Deathtrap

by Craig Alanson

  That was mildly surprising to Perkins. “I thought the Bosphuraq were using the Wurgalan to handle their dirtside work?”

  “They are, mostly, but the octopussies don’t want most of the star systems the Bosphuraq are leaving to them. Those worlds are too far from Wurgalan territory, the octopussies know they can’t hold onto them if the Jeraptha and Ruhar get their acts together and push back. I don’t blame them, a distance of two hundred lightyears is one hell of a long supply line, even with Elder wormholes providing shortcuts. So, the Wurgalan are trading their new planets to the Kristang, in exchange for Kristang planets the octopussies want. They’re being smart about it, too,” Ross smiled with grudging respect. “The deals they are making strengthen several Kristang clans that have been hurt badly in their latest civil war. That will prolong the civil war and keep the Kristang weak, while the Wurgalan build up their strength.”

  “Sir, we can’t disarm. Pulling people back to base won’t do any good, the lizards will just stretch out their festivals until we can’t take it any longer. If we fold now, this is the end of humans being part of the Alien Legion. Any planet we go to, all the lizards have to do is hold Keepers hostage and freeze us out. UNEF will be finished, we all go back to farming on Paradise and being pets of the Ruhar. If we-”

  “Goddamn it! You think I don’t know that, Perkins? We just need to get through this without any incidents that break the treaty. In the future, soldiers who sign up for the Legion will know the kind of mind games the lizards plan to use against us, that will reduce the impact. We’ll bring back to Paradise video of the festivals here, people will already have seen it before they go offworld. The problem here is, the lizards sprung these gladiator games on us, and there isn’t enough time for the force to process it. What about your team, Perkins? Do you trust them not to hit the lizards when they see humans being torn apart by animals?”

  “General, honestly, I wouldn’t trust myself to hold fire. I don’t know what I will do. There are a couple of my people I am watching, it’s hard telling them to stand down when I sympathize with what they’re feeling.”

  Ross looked out the window. “Me too, Perkins. Did you know one of my nephews joined the Keepers? My brother always was an asshole, and he passed that trait along to his son. My nephew Jason isn’t on Fresno, I checked that because if he was forced into one of these festivals, I would need to step down. I had my staff run some numbers,” he pulled his laptop around so Perkins could see it. “The hamsters identified all the Keepers here for us, and I had my staff cross-reference those names against the force here. Over three thousand of our people on the ground here personally know one or more of the Keepers who will die in those festivals. The Keepers are either related, or served in the same unit, or were friends. Former friends,” he added, not able to imagine anyone could remain friends with any Keeper of the Faith who was stupid and gullible and just bull-headed enough to betray UNEF and go away with the Kristang. “The only good thing about these festivals is, they will destroy any ability the Kristang have to recruit new Keepers.”

  Perkins snorted. “No, it won’t, Sir. The Keepers will just say the videos are fake news. You can’t fix stupid.”

  “You may be right about that. The lizards are playing psy-ops games with us, I need someone to advise me on how to counter that tactic. There’s an Air Force psychologist on my staff, she’s serving as liaison to the Verds now. I sent for her, maybe she knows a way to keep our people frosty over the next ten days.”

  “I know one thing that would help, Sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We could tell our people the next mission of the Legion won’t be to herd civilians aboard transport ships. It will be to seriously kick lizard ass.”

  That remark made Ross smile. “We’ll need to convince our hamster overlords to give us that opportunity. Commissioner Useless right now wishes humans had never come to Fresno.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Ruhar were humiliated by the revelation that a group of lowly humans, working on their own with whatever data they could get second-hand, had located a potentially dangerous hidden cache of weapons and troops. Commissioner Yusafft in particular was incensed and demanded that, if there were more undeclared weapons stashed away by the Kristang, they be found by Ruhar and not by another species. As Yusafft was a politician and knew any setbacks in the schedule would be blamed on him, he hedged his bets by ensuring that Perkins got access to all the data she wanted, plus a pair of drones specially modified to detect Kristang stealth fields. When Perkins planned to send the team’s Buzzard to deploy the drones in an area she thought most likely to have a weapons cache, she was warned away by the Ruhar, who wanted to search that area first. The next seven areas on the priority list were all designated for the Ruhar or Verds to scan, which left Perkins to direct her team’s search in provinces that were already under the Legion’s control.

  “This area has been cleared, Ma’am,” Shauna reminded her CO as that woman leaned over the console, partly blocking Shauna’s view and annoying her.

  “It has been declared clear, Sergeant,” Perkins was in a bad mood. “That doesn’t mean it is clear. If I were a lizard planning an attack, I would want to pop behind enemy lines, where I could cause maximum damage in the shortest time. These other provinces,” she waved a hand over the displayed map, “are better places to keep weapons hidden, but the lizards knew what our schedule would be before we landed.” The Legion had limited options for taking over the planet. Logically, and most practical in terms of logistics, they had first secured the area around the huge railgun cargo launcher located on the equator.. With the Launcher secured, the Legion had then moved out to surround the planet’s only two significant cities and establish supply bases. Any Kristang with half a brain and access to a map could have predicted the Legion’s moves. For the purpose of concealing weapons and soldiers, the local Kristang would have prepared underground bases hidden behind stealth fields, and located them far from the areas the Legion would occupy first.

  But if the Kristang planned to hit the Legion, that strategy did not make sense. “The lizards have to know they will have only hours, maybe a day, to hurt us before the Ruhar’s orbital firepower pounds them back to the Stone Age. If they pop up out of a cavern let’s say here,” she pointed to an area far from any Legion ground forces, “they will have to fly or drive a long way to hit us. No, they wouldn’t do that. I’ll bet that instead of a few big caches of weapons, our clever, nasty lizard friends have planted a bunch of small weapons caches, and they plan simultaneous attacks.”

  “Guerilla tactics, Ma’am?” Shauna frowned. Her experience in Nigeria had taught her how dangerous and frustrating it could be to fight small groups of lightly-armed insurgents. A dozen locals, armed with AKs and rockets, could tie down a full company for a day, forcing the vastly better equipped foreign army to clear a village house by house or even room by room.

  Perkins’ jaw worked side to side, like she was tasting something in her mouth that was unpleasant. What she found unpleasant were memories of her own time in the bush of Nigeria. “The Army calls that ‘asymmetrical warfare’ now. Yeah, it’s all the same. If they’re planning anything, it will be small attacks at the same time, designed to kill as many of us as they can. The hamsters have seen it before on planets the lizards surrendered, their warrior caste has to make an attempt to hit back as a matter of honor, before they evac. It’s almost a ritual, the lizards launch attacks, the hamsters fry them from orbit, then the lizards stand down after a reasonable body count on both sides. That’s why I’m thinking our best bet to find anything, in the areas we’re allowed to search, is near villages that our hamster friends have declared clear. Once a ground team updates the map with a ‘Clear’ label, they forget about it and move on. We don’t have the manpower or transport resources to run a deep scan twice.”

  “I can try it, Ma’am,” Shauna was skeptical. Not of the Colonel’s logic, but of her chances to find anything. The p
laces Perkins wanted to concentrate the search were near power-generator stations or along transmission lines. The energy saturating those areas would make it harder for a scan to detect the flaws along the edges of an underground stealth field, which also made them good sites to hide caches of weapons.

  “Do you know what to look for?” Perkins found it difficult to step back and let her team do their jobs. “Can you compare these scans to the stealth field around that cavern we raided?”

  “I could, but those overlapping stealth fields were crap,” Shauna said with disgust. Once Perkins had persuaded Legion leadership to investigate her suspicions about the site, drones had quickly confirmed the presence of stealth fields, because those devices were so poorly tuned. “If that cavern we raided yesterday was a decoy, then I think the stealth fields were also bogus. They wanted us to detect those fields, and they want us to waste time looking for the same signature. If the Kristang really are that sloppy, they might as well surrender all their territory now and save everyone a lot of trouble.”

  “I hear you, Jarrett. See what you can find. I’ll be back this afternoon and I’ll join the effort. Is there anything you need?”

  Shauna looked up and smiled hopefully. “Coffee and doughnuts, Ma’am?”

  “I’ll ask Colter to bring coffee. The closest doughnuts are on Paradise, so let’s wrap this up and go home.” Home. Damn, Emily thought. When had Paradise become the planet she thought of as ‘home’? “What is it? You look like you want to say something.”

  “If the greatest risk is in sectors we’ve tagged as Clear, why are we the only ones looking there?” Shauna appreciated the faith being placed in her abilities, she also did not want the responsibility of being the only person conducting the search.

  “We’re not. General Ross and the Verds agree we could get sucker-punched from behind, and they have teams double-checking where they can, but the Commissioner insists the Legion concentrate the search on provinces we haven’t taken yet. From his viewpoint, that makes sense. Scattered groups of lizards popping up in our rear to hit as a face-saving gesture would be hell for us, but Yusafft can write it off as an expected cost of occupation. What he is worried about is a major push to re-establish control of the planet. No way could he escape blame if the Legion got hurt so badly, we had to pull back to orbit.”

  “The Kristang care that much about this world?”

  “I don’t think the leadership of other clans could find this backwater rock on a map. What they do care about is squashing the Legion, because the idea of the Verd-Kris advancing across their territory with the backing of the Ruhar, has all Kristang clan leaders scared out of their minds. If the lizards are going to make a big push to kill the whole idea of an Alien Legion, they should do it right here,” she jabbed a finger on the console, “right now.”

  Hearing that did not boost Shauna’s confidence. “You said us coming to Fresno was a set-up, them bringing in Keepers and all before we got here. Do you think the Kristang will try to push us off the surface?”

  Perkins smiled with her mouth but not her eyes, it was unconvincing. “If they do, they are going to get a bloody nose from Commodore Sequent. Just one of his ships can obliterate any target on the surface, and with three ships, he can rotate his force to keep two continuously providing close-space support while the other ship conducts maintenance. Don’t worry, Sergeant. The only way the lizards have a prayer of kicking us off this rock is by making a major commitment of resources, and with them busy killing each other in their civil war,” she knocked on the wood pole of the tent for luck, “they don’t have the manpower or the ships.”

  Emily Perkins had never been so wrong about anything in her life.

  Commodore Sequent enjoyed his new title even if it was temporary, as soon as the other two ships in his little squadron returned to their home battlegroup, he would revert back to being Captain Sequent. He enjoyed the blue stripe on his uniform, the blue star next to the symbol of his ship on tactical displays, and he enjoyed the additional pay and authority that came with the title. He knew that while technically, a commodore could be appointed to a formation of only two ships, in practice three ships were the minimum number for which the Fleet officially appointed a commodore. More than once he thought he had detected an unspoken undertone of mirth when the other two ship captains addressed him as ‘Commodore’ and he really could not blame them. The three had served together many times in their careers, and he supposed it was difficult to take seriously as a Commodore a man the others usually referred to as ‘Mahrtee’. Especially because more than once, Captain Mogonnel of the frigate Dol Tershanna had dragged his old friend Mahrtee home from a bar after closing time.

  Sequent did not enjoy being required to cover an occupation with only three ships, none of them a heavy combatant. The whole operation was being conducted on a shoestring budget, with a wholly-untested alien ground force. The humans could be trusted only until they found a better deal than the Ruhar were offering, Sequent admired the accomplishments of the team called ‘Mavericks’, but he would not be surprised if tomorrow the human force declared loyalty to the Wurgalan, or whoever made the most lavish promises of protection and assistance. The Verd-Kris were no better; Sequent wholeheartedly agreed with the Fleet Intelligence opinion that those supposedly peace-loving Kristang were only waiting for an opportunity to stab the Ruhar in the back and join their warrior brethren. The worst, absolute worst part of the shitshow he had been thrown into was Commissioner Yusafft, that incompetent, nit-picking, self-promoting, publicity-seeking moron. Yusafft had thrown out the Legion’s carefully made plans and put political considerations in front of military reality on the ground. He had attempted to interfere with Sequent’s squadron, finally getting the message when Sequent’s staff repeatedly informed Yusafft that the Commodore was not available to talk.

  Now Sequent might have to relent and speak with the know-nothing politician, because the Commodore had followed the advice of the human Perkins and pulled two of his ships away from the planet. At the time, that seemed to be a wise precaution, now Sequent looked like an overly-cautious, even timid commander. Yusafft was demanding full coverage of the planet for close-space support of the ground force, and no amount of explaining could make the jerk understand the time-tested wisdom necessity of Fleet tactics.

  “Sir,” Sequent’s first officer approached with a wary expression. The Commodore had been irritable recently, it was best to deliver bad news in a tactful manner. “I don’t think you can put off the Commissioner much longer, he is demanding to speak with you directly.”

  Sequent stared at his XO and when she didn’t flinch, he nodded ruefully. “You told him the Verland’s main reactor is offline for maintenance, and I am in a heavy-duty armored suit inspecting the shield magnets?”

  “Yes, and his staff responded that the potential crisis point of the occupation is an odd time to pull a warship offline for routine maintenance. They also said that if the City of Verland is in such a poor state of combat readiness, we should withdraw and request another ship to be assigned to the squadron. I’m afraid the Commissioner’s sole talent may be choosing an efficient and well-informed staff, Sir.”

  Sequent snorted. “More likely someone in the Commission with actual competence chose the staff for him. The fact that a worthless career bureaucrat like Yusafft drew this appointment tells me the Colony Administration Commission does not expect, or does not want, this occupation to succeed.”

  “Or that no other senior Commissioner wanted this appointment, because they feared the Legion can’t handle the job.”

  “That’s the same thing, effectively. Either way, our military will get the blame if this Alien Legion fails. Very well, Roodan. Signal to the Commissioner’s office that repairs to our reactor have been completed successfully.”

  “We will be jumping back into orbit, to provide close-space support?”

  “No,” Sequent rubbed his right ear, a sign that he was thinking. “The Tershanna can handle a
ny minor flare-ups on the surface by herself.”

  “What if there is a major flare-up?”

  “In that case, the last place I want my squadron to be is deep in a gravity well. Tell the Commissioner the Verland and the Revlikka will be conducting practice maneuvers for the next few days, but we will remain within two lightminutes of the planet, with jump drives ready to bring us back at a moment’s notice.”

  “Yes, Sir. Will we actually be practicing maneuvers?” She asked hopefully, eager for a break in the routine.

  “Why not?”

  Roodan felt she needed to speak her mind. “Commodore, the Tershanna is only a frigate. She can easily hit targets on the surface, but if she gets in trouble-”

  “Relax, Roodan. Our destroyers will be two minutes away if there is trouble. Besides, this will be a good opportunity to make that lazy Mogonnel work for a living. The crew of the Tershanna are entirely too pleased with themselves.”

  Commodore Kekrando’s crew tensed for him to issue a vile string of curse words when he was given a report that the two Ruhar destroyers, instead of politely returning to low orbit where they would be easy targets, were now jumping around almost randomly within two lightminutes of Feznako. If the task force under Kekrando’s command had time, they might have been able to calculate a pattern to the enemy maneuvers, and stealthily position assets to deal with the problem.

  Kekrando did not curse, he did not shout, did not verbally abuse his crew. He was past such behavior, past caring enough to arouse his passions that far. He merely unbuckled the harness that held him to the chair, floated out of it, and gently pushed himself over to the navigation console. That console did not contain any information that was not on the main displays or the displays attached to the armrests of his command chair, he went to the nav station because he wanted to get more familiar with the crew of the ship. As senior captain in the task force, he was in command, even if his disgraceful fall from admiral’s rank tainted his present authority.