Mavericks (Expeditionary Force Book 6)

by Craig Alanson

  “He’s lying again,” Chisolm growled as his people shuffled their feet and looked at him for reassurance. “We weren’t given any weapons at all, we didn’t need them for our mission. We sure as hell were not given any bioweapon.”

  “Yes you were,” Adams stepped forward and poked Chisolm in the chest, a bit harder than I had done. He was getting pissed about it. “It’s in here,” she jabbed him again, hard enough that he took a stride backward.

  “You are all infected,” I explained. “That is why we are sealed up in these suits, and why you will not be leaving this docking bay, until we have a cure for you and a vaccine for us.”

  “Or until you die,” Adams stepped back away from the red-faced Chisolm. “Data recovered from Camp Alpha indicates the incubation period is about three months for humans.”

  Now the Keepers all began to talk amongst themselves. Hearing Adams reference Camp Alpha had struck a nerve. “What’s wrong?” I asked the group. “Come on, some of you must have suspected you were getting used, again. The lizards tested the pathogen on multiple groups. They had a control group that was never infected, those people were taken off Camp Alpha by a Jeraptha ship, along with a mixed human-Ruhar team.” I left out the participation of the Verd-Kris to avoid confusing the issue. “Groups of people would be separated, taken away from the base, and you’d never see them again?” I could see that got a reaction. “At least some of you idiots must have suspected something wasn’t right. Seriously?” I mocked them. “You really thought the Kristang needed you provide intel about Paradise? Think about it, think. It would not be too long before one of you got recognized and the hamsters figured out that Keepers who left had somehow come back to the planet.”

  “That’s not true,” Chisolm waved his hands frantically to calm his people down. “We were trained to-”

  “Trained to what? The hamsters have your DNA, even UNEF has your DNA in a file somewhere. You were going to get caught eventually. A month, maybe two months you could sneak around before somebody asked the wrong questions. Ah, forget it,” I waved a hand in disgust. “If you are stupid enough to believe the Kristang war fleet needs you to take back control of the planet, then you are way too stupid to ever see reality.”

  “Um, Joe, there is an unpleasant surprise I just discovered,” Skippy broke into the conversation. “It seems the Kristang did not entirely trust the crew of knuckleheads they sent on this mission. I have no idea why, as I can tell these fools are totally trustworthy. Not! Anywho, the Kristang were concerned the Twenty Stooges here would blab their mouths to someone on Paradise and expose the mission. These Keepers would die eventually, of course, but that would take months, and the Kristang did not need them to live for more than a month. One month would be plenty of time for them to infect plenty of unsuspecting victims, people who could move around a lot more freely and spread the pathogen widely. As a precaution, the Kristang injected each one of them with an implant that will all activate at the exact same time, about twenty eight days from their scheduled landing. This implant will burst blood vessels in their brains, so they will all drop dead instantly of massive aneurysms. The implants are timed to kill them all at the exact same moment, so one of these fools doesn’t see his buddy drop dead and start shooting his mouth off before the implant kills him.”

  “Where are these implants?” I took a half-step back, subconsciously afraid of getting killed by proxy.

  “Like the suicide dots our away teams wear, the implants are at the back of the neck, near the brain stem. Our nanodots kill the wearer by electrical impulse, they are worn on the skin, they can be removed easily, and of course the wearer knows about them and decides whether to activate the suicide mechanism. The implants given to the Keepers were inserted under the skin, and nanofibers spread along blood vessels to several places in their brains.”

  “Can you turn them off, get rid of them, something like that?”

  “Oh, I already postponed the activation sequence. But I can’t guarantee there won’t be a glitch so to be safe, they need to be physically removed. That can be accomplished easily enough, I will send in nanobots to disable and dissolve the Kristang implants.”

  “Ok, we can do that when we-”

  “You are not touching me with any of your Goddamned machines,” Chisolm growled. “We do know about those implants, the Kristang explained why they are needed and we all agreed to have them. You’re lying, the implants aren’t dangerous to us, they are beacons so the Kristang can locate us when our mission is complete. Without the implants, we might mistakenly be targeted during a raid, before the planet is taken back from the hamsters. The implants will pinpoint our location, so we can be evaced by stealth dropships when the Kristang are satisfied with the take from our intel.”

  “Wow,” Skippy’s voice rang from the speakers. “That is a truly sterling example of self-delusion. Hey asswipe, you know that isn’t true. You morons are disposable to the Kristang, no way would they risk sending a stealthed dropship down to pick up you losers. Seriously, you expect them to fly around willy-nilly to pick up all of you?”

  “No, we will get a signal to gather in a pre-arranged, remote location,” Chisolm glared at me. “That minimizes the risk of-”

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Skippy’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Why would-”

  I cut off Skippy’s disgusted comment before we wasted too much time on an irrelevant discussion. “As you reminded me, never argue with an idiot, because they can’t understand when they’ve lost. Fine,” I pointed to Chisolm, “you can keep your implants, and we will even reset the timer back to its original setting. But, anyone who does not get their implants disabled will be isolated so you can’t harm anyone else until you drop dead, got that?”

  That prompted a huddle around Chisolm by several Keepers, with low voices and a lot of animated hand gestures. I politely did not eavesdrop on the argument. Ok, so it was not me being polite, I just did not want to listen to a bunch of fanatical dipshits trying to make a totally obvious decision. After two minutes, Chisolm stepped forward. “Colonel Bishop,” I could see referring to me as a colonel felt sour in his mouth, “we agree to have the implants disabled, therefore you have no excuse to isolate any of us,” he smirked as if he had just foiled an evil plot. “We are one team and we will remain strong together. Also, it appears a locator beacon will not do us any good now, you could easily block the transmission.” My guess was he added that last part as a way to save face in front of his people.

  I truly did not care whether his people respected him or not. “Fine,” I snapped. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We are going to take samples of your blood and tissues,” Mad Doctor Skippy had been vague about how invasive and painful the sample collection process would be, and I truly did not care. “You are going to cooperate and live here,” I gestured to the portable shelters we had set up along the inner bulkhead of the docking bay, “until we have a cure, or until you die as the pathogen runs its course. We will not risk you infecting us or contaminating the rest of the ship, because we are going home, and UNEF Command won’t let us off the ship if they think we might be carriers. I will now leave you to the kind tenderness of Gunnery Sergeant Adams,” I nodded toward her “She will explain in detail your living arrangements and exactly how you will be cooperating. Keep this in mind,” I scowled from one face to the next. “We need samples of the pathogen to develop a cure, and we need subjects to test a cure. We do not need all of you for the procedure to be successful. Sergeant Adams,” she came to attention. “I figure we need maybe ten out of twenty of these losers, max. If they give you any shit, you have my permission to break bones. If any of them give you serious trouble, I am ordering you to toss them out an airlock, with this asshole,” I pointed straight at Chisolm, “going first. In case any of you geniuses thinks Gunny Adams won’t do it, here’s a breaking news flash for you. That Kristang destroyer that brought you here? It is not coming to rescue you, because we took control and jumped it just abo
ve the surface of the star, where those brave warriors had a few seconds to cry and piss in their pants before they got swallowed up by a fireball. Adams here pressed the button to jump those lizards straight into hell. Do not piss her off. Or,” I smiled with my mouth but not my eyes, “do it. Please. One of you, try it. Make my day.”

  There weren’t any takers for my dare. No matter how fanatical they were, they were badly shaken up by their shocking sudden change of circumstances, and by what I had told them. Even Chisolm cooperated, though he told his people to cooperate only so they could live to fight another day, fight for the Kristang. I did not care what he told them. Mad Doctor Skippy got his samples and began doing, whatever it was Skippy did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  Two days later, I saw Adams in the galley. “How are our guests enjoying their luxury accommodations?”

  She gave a long, exaggerated sigh, making sort of motor boat sound with her lips. For a moment I just stared at her, because I never imagined her doing something like that. There were so many layers to our tough Gunnery Sergeant, she was like an onion wrapped in an onion. A sweet onion, like a, what are they called? Not Valvoline, that’s a motor oil. Not Viagra either. Something with a V? Vidalia, that’s it! A Vidalia onion, not a sour one that makes you cry. Although, Adams could make you cry if she wanted to. Despite the years we had served together, I barely knew her, the real Margaret Adams. That was maybe my one major regret, that—

  Uh, I’d better drop that subject like a hot potato.

  Anyway, she sounded exasperated and disgusted. “Sir, I have to talk to you about that. I don’t want to, but I’m kind of required to by the UCMJ.”

  “The Uniform Code of Military Justice?” Holy shit, I told myself, this could not be good. If Adams had seen fit to toss one of the Keepers out an airlock. I was Ok with that, but expected she would have notified me about it first. She should have immediately notified me about any serious incident, and, again, holy shit! Anything involving the UCMJ was no joke. “Uh, what?”

  “It’s nothing serious, Sir,” she must have seen the deer-in-the-headlights look on my face. “Some of them, that Chisolm guy mostly, have been complaining about their treatment. One of them is a barracks lawyer, he cited sections of the Geneva Convention at me.”

  “The Geneva freakin’ Convention?” I was astonished. “Like that matters out here?” Actually, crap, it might. The Keepers were humans, and our mission was under the authority of UNEF Command. So, damn it, maybe it did matter. Oh, hell, I needed to ask Skippy, he knew all that legal stuff.

  “That’s above my pay grade, Colonel,” she raised an eyebrow, having just successfully passed that particular buck to me. “Consider yourself officially notified, Sir,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes. I loved to see Adams smile, it lit up her whole face.

  “Gunny, I would love to give a shit about whether those Goddamn Keeper traitors are happy about their living situation.”

  “I am guessing you don’t?”

  “Sadly, my shit-giving ability is currently offline, and it don’t look good for getting it fixed any time soon,” I winked at her.

  “What should I tell the Keepers? They demanded to meet with you, to present a list of grievances.”

  “Grievanc-” I clamped my jaw shut to control my anger. “Tell that barracks lawyer I have him penciled in to meet with me at Punch-him-in-the-face O’clock, but if he would prefer Kick-in-the-balls Thirty, that’s good for me too.”

  “I don’t think any of those cowards have balls, Sir.”

  “Punchin-the-face O’Clock it is, then. Tell him he can meet me in the airlock, I’ll give him a tour of the ship, from the outside. It will be a short tour, before his eyeballs explode from vacuum. Seriously, Adams, if that particular shithead were to suffer a terribly unfortunate accident involving powered armor and several vital organs, I would not be unhappy, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean, Sir.”

  I do not know what Adams did, if anything, but I did not get any more complaints from the Keepers. That I know of. Not that I asked, if you know what I mean.

  While we waited for Skippy to magically create a vaccine or cure for the bioweapon, I tried to keep the crew’s spirits up by requesting people to create lists like what favorite food they would eat when we got back to Earth, what places they wanted to visit during the leave they would be granted after debriefing, happy stuff like that. One thing I did not do was ask about the family and friends people were looking forward to reconnecting with, because thinking about how long we had been away from our loved ones was bound to be painful, and exactly the opposite of the happy morale boost I was hoping for.

  It did not surprise me that while I was looking forward to finally seeing home again, our high-speed SpecOps warriors and hotshot pilots had mixed feelings about it. Major Smythe openly told me he would miss the adrenaline rush of combat, and just never knowing what gut-wrenching crisis we would be dealing with the next day. All of the SpecOps teams worried they would be trapped dirtside after this mission, as their national militaries would want at least some of them to stay home, to transfer their knowledge and train other troops in space combat techniques. The pilots were worried about having to fly slow, boring aircraft and helicopters again, and never even getting above low Earth orbit. There wasn’t anything I could say to soothe their fears, as I had no idea what UNEF Command planned to do with the crew once we landed on our home planet.

  There was another person aboard the ship, not technically a member of the crew, who had seriously mixed feelings about going home. Hans Chotek was worried about UNEF Command’s reaction to how long we had been away, on what was supposed to be a simple and short mission. Yes, we had successfully confirmed the Thuranin were not sending another surveyor ship to Earth. And yes, we had stopped the Ruhar from sending a ship, paid for by the Kristang. Those were both major items in the plus column for sure. Even our having saved the human population of Paradise, twice, hopefully counted as wins. But we had also risked exposure on Paradise two times, Ok, technically three times. And our beer can had proven to have judgment as trustworthy as a meth addict with a pocketful of stolen credit cards. We nearly got trapped by a task force of combined Thuranin, Bosphuraq and oh, yeah, don’t forget Maxolhx ships. We broke an Elder wormhole! We had messed with a freakin’ Elder sentinel killing machine. It was almost not worth mentioning that we engaged in combat with a Maxolhx warship, and that a Maxolhx had committed suicide aboard our ship. All that bad or at least risky stuff happened on Hans Chotek’s watch. All of which he expected to catch hell about from chair-bound bureaucrats when we got home.

  And all of which did not compare to the fact that career diplomat Hans Chotek started an alien civil war. I almost felt sorry for the guy. Srcatch that, I did feel sorry for him.

  There was another person I felt sorry for: myself. UNEF Command had not wanted me as captain of, or even aboard, the Flying Dutchman the last time we left Earth. They viewed me as too young and too prone to take risks before. They were going to be just thrilled to hear what trouble I had gotten us into this time. My stomach got queasy every time I thought of the major ass-chewing I would get as soon as my boots hit the ground.

  Anyway, to keep my mind off the fate that awaited me on Earth, I took our enforced idleness as an opportunity to ask Skippy about something. My hope was I could bring some good news home to UNEF Command, and maybe they’d forget about all that other shit. Which was never going to happen, but I figured I should give the self-delusion thing a try. “Hey, Skippy.”

  “Hey, Joe. What do you propose to waste my time with now?”

  “How do you know that I’m going to-Oh, forget it. I have a question. Now that you are the new, better-than-ever, ‘fresh scent’ Skippy-”

  “Fresh scent? I do not have a scent. Or do I?” He gasped in shuddering horror. “I have never asked you if-”

  “No, no, Skippy, don’t worry about it. I just meant that ‘fresh scent’ is something marketi
ng people say when they describe an improved product.”

  “Hmmm. Did this product previously smell like rotten fish?”

  “Well, in that case, ‘fresh scent’ would be a big improvement, right?”

  “I can’t argue with that. The way I would describe myself is ‘More Awesome Than Ever’.”

  “How about ‘Fifty Percent More Awesome For The Same Price’?”

  “I like your thinking. Anywho, what is your question?”

  “Can the new Awesome-Beyond-Imagination Skippy share even a tiny bit of technology with us poor monkeys soon, like when we get to Earth? You said you were working on that, after you rearranged your sock drawers or whatever you do in there.”

  “Ugh. Why do I ever try explaining technology to you? Ok, at your pathetic level of development, rearranging my sock drawer is an appropriate, bacteria-level understanding of the mind-bogglingly incredible-”

  “Yeah, blah blah blah, you’re awesome. Listen, has rewriting your internal software loosened your restrictions yet? The annoying subroutines or whatever that prevent you from flying ships by yourself, sharing technology with us, all that?”

  “Not yet, Joe,” he scolded me. “I told you, I am working on it. Damn, I should never have mentioned that possibility to you. I. Do. Not. Know yet, you dumdum. Rewriting my software, which is a bad analogy that makes you think the task is much easier than it truly is, has proved to be an extremely delicate problem. I am having to create sort of a model of myself, so I can test changes in a controlled environment, instead of taking the risk of damaging myself. If I screw something up, I might be unable to undo the damage, and then we would be right back to my operating at reduced, perhaps severely reduced capacity. Would you like me to take that risk?”

  “No! No, I very much did not like it when you were acting drunk or high or brain-damaged or whatever was wrong with you. The last thing I need is you waking me up at Zero Dark Thirty to marvel at the freakin’ universe. You, uh, take all the time you need to get that sock drawer squared away, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”