Mavericks (Expeditionary Force Book 6)

by Craig Alanson

  Bifft stiffened, and his friends tensed for his reaction. What he did was unexpected. He pressed two fingers to his cheek in the Ruhar form of salute. “Understood and agreed, Colonel.”

  “Excellent. Surgun Jates,” as she spoke the Verd-Kris came through the doorway, “will come with you to assist.”

  Bifft blanched at seeing the Verd-Kris, and he subconsciously wrapped his injured fingers with his other hand. “We have to trust each other, but you send this, person,” he chose his words carefully, “to spy on me!”

  “I am not a spy, and I am not worried about you taking over the ship,” Jates glared through the bars. “You have already proven to be totally incompetent at that. We will see whether you are competent to do anything aboard this ship.”

  Bifft knew he was not going to win the argument about Jates following him around the ship. “If you are not watching me, what will you be doing?”

  “My task is, think of it as providing motivation.”

  “Motivation, how?” Bifft asked, his eyes flicking between the menacing Kristang and his friends who were clearly going to be no help at all.

  Jates pointed at the senior cadet. “Ass,” then he pointed at his feet, “meet boot. Any questions?”

  Given a reprieve from death or at least a long prison sentence, Bifft threw himself into his assigned task with feverish energy. Perkins had to admit the cadet leader had excellent organizational skills and a natural charisma that made people want to follow him, finding herself forced to admire the job he was doing. He got Jinn’s list of tasks prioritized not only by level of potential danger to the ship, but also took into account which tasks could be combined, to minimize the time required and risk to the teams working in hazardous conditions. Soon, the repair teams began to fix things faster than they could break, and Jinn Garnor had time to think beyond the immediate crisis. When Bifft, escorted by Jates, came to report progress to Perkins, Jinn decided it was time to deliver the bad news. “We can get one reactor restarted,” she told Perkins with a raised eyebrow, implying she was not entirely sure of her facts. “The other reactor is too damaged to attempt a restart.”

  “All right, all right, that’s good, then,” Perkins stifled a yawn. Damn she was tired, and there was no prospect of her getting sleep anytime soon. “The ship can run on one reactor?”

  “It can, but that is not the problem. The containment shielding around the good reactor is damaged, we don’t have enough replacement components, and we can’t take shielding from the other reactor, because damage to the second reactor is even more extensive.”

  “The reactor will leak radiation?”

  “Worse, it will leak plasma. Once plasma gets past containment, it will burn through the outer shielding, and then,” Jinn made an exaggerated shrug. “We lose the reactor, all systems near the reactor, and probably the ship.”

  “Is there anything you can do to compensate?”

  “Yes. We can run the reactor at very low power, and periodically vent plasma to reduce the stress on the containment system. Colonel, there is only so much we can do to keep the containment from failing. My best guess is, once the reactor is restarted, we will only have ten days before it must be shut down, permanently.”

  “Ten days?” Bifft squeaked with dismay. “We can’t go anywhere in ten days!”

  “The reactor isn’t the only problem,” Jinn ran a hand through her hair in a very human-like gesture, sweeping bangs out of her eyes. “It isn’t even the most important problem. The battlegroup’s action was not planned, so the fleet does not know where we were when the Bosphuraq attacked. The fleet won’t know we are missing for another two weeks, and a search could take months. Or more.”

  “That assumes the fleet will conduct a search and rescue operation,” Perkins mused, instantly regretting she had spoken aloud.

  “The fleet will search for us!” Bifft declared indignantly. “My mother-”

  “The Bosphuraq may have launched a large-scale attack into Ruhar territory,” Perkins explained, “the fleet may not have the resources for a search operation. Especially if they don’t know there are any ships left to search for.”

  “Oh,” Bifft stared at his feet, chastened. Even his parents could not simply order a warship to search for their son, if the fleet was hard-pressed responding to an incursion by the Bosphuraq.

  “However we’re getting out of this, we need to plan to do it on our own,” Perkins looked to Jinn. “What are our options?”

  “That is the problem, Colonel. I do not see that we have any options. We have enough charge in the capacitors for several jumps, and at low power, the reactor could slowly recharge the capacitors for perhaps another two jumps, before I have to shut down the reactor. You must understand, this ship is not capable of traveling to a star system with a habitable world from here. Even if all systems were operating perfectly, it is unlikely we could perform a flight between star systems before some critical component wore out. Our ships are not usually capable of interstellar flight, which is why we rely on Jeraptha star carriers.”

  “I did know that,” Perkins replied with a measure of irritation. “We are not capable of jumping to anywhere with a habitable world, or a data relay we could use to send a signal, or a fleet refueling station, anything like that?” On the panel in front of her, she scrolled through a star map of the area within two lightyears of what Captain Striebich had said was their present position. It sure did look empty. A whole lot of nothing. Two point two lightyears away was a brown dwarf star, without a symbol indicating any species in the Rindhalu coalition had a facility there, not even an automated monitoring station. “The fleet doesn’t know where we are, because the battlegroup altered course when we found the debris from that civilian ship. Is there a way to see,” she fiddled with the controls then gave up, “the original flightpath plan of the star carrier, before it altered course?”

  “Because that original flightpath is where the fleet would be searching for us? Yes, it’s here,” Jinn reached over and adjusted the controls, zooming out. “At closest approach, the planned flightpath was,” she squinted at the display, “about sixteen lightyears from here.”

  “Hell, that’s no good,” Perkins said sourly, “no way can we jump that far. Our jump drive isn’t capable of getting us anywhere useful from here,” she did not consider that she might have just insulted the Ruhar by disparaging their jump drive technology. Perkins wound a strand of hair around one finger, a nervous habit that seemed to fascinate the Ruhar. She pulled her hand away and bit down on a thumbnail while she thought. “We don’t,” she said softly, speaking to herself, “we don’t know that star carrier was destroyed, do we?”

  “We saw it blow up!” Bifft scoffed.

  “No,” it was Jinn’s turn to look thoughtful. “We saw it get hit, just before we jumped away. We didn’t see,” her voice trailed off as she accessed controls on her workstation, recalling sensor data of the final seconds before the Ruh Tostella jumped away. The audience watched anxiously as the Jeraptha ship got battered, then the image cut off as their own ship jumped.

  “Run that back,” Perkins ordered, then, “there’s too much interference. Can you clean up the image?”

  “There was a lot of energy saturating the battlespace back then,” Jinn warned as she manipulated the sensor feed. “Our ability to separate signal from noise is limited.”

  “There,” Perkins jabbed a finger at the display excitedly. “Pause it there, no, back, there. What am I seeing? That looks like the star carrier took a direct hit amidships.”

  Jinn examined the fuzzy data from several different sensor feeds, running the images through filters then giving up as the data could not be cleaned up any further. “You are right, a missile struck the star carrier’s spine just before we jumped.”

  “So,” Perkins noted with a tiny flare of hope, “we don’t know that ship was destroyed.”

  “That is crazy,” Bifft threw up his hands. “We can’t rely on wishful thinking!”

&nbs
p; Perkins ignored the cadet leader. “What is this?” She asked about a glow in the image, off to the top.

  “It is,” Jinn pulled back. “Mmm, it appears the destroyer City of Sandeppe jumped away less than a second before we did. Ohhhh,” she groaned with dismay. “No. It attempted to jump away. Look at how the event horizon of their jump wormhole is distorted. They were too far inside the damping field.” She looked up to meet Perkins’ eyes. “It is unlikely the Sandeppe survived the jump attempt.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Perkins knew her words sounded flat, when she was talking about the deaths of almost a hundred Ruhar. What could she say? The entire battlegroup was probably dead also, along with the crew of their Jeraptha mothership.

  “That, could actually be good for us,” Jinn’s comment surprised Perkins, and the Ruhar cadet saw that so she explained. “The collapse of the Sandeppe’s event horizon could have created a local spatial distortion, preventing the Bosphuraq ship from jumping to pursue us.”

  “But that battlecruiser could have jumped eventually?” Perkins guessed.

  “Yes,” Jinn scrunched up her face to recall the intricacies of jump physics, which was not specifically part of her studies. “The Bospuraq would have to fly a considerable distance through normal space, to get clear of the distortion, before they could jump.”

  “Like, how far? Could that battlecruiser still be there?”

  “No, no, they would not need to fly that far before jumping. That ship’s rate of acceleration is impressive,” Jinn knew that because she had taken a minute to study up about their opponent after the battle.

  “Outstanding,” Perkins muttered to herself. “Then there is no reason to think the Bospuraq are still hanging around the battlespace.”

  Bifft did not like the sound of that, his ears stood up in alarm. “You cannot be suggesting we jump back into the area?”

  “Cadet Colhsoon, I am not suggesting anything. I am considering our options and I might order a jump back into the battlespace.” Her tone made it clear she was not seeking input from a former and failed mutineer.

  Jinn nodded, ignoring Bifft. A day before, she would never have done that. “You are hoping some of our ships might have survived?”

  Perkins nodded curtly. “It’s our best bet that I can see. The Bosphuraq know our ships can’t travel between stars,” she missed the fact that she had referred to Ruhar warships as ‘our’ rather than ‘your’. “Once they snapped the beetle star carrier in half, they might have figured their job was done and moved on. Yes, Cadet Colhsoon, that is wishful thinking,” she admitted with a defiant tone. “Sometimes, wishful thinking is all you’ve got to go on out here. Staying here and doing nothing is only wishing for a slow death.”

  Bifft looked to Jinn for help but she looked away. “Colonel Perkins,” he pronounced her name correctly. “If the Bosphuraq have not left the area, it will be certain death for us to jump back in there.”

  “Agreed. My judgment is the Bosphuraq had no tactical reason to remain in the area. For whatever purpose they stalked and hit our battlegroup, their mission was a complete success once they disabled that star carrier.” She had decided their best option for survival was to jump back to the only place in range where they might find help. Now the question was, could they do that?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Can we do it?” Perkins asked, trying to decide where to float in the cramped confines of the auxiliary control center.

  “Can we jump? Sure,” Derek was quick to answer. “Problem is, we have no idea how to program a jump. Colonel, I mean, no idea. None of the training materials available to us even mention the subject.”

  “There’s no handy-dandy ‘jump back’ feature, like call-back on a phone?” Perkins joked, though hoping that might be true.

  “Even if there was, Ma’am, I think the jump we did under the damping effect was so sloppy, the system wouldn’t know where to go back to. We need to get some smart cadets up here to help us program the jump computer.”

  “Ok, but the drive can do that jump? Garnor tells me there is plenty of power left in the capacitors.”

  “There should be more than enough, Ma’am,” Irene agreed. “We jumped out of a partial damping field, that takes a lot of extra power. Jumping back should use a lot less juice. Unless the drive coils got degraded from our jump, I’ll have to ask the engineering team about that.”

  “Do it,” Perkins ordered. “I’ll find some cadets who have at least a basic knowledge of jump physics,” she added hopefully. Faster than light travel was critical to the Ruhar fleet and the whole war effort. Jump theory and navigation had to be an important topic at their training schools.

  Jump theory and navigation was an important topic at Ruhar training schools. Unfortunately, no cadet aboard the Ruh Tostella had enough experience to actually program a live jump. Even the senior cadets had mostly learned jump physics and theory, not practical application.

  Fortunately, there was one person aboard the ship who had actual hands-on training in jump navigation, though even she had only worked with a simulator. Ser-Kotreh Tutula volunteered when she heard Perkins needed someone to assist.

  “Thank you, but, no, you don’t understand,” Irene let exasperation get the better of her. “We don’t need you to assist, we need you to do it, all of it. The two of us have absolutely no idea how any of this stuff,” she waved her hands at the confusing jump controls on the display, “works. No idea.”

  “That is unfortunate,” Tutula frowned in a very human-like expression that was much better than a smile from her species. “I will require qualified senior cadets to assist me with the calculations, the math is complicated and verifying the calculations is a rigorous process.”

  “Thank you. If you need anything from us, let us know, but,” Irene scowled. She hated feeling useless and helpless to control her fate. “Otherwise, we will stay out of your way.”

  “As we are under a time constraint, it would be best if you were not involved. I might have time to explain the process later, but-”

  “Yeah, we get it,” Derek rubbed a hand along Irene’s arm to soothe her bruised ego. “Until we learn the basic theory, watching the process won’t do us any good. Tutula, are the cadets going to be Ok with a Verd-Kris programming one of their starships to jump?”

  “No doubt some of them will not be pleased,” Tutula’s expression was unreadably blank. “Those who refuse to participate will be noted, and I expect Fleet Command to reprimand them appropriately. If not, I will.”

  Bifft came back to confer with Jinn Garnor, this time without being escorted by Surgun Jates, who was busy ‘motivating’ a team of cadets working to patch a leaky fuel tank.

  Jinn listened to Bifft’s whispered words, then “You are suggesting I sabotage our jump drive?” Jinn asked, incredulous.

  “Shhhh,” Bifft’s head snapped around, but no one had heard her words in the noisy compartment. “No, only the drive control circuit,” Bifft explained, getting his natural cockiness back. “We have to stop the alien from jumping us back to the battlespace, it’s insanity. It is suicide,” he reached for her shoulder for emphasis but she pushed herself away.

  “It might be risky,” Jinn admitted. She was not entirely sure the jump drive coils would not explode when energized. “What do you suggest we do?”

  “We stay here, and wait for rescue. Without using power for jumps and propulsion, the reactor can-”

  “The reactor won’t last, I told you that.”

  “It is amazing you got it restarted at all,” Bifft flashed a grin that used to be considered charming, but now he feared most cadets saw through his attempt to flatter and manipulate them. Jinn only glared at him and folded her arms, so he hurried to continue. “Er, yes. While the reactor is working, we use it to charge up every powercell we have, so when the reactor has to be shut down, we can stretch out life support.”

  “Stretch it out how long? And when that runs out, we get into dropships, and then we survive in
spacesuits? You weren’t listening,” her tone implied that was a common problem with Bifft Colhsoon. “The fleet has no idea where we are. No idea. They don’t even know we are missing yet!”

  “Then waiting in one place is as good as any other, and we should stay right here rather than risking a jump.”

  “Wrong,” Jinn brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “The battlespace was flooded with high-energy particles. If any place in the area will attract the attention of ships searching for us, it is there, not here.”

  Bifft kicked himself for not thinking of that fact. And he was stubborn enough not to admit when he was wrong. “You know what else was in the battlespace? A Bosphuraq warship! It is too risky for us to jump back in there. Jinn, all you need to do is-“

  “No! No, I won’t do it. And you are not doing it either. You leave my drive circuits alone!” Anger flared in her eyes.

  “You will obey this alien even though you know her plan is insane?”

  “I am obeying because it is my duty, and because I agree with her. We can’t stay here while our reactor shuts down, then life support fails. There is nowhere within this ship’s jump radius that will allow us to survive. Our best chance is if one of our ships is still in the area of the battle.”

  “Now you are indulging yourself in wishful thinking!” Bifft turned away in disgust. How could he have once wanted such a weak woman?

  “I wish to live, and you have not offered a better option. Now, get out of my control center,” she waved him away, “I have work to do.”

  Irene held up a hand to get Perkins’ attention. “All stations report ready for jump, Colonel.”

  “As ready as we’re going to be, you mean?”

  “Uh, yes. Ma’am, there isn’t anything more we can check that hasn’t been checked at least three times already. The unknowns are going to remain that way, until we load power into the jump coils.”

  That would have to be good enough, whether Perkins liked it or not. For the record, she did not like it. “Remind me, how long after we jump until the sensors are able to give us useful data?”