Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) Page 8

  “No interference. No contact at all,” Jones reported.

  “No contact?”

  “Nothing. We are not receiving any signals from the alien, its connection with the ship has been severed.”

  “Hell,” Rodriguez grunted as he and three members of his team ran up the access tunnel of the ship’s spine, the hatchway to the forward hull in sight. They had not dared ride the tram in case the alien took control and shut it down. The other three were racing aft toward the engineering section, to connect with and secure the scientists and engineers there. “Is the alien dead? Maybe that computer worm damaged it more than it admitted.”

  “Speculate later,” Jones ordered.

  “Copy that,” Rodriguez concentrated on getting through the hatch that was approaching fast. If the hatch was closed and locked against them, they had plasma torches for cutting through, or shaped-charge explosives if they absolutely had no time to screw around. To his great relief, his team ran through the open hatch single-file without any problem. It might be, the thought flashed through his mind, that the Delta team was not needed at all. They had full control of the ship already, and people who were not part of the plan posed no threat to UNEF Command’s ownership of humanity’s only real starship.

  The part of the ship they were running through was a wide and tall central passageway with double doors to cargo bays on each side. Up ahead the wide passageway ended in a T where his team would split again, two going left to the computer core while Rodriguez and another would go right and forward to the CIC. With a glance downward, he verified the safety of his Kristang rifle was off, they were equipped with low-velocity rounds to avoid blowing a hole in anything important aboard the ship. That was another problem for Rodriguez to worry about: those rounds had never been tested inside an actual Thuranin starship.

  When he looked up again after no more than a half-second, a cargo bay door had opened ahead of him, and an armor-suited figure carrying a rifle stepped out.

  “Hello, boys,” Lauren Poole greeted the newbies.

  The FBI agent burst out the back door of the Bishop house, waving his arms toward the trailer in the driveway. “He’s gone! Joe Bishop is gone!”

  “What do you mean, gone?” The field supervisor asked from the trailer’s open door, feeling an already bad morning going to shit in front of his eyes. “Did you check in the basement?”

  “Yes, we’re checking the attic now but-”

  “Yeah. Shit! How did he get past the motion detector and laser fencing?” The supervisor asked to himself, fearing he knew the answer to that question. Then he felt a chill up his spine. The agents should have reported from inside the house, not needing to run out the back door and shout. Pressing the transmit button on his walkie-talkie, he called out. “Team, this is Gillis, report in.”

  “Sir, comms are down,” the agent shook his own walkie-talkie with disgust, popping open the cover to check the batteries.

  The supervisor tossed his useless walkie-talkie on a shelf beside the door and pulled a cellphone out of a pocket. Four bars, that was good, they had installed a new cell tower in the area just to support the security detail. His phone had an app that would have alerted him if the phone lost contact with the cell tower. Bishop must have set up a silent jammer in or near the house, blocking the frequencies used by the walkie-talkies, but that jerk spaceman had not been able to interfere with cell signals. The supervisor only needed to press the first number on speed-dial to contact the local operations manager, he would have a one-mile radius locked down in a few minutes, with a five-mile cordon soon after. That reckless asshole Sergeant Bishop would not get far.

  Except that when the supervisor held the phone to his ear, he did not hear the local ops manager. He heard a sultry woman’s voice. “Welcome to Trixie’s erotic chat line, where your fantasies can become reality-”

  Red-faced, the supervisor ended the call and pressed the numbers manually for the local ops manager, a number he had practiced calling over and over until it was burned into his memory.

  This time, he did not mis-dial a phone sex company. But the result was just as disappointing. Three whistling tones, followed by a familiar female voice soothingly saying “The number you have reached is not in service. If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.” The supervisor stared at the phone, irritated at himself for pressing the wrong sequence of buttons.

  Then he got angry at someone else when the phone message continued. It was a snarky, arrogant voice he knew well from listening to recordings. “Hey, shithead, I said, hang up and try again. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Hey Joe,” Skippy’s muffled voice came from inside my jacket.

  “Just a minute,” I shouted toward the pocket, trying to finish eating a muffin. Damn it, I had asked Skippy to leave me in peace that morning. In disgust, I tossed the half-eaten muffin into the lake, which prompted a big fish to immediately hit it. Crap, that was my last muffin, I should have saved one to use as bait. With the phone to my ear, I answered the pain-in-the-ass beer can. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I- hey. Are you fishing in the rain?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Don’t normal people wait for a nice day to go fishing?”

  “It’s peaceful out here, I like it. What is so important?”

  “Oh, nothing much, pretty quiet up here. I’m chilling in my new mancave since the duty officer ejected my old escape pod and blew it to dust with a maser cannon. Captain Reed has a gun to her head, Captain Poole is alone against a seven-man Delta Force team that is trying to seize control of the ship. You know, a typical Tuesday.”

  “Holy-” Shit, it actually was Sunday. “What the f-”

  “This will go faster if I just give you a sitrep instead of the usual blah blah buh-lah of you interrupting me with stupid questions.”

  “Deal.”

  “Great. Ok, the UN Security Council has scheduled a vote this evening on whether to send the Dutchman out to surrender to the Jeraptha. The measure is expected to pass because most governments are scared shitless about Maxolhx warships coming here. I knew about that vote and I was going to tell you, even though you asked me to leave you alone because little Joey wants to catch a fish thiiiiiiis big so his Mommy can cook it and-”

  “I need a break, Skippy.”

  “Was that you not interrupting me?”

  “Was that you giving a sitrep, or you whining about me wanting ten freakin’ minutes to myself for a change?”

  “Fine,” he huffed. “Anywho, what I did not know was the five nations of UNEF met in secret this morning and already voted for surrendering to the Jeraptha.”

  “How could you not know? You know everything!”

  “First, Mister Jackass, they apparently conducted all communications face to face or by writing notes on paper. Can you imagine that? So primitive. But, eh, effective. The site where they held the vote had no electronics at all, nothing I could hack into. Well, not quite, I could have hacked in if I knew about the meeting, or cared about what a bunch of monkeys in suits were doing. Hee hee, monkeys wearing suits, that’s funny. You know what is even more funny? Monkeys wearing tuxedos. While riding bicycles. Ooooh, even better, riding tiny tricycles!”

  “Yeah that’s freakin’ hilarious. How do you know about it now?”

  “Count Chocula told me. He is being held by the French intelligence service in an underground interrogation cell, also with no electronics. Fortunately, that cell has a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and I have been paying close attention to old Hansie.”

  “Because you are concerned about him? I didn’t know you cared.”

  “Eh, more like because I was hoping he would do something stupid to amuse me, but let’s go with the ‘care and concern’ thing if that makes me look better. To make a long story short, Chotek is clever enough to suspect I could listen to him through that lightbulb. Admittedly, the audio quality is poor, that building is old and the w
iring dates back way before World War Two. I kind of amazed myself, really. To listen in to Chocula, I had to create a map of all electrical activity in that building, then calibrate-”

  “Can we agree you are amazingly awesome, and skip the part where you brag about yourself? What did Chotek say?”

  “Ugh. You say you know the extent of my awesomeness, but when I-”

  “Sitrep. Short and to the point.”

  “Fine. Jackass,” he muttered under his breath. “Chotek warned me about a plan to seize the Dutchman, they didn’t trust you and the Pirates. They also did not trust me, which is quite-”

  “Which is totally understandable. What is the situation upstairs? Damn it, there’s a Delta team taking control of the ship?”

  “Poole is handling it. Well, she’s trying to, nothing you can do about it right now. What you need to be concerned about is yourself. The FBI team at your house was ordered to take you into custody about six minutes ago. They stormed into the house and scared the crap out of your mother, she whomped one of them in the face with a cast-iron skillet. Laid him out cold on the kitchen floor. Hee hee, I like your Mom.”

  “Crap!” I picked up the paddle, and began digging into the water for shore where I had parked Tom’s old Jeep. “Are my folks Ok?”

  “There was a standoff between three feds and your father holding a baseball bat, but when the feds saw you weren’t in the house, they bailed. They called for air support and have sealed off roads around your neighborhood.”

  “We live in the woods, Skippy, there is no ‘neighborhood’.”

  “You know what I mean. The feds have three helos in the air now, but don’t worry. I’ve got them chasing a ghost along Route 212 near Merrill. You are not the only Pirate in jeopardy, orders have gone out to, ahem, ‘secure’ the entire crew.”

  “Shit. It’s lucky that I snuck out to go fishing.”

  “True, as you monkeys misunderstand the concept of ‘luck’.”

  “Hey,” I stopped paddling as a thought hit me. “The feds are looking for me? Why hasn’t the Army called me and just ordered me to surrender?”

  “Um, would you want to know about such a call?”

  “Shit. No.”

  “Then as far as you know, the authorities have not tried to contact you. You can’t refuse to obey an order you never received, right?”

  That was skating on very thin ice, but I wasn’t going to argue about it. “Hypothetically, if the Army did call me, what would the order have been?”

  “Well, they wanted you to-”

  “Hypothetically, Skippy.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. I can tell you that Army leadership does not agree with the decision to contact the Jeraptha. The other services also argued against surrendering, but they are subordinate to civilian authority in your country. In other countries, the militaries generally think contacting the Jeraptha is premature, without knowing when the Maxolhx are expected to be here. And without first making at least some sort of effort to stop those Maxolhx ships. The United States Army is in a particularly bad position, because an Army officer whose name rhymes with ‘Shmoe Dipshit’ got you monkeys into this mess.”

  Shmoe Dipshit? That was a good one, even I had to chuckle. “All right. Close enough.” I looked at my zPhone. There were no missed calls, no text messages, no emails. No evidence anyone tried to contact me. My other cellphone, the one provided to me by the feds so they could track me, was under my bed back home.

  “Joe, what matters now is I have a dropship coming to pick you up. You may have to apologize later, we don’t have time to be gentle about this, so I will have the Falcon coming in at Mach Seven and that sonic boom is going to wake up people all over the state. ETA is just over twelve minutes.”

  “Ok, Ok. Uh, please contact Tom and tell him where I parked his Jeep, the keys are under the passenger seat.” I am such a dope. Who cares about an old Jeep in such a crisis? “How many other Pirates can you pick up before the authorities get to them?”

  “Working on it.”

  Lt. Colonel Jennifer Simms was soundly asleep when her regular cellphone blared her awake. It was Skippy, and it was an emergency. The FBI was coming for her, she had seven minutes to decide what to do before the black SUVs rolled up in front of her apartment. Without hesitation, she reached under the bed for her ‘Go’ bag, pulled on the clothes and shoes she wore the previous day, slipped out the sliding glass door, and ran across a field into the wooded area. By the time she reached the elementary school, the low clouds behind her were flashing blue from the FBI’s lights. “Am I Ok, Skippy?”

  “Uh huh. I jacked your car and I am driving it like maniac toward the interstate, the FBI just heard about it. Oops, just clipped another car, sorry about your headlight. And the fender.”

  That made her slow her pace. “Skippy, I don’t have a self-driving car.”

  “Duh. That thing handles like a refrigerator on a skateboard. Seriously, what were you thinking when you bought that shitbox? Crap, I just took out someone’s mailbox. That’s a federal offense, right? Ah, maybe I can plea-bargain down to the death penalty.”

  “That car was cheap,” she answered defensively. “I have not needed to drive a lot for the last couple years, you know?”

  “True. You did crash that truck in Nigeria, so everyone is safer if you are not-”

  “Where should I go? What’s the plan?”

  “Um, let me think. Stay where you are.”

  “Here?” She looked around her in the pre-dawn darkness. “I’m in the middle of an elementary school baseball outfield.”

  “Yup. Perfect place to land the Falcon I have dropping down for you, it will be there in five minutes. Lucky for you, I was flight-testing that Falcon after replacing an engine, so it was already over Montana. Texas isn’t that far.”

  “Montana to Texas isn’t far?”

  “Not at Mach Twenty Five it isn’t. Uh, better cover your ears when it gets there.”

  Simms knew better than to argue with the beer can. She used the time to duck into the Porta-potty near the bleachers, and trying to drag her fingers through the tangled mess of her hair. Then she waited, hands over her ears. Until she saw a problem. “Skippy, there is a cellphone tower to the south of the school, and a powerline behind the ball field. Will those be a problem for the Falcon?” Even a Falcon, smaller of the two types of Thuranin dropship, was a big damned thing.

  “That powerline is a problem. Taking care of that now, I will need you to press the Big Red Button on your phone to authorize weapons, I still have that annoying restriction in my programming. Oh hey, best not to look in that direction, huh?”

  “Oh shit.” She swept to the second set of icons on her phone and there is was, a Big Red Button app that hadn’t been there the previous night. Even facing in the other direction with her eyes closed, she saw the bright explosions as the Falcon’s masers ripped into the base of the powerline towers and they fell, sending searing bright arcs of light. When she turned around to see the incoming dropship firing its nose thrusters to slow down, its belly was illuminated by sparks coming from the downed powerline.

  The city behind the dropship was going dark from the power outage.

  “Was that really necessary?” She shouted over the whining turbines of the Falcon as it settled down in the outfield, its heavy skids plowing deep into the damp soil. “There’s a high school football field a half mile away, I could have run there!”

  “Was it strictly necessary? Shmaybe not. Was it awesome? Abso-lut-ely!”

  “Why do men love blowing things up?” Jennifer clutched her ‘Go’ bag with both hands and ran up the Falcon’s ramp, using her knees to brace herself in a jumpseat because the ship was already taking off.

  “It’s a dumbass thing,” Skippy admitted, “you wouldn’t understand. Hang on, we have a stop to make before climbing for orbit.”

  Skippy was not kidding about the sonic boom. The dropship came straight over the water toward me, spun around so the open back r
amp splashed in the shallow water, and I waded out to slog my wet boots up the ramp. If I wasn’t wet before, I was then as the belly jets kicked up a nearly blinding spray of water. When I was halfway up the ramp, there was a long, low rumble that sounded like never-ending thunder. Anyone in the North Woods who decided to sleep in on that rainy Sunday morning would be woken up by that alarming sound.

  To save time, I took a jumpseat at the top of the ramp. “Go, Skip-” my order was cut off by the Falcon standing on its tail and leaping up for the sky. Crap, I thought, I hope the jetwash doesn’t knock over Tom’s Jeep. Or worse, knock down a tree to crush it. If a Jeep rolls on its side, you can just push it back onto its wheels.

  “Where are we going, Skippy?” I asked as the ship began to level out and punched through the sound barrier. I knew we went supersonic because the sound of the engine exhaust was muted, those sound waves couldn’t catch up to the ship. While we talked, I unstrapped and labored to walk toward the cockpit, holding onto seatbacks along the way.

  “To pick up Smythe and hopefully some other Pirates. We have to go suborbital to get to the UK quickly, so hang on. I’m pushing your Falcon hard.”

  “Yeah, I can feel that,” I grunted as I rolled into a pilot couch and the straps automatically hugged me tightly. Without a flightsuit, I was feeling naked, and uncomfortable. The flightsuits compensated for the pilot couches having been designed for Thuranin and, even modified, were too small for me. “How many Pirates can we count on?”