Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  “Why, Joe?” Skippy asked. “Is it because of the outstanding warrants? Don’t worry, the statute of limitations on indecent exposure is only like five years. I think.”

  “Not helping, Skippy, you are not helping one bit.”

  “Joe, making you face your shortcomings is you helping in the long run,” Skippy protested. “Also a lot of fun for me, although of course that was not my motivation. That you know of.”

  The next time a beer can on a dusty shelf starts talking to me, I am going to walk out and lock the door behind me.

  “Whoa! Slow down there, partner,” Jesse cautioned as Derek greedily gulped a container of nutrient mush and reached for another. “Your stomach has shrunk. You need to go slow.”

  “Is that,” Derek mumbled through a mouthful of mush, “chocolate chips cookies?” He pointed to a box in Jesse’s lap.

  “Yes,” Jesse lifted the box out of the pilot’s reach. Damn, he thought, this is like dealing with a child. Well, the man had to be damned hungry by now. “They are real honest to God chocolate chip cookies from,” he was about to say ‘America’ but the box said ‘Belgium’. “Earth. You eat two of those mushes, and let your stomach get used to it. Then you can have a cookie. Right, ma’am?”

  Perkins looked up from her tablet and nodded. “That’s right. Lt. Bonsu, you do what the man says.”

  “Yes, Major,” Bonsu said shakily. “Is this a special forces unit, ma’am?” He asked that skeptically. None of the five had special forces unit insignia on their uniforms.

  “Hell, yes,” Jesse answered seriously. “We’re the most special force you’ve ever seen.”

  “Not exactly,” Perkins said.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Shauna interjected. “I think Jesse is right. Has there ever been a mission more special than this? We destroyed a battlegroup.”

  Perkins paused. “You may be right about that. Lt. Bonsu, we’re going to drop your pilot off some place that has a Ruhar medical facility.” To the relief of Perkins, there had not been any discussion of ignoring the Ruhar pilot after they picked up Bonsu. “Then our secret will be out anyway, so you might as well hear it now. We-”

  Irene called from the cockpit. “Major Perkins? Could you come up here, please?”

  Perkins stood, holding onto a strap, as Irene was flying the Buzzard close to the ground and the flight was not smooth. “Jarrett, Colter, tell Lt. Bonsu what we’ve been doing.”

  “We will,” Shauna acknowledged. “Lieutenant, let’s start with three words, Ok? Giant. Maser. Cannons.”

  They selected a medium-size village that had a fully-equipped hospital, no Ruhar military presence, and was comfortably within the Buzzard’s range of its depleted power cells. Irene warned that they needed to go back to the truck and refuel after dropping the Ruhar pilot off; the Buzzard would be flying on reserves just to get back to the truck.

  Perkins considered waiting until darkness, but Bonsu insisted that Saily was in a coma already, and she could not wait any longer unless they wanted responsibility for a dead Ruhar pilot. So Perkins ordered Irene to land the Buzzard on the hospital’s landing pad. Irene began extending the rear ramp as the landing gear came down. As soon as the Buzzard settled its weight on the landing pad, Dave and Jesse carried Saily out. Shauna escorted them, a Ruhar rifle in her arms, the muzzle pointed at the ground but a finger alongside the trigger in case of trouble.

  A door opened, and three confused Ruhar stepped out of the hospital. There had not been a call from an incoming aircraft, and now there were three humans in front of them. One of the human had a rifle. A Ruhar rifle. Humans were not supposed to have weapons at all. Jesse and Dave laid Saily down carefully, then backed away with their hands up. The three Ruhar were not looking at Jesse and Dave; they were looking at the rifle in Shauna’s hands. Dave pointed at Saily. “Help her,” he shouted in Ruhar over the whine of the Buzzard’s engines. “Help. Her.”

  One of the Ruhar nodded, so the three humans backed away, Shauna last. At the top of the ramp, she hit the button to retract the ramp and shouted for Irene to go. Irene lifted off very gently, wary of her jet exhaust kicking up debris and injuring the Ruhar. When she reached one hundred meters altitude, she engaged the stealth field and pointed the Buzzard’s nose straight toward the truck. “We don’t have the fuel to fly a maximum stealth course,” she explained to Derek in the copilot seat. While the man was still too weak to take the controls, he could monitor instruments for her. Derek had trained on Buzzards before switching to Chicken gunships.

  “You are sure the truck is still there?” Derek asked.

  “It had better be. Or we’ll be walking.”

  The Buzzard made it back to the truck, and they refueled, although they were only able to supply half of the fuel the Buzzard could hold. “We’re not going to be flying far, ma’am,” Irene told Perkins, “I hope Emby doesn’t expect us to bring more than one projector online.”

  “We’re done doing this all by ourselves. The Kristang have dozens of teams searching for projectors,” Perkins frowned. They knew about the Kristang from listening to chatter on the Ruhar civilian network. Although the Kristang still didn’t know exactly where additional projectors might be located, they could guess, based on where they would have installed projectors. “It’s time for the Ruhar to take over this task. I’m messaging Emby now.”

  Prepared for an argument, Perkins was pleasantly surprised when Emby immediately agreed that it was time for the Ruhar planetary government to be officially brought into the effort to activate and control projectors. Emby was going to send a message to Ruhar government officials, but Perkins had better idea. I am going to call someone I know, she typed. After I talk with her, you can send her a message.

  Emby agreed.

  Baturnah Logellia’s phone beeped with a priority call, and she answered it automatically, assuming it was one of her staff calling.

  “Hello, Burgermeister.” It was a human voice, speaking acceptable Ruhar with a heavy accent. “This is Major Emily Perkins.”

  Baturnah held the phone away from her ear and stared at it. How had Perkins made her phone beep with a priority message? “Hello, Major Perkins. How are you?” Where are you, Baturnah wanted to ask. Perkins and three other humans escaped from a train, and the Ruhar had not been able to find any trace of them.

  “I am well,” Perkins spoke precisely, as many human expressions did not translate into the alien language. “We have been busy. We escaped from a train, then we stole a truck, and we stole an aircraft. Also we rescued two pilots who had been shot down. Oh, and before that, we were flying around, activating giant maser cannons.”

  Baturnah gasped, loudly enough that Perkins could hear.

  “Would you be interested,” Perkins asked, “in learning where all the other projectors are located? It has gotten to the point where my team needs help. We can show you how to access and activate a projector, and our friend can give you a map of all the projectors on the planet.”

  “Your friend?” Baturnah asked cautiously, while frantically waving to get the attention of her staff.

  “We call our friend ‘Emby’. Check your phone for a message, it should be there now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Commodore Ferlant’s plan to regain the initiative replied on his people to be the competent, disciplined professionals that he knew they were; and it relied on the Kristang being Kristang. The destroyer City of Fah Lentan departed the task force, performed a series of jumps, and finally jumped in less than three lightminutes from where the five ships of the Kristang pursuit force were holding station.

  Senior Captain Gerkaw knew what he should have done. He should have held position with four of his ships, and dispatched a frigate to Admiral Kekrando; informing the battlegroup commander of the development and requesting instructions. But that would not have been any fun. Besides, the admiral’s position was precarious, and if Gerkaw could show successful aggressiveness, the clan leaders could only look favorably on him as a
n alternative, if the weak and indecisive Kekrando suffered more losses. Instead of doing what he should have done, what he knew the admiral wanted him to do, Gerkaw took the excuse of falling back on Kekrando’s standing order to pursue. The Ruhar ships were no longer beyond the distant boundaries of the star system, therefore as far as Gerkaw was concerned, the previous order to pursue them was reinstated. His crews, who sought glory and promotion as much as Gerkaw did, followed their Senior Captain’s lead with great enthusiasm.

  Aboard his own light cruiser A Fearless Warrior's Honor is his Greatest Weapon, Gerkaw jumped in to surround the Lentan with three ships; holding two ships in reserve. As soon as his three ships emerged from their jump wormholes, they extended damping fields at maximum power, holding back stealth capability and defensive shields in order to link up the damping fields into an impenetrable barrier around the Ruhar ship. Gerkaw was relying on speed, shock and surprise. He paid for it, or rather his people raid for his aggressiveness.

  The Lentan was ready to be surrounded, expecting a damping field to be extended around it. Rather than activating its own defensive shield, the Lentan channeled all of its power into two maser cannons, pouring bolt after bolt of searing maser energy at a single ship; the Kristang destroyer We are Proud to Follow the Shining Example of Warrior Pilot Aas-den-Val Pentat. The unshielded Pentat staggered, sustaining direct hits to its reactor armor. To protect its ship from a catastrophic reactor breach, the reactor automatically took itself offline and ejected its plasma in a controlled manner, which left the powerful destroyer running on only backup energy supplies. With more maser bolts coming in from the fully-shielded Lentan, the Pentat’s captain ordered his ship to perform an emergency microjump. Knowing that he might later be accused of cowardice by the Senior Captain, the Pentat’s captain judged that being alive to defend himself was a better option, than the prospect of posthumously having a ship named after himself.

  Unfortunately, the damage to the Pentat’s reactor, and the superheated plasma spewing from the reactor’s ejection system, had caused a fluctuation in power flow to the jump drive capacitors. The capacitor control system was desperately attempting to compensate, when a signal from the bridge forced a jump that the drive system was not ready for. The jump of ten lightseconds was only partly successful, with the coils rupturing while the ship was still inside the wormhole. The unlucky Pentat cleared the event horizon of the jump wormhole’s far end, and immediately emergency protocols kicked in automatically. Explosive bolts blew in rapid sequence, bulkheads tore apart, cables were ripped from their connections, and the aft engineering section of the destroyer was deliberately separated in a last-ditch attempt to save the ship. The attempt was successful in that, when the remaining stored power in the jump drive capacitors was released in a massive explosion, the drive unit was no longer attached to the ship. Because of that precaution, only half of the Pentat’s crew died when the shockwave of the explosion hit the hull.

  As an additional insult, the destroyer Lentan jumped away just before the damping field could surround her. Senior Captain Gerkaw howled in anger and frustration. “Idiot!” He shouted at the captain of the crippled Pentat, raging at the man’s lack of ship maintenance that had left the Pentat so vulnerable. Even though it was Senior Captain Gerkaw who had ignored his commanders’ increasingly strident pleas for time to repair their worn-down ships. And even though it had been Gerkaw’s insistence that his three ships leave defensive shields offline in order to put all available power into the damping field. That had been a gamble by Gerkaw that the Pentat’s crew had lost, and Gerkaw was aware that his own ship the light cruiser Fearless could easily have been the target of the Ruhar ship’s maser fire. If the Ruhar had targeted the Fearless instead, Gerkaw could very well be dead right then, and that fear fed his rage. With no hesitation, he recalled his two reserve ships, and ordered immediate pursuit. Because the Ruhar ship had not dropped off a quantum resonator to mask where it had jumped to, Gerkaw’s force was able to pursue with a short jump, within six minutes of the Lentan’s escape.

  When the pursuit force arrived at the coordinates of the Ruhar ship’s jump, they found not the Lentan, but the still-hotly vibrating remnants of an outbound wormhole. The enemy must be desperate, Gerkaw concluded with glee, for the Ruhar ship had again failed to use a quantum resonator, and based on the noisiness of the collapsed jump wormhole, the enemy ship’s drive was in poor condition. The enemy task force must be out of resonators and unable to repair their jump drives. Having disobeyed the spirit if not the letter of the admiral’s orders and having subsequently lost a warship, Senior Captain Gerkaw knew that he absolutely had to kill the enemy ship, if he had any chance to avoid being thrown in the brig or even executed for insubordination and incompetence. The Kristang warrior culture could forgive unsanctioned boldness, it could not tolerate failure. He ordered a coordinated jump with all four of his remaining ships, as soon as the enemy ship’s jump position could be calculated. This time, Gerkaw told himself while smashing his fist down on a console, he had the enemy. With its jump drive in poor condition, the enemy could not possibly jump away soon enough. At last, victory and revenge would be his!

  Demonstrating admirable coordination and more than a little bit of luck, Gerkaw’s ships all arrived at the designated jump point within a second of each other. The fact that one ship had emerged on the wrong side of the target, and that two ships had almost collided because their jumps were so inaccurate bothered Gerkaw not at all. Poor jump accuracy was such a common malady in Kristang jump drives that crews joked their lack of accuracy was a feature, not a flaw. The nagging fact that his ships’ jump navigation computers could barely hit the side of a barn from inside the barn did not bother Gerkaw; with four ships he had been able to surround the enemy. The Ruhar destroyer was right where he had expected it to be, and he-

  “No!” Gerkaw shouted with shock as his ship was rocked by multiple explosions. The shields of the Fearless flickered from the strain, and he heard the rattling of the point-defense guns warding off more incoming missiles. Then he was thrown across the bridge as the light cruiser spun to one side from taking a railgun dart through her bow. It was an ambush! The enemy must have salted the area with free-floating missiles, using the destroyer as a decoy. To his horror, on the main bridge display he watched that enemy destroyer flying at maximum acceleration, directly toward the destroyer Vikran. The two destroyers exchanged heavy fire, with both ships staggering from the close-range impacts, then the symbols on the display merged as the Ruhar ship deliberately collided with the Vikran. With a combined speed of over fifteen thousand kilometers per hour, the hulls of both ships were effectively vaporized even before their reactors and drive capacitors exploded.

  “Take us-” Gerkaw never finished the order, as a second railgun dart from the cruiser Ruh Gastalo had targeted A Fearless Warrior's Honor is his Greatest Weapon. On its way to the Kristang ship at eighteen percent of the speed of light, the railgun dart did not have time to ponder whether the crew of the ship was indeed fearless, or whether honor was a better weapon than a railgun dart. At the moment, that seemed unlikely. The dart scored a direct hit on the reactor, and the light cruiser blossomed into a blinding ball of light.

  “Two down, Commodore,” the Lentan’s former captain reported in a strained voice. She had just watched her crewless former ship ram an enemy, and now she was a captain without a ship at all. Commodore Ferlant had taken the doomed Lentan’s crew aboard his cruiser. With two captains suddenly aboard one ship, Ferlant took the opportunity to have Lentan’s former captain handle the tactical console, allowing Executive Officer Smeth to concentrate on maneuvering the Ruh Gastalo in combat.

  The damping field extended by Ferlant’s ships had effectively trapped the two surviving ships of the Kristang pursuit force; a matching pair of frigates. “Signal to all ships, concentrate fire on that closest frigate,” Ferlant ordered. Of the two small warships, one of them had jumped in considerably off course, and had been turning
to close the distance to the original target. Now that the target Lentan was no more, and the Ruhar had turned the tables on the Kristang, that wayward frigate was headed at maximum acceleration toward the edge of the damping field.

  The other frigate, which had with considerable pride jumped in much closer to the Lentan’s calculated position, now began to regret its pride, for it found itself the sole target of five Ruhar warships. And shortly thereafter, it found itself briefly creating a new sun in the sky as it was wiped from existence.

  “Shall we shift fire to the other frigate, Commodore? We could, oh!” Smeth said with a start. “It’s our old friend the Glory. Sir, we could swat that tiny insect now, and be done with it.”

  “No, let it be,” Ferlant said with a smile. “Drop the damping field.”

  “Because Fate for some unknown reason has a fondness for that particular ship, Commodore?” Smeth asked quietly.

  “No,” Ferlant declared. “This time, Fate has already favored our little friend out there. I want a ship to carry the good news back to Admiral Kekrando. When he hears about the little disaster that his pursuit force stupidly jumped into, his overly developed Kristang sense of bravado will demand that he come after us with the remainder of his ships. His bravado and his sense of self-preservation. Kekrando will know the only way for him to avoid absolute disgrace will be to hunt us down and kill every single one of our ships.”

  “That is something for which you have a plan to avoid,” Smeth raised an eyebrow. “Sir?”

  “Yes I do, Mr. Smeth, don’t worry about that,” Ferlant said with a well-satisfied chuckle. “I plan for us to lead Admiral Kekrando on a merry chase for as long as necessary. While he is vainly pursuing us, he won’t be able to interfere in the events on Gehtanu. And that will get the government there off our backs. I find them considerably more vexing than my counterpart in the Kristang battlegroup.”