI aboard the Flying Dutchman. The hangar was deep underground and had no cameras or communications equipment that might be used by a hostile or even indifferent intelligence. Whether that was true or not, was something the assault team would learn only when they got out of the Dragon in the Dutchman’s docking bay.