Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4)

by Craig Alanson

  “Me?” The AI replied indignantly. In Merry Band of Pirates slang, to ‘Bishop’ something meant to use the most horribly complicated way to accomplish a task. Even though it usually also meant that, afterward, no one could think of a less complicated way to have done it. “Hey, in the future, you can do the planning yourself. When this op went sideways, I did get you off that roof.”

  “And now we’re up a tree, where we might be eaten by a monster.”

  “That thing might not be able to get through your armored suits quickly,” Skippy scoffed. “Well, not easily. I think.”

  Smythe watched as the grikka roared in frustration, then bit cleanly through a fallen log at least a meter in diameter. Splinters pelted Smythe and Robertson. “If you were here, you would not be so certain about that. Robertson,” Smythe advised as the grikka began gnawing at the base of Smythe’s tree, and chunks of the bark flew through the forest. The tree shook and wobbled to the left, forcing Smythe to shift his weight. “If this tree is about to fall, I am going to shoot that thing first.”

  Robertson unslung his rifle, flicked the safety off and selected explosive-tipped rounds. He sighted in on the base of the grikka’s thick skull, wondering whether he should target one of its legs instead. It would be nice to know the beast’s vulnerabilities. If it had any. “Got you covered, Major.”

  “Skippy says gunfire will alert the sensors in this forest, so after that thing is dead, we get out of these trees and run,” Smythe instructed. “This whole area will be swarming with Kristang.” He had the same question as Robertson. “Skippy, do you have a recommendation for where we should shoot a grikka? The blasted thing is armored all over.” The explosive-tipped rounds might waste their destructive power on the exterior of the monster without causing any serious damage.

  “Oh, don’t be so bloody dramatic, Major,” Skippy interjected. “The rescue dropship is practically on top of you. If you have to shoot, aim for the underside; the armor is thinner there.”

  “We are in trees, above the grikka,” Smythe reminded the absent-minded beer can.

  “Oh. Yeah. Hmmm. Sucks for you, huh? Maybe you can get it to roll over for a belly rub?”

  “I do not think-” Smythe was interrupted by his tree lurching alarmingly. “Robertson, aim for its-” He was interrupted again by the whining of turbine engines, coming from an unseen source, but above him.

  “Major Smythe, we are above you, lowering a cable now,” said a voice he recognized as belonging to Lt. Reed. “You should be able to see the end of the cable now, it is homing on your suit.”

  “I don’t- I see it,” Smythe slung his rifle and watched, transfixed, as the sling at the end of a cable came snaking down toward him out of the darkness. The other end of the cable was unseen as the dropship was encased in a stealth field. The sling swung toward him and missed, as the tree was now swaying from both the actions of the now-enraged grikka and the downdraft of the dropship’s engine fan blades. The grikka, perhaps sensing its prey might escape, threw itself at the tree, trying to climb up. Its massive bulk battered the weakened tree, and it began toppling. Smythe slipped, got a firm foothold, and leaped up for the sling. Unfortunately, the sling had just turned around to guide itself back to where Smythe had been, so it was in the wrong position at the height of Smythe’s leap. He reached out and caught the sling with only one finger of his left hand. For a moment, he dangled alarmingly.

  And his other hand came around in an athletic maneuver to firmly grasp the sling. “Up!” He shouted as the grikka gathered itself to jump up toward him.

  Robertson tracked the grikka with his rifle, finger poised on the trigger. As the beast jumped and the cable pulled Smythe upward, Robertson instinctively judged the grikka would miss, and he was right. The monster’s outstretched claws raked through empty air two meters below the SAS team leader’s feet, and the heavy beast crashed back to the ground, stunned. Robertson kept watch on the grikka as it circled the tree Smythe had been in, shaking its head. Seemingly unaware its prey was no longer in the tree, the grikka resumed biting chunks out of the base, while the cable came back down for Robertson. It was not until Robertson had the sling securely under both arms that the grikka looked up, looked Robertson straight in the eye. As the cable tugged him upward, Robertson slung his rifle. In a way, he felt sorry for the beast, condemned to live its short existence providing sport for the Kristang.

  Safely aboard the dropship, Robertson accepted help strapping into the seat. Following Smythe’s lead, he popped the seal of his helmet. Then sniffed. “Oooh,” he looked down at whatever substance was now dried and crusted onto the suit. Unsavory substances that had likely stuck to the suit in the sewer, and not been washed off during their time in the open river.

  “I’ve smelled worse,” Smythe said with a grin as the dropship’s crew backed away from the odiferous pair of SAS men.

  “How are you, Major?” Reed called from the cockpit.

  “Let me think,” Smythe said as he breathed in air that had not been scrubbed by his suit’s filters. Even the whiff of stink coming from his suit didn’t make breathing unfiltered air any less sweet. “We parachuted into an alien city, dropped missiles off a roof, fell down an elevator shaft, played cop, stole a lorry, got flushed down a sewer and then chased up a tree by a monster. On Earth that would be remarkable, but for the Merry Band of Pirates,” he shrugged, “we call that ‘Tuesday’.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  I pumped a fist when Lt. Reed reported the SAS team was safely aboard her dropship, and that she was flying low and slow along the egress route that Skippy had cleared of busybody sensors. Only ten minutes later, the SEALS team was safely aboard another dropship, and Lt. Williams called me directly. “How is Jones?” I asked first.

  “He will be fine, Colonel,” Williams answered, his voice sounded tired.

  “Are you all right?” His tone concerned me.

  “Sir, the worst thing about the whole op was the, the showtunes. Skippy sang to us the whole time we were in that truck. Colonel, I’m serious, I want to kill him.”

  “Skippy!” I shouted with a hand over the microphone.

  “What?” The beer can answered innocently. “Damn. Ok, so sue me for trying to inject a little culture into this band of cutthroat pirates.”

  “We will talk later,” I scolded the beer can. “Lieutenant, I will keep you away from Skippy for a while.”

  “That’s probably wise, Sir. Williams out.”

  I turned to Skippy, who was in a slot on the console in front of me. “Let’s save the showtunes issue for another time. What’s going on with the war?”

  “The Fire Dragon leadership contacted the Black Trees, who denied any involvement in the attack. Unfortunately for us, the Black Trees just offered to send several first sons of senior leaders to the Fire Dragons as hostages, the Fire Dragons have not yet responded to the offer. Joe, we need Colonel Chang to be successful in his phase of the operation. As I predicted, the Fire Dragons are sending some of their remaining senior leaders off the planet for security, in case a full-scale war breaks out. The dropship carrying those leaders is climbing out of the atmosphere now. King Kong,” he used his private nickname for Chang, “is now up for Phase Two.”

  Lt. Colonel Chang Kong received the order to carry out Phase Two of the operation. He, and the entire crew, had been hoping Phase Two would not be needed, now they were committed to the attack. “Skippy had better be right about how those Fire Dragon ships perform the jumps he programmed for them, or this could be a very short engagement,” Chang said mostly to himself as he sat in the Flying Dutchman’s command chair, elbow resting on the side of the chair and his chin on his knuckles. If he had ever seen Star Trek, he would have recognized the classic Jim Kirk move. “Space combat is much too complicated. Sometimes, I long for the days when I was a simple artillery officer. All I had to be concerned about then was delivering ordnance on target. And then moving my guns before the enemy tracked our shells back and hit us with coun
terbattery fire.” He sighed wistfully. “That was so much easier.”

  “Sir,” Desai turned in the copilot seat to look at the Flying Dutchman’s current commanding officer. “Space combat is complicated for certain, but the problem out here is that everything we do is extraordinarily complicated. I don’t think Colonel Bishop and Skippy could make toast without a fourteen step plan that involves us warping spacetime, and hacking into alien computer systems.”

  Chang laughed. “And carving up asteroids, don’t forget about that. Maybe it is just the Merry Band of Pirates that makes everything horribly complicated,” he ran his fingers over the paramecium-logo unit patch on his shoulder. “Or it could be that I don’t belong out here,” he said in a rare confession for the usually reserved Chinese Army lieutenant colonel. “I was trained to fire artillery, not to be captain of a starship.”

  “Bishop was trained to carry a rifle,” Desai replied pointedly. “He has done pretty well for himself, and for us.”

  “And humanity overall,” Porter added from the left-hand seat.

  “Yes, and humanity,” Chang agreed. “Desai, Porter, tell me you don’t wish we could go into a straight stand-up fight, instead of all this sneaking around laying mines and setting up missiles for an ambush.”

  “Yes Sir, I do,” Porter acknowledged. “I also wish we had a real warship rather than a fancy trash hauler. Taking this bucket of bolts up against three warships, even if they are Kristang warships, does not fill me with confidence.”

  “And without Mister Skippy,” Desai added in a worried tone. “If we get into trouble out here, we’re on our own.”

  “I think about that every second,” Chang said without exaggeration. “Bishop gave me the keys to the ship, I want to bring it back without a scratch. Please tell me we can get out of here in a hurry if we have to.”

  “Got an emergency jump programmed in,” Porter patted the console affectionately. “One of us presses this button,” he indicted the prominent green button at the top of the console between the two pilot seats, “and we go through whatever crazy-ass hole in spacetime the jump drive supposedly creates.”

  “Supposedly?” Chang asked with an arched eyebrow.

  “The United States Navy paid for me to get a master’s degree in physics,” Porter answered. “I had planned to go on to a PHD program someday, when my flying days were over. Then aliens showed me that humans don’t know squat about physics,” he said with more than a touch of frustration. All the many hours he had spent in a classroom, and studying on his own, had barely gotten him to the bottom rung of the knowledge ladder. “Before the Ruhar arrived, we had theories about wormholes. Now, we know all those theories were wrong, but we don’t know how jump wormholes really do work. How does a ship here,” he pointed at the deck, “project the far end of a wormhole at a distant point, with the effect exceeding the speed of light between the two points? It’s almost instantaneous. And how is the far end of a jump wormhole in a different time state?” He shook his head. “All I know is, I press a button, and the ship goes to a different place. It could be a different, parallel universe we jump to, for all we know. This is Alice in Wonderland, and we’re going down a rabbit hole.”

  Chang shared a look with Desai. “Mister Porter, since Colonel Bishop is not here, I will say it for him: you are not filling me with confidence.”

  Porter took the hint. “Colonel, when I press the button, the ship will jump. I’m the pilot; how the jump works is somebody else’s problem.”

  “Yes, until it screws up and they expect us to get them out of the mess,” Desai whispered.

  “In this case, the ‘they’ is a talking beer can,” Porter whispered back. “How F-ed up is that?”

  A heavily-armored dropship raced out of the planet’s atmosphere, surrounded and escorted by five gunships. A frigate dipped dangerously low into the atmosphere, its forward and lower surfaces glowing dull red from friction as its engines trembled and strained against the unaccustomed pull of heavy gravity. The frigate was there to provide additional protection for the armored dropship, but the frigate’s guns were not its primary asset, and its defensive energy shields were weakened by passage through the air. The greatest aid the frigate could provide was the hot, roiling air surrounding its hull and blazing out of its main engines and thrusters. The air was so disturbed and saturated with infrared energy, any targeting sensors would have difficulty locking onto the armored dropship as it soared near and then above the frigate. After the vital dropship was securely above the frigate, protected from ground-based weapons and sensors, it had to slow its ascent to allow the frigate to catch up. There was a heart-stopping moment for the frigate’s crew when a series of relays blew, causing temporary loss of attitude control. The frigate nearly rolled onto its back, slewing violently to the side and tossing its crew around like marbles in a shoebox. Just as the ship was about to roll past the critical thirty four degree mark beyond which it could not recover, a single relay reset itself and the thrusters in that array roared back to life. For a split second, the frigate hovered on the knife edge of thirty three and a half degrees of roll, its acquired momentum resisting the power of the thrusters. The crew held their breath, knowing if their ship flipped over, they would plunge down through increasingly thick air, deeper into the gravity well until the strain broke the little ship’s back and scattered them to the unforgiving winds.

  With an echoing cheer, the bridge crew watched the inclinometer slide back away from disaster; thirty three, thirty two, thirty then faster and faster back toward safety. At fifteen degrees of roll that would have been considered terrifying only seconds before, the captain commanded the frigate to stand on its tail and apply full power to the main engines. Led by the dropships, the frigate climbed back out of the atmosphere, its forward shield generators rapidly degrading and the crew happy they could deal with that problem later.

  The frigate and gunships escorted the armored dropship and its VIP passengers, until the VIPs were safely aboard the Fire Dragon clan heavy cruiser None Can Stand Against Us. With several senior clan leaders having been killed in their compound, two of the surviving senior leaders needed to get away to safety. The escort gunships applied emergency power to get away as the Stand’s jump drive coils began vibrating. To jump from low orbit was a violation of local space traffic rules and several treaties, and under the circumstances not a single person aboard the Stand of its two frigate escorts cared about the consequences.

  As the jump drives of all three ships ran up to full power, their navigation computers exchanged heavily encrypted data to coordinate their simultaneous but individual jumps. The frigates needed to jump to roughly the same location as the heavy cruiser, or they would be useless as protective escorts, so they followed the Stand’s guidance on where to jump to. Considering the notorious inaccuracy of Kristang jump drives, the cruiser’s command crew was more concerned the frigates did not try to occupy the same distant point of space when they emerged. They followed standard protocol for a small formation jump. A larger formation of ships often sent an expendable frigate to scout ahead the distant jump point, waiting for that unlucky ship to recharge its drive coils and jump back to report. That precaution took time that the captain of the Stand could not afford right then, so he opted for a formation jump. Every moment the heavy cruiser lingered in orbit, the VIPs aboard were exposed to more danger, as the fighting on the planet’s surface threatened to rapidly spiral out of control.

  “Skippy, you are sure you can control their jumps from down here?” I asked worriedly. We had a couple nice firefights going on the surface, and a developing air battle between three clans to the east, but if the two Fire Dragon senior leaders could get safely away, they might be able to calm things down and prevent the fighting from spreading widely across Kristang-occupied space. The Fire Dragon leaders were running to a pre-planned safe haven provided by an allied clan. From that safe haven, they could rally their forces to a strong defense, giving them time and a sense of security t
o think clearly and avoid a preemptive strike that would widen the conflict.

  I wanted the conflict widened. I wanted to enlarge the current fracture in Kristang inter-clan relations wide enough that I could fly the Dutchman through it.

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it, Joe. No problem. Seriously, you think hacking into and messing with lizard jump drive computers is any challenge to me? I am Skippy the Magnificent, my magic is capable of warping stars. For me, this lame-ass level of magic is like making balloon animals or pulling a coin out of your ear.”

  “But-”

  “But, shut up a minute and let me work, will you? Go, I don’t know, practice tying your shoelaces again. Maybe by a miracle, you’ll get it right this time.”

  I was going to shoot back with a witty retort, but I couldn’t. A week ago, I wasn’t even able to walk from my cabin to my office before a bootlace came untied and I tripped, falling against the doorjamb of the bridge/CIC complex. I suspect a certain asshole beer can somehow snuck a bot in my cabin to loosen my laces while I was brushing my teeth, but it was better to drop the subject. “Thank you, Your Magnificence.”

  “Now that’s more like it, Joe. Aaaaand, those ships have jumped away.”

  “You did it, right?”

  “Yup. Well, did the best I could, under the circumstances, you understand.”