Read SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Online
Authors: Craig Alanson
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Military, #Space Fleet, #Space Opera
SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)
The
Flying Dutchman
shuddered again, with
sounds of groaning and the terrifying shriek of metal composites being torn
apart. The displays on the bridge flickered, and the air was filled with alarm
bells and klaxons from almost every system. "Skippy! Get us out of-"
The ship shook violently again. "Direct hit on
Number Four reactor," Skippy announced calmly, "reactor has lost
containment. I am preparing it for ejection. Ejection system is offline. Pilot,
portside thrusters full emergency thrust on my mark."
"Ready," Desai acknowledged in as calm a
voice as she could manage.
"Mark. Go!" Skippy shouted.
Whatever they were doing, it was more than the ship's
already stressed artificial gravity and inertial compensation systems could
handle, normally ship maneuvers were not felt at all by the crew. This time, I
lurched in the command chair and had to hang on, as the ship was flung to the
right. There was a shudder, actually a wave of ripples traveling along the
ship's spine, accompanied by a deep harmonic groaning. No ship should ever make
a sound like that.
"Ah, damn it. Reactor Four is away, it impacted
Reactor Two on the way out, shutting down Two now." Skippy's voice had a
touch of strain to it. "Missiles inbound. Diverting all remaining power to
jump drive capacitors. Hang on, this is going to be close."
The main display indicated the jump drive was at a 38%
charge, Skippy had told us that with the
Dutchman
trapped inside the
Thuranin destroyer squadron's damping field, we needed a 42% charge for even a
short jump, and that still carried a severe risk of rupturing the drive. If
that happened, we would never know it, we'd simply be dead between one
picosecond and another.
The missile symbols on the display, seven of them,
were coming in fast. Two of the symbols disappeared as I watched, destroyed by
our ship's point defense particle beams. The other five missiles continued
toward us, fast, fuzzing our sensors with their stealth fields and weaving as
they bored in. One more missile destroyed. Four still moving fast.
Jump drive at 40%.
Too close.
I turned the knob to release the plastic cover over
the self-destruct button, and turned to look through the glass wall into the
CIC compartment. "Colonel Chang."
He nodded, and I saw him flip back the cover to the
other self-destruct button, the confirmation. "Sir." He looked me
straight in the eye, and saluted.
I returned the salute. "Colonel Chang, we have
been down a long, strange road together. It's been an honor serving with
you." My left thumb hovered over the self-destruct button. The ship was
dying anyway. This was my fault. How the hell had I gotten us into this mess?
I'd better start at the beginning.
My name is Joe Bishop, I’m a sergeant, temporarily
holding the theater rank of colonel, in the United States Army. Neither rank
matters much at the moment, since I’m aboard a stolen alien starship over a
thousand lightyears from Earth. Believe it or not, the United Nations
Expeditionary Force has put me in command of our ship, a Thuranin star carrier
we unwisely named the
Flying
Dutchman.
I have, I think, good
common sense, and, everyone else would agree, a history of getting into
trouble. Big trouble. And a history of getting out of trouble. If you ask me,
I’ve been in the right places at the wrong time. My critics would say that I am
one lucky son of a bitch. My mother is not a bitch, but other than that, they
may have a point. Skippy, our ancient alien talking beer can combination mascot
and artificial super intelligence, says there is no such thing as luck, that
humans believe in luck because our dumb monkey-level linear thinking has no
idea how the universe works.
Whatever.
When the
Flying
Dutchman
went outbound
through the wormhole near Earth, and Skippy shut down the wormhole behind us, I
have to admit a tiny, tiny part of me was disappointed that the ship didn't
immediately explode into a bazillion pieces. One of our cargo holds has a dozen
tactical nukes from the American inventory, we only need one to vaporize the
ship and erase all trace that humans were roaming the galaxy, but somebody had
a coupon, or they were cheaper by the dozen at Nukes 'R Us or something, so we
had eleven extras. No, they aren't available as last-minute birthday gifts,
thanks for asking. When Skippy confirmed the wormhole had been shut down behind
us, deactivated it this time, not merely temporarily disrupted its connection
to the network or whatever, a tiny part of me hoped that UNEF had somehow snuck
behind Skippy's back and set a nuke to explode right then.
You ever been on a cliff or the balcony of a really
tall building, and you look over the edge with butterflies in your stomach, and
you're afraid of falling, but a tiny part of you wants to jump? A tiny part of
you, that you're afraid you won't be able to control, wants to jump? You're
afraid of being near the edge, because you think you might not be able to
control yourself, that you might feel compelled to jump? I read somewhere that
is because part of your brain can't stand the tension, and wants the tension to
just go away, even if the solution kills you. No? Never had that happen to you?
Hey, I'm afraid of heights, that's why I never signed up for Army parachute
training. Flying in a Blackhawk helo with the door open hadn't bothered me
much, as long as I could hear the engines howling above my head, I figured we'd
be all right. Being on my parents' house roof stringing Christmas lights, now
that kind of thing scared the hell out of me. Scared me enough that, every
February I had argued with my mother against taking the lights down. Why go
through the trouble of taking them down, I asked? Sure, most of the year our
neighbors would grumble that the Bishop family were lazy procrastinators, but
by October, maybe November, we'd begin to look like proactive geniuses. Right?
My mother never fell for that argument. The Christmas
lights were always down by Super Bowl weekend.
In this case it wasn't heights I was afraid of, my
fear was of the unknown, of being responsible for all the people aboard the
ship, and, if one of my screw-ups meant our enemies discovered humans had
stolen a Thuranin star carrier, of me being responsible for the destruction of
humanity. If the
Dutchman
had exploded beyond my control, I wouldn't
have to be concerned about my inevitable screw-ups.
UNEF hadn't set a nuke to explode, or they did, and
Skippy of course discovered their plan and stopped it. It would have been
easier for everyone if the
Dutchman
had become a rapidly expanding
sphere of subatomic particles. Either way, we were still alive and I had to
continue the mission as planned. Darn.
If the
Dutchman
had exploded, it would have
killed seventy people. Our new not-so-Merry Band of Pirates was fifty eight
military personnel, and a dozen civilian scientists. This time, we were
semi-officially a Merry Band of Pirates, everyone had on their uniform the
paramecium-with-eyepatch logo that Skippy designed for us. Even the scientists
were given a patch on their official mission jackets, so far I hadn’t seen many
of the scientists wearing those jackets, and I wasn’t going to make an issue of
it. Scientists, civilians, didn’t worry me. What did concern me is that, this
time, the military units assigned to the
Dutchman
were from SpecOps
units; elite special forces troops and hotshot pilots.
By the way, when I left Earth the first time, I'd been
current on military slang, at least, US military slang. On Camp Alpha and later
on Paradise, we'd called the United Nations Expeditionary Force 'UNEF',
pronounced You-Neff. That's what people on Earth called it before we left, but
after that, governments had wanted to emphasize the glorious contributions of
their own armed forces to fighting the horrible Ruhar, so they'd stopped
mentioning the 'UN' part of 'UNEF' and just called us the Expeditionary Force,
or ExFor. The name Exfor sounded cool, and it stuck. A bit later, when people
and their governments began to regret the alliance with the Kristang, the
governments in UNEF tried to emphasize again the United Nations part, as if the
governments that were part of UNEF had no responsibility for what had happened.
By that time, it was too late, 'ExFor' had stuck in the public's mind.
The mission was technically under the command of the
United Nations Expeditionary Force Special Operations Command directorate.
Yeah, that's a mouthful to say. And in reality, I was in command all by myself,
because as soon as the
Dutchman
jumped away from Earth orbit, we were on
our own. If things went well, UNEF SOCOM would take credit. If things went
sideways, they would heap the blame on me. That's the way it works.
When Special Operations Command assigned our crew, I
first called the new Merry Band of Pirates 'SOCOM', then I quickly learned all the
cool kids used the term 'SpecOps', pronounced like Speck Opps. Although when I,
a soldier who had never been in a special operations unit, tried to be a cool
kid by saying SpecOps, I got some weird looks. I was learning.
Let me explain about SpecOps, or special forces,
troops. My knowledge comes from observing, and certainly not from experience.
Whether they are US Navy SEALs, US Army Rangers, British SAS or in any other
military service on Earth, SpecOps soldiers are all bad-asses, and they know
it. Getting into special forces units requires incredible commitment to meet
tough physical standards, and much more importantly, mental toughness.
You know those guys, or girls, in high school or even
before that, who already knew exactly what they wanted to do in life? They were
completely focused, in great physical shape, getting up at 5AM for swimming or
hockey practice or running or lifting weights before school. They got good
grades, studied hard, never slacked off, the adults always liked them. They
were great athletes, intense even in practices. Most importantly, they were
serious, serious about life, even as young teenagers, at a time when most of us
were drifting along or flailing through life, having no idea what we wanted.
Those guys and girls? They are where SpecOps troops come from. They're better
than most of us, certainly better than me. I am a reasonably dedicated soldier,
proud to wear the uniform. No way could I qualify for special forces. The
physical stuff I could train myself up to do, I'm pretty sure. The difference
is, I would never want to train that hard. I don't have the internal
discipline, or the drive, to work that hard, I simply don't have enough desire
to do it. I greatly admire the people who do make that level of commitment, and
I'm glad I don't have to.
Special forces are the best of the best, and the
Dutchman
got the best people from Special Operations commands of the five nations in
UNEF. I couldn't imagine the competition that had gone on for slots aboard the
Dutchman
,
the only thing I was sure of is that I would never have qualified.
Our new merry band of pirates completely intimidated
me. They were tougher than me, smarter than me, more dedicated, more driven,
better soldiers and human beings in almost every way I could think of. And I
was in command of these super humans. Me. I wasn't worthy. They knew it. I knew
it.
Part of being officially in command of an actual UNEF
mission, instead of being the do-it-yourself leader of a pirate ship, was the
mountains of official paperwork, even if paper had been replaced by iPads. I
hated it, I had never been good at dealing with boring details.
"Joe," Skippy said to me while I was in my office the day after we
left the wormhole behind, trying to deal with the tedious administrative details
of being a commander. "I have a question for you. Technically, a
complaint."
"Ayuh. Write it on a piece of paper, and put it
in the suggestion box."
"We have a suggestion box?" He asked,
sounding genuinely surprised.
"Yup. It's in the closest black hole. Just drop
it in, and wait."
"Oh, ha, ha. Very funny, Joey."
"A black hole will get you the same result as a
suggestion box, so-"
"All right, I get the message. Anyway, I was
looking at the crew roster database on your iPad-"
"Oh, man, don't remind me, please, I've got
enough of this damned administrivia to deal with already."
"This is an easy one, Joe. I noticed there's no
entry for me in the crew roster. I'm not even listed as a passenger, and I'm
clearly crucial to the proper operation of the ship. I should be listed as part
of the crew."
"I'm sorry, Skippy, I didn't know you
cared." Damn, our super powerful alien AI was sensitive about the oddest
things. He hated it when he was considered differently than any other sentient
being aboard the ship. "You're right, that's my fault. I'll input your
data right now. Oh, and I see you've already helpfully pulled up the input
screen on my iPad for me. Did you save the report I spent the last twenty
minutes writing?"
"Yeah, like humanity needs to read that mindless
drivel. I'd be doing monkeykind a favor by erasing that crap. Sure, it's, uh,
saved."