Our two Kristang dropships, no longer useful to us, were on their last mission. Since we had recovered them from the ignoble fate of fading away aboard derelict transports, I thought those dropships might appreciate going out in a blaze of glory. Both dropships kept their enhanced stealth engaged and flew low and slow as they approached their target; the main sensor network node of the clan below us. When they popped over a hill and were being swept by powerful active sensor pulses, one of the dropships pulled ahead and switched to the unenhanced Kristang stealth unit, making it intermittently visible to enemy sensors. That dropship attracted a defensive curtain of maser beams, missile and self-guided cannon rounds. The dropship flew a random evasive course, surviving longer than it should have before being ripped to shreds.
From the other direction, the other dropship kept its full enhanced stealth capabilities engaged, approaching the target without being detected. The enemy sensor network was distracted by the dropship that had just been destroyed, and perhaps the Kristang in command of the defenses were congratulating themselves and not paying proper attention. The second dropship was close enough to use its line-of-sight maser cannons before it rippled off its entire load of eight Zinger missiles. After the missiles were away, the dropship climbed and began firing its masers continuously. That attracted the attention of the Kristang, who concentrated on destroying the dropship and realized only too late that eight missiles were inbound. The missiles made no attempt at stealth, relying on speed and hugging the terrain. Five of them were caught and exploded by the maser autocannons, one took a hit and went off course. The remaining two missiles impacted the complex, and detonated their special warheads that threw out electromagnetic rather than kinetic energy. Hot, noisy particles spewed into the air, temporarily blinding the ground-based sensors. The Kristang there knew the purpose of the attack had been to knock back their sensor coverage, but they did not turn their gaze high above them to where we floated. They had more immediate concerns; protecting themselves from the possibility of more aircraft racing in under the temporary sensor blackout. Preparing for an attack on their central complex by aircraft and ground troops was the entire focus of the Kristang below us, so they did not notice when our dropships powered up their engines and cut loose from the balloons.
“So far so good, Colonel,” Lt Reed reported from the copilot seat. There was a slight stomach flipping moment of zero gravity as the ship released and fell less than a hundred meters before flying gently upward under its own power. The discarded balloon was already disintegrating, even the balloon’s stealth field generator was being eaten by nanoparticles. By the time the remains of the balloon reached thirty thousand meters, all that would remain was inconspicuous dust.
I didn’t reply, not wanting to distract the pilots. We climbed as gently as the math of orbital mechanics allowed, with the second dropship following us a hundred kilometers behind. This was the most dangerous part of our Plan B escape, when both dropships were using the most energy of the entire flight profile.
“Picking up some ionization,” Reed warned. Our increasingly swift passage through the upper atmosphere was leaving a trail of ionized gas in our wake, even in the ultrathin air at the edge of low orbit. Our Thuranin dropships had equipment for pumping out gas to reduce our ionized trail, even their advanced technology could not completely mask our flight. “I hope you’re right about this, Sir.”
“Me too, Reed.” What she was referring to was my riverboat gambler’s move, of expecting and hoping no one on or around the planet would bother shooting at one or two small ships moving away from the planet. Most of the Strategic Defense satellites had obliterated each other in the first minute of the war, we could see the hot clouds of debris above us and raining down all around us. I was betting all our lives that no clan would risk unmasking a precious surviving stealthed satellite just to shoot at two small targets that did not pose a threat to anyone. Our flightpath had been chosen to avoid coming near or above any critical assets a clan would fight to protect. “We are tiny little innocent dropships, just wanting to get off a war-torn planet, we are no threat to anyone. No reason for anyone to shoot at us or even look at use closely.” So far, my gamble was paying off. The problem was, I was counting on a whole planet full of pissed off, trigger-happy lizards to act calmly and rationally. It would only take one overeager jackass to ruin our day.
We made it, into orbit and beyond. After three full days circling the planet to slowly build up escape velocity, we all were exhausted as no one had been able to sleep, other than those injured people who were sedated. Around us, Strategic Defense satellites occasionally dropped their stealth to pound a target on the surface, provoking a retaliatory maser strike that almost inevitably destroyed the satellite. We could see sporadic air and ground battles scattered across the surface, with the occasional ship jumping in, launching weapons at the planet and jumping away. The good news was that, in all the excitement, if we had been detected, no one gave a shit about our two relatively tiny ships that were clearly no threat to anyone. Clans on the surface, who still retained some offensive military capability, were not going to expend precious ammo shooting at us. Even firing a maser at us would give away the position of that maser cannon, and some clan would surely take the opportunity to further degrade a rival clan’s defenses. When Skippy and I had developed our Plan B escape route, the little beer can had told me the success of the plan depended mostly on the chaos of war making our two dropships unworthy targets. At that time, Skippy told me he couldn’t predict whether some Kristang clan with nothing to lose wouldn’t take a shot at us, so he could not recommend Plan B. I agreed with him, the difference is I was willing to take the risk. Because there was no Plan C.
Accelerating as gently as we possibly could, we managed to dodge space junk until we were far enough away to point the ships on a course to the planned rendezvous with the Flying Dutchman. I didn’t close my eyes for more than brief snatches of sleep until the planet behind us had shrunk to the size of a golf ball.
All we needed to do then was survive cooped up in two dropships, each of which had a single bathroom designed for little green men about four feet tall. I was not looking forward to the long journey; seven weeks until we reached the alternate rendezvous point where the Dutchman was supposed to be waiting. One of our doomed Kristang dropships, before their suicide mission, had sent a burst transmission out to the point in space where our pirate ship should be when the speed-of-light signal got there. Following protocol, the Dutchman did not reply, so we did not know if our ship received the signal. Yet another thing for me to worry about.
I was also extremely worried about Skippy. He was completely unresponsive. Worse, after growing uncomfortably warm, his beer can had cooled and was now distinctly chilly. I kept him tucked away, wrapped in a jacket in a locker, and I didn’t tell anyone that his can had gone cold; people had enough to worry about.
It sucked that, after an operation that had accomplished the impossible, we didn’t feel like celebrating. We had started a war on Kobamik, but without Skippy we did not know if the war had spread throughout Kristang space, and whether the Fire Dragons had cancelled their deal to send a ship to Earth. Our operation might have accomplished nothing more than getting a lot of sentient beings on Kobamik killed for nothing. Worse, it may have been the strain of hacking the entire planet to protect us that distracted Skippy enough he became vulnerable to the worm. I may have just gotten Skippy and my entire species killed, and I had no way of knowing one way or the other.
Three weeks out from Kobamik, with another four weeks until we reached the Flying Dutchman, our existence of stifling boredom was shattered. “Contact!” Lt. Reed shouted from the cockpit.
I was instantly awake, having been drifting in and out of slumber for an hour. With oxygen and other consumables at a premium in the cramped cabin of the dropship, we slept a lot, or stayed out of each other’s way as much as possible. “What is it?”
“We just got swept by the edge of
a sensor field,” Reed explained. “There is at least one stealthed ship out there. Colonel, we didn’t see it at all.” She pointed at her console, frustrated. “We had no idea a ship was anywhere near us.”
“It’s not your fault, Lieutenant,” I assured her. “Even a Thuranin dropship doesn’t have the sensor capability of a starship. That ship may be optimized for stealth to patrol this area. I am pretty damned sure no one sent a starship all the way out here to look for us.”
“I hope you’re right, what do you want us to do?”
“Nothing for now. We caught the edge of their sensor field?”
“It was faint,” she replied. “Should we change course, or maybe they didn’t notice us?”
“In peacetime, maybe they wouldn’t notice. With the Kristang at each other’s throats in this system, I can’t imagine the captain of a lizard ship letting a contact go by without checking on it. They got a contact on sensor field, but we’re not showing up on their passive sensors, so they’ve got to know they stumbled across a stealthed ship. Maintain our present course. If we try to evade them, they will certainly get curious. Our best move right now is to be innocent as possible. We need to make that ship’s captain think whoever we are, we’re not worth him breaking stealth to hit us.”
“Another gamble?”
“It worked the first time,” I said without confidence.
We waited. Ten minutes went by and I was breathing easier, when we got swept by a sensor field again, this time the signal was stronger. That ship must have altered course to ping us again. If they pinged us a third time, we were screwed. With the second sweep, even typically crappy Kristang sensors could not miss determining that we were only a dropship. A large dropship, but certainly not any kind of a starship, not even an in-system interplanetary transport ship.
It was time for another gamble, this was would be low-risk. If they did not ping us a third time, it wouldn’t matter what we did. If they did try to sweep across us a third time, I wanted to make it more difficult for them to find us. “Reed, alter course away from that ship.” Of course, we didn’t know exactly where the ship was, but we knew where it was not; on our port side, as both sensor sweeps had come from starboard. “Signal the other dropship to alter course, and meet us at the rendezvous point.”
If that ship really wanted to find us, I wanted to make it difficult. I wanted that ship’s captain to decide that finding us was worth compromising his stealth capability, and worth leaving his assigned patrol area. My hope was that ship’s captain would judge a dropship not worth the trouble.
You know what sucked about combat? Yeah, getting shot at, duh. Second worst was waiting, not only waiting to go into action, but waiting to know. Not knowing whether the unseen warship near us would be coming back was agonizing. Reed pointed the dropship’s nose to port, flipped around and decelerated very gently. Then she swung farther to port, flipped the ship back nose first, and accelerated. We could return to our previous course later.
Minutes went by, then an hour. We picked up a very faint backscatter from a sensor field, not strong enough for us to be detected. Then several hours went by without us seeing anything alarming on our passive sensors. I was still tense, waiting for a third sensor ping, followed by a bolt from a maser cannon, or a missile hunting us. I felt completely powerless. I hated that. Several times, I went into my locker and touched Skippy, in case his beer can was warm again. He was ice cold.
We didn’t relax until some ship in our general vicinity started shooting, and two other ships shot back. Then another pair of ships opened up on the first pair. My guess was the patrol ship had found what it really had been searching for: an enemy starship. One of the first pair of ships was hit and disabled, the second one jumped away. We followed the action anxiously, taking advantage of the battle to gently accelerate away and come back toward our original course. By the time two ships exploded and the fighting stopped, they were well behind us. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The farther we got from Kobamik, the less likely we were to stumble across random patrol ships.
I still wasn’t able to sleep well.
CHAPTER THIRTY
As we made our final approach to the alternate rendezvous point, the Flying Dutchman wasn’t visible at all on our passive sensors, and we did not dare use any active detection technology like a sensor field or active sensor pings. With its more advanced sensors, the ship might be able to detect our dropship; if they did, they remained silent. It pleased me that, no matter how anxious the crew aboard the ship might be, they did not break communications discipline to contact us. It did not please me that we didn’t truly know whether our pirate ship was silent due to admirable discipline, or because it was somewhere else, or because it lacked the power to transmit even a brief message. Not knowing sucked. We were flying almost blind. As we approached the rendezvous point, I ordered the pilots to slow us to rendezvous speed well away from the imaginary point in space where the Dutchman was supposed to be, to avoid stumbling into our ship at high speed. Finally, my nerves couldn’t take it any longer. “Hold us here,” I ordered. After we came to a dead stop, I instructed the pilots to send a single, low-power maser ping to where the ship was supposed to be.
And the ship responded, also with a single ping so faint that if we had not been expecting it, we might have missed it entirely. Based on that brief signal, we had the ship’s location defined well enough to proceed forward. Within minutes, we passed through the Dutchman’s stealth field, and then our dropship was illuminated by a spotlight coming from the open docking bay. “Welcome back, Colonel Bishop.”
“Colonel Chang!” I almost had a tear in my eye from happiness at hearing his voice. “I see you’ve been able to keep the lights on.” The fact that the ship was at the alternate rendezvous point meant Chang had been able to maneuver the ship, and lights meant it still had power.
“So far, Sir. I don’t know how long we can do that, the science team will brief you when you’re aboard.”
“Will we be able to shower first? It’s gotten a bit ripe in here.” Unconsciously, I paused, expecting Skippy to make an insulting comment about how badly we all needed a shower. While I hated the embarrassment, I missed that irascible little beer can. My purpose in talking about showers was not only because I wanted to scrub the accumulated grime off my skin. What I really wanted to know was whether conditions aboard the Dutchman allowed anyone the luxury of a shower. If the answer was no, that told me a lot about how badly the ship was coping with Skippy’s extended absence.
“Sir,” Chang chuckled, and I’m sure he knew exactly why I inquired about the shower situation. “You can take a Hollywood shower if you like. Then we need to update you. Can I assume Mr. Skippy is still on holiday?” There was no laughter in his question.
“Skippy has been nonresponsive. He also hasn’t lost containment and exploded, which gives me hope he will recover and come back to us, like last time.” Last time, the beer can was only dormant for seventeen hours. This was very different, and much more serious.
We got two items of good, even great, news as soon as we stepped out of our rather funky-smelling dropship. The first piece of good news was Nagatha greeting me, and chatting on my zPhone as I headed toward my cabin. Chang told me there wasn’t anything that needed my immediate attention, and the second dropship was thirty minutes behind us, so I had time to scrub off the grime and finally put on a new uniform. “Nagatha! It is great to hear your voice.”
“Why, thank you, Colonel Bishop,” from the tone of her voice, I pictured her blushing somewhere. “It is very pleasing to speak with you again. Before you ask, I must tell you that I am unable to contact Skippy, I began attempting to contact him, as soon as your ship came aboard. There is no response.”
Shit. In the back of my mind, I had been hoping she would be able to wake him up. With that possibility dead, my hopes of Skippy ever reviving faded away to almost zero. “Nagatha,” I lowered my voice. People were giving me space as I walked, but they could h
ear me going by. “I think I killed Skippy. He was hurting, and I asked too much of him. If he hadn’t been so distracted by concealing us from the Kristang-”
“Nonsense, Colonel Bishop,” she said in a soothingly, in a tone that somehow also had a slight touch of scolding to it. “Skippy’s resources were not at all taxed by what he was doing on that planet.”
“But-”
“No buts, young man,” now her tone was definitely schoolmarm-ish. “I know Skippy was not overextending himself, because he was constantly talking with me over the wormhole link, telling me how bored he was. He also told me how incredibly proud he was of the amazing success your team had down there, considering that you are ignorant, flea-bitten monkeys. Those were his words, not mine.”
“Proud of us?” I asked, as I stepped into my small cabin and closed the door behind me.
“Oh, yes. He is very proud to be part of the Merry Band of Pirates. You have been running rings around the supposedly advanced species of this galaxy, and they don’t even know you exist. Skippy also told me he would deny ever saying such a ridiculous thing as him being proud to associate with your lowly species.”
Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4) Page 50
