“How Chotek wants to handle what?” I asked Simms. “Did the Thuranin call us?”
“Not exactly, Sir. I think you may need to come down here.”
“Ok, Major, one moment.” I ordered the pilots to take us back down to base camp on Gingerbread; that would take well over an hour because our orbit was in the wrong position and we had to fly almost all the way around the planet before plunging back into the atmosphere. “We’re on our way, ETA seventy two minutes. I’ll call Chotek but I need to know what is going on first.”
“I will give you the short version, Colonel. Like I said, it’s complicated.”
The story she told me was so unbelievable, I had to ask her to repeat herself at first, then I sat back and listened while shaking my head. The key to the whole messy situation was Thuranin teenagers being just as stupid as teenagers from any species across the galaxy. I don’t mean cyborg, artificially-grown clone Thuranin. I mean the unenhanced, messily-grown natural Thuranin on Gingerbread.
The Thuranin living in a village to the northwest of the lake had sent a message to their elders near the lake, urging contact with the unknown species. The message had blamed those same elders for taking hostile action when the unknown species had not demonstrated any threat. The villages feared shooting down my Dragon would make the unknown species reluctant to cooperate.
Speaking as a member of that unknown species who almost drowned after a Thuranin missile hit my Dragon, I can say those villagers are damned right the incident did not leave me in a cooperative mood.
Anyway, the elders and some of their hardline younger followers did not appreciate the villagers’ lack of team spirit, and sent a delegation to the village to straighten them out. A heavily-armed delegation, with combots.
That was not a problem for us, it was none of our business how those hateful MFers handled their internal politics.
When the villagers heard the nasty reply from their elders and knew they were in big trouble, two teenagers, a male and female, ran away from the village. What they planned to do in the wilderness on a planet where life was incompatible with Thuranin biology, I do not know. Since they were stupid teenagers, they probably didn’t have a plan. They were in love. Gag me. What a couple of morons. They wanted to be together and they didn’t want to be trapped under the oppressive rule of their elders. So, they ran away.
That was still not a problem for us.
While the two runaways, who our team at base camp had of course named ‘Romeo and Juliet’, had not brought many useful items with them such as food, they did bring one of the most dangerous technologies in the galaxy: a radio. As soon as they got a few kilometers from the village, they began calling us, begging for help. They wanted the unknown species to fly in and pick them up.
Still, that was not a problem for us. A pair of alien love-struck teenagers, on a planet thousands of lightyears from Earth, was certainly not an issue we had any responsibility to deal with.
Here is the problem: Hans freakin’ Chotek.
Chotek did not see two young aliens making bad decisions. No, he saw an opportunity. He wanted to fly in and pick them up, so we could, as he said it, ‘open a dialog’.
“Open a freakin’ dialog? Are you kidding me?” I fairly shouted at Simms. “These two idiots are not the Thuranin High Command, they are dumbass kids. What the hell can we gain by taking with them?”
“Now you see why I contacted you, Sir,” Simms said dryly.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry, didn’t mean to yell at you, it’s not your fault. Crap. I need to call Chotek. Major, thank you, you were right to call me. I assume you already expressed your misgivings to our fearless leader?”
“I did ‘express my misgivings’, yes. Strongly enough that he left me here at base camp.”
“Left you? Where is he?”
“In a Dragon, flying to pick up Romeo and Juliet. They dusted off a few minutes ago.”
“Damn it! I’ll call him right now.” Skippy had placed a microwormhole near Gingerbread and one near the Dutchman, and one near himself so we didn’t have a huge timelag communicating with him, but he was super busy searching the junkyard and reassembling himself, we mostly had to handle all comms manually. We had to do everything by ourselves, which I thought was excellent training, and I also thought was annoying when I needed to do something quickly. How to contact Chotek directly, I asked myself as I fumbled with the icons on my zPhone?
“Colonel?” The pilot called out through the open cockpit door, and I had a split second of looking behind me for a senior officer. No matter how much I went through with the Merry Band of Pirates, I still thought of myself as a sergeant. The pilot cleared her throat. “Colonel Bishop?”
“Oh, yeah,” that was embarrassing.
“We’re about to go into communications blackout in just over one minute, Sir,” she reminded me.
Double damn it! I could see what she meant on the display in front of my seat. Because of the irritating fuzz and stealth fields surrounding Gingerbread, the only way to keep a comm link to the surface was with a combination of flying drones, high-altitude balloons and small satellites. We didn’t have enough satellites to cover the entire globe and usually that didn’t matter. But our dropship was close to Gingerbread and dropping lower to enter the atmosphere, so we were about to swing into the shadow of the planet, where Gingerbread would block our laser link to the satellite. My pilot training included giving me a working knowledge of orbital mechanics and that math was unforgiving; we couldn’t cheat. Whatever conversation I had with my civilian boss was going to be short. “Thank you,” I responded to the pilot, then buzzed Chotek.
“Colonel Bishop,” he answered. “I can guess what you are about to say.”
“Uh?” Why was I always prepared to talk with him until he started speaking, and then I always had to throw my prepared speech out the window and wing it? Oh, that’s right, Chotek was a skilled negotiator, trained to throw his opponent off balance. “I’m wondering what you are planning, Sir.”
“I am planning to get a closer look at the situation,” he said smoothly, as if that was all he planned to do. I knew damned well he intended to pick up Romeo and Juliet, and he knew that I knew. “Captain Giraud is with me, so you do not need to be concerned about my security.” Although the French paratroopers had fully recovered from radiation poisoning, Doctor Skippy recommended they remain on Gingerbread rather than flying around in dropships for months, where radiation exposure would be greater than on the surface.
“I am, pleased,” I scrambled for what to say, “that Giraud is there to, advise you. What are you planning to do with the,” Chotek hated nicknames so I couldn’t call then ‘Romeo and Juliet’. “The pair of Thuranin who called us? I am concerned this could be a trap to lure in a dropship.”
That made Chotek pause to think. “A trap?”
Yes! I threw in that comment about a trap at the last second as a Hail Mary pass, not expecting much. “Sir, we do not know their intentions. We know even less about these Thuranin than we do about their kin outside,” I almost used the name ‘Roach Motel’ that Chotek hated. “This star system.”
“Colonel Bishop, the Thuranin down here are not our enemies.”
“They sure felt like enemies when they shot down my dropship, and then tried to kill our ground team.”
“That incident was most likely caused by lack of communications, Colonel.”
“That is exactly my point, Sir. You are flying into the unknown. The Thuranin could start shooting out of fear simply because they don’t know you or your intentions. And they certainly have no reason to trust us. Please, please allow Captain Giraud to handle the contact, if you decide to pick up those two Thuranin. Which I strongly advise against; I don’t see how bringing those two-”
“Colonel, I under- you have- potential-” his voice faded way.
“Sir. Mister Chotek?”
“We’re in communications blackout, Colonel,” the pilot warned me.
“Crap! Damn i
t!”
There was nothing I could do about the comm blackout; if we flew higher to get laser link line of sight to the satellite, that would delay us getting down to the surface where I could actually do something useful. Chotek clearly wasn’t going to listen to me, so I had to trust the good sense and experience of Renee Giraud. As our dropship flew around the planet in an unpowered arc to make contact with the atmosphere, I anxiously watched the timer counting down to the end of the comm blackout. From our position, I couldn’t contact Skippy either, the microwormhole was parked near the comm satellite. Being out of contact with him did not much matter, as he couldn’t do anything useful from his position way out in the junkyard. Most likely all he would have done is insult me, and say we should call those teenagers ‘Beavis and Butthead’ instead of ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
I still missed being able to talk with him, being out of contact reminded me of the bad days when he had gone AWOL on us.
As soon as our comm laser reestablished a link to the satellite, I called Chotek, but Giraud answered. “Colonel Bishop, we are orbiting one-fifty klicks east of the target, most likely we will be returning to base camp.”
“Oh.” Once again, I didn’t know what to say. “What happened?”
“The Thuranin got to Romeo and Juliet before we did. They are dead, Sir.”
“Shit.” While I didn’t want Chotek bringing two stupid alien teenagers aboard a dropship, I also hadn’t wanted them dead either.
“The Thuranin had a head start,” Giraud explained, “they did not contact the village until their soldiers were already close. A combot followed them, and, I don’t need to tell you the rest.”
“How is Chotek taking it?”
Giraud lowered his voice. “He is,” he chose his words carefully, “disappointed. I do not think you are needed down here, Colonel.”
“All right, uh, sure. I’ll let Major Simms know. Thank you, Captain.”
The pilots took yet another change of plan in stride and soon I was pressed back in my seat by acceleration as our dropship broke orbit, headed for a rendezvous with Desai in the junkyard.
Damn it. Now that Romeo and Juliet were no longer a problem, I regretted their deaths. They were stupid teenagers, but I had been a stupid teenager not that long ago. Now, I was a stupid twenty-ager. Stupid teenagers should not have to fear their elders will kill them just for speaking their minds, which was yet another thing Thuranin society needed to answer for.
Someday.
“Joe, remember when you liked to dress up my beer can in stupid little outfits?”
“Yeah,” I smiled wistfully. “Good times.”
“Those were not good times.”
“They were good times for us monkeys. Anyway, we mostly stopped that when you began using an avatar. Why do you ask?”
“Because, if we ever bring this Frankenstein kludge of a ship to Earth, I will need to wear a paper bag over my can. Oof,” he huffed. “I would be embarrassed to be seen anywhere near this piece of crap.”
Looking through the dropship’s cockpit display at the rebuilt Flying Dutchman, I had an ear-to-ear grin. “I kind of like it.”
“You would. Any self-respecting engineers would hide their heads in shame to bring such an abomination to Earth. Doctor Friedlander is constantly offering suggestions to rework temporary fixes I used to get this thing flightworthy again. I think he is afraid his alma mater will revoke his engineering degree when they see this piece of crap appear in the sky above Earth.”
“You are way too sensitive about it, Skippy. You performed a genuine miracle! You should be proud of yourself. Damn, the old Skippy would never stop bragging about an accomplishment like this.”
“The old Skippy had much lower standards, Joe.”
In a way, I missed him boasting about what an awesome job he had done getting the Dutchman to be the Flying Dutchman again. If there ever was a time he deserved to brag about himself, it was now. From the day Skippy killed the worm to the day the Dutchman had flown under her own power had taken ten long months. Ten months and a truly herculean effort by the crews who took turns flying and crewing dropships. All of our dropships had participated in the project, even the little Kristang Dragon-A models had ferried crews, supplies, fuel and spare parts back and forth to the Dutchman and the far-flung junkyard. The big Thuranin Condors had latched onto the hull of the stricken Dutchman, and slowly nudged what was left of our once-proud star carrier into a nearly-circular solar orbit where the Falcon dropships delivered parts recovered from the junkyard. There were a lot of useable parts floating around the junkyard, way more than Skippy had expected. More than I had realistically hoped to find.
Ok, so the new, not-improved UNS Flying Dutchman was not the prettiest ship in the galaxy, nor the most capable. And Skippy was right to be embarrassed by the collection of mismatched spare parts that was held together with duct tape. The cars in the Mad Max movies looked showroom-fresh compared to our starship.
We now only had two reactors; a main unit and a backup. The main reactor was a much higher-capacity unit than any of the Dutchman’s original reactors, so the overall decrease in power was only thirty eight percent, assuming the truly ancient reactor didn’t quit on us when we needed it. Skippy thought he could keep that reactor limping along if we didn’t do anything stupid like attempt to take the ship into combat or jump through a wormhole. Instead of having six of the large reactionless drive modules attached to the rear end of the ship, we now only had three. The lifeboat was gone, stripped of everything useful and discarded. The ship was now no longer technically a star carrier, as the three starship docking platforms we had retained after Skippy rebuilt the ship the first time were gone. We couldn’t afford the additional useless mass, and those platforms contained components Skippy needed to bring the ship back to life.
As for the item that made the Dutchman a starship rather than mere spaceship, we did have a jump drive Skippy considered functional enough. As a bonus, we had plenty of coils left over to use as spares. Unfortunately, we most likely would need the spares as the active coils burned out from the strain of working with a drive system cobbled together from ships with different technologies. Skippy was confident the jump drive could get us back to Earth, and that was good enough for me. To conduct even a test jump, we had to wait until the Dutchman cleared the edge of the damping field that saturated the entire star system.
On the good news side of the ledger, we had more than enough shield generators, and the ones we recovered from the junkyard were more powerful than the original units installed aboard the Dutchman. When the Thuranin designed ships to penetrate the Roach Motel, they had assumed those ships would need protection from unknown forces, so they equipped the ships with almost ludicrously powerful shield generators. With our single main reactor, we couldn’t even use the full power of the shields, giving us lots of reserve capacity. Shields helped with defense, and we had a big advantage on offense also. A couple of the shipwrecks we explored were stuffed with ship-killer missiles, so we took aboard as many as we could carry. Although the missiles were of course obsolete by now, Skippy was able to take them apart and make somewhat modern missiles. We now had the missile capacity of a Thuranin heavy cruiser, which sounded great until you learned we only had seven launch tubes and the reloading process was slow and cumbersome. Whatever. We now had missiles capable of threatening any Thuranin ship we might encounter, and our magazines held enough flightready birds that we could engage in a prolonged shooting contest if we had to.
Hopefully, that would never happen. We still only had two main maser cannons, and no railgun.
But the Dutchman could fly under her own power. She had just completed a test of two hours at maximum thrust, and Skippy declared himself grudgingly satisfied with the results. Next, we planned to bring the ship to swing by Gingerbread and collect the full crew, all of our gear, and supplies including food that had grown on that planet. “Come on, Skippy. Think about it this way: we have the only starship in the gala
xy that is constructed by Elder technology.”
“Yeah, but it is constructed of ancient, obsolete crappy Thuranin technology,” he grumbled. “Joe, please promise me we will fly this thing back to Earth really, like, super gently. Fly it like your driving instructor is watching, and you’ve got an unsteady nuke rolling around on the floor, Ok?”
“Sure will, Skippy.”
Chapter Twenty Six
Months later, I was taking a duty shift on the bridge, sitting mostly uselessly in the command chair while Skippy ran more diagnostic checks on our Franken-ship. To his surprise, the Dutchman had survived the trip to Gingerbread, we got the entire crew loaded aboard with all our gear and supplies, and were now preparing to head toward the edge of the damping field at a gentle one quarter thrust. It occurred to me that other than home, the Roach Motel star system was where I had spent the most time. Even my three stays on Paradise did not cumulatively add up to the time I had been forced to endure in the Roach Motel.
Morale aboard the ship was great, my right hand was stinging from accepting high-fives from so many people. We were going home! Against all the odds, we were going home! Well, we would be going home, after we somehow confirmed the civil war among Kristang was still raging, and therefore the lizards were not interesting in traveling all the way to humanity’s home planet for any reason. And also confirmed the Thuranin hadn’t realized they had an extra surveyor ship sitting around doing nothing, and decided to send it to Earth because they had lost their fight against the Jeraptha and they needed something else to do. And confirmed Bosphuraq or the Maxolhx or the freakin’ Rindhalu or someone else didn’t decide to investigate why the wormhole near Earth shut down, because, you know, the universe loves to mess with Joe Bishop. Oh, and also we needed to stop by a gas giant planet to refuel. Ok, there were a lot of things we needed to do before going home, but the point is, we were going home. Going home wasn’t the reward at the end of our mission, it was our mission.
Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5) Page 46
