Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  Major Simms was in charge of coordinating with UNEF Command all the items we would need for the next mission, and the large list of equipment Skippy said he needed to continue repairing and upgrading the Dutchman. Simms and I went over the list at Wright-Pat, and some of the things Skippy wanted puzzled both of us. “Skippy,” I asked, “this is a big list. I can see how most of it would be useful, I guess, but why do you need six crates of WD-40?”

  “WD-40? Oh, that was just me messing with you. You monkeys didn’t know that was a joke? Damn your species is clueless sometimes.”

  Simms looked like she would have tossed him out an airlock right then, if we’d been aboard the Dutchman. I wasn’t happy with him either. “That was not funny, Skippy. We’ve got people working 24/7 down here to-”

  “Yeah, yeah, blah blah blah. I get it, Joe, won’t happen again. Man, you hate it any time I have fun. Listen, to be serious, there is only so much I can do to keep the ship running without access to a Thuranin spacedock. Star carriers are designed to operate on their own for extended missions, but we’ve been out on our own for too long, and the ship got beat up pretty badly on our last mission. Eventually, we will need access to Thuranin spare parts, or we’re going to need another ship.”

  “Crap,” I looked at Simms and we both frowned. “Not on this mission, right?”

  “That depends on how long the next mission lasts, and what kind of stress we put the ship through, Joe. I can’t make promises without knowing the parameters. On the last mission, we didn’t expect to get ambushed by a Thuranin destroyer squadron.”

  He had a point. I didn’t like it. Until then, the thought that the Flying Dutchman would wear out, could wear out, hadn’t occurred to me. The technology of the ship seemed more like magic than anything created by living beings. Skippy did a great job behind the scenes, using robots to perform maintenance, and even daily chores like cleaning and doing our laundry. Whatever Skippy did to keep the ship operating was invisible to me. It was time I started paying careful attention to how much effort went into keeping the ship’s magical machines working.

  The other thing that was not great was that UNEF Command put me on a plane flying to Paris that very afternoon. Paris France, not the one in Texas. I went into a bathroom on the plane for privacy and called Rachel on my zPhone. “Hi, Joe,” she sounded happy. “How is Maine? I checked the weather report this morning, it looks nice up there.”

  “Um. I’m on a plane to Paris,” I blurted out.

  “Paris. I’ve always wanted to go there. This is for work?” There was a tone to her voice that I interpreted as asking whether I was going to Paris with a girlfriend.

  “Yes, UNEF sent me, this is a last minute thing.”

  “Are you coming back to Dayton?”

  “I don’t know. Rachel, I truly don’t know. The ship is going back out soon, and-” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I see.” Her voice changed and I couldn’t tell whether she was hurt or angry or relieved. “You don’t know when you’re coming back?”

  “No.” Damn it, I had always sucked at talking over a phone. “Rachel, we don’t even know where we’re going.” I took a deep breath. “Listen, Rachel, when I get back-”

  “Joe,” she interrupted me. “Were you about to make a promise that you don’t know if you can keep? Don’t do that.”

  “I-” I what? I’m an idiot?

  “You’re lonely, Joe, I could tell that right away. You were away from home for a long time, and now you’re going back out. We had fun, I’m glad I met you. It’s not like you left in the middle of the night. You have a mission and you have to go. I understand. I was in the Air Force, remember?”

  We awkwardly chatted for another few minutes, ending with me saying that if I could get back to Wright-Pat before going into orbit, I would contact her. She told me that wouldn’t be a good idea. I could see her point. When you tear off a Band-Aid, you don’t want to put it back on and do it again. Best to get it over with once.

  My history with women seems to be they had me on a catch-and-release program. If my past was any indicator, Rachel had her fill of Joe Bishop and was ready to move on.

  Crap. My longest current relationship was with a shiny beer can.

  Maybe I needed to seriously rethink my life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Paradise

  With almost simultaneous gamma ray bursts, the Kristang frigate To Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious and the destroyer We are Proud to Honor Clan Sub-Leader Rash-au-Tal Vergent who Inspires us Every Day emerged above Lemuria, about twenty three thousand kilometers apart. They emerged on either side of the unlucky Ruhar frigate Tolen Grathur. Because of pressure put on the task force commodore by the Chief Administrator, the defending task force had stationed a single frigate above Lemuria, to prevent or at least lessen the severity of future raids. Unfortunately for the Grathur, the Kristang had been watching that ship’s patrols and noticed a pattern. There was a place the Ruhar frigate returned to reliably every eleven hours. Seeing an opportunity to hit the enemy hard with manageable risk, the Kristang task force commander had approved the idea of a raid by the captain of the destroyer Vergent, and naturally the experienced frigate Glory had been assigned to the mission. That fact understandably did not please the crew of the little Glory.

  Both Kristang ships emerged with weapons hot and fired missiles, maser cannons and the destroyer launched railgun darts at the Grathur. Only luck saved the Grathur from complete destruction that day; a maser beam from the Glory hit a missile from the Vergent just as that missile evaded the Grathur’s point defenses. Instead of a devastating direct hit, the explosion of the missile warhead 1200 kilometers away only severely damaged the Grathur, allowing that hapless ship to perform a short emergency jump. The Grathur would be out of service for several weeks repairing damage, which the Kristang commander counted as good as a kill.

  The captain of the Vergent was bitterly disappointed that he could not claim a complete victory that day, and he blamed the crew of the Glory although it had been an accident. The Vergent’s missile had been maneuvering violently to avoid fire from the Grathur’s point defense cannons, and flew right into a maser beam from the Glory. In the chaos of battle, it happened, and it was no one’s fault.

  The crew of the Vergent still blamed the Glory.

  The crew of the Glory were happy merely to have survived another day.

  Earth

  The next call I needed to make was to one of the prior Merry Band of Pirates. “Hey, Skippy, I have a special request, it’s kind of unusual. I need to call someone, and I need the call to be completely private, on both ends.”

  “Sure thing. Is this person living or dead?”

  “What? Living, of course. I-, wait,” Skippy could do so many incredible things, and he was still constantly surprising me with things he could do. “Oh my God! Can you really talk to dead people?”

  “No, you big stupidhead,” he laughed. “Of course not. Damn, you are dense sometimes.”

  “Then why the hell did you ask?”

  “You said this request is unusual, so I was trying to judge just how idiotic this was going to be. You know, will this be normal Joe-level moronic, or are you cooking up something truly special to entertain me?”

  “You are such an asshole. Can you do it, or not?”

  “Whew,” he let out an exasperated breath. “Please. Easy-peasy, Joe. Who do you want to call?”

  “Doctor Friedlander.”

  “Our friendly local rocket scientist? Is he in any condition to talk? I think he sprained his brain aboard the Dutchman, trying to understand how the reactors work,” Skippy chuckled.

  “Skippy, be nice once in a while.”

  “Ok, Ok. For a monkey, he’s not nearly as dim as the rest of you. And he does tell good jokes sometimes.”

  “Friedlander? Tells jokes?” This completely surprised me. Although, I hadn’t spent much time with the science team.

  “Yes. Aboard the ship, he star
ted every science team meeting with a joke. Like, did you hear the one about the rooster?”

  Skippy was going to tell the joke anyway, so I played along. “No.”

  “This farmer has a rooster that is growing old, and the farmer decides it’s time to get a new rooster. So he goes down the road to his neighbor Gilroy, and he buys a young rooster. When he gets home,” Skippy was already laughing at his own joke, “he puts the young rooster in the pen. The young rooster struts up to the old rooster and says ‘Hey old-timer, you need to hit the road. This is my place now’. The old rooster says ‘You’re right, it is my time, but I’ll tell you what. Someday you’ll be old, and a young rooster will come along to kick you out. I don’t want the ladies to see me just walk away. Could you chase me around some, we’ll fight for a minute for me to keep my dignity, and then I’ll leave?’ And the young rooster feels sorry for the old one, and says ‘Sure, old-timer, let’s go.’ So the young rooster chases the old rooster around the henhouse, and the farmer comes out to see what the commotion is. He says ‘What the hell?’ He grabs his shotgun and blows the young rooster away. As the old rooster is chuckling, the farmer says ‘Damn Gilroy done sold me a gay rooster’!”

  I laughed.

  And Skippy laughed.

  “You’re right, that is a good one.” Maybe I needed to make more of an effort to get to know all the people aboard the ship. “Can you call Friedlander?”

  “Wait a minute, he’s in his kitchen with his wife right now. I can make the call completely private, but I can’t prevent his wife from overhearing him talk. He is about to go outside to get something out of the toolshed, you can talk to him then.”

  I was curious. “How do you know he’s in the kitchen?”

  “Duh. You really have to ask, seriously? Since you asked, in this particular case, they have one of those fancy refrigerators with internet connectivity and touch screen. That is not the best idea if you’re concerned about privacy, by the way. Also, one of their yogurts is expired. It’s behind the bread, that’s why they haven’t noticed it.”

  I made a mental note to get a really, really old non-digital fridge, if I ever got a place of my own.

  “Ok, Friedlander just walked outside. I’ll call his phone now?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  There was a delay of a couple seconds, and I was about to ask Skippy what was the problem, then I heard Friedlander’s voice. “Hello? Who is this?” He demanded.

  “Doctor, it’s Joe Bishop.”

  “Oh, sorry for snapping at you. There was no caller ID, and I don’t usually answer those calls, but my phone somehow picked up the call by itself.”

  “That’s because this call is going through Skippy, not a cellular network.”

  “Yes,” Skippy’s voice broke in, “SkippyTel has amazing rate plans, and the best quality of service. Exclusions apply. Not available in other solar systems. Or to people I don’t like.”

  “Got it, Skippy, thank you,” I said. “I’ll consider switching my plan to SkippyTel, please send me your brochure. Doctor Friedlander, we’re going through Skippy because I want this call to be completely private. Can you talk?”

  “Give me a moment, I’m, Ok, I’m in my toolshed, and my wife is in the house.”

  “UNEF has decided to send the Dutchman back out.”

  “I would have thought that was obvious,” he said. I could hear the sarcasm in his voice.

  “So did I, but it took a while for the bureaucratic wheels to get into motion, I guess. The reason I called is to see if you are interested in going back out with us.”

  “Oh. Wait minute.” He was silent a moment. “I had to check that my wife is still in the house. I am not sure about going again, Colonel Bishop,” he answered slowly. “Last week, NASA invited me to train for the mission to recover that Kristang troopship. We still have to do that? Skippy won’t bring that troopship back for us?”

  “I asked him to bring it back for my birthday,” now my voice had the sarcasm.

  “Joe!” Skippy broke in again. “I already got you a pair of socks.”

  “And I appreciate that, Skippy. Truthfully, I would rather have a starship.”

  “These are a very nice pair of socks, Joe,” he said with a sniff. “However, I will consider it.”

  “Unless Skippy changes his mind soon,” I concluded, “we should assume NASA has to go out there in old-fashioned chemical rockets. You would rather go on that mission, than join us aboard the Dutchman again?”

  “What I want is not the only consideration.”

  “Oh.” Crap. This was going to get complicated.

  “My wife told me she married an engineer, not an astronaut. She was a nervous wreck when we got home.”

  “Doctor, this time, we do expect the Dutchman to return. Last time we didn’t, but you went anyway?”

  “I, um, I didn’t quite believe your speech about how we wouldn’t be coming back.”

  “I wasn’t kidding about that,” I said, frustrated.

  “Which I realized when we got out there, and I learned that we can’t operate the ship without Skippy. By then, it was too late. Before we left, I told my wife there was no way UNEF would allow a valuable asset like a Thuranin starship to be put at risk. I figured all the talk about the high level of risk was something UNEF lawyers made you say. So that, if anything did go wrong, the families couldn’t sue UNEF. Sorry about that. Colonel, I wasn’t the only person who thought that way, the whole science team did.”

  All my serious speeches had been for nothing? “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Your wife is Ok with you going into space with NASA?”

  “No! No, I told NASA that I need to think about it. My wife is very much against me going up in a NASA rocket. Or a Chinese rocket. Any craft we send out to that troopship will be experimental. I’m not enthusiastic about the idea either. NASA wants me to go, because they’re hoping that I learned enough about the Flower to be able to get the troopship’s reactor restarted.”

  That surprised me. “You can do that?”

  “No. And I told that to NASA, I think they’re hoping that I’m wrong. Colonel, I appreciate the offer. I gathered so much data aboard the Flower and the Dutchman already, it will take me years to-”

  “I need you to lead the new science team,” I said before he could finish.

  “Me? Colonel, I’m an engineer. I don’t do basic research and theory; I figure out how to make theories do something useful. Out among the stars, we should be-”

  “Doctor, on this mission, UNEF wants engineers, not biologists, or cosmologists,” I stumbled over that word. Wasn’t that people who gave fancy haircuts? No, I remembered with relief, those were cosmetologists, like my cousin Debbie. “Or chemists, or any kind of ‘ist’. UNEF wants people who can figure out how the Dutchman, and any other alien technology we encounter, works.”

  Friedlander sounded puzzled. “Why didn’t they do that the first time?”

  “Because, as I said many times, last time they didn’t really expect the ship to ever come back.”

  “Mmm. And this time they do, so they care about us delivering concrete results.”

  “You got it, Doctor.”

  There was a pause in the conversation. Maybe I should have done this face to face, rather than over a phone. I pictured him in a toolshed, surrounded by a lawnmower, weed whacker, rakes, shovels and a bucket of topsoil. If I closed my eyes, I knew what it smelled like; a bit musty, with dried dirt and grass and gasoline and plywood. It smelled like suburbia. It smelled like freedom. It smelled like America. Finally, he spoke. “Why me, Colonel?”

  “You have experience aboard the Dutchman, and that counts a lot, because it means you have proven to be cool under pressure. Also, you got along well with people in a confined environment.” That counted for a lot; there had been flare-ups of personality conflicts even among our carefully-chosen Merry Band of Pirates. “Mostly, I’m hoping you are someone I can count on. We are sticking to a limit of seventy people again,
and this time we will have some, let’s say, observers and intel people from UNEF. So the science team will have fewer people. I’d like you to select a wide mix of expertise for your team. Doctor, you know that we have no idea what fields of knowledge we will need once we’re out there. On Newark, biology and archeology were critical for unraveling the mystery of that planet. And the science team ran an analysis that made Skippy realize an entire moon had been vaporized. UNEF is going to want to stuff the science team with you rocket scientist types so they can hopefully figure out how Thuranin technology works. You understand how useful it might be for that team to not be narrowly focused. It may mean the difference between us coming home or not.”

  “I agree with you on that point, Colonel. Do you need an answer right now?”

  “No,” I replied, “give it three days. No more than that, though. If you’re onboard, you’ll need a head start selecting your team.”

  “Ohhhh,” he groaned. “This is not going to be easy to sell to my wife.”

  And, there, I knew he wanted to come with us. “I understand. Doctor, I’m not going to give you a Duty, Honor, uh, Humanity speech. I’d very much appreciate if you can come with us, but you’ve done your duty already. Think about it, and call me either way, please.”

  Friedlander called me the next morning, waking me from sleep because I was on Paris time. “Colonel Bishop, you still want me on the next mission?”