“Hey, Shauna,” Dave said with a cough, pounding his chest to get the seawater out. “Let’s overload the powercells, you said. That was a great idea.”
“Did you have to blow up the entire freakin’ island?” Derek complained with a grin.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Shauna own voice echoed in her head, because of the water in her ears. She tilted her head to one side to get the water out, but it only sloshed around. She suspected she would be picking sand out of her hair and other places for days.
“Hey, it worked,” Jesse felt the need to defend his sort-of girlfriend.
“It did,” Irene grimaced at her sore shoulder. “Next time, let’s try for a solution in the sub-megaton range, huh?”
“I’ll remember that,” Shauna kept shaking her head, and the water in her ears kept sloshing. “Ah, there’s more sand in my clothes than on this beach.”
Perkins felt rubbed raw by the sandpaper-like grit between her clothes and skin. “Me too. Jarrett, Striebich, we need to get these clothes off and rinse them out. We don’t need more sand getting in cuts.” Rivulets of blood trickling down her cheek and dripping on her neck. At least the blood was flushing sand out of the cuts. “You men,” she looked at Derek, Jesse, Dave and Nert, “go around the corner to that other beach. Meet back here in twenty.”
Jesse, Dave and Derek waited with Nert, discretely peering over the pile of broken trees and other debris to see if the three women had finished washing the sand off their skin and were back on the beach. The three men and the alien boy called out, before walking from their bay to where the women were standing in the sun, trying to get their clothes dry while wearing them.
"That is not fair," Irene pointed at the shirtless men, as Derek hung his shirt on a broken tree branch to dry in the steady breeze. "My shirt is so encrusted with salt, it itches."
"You have a bra on," Derek almost snapped at her, his broken wrist starting to throb and making him grumpy. "You don't need to wear a shirt for me."
For a second, Irene considered removing her shirt, as she was wearing a jogging bra, and after all they were on a tropical beach. There was no real difference between wearing a bra and wearing a bikini top. Major Perkins clearly had no intention of letting the men under her command see her walking around in a bra, so Irene sighed. "Maybe later."
Without her asking, Jesse picked up Shauna's boots, which had become half filled with sand and broken bits of shell. "I'll clean these out for you," he offered, turning the boots upside down and bashing them together. Sand, shells, seawater, splintered wood and one wriggling little sea creature spilled out.
"Oh!" Nert exclaimed, pointing excitedly. "That is what 'knocking boots' means!"
"What?" Jesse's face turned red. "It's not-"
Shauna hushed him with a waving hand. "Yes, Nert, that is what ‘knocking boots’ means. Cornpone, Jesse," she blushed, "is showing he cares for me by cleaning my boots."
"Ah," the alien boy nodded with sudden understanding. In halting English, he asked "this is a prelude to mating?"
"Nert!" Jesse spoke quickly to get the Ruhar cadet to shut up. "That is not-"
"Maybe," Shauna said quietly with a wink toward Jesse. "If Jesse keeps his mouth shut."
"Mmm," Nert grinned.
"Less talking, more cleaning." Jesse waded out into the water, plunging Shauna's boots under the water to get the rest of the sand out. "While I'm out here, y'all toss your boots to me, and I'll clean them." More cleaning, less talking. Jesse was going to clean everything in sight, if he had to.
Captain Rastall clenched his fists tightly to release some of his nervous energy. Outwardly, he was calm, in cool command of his ship and crew. Inwardly, he chafed at further delays in what had been a long and tedious chase of the hidden enemy ship. If left to himself, Rastall would have preferred the Mem Hertall to go in alone, maser cannons blazing and missiles running hot. That would be eminently satisfying, to see an enemy ship panic, drop stealth and attempt to accelerate away. That would also be giving the enemy a chance to escape, and potentially to end Rastall’s promising career. So, instead of giving in to emotion and acting rashly, he waited for the tightbeam laser signal from the Grathur. The Toman had signaled minutes ago that ship was ready. As soon as all three ships, wrapped tightly in stealth fields, indicated they were ready, he would initiate the attack.
Behind Rastall, the communications officer spoke. “Captain, signal received from the Grathur, she is in position and waiting your order.”
“Status?” Rastall asked, though on his own display, he could see status of all vital shipboard systems.
“All systems ready,” the first officer reported.
“Initiate countdown,” Rastall ordered without hesitation. Although all three Ruhar ships were in stealth, using only passive sensors, he worried the enemy could detect their transmissions. The ships had crisscrossed the area, with the Hertall continuing to follow the trail of particles left behind by the ghost ship, and the other two ships determining the trail ended ahead of the Hertall. Somewhere out there, somewhere close, was a stealthed enemy ship. It puzzled Rastall and his sensor experts that a Kristang ship that close had not yet been detected, for stealth was not usually a strength of Kristang technology. Rastall had taken a risk in ordering his ship to maneuver away from the particle trail, so the area ahead was between the Hertall and the star. He was hoping his ship’s passive sensors could detect a ripple where the enemy’s stealth field bent the star’s light around the ship. That technique was known to be quite effective against most enemy ships. Had the Kristang developed, or more likely bought or stolen, advanced stealth technology? If so, discovering the characteristics of such a new stealth field would be more important than destroying a single enemy ship that threatened a populated planet.
“Both ships acknowledged,” the first officer reported. “Countdown coordinated and running. Four, three, two, one, activate!”
The Mem Hertall, hidden and painfully quiet while acting as a passive sensor platform for far too long, came to life as a warship. Simultaneously with the two other ships, the Hertall dropped her stealth field and extended both an active sensor field to pinpoint the enemy’s location, and a damping field to prevent the enemy from jumping away. Each of the three ships launched a pair of missiles, initially unguided. The missiles were targeted at the area where the enemy ship was most likely hiding. Once each missile’s mothership locked in the enemy’s exact position with a sensor field, targeting coordinates were passed to the missiles. The missiles changed course and surged forward at maximum acceleration. Only seconds remained in the enemy ship’s life.
“No response?” Captain Rastall asked anxiously. Despite his strong desire to see the destruction of an enemy ship that had tormented him for months, he hoped the Kristang would see the hopelessness of their situation and surrender. Because the enemy ship had not declared itself at the time of the ceasefire agreement, the ship was not covered by the agreement, and therefore would not be allowed to simply be transported away by the Jeraptha. Rastall could seize and board the enemy ship, learn its secrets, take its crew prisoner to be exchanged for Ruhar prisoners later. Capturing the Glory would be more of a triumph than simply destroying that ship.
“No,” the first officer’s voice reflected puzzlement. “The enemy is not reacting in any way, Captain. No change in status, and they haven’t dropped their stealth field.”
“Could their crew be dead?” Rastall speculated.
“That is unlikely? We know the ship has been maneuvering,” they could tell because the particle trail had curved and swung back and forth while they followed it. “And not randomly. It hasn’t been drifting, or spinning around by a malfunctioning thruster. Someone has been directing its flight.”
Rastall had a terrible thought. “Or something.” Had they been chasing a dead ship, directed only by its AI?
“Your orders?” The first officer glanced at the tactical display. The first missile was almost on top of the enemy ship.<
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Rastall took a moment to think. The reason they had fired missiles instead of masers is because incoming missiles gave the enemy time to surrender. And because missiles could be recalled. Rastall could order the missiles to self-destruct, or simply deactivate. “Let the first missile run, put the other five into a holding pattern.”
The first missile, its seeker being fed targeting data by all three ships, raced in toward the target. When it was six seconds from impact, the missile switched on its own active sensors, risking detection and interception by the enemy ship’s defensive maser turrets. The missile was prepared to be fired on by maser cannons; if its computer determined the missile would be destroyed, it would explode its shaped-charge warhead in the direction of the enemy ship.
The missile was not intercepted, it had the unusual privilege of impacting the enemy ship directly before exploding.
“Detonation confirmed,” the first officer reported. Then he frowned, rechecked the data, and frowned more deeply. “Captain, there was no secondary explosion. The debris field is barely large enough to be a,” he groaned as the truth dawned on him, “a dropship.”
“We’ve been following a dropship?” Rastall asked, incredulous.
“Or something roughly that size, based on the debris.”
“How? We have been following radioactive particles. Hull coating that we know is from the Glory. How could-” Rastall knew the answer to his own question. The crew of the Glory must have scraped off a section of their ship’s hull coating, and put the particles into a container, along with oxygen, radioactive reactor waste. Then the container sprayed its contents slowly, creating a trail that appeared to be coming from a battle-damaged Kristang frigate. The Hertall and the other two ships had been chasing a decoy. Rastall slammed a fist down on a console and shouted a Ruhar curse word. “Where is the Glory?!”
Satisfied that the Ruhar guard ships were following the decoy, the frigate To Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious had slowly maneuvered to within twenty seven lightminutes of the planet they knew as Pradassis. Her captain planned that maneuver to monitor Ruhar guard ship movements around the planet, before the overworked little ship had to make its final two jumps into low orbit, to pick up 39 Commando’s Jawkuar. Those might be the ship’s final two jumps ever, in her captain’s opinion. Although the Ruhar’s strategic defense satellite network around Pradassis had barely begun construction, and the battlegroup was away on a fleet exercise, the Ruhar guard ships were on patrol, ever watchful.
Twenty seven lightminutes, which was the equivalent of a nice round, lucky number in the Kristang numbering system, was far enough away so the Glory would not be in serious danger from the guard ships. If the battlegroup had been in orbit, frigates might have been sent out to investigate the gamma ray burst of the Glory jumping in. Without support from the fleet, the guard ships were not going to be lured away from orbit. Or so the Glory’s captain hoped. He checked the sensor displays, finding everything at Pradassis was as he expected them to be. Or at least, they had been that way, twenty seven minutes ago. He checked the clock. There was no point delaying any longer, it would too soon be time to jump into whatever Fate had in mind for the ship that had pushed its luck far too many times already. He turned away from the sensor display, and resignedly slumped into his command chair. “Program jump drive for-”
“Captain!” Second Officer Smando called out. “There has been an explosion.”
“In orbit?” The captain asked, gripping the arms of his chair. The special forces warriors of 39 Commando had timed their rendezvous with the Glory precisely to occur just after the maser projector destroyed the two Ruhar transport ships. An explosion now would throw off all their plans, and make it extremely difficult for the Glory to pick up the commandos. But, the timing also did not make sense. When the captain checked mere moments ago, the two Ruhar transports were still maneuvering to match course and speed with the top of the space elevator, and one of the transports was still behind the planet. Had the commandos been forced to act early, and attack only one transport?
“No,” Smando was puzzled. “On the surface.”
The captain leapt out of his chair to stand beside Smando, and checked the coordinates of the explosion. “That’s a projector site,” he muttered, almost to himself.
“What do you think it means, Captain?”
“I think,” the captain answered with a wryly bemused smile, “that 39 Commando will be late for the rendezvous.” He looked directly at Smando. “Very late.”
“Oh. Oh,” Smando said as the implication dawned on him. “That’s the projector site.” He knew the broad outlines on 39 Commando’s plan, but not the details. “They blew it up?” That surely could not have been part of the plan.
“Or it blew up on them by accident,” the captain mused. “They were attempting to reactivate an old projector, without the proper equipment or training.” Neither of them considered that a third party may have blown up the site, and 39 Commando with it. They certainly never imagined that lowly humans could have been involved.
“What should we do now?” Smando asked.
“Now?” The captain sat down in his chair again. “We send a distress call to the Ruhar.”
“Sir?”
“Smando, it is unfortunate that our extensive battle damage has, until recently, rendered our communications systems and jump drive inoperable,” the captain shook his head sadly. “That is why Admiral Kekrando thought we had been destroyed, and why we missed being transported back home by the Jeraptha. Now that our heroic repair efforts have been successful, we are complying with the cease fire terms and reporting our presence to the Ruhar.”
Smando caught on quickly. “I regret to report that the battle damage also affected our computer systems, so that no useful data exists about our recent activities.”
“That is unfortunate indeed,” the captain nodded gravely. “I commend our technical staff for keeping the ship operational, despite the severe damage to our computer systems.”
“I will convey your admiration to the technical staff,” Smando bowed, wondering just how big an explosive would be needed to wipe out the ship’s computing center. The technical staff should know that sort of thing.
Several minutes later, the second officer was at the chief engineer’s duty station. “You want me to blow it up?” The chief engineer asked incredulously.
“I know you and your people have worked miracles to keep the computers operating this long, so it would be a shame to-”
“No! No, sir, I would love to blow up that obsolete piece of junk,” the chief engineer said gleefully. “I may reward my team by letting them smash it with hammers,” he considered, talking mostly to himself. “Is there anything else on this decrepit pile of crap that I can blow up or destroy before the Ruhar arrive? That would prevent Fleet from telling me to keep the equipment going somehow.”
“Just the computer core for now,” Smando cautioned. “However,” he said with a wide grin, “I will ask the captain about other systems. He may wish for you to render the entire structure unsalvageable. This ship’s luck should have run out a long time ago.”
Major Perkins had just rinsed her feet and pulled her newly-cleaned boots back on, before a pair of aircraft flashed overhead, followed by a sonic boom that rattled her teeth. The aircraft, mere dark streaking dots in the sky, curved around to circle where the projector island had been. Irene helped Perkins stand steady while she pulled her boots on, watching a rapidly-approaching dark spot, high in the sky. The dot grew into a Ruhar dropship; it slowed and circled the island as the six humans and one Ruhar cadet waved their arms in a manner intended to be friendly. Perkins hoped the sharp imagers of the dropship would see Nert, in his battered Ruhar cadet’s uniform, and determine the little group on the beach was not hostile.
“Uh, oh,” Irene announced. “They’re coming in to land.”
“Why is that an ‘uh oh’?” Jesse asked.
Irene and Derek glanced at each other. “Becau
se,” Irene explained, pointing left and right along the beach, “this beach isn’t anywhere near big enough for that dropship to land.”
To Irene’s relief, the dropship’s pilot knew that. The big ship hovered over the water, safely offshore, and a door opened. A Ruhar dressed in some sort of slick coveralls was lowered into the water on a thin cable, and headed toward shore, propelled by a thing like a short surfboard with a motor.
“Now that’s a cool toy,” Jesse said admiringly.
The new Ruhar reached the shore and removed its helmet, revealing a young fuzzy-faced woman. Perkins recognized the rank insignia as klasta, roughly equivalent to a lieutenant. Perkins saluted and her team followed, but the wary klasta ignored the humans and spoke to Nert.
Nert said something, and pointed to Perkins, so the klasta pulled out two devices like small zPhones, and handed one to Perkins. The klasta spoke into her device. “What happened here?”
Emily Perkins took a deep breath. “How much time do you have?”
CHAPTER TEN
Deputy Administrator, technically now acting Chief Administrator, Baturnah Logellia stood up when Emily Perkins was escorted into the office. “Major Perkins, it is good to see you.” She offered a warm handshake, not being squeamish about touching the strange aliens. “Please, sit.” When Perkins had sat down, Baturnah pushed a ceramic cup and a covered pot across the table, along with a small box. “Would you like co-ffee?” She pronounced the unfamiliar alien word. Tapping the box, she added, “or choc-o-late?”
Trouble on Paradise: an ExForce novella (ExForce novellas Book 1) Page 17
