SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (31 page)

“I am the executive officer, I wouldn’t be much use if
I didn’t keep you out of trouble, sir.”

Before we could attack the scavenger base and take the
AI and comm node, we needed a plan. The SpecOps leaders began looking at maps
and gathering data as soon as I dismissed people from the meeting. What I did
was call Skippy. Before we made elaborate plans, I wanted to try something very
simple and easy. "Hey, Skippy, I've got a question for you."

"What?"

"You said even a nuke wouldn't damage you,
right?"

"True."

"Great-"

"True, both that I said it, and that a nuke can't
harm me. To be clear. Since I'm talking to a monkey."

"Uh-huh. Same with this other AI?"

"Possibly. I don't know for certain, it depends
on the strength of its connection to the local spacetime. If that connection is
weak, an explosion could damage it."

"Crap."

"Why did you ask?"

"Because," I said, mentally crossing one
idea off my list, "I was hoping you could hit the Kristang base with a
couple missiles, then all we would need to do is sort through the debris to
find this beer can, I mean, AI." The Thuranin missiles aboard the
Dutchman
weren't tipped with nuclear warheads, they used some fancy high-tech molecular
compression device that had a high explosive yield without radiation.

"Ah ha. Unfortunately, there are four problems
with your idea. First, even one of our missiles might damage the AI, and we
can't risk that in any way. Second, I would be launching the missiles at very
long range, which would make it almost impossible to time their impact when all
the Kristang are at their base. Third, a missile will certainly damage the comm
node, which is almost as important as the AI. Elder communications nodes are
rather fragile devices, for reasons I had best not explain to monkeys. And
fourth, perhaps most important, we currently don't have any missiles aboard the
Flying
Dutchman
."

"What?" I asked, surprised. "We had
eight-"

"Dumdum, you forget I used one to carry the
microwormhole to Newark."

"Fine, seven. We had seven missiles!"

"You are entirely, one hundred percent accurate.
We
had
seven missiles. To repair the
Dutchman
, I had to disassemble
them for raw materials and fuel."

"Well, that's just freakin' great,” I fumed. “When
were you going to mention that? What the hell is the point of me being a
commander if I didn't know what is going on with my own ship?”

"I'm building a starship from moon dust here, you
want every detail? We also no longer have a galley or a gym, those parts of the
ship are currently being used as a crude particle accelerator, to transmute
rare elements I need."

"A warship, that now does not have any missiles,
is kind of an important fact I need to know, Skippy. Although we're going to
need a galley eventually."

"Damn, Joe, what is so important about a freakin'
galley anyway?"

"Skippy, we have a crew of people who, whether
they think about it consciously or not, in the back of their minds they know
we're never going home. You said it, after you contact the Collective, you'll
be gone, and it's very unlikely we can fly the ship all the way back to Earth
by ourselves. Food, good food, prepared by people we know, served hot, in a
place we can gather and enjoy it together, that's important. That is vital to
morale, Skippy. We need it. It is one of the few comforts we have out here, no
matter how bad the situation is, if we can look forward to eating something
good, that gives us hope. It's a meatsack thing, you understand it? A galley is
important, we need it."

"Also," Skippy chuckled, "your galley
does provide me with endless opportunities for amusement. Ok, by the time you
get back aboard, we will have a galley, at least part of a gym, and three,
maybe four missiles. As the reactors come back online, and I process raw
materials into useable substances, I will be able to divert resources to
habitation needs and weapons. My projection is that we will have enough
materials and energy, to assemble up to eleven missiles total. Not all these
new missiles will have fully capability, we simply don't have the resources for
that type of manufacturing."

"Skippy, I do appreciate the enormous amount of
work you're doing." At my parents' house, weekend projects were carefully
planned, because a round trip to a decent hardware store or lumber yard, took
over two and a half hours. Skippy's hardware store was whatever tools he could
make by himself.

"Remember that when you get back here, and parts
of the ship are still off-limits to be decontaminated from high-energy
radiation."

"I'm sure we will simply love what you've done
with the place."

"It will truly be magical, I'm going with an arts
and crafts style theme, with a blending of elements from Disney and French
bordello. Blowing up the scavenger base with a missile won't work, what is your
backup plan?"

"That was the backup plan, Skippy. The original
plan is we raid the scavengers' base. I'm working on that."

The reason we were still working on plans for the raid
was, we didn't have a workable plan. The best plan would be for our special
forces to attack the scavengers' base at night, wearing powered armor. Speed,
power, surprise, that plan had all the advantages. We would need to sneak up to
their base, take cover, and wait until their aircraft was safely down and
secured. Thanks to Skippy, we could track their aircraft, and we had a complete
layout of their base. Thanks to the fact that the scavenger leaders didn't
trust their forced labor, and therefore had the base covered with surveillance,
Skippy tapped into their systems and could see almost everything inside their
base. There was a very basic problem with that plan; our armored suits didn't
store enough power to walk all the way to the scavenger base. The stupid
Kristang hadn't built their suits with removable powercells, so we couldn't
bring along enough energy to have a person in a suit carry an empty suit and
leapfrog to get there. In regular use, powered suits were supposed to be supported
by portable recharging units, and we didn't have even a single one of those
with us. However we got there, we wouldn't have armored suits for the assault.
As good as our special forces were, they wouldn't be so special matched up against
Kristang. We would be facing over thirty larger, stronger, faster, genetically
perfected aliens, and four, possibly six of them would have armored suits. We
needed a way to even the odds before we attacked. So far, we didn't have a good
plan to do that. The special forces worked feverishly to develop an attack
plan, and so far, none of our ideas minimized the risk sufficiently for me to
have confidence that we could succeed.

That night, I woke up in the middle of the night with
an idea. My unconscious mind is apparently smarter than I am when I'm awake, I
don't know what that says about me. My plan, and it was pretty freakin'
brilliant in my humble opinion, would accomplish two things; whittling down the
number of Kristang we were facing, and removing the Kristang's advantage of air
power. If the plan worked, that is. Knowing I wouldn't get back to sleep, I got
out of my cot and walked quietly across the cavern to get coffee, tiptoeing
carefully around people sleeping on cots and sleeping pads. Then I walked
outside, where it was chilly and damp but thankfully not raining, and I called
Skippy to discuss my idea with him. Surprisingly, he shut up long enough for me
to explain my idea.

"Hmmm," Skippy said, "
this
is
your plan? Perhaps I had better get out the dictionary and explain the
definition of the word 'plan' to you."

"I know what a plan is, Skippy. Other than the
fact that this plan was dreamed up by a monkey, do you see any major
problems?"

"I have to admit that this plan is, possibly, not
the most incredibly awful stupid thing I’ve ever heard. Possibly. It is clearly
in the top five of all-time stupid ideas in this galaxy, of course, from there
it's a matter of judgment."

"Damn, thanks for the vote of confidence, Skippy.
Seriously, do you see any problems? A lot of the plan relies on you."

"It relies entirely on me, you moron! And here I
am on the other side of the freakin' star system, building a starship out of
moon dust. The biggest problem, and if you had more than two brain cells, you'd
know this, is that your plan has multiple potential points of failure. Unless
all parts of the plan work correctly, the entire plan collapses."

"Ok, Ok, I hear you. You got any better
ideas?"

"No, I'm good. Let's try this one."

"What!" I almost shouted. "You bust my
balls about me making a stupid plan, and you're Ok with it?"

"Yeah, sure, it's good enough. Come on, Joe,
you're monkeys. I figure, what are the odds that you'll think up a better
plan?"

We put my possibly not incredibly awful stupid plan
into action two days later. Two days after that, the Kristang took the bait.

The bait was, supposedly, an Elder energy tap. Through
their satellites, Skippy showed the scavengers a tantalizing view of an energy
tap lying on the floor of a narrow canyon, our cover story was that the
artifact had been exposed by a convenient landslide. The landslide was real,
the energy tap we faked up with spare parts and discarded items, it only needed
to look convincing from the top of the canyon or higher.

If the scavengers were marginally competent, they
would have noticed the unburied energy tap within hours of the landslide. They
were completely incompetent, they didn't notice the prized energy tap lying
there on the ground, in the intermittent sunshine. Skippy got so frustrated, he
wanted to call every one of their zPhones and ask if there was any way they
could be more stupid. Thankfully, he restrained himself, and the scavengers
finally noticed after Skippy practically shoved it in their faces, by
highlighting it in their daily sensor summary.

We followed their aircraft, all the way from it being
flight prepped at the scavengers' base, to watching through our satellite as
two pilots and eight other Kristang loaded aboard and it took off. The aircraft
was very much like the Ruhar 'Buzzard' transport I knew from Camp Alpha and
Paradise, only this one was a little bigger and a lot uglier. And beat up, even
from high orbit the satellite cameras showed us the patched, scratched and
dented skin of the aircraft. Skippy said the maintenance records indicated the
Kristang did the absolute minimum required to keep it in the air, one of the
engines was more than a thousand hours late for an overhaul, and the pilots
complained that engine always ran alarmingly hot. The other engine ran only
slightly too warm and produced plenty of power, except that it vibrated so much
it practically shook loose from its mounting. When the scavengers left Newark,
they wouldn't be taking the aircraft with them, I could see why they didn't
want to put extra resources into keeping it airworthy. That was easy for me to
say, since I wasn't riding in that rattling deathtrap. Maybe it would fall out
of the sky, without us having to do anything.

After it took off, Skippy followed its flight by
satellite, we were able to watch it every second. The Kristang were being
cautious with their beat up aircraft, they could have come to get the fake
Elder power tap the day before, but the weather had been bad, with low clouds
and rain. The day the aircraft left the base, the weather was patchy clouds and
cold, with only light winds. Perfect for landing a poorly-maintained aircraft
in an unfamiliar area.

"What do we call it?" Smythe asked, while we
watched the aircraft cruising along high above the clouds, it was headed
straight for us.

"The aircraft?" Adams inquired. "On Paradise,
the Ruhar had a similar vertical lift transport that we called a Buzzard. This
is the lizard version, we can call it a Luzzard for now. Or something like a
crow, maybe."

"Luzzard is good enough for now," I said, I
didn't want us to get distracted by a discussion that wasn't relevant to the
operation. "Skippy, what are they saying?"

"The pilots haven't communicated with their base
since the aircraft reached cruising altitude. I can't hear them talking inside
the aircraft. Hey, I can relay their transmissions to you, and translate
it," Skippy offered.

"That would be great," it would be useful to
hear what the pilots were telling their base, in real time. "Relay it to
the Zinger teams also."

"Affirmative."

We expected the Luzzard to overfly the bait, our fake
Elder power tap, it made sense they would want to thoroughly check out the
area. What we did not expect was for the Luzzard to fly over the area, at high
altitude, several times, and then fly in a wide circle three times. It was a
damned good thing it had rained a lot recently, the rain covered up the fact
that the area near the caverns had been well trampled by humans. We had
gathered grasses and shrubs from other areas and scattered them over places
where we'd walked often enough to create a path through the mud, the rain
couldn't hide those tracks by itself. Except for the Zinger teams and spotters
like myself, everyone else was waiting deep in the caverns, with all power shut
off, and no artificial heat sources. We were as prepared as we could be, given
the circumstances.

Desai, who was with me, told me the pilot likely
circling the area to look for a low-risk place to land. The Luzzard was flying
slowly, cruising around, and it was a tempting target, although it was within
Zinger range, it was not comfortably within Zinger range. If the pilot detected
a Zinger immediately, and the missile for any reason missed on its first
intercept attempt, the Luzzard could have flown out of range, and that would be
a disaster for us. We stuck to the plan, and waited for the Luzzard to descend.
The Luzzard teams remained under cover, maintaining discipline, waiting for
Smythe's signal.

Descend it did. Through Skippy, we heard the pilot
call back to his base, announcing that he was making one more pass over the
bait, at low altitude, and that he intended to land on top of a canyon ridge,
rather than risk landing at the bottom of a canyon and not being able to fly
back out in the aircraft he didn't completely trust. There was apparently some
protest about that idea from the other Kristang aboard the Luzzard, it meant
they would need to climb down the canyon, then all the way back up, lugging the
precious power tap with them.

The Luzzard approached from the south, with the sun
behind it and not interfering with the pilot's vision. It descended rapidly at
first, then went into a shallow dive. The pilot was going to fly over the
canyon where the bait was located, and land atop the canyon wall to the north.
I gave the 'Go' signal to Smythe, and he took it from there.

An Indian paratroop team got lucky, or unlucky, they
were in the perfect position as the Luzzard approached. Just as the Luzzard
cleared the south canyon wall, the paratroopers rippled off a pair of missiles,
and they were on the unfortunate Luzzard in the blink of an eye. Both Zingers
impacted the Luzzard's starboard engine nacelle, drawn in by the glaring heat
signature of the straining engine. Those Zingers were smart, they knew that
while the engines were vulnerable, and easier to target in any aircraft
surrounded by a stealth field, the most vital part of the aircraft was its
power center, where energy for the engines was generated and stored. That is
where the Zingers would normally have targeted themselves, which would have
been no good for our purpose; we needed the Kristang to see a Luzzard that fell
out of the sky because an engine exploded. For them to fly over the crash site,
and see that missiles had ripped holes in the body of the aircraft, would have
screwed up all our plans. That is why the SpecOps Zinger teams manually
targeted the starboard engines, and locked the Zingers' seekers there before
launch.

Without a stealth field, without the pilots taking any
precautions against an enemy they didn't even know was on the planet, and with
the pilots flying low and slow over the canyon, searching for the bait we'd
planted, the Luzzard was a sitting duck. The first missile destroyed the
starboard engine, the second missile impacting a split-second later obliterated
what was left of the engine, plus most of the sponson it was attached to.
Missile warhead debris and engine turbine blades splattered the fuselage,
ripping it apart like tissue paper. The Luzzard staggered in the air, spinning
rapidly to the right, its nose in the air, then it flipped over on its back and
fell straight down. The tail clipped the lip of the north canyon cliff,
shearing part of the tail off, and sending the Luzzard tumbling end over end,
bouncing off the canyon wall on its way down to a violent crash on the canyon
floor, where it rolled over several times. What was left, which was
surprisingly intact, came to rest with the back half partly submerged in a
stream.

"Alpha teams, hold position," I ordered.
Captain Xho, I knew, was itching to get into real action with his Alpha team in
powered armor suits, and I couldn't blame him one bit. The Kristang we'd seen
boarding the Luzzard had been wearing typical cold weather gear, no armor and
no weapons that we could see. It was possible one or two armor suits were
inside the Luzzard, and the Kristang had donned them in flight, that seemed
unlikely. From the intel Skippy had gathered, access to the armor was
restricted to the high-ranking Kristang, it was intended for them to keep their
forced labor under control. Considering that, I couldn't see their leaders
allowing the laborers in the Luzzard having access to any type of weapon.

I also couldn't see how anyone, even
genetically-perfected super warriors like Kristang, could have survived the
crash. The super-tough composites of the hull structure had held together, in
conditions where a human-built craft would have been flaming chunks. For all
their enhancements, the Kristang were biological, with the limitations of
biology. The extreme g-loads of the crash must have snapped necks, crushed rib
cages, torn limbs off. There was no way, I was sure, any of them could have
survived that.

I think I was sure. "Alpha team, hold
position," I ordered, "repeat, hold position."

"Acknowledged," Xho replied tersely.

"Skippy, you feeding our cover story in the
video?"

"Affirmative," Skippy said with
uncharacteristic brevity.

Our friendly beer can, controlling data feeds through
the Kristang’s' two satellites, was the key to our entire plan to knock out the
scavengers' advantage of air power, and whittle down their numbers. What we
saw, on the ground, was a Luzzard flying slowly over our fake Elder treasure,
and a pair of Zingers racing up from the ground to blow up the Luzzard's
starboard engine. We heard, through our zPhones, the pilots shouting a warning
about missiles, then the Luzzard fell out of the sky and crashed to the bottom
of the canyon.

If the Kristang at their scavenger base had seen the
same thing, it would have been an absolute disaster for the Merry Band of
Pirates. The Kristang would have been alerted to the presence of a hostile
force on Newark, they likely would have overflown us to recon the area at high
altitude with their dropship, keeping above Zinger missile range. They could have
used the dropship to follow us on our march to their base, dropping off
armor-suited warriors to harass us, and they would have prepared defenses
around their base so that it would be extremely difficult if not impossible for
us to successfully attack. Their leaders could, likely would, even have taken
the dropship, with their precious Elder artifacts up into orbit, or to another
part of the planet that we couldn't get to by walking. And, when their
retrieval ship arrived, the scavengers certainly would have told the ship about
an unknown hostile group on Newark, and that ship would have pounded our
positions to dust from orbit.

Bottom line: we needed to shoot down the Luzzard, and
make the Kristang think it was an accident, completely conceal out presence on
the planet.

Enter the magic of Skippy the Magnificent.

Through his complete control of the two Kristang
satellites, he was already assuring that the scavenger lizards did not see any
sign of human activity on Newark. The satellites edited the images and sensor
data they transmitted down to the scavengers, so they saw only what we wanted
them to see. They hadn't seen our dropships making multiple trips to bring
people and supplies down to Newark. They didn't see humans walking around, they
didn't see the solar panels we set out, they didn't detect increased infrared
radiation from the heat human activity generated. When the Kristang looked at
satellite images, if they ever bothered to look at our area of the planet, all
they saw was grasslands, low-growing shrubs, mud and rocks. Oh, and streams and
rivers here and there. No humans. No sign that Newark was inhabited by any
other sentient species.

With Skippy in complete control of the audio, video
and sensor data feeds through the satellites, what the Kristang at the
scavenger base saw and heard was their Luzzard hovering over a priceless Elder
artifact, then the pilots shouting a warning that the starboard engine was
overheating. The engine then tore itself apart, and the Luzzard crashed down,
the pilot's last words were to curse the scavengers' leaders for ignoring his
warnings about neglecting engine maintenance. The video feed through the
satellites did not show humans approach the wreck, with some of those humans in
Kristang powered armor. All the video feed showed was the busted Luzzard laying
dead on the floor of the canyon, with no movement in or around it.

And the video feed showed a priceless Elder artifact,
still there, still exposed in the patchy sunlight. Still tempting, too tempting
for the scavengers to ignore.

The scavenger leaders may not have cared about the
Kristang who died in the crash. they may have written off the Luzzard as a cost
of doing business. There was no way they were going to ignore a priceless Elder
treasure that could make their entire miserable expedition pay off for them.
What I was counting on was that the scavengers still had air transport, their
dropship. And they would be coming for our decoy in that dropship, coming
unaware their Luzzard crash had not been an accident, unaware that humans
inhabited Newark. I was counting on greed, I was counting on desperation, and
more importantly, I was counting on Kristang being Kristang. When their
starship arrived to retrieve them, if that ship detected the Elder artifact
still sitting exposed in the open, far from the scavenger base, the captain of
that ship would be strongly tempted to land in his own dropship, and take the
artifact for himself.