Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4)

by Craig Alanson

  Thuranin missiles are smart things, not self-aware but capable of thinking on their own. If the missiles were self-aware, I imagine their thinking went something like:

  WTF, I’m launching while the ship is inside a freaking’ wormhole? Of all the stupid- Unbelievable, I survived. Great. Where is the target? It’s- Holy shit, I’m right on top of the damned thing! No shields in my way? Uh, I am programmed to expect strong defensive shields. And defensive fire from maser turrets. None of that going on here. Ok, what should I- Oh. Hmm. There is a nice big smoking hole in the enemy’s hull. Maybe I’ll go in there. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Hey, it’s cozy in here, although the Thuranin really could use some help tidying up the place. Well, this has been nice, but a missile has got to do what a missile has got to do, right? I can set the warhead for wide dispersal, now that I’m inside the enemy’s hull.

  Of the four missiles we launched, two missed completely, as their targeting systems got scrambled by distortion of the jump wormhole. One was intercepted and destroyed by a defensive maser turret that somehow managed to remain active and locked onto the incoming threat. Even in the moment of death, that warhead triggered its shape-charge warhead, taking out the maser turret and twenty meters of the enemy’s hull.

  Our one missile that survived dove inside a hole carved by our maser cannons, and exploded when it was down at the third deck under the armor plating. If our pilots had not performed a blind emergency jump, the Flying Dutchman would have been ripped apart by debris from the exploding light cruiser.

  The jump was rough; not catastrophically bad as when the Dutchman had been fleeing from the Thuranin destroyer squadron on our second mission, but the ship lurched and shuddered and I heard the structure groaning and flexing in a way it should never do.

  We emerged seven million miles from the relay station, much farther than intended. “We’re in one piece?” I asked fearfully. Many of the status indicators on the main bridge display were blank or flickering.

  “Mostly in one piece,” even Skippy sounded worried.

  “What the hell was that?” I shouted, my voice cracking.

  “The jump? We initiated the jump much closer to the cruiser than I expected, and its mass distorted the event horizon in a way I could not predict. That threw us far from the point I had programmed, and going through the wormhole damaged the ship. I’m assessing the damage now.”

  “Can we jump again?” Sixteen Thuranin warships would be arriving at the relay station within the hour, and we could not travel seven million miles through normal space in that time. Unless we could jump, there was no way we could rescue the French and Indian teams. Or Chotek’s party.

  “We can jump back in a few minutes; I am making adjustments to the drive coils now. Ok, I have a preliminary damage report; while it’s not good, we can deal with it until we get the hell out of here.”

  “Bonjour, Rene!” Skippy’s voice rang out of his helmet speakers, and Giraud shuddered with relief. “Holiday time is over; I know you French get like fifty weeks of vacation a year, but now it’s back to work, non? Did you miss me?”

  “Skippy,” Giraud laughed almost hysterically before catching himself. “I am so happy to hear your voice, I do not even mind that you are, as Colonel Bishop says, an asshole.”

  “Rene! Oh, I am deeply hurt. Well, you French are renowned for being rude, so I’m not taking it personally. Colonel Joe has dropships launching now to pick up your team. On a serious note, I queried your suit sensors, and you all need treatment for radiation exposure. The medical bay will be ready to receive you.”

  “We will be treated by Doctor Skippy?” Giraud sighed. “Is there another option?”

  “A long, lingering and painful death?”

  “Oh. In that case, I will make an appointment with Doctor Skippy.”

  “Great! You won’t regret this, Captain Giraud. While you are recuperating, I can serenade you with a variety of tunes.”

  “Merde. Can I still choose the lingering and painful death?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “Maybe I’ll open my helmet right here, then.”

  “Oh, come on, Rene. You love my singing.” He launched into La Marseillaise. “Allons enfants de la Patrie, le jour gloire est arrive! Contre-”

  “Sacre bleu,” Giraud muttered to himself while he searched for the helmet speaker controls.

  Controls which, of course, Skippy had remotely disabled. His warbling, out of tune voice continued. “-nous de la tyrannie. L’etendard-”

  CHAPTER THREE

  We jumped back to the relay station after Skippy’s bots quickly patched up our jump drive. While his bots were frantically busy doing the minimum repairs so we could jump without exploding, I was dealing with reports of injuries and damage that was obvious to the crew. Once we returned, I immediately launched dropships out to collect the French team; Captain Chandra’s dropship was already taking the Indian team aboard. The French had been scattered by our hard acceleration and then by the jump wormhole tearing a hole in spacetime; Giraud reported that being violently flung around by spacetime ripples had caused injuries among his team. And Skippy said he would need to treat all the French and Indians for radiation exposure; he thought they would all recover fully. Chotek, Simms and Friedlander had kept communications silence aboard the relay station, until Skippy contacted them with a properly coded signal. They were fine, and a dropship would pick them up, after taking the Indian team aboard.

  “Skippy, what went wrong?” I asked as I watched the main bridge display continue to flicker.

  “In a nutshell, Joe, I played it too safe.”

  “Too safe?” How bad would it have been if he had taken too much risk?

  “Yeah, too safe. Kind of ironic, huh? I did not expect our maser cannons to punch through their armor plating before the exciters burned out from the overload. And the odds were that only one of our missiles would survive to explode its shape-charge warhead. So, I expected we would need to fire our first volley, then accelerate away while preparing a second volley with the aft maser cannons and missile tubes. I figured by that time the enemy would hit back at us, so I was prepared to absorb maser hits to the aft shields, then direct the pilots to jump away. Instead, our masers carved up their armor plating, and one of our missiles scored a direct hit, actually going inside their hull before exploding. I don’t know if you saw that on the display?”

  “No, Skippy, it all happened too fast,” I admitted.

  “When our missile exploded, that ship blew apart and nearly took us with it, we were so close. I needed the pilots to initiate the jump while we were uncomfortably close to the mass of that cruiser, and that threw off my calculations. I’ve never seen a jump wormhole distort like that, I didn’t have the math to predict how the wormhole’s event horizon would propagate. That is why the jump was so rough, and why we were thrown so far off course. We do not want to ever do that again.”

  “We nearly lost the ship,” I asked incredulously, “because our attack was more successful than expected?”

  “We got lucky, Joe. You didn’t give me much time to plan the attack, and I based my planning on a beat-up star carrier against a top-of-the-line light cruiser. Ordinarily, even with the advantage of surprise and our jump wormhole knocking out their shields, that would be a close to even fight. What I did not know was the serious damage that ship had already sustained in combat against the Jeraptha. I was not prepared to completely destroy that ship in the first salvo. If that missile had not acted on its own initiative and penetrated their hull, the fight would have gone on for a second, possibly third salvo.”

  “Wow, cool! Anyway we can give that missile a commendation?”

  “Posthumously, maybe.”

  “What now? Can we jump again, after we recover the special ops teams?”

  “Yes. For our first jump, we should go maybe 75% of our maximum range. Far enough that it will not be easy for anyone to follow us, but not straining our jump drive. We will be ready to jump again in
twenty five minutes.”

  “Twenty five?” I whistled and looked at Chang. Sixteen Thuranin warships would be arriving within the hour, maybe sooner. That was to close. “Colonel Chang, are the dropship pilots still reporting it will take thirty three minutes to recover the French team?”

  “Thirty two minutes, that’s the best they can do, the French are scattered all over space.”

  “Twenty five is fine, then, Skippy. We need to bug out of here ASAP.”

  “Agreed. I will set the relay station to self-destruct after we retrieve Chotek’s team?”

  “Yes. Make it- Wait, wait.” Our latest near disaster had given me a thought. During our second mission, after the Dutchman got ambushed by a Thuranin destroyer squadron, we used our captured Kristang frigate the Flower as a lifeboat. Given the track record of the Merry Band of Pirates, it would be useful to have a lifeboat again. “Skippy, that relay station was built from a starship.”

  “Yes, so?”

  “Could we take it onto one of our docking platforms, bring it with us?”

  “Yes, the station is designed to be moved, so it is still capable of mating with our docking platforms. Why do you want it?”

  “As a lifeboat,” I explained. It would also be useful for training. “And spare parts. That station must have Thuranin components we could use, and we don’t have time now to strip out everything we need.”

  “Oh, crap,” Skippy sighed. “Yes, you’re right, we should take it with us. Ugh, I am so much going to regret this.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain later. Time to rendezvous with the station, and secure it on a docking platform, would be about eighteen minutes. Doing so will not delay recovering the French team. And it will save time, because a dropship will not need to pick up Chocula and his companions.”

  “Bonus. Let’s do it.”

  “Crap. This sucks,” he grumbled to himself, without explaining why. “Well, when the Thuranin ships arrive, they will find one hell of a mystery. A light cruiser blown to bits, and a relay station missing. Ha!” He remarked cheerfully. “A relay station that disappears, instead of being blown apart, will drive the Thuranin crazy trying to figure out why. Ooooh, and if the Thuranin back-trace any funky transmissions to this relay station, having it disappear will make them think the Jeraptha were involved! Yeah, that will keep the Thuranin busy chasing their tails for a while. Maybe they’ll stay out of our way. Good idea, Joe.”

  We jumped away from the station as soon as possible, which meant initiating a jump as soon as the last dropship was secured in its docking clamps; we didn’t even wait for the docking bay doors to close. With sixteen Thuranin warships about to jump in right on top of us, I wanted to skedaddle out of there ASAP. After the jump, Skippy was not happy about the condition of our jump drive, he requested down time to make adjustments to it. I was about to argue with him, until Desai silently pointed to the main bridge display, which indicated we had emerged from jump seven hundred thousand miles away from the target location. With Skippy programming the jumps, we should have been within a hundred meters of the target. Something was seriously wrong with our jump drive, and a dumb monkey like me certainly should not argue with our genius beer can.

  Mindful of who was the mission commander, I sent a dropship to bring Chotek back aboard; even though the relay station was attached to a docking platform, it didn’t have an airlock that would allow them direct access to the ship. Because I was in command of the ship, and because I didn’t want to deal with Hans Chotek, I sent Chang down to the docking bay, to greet our mission commander and fully brief him. Maybe I was being cowardly in not wanting to be harangued by Chotek; I was too stressed to care. With our jump drive down for maintenance, and a whole battlegroup of extremely pissed-off little green Thuranin potentially chasing us, I was determined to remain in the command chair.

  Major Simms came straight to the bridge, walking in with a bemused expression. “Colonel.”

  “Major Simms, it is good to see you in one piece,” I stepped out of the chair and waived Desai over to take command temporarily. In the corridor, I asked quietly “How are you?”

  “Fine, Sir. It was tense for a while; we got notice from Skippy of that cruiser jumping in, then all comms cut out. We waited it out. From the after-action report we received from Skippy, it looks like you had a close call?”

  “Too close. How was our, uh,” I glanced around to see if anyone was in earshot. “Our fearless leader?”

  “He was frosty the whole time, didn’t panic at all,” she replied with an arched eyebrow. “Scared as hell, of course, but he was more afraid we would be boarded and discovered, and give away our secret. He made me promise,” she patted her sidearm, “that I would shoot him in the head before he could be captured.”

  “Huh.” That surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. Hans Chotek was a pain in my ass, but he was a professional, as dedicated to his job as I was to mine. “It might be that in the future, we should issue sidearms to everyone in an away party. Just in case.”

  “We could do that, but there is another consideration,” Simms warned. “Dr. Friedlander is a Catholic; suicide is considered a mortal sin, I think. He asked me to, to ‘take care’ of him, if it came to that. If he had to, I think Friedlander would do what he had to, but we shouldn’t put civilians in that position.”

  “Crap. You’re right.”

  “During our flight back, Mr. Chotek remarked that all away parties should bring nukes with them, to cover up our presence if needed.”

  “That will be inconvenient,” I thought aloud. Carrying a tactical nuclear warhead in a dropship was enough of a logistical burden. How was a group of people supposed to bring a nuke with them; in their pockets? I sighed heavily, something I should have not done in front of Major Simms. “I’ll discuss that with Chotek. Maybe we could compromise and issue sidearms to him and the science team.”

  Simms raised an eyebrow, something she did a lot when talking with me. “That won’t solve the DNA problem. The Thuranin can’t interrogate a dead human, but they can ask how the hell we primitives are flying around the galaxy by ourselves.”

  “You’re right, I know.” Two things I was getting tired of saying were ‘you are right’ and ‘I am sorry’. That wasn’t anything new; I had been doing that all my life. “It’s good to hear our fearless leader is cool under pressure.”

  “That shouldn’t really be a surprise, being cool under pressure must be a primary job requirement for diplomats. Otherwise, they’d be tempted to reach across the table and slap somebody. I know I sure would.”

  I almost rolled my eyes at her. “There’s a big difference between people yelling at you, and people shooting at you.”

  “Maybe not from his point of view.” She looked at her holstered sidearm and patted it. “I’m going to return this to the armory; I’ve had enough excitement for one day. Colonel, I think you should know; there is something odd going on with the relay station. After you jumped away, it seemed like the AI there was trying to communicate with us, but it was horribly garbled. And it cut out shortly after you returned.”

  My Spidey sense tingled. Skippy had been reluctant to bring the relay station with us, and he hadn’t told me why. Could the submind he installed there have something to do with it? “Skippy has some ‘splainin’ to do.”

  After Hans Chotek had time to shower, change clothes and have a few minutes to himself in his office, I walked down the passageway and knocked on the doorframe. His office was larger than the tiny closet I used; his office had been converted from a Thuranin sleeping cabin. The relative size of our offices didn’t bother me at all, mine was right around the corner from the bridge/CIC complex, while his was back near the forward cargo bays. Being physically separated was a good idea; it kept us from irritating each other 24/7. I put on my best winning smile. “Welcome back, Sir. Did you enjoy the sightseeing trip?”

  Surprisingly, he smiled back, it looked genuine. Maybe later I would ask Skippy to analyze Cho
tek’s blood pressure, galvanic skin response, brain wave patterns and the haptics of his facial expression to learn if Chotek had been faking it. “The sightseeing was exciting enough by itself, Colonel. You did not need to arrange a bonus space battle for my benefit.”

  “You did purchase the special Premium Experience Package; we figured you should get your money’s worth.”

  “Next time, offering complimentary valet parking would have been sufficient. Maybe a glass of champagne.”

  “Yes, Sir,” that time, my grin wasn’t forced.

  Chotek’s smile faded. “The incident reinforced in my mind that, out here, we must constantly expect the unexpected. Colonel, we almost got jumped by a ship out of nowhere. Even with the advantage of Skippy’s ability to intercept secret alien communications, we cannot anticipate every obstacle we will encounter out here. I am anxious to hear your ideas for preventing the Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth, because the alternative is to approach the Ruhar and offer an alliance. We must begin thinking long-term, rather than reacting to events forced upon us.”

  “Yes, Sir. I am working on it with the team. We have several promising concepts,” I lied, as we had a grand total of nothing in terms of workable ideas.

  There was a knock on my office doorframe. “Colonel Bishop?” It was Doctor Sarah Rose, part of our science team, a geologist. She had shoulder-length medium-brown hair, curly at the ends, cute dimples and a great smile. Mid-thirties, I guessed; I could have looked it up on her personnel file, if I cared. What I did care about, I already knew about her.