SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (22 page)

We all needed to keep busy, to keep our minds off our
dilemma. Our destination was a marginally habitable planet, or more accurately
a planet Skippy thought might be habitable, in that it supposedly had an oxygen
atmosphere and temperatures within a range humans could survive. His
information was sketchy, he got it third hand from the Thuranin, who got it
from the Kristang, who got it from the Ruhar. The planet had been in Ruhar
territory before the recent wormhole shift, no Ruhar lived there, which wasn't
encouraging for us. The planet was now in Kristang territory, and apparently no
lizards wanted to live there either. Also not encouraging.

The reason we had to abandon ship was that Skippy
needed to repair it, rebuild it from the junk pile it had become. We were going
to leave the
Flying
Dutchman
in orbit around a gas giant planet,
with Skippy remaining aboard by himself. He was going to mine the planet's
numerous moons for raw materials, and mine the gas giant's atmosphere for
reactor fuel. While Skippy was rebuilding the ship, it would be torn apart and
unable to support life. Could Skippy essentially build us a new ship, from
nothing much more than moondust and toxic gases? To the crew, he was supremely,
arrogantly confident. To me, in private, not so much. "I won't know until
I get under the hood," he told me, "could be expensive. You got
insurance on this thing, right? Might want to think about a rental car."

When a car mechanic talked to me like that, he
probably needed to make a payment on his boat. "Be serious for a moment,
Skippy. Can you fix the ship?"

"That's not a yes or no question, Joe. Let's see
if I can dumb this down enough for you: I don't have enough data now. The
question is whether my repair effort will consume resources faster than I can
create new ones, and I won't know that until I scan what raw materials are
available. If I don't find critical elements quickly, or it takes too much
energy to process the raw materials, then I'm on a downward spiral. Joe, I
simply do not know. The only data I have on this system is a vague report the
Kristang got from a Ruhar computer, when they captured Paradise. The Ruhar only
cared whether the system held a habitable planet, data on the other planets is
very thin. I'm guessing. We don't have another survivable option in
range."

"Oh," I said, "uh, about that rental
car?"

The
Flying
Dutchman
limped into orbit
around the gas giant, an orbit that was barely adequate for Skippy's needs, the
bottom of the orbit dipped too close to the cloud tops, while the other end of
the orbit swung inconveniently far away. With the ship completely drained of
all but emergency power, there was no energy to spare for altering the
Dutchman's
orbit. Skippy said he could live with it.

The first thing Skippy did was listen for any sign of
other ships in the star system, and he didn't find anything. If there was a
ship, it was silent and stealthed, and we couldn't do anything about it. Any
ship that had been in the system long-term, even stealthed, would have left a
trail of exhaust and other gases, Skippy didn't see anything like that, and
there didn't seem to be any point for a ship to be stealthed, so far inside
Thuranin-Kristang territory.

Next, he checked out the second planet from the star,
the place we humans would be living while Skippy pimped our ride, by himself.
At that moment, the second planet was on the other side of the star system,
only a couple weeks from swinging completely behind the star.

"Sir?" Adams asked while we were all still
reading through Skippy's data, "what do we call the planet?"

"Which one," I asked. "The one we'll be
living on, or this gas giant? Oh, duh, the one we'll be living on, of
course." Nobody cared about Skippy's gas station, which was all the giant
planet meant to us, a source of helium 3. According to Skippy's preliminary
data, the second planet in the system, the only one that could support human
life, was only marginally habitable. And that was the 'good' news. Its orbit
was elliptical rather than round, so each year it swung far away from the star,
then much closer. That planet's funky orbit took it close to the outer edge,
then inside the middle of the 'Goldilocks Zone', where it was not too hot and
not too cold for life. The planet was frozen most of its year, with only part
of the surface along the equator thawing as it swung closer to the star.
Another piece of good news is the planet was approaching the summer part of its
orbit, it should become marginally warmer while we lived there. Oxygen levels
in the habitable area were low, equivalent to ten thousand feet elevation on
Earth, while gravity was fourteen percent stronger than Earth normal. And,
because we were on a stolen Thuranin ship, the artificial gravity aboard the
Dutchman
was normally set at 83% of Earth normal. At my request, Skippy had been able to
goose up the gravity to 87% of Earth normal, still, setting down on the planet
would be a 31% increase over the gravity we’d gotten used to. And since the
battle, gravity aboard the ship had been much lower. The sudden increase in
weight was going to be tough. Life there, when not covered under snow and ice,
consisted of simple grasses, moss and lichen, the type of plants you would find
in the tundra of Canada or Siberia. Skippy detected substantially more life in
the oceans than on the land, still, most of the oceans were covered by ice just
like the land. The place was chilly, heavy and hard to breathe. Definitely not
Paradise. "It's cold."

"We should call it Hoth." Williams
suggested.

"Hoth?" I asked. "Why's that?"

"Hoth. You know, the ice planet where the rebels
had their base in 'The Empire Strikes Back'. Star Wars."

"Oh, yeah." I remembered now. "No,
we're not calling it Hoth, sounds too much like 'hot'. This planet is a crappy
place. Nobody
wants
to be there, we're only going there because we have
to, and we're leaving as soon as we can."

Seager snorted from the pilot seat. "Sounds like
Newark."

"Newark?" I asked.

"You ever fly through Newark?" Seager
shrugged. "Lots of people go through Newark, but no one
wants
to be
there."

Adams and I shared an amused look. "I like
it." Adams said.

Wracking my brain, I tried to remember whether any of
our merry band of pirates was from Newark. Or New Jersey in general. "What
the hell, why not? Newark it is."

"Uh, oh. Damn." Skippy said. "Joe, we
have a major complication. There is a group of Kristang on the planet."

"What?" My heart sank. The
Dutchman
was dead; we couldn't live on the ship while it was being repaired. We couldn't
live on a planet occupied by Kristang either. There was no other option. We
came all this way, for nothing? "What the hell are they doing there?"

"Wait, wait, I'm still processing the data, this
may not be a total disaster. It is a small group; they do not have a ship with
them. The data I have comes from the two small satellites they have in orbit. I
think, hmm, it appears they are a small group, around thirty, that were landed
there to search for remains of an Elder ship crash. Hmm, that certainly sounds
familiar, huh? They have one base and only two, maybe three aircraft, they stay
close to the main crash site. They're not warrior, they're scavengers. Joe, I
think you can land on another part of the planet, and remain concealed. Their
satellites, I can hack into and filter data the satellites transmit, so the
Kristang will not know you are there."

"Concealing the presence of seventy humans is
going to be one hell of a magic trick, Skippy."

"Hey, they don't call me Skippy the Magnificent
for nothing."

"Nobody calls you Skippy the Magnificent."

He sniffed. "Well, they should. We will need a
closer look at these Kristang, that can be part of the
Flower's
recon
mission. I am now scanning this planet's moons to determine whether the proper
raw materials to repair the ship are available in sufficient quantity."

"Great, send what you have to our science team,
I'm going to talk to them." They'd want to show their findings to me
anyway. "Sergeant Adams, you have the, uh," since there was nothing
to conn aboard a dead ship, "the chair."

On my way to the ship's science lab, which was only an
empty cargo bay that held tables covered with computers and all sorts of
scientific instruments, I stopped to talk with Major Simms, she was organizing
the effort to identify and pack up everything we needed to survive for months
on the ice planet, I needed to remember to call it 'Newark'. She was beyond
busy, helping her sort through a mountain of gear were the British SAS team and
the Chinese 'Night Tiger' special forces. The Brits and Chinese worked well
together, their commanders got along well, so at Lt Colonel Chang's suggestion,
I assigned them to officially be a team. "Major Simms, how is it
going?"

"Busy, sir," she said in a tone that me
dropping by to ask stupid questions was anything but helpful. She tapped her
iPad, everyone was studying their iPads intently. "We just received the
preliminary data on the planet, we're really going to call it 'Newark'?"
She didn't wait for an answer. "The gravity and low oxygen levels we can
simply deal with," the Chinese and British team leaders nodded stoically,
"the cold we'll have to plan for. Daytime high temperatures can be briefly
pleasant in the peak of summer, almost 18 degrees." For a moment I was
startled, until I realized she was talking about temperatures in Celsius, and I
had to mentally convert to Fahrenheit, that was, uh, around 65 degrees.
Pleasant. "That isn't the norm," she warned, "during winter, this
place has snow even at the equator."

"You heard about the Kristang there?" I
asked.

“Just did,” she nodded, and the special forces looked
grim. "Until you tell me otherwise, sir, I'm preparing to evacuate us to
Newark."

"Carry on." I didn't know what else to say
at the moment, because I didn't know what to do about the Kristang either. A
small group on the surface, without a space-capable ship, would be an easy
target for even the
Flower's
meager weapons load. I needed to balance
the convenience of eliminating a minor threat, with the greater threat of a
Kristang ship arriving to pick up the scavengers, and finding them all dead
from orbital strikes. Such a ship would scan the surface intently, inevitably
find us, and might even find the
Dutchman
. I needed to think long and
hard about our options. My options. It would be my decision; I was the
commander.

Crap. I realized with a shock that, somehow, I had
become that upper-echelon asshole who made dumbass decisions and made people's
life miserable. When I was a private, then a specialist and then a sergeant, I
had hated those dumbasses. And now, I was one.

The entire science team, including the three walking
wounded, were gathered in their lab, talking excitedly. "Colonel J-
Bishop!" Dr. Venkman called me over, almost referring to me by the
nickname Skippy used. "Mr. Skippy just reported that this planet, and its
moons, are adequate for repairing the ship. He asked me to tell you that he has
found sufficient quantities of raw materials, including the critical elements
vanadium, rhenium and bismuth."

"Great, uh," I was super self-conscious of
my ignorance in a roomful of certified geniuses, "what are those?"

"Vanadium and rhenium are transition
metals," she could tell by the blank look on my face that I had absolutely
no idea what she was talking about. "They are valuable metals; we do not
yet understand why they are needed in large quantities to repair the ship. As
to bismuth," she made an exaggerated shrug.

"Isn't that," I guessed, "used in pepto
bismol? Like when you have an upset stomach?"

"Bismuth subsalicylate, yes." She shook her
head. "We do not know why it would be useful here, on Earth it is often
used as a less toxic substitute for lead. Bismuth is a post-transition metal
that is the most diamagnetic element," she paused, sparing me further
embarrassment. "It is apparently good news, anyway."

"That is good news, yeah," I agreed. Skippy
could fix the ship with the materials at hand, that was one less thing to worry
about. We still had that other major problem. "You may not have heard yet,
there is a group of Kristang on the planet, we're uh, we're calling the planet
Newark."

"We just heard about the Kristang," she
said, glancing at her iPad. "What are we going to do about them,
Colonel?" She couldn't keep the anxiety out of her voice.

I could sympathize with her, the science team knew
they were completely reliant on the military to deal with the Kristang, all
they could do was analyze the scientific crumbs Skippy threw their way, and
hope the
Dutchman's
crew kept them safe. "We are considering
options, Dr. Venkman, Skippy is still analyzing the data. We'll be sending the
Flower
out to recon the planet, and assess the threat the Kristang pose to us." Unspoken
was that one of our options was self-destructing the ship. I didn’t like that
one.

Back on the bridge, I was looking at the sensor data
on my iPad. Those Kristang could be a major, show-stopping problem. And, it
occurred to me right then, we might have another huge problem. "Skippy,
during the battle, our stealth field was down?" Over in the CIC, I could
see people nodding ‘yes’ slowly in answer to my question.