Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7)

by Craig Alanson

  “Brilliant. STAR Team-Alpha, we are a Go. Again.”

  Katie Frey lay prone on the gray rock, not moving a muscle. Except for the muscles alongside her nose, she had an itch there and couldn’t scratch it through the helmet faceplate. It was less distracting to wiggle her nose than to let the itch drive her crazy.

  The reason she could not move was that the team’s portable stealth field generator was not extended over her, and her prone form was covered with stealth netting that has been placed around her by another team member. The last members of the team were across the crawler route from her position, she could just barely detect the stealth field that concealed them by a very faint shimmer where the field’s edges touched the ground. The ambush site had been chosen largely because that shelf of hard rock was relatively free of the gray dust that coated the entire moon, the team did not leave deep bootprints behind them. As they walked, each person dragged behind them a sweeper that smoothed out the shallow tracks they made, and applied a charge that made the dust want to cling to the moon’s surface rather than churning in swirls. Virtual testing by Skippy showed the sweepers could not erase tracks more than a few millimeters deep, so the ambush site, and the route from the Falcon to the ambush had been chosen to avoid deep layers of dust.

  After a minute, and with only nine minutes to spare before the crawler would come around a spur of the ridge and into view, the portable stealth field turned off, and Katie’s enhanced synthetic vision could not see any other members of the team. For the critical phase of the ambush, there would be no communications between the team, not even low-powered, line-of-sight laser burst transmissions. Mission success relied on every member of the team knowing and performing their assigned task, and the team as a whole relied on Katie to do her task first and do it correctly.

  The reason Katie had all the pressure on her was the method of stopping the enemy crawler, without the two-person crew realizing there was anything suspicious, had been her idea. The original plan had been for a sniper to shoot a tread, forcing the crawler to a halt. The crew would then get outside to examine and fix the problem, allowing the concealed STAR team to take them out. Skippy’s response to that plan was scathing, pointing out that the crawler had external cameras and the crew could easily tell the treads had been impacted by a rifle round or maser beam or some other type of hostile force. When the crew saw they had been shot at, the last thing they would do is get out of their vehicle, and they would activate the crawler’s automated defenses that were targeted by sensitive motion sensors. The autocannons of the crawler could shred the team as soon as they moved.

  Whatever plan they used, it could not allow any significant external damage to the crawler, or the crawler would not be allowed inside the base’s garage for the team to infiltrate the enemy facility. Smythe and Bishop were at a standstill in planning when Katie on her own initiative studied diagrams of the crawler vehicle. Slung underneath for easy access were spare treads, flexible toothed belts the treads attached to, jacks and pads, basically everything a crew needed to swap out a busted tread quickly. Katie suggested the ship’s fabricators could create a duplicate tread and belt, which could be placed where the crawler would run over it and get tangled. Looking out through the external cameras, the crew would curse the idiot crew of a previous crawler who had lost part of their gear, but they would not be suspicious of enemy activity, so they would go outside to remove the obstruction.

  Katie had been pleased with herself, until Smythe gently pointed out the flaw in her plan; they could not be sure precisely which route the crawler would travel, and anyway the crawler’s forward sensors would detect the obstruction and maneuver around it. Laying several sets of treads and belts, so the crawler could not avoid becoming entangled, would certainly arouse suspicion. Basically, the senior STAR officer and the alien AI had patted her on the head and somewhat condescendingly told her nice try, but her plan would not work.

  So, she had talked with the matronly ship AI the crew called ‘Nagatha’. That AI had been sympathetic and ran through several concepts until Katie had a fool-proof plan. When Colonel Bishop flashed his charming grin and an enthusiastic thumbs up at her, she knew they had a workable plan for that phase of the difficult operation. She also felt, for the first time since she came aboard, that she might, just might, actually belong in the elite Merry Band of Pirates.

  That was why she was alone under stealth netting, lying prone on cold lunar rock, trying to control her breathing and deal with her itchy nose, while she waited to play her critical part in the operation. Be careful what you ask for, Katie, she told herself. You might get more than you can handle. Maybe she could not handle the pressure. What was she doing on an alien moon, thousands of lightyears from home? Maybe she should have stayed-

  No. She recognized her feelings of doubt as nothing more than pre-race jitters, the butterflies she got in her stomach before the starting gun or horn sounded. That thought was confirmed when the nose of the crawler came around a corner, and all her nervous tension melted away to the back of her mind. She had a job to do, and the sudden calm that washed over her gave her confidence that she could handle any last-minute complications.

  Complications like the crawler veering abruptly from the straight course it had followed since rounding the corner. There wasn’t anything Katie could see that would have caused the driver to- Oh, there it was. A pothole filled in with dust that the crawler’s forward sensors must have detected at the last moment, swerving the vehicle to protect the treads. Were there any potholes in the rocky path in front of Katie? She did not remember any, but then she had been walking under the spooky ultra-darkness of a portable stealth field. The ground in front of her had been illuminated only by lights attached to the waist of her suit, and that light had been weirdly bent and distorted. Without her suit computer to interpret the images for her, she would not have recognized her own boots. The light-bending effect was disturbing enough when the field was static, but when it moved along with the two people carrying the device, the result was visual chaos.

  No matter. The crawler was moving along the expected path, and soon would be opposite her position, its cheery bright blue sides exposed and vulnerable.

  She was lying in between two rocks, with only a thin wire poking above the stealth netting to provide a view, which her suit computer fed to her faceplate and the scope of her modified Kristang rifle. The narrow gap between rocks caused her to be wedged in uncomfortably, with comfort given the least consideration. The position was perfect, for it provided a clear view of the exact spot where the crawler would fall into shadow by the jagged peaks above. That transition line, between the intense brightness of sunlight and the cold darkness of shadow, would be the most difficult area for enemy satellites overhead to get clear images of, and fooling enemy sensors was the key to the whole plan.

  Positioning the portable stealth field generator was the trickiest part of the operation. In the event that the crawler moved away from Katie’s position, there was a backup sniper on the other side of the track, with instructions to fire only if the crawler rolled on past an imaginary line that represented the limit of Katie’s effective field of fire. The second sniper provided a backup if the crawler moved on either side of the track by about a quarter kilometer. What the team did not have a backup for was the amazing technology of the portable stealth field. Following Skippy’s instructions, the two men carrying the heavy unit had placed it in the optimal place to envelop the crawler, but only if the crawler did not vary too much along its course toward the gap in the mountain ridge ahead. The synthetic view projected on the inside of Katie’s faceplate had imaginary lines showing where the crawler had to be in relation to the stealth field, or the operation would be called off and the team would let the crawler roll past, unaware of its narrow and lucky escape. The team would then regroup to try again, again.

  Fortunately, the crawler was sticking closely to the route used by previous crawlers, the tracks they had made outlined clearly i
n the harsh sunlight. As it approached, Katie confirmed it was within the green lines of optimal positioning for the stealth field to cover.

  As the crawler drew closer to the target area, Katie did not hear the crackling burst of static that was the designated abort code. She did not think anything dramatic like ‘we are really doing this’ or ‘here we go’ or ‘God please do not let me screw this up’, she did not think anything at all, with her mind calm and entirely focused. The amazing targeting optics of her Kristang suit and rifle not only showed her precisely the tread she selected, they provided a feature where she could designate that tread, and the rifle would automatically follow it. The electric nanomotors built into the rifle moved the muzzle slightly independently of the stock she held, keeping focus on the tread she had selected. It was almost startling when the rifle fired a mere second after she pressed the trigger to authorize the weapon.

  What shot out from the rifle was a round specially fabricated by Skippy’s bots. The round was low velocity so that the device impacted the crawler without a sharp sound that would startle the crew. What the blank round launched was not a weapon but a heavy object that, when folded up, was the size of a tennis ball. As it got within ten meters of the targeted tread, the device unfolded, colliding with the designated tread just as it rolled under the crawler and immediately became entangled, jamming the tread. To protect the entire tread assembly, the crawler automatically ground to a halt.

  That was Katie’s entire part of the operation to capture the crawler, for the modifications to her rifle temporarily rendered it unable to fire anything other than the specialized ammo to disable the alien vehicle. Her part of the operation had been entirely successful.

  “Success!” Skippy shouted into Smythe’s ear loudly enough to make him wince. “This confirms my suspicion that Joe’s supposed brilliant cleverness is nothing special, all you monkeys are capable of dreaming up inventive plans.”

  Smythe smiled despite his intense focus on the operation. “Are you saying that all humans are capable of doing something you can’t do?”

  “What? I, I, ooooooh, you Limey bastard, I hate you so much-”

  “Quiet please. Sitrep.”

  “Fine,” the beer can huffed. “Why do you have to ask me about the situation? I’m feeding the data to your suit, you can watch all the spine-tingling action on your faceplate.”

  “Because, while you are providing a play-by-play report, you are not making an arse of yourself and annoying me.”

  “Oh. Good point. That is fair, I guess. Um, not much is going on yet, the crew just turned off power to the tread motors, and, yup, they followed proper procedure to disconnect power flow so they can work on the treads. Hee hee, they are indeed cursing the previous crew who they suspect of losing their gear and not reporting it. I wonder if the base charges crew for lost gear? That would be a good incentive not to report anything missing. Anyway, they just called the base, or they tried to, because of course I am intercepting all signals. The base duty officer, meaning me, asked them how long of a delay there will be this time, implying those knuckleheads are expected to screw up. I was grumpy about it, too, that should make the crawler crew eager to get the job done fast. Aaaaand, yes, they just stepped into the airlock. I am now engaging the stealth field to cover the crawler. Field strength is good. Wait for it, waaaaait, Ok, we’re good. None of the satellites sounded an alarm when the stealth field engaged and their real view of the crawler was replaced by the view I want them to see, because I am aaaaawe-some,” he sang. “Continuing the play-by-play as requested, the outer airlock door is cycling open- we now pause for a word from our sponsor.” He switched to a phony used-car-salesman voice. “Skippy’s patented Awesomeness Pills can make you awesome, although, let’s face it, making you even ‘meh’ would be a freakin’ miracle, so-”

  “Skippy!”

  “Ok, Ok, damn you are just like Buzzkill Joe, you never let me have any fun. Tweedledum and Tweedledumbass are now stepping down onto the surface, and walking back toward- Oh ho! The quarterbacks are down, a smashing tackle! Double play! Two outs!”

  “I think you are mixing metaphors there.”

  “Ah, whatever. You brits don’t play American football or baseball anyway, so it’s all Greek to you. Both knuckleheads are dead, those were superb shots by your team, you should congratulate them. After, you know, you move your ass because we are running out of time. Full comms are now available.”

  “ST-Alpha, good show,” Smythe announced in a typically understated monotone as he rose to his feet, being careful not to move faster than the sweeper behind him could cope with the voids he was leaving in the fine layer of dust. “Execute clean-up.” In his synthetic vision, he could see all members of the team rising and proceeding toward the crawler, moving deliberately as they had been trained, no one moved with undue speed and there were no wasted motions. He noted that the Canadian sniper paused as she neared the crawler to stoop and pick up the discarded shell that had covered the special munition she had fired. Without being told, she walked backward then forward again over the spot where the shell had fallen and tumbled in the dust, the sweeper dragging behind her smoothing out the dust and erasing all signs of the shell’s fall. It was very, very likely those faint tracks in the dust would never have been detected by satellites, and if another crawler had time to drive from the base to examine the area the operation would have failed by then. But paying close attention to tiny details is a big part of what made special operations troops special, and he was pleased to see a new and inexperienced team member having the presence of mind to take care of small details no one might ever notice.

  The team picked up the dead bodies of the Bosphuraq, surprisingly heavy in the low gravity and awkward because their knees bent the wrong way. Smythe was pleased to see Skippy had been entirely correct about the accuracy of the shots, both aliens had been double-tapped center mass in their chests, where their suits leaked less air that might be detected. Because they had fallen backward, the blood seeping out before the suits sealed the leaks was contained to the front of their suits, with none dripping down to discolor the gray ground. A shot in the back or head would have caused unacceptable leakage of air, blood or other fluids. Smythe knew the accuracy of the shots was not entirely due to the advanced technology of their Kristang weapons, and he planned to acknowledge the skill of the snipers. Later. Recognition would come later, after the op was successfully completed and they were enjoying gin and tonics aboard their pirate ship.

  The clever device that entangled the treads had released itself and fallen into Frey’s hands on a command from Skippy, Smythe briefly joined her to inspect there was no damage to the treads before ordering the team into the crawler.

  With the team were three combots, one of them utilized only to carry the bulky stealth field generator that would be used to encompass the entire moonbase. That combot’s upper section had been removed, leaving only the chassis and with the generator strapped onto it. Regardless of whether the combot’s chassis carried a weapon package or some other burden, they could not fit through the side airlock, so Skippy had ordered the crawler to suck its cabin air back into reservoirs, then swung up the large back door. The entire team, followed by the combots, stomped up the ramp, after which the door closed and sealed. Skippy instructed the air pressure back to normal, then increased it seven percent so it matched the pressure at one kilometer altitude on Earth, for the health and comfort of the STAR team.

  Katie Frey wrinkled her nose when she took off her helmet inside the crawler, and not because it still itched. “Oh God. What is that smell?”

  “You too?” Marine Raider Ed Burke asked, sticking his tongue out like he was gagging.

  “That,” Skippy announced happily, through the microwormhole in Smythe’s pack, “is Eu De Toilette, in this case it should be pronounced ‘toilet’. Otherwise known as the natural musky essence of the Bosphuraq. They are known far and wide across the galaxy as a smelly species, what your noses are object
ing to is the scent glands they use to-”

  “I am fairly certain none of us is going to die from the smell,” Smythe remarked dryly.

  “No, we will just wish we did,” Frey said under her breath.

  “How does the beer can know what we’re smelling in here?” Roark asked. “Can you detect scents through that wormhole?”

  “No, I cannot,” Skippy replied with a haughty sniff. “I made a logical deduction. Referring to me as ‘the beer can’ is not going to win you any points with-”

  “Move now, argue later,” Smythe cut the chatter. While keeping the asshole AI amused was an important part of any mission, it could not be allowed the delay the operation. “Nunnally, Grudzien, you take first shift as drivers, go forward and check out the cockpit. I want us moving in,” he checked the display on his wrist, “two minutes. Skippy, the ruse is still working?”

  “It is working perfect-oh, of course. The base is seeing an image of the two knuckleheads removing the junk stuck in the treads, they are all proud that it is a quick and simple fix and are assuring the base they will be moving again shortly. The base duty officer is telling them to move their asses if it is so simple, it should be done by now. Those knuckleheads would be in big trouble right now if, you know, they weren’t dead. Hee hee, I am such an asshole sometimes.”

  Smythe looked around in dismay at the crawler’s cabin, which was empty except for a streaked coating of gray moondust on every surface. The Bosphuraq crews had not been fastidious about washing the dust off the boots when the returned to the vehicle. Smythe’s team had dust clinging to the boots and calves of their suits, they also had not used the decontamination feature of the airlock, but his team had the very understandable reason of being in rather a hurry. The crawler crew had no such excuse for their sloppiness. “Skippy, will breathing this dust present a problem?”