Mavericks (Expeditionary Force Book 6)

by Craig Alanson

  “Looks like it,” Perkins agreed. Normal procedure for docking with a Jeraptha star carrier was for ships to approach one at a time, remaining outside the imaginary bubble of space within which the Jeraptha ship’s AI took control from the docking ship’s navigation system, until the star carrier authorized them to proceed inward. Only when one ship was securely attached to a docking platform and powered down, was a subsequent ship given clearance to approach. Due to the poor maneuverability of star carriers, the Jeraptha were understandably worried about bulky armored warships clumsily crashing into each other, or into the vulnerable long spine of their space truck.

  What Perkins and Striebich noticed was the Ruhar warships were approaching in groups of three, with the remaining two ships close behind. Though battle damage to the Ruhar ships rendered some of them awkward to handle, the Jeraptha appeared to be more concerned about completing the docking operation as quickly as possible than about navigation safety. The two human women shared a look, and they both pulled their seat straps tighter. “People,” Perkins ordered, “let’s get buttoned up,” she reached under the seat for her helmet. “I think once this ship gets moving for real, it could be a rough ride.” At the moment, their cruiser was proceeding toward the star carrier at a leisurely rate of acceleration, hanging back to give the battle-damaged warships clearance to maneuver onto the docking platforms.

  “What’s up, Colonel?” Jesse asked.

  Irene answered for Perkins. “The Jeraptha are breaking safe docking protocol, they’re going for combat latching. That means incoming ships fly a partly-independent approach, get onto whatever docking platform they can reach ASAP, and hold on with their own magnetic grapples as best they can. The beetles are worried about something, they want to jump out of here pronto.”

  “They won’t jump without us, will they?” Dave asked, hoping he knew the answer.

  “No,” Derek assured the soldier.

  Irene acted as the killjoy. “They won’t if they can help it. But the beetles aren’t going to risk their star carrier and a dozen warships for a training cruiser. If they think they’re in jeopardy, they’ll jump away and we’ll be on our own.”

  “We’ll be on our own for a short time,” Derek shot the other pilot a look. “Czajka, all it means is if the star carrier jumps away, we jump away also, and meet up at a preprogramed AZ.”

  “What if that AZ is hot also?” Shauna asked.

  “Then we go to the alternate AZ, and then another. Look, Jarrett, Czajka, the Ruhar and Jeraptha have been doing this for a very long time,” Derek said in a calm, steady voice. “Probably before humans had any form of writing. They know what they’re doing. And,” he added for emphasis, “they’ve been kicking the lizards and Thuranin’s asses all over this sector.”

  “Besides,” Irene chimed in unhelpfully, “we’re just a training ship. In a battle, we would be the last ship targeted.”

  “Yeah, because we’re the most vulnerable,” Shauna rolled her eyes at Irene.

  “Sorry,” Irene muttered. Just then, another alarm blared and the ship’s acceleration increased noticeably. “Hmm, the Jeraptha want us docked as soon as possible, too,” she said as she watched the display project the ship’s course, straight in to a docking platform in the middle of the star carrier between two other ships. The Jeraptha must be confident their undamaged ship could tuck into that tight space, Irene thought to herself, while they are directing the incoming battle-damaged warships onto platforms that had plenty of empty space around them.

  “Captain Striebich?” Dave asked, pointing at the display. “What’s that destroyer doing?”

  “A go-around,” Irene guessed. She had watched the stricken destroyer approach its assigned platform clumsily, clearly that ship’s damaged propulsion system was making it difficult to control its flight. The destroyer had fired its thrusters on full to avoid a collision with another incoming ship, overcorrected and been forced to back away using its main engines. “The Jeraptha waved it off. It will have to try again.”

  “What if they can’t do it?” Shauna asked, fearing for the crew of the destroyer.

  “They’ll have three options,” Derek explained. “They can get tug bots to tow them in.”

  “They won’t have time for that,” Irene said quietly. “Those tugs are designed to move dropships, not starships.”

  “Or they can remain stationary and the star carrier can maneuver to latch them on. I sure wouldn’t want to do that, even if we weren’t in a hurry,” Derek shook his head at the thought of the massive star carrier, burdened with warships, trying to perform the delicate operation of moving precisely enough to position a docking platform under the belly of the destroyer.

  Shauna unconsciously pulled her arms tightly around herself from anxiety. “What’s the third option?”

  “Abandon ship,” Irene replied. “Get the crew off in dropships, send the ship away on autopilot. They can recover the ship later, or set it to self-destruct.”

  “That’s not optimal,” Perkins noted. “They probably have wounded aboard, moving them to dropships will take time, and risk interrupting their medical treatment.”

  “Yes Ma’am,” Irene agreed in a soothing tone. “The Ruhar have a procedure for that. I’m sure that ship’s command crew began prepping their medical teams to transport the wounded, as soon as they realized the ship wasn’t responding properly to her helm.”

  “I hope they did,” Shauna clenched her fists as she spoke.

  “Look!” Derek pointed. “That destroyer is opening docking bay doors. They are preparing to abandon ship!”

  It was Emily Perkins’ turn to clench her fists. If the Jeraptha were junking a destroyer after one failed docking attempt, the beetles must be very concerned about getting away from the Assembly Zone as quickly as possible. That meant the beetles expected trouble. And that was not good. Before she could halt her tongue, she muttered aloud “I hope this doesn’t turn into a fight.”

  “If we have to fight, this could get kinetic in a hurry,” Irene warned. Their cruiser was significantly behind the other ships in line for docking. Even with the Toaster’s command crew now twisting the cruiser’s tail to get it moving faster, they would not be docking for over twenty minutes. Distances in space were vast, and the ship’s approach speed was limited because however hard they accelerated toward the star carrier, they would need to cancel their relative speed before docking.

  “Yeah,” Derek grimaced. “We throw that term around loosely but remember out here, ‘kinetic’ can be measured as a percentage of lightspeed. A fleck of paint could punch through the hull armor,” he rapped knuckles on a bulkhead, “if it’s going fast enough.”

  “Captain,” Jesse did not like the mental image of being killed by a tiny fleck of paint. “You are a genuine confidence-booster.”

  Despite the anxiety of the team’s pilots, who could only watch the combat latching operation, all the warships attached themselves, even the destroyer that had been waved off its first attempt to connect with a docking platform. The Ruh Tostella was the last ship to contact a platform, and the clamps had barely engaged when the star carrier jumped.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “No,” the Ruhar flight instructor said with a plastered-on smile and a forcibly pleasant and patient tone that came across as irritated, impatient and patronizing, as if she were speaking to a young child who could not understand how to perform a simple task. “You first have to-”

  “Switch to the independent mode, yes, I know that, and that is why I have the mode selected,” Irene replied through gritted teeth, using her right pinky finger to indicate the ‘INDEPENDENT OPERATION’ symbol in bold letters at the top of the touchscreen display. With two human pilots learning to fly the starship from the auxiliary control center, the displays were converted to English words and symbols familiar to humans, like having positive indicators in green and negatives in red.

  “You don’t have to be nasty about it,” The flight instructor huffed, her tran
slated words coming across as distinctly frosty.

  “I wasn’t being nasty,” Irene tensed in her pilot’s couch, but kept her eyes focused on the displays instead of turning to confront their alien instructor. It slightly irritated Irene that they were being instructed by a young Ruhar whose rank of ‘klasta’ was roughly equivalent to a second lieutenant, while Irene and Derek were captains with many thousands of hours of real flight experience. Klasta Splunn was freshly graduated from the academy, having taken the low-status assignment aboard the Toaster only to build up flight hours in her logbook. The alien had little real-world flight experience, she was clearly bored and angry about being assigned to teach humans, and Irene wasn’t taking any crap from her.

  “I do not like your tone, human,” Splunn ground her incisors as she spoke.

  “I do not like being spoken to like a child, by an instructor who can’t read her own display,” Irene shot back, knowing that although the Ruhar probably could not or would not read the English symbols on the two pilot displays, the klasta had standard Ruhar common language symbols on the displays at the instructor station.

  The klasta tensed, lifting a finger to halt the simulation. “Perhaps it would be best if-”

  Derek turned in his couch to face their instructor, jabbing an accusing finger at her, in a gesture he knew she understood. “Perhaps it would be best if you do the job you have been assigned. If you are not capable of that, we can request a more qualified instructor right now,” he held up a zPhone.

  “Good idea-” Irene began to agree.

  “And you,” he turned to his fellow pilot. “Do your job, and leave out the comments. We’ve both had asshole instructors before, and you aren’t making things any better.” He leaned toward Irene and pressed a button to transfer control to his station. “My spacecraft,” he declared as he assumed the role of pilot in command. “Initiating approach,” he stated as he authorized thrusters for manual operation. “Are you good, Klasta Splunn?”

  “Yes,” came the curt reply.

  “Sorry,” Irene’s voice was soft. Then, louder, “Monitoring remote guidance, guide beam acquired and active.”

  “Acquisition confirmed,” the Ruhar behind them confirmed in a voice that held only a hint of anger. “Proceed at one-quarter power. Watch your heading!” She added in a reproachful tone.

  “Heading dialed in,” Derek reported with a smile, and a wink toward Irene. He had the ship exactly on the designated heading, not only within the green band of acceptable error, but near the blue center line of optimal course. Derek Bonsu had learned the best way to respond to someone trying to bait you was to never take the bait. Ignore the insults, plaster a fake smile on your face, and pretend you did not understand an insult was intended. That often turned the tables and made his opponents lose their temper, while he just had a good laugh inwardly.

  Irene lifted a hand off the controls just long enough to give her fellow pilot a thumbs up, then returned her laser focus on the copilot’s task of providing navigation data to Derek. She knew the heading they had the ship on was nearly perfect and the instructor had nothing to complain about. Had nothing to do, because so far, neither of the two humans had made any kind of significant mistake. “Course within ninety seven percent of nominal,” Irene could not help reporting. “Ninety eight percent.”

  The humans ignoring her, defying her, made the klasta pissed off enough that she decided to deviate from the approved training course. With a tight smile at the trouble she was causing, she changed parameters of the simulation. “Star carrier reports hardpoint Three has a mechanical failure, change course to hardpoint Seven.”

  Without losing her cool or making a snarky remark though she knew the hamster was screwing with them, Irene smoothly pulled the navigation control to the new guide beam, and fed the data to Derek. “Hardpoint Seven, acknowledged.”

  “Watch your-”

  “That frigate will be crossing our heading,” Irene warned as the instructor threw another complication at them, this one a ship that was coming into hardpoint Six and interfering with the Toaster although the larger and heavier training cruiser had the right of way. “Adjusting course to keep clear.”

  “Taking power to thirty percent,” Derek glanced toward Irene and she nodded. “Slowing down to give that frigate a clear path to Platform Six,” he said just as the simulated frigate suffered an unlikely engineering failure and veered toward the Toaster. This time, Derek could not keep the smile off his face. He had anticipated the instructor throwing a highly unlikely problem into the sim, and he was almost disappointed at how obvious and unimaginative the complication was. “Taking power to fifty percent, sound collision alarm!”

  “Fifty percent is not authorized under proximity maneuver conditions,” the klasta snapped gleefully, anticipating an opportunity to reprimand the primitive aliens. “Reduce-”

  “The frigate has suffered an engineering fault of unknown severity and origin,” Irene interrupted. “Emergency flight regulations require us to get to a safe distance as soon as possible, in case the frigate’s jump capacitors or reactor explode.”

  With a grin, Derek reveled in the chance to truly fly the bulky cruiser, even if it was only in a sim. “Bringing main power online, thrusters at eighty percent.” The Toaster’s main normal-space engines would soon be responding to his commands, surging the ship forward with awesome power.

  “Main power ready,” Irene reported. “Releasing-”

  “Pausing simulation,” the klasta said unhappily. “Resetting. That was,” she cleared her throat. “Acceptable. Our instruction course has not yet covered emergency flight regulations.”

  Again Derek turned in his couch to face the Ruhar, wiping the grin off his face. “We studied those regs on our own, before we came aboard the ship. We did not wish to waste your very valuable time,” he added with a quick smile that he kept as genuine as he could.

  “Hmmf,” Klasta Splunn sniffed. For the next hour, she stuck to the standard training course, only throwing curveballs at them occasionally and only introducing approved complications. Chit-chat was kept to a minimum and Irene was on her best behavior, knowing their success was the best way to piss off their alien instructor.

  After the Toaster latched onto the star carrier, the Deal Me In had performed a series of jumps, then dropped off the training cruiser and other ships in dark interstellar space while the Jeraptha went to pick up the other half of the battlegroup. Training had been suspended for six hours, as the Toaster and the battle-damaged warships waited for the Jeraptha star carrier to reappear and take them aboard. After twelve hours, with no sign of the star carrier and with the warships busy patching up their stricken hulls and making repairs as best they could, the Toaster resumed training on a limited schedule. Priority for pilot training in the simulators had been given to Ruhar cadets, as they would only be aboard the ship for another couple weeks before returning to the academy, so at first Irene and Derek had been studying dull flight manuals by themselves, until Perkins asked why the ship’s auxiliary control center could not be used to run simulations? With the cruiser hanging motionless in space, the aux flight station was admittedly empty and unused, and all Perkins had to do was find an instructor who was willing to lower his or her self to training the most primitive semi-intelligent species in the known galaxy. Fortunately, instruction time partly counted toward qualified flight hours, so it was not impossible to persuade an instructor to take on two additional students. Unfortunately, since the best instructors were already busy, Irene and Derek had been stuck with the sour-faced Klasta Splunn, who was predisposed to being grumpy because she knew no one else wanted to be trained by her.

  The klasta was frustrated that the two humans had not quickly failed, which would have given her ample opportunity to insult them and even better, would have allowed her to push at least one of them aside and use the simulator to build her own qualifying flight hours. More than two hours into the training session, she set a simple instruction to run, and
left the aux control center to get a snack from the galley.

  “That’s a relie-” Irene began to say before Derek raised a hand and silently pointed to the flight recorder module between the two pilot stations. Whatever they said or did would certainly be scrutinized later by the Ruhar. “Real, real challenge,” she recovered. “My turn?”

  Derek pressed a button on his console and lifted hands away from the touchscreens. “Your spacecraft.”

  The two pilots ran the simulation on their own, flying the starship through normal space to various points, until it almost became dull. Truly, flying even a light cruiser in normal space was not all that much different from flying a dropship. Flying in combat would be much more challenging, but they were far from enjoying that type of simulation. Several times, Irene had to look to Derek, a huge grin on her face. “Think about it, we are the first humans ever to fly a starship!”

  “Simulated,” Derek reminded her, though that did not much tarnish their shared joy.

  “It’s simulated now,” Irene agreed, knowing the standard training course would include actually moving the big cruiser, some months in the future. “We were the first humans to ever fly a dropship, for real.”

  “Ah, except for Captain Desai, when that guy Bishop stole it to, to do whatever they did. She was the first to fly a Dodo, that we know of.”

  “Fine, except for her,” Irene admitted, wondering how the mysterious Desai had managed to fly a Ruhar Dodo without any training. Had Desai somehow gotten access to a simulator before she broke out of jail? No, it was more likely one of the whispered rumors was true; that the whole operation had been planned and run by the Ruhar, using Bishop’s group of humans as a cover story. Unless the Ruhar clandestine operations people admitted the truth, no one would ever know. Irene looked at the clock on her console, feeling her back growing stiff from sitting so long in the pilot couch. “Is our instructor ever coming back?” The current sim program only had ten more minutes remaining.