SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (11 page)

"True, and it is mildly impressive that a monkey
like you is capable of such thinking," Skippy said grudgingly. "Well,
then, in that case, I will concede that this may turn into a fight, if those
dropships arrive at the Elder base. Until such time, I believe our best course
of action is to wait, to determine what the Kristang are doing."

"Waiting won't limit our options?" I asked
with a frown. "That ship is going behind the moon, and our maser cannons
require line of sight to hit the dropships."

"Waiting will not substantially decrease our
chance of success at rescuing the landing party, Joe, because the odds are very
much not good for us. Our best chance to recover the landing party, I am trying
to tell you, is to wait and hope this is an exercise. There is little downside
to delaying action for up to another twenty, even twenty two minutes. If we are
forced to act, delaying will only decrease our chances of success by zero point
one seven percent. Overall, our chances of retrieving the landing party, in
combat against this Kristang task force, are, ahh, you hate math anyway, so I
won't quote numbers at you. The odds against us suck, Joe. The landing party is
simply too vulnerable down there, and this ship is not capable of providing
enough firepower to shield them."

"We wait?"

"Yes, that is my recommendation."

I slumped slightly in the chair. "Waiting is
something I'm not good at, Skippy."

"Joe, if I listed all the things you are not good
at, we would be here a very long time. I do agree that waiting is something you
particularly suck at. If you were a superhero, you would be No Patience Man.
You'd be the guy who thinks, if the instructions say to bake a cake at 300
degrees for thirty minutes, you can instead bake it at 1800 degrees for five
minutes."

"You can't?" I managed a hint of a smile at
that.

"That would be a solid no, Joe. Remind me to keep
you away from the galley."

We waited. We waited, and we made plans, we hastily threw
together plans to attack the Kristang and recover the landing party. We waited
another five minutes, then ten. At the twelve minute mark, Skippy announced the
four dropships had split up into two groups of two, with a gunship and a troop
transport in each group. They had split up; their apparent courses were taking
them to approach the Elder base from two directions. "It now appears very
likely," Skippy said sadly, "that they intend to land and practice a
full combat assault on the Elder base. This is very unfortunate. I still
believe the Kristang do not know anything about our landing party, the Elder
base is merely a convenient place to practice an assault. As you said, that
hardly matters now."

"It doesn't matter. If we have to fight, I want
to do it when we choose, not wait for them to force our hand. I am not letting
those dropships get close enough to that Elder site to threaten our people down
there. Major Simms, get the ready bird warned up," we had two pilots in a
dropship, prepared to launch on a two-minute notice. "Skippy, show us our
best options again."

"As none of our options are good, not one of them
could be considered 'best', Joe. The option you liked best is- wait, I'm
intercepting a message from the cruiser. Yup, I was right, this is an exercise,
the captain of the cruiser is bragging about how well the exercise is going,
and he is requesting permission for the dropships to engage stealth for the
final approach to the Elder site. The task force commander apparently denied
use of stealth so far, because he didn't trust the dropship pilots not to crash
into each other if they can't see each other. It will take several minutes, of
course, to receive a reply from the task force."

"Let's use that time wisely, then, I don't want
those dropships to be stealthed when we have to target them. We're going with
Option Bravo," I ordered. "Pilot, orient the ship and bring us about,
accelerate to match speed with target. Major Simms, tell the ready bird to open
the bay doors and prepare to launch."

Option Bravo was the least bad of our bad options, in
my inexperienced opinion. We were going to accelerate the
Dutchman
out
of the planet's magnetic field, to match course and speed with the moon, and at
the last minute, turn the ship so it would be sticking straight up and down in
relation to the Elder base. Straight up and down, with the engines pointed
down, so that when we emerged from jump, the
Dutchman
would be falling
in the moon's gravity well rear-end first. Our plan was to launch the ready
bird as soon as we came out of the jump wormhole, and send a signal to Desai.
Hopefully, Desai would get our signal and climb up to rendezvous with the
Dutchman
,
while our pilots tried to balance the massive, awkward ship on its tail.
According to Skippy, our star carrier didn't have enough thrust available to
maintain altitude, or it did have enough thrust, but we couldn't use it in a
gravity well without snapping the ship's long spine. So, the ship would be
falling, tail first, toward the surface of the moon, and Desai would need to
precisely match our speed and acceleration, and fly her dropship into a landing
bay. While she was flying up to us, we would be hitting the four Kristang
dropships with maser cannons, and the ready bird would be flying down to
hopefully recover Chang's landing party. There would not be enough time to
recover the ready bird before the
Dutchman
had to jump away, we could
only fall a certain distance before we had to jump, or crash. When we jumped,
the plan called for us to engage the Kristang cruiser with missiles, then jump
away again. The ready bird would need to recover Chang's landing party, fly
some distance away from the Elder site, engage stealth, and wait. Wait, for
possibly a long time, because even if we got lucky and knocked out that
cruiser, the rest of the Kristang task force and their friends now just outside
the star system, would be buzzing around the moon like angry hornets.

It was not a good plan. It was the only plan we could
think of in the short time available. It would have to do; I was not leaving
the landing party down there. It may sound heartless, but if we couldn't
recover the landing party from the Elder structure they'd taken shelter in, I
would have to order a missile strike on them, to hide the fact that humans were
out here.

"Whatever happens, Joe, this will be a first in
galactic history," Skippy announced. "No one has ever done this with
a star carrier."

"Something to look forward to, then."

"No one has done this, because this is
mind-bogglingly stupid!"

"Hey, Skippy?"

"Yeah?"

"Hold my beer, watch this."

"What? Hold your- damn it, whoever put a redneck
in command of a starship?"

"You did."

"Oh." He thought about that for a moment.
"Damn! I guess I did."

The time for joking around with Skippy was over.
Grimly, I took one last look at the main display, and ordered "Pilot,
initiate jump countdown. Major Simms, don't wait for a signal from me, your
team is weapons free. Take out those dropships quick, they'll go into stealth
mode if we miss with the first shot." There were four enemy dropships
racing low and fast barely above the moon's surface, and the
Flying
Dutchman
had only two rear-facing maser cannons. We had to make every shot count.

"Aye, aye, sir," Simms acknowledged.

I saw the pilot press the button to initiate the
programmed jump, and she counted down, "Jump in ten, nine-"

In a few seconds, I was going to take a new, untested
crew, and a ship never designed to engage in direct combat, into desperate
combat. Everyone aboard the ship could die, and it would be my fault, entirely
my fault. My right hand was shaking so badly, that I put it in my lap and
squeezed it with my left hand, which was not much better. And I needed to pee,
again. Waiting for combat to begin, the anticipation of danger, was almost
worse than combat itself. Once the shooting starts, my mind attains clarity and
focus. Before the shooting starts, my mind raced over every horrible possibility
of things going sideways.

"-four, three-"

"Belay that!" Skippy shouted, and I saw on
the display that he'd cancelled the jump on his own. Also he'd cut power to the
engines, we were no longer accelerating.

"Skippy, what the hell-"

"Battlecruiser just jumped in, near the Elder
site! They are targeting the four dropships with low-power masers. This must be
another part of the exercise. Oh! Two destroyers just jumped in near the
cruiser on the far side of the moon, they are engaged in a mock battle. Joe,
trust me on this, those four dropships have been declared dead by the task
force commander, they have changed course and are climbing for orbit. They are
no longer proceeding toward the Elder site."

"Oh, thank God," I let out a long breath and
slumped in the chair. "Pilot, bring us back into the magnetic field,
gently, please, we don't want to be seen."

"Wow," Skippy grunted.

"What is it?" I asked fearfully. Right then,
I didn't think I could take any more bad news.

"Oh, nothing that affects us directly, Joe. Man,
the mock battle between that cruiser and those two destroyers is not going well
for either side, all three ships are shockingly clumsy. The task force
commander is pissed, he is bitching at them in the clear, not bothering to
encrypt the transmission. I think he wants the rest of the task force to hear,
to embarrass those three ship captains in front of their peers."

"Clumsy, huh? You, uh, think they're clumsy
enough that we could take them in a fight, if we had to?"

"Hahahahahaha!" Skippy laughed. "No
way, dude! Damn, when I say clumsy, I mean clumsy by the standards of a hateful
warrior species like the Kristang. Joe, the
Dutchman
is a big, long,
spindly monstrosity that would handle like a drunk pig even if I were flying
it, and our ship is flown by unskilled monkeys. No offense to your pilots, but
the Thuranin designed this ship to be controlled by cyborg implants. Using the
manuals controls on this backup bridge slows reaction time down by a factor of
like ten. Those three Thuranin ships would fly circles around us. Our weapons
targeting is way too slow for us to have any confidence of hitting a moving
target."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence in us
monkeys, Skippy," I said, putting as much sarcasm into my voice as I could
right then. My hands were still shaking. Although I no longer needed to pee
immediately.

"What? That wasn't intended to be a vote of con-,
oh, I get it, you were being sarcastic. Ha, ha, very funny. Stupid
monkeys," he grumbled.

Beginning at the twenty three hour mark, I relieved
the duty officer, and took back the command chair. The twenty four hour mark
came and went, with no sign of the Kristang going anywhere. They were still
fully engaged in exercises, although they had now gone back to the basics of
ship handling, the task force commander was very unhappy with the lizards under
his command. None of the Kristang ships were anywhere near the moon with our
trapped landing party, and I was tempted to order Desai to try sneaking away.
Skippy strongly advised against it.

Shortly after the twenty five four mark, we took a
slight risk and shot a tight-beam burst message to Chang and Desai, assuring
them we were still there, that we would pick them up as soon as we could.

Twenty five hours, thirty minutes came and went, and the
Kristang were still there.

Twenty six hours. The Kristang were still engaged in
ship handling exercises. Anxious, I pulled up the combat options again and
reviewed them. None of the options had a decent chance of success. I was
staring at the cold, hard fact of abandoning Chang's team, in order to preserve
the ship, and continue the mission.

Finally, Skippy spoke. ''Uh, oh, Joe, bad news. I'm
intercepting a ship to ship transmission, the task force commander is declaring
the exercise over, and ordering the task force to jump out to rendezvous with
the star carrier."

A glance at the display showed that it was twenty six
hours, twelve minutes since the Kristang had jumped in. "I don't get it,
Skippy, why is that bad news?" I asked, it sounded like good news to me.

"The bad news is that only four of the task force
ships will be departing, three will remain here. The commander is not happy
with the performance of two of the ships, the destroyers, he has ordered them
to remain behind with his battlecruiser, for remedial training. The full truth,
which I just learned, is that one of the destroyer captains is a younger
brother of the task force commander. As is typical with Kristang, the two
brothers absolutely hate each other. Why this matters to us is, the commander
intends to keep those destroyers here until he is satisfied with their
performance, even though that will mean they miss the original rendezvous with
the star carrier. The next star carrier to pass by this system will not arrive
for another seven days."

"Seven days?"

"Seven days," he repeated gravely.

"Two destroyers and a battlecruiser?"

"Yes. That battlecruiser is a formidable warship,
for the Kristang. It is a relatively new design, being less than thirty years
old, and contains weapons that could certainly threaten our ship."