Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4)

by Craig Alanson

  “Hmmm. Mmmm. In-ter-esting,” Skippy stretched the word out. “It looks like while Van Gogh was cutting his ear off, he tripped over Picasso and spilled paint on a Disney sketch. What, um, what is that supposed to be?”

  “It’s a cool pirate monkey standing on a flying banana,” I explained defensively. Damn it, I was proud of that sketch. It took me hours to make. “See, the ship is a flying banana, because we are monkeys, right? You see it, Adams?”

  Adams tilted her head one way then the other. I could see her shoulders quiver as she suppressed a laugh. “Whatever you say, Sir.”

  “A banana?” Skippy did chuckle. “That’s supposed to be a banana? Hmmm, I can see it is a sort of yellowish blob-”

  “It is a freakin’ banana!” I insisted.

  “Ok, I can see how someone on serious drugs may think that thing on top might be a pirate monkey, but, um. Hmm, maybe you could replace the lower part of the sketch with text saying ‘imagine a banana here’.” He began laughing hysterically, and Adams joined in.

  “You are such an asshole.” I turned the iPad off.

  “Don’t get mad, Joe. This is really no different from any of your operational orders. After all the boring blah blah blah at the beginning, you could insert ‘imagine a plan here’.”

  Adams was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. That was the last time I showed my artistic ability, or inability, to anyone.

  I looked out one of the Flying Dutchman’s two viewing stations, where a bubble of clear glass, plastic, crystal or maybe it was diamond, protruded in a dome above the skin of the ship. The viewing stations had not been designed for sightseeing, they were intended for an emergency backup method of guiding dropships into the docking bays. “Hey, Skippy, where’s this fabulous nebula you promised to show me?” All I could see were smudges and stars, lots of stars.

  “It’s on the display anytime you want to look, dumdum,” Skippy sounded distracted.

  “I can look at stuff on a screen anytime. I want to see it, with my eyes. You told me this thing is huge!”

  “Oh, for crying out- How come you bother me every single time I am busy doing something important?”

  “Like what are you doing that’s so important? You told me talking with us baboons hardly takes up any of your processing power.”

  “Talking with you specifically takes more of my resources than usual, because I have to waste time attempting to understand what you are trying to say with all the blah, blah, blah. If you must know, I am calibrating the jump drive coil assembly, monitoring the dropship fuel collection operation, and I am in the extremely delicate process of renewing the containment system of Reactor Three.”

  “Extremely delicate, huh?”

  “Things could go ‘Boom’ rather easily, if my concentration slips.”

  “Got it. Show me this nebula, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Aargh,” he groaned in frustration. “Even from here, it is a dim object, Joe. Not dim like you, I mean the amount of light emitted.”

  “We’re practically on top of it, you said!” I protested. One reason I had agreed to jump to this boring, crappy star system was that Skippy promised it was close to the North America Nebula, which I thought was a cool name.

  “We are practically on top of it; less than twelve lightyears. It is, however, mostly on the other side of the star. And the planet is blocking part of the view at the moment. If you wait half an hour, our orbit will take us around, and you will have a better view. Joe, prepare to be disappointed. With the naked eye, even from here it’s only going to be a hazy blob.”

  “Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll wait.”

  “What’s bothering you, Joe? I know astronomy is not your greatest passion.”

  I did enjoy astronomy, but not as much as I enjoyed, for example, cheeseburgers. Or crinkle fries, the kind that have ridges to hold extra ketchup, you know? Or beer, of course, duh. “I’m worried sick about the fueling operation, that’s all.”

  “Captain Desai and her team have reached target depth without incident, and have deployed the scoop; it will begin filtering the atmosphere within the next ten minutes. Relax, Joe, everything is under control.”

  “We’re losing control!” Desai warned, trying to be calm while struggling with the dropship and the homemade fuel scoop. In the preflight briefing, Skippy had warned them about sudden wind gradients as they descended deeper in the gas giant’s atmosphere. The pilots of the two dropships had been prepared for sudden changes in wind velocity and even direction; the layers in the atmosphere showed up clearly on the sensors of the dropships, and Skippy provided warning and guidance from the star carrier high above. Descending from orbit, the scoop had connected the two dropships, but with the fuel collection mechanism retracted it had not been difficult for the pair of Thuranin ships to fly in close formation. Skippy had designed the scoop so that it did not awkwardly hang between the two dropships; instead each ship had a nanofiber cable trailing them, with the furled scoop far behind at the end of the V-shaped cables. With the scoop furled, Desai found flying in formation no more difficult than in any other aircraft.

  Once the two ships reached target depth, where the thickness of the atmosphere allowed the homemade scoop to function efficiently, the flying had become much more difficult. At first, Desai had almost been able to relax after the scoop was fully deployed. She had gotten used to the substantial drag caused by the unfurled scoop, finding she needed to increase power almost exactly as she had in the simulations programmed by Skippy. Everything had been going as planned; the scoop was functioning as designed, fuel was being collected and pumped along tubes into the special tanks installed in each dropship’s aft cargo holds, and the rate of fuel flow was three percent above Skippy’s estimate.

  Then a problem arose when the dropships flew through an area of turbulence, which Desai saw as a slightly more pink section of the purple clouds around them. The dropships did not have actual windows for the pilots to look through; windows would have degraded their stealth capabilities. Instead, in front of the pilots were curved displays that showed a view from cameras mounted in the nose. When they first dipped down into the clouds, Desai had followed Skippy’s suggestion to set the displays for an image which removed most of the clouds, but Desai found that distracting and useless. So she switched to a plain image; it showed her only thick clouds and navigation data but was no different from flying in thick clouds on Earth. She found that images vaguely comforting while she piloted an alien dropship in the crushing pressure of a gas giant planet, almost two thousand lightyears from Earth.

  The problem began with an almost imperceptible flutter traveling along the cables from the scoop. Desai did not notice the flutter at first, being occupied by the turbulence that was far worse that what Skippy had told her to expect. Her dropship was bouncing up and down fifty meters at a time, alternatingly forcing her down into her seat or suspended against the straps with her stomach doing flipflops. As the lead ship in the formation, she was not responsible for maintaining distance from the other ship; her task was to fly as smoothly as possible and hold to their programmed course. The other pilot then only needed to follow her lead. With the two ships lurching their way through the thick clouds, keeping the formation within the limits of the scoop was fairly difficult.

  When fully extended, the scoop formed a circle large enough so its rim was wider than the distance between the two dropships. They towed the scoop behind and between them, at the ends of two nanofiber cables that stretched and flexed in the powerful, roiling wind. On its own, the scoop would have spun around the twin cables and destroyed itself within seconds. To prevent that, the scoop was capable of steering itself with guidance from Skippy, using sensor data from the ship and the dropships. Skippy controlled the flight of the scoop and the operation of the fuel collection mechanism; all he needed the dropships to do was tow the scoop like an airplane on Earth towing a banner.

  That was Skippy’s plan.

  It wasn’t workin
g.

  The flutter traveling up the cables became a shaking, hard enough for Desai to feel over the bouncing of the ship. It was growing worse by the second. Desai struggled with the controls, then heard her first flight instructor’s words in her head. Never fight the controls, the instructor had told her, work with them. If you are trying to make the aircraft do something it can’t, the controls will tell you. She relaxed slightly and listened to what the controls were telling her.

  They were telling her the scoop’s induced flutter was growing worse, feeding on itself. It is continued, the scoop would fail and might take both dropships down with it. “Cable status?” Desai inquired of her US Air Force copilot.

  Alarmed, Samantha Reed in the copilot seat pointed to the strain gauge on the display; the stress on the mounts where the cable attached was already almost to the redline. The data feed from the second ship showed the same problem. “Almost critical,” Reed reported tersely. “It’s spiking.” Her fingers flew over the controls, seeking a solution.

  “Skippy!” Desai called. “We’re losing the scoop!”

  “I know that,” the alien AI responded with a snarky tone. “There’s too much flutter, I can’t control it. Damn it! If we lose this scoop, it will take me too long to build another one. This is our only chance to do this. I’m working on it,” Skippy admitted.

  “Work faster,” Desai silently pointed to the button that would sever the cable from both ships simultaneously.

  Reed interrupted. “Ma’am, I think I can fly the scoop from here,” she announced with calm confidence.

  Desai raised an eyebrow without looking away from the controls. “Are you sure, Sami?”

  “Yes. Skippy can’t control the scoop from up there because of the signal lag. I can fly it from the console here.”

  “No you can’t!” Skippy argued. “You monkeys’ reaction time is way too slow for-”

  “We are not monkeys,” Desai declared without raising her voice. “What you’re doing isn’t working, so we’re trying this before we have to sever the cables. Release control on my mark,” her tone did not allow for any argument. “Three, two, one, mark!”

  Desai had a moment of almost panicked regret, as the scoop jerked hard, and the dropship yawed to the side. “Sami!”

  “Got it,” Reed did not break her concentration. “I had to correct the flutter before I could make it fly right. It’s smoother now.”

  It was smoother, the cable’s vibration lessened, then settled down to a gentle, random pulsing. The vibration was no longer building on itself in a fatally sympathetic action. Desai cautiously lifted her hand away from the button that would sever the cables. She glanced away from the flight control displays to check the scoop’s status. It was still rocking side to side and up and down, but it was bouncing around no more than the two ships that were towing it. “Skippy,” Desai called, “the scoop is under control.”

  “Yeah,” the ancient alien AI replied grumpily. “I can see that. Whoopee freakin’ doo. Stupid monkeys.”

  “Ma’am,” Reed felt confident enough for a quick look to her left, “I’ve got the feel of it now. It is,” she added as a drop of sweat rolled down her forehead and off her nose, “not easy. I think when we have full tanks, we furl the scoop here before we climb out.”

  “You want to furl the scoop in this turbulence?” Desai asked, surprised.

  “I know how to handle this turbulence. If we climb above this cloud layer, to where the wind direction and speed is different, I don’t know if I can fly the scoop through the transition.”

  “Skippy?” Desai called. “Can we do that?”

  “Yes. Lieutenant Reed is correct; it would be better to furl the scoop in conditions we know she can control. I have just uploaded revised software for the scoop to furl itself, while it is being flown from the dropship.”

  “Outstanding,” Reed replied with an ear-to-ear grin. “Ma’am, on future missions, we need a third pilot. I can’t both control the scoop and act as copilot.”

  “Agreed, I will inform Colonel Bishop,” Desai acknowledged. “Skippy, we should add training on flying the scoop to the simulations; can you get people working on that now, so the next crew will be ready?”

  “Yes, I am designing the simulation based on Lt. Reed’s actions,” Skippy replied sourly. “I have a question. You proved that monkeys can do something I couldn’t do. Ugh. So, is Lt Reed ever going to wipe that grin off her face?”

  Reed shared a laugh with the Flying Dutchman’s lead pilot. “What do you think?”

  “Shit. No,” Skippy’s voice almost choked. “To be fair, I would do the same thing. We can, um, keep this between us, right? No reason for the entire crew to know about this little incident?”

  “Little incident?” Desai was amused. “You mean the incident where we were on the edge of mission failure, and possibly losing one or both ships, because you couldn’t handle it?”

  “Maybe I’ll get lucky, and one of the reactors will explode before you get back up here,” Skippy said hopefully.

  I was in the docking bay to greet Desai’s dropship when she returned. The condition of the super high-tech Thuranin dropships surprised me; they both looked scorched, their noses and leading surfaces caked with dark soot. And they smelled burnt. Not the pleasant wood-smoke scent of a campfire; this was the bitter stench of burning plastic. Despite my earlier joking with Desai, the damage to the skin of those dropships was not going to buff out; Skippy’s bots would need to perform some heavy maintenance before we could use those dropships in any sort of stealth mission. Skippy assured me both ships were ready for another trip down into the atmosphere, and he was very pleased with the fuel collection process. Putting our dropships, which were space craft, deep enough in an atmosphere that they could be crushed made me uncomfortable. “They are fine, Joe. Trust me,” Skippy said as we waited for the skin of both ships to stop radiating killing cold before I could approach.

  “You are not down there with the pilots,” I retorted.

  “Fine. Don’t take my word for it, then. The door is about to open, you can ask Desai.”

  “How was it?” I held out my hands to take her helmet and flight bag, she looked tired. Her hair was plastered to her head, and she had dark circles under her eyes. The dropship had a tiny bathroom, she and Reed could have removed their suits and washed up a bit after the dropship cleared the atmosphere. The fact neither of them had done that told me how exhausted and stressed they must be. Desai was tired and her copilot looked even worse.

  “Challenging,” she replied with a voice drained of emotion. “We can do it; the difficulty is flying in formation with a ship you can only see on sensors. The winds down there are more variable than Skippy told us to expect, or he has a different idea of what ‘variable’ means.” She shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sir, that was a six hour flight, with three hours collecting fuel. I recommend limiting flights to two hours in the atmosphere; three hours is pushing the limits of human concentration and endurance. And we need a third pilot, so the third pilot and the copilot can take turns flying the scoop. Reed did an outstanding job, but three hours of flying the scoop is too much; she is exhausted.” Desai’s own right hand was shaking slightly, she covered it with her left and clutched them tightly.

  I did some quick math in my head; cutting fuel collection time by one third would mean we needed one additional mission. While that might not seem like much, it was another time crews needed to drop into a crushing atmosphere, an additional opportunity for something to go horribly wrong. “We will run two more missions as planned, then I will reassess whether to go down there again.” As much as I hated the idea of sending more people down into the gas giant, we should top off the Dutchman’s fuel tanks while we could, and the fueling operation wasn’t going to be any more safe in some other star system. “For now, get some food while you brief the pilots for the next flight.” My hope was to turn the dropships around quickly and send another team out within two hours.
I had assured Chotek this uninhabited star system was perfectly safe, and I was anxious to jump back out of there before something went wrong.

  The problem was, jump to where?

  We still did not have a plan to steal a Kristang starship. After days of off and on discussions, we had a grand total of nothing resembling a workable plan. The closest we had to a plan was a desperate dropship raid like the op we’d conducted when the original Merry Band of Pirates boarded and took the Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory. No way was Hans Chotek, or I, going to approve a sketchy op like that.

  One problem we faced was that frigates seldom traveled on their own, they were escort vessels. Most of time, a frigate flew with other frigates, escorting destroyers or larger ships. Finding an isolated frigate was going to be very difficult.

  Then Skippy had thrown a monkey wrench into the planning, when he weighed in with his opinion on one idea we were considering. “No, no, no, you idiots. I can’t magically take over any Kristang warship whenever I want. That Thuranin nanovirus is a short-range, short-term technology. It degrades over time; a Kristang ship needs recent exposure to a Thuranin star carrier to be infected with viable nanomachines. You’re going about this all wrong anyway, Joe.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Enlighten us, please, Oh Great One.”

  “You can’t simply steal a warship,” he sighed disgustedly. “A Kristang clan would not need to steal a frigate; they have plenty of them. If the Kristang know a frigate was stolen, and then a frigate attacks the Ruhar negotiators, the Kristang will know the attack wasn’t by one of their clans. They will know the ship was stolen by an outside party who wants to stir up trouble within the Kristang. The whole thing could end up backfiring in your face by actually uniting the Kristang against a common enemy.”

  “An outside party?” I asked. “Like, if the Ruhar attacked their own negotiators?” That didn’t make any sense to me.