Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9)

by Craig Alanson

  In addition to coffee, Simms was also stuffing something into a blender, and pouring milk over it. She pulsed the blender, I kept quiet until the ruckus was over, and she poured a glass for me.

  “Uh, thank you?” I sniffed the pinkish liquid suspiciously. “What is it?”

  “A smoothie. It’s good for you, Sir. Drink it.”

  “I was going to-”

  “You were going to have marshmallow Fluff on toast,” she rolled her eyes. “I know that. A supply ship came over from the Dutchman last night, we have fresh strawberries.”

  That explained why the smoothie was pink. That did not explain the dark green chunks in it. “Mmm,” I said, licking my pink mustache. “Interesting. What’s the other flavor?”

  “Kale. It’s loaded with antioxidants, protein and fiber.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “No, it’s good. It’s just-”

  She looked at me over her glass. “What?”

  Dipping a finger into the smoothie, I pulled out several of the dark flecks and wiped them onto the outside of the glass. “Putting this stuff into a smoothie makes it really tough to get all the little pieces of kale out, you know?”

  “Er!”

  I was on my best behavior during our morning meeting, and I did drink the whole smoothie. Then I went back to the galley later for a Fluff-on-toast. You need to be careful not to give your body too much nutrition, or it gets spoiled.

  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  We jumped Valkyrie into the red dwarf system where the Ruhar were training UNEF Commandos, using our ship’s ability to focus the gamma ray burst so we weren’t detected. Our battlecruiser also had better stealth capability than even the upgraded Flying Dutchman, making the choice of ships for the recon easy. It made me uneasy that, if we were somehow detected, I didn’t have a good reason why our infamous ghost ship would be hanging out in an isolated Ruhar star system. Smythe suggested that we explain our presence as the ship needing to refit, and Ruhar territory was the last place the Maxolhx would look for us. That cover story was Ok, I just felt we could have done better.

  Anyway, once there, we drifted in stealth and listened. First, we listened to detect what objects out there were radiating artificial energy or transmitting signals. There were a lot of them. Next, we listened to make sure our inbound jump had not been noticed, because a sophisticated sensor network, like the Strategic Defense system around a Ruhar planet, might have seen something. Fortunately, the hamsters did not have an SD network in that system, and-

  No, that’s not entirely correct. There were SD platforms orbiting the second planet, but they were just mock units for training. Their sensors were tuned to survey a short-range area around the planet, because that was where the Ruhar were training their Spaceborne Cavalry units. The UNEF Commandos were just piggybacking on a much larger training exercise.

  Satisfied that no one had seen us jump in, we concentrated on the next potential problem, one serious enough that I considered aborting the whole operation.

  Skippy had detected a Jeraptha ship, orbiting the second planet.

  “Shit,” I clenched a fist. “What the hell is that ship doing here? It’s not a star carrier.”

  “No, Joe,” Skippy used his Professor Nerdnik lecture voice. “It is a light cruiser. A warship capable of longer flights than a destroyer, but lightly armed and armored. The Jeraptha typically employ such ships on missions where they are not expected to encounter heavy opposition. I suspect this particular ship is here to observe the wargame exercise.”

  “We might risk making enemies of the Ruhar. We are not pissing off the beetles. That’s it, then, we’re outa here,” I declared.

  “Don’t be so hasty, Joe,” Skippy added. “The wargame exercise concluded two days ago. That cruiser is broadcasting a general alert to warn traffic that it intends to maneuver out to jump distance. More precisely, it was broadcasting such an alert three hours ago, when the message was sent. It is likely that ship has jumped out of the system by now, the gamma rays have not reached us yet.”

  “Ok. Ok, we move on the assumption the beetles aren’t hanging around for a second slice of pie. What data do you have on UNEF Commandos?”

  “Good news and, er,” he caught himself. “News that is even better, for it poses a challenge.”

  Behind me, Smythe groaned.

  “What?” Skippy asked, baffled. “You love challenges!”

  “I am sure we will run into plenty of challenges during the operation,” Smythe explained. “It does no good tempting Fate by looking for challenges we could avoid.”

  “Oh, well, um,” Skippy sputtered. “In that case, you are screwed, Dude. The Commandos participated in the recent wargame, and most of their units have stood down to refit and recuperate. There are only three Dodos carrying humans that are on maneuvers currently. One of them is near the second planet, I suggest we scratch that off our list.”

  “I second that suggestion,” I agreed. “What else?”

  “Two units in the asteroid belt. You will have to choose between them. What information I have is available to you now.”

  Right away, I eliminated one unit from consideration. “Smythe?” I asked, turning around in my command chair to look at him.

  He nodded, having seen the same thing I had. “Quite so. It will not do.”

  “What?” Simms inquired. Her attention had been on the ship’s sensors, keeping us out of trouble.

  “There’s a pregnant woman aboard one of the Dodos,” I commented without thinking, my focus on data about the other Dodo.

  “And?” Simms had turned in her chair and was looking straight at me.

  “She’s, well, you know-” Shit. I was totally unprepared to discuss that subject.

  “She is a dedicated soldier who knows what she’s doing,” Simms insisted. “UNEF-Paradise obviously doesn’t have a problem with her serving on active duty.”

  Miraculously, because my response would have been ‘Uh’ followed by another ‘Uh’, Smythe answered for me. “UNEF-Paradise will have a place for her, when she can no longer serve in a Commando unit. We do not. Neither Valkyrie nor the Flying Dutchman have facilities for young children.”

  “Then, Colonels,” Simms’s eyes darted between me and Smythe, “we should have thought of that, before we began an operation to rescue over a hundred children.”

  “Ooh, crap, Joe,” Skippy groaned. “I hadn’t thought of that. A bunch of rugrats-”

  “They are not rugrats,” Simms insisted.

  “Sorry. Anklebiters, then,” Skippy corrected himself cluelessly. “Wow. Damn. With a hundred children aboard, the Dutchman will become a Super Duper Funtime Shitbus for sure. Hoo-boy. I’m glad that will be Nagatha’s problem and not mine.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I admitted, showing how little thought I had put into the subject. “Valkyrie is the bigger ship, and more well-protected. We might keep the children here.”

  “Dude!” Skippy howled. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Can we get back to the subject, please?” Simms demanded.

  “Listen, XO, it’s simple,” I pleaded, desperate to end the conversation. “There are two Dodos out there. One of them has a complication. I’d rather avoid a complication, Ok?”

  “The other Dodo has a more experienced team,” Smythe added. “Eleven of those eighteen people are French paratroopers who have served together since before Columbus Day. The other seven have been with the team for three months. That is a good start.”

  Simms relented, turning back to her station. “I am all for avoiding complications.”

  Smythe caught my eye and pointed to his tablet. I knew what he meant. The first Dodo, with the pregnant soldier, came with another complication. That Commando team was commanded by a Chinese brigadier general. He outranked me. Even if we assumed promotions granted on Paradise were not legit, the guy had been a colonel when the Expeditionary Force left Earth, which meant h
e had more time in grade than I did. That could be a problem. My response was a shrug. If General Song became an issue, we would deal with it.

  Anyway, hopefully it would not matter. The Commando team aboard the second Dodo was led by a French Army major. There would be no rank issues there. That made my decision easy.

  All the info we had on the Commando team, and the six human pilots aboard the second Dodo, was good. It’s what was not listed in the file that bothered me. “Skippy, where’s the data about the Ruhar observers?”

  “We don’t have it, Joe. The data we have is from transmissions I intercepted out here, and those messages didn’t contain any details about observers. To get more data, we need to move deeper into the system.”

  Going into an operation without knowing all the pieces on the board did not please me. It was also standard operating procedure. “There are typically two observers?”

  “Yes,” Skippy confirmed. “One pilot and one cavalry soldier.”

  And, right there was the problem. We would not only be commandeering the human soldiers, an action for which I had at least a sketchy level of legal authority. We would outright be kidnapping two Ruhar. They would be treated well, they would have basic food made by Valkyrie’s fabricators, and whatever comforts we could provide. They would also be prisoners, restricted to limited areas of the ship. To minimize the risk of them causing trouble, the Ruhar would be aboard the Flying Dutchman, and therefore Chang’s problem. I felt bad about dumping another problem on him, and I knew he would understand. “Smythe?”

  “I say we launch, Sir,” he said with less than a full measure of enthusiasm. The idea of expanding our list of enemies by kidnapping Ruhar citizens made him uncomfortable. It sounded reasonable given the circumstances, he told me. What he worried about was the Law of Unintended Consequences.

  “Ok. Simms, launch the packages. Then we’ll jump back to rendezvous with the Dutchman for the next phase.”

  After the packages were away, there wasn’t much for us to do. I waited until we saw the Jeraptha ship jump away just like Skippy said it would, then I told the bridge crew to get rest, except for a duty officer and a pilot.

  My first stop was my office, then I planned to hit the gym. Skippy still had me locked out from playing video games until I read all the stuff he thought was important, so I was reading fast as I could. In my office, or on the treadmill, or while falling asleep, I had a tablet in front of my nose, reading one document after another. The current file I was reading had only six pages left, I planned to ask Skippy to give me a break after I finished that one.

  Simms came in without knocking, we had dispensed with that because the sliding doors were like fifteen feet wide and always open. It seemed silly for people to stand in a wide-open doorway and ask permission to enter.

  “Simms,” I glanced up, then kept one eye on the tablet, trying to keep track of which line I was reading. When she sat quietly in the chair across from me, I figured she wanted to continue the uncomfortable conversation we had on the bridge. “Hey, uh, XO. Listen, I have nothing against women who are-”

  “I would like to be pregnant, Sir,” she announced as she rested her elbow on my desk.

  “Uh-” My brain locked up. Part of the problem was sheer panic. The other was the ‘WTF’ reaction of not believing what I just heard. From what I learned in high school Health class, becoming pregnant involved a particular process, but maybe I was remembering it wrong. “You are telling me this, because-”

  She snorted. “You would not be involved.”

  “Oh thank God. I mean-”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, her eyes twinkling. She enjoyed screwing with me. “What I mean is, I want to have children someday.”

  “Ok, uh-”

  “I need stability for that.”

  “And a guy too,” I blurted out before my brain could stop me. “Usually. It’s none of my business, Simms, sorry I-”

  “We’ve talked about it. Me and Frank. We’ve discussed it. It’s what he wants also.”

  “That’s great,” I mumbled as a way to stall for time. Why was she telling me these intimate details of her personal life?

  She came to my rescue, answering the question I hadn’t asked. “When this mission is over, when the Backstop wormhole is near Earth and open, I would like to go back to Avalon.”

  “Sure,” I smiled with relief. “To get the colony set up to receive refugees.”

  “That, and to start a family. Frank, he,” she twisted to her left and dug into her right pants pocket. When her hand came out, there was a ring in her palm.

  “Holy sh-” The ring was gold. The diamond was freakin’ huge. “Where did he get- Sorry,” I blushed with embarrassment. “Congratulations.” There was a protocol when hearing about such announcements, I think. I was supposed to ask how he proposed, was it romantic, something like that?

  “The rock?” She held up the diamond to catch the light. “Skippy fabricated it for Frank. A flawless diamond. It’s a bit gaudy,” she looked at the ring with affection, and I stopped myself from saying ‘Ya think’? “Skippy says diamonds really aren’t worth anything out here, but,” she held the ring above the appropriate finger. “It’s the thought that counts.”

  “So, Muller proposed.” I automatically referred to him by his last name, though the guy was a civilian. “Did-”

  “No. I proposed to him. We’re adults,” she explained. “I don’t like playing games. Frank had the ring made to make it official. We’re keeping it quiet, I don’t want to distract anyone from the rescue mission.”

  “Oh. Sure.” My responses were confined to the safest, most bland things I could think of.

  “When I proposed to Frank, I gave him a ring made from one of the Dutchman’s old jump drive coils. That was Skippy’s suggestion. His second suggestion, actually.”

  “What was his first suggestion?”

  “That I keep looking,” she laughed.

  I laughed too. “That sounds like Skippy. Ok, I will need another Executive Officer, then.”

  “It seemed fair to tell you now.”

  “This may all be OBE anyway, you know?” I used the acronym for Overcome By Events. “We need to complete the rescue, then go back to see if Backstop got into position, and if Skippy can wake the damned thing up.”

  “Understood.” She still had that amused look. She knew how to make me uncomfortable, and she enjoyed doing it. Not all the time, just when she thought I was being a doofus.

  “It’s not up to me, you know.”

  Her eyes narrowed and the look of amusement was gone. “What isn’t?”

  “Whether you go back to Avalon. Whether the UN assigns you to the beta site.”

  She blinked, like that thought hadn’t occurred to her. “I, we,” she meant herself and Frank Muller, “already have been assigned there.”

  “Not permanently,” I reminded her gently. “That was supposed to be a simple, and short, survey mission. Now the rules have all changed. The UN hasn’t even agreed that Avalon is the best candidate for a beta site.”

  “It’s the only candidate,” she insisted. I could see on her face that her dream was slipping away.

  “Simms, I’ll do what I can. But, you know that when we get back to Earth, we will not be bringing good news, right? My influence will be limited, if I have any at all. We might-”

  “Oh, Skuh-REW this,” Skippy spat, appearing between us on the desk. “Tammy, I mean, Jennifer, if you want to be on Avalon, then that is what’s going to happen. Joe, you tell those knuckleheads at the UN that if they want the Backstop wormhole to stay open for the evac, Simms gets what she wants.”

  “Hey, I’m all for that,” I gave him a thumbs up. “You tell them.”

  “Me? Why do I have to talk with filthy monkeys?”

  “Because when we get home, UNEF Command may want to skip a court-martial for me, and go straight to the firing squad, you know?”

  “Shit. I forgot about that little detail. Thanks a lo
t, Mister Buzzkill.”

  That was the essence of Skippy. I was worried about getting the death penalty, and what he cared about was that ruined his good mood. With Skippy, you take what you can get. “Simms, I’m very happy for you and,” it felt odd to call her fiancé ‘Frank’. “Mister Muller. We’re a long way from being able to worry about what UNEF thinks. Get some rest, we have a real mission to complete out there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  The next move was for me, Smythe, Kapoor and the STAR team to transfer to the Flying Dutchman. Our cover story was the Thuranin kidnapping an Alien Legion team, so we had to take a Thuranin ship in, rather than Valkyrie. Sure, if everything went as planned, the Dodo’s communications would be jammed so they couldn’t signal what they saw, and no one would ever see through our assault ship’s stealth field. But, knowing the Universe had a soon-to-expire coupon for a free sucker punch against Joe Bishop, I did not count on everything going as planned. If there was a stealth field failure, we needed the rest of that star system to see a Thuranin ship, or at least a vaguely Thuranin-looking ship. So, our mighty Valkyrie was waiting in reserve, while we took our creaky old star carrier in for the op.

  No, that was not quite true. The Dutchman was no longer a star carrier. And it was no longer creaky. The upgrades Skippy had performed, using leftover Lego pieces, made that ship better than when we took it. Better than new. The Dutchman still carried only a limited array of offensive weapons, but it could outrun any ship in the Thuranin fleet. Chang told me he was very well pleased with his new command, and I agreed with him.