Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4)

by Craig Alanson

  Desai cocked her head. “There are no guarantees in life, Sir.”

  “The guarantee I care about is the lizards not paying the Ruhar to send a ship to Earth. I can live with the risk to assets and personnel,” I said, realizing I sounded like something I read on a PowerPoint chart. Even to my ear, it sounded heartlessly unemotional. That’s what you learn to do when dealing with unpleasant facts in the military; you treat them as facts, and put emotions to the side until the mission is over. If you let emotions cloud your thinking, people die and missions fail. It sucks but somebody has to do it, and that’s why Uncle Sam trusted me with a rifle in Basic Training.

  Yes, I did drop my rifle on my foot, but I only did that once, and it wasn’t loaded. I think.

  “Skippy has already adjusted the flight profile based on feedback from pilots running the simulations. We’ll get through it, Sir. I’m more worried about the ground teams, that’s Major Smythe’s area of expertise. I suppose you’ll want me flying your ship?” Desai asked.

  “No, I, uh,” tried to think of a good way to say her practice in the simulator was necessary, but not for the reason she expected. I needed Desai to evaluate the performance of our modified Kristang dropships, to give me an honest opinion if they could handle the proposed mission. Too many of the pilots assigned to the Merry Band of Pirates were so gung-ho they would say yes to just about any mission, no matter how risky. That our pilots were supremely skilled was not in question; I had to make sure their confidence in their abilities did not cause them to push so hard as to endanger the mission. Desai was the one person I could trust to tell me she could or should not do something. “You will be aboard the Dutchman. Chang should have our most experienced pilot for that phase of the mission.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Desai glared at me. “I’m not arguing that I should be flying a dropship down there; I’ve told you before that I’m not our most technically proficient pilot, not even close. Keep me off the mission roster if you think that is best, but don’t tell me I’m needed up here to fly our clumsy space truck.”

  “I-” damn, I had rehearsed this discussion a dozen times in my head, and it had never gone off the rails like this. “Your skills with stick and rudder are not what I value,” I used an old term, for neither our dropships not star carrier had control sticks or rudders. “It’s your judgment. Chang is taking our beat-up star carrier into combat, and for the first time, Skippy won’t be aboard. He’ll have Nagatha but she can only handle communications. That means programming jumps, monitoring sensors and firing weapons will be entirely the responsibility of the crew. Even if Skippy’s plan works perfectly, the Dutchman will be fighting enemy ships at close range. Whatever combat maneuvering is involved, humans will be handling all of it, there won’t be a beer can to feed fancy evasive patterns into the autopilot.”

  “Skippy will be able to communicate with us through the microwormhole,” Desai said pointedly. “He can advise us.”

  “Not in real-time. I asked him, he can’t do it. Even with instantaneous data transmission through the wormhole, there will be a lag for signals going up to the wormhole in orbit above us, and a lag for signals to reach the Dutchman from the wormhole on your end. Once you start maneuvering, Skippy won’t be able to keep your end of the wormhole near the ship; he can only move the wormhole ends slowly and carefully. You’ll be on your own up there, and we’ve never taken the ship into combat without Skippy.”

  She sighed, and I knew she had bought into my plans. As a colonel, I could order her to remain aboard the Flying Dutchman, and I would be issuing formal written orders later, but I wanted her to buy into her role. A happy crew is an efficient and effective crew. I didn’t need any fancy United States Army officer training PowerPoint slide to tell me that. “I’ll do it, Sir. If it makes you and Colonel Chang more confident.”

  “Hey,” I gave her my best winning smile. “I’ll be flying around a lizard-occupied planet with three souped-up dropships, a SpecOps team with a raging hardon to shoot something, and an absent-minded beer can. We need some adults up here to mind the store.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “I’m serious, Desai. We could lose all three dropships, and our part of the mission will still be successful, if we’ve done our job before we crash. You would be able to fly a Thuranin dropship down to pick up Skippy later, even if everyone else is dead. But if we lose the Dutchman, it is game over; we wouldn’t have any chance to deal with whatever the next crisis is. There is always a next freaking’ crisis.”

  “Welcome to the military, Sir,” she replied with a wry smile.

  “Yeah, but the Merry Band of Pirates never gets a break. I’m thinking if we pull this mission off successfully, I’ll ask Skippy to find us a nice uninhabited planet with good weather and beautiful beaches, where we can chill in the sunshine for, like, a solid month.”

  “Shore leave?” Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, telling me how very much she wished to get off the ship for a while.

  “Yeah, shore leave.” Damn, that sounded good. I was captain of a goshdarned starship that was equipped with immensely powerful weapons, and the best R&R I could manage was a couple hours in the gym followed by a cheeseburger cooked on a flattop grill. How come Captain Kirk was always flying around the galaxy making it with hot alien babes? Why couldn’t I get any action like that?

  Because in my universe, the best-looking alien woman was a hamster. I’m sure there are human guys who are into girls with light fur all over their bodies, but I wasn’t one of them.

  Damn it. The Army hadn’t given us cool alien weapons, we had to steal the ones we had. No genetic enhancements. We did have mech suits that allowed us to run super fast, carry heavy loads and jump twenty feet in the air, but those were Kristang powered armor suits we had stolen.

  No brain implants. No tweaks to our genes. No hot, eager alien babes. And the whole galaxy was filled with hostile or indifferent aliens.

  Man, the future was a huge disappointment.

  After all the agonizing about how to get SpecOps troops into the city so they could launch their Zinger missiles, then retrieve our people without the Kristang ever knowing the city had been infiltrated, we still had not tackled the most simple yet most difficult problem: how to get the dropships to the surface. We needed to fly multiple dropships down from orbit onto a planet with an extensive sensor network, that even all the incredible awesomeness of Skippy could not fully control. Even if Skippy did have complete control over all the overlapping and competing sensor networks, our stealthed dropships might be detected by a single lizard looking at the night sky, and seeing a fiery streak as our dropships burned through the upper atmosphere on their entry flight. We had been able to land our stealthed Thuranin dropships on Paradise because Ruhar systems were easier for Skippy to hack into, and because the Ruhar had not completed installing a Strategic Defense network around that sleepy agricultural planet. When we flew down to the surface of Paradise, we had taken advantage of the vast unpopulated land areas and oceans of that world. Kobamik had unspoiled areas of forests and jungles, it also had a population of over two billion lizards, and a robust Strategic Defense capability.

  There was no way, simply no way, for our dropships to get to the surface without being detected and blown out of the sky. We had wracked our collective brains for ideas, all of which Skippy rejected as unworkable. There was simple no way to do it.

  There was no way, until I was flossing my teeth before bed. I had the final piece to the puzzle. Excitedly, I raced to my office and called Skippy. “Hey, Your Lordship. I have an idea for how we can fly dropships down to the surface of Kobamik without being detected.”

  “Wow, that is amazing, Joe,” Skippy said admiringly. Then his avatar took off his ridiculously-sized hat and mimed scratching its round shiny head. “There is only the teensy weensy problem that it is, how do I say this? Impossible!” The avatar jammed its hat back on. “It is impossible! I am disappointed in you, Joe. Actually, the fact that you have managed
to fall below even my incredibly low estimation of your intelligence is impressive by itself. I have told you many times how difficult it is to get a dropship down through an atmosphere without being detected. We managed to do it on Paradise only because that planet is not yet covered by an extensive sensor network. This target is much more difficult, even given the traditionally crappy state of Kristang sensors.”

  “I know, Skip-”

  “Let me remind you,” the avatar crossed its tiny arms, and I groaned inwardly because I knew he was in full Professor Nerdnik lecture mode and there was no stopping him. “A dropship making an unpowered descent creates a superheated plasma fireball that no sensor could miss. Even with an extensive stealth field, which consumes enormous power, the superheated air trailing behind the dropship could not possibly be missed by infrared sensors. So incoming dropships need to use a combination of parachutes, ballistic balloons and a powered descent, combined with an extensive stealth field. Downward engine thrust is required to slow and control the dropship’s descent, which is a major problem. You can cool the exhaust to decrease the infrared signature, but the air below the dropship is still being disturbed at near-supersonic speeds, and sensors will almost certainly detect that.”

  “I know that, Skippy. I remember you telling me all that, and I paid attention when you told me.”

  “You know all that?”

  “Yup.”

  “You know about all those problems, and your monkey brain still says ‘Duuuuh we should do this’?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh boy. You have a monkey-brained solution?”

  “Yes, and well, heh, heh,” I mimicked the typical asshole move he used on me, “you are very much not going to like this, Skippy.”

  “Joe, I very much DO NOT LIKE THIS!”

  “Uh huh, Skip, you might have mentioned that once or twice. Or, like, a billion freakin’ times already. Will you shut up about it? We’re trying to concentra-”

  “Do. Not. Like. THIS!”

  “Copy that. How about you create a subroutine to say that to yourself over and over until you just want to kill yourself, and leave us alone.”

  “Fine,” he said in a huff. “I’ve been wanting to kill myself since I met my first smelly, hairless ape. That ‘well heh heh’ is supposed to be my line, Joe.”

  “Yeah, well, payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

  “Next time, it’s my turn.”

  “Great. How long to rendezvous?” The time was on our Thuranin dropship’s cockpit display, and I could have seen it on my tablet or zPhone; I asked to keep him busy.

  “Thirty seven point three seconds, until the microwormhole is in position. We are slowing precisely to match course. Joe, we will have only eight seconds to latch on. If we miss this hookup, we will have to go all the way around the planet again.”

  “Got it. That’s why you are not going to miss, Skippy.”

  “I’m not going to miss? I’m not flying the dropship, you-”

  “You are controlling the cable and grapple, Skippy.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, I am certainly not going to miss.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, then.”

  “Ha! So, so many things to worry about, Joe.”

  “How about you let me worry, and you concentrate on getting that cable latched onto us?”

  “It’s hard for me to concentrate, with that subroutine shouting ‘I very much do not like this’ at me over and over.”

  “What? Oh, for crying out- Damn it, that was a joke, Skippy. Turn it-”

  “Ha ha! Just joking, Joe. Ok, we are in position. Transmitting signal to the Flying Dutchman now. Aaaaand, I see the grappling mechanism on the end of the cable. Guiding it, huh, we are almost perfectly in position, that is good flying by Captain Renaud. Done!” He exulted as there was a faint ‘clunk’ sound from the upper hull of our stealthy Thuranin dropship. “Positive lock, we’re attached. Pilot, cut main power.”

  “Main power cut, confirmed,” Renaud said worriedly, holding up his hands to show he was not touching the controls. He had lost major control of our dropship, now being able only to move us side to side slightly. He looked distinctly unhappy about it.

  “Commencing descent now,” Skippy announced. “Everyone, stay in your seats and try not to move much.”

  “Uh, I have to pee, Skippy,” I said with a wink to Lt. Williams.

  “What? Damn it, Joe, you should have done that before-”

  “Joking, Skippy, that was a joke. How are we doing?”

  “Uh, hmm. Actually, due to my overall awesomeness, there is even less vibration in the cable than I predicted.”

  “Oh, so your prediction was faulty?” I asked with a fake frown. The truth was, I was running my mouth nonstop out of an overabundance of nervous energy. It was unprofessional and not something a real colonel in the United States Army should be doing. Maybe the officer training I had completely skipped would have trained me to be more steady in tense situations; I had always been shaky right before combat or other extreme danger.

  My nervousness came from the fact that the operation we were engaged in was my idea, so if it went south it would be my fault. And my fear stemmed from the fact that, according to Skippy, no one had ever done anything quite like this. Either way, he had assured me, this was going to be a ‘hold my beer watch this’ moment for the history books.

  His assurance did not actually reassure me at all.

  Our big Thuranin Condor dropship, a bird that was already stealthy before Skippy worked his magic on it, was attached to a grapple at the end of a long, superthin cable. Thin, like way more thin than a human hair. Way more thin even than spider silk. The cable was made partly of some exotic material; trying to understand the material’s properties had made even Dr. Friedlander’s rocket scientist brain hurt. The cable went up above our dropship and into the near end of a microwormhole that Skippy was holding precisely in geostationary orbit, above one spot on the planet’s surface. The other end of the cable was anchored to the substantial mass of the Flying Dutchman, which was parked a quarter lightyear away outside the star system.

  The ultrathin cable passed through a microwormhole, with almost no room on any side. Skippy was maneuvering both ends of the wormhole, but if the Dutchman or our dropship jerked to the side unexpectedly, the cable would be cut, and the dropship would fulfil its name and drop like a stone. The Dutchman’s great mass, and its position far from any gravity source, meant our star carrier would be unlikely to move relative to the microwormhole. Lt. Colonel Chang said he was willing to endure a substantial hit by space debris before he risked moving the ship, and I believed him.

  Our dropship was the potential problem. The Flying Dutchman was stationary, half a kilometer from its end of the microwormhole. As the cable unreeled, the Dutchman would remain at the same distance from the event horizon of the magical microwormhole Skippy had created. The dropship, on the other end of the cable, was getting farther and farther from the event horizon, such that any tiny vibration created on the end of the cable was exaggerated as it traveled upward. We had a very small margin for error; so small that Skippy had refused to discuss it with me. “Don’t worry, Joe, it’s me,” he had said, but his voice had not contained the usual disdainfully arrogant confidence.

  In the Condor, I was holding my breath, and when I did take shallow breaths, I tried not to breathe evenly. Whether it made sense of not, I was afraid that breathing in rhythm would set up a sympathetic vibration in the cable; matching the cable’s natural resonance frequency and shaking it apart. I remember watching an old video in basic training that had explained why soldiers should not march in unison across a bridge. Many boots striking the deck of a bridge at the same time, over and over, could actually shake a bridge apart.

  Yeah, I’m sure I was being silly about the breathing thing.

  Maybe.

  “My prediction was not faulty, Joe,” Skippy had with a touch of pride in his voice. “I included a safety factor for unknow
ns in the process of manufacturing the cable. The Dutchman’s fabrication facilities were not designed to create exotic items like our yoyo string.”

  “Please do not call it a yoyo string,” I stuttered nervously.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Joe. What is a better term for an incredibly flimsy-”

  “Do not use the word flimsy either. It is a cable, Skippy. An amazingly strong, secure, thick cable that will never fail to hold up this dropship.”

  “Oh, sure. It is amazingly strong and secure, even if it is not thick, unless you mean ‘thick’ compared to a hydrogen atom. The cable’s strength is not in question, Joe, my concern is if there are vibrations that-”

  “Which you won’t let happen, right?”

  “Doing my best here, Joey.” The fact that he didn’t manage a snappier reply, told me even Skippy’s vast processing power was straining to predict and control the gossamer thin cable and the two ends of the microwormhole.

  Because the greatest risk in the atmospheric entry operation was the heavy dropship swinging back and forth on the end of the cable, we had selected a landing zone for light and predictable winds. The landing zone was not optimal for the assault operation, being far from any targets. I was totally, enthusiastically willing to accept that compromise if it meant getting our five stealth-enhanced dropship down safely.

  Five dropships. We needed three Kristang Dragons to implement the ambitious, complicated assault plan developed by Major Smythe and his SpecOps team. We used two of the big Thuranin Condors to bring down personnel and equipment. We only had one cable; the equipment aboard the Dutchman had only been able to make one.