Mavericks (Expeditionary Force Book 6)

by Craig Alanson

  Shauna sat on the rock next to Perkins, crossing her legs in a sort of yoga position, looking toward the setting sun. She took a deep breath, wrinkling her nose at the acrid burnt smell that pervaded the entire planet’s surface. Did the oceans also smell bad? She asked herself. “At times like this, Camp Alpha doesn’t seem half bad, but most of the times, I hate this place. The first time we were here, I was too busy, and too stupid and naive to pay attention to what a pit this place is. That maybe should have been my first clue the Kristang were not the good guys.”

  “It’s not that bad, Jarrett. You ever been to the NTC at Fort Irwin?” She meant the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert. When Shauna shook her head, Perkins continued. “A hundred ten degrees in the afternoon, and don’t believe that bullshit about it being a ‘dry heat’. One ten is Goddamned hot. My first overseas assignment was Iraq,” she shook her head in disbelief that America still had boots on the ground in that country, even if those troops were technically only supposed to provide ‘advice and training’. “Now that place is scorching hot in summer, and the northern mountains get bone-chilling cold in winter. You know what the Nigerian jungle is like, a steam bath on a good day. Camp Alpha is a pleasant spa by comparison. Also, here I don’t have to check my boots for scorpions and snakes every morning.”

  Shauna tilted her head back to gaze at the sky. The sun was low enough that the second planet in the system could be seen as a bright star in the sky. “Here, all we have to worry about is a Kristang ship jumping in and blasting us from orbit.”

  “Is that what you wanted to talk about?” Perkins nudged her tablet as a hint she wanted to get back to work.

  “No.”

  “I’m kind of busy-”

  “No, you’re not.” Shauna looked her CO straight in the eye. “None of us are busy. We’re waiting, and nothing we do down here matters. A friendly ship jumps in to rescue us before the lizards get here, or it doesn’t. If we’re infected, we die down here, because no ship will take us aboard. There’s nothing any of has to do down here. Nothing that matters.”

  Perkins noted Shauna had not addressed her as Colonel or Ma’am, and she let it slide. “You’re feeling helpless, is that it?” If that were true, she would be surprised. Sergeant Jarrett had been a squared-away, focused soldier since the day they met.

  Shauna spat on the dusty ground. The acrid air irritated her throat. “I’ve been feeling helpless since Columbus Day, when aliens pounded our homeworld from orbit. What I’m here to talk about is Dave.”

  “Sergeant Czajka?” That soldier had seemed distracted the past several days, Perkins attributed that to boredom after the excitement of combat.

  “He’s planning to leave the Force, if we get back to Paradise.”

  “That-” The Mavericks without Dave Czajka? She could not imagine her team without-Emily felt a lump in her throat. She could not imagine herself without him. Bunking with that male soldier had been awkward, but just listening to him breathing in the bunk right above her head had been comforting. She missed greeting him in the mornings, even though that was often the most awkward part of the day for each of them. “I know many people are worried about opportunities passing them by on Paradise, but out here we’ve seen plenty of action. If he-”

  “Dave got an offer to go into business brewing beer, or something like that, but that’s not the problem. You need to stop stringing him along.”

  “What? Soldier, that-”

  Shauna let out a long, weary breath. “Don’t give me that ‘soldier’ shit. I’m off duty. This is two women talking. You think out here, military protocol matters?” She rolled her eyes angrily. “UNEF is over. It’s dead. Whatever authority the Force had so far from home, it died when our access to Earth got cut off.”

  “Jarrett,” Perkins refused to use the other woman’s first name, “military protocol and the Code of Conduct are all we have out here. We can’t-”

  “No. The Code of Conduct was all we had, back when we shipped out. If the only thing keeping us together are regulations from a planet that could be dead, then all we’re doing out here is playing soldier, and that’s pathetic. These,” she tapped her UNEF and US ARMY patches, “are not why I came off Paradise. I want to make a difference, and this team, your team, is my best chance to matter to the future of humanity. When we met, all I knew was you rode a chair as a staff officer, and intel types are not the most popular with foot soldiers. You had to earn our respect, and you’ve got it. By the time we get back to Paradise, if there is anyone still alive there, the entire Force might have dissolved, and where does that leave us? You told us we need to think long-term about how humans fit into Ruhar society. You’re right about that, but whatever strategy we use long-term, UNEF won’t be a useful part of it.”

  “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” Perkins replied in a neutral tone.

  “The strategy stuff can wait. Dave can’t. Think about that first, or you’re going to lose him, we’ll all lose him. If you are really not interested, then you need to tell him. If you are interested, don’t hide behind regs written on a planet a thousand lightyears from here. Dave is a good guy,” Shauna emphasized by squeezing the other woman’s shoulder. “That’s not easy to find.”

  “Again, I need time to think,” Perkins relied, irritation creeping into her voice.

  Shauna stood up and stretched her legs. The sun had set and already the night air was growing chilly. “Think about this, then. We’re making up the rules as we go out here. Maybe it’s time to throw out some of the rulebooks we took with us from Earth, if following those rules means we don’t have a Force left. Colonel, we didn’t follow you to the stars because of a rulebook.”

  Emily Perkins never picked up her tablet that night, whatever trivial task she had been working on forgotten. She had a lot to think about, and no star to guide her. Jarrett was right, they were fighting a new war, with a new human society, maybe they needed a new set of rules. Still, she had joined the military as a career and the rules and traditions of the service were deeply ingrained, deeply personal. Rules were the difference between a well-disciplined force and a mob.

  She had a lot to think about.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  The star carrier Deal Me In was officially declared Overdue, when that ship failed to contact a relay station as scheduled. The relay station noted the event, and sent the notice to a passing ship the next day, but the local Jeraptha fleet base commander did not become concerned immediately. She did not become concerned because a delay of one or two days during a long training mission was not unusual, and because she had much more important matters on her mind.

  The Bosphuraq, who had been quiet for decades along the border they shared with the Jeraptha, had suddenly demonstrated a radical change of tactics. The birdbrains had unexpectedly launched attacks into territory recently lost by the Thuranin. These attacks, supported by ships of their client species the Wurgalan to handle the grunt work of taking planets and scouring solar systems of threats, were mostly conducted by battlegroups of the standard Bosphuraq fleet action deployment; two battleships escorted by a half dozen cruisers and up to fifteen destroyers, frigates and support vessels. The Jeraptha had long-standing tactics to deal with a Bosphuraq battlegroup, either alone or in multiple units, so at first the local fleet commander was not overly concerned.

  Then she received reports of something new and alarming; Bosphuraq and Thuranin ships operating together. Based on very skimpy data coming in from Jeraptha ships that had been hit hard by the unexpected enemy offensive, it appeared the Thuranin were taking a supporting role in recapturing the territory they had recently lost. Few Kristang ships were participating, perhaps because those lizards were busily enjoying one of their regularly-scheduled murderous civil wars. Regardless, it was mostly the Wurgalan doing the dirty grunt work of securing planets after the combined Bosphuraq/Thuranin warships cleared a star system of resistance and rolled onto the next objective.

  So, when anoth
er four days went by and the Deal Me In still had not contacted a relay station or friendly ship, the star carrier and its attached task force of Ruhar ships was declared Missing. It worried the local fleet commander that the Deal Me In had been operating close to the area where the Bosphuraq suddenly attacked, and that no other Jeraptha fleet assets had been in that area at the time. The star carrier had been operating there with a group of Ruhar ships conducting training exercises, because that area was supposed to be safe.

  The local fleet commander had three emotional reactions. First, shock and outrage, not at the carnage caused by the Bosphuraq attack, but because she recently had wagered the Thuranin would not go on the offensive in her sector for another fifteen months. Her shock was that she had been caught on the wrong side of the wager, and her outrage was that the unscrupulous bean-counters at the Central Office of Wagering would not cut her a break just because the Bosphuraq had taken the lead in the attack. Thuranin warships were participating in the offensive, so she had lost the wager, period. That argument would seesaw back and forth in the courts for years and the terms of the wager might be adjusted slightly, but overall the local fleet commander was well and truly screwed.

  Second, she felt sorry for the crew of the Deal Me In and its attached Ruhar task force. Considering the scale of the enemy offensive, the star carrier being declared missing very likely meant it had been lost to enemy action, and she quenched her feelings of sorrow long enough to post a wager that the Deal Me In had in fact been destroyed.

  The third emotion she felt was regret, regret that she could not spare even a single ship of her overtasked fleet to search for the Deal Me In. That old star carrier, with its attached group of older Ruhar ships that had been working up crew trainees for fleet service, was simply not important enough to devote scarce resources to a search she felt certain would have only one result: finding scattered debris. The worst part of the situation was that, as the Deal Me In had been operating independently, it did not have a predetermined flight plan when it departed from the planet the Ruhar called Gehtanu. It could be anywhere, and even the entire Jeraptha fleet might never find a single piece of debris from that ship.

  No, she could not detach even a frigate for the search operation, so she did the only thing she could do, the only action that might resolve the mystery of the star carrier’s fate. She used local fleet funds to post an open wager across Jeraptha space, a wager that no trace of the lost star carrier would be found within 47 days. The terms of the wager were generous and should prove enticing to any commercial vessel crazy and desperate enough to go looking around in what was now Bosphuraq-controlled space.

  Of course, she also registered a small offsetting wager of her own, in the case of a miracle that even one of the Deal Me In’s crew were found alive.

  The Sure Thing was an old, very old, Jeraptha star carrier that had been retired, sold and much modified over the centuries, with few of the modifications making the ship better or even keeping it in the marginal condition it had suffered from before the alterations. While the Sure Thing had left its original shipyard with three main and two auxiliary reactors, fourteen hardpoints for docking ships, a railgun and multiple missile launchers and maser cannons, it now was much reduced in power and fortune. A single ancient and leaky reactor powered the ship, with auxiliary power provided by worn-out powercells and a type of primitive Ruhar fuel cells that even the Ruhar no longer used aboard their own ships. Only three hardpoints now remained, those being suitable only for cargo containers, which was fine as the Sure Thing now carried only cargo across the star lanes. Of the original armament, only a single maser cannon remained other than maser turrets for self-defense, and all those units had exciters that were more likely to explode and damage the ship than protect it.

  As a search and rescue ship, the Sure Thing had only three things in its favor. It was a former star carrier, capable of traveling vast distances on its own. It had excellent sensor gear, because the crew wanted to avoid danger, and even more wanted to avoid Jeraptha Revenue and Customs ships that were currently seeking to impound Sure Thing for unpaid docking fees, violating space maneuver regulations and flying a poorly-maintained ship whose spaceworthiness certificate had expired the previous year. And, the most important factor in favor of the Sure Thing was that ship’s owners were truly, absolutely, desperate. They already owed more in unpaid fees and lost wagers than the ship was worth. The crew had not been paid for months, both for salaries and for a lengthy list of wagers the crew had won against the vessel’s owners.

  Thus, the two owners of the Sure Thing, a married couple, had nothing to lose when they heard about the wager to find the lost Deal Me In. Unfortunately, they also had nothing to wager with.

  Vincerientu ‘Vinny’ Gumbano clicked his antenna together nervously, in a gesture he knew his business partner understood was a sign that Vinny was about to say something she might not like. Vinny concentrated on holding his antenna still, but as soon as his concentration slipped, they clicked their tips against each other, causing Ammarie Viso to cross both her arms and her own antenna. “What is it now, Vinny?”

  “Darling, this is a marvelous opportunity. We’ll never get an opportunity like this again!”

  “You mean never again, because if we don’t cash in now, we’ll lose the ship and be totally out of action. The next port we put into, the Customs and Revenue people will seize this bucket and we can’t stop them.” For the past year, the Sure Thing had been running on borrowed time, multiple false registrations and a well-placed wager that the Customs and Revenue service would catch the ship within fourteen months. The last time they were in port, an official from Customs and Revenue had almost certainly seen through the thin cover of their false registration, but since that official had taken the other side of the wager, that his service would not catch the Sure Thing, the ship had been allowed to slip away. That particular wager was some of the best money Vinny and Ammarie had ever spent. “Vinny, dear, you don’t need to sell me on this one; I agree we should take the action for finding the Deal Me In. There is only one problem: we don’t have anything to wager with! We owe more on this ship than it’s worth and the Central Wagering Office knows that. We can’t even pay off the bets we’ve lost in the last year.”

  “We do have something to wager,” Vinny’s antenna fairly danced, he was so nervous. “I insured our cargo for double its value,” his eyes cast down to the deck, then flicked upward to see his partner’s reaction.

  She laughed. “You too? I insured it for double!”

  Vinny was less surprised that he might have been, for he was used to Ammarie out-guessing him. “The cargo is insured for four times its value?”

  “Five,” came another voice from the hatchway, and in walked their two remaining crew members, the only ones who had hung on when the paychecks and wager payoffs stopped flowing. Cleeturss Delroy had not left the ship because he was Ammarie’s brother, and because he figured his only chance to collect on back pay and wagers was to stay with the ship and watch the two owners with keen eyes and a suspicious heart. “We,” he pointed to indicate his wife Thelmer, “took out our own insurance policy.”

  “You don’t have an insurable interest,” Ammarie groaned, wary of her sometimes dim-witted brother’s schemes. Cleeturss had good concepts, he just was not good at the details. So something usually went wrong. Almost always went wrong.

  “Don’t worry,” Thelmer assured the ship’s owners. “I ran it through shell companies.”

  “You did?” Ammarie asked hopefully.

  “Why?” Cleeturss clacked his antenna irritably. “You don’t trust me?”

  “I do trust you, dear brother. I trust Thelmer more.”

  “She did it,” Cleeturss let his antenna flop. “But it was my idea.”

  “Good, excellent,” Vinny interrupted, wanting to forestall another argument between Ammarie and her brother, but he was just a bit too late.

  “Why did you insure our cargo?” Ammarie pressed her
brother, drawing herself up on her hind set of legs.

  “Because,” Thelmer stepped between the siblings. “We want to get back pay, regardless of what happens to this ship. At this point, you have an incentive for this ship to suffer an unfortunate accident, if you know what I mean. That might solve the problem you two got into, but it would leave Cleeturss and me with nothing. Don’t tell me that ditching this ship never crossed your mind, Ammarie, I know you’re smarter than that.”

  Ammarie looked to her business and life partner, and when Vinny said nothing, she sighed. “Let’s put all that aside for now, hmm? We have agreed to take this wager, to find the Deal Me In?”