SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (46 page)

"What do you think?"

"No. You aren't. In your defense, I wouldn't
either, if I was in your place," Skippy admitted. "That was a pretty
great idea."

"Yup. So?"

"Sooooooo, before I ripped that ship apart with a
perfectly aimed particle beam shot through a weak spot in its reactor
containment shielding, one hell of a shot, by the way. The microwormhole exit
point nutates in a random fashion, because I had to avoid causing a detectible
rupture in spacetime right there, and with time dilation, I had to estimate how
the particle beam would be affected by the nutation. As far as I'm aware, this
is the first time a wormhole has been used to deliver a particle beam, it was
an interesting exercise. I realized that I needed to create, or perhaps more
accurately recreate, a branch of mathematics, using a variation of topological
invariants. Then there was the speed of light time lag between the wormhole and
the ship, to deal with that I realized I needed to first tag that ship with a
low-powered targeting laser in order to establish-"

"Skippy!"

"What?"

"Back to the subject, please?"

"Huh?"

I rolled my eyes. That beer can needed to create a
submind to keep track of his thoughts. "The subject, please. You know, the
bad news about aliens turning Earth into a wasteland?"

"Oh, yeah. Huh. Anyway, hitting that ship's
reactor, with a particle beam through a wormhole, was an incredible shot, if I
do say so myself."

"You did say so yourself."

"If I didn't, how would you know how awesome I
am?"

"I don't know, how about, hey, there's a
suggestion, you tell me about this big threat to Earth, and how you found out
about it?"

"Easy peasy, Joe. Before I hit that ship, I was
able to download some data from its computer memory. There wasn't time for a
full download, especially with the narrow bandwidth I was working with through
the microwormhole, so all I was able to get is a stack of messages intended for
the leaders of the scavenger group on the surface; mostly messages from their
clan. I was super busy, so I didn't bother to read through that pile of crap
until a few minutes ago. One of those messages warns of an impending power
shift among the clans, it seems that with the loss of a wormhole connection to
Earth, and the Kristang's retreat from Pradassis, that's the planet you humans
call 'Paradise', the fortunes of the White Wind clan took a major, in fact
fatal, blow. The White Wind clan has been forced to seek a more powerful clan
to ally with, the cold truth is the White Wind are going to be absorbed into
the more powerful clan, calling it an alliance is a transparent face saving
move for the White Wind leadership. The alternative to being absorbed is being
conquered, and their territories and properties divided by the victors."

"Sucks to be them, huh? I don't know anyone here
who is going to shed any tears if their entire clan gets smashed. How does this
threaten Earth? All the Kristang on the Earth end of the wormhole are dead,
right?" I tensed, fearing his answer. My home planet was defenseless
against even a single Kristang ship, if there were stragglers we didn't know
about before we left Earth orbit.

"It threatens Earth because, according to
Kristang law, which is adhered to more strictly than you may expect, given what
a nasty bunch of lizards they are, for a clan to be formally absorbed, the clan
that is losing its identity must have unanimous approval from the senior clan
leaders. This unanimous approval sometimes is achieved by assassination of clan
leaders who disagree, the law doesn't prevent that. Kristang law is both rigid
and flexible, the formalities must be rigidly adhered to, the morality behind
the laws is more of a 'meh' thing."

"Fine, interesting, and?"

"And, um, here's the thing. Heh, heh, this is
kind of ironic. The law of unintended consequences and all that."

My Spidey sense was tingling at Level Ten. "What
the hell did you do, Skippy?" I asked carefully.

"Technically, it's what I didn't do. Or, I guess,
it's what I did, or we did, in my defense, hey, no, you know what, as a matter
of fact, it's what
you
asked me to do. So, this is your fault. Yeah,
yeah, that's it! This is all your fault. Humans, I mean, not only you
personally. Although, mostly you, personally."

"Skippy, you once told me that the Andromeda
galaxy is going to collide with the Milky Way in about, what, four billion
years?"

"Uh huh, that's right, why?"

"Is there any chance you'll get to the freakin'
point before then?"

He made an exasperated huffing sound. "Fine.
Sure. What I did, because you asked me to, is wipe out the Kristang on Earth.
Including effectively pounding their last two sites into dust with railguns."

"We did ask you to do that," I couldn't see
why that could be a problem, "and we thank you for your help. What didn't
you do? Are there any Kristang alive on the Earth side of the wormhole?"

"No, not that I know of. I told you that."

"Thuranin?" I asked fearfully.

"Nope. Look, if you'll stop asking stupid
questions, I'll tell you, or this conversation really will last forever. What I
didn't do, and you didn't ask me, or remind me, and that part is entirely on
you, hundred percent, was I didn't dig through the enormous pile of data in the
Kristang's computers at Earth, on their ships and on the ground. If I had done
that then, I may have discovered that two senior leaders of the White Wind clan
were on Earth at the time. I started sifting through the data in their
computers, before we, you know, blew up those computers, and 99 percent of it
was the usual boring messages back and forth. Like 'oh I got so hammered last
night' and 'this planet sucks' and 'my boss is an asshole' or 'we should kill
all the humans'. The usual BS, I lost interest in digging through it, which is
why I didn't realize senior clan leaders were there. They were there to oversee
the operation of fully securing your planet, of finding some way to turn a
profit on their risky venture, and to show support for what they must have
known by that time, was a sinking ship."

"Two senior clan leaders were there. They're dead
now?"

"Affirmative. One was aboard that frigate I
jumped into your sun, the other was at a site I hit with a missile strike in
the first attack."

Before asking another question, I stopped to think.
Skippy said he'd missed something, and he was terribly absent minded. If I
didn't ask the right question, he might never tell me what I needed to know.
"They're dead, they died right away. We couldn't have negotiated with
them, because they were dead. The White Wind clan can't agree to be formally
absorbed, so other clans will pick them apart. I still don't see why this is
our problem."

"It is your problem, Joe, because the clan that
is absorbing them, the Fire Dragons, wants to avoid a protracted fight over the
White Wind. The Fire Dragons, while much stronger than the White Wind, have
been stretched thin recently, the wormhole shift hurt them also. They are
rather desperate to get formal approval to absorb the White Wind clan and its
assets without a fight. They are so desperate, that they are paying the
Thuranin to send a long-range ship to Earth, all the way there without a
wormhole, in order to bring back those two senior White Wind clan
leaders."

"Oh, shit," I almost choked on my words.

"Hence why I described this as an
end-of-the-world thing for you humans."

We were screwed. We were totally screwed. If the
Thuranin got to Earth, they would not only discover all the Kristang there were
dead, they would surely learn, by raiding our databases, all about the
Flower
and the
Dutchman
, the merry band of pirates, and about Skippy. And that
the wormhole near Earth had been shut down deliberately. And that little fact,
about our ability to manipulate wormholes, would get every technologically
advanced species in the galaxy very interested in Earth. Such interest would
not be healthy for humans. "We need to stop that long-range ship,
Skippy."

"Probably a good idea. My best estimate, for the
earliest when that ship could arrive at Earth, is twenty nine months from now.
We, of course, can get to Earth long before then, by reopening that wormhole.
The easiest time to hit that ship is when it arrive-"

"No way. No way, Skippy, and we don't have
anything like twenty nine months. Tell me, what will the Thuranin do, if their
ship doesn't return in about five years?"

"Most likely? They will wait another six months
or so, then they will begin to worry. Then they will almost certainly send
another ship. Likely more than one ship."

"Exactly. If that ship disappears at Earth, or on
its way to Earth, the Thuranin are going to be very suspicious about what is
going on at Earth. Tell me, what would happen if that long-range ship was
instead destroyed in Thuranin territory, before it even gets started on the
actual journey to Earth?"

"Hmm. Good question. Give me a moment to research
the history of similar incidents, this could take a while. Done. Most likely,
in this case an 84% probability, the Thuranin would tell the Fire Dragon clan
that the Thuranin consider the contract fulfilled, because the Thuranin made a
good-faith attempt to reach Earth, and with the loss of the ship the Fire
Dragons hired, the contract is closed. The Thuranin have only a handful of
long-range ships that could reach Earth, such ships are frightfully expensive.
It is also unlikely the Fire Dragons could afford to fund a second expedition
to Earth. Other clans who want a piece of the White Wind would see additional
delay as a signal to strike, and the Fire Dragons would need to act
quickly."

"Exactly. See my point? We need to destroy that
long-range ship while it's still in Thuranin territory. Destroy it in a way
that the Thuranin think it got hit during a random Jeraptha fleet engagement,
that whoever destroyed that ship didn't consider it anything special, that ship
wasn't specifically targeted. Damn. That means we'll need to hit other Thuranin
ships at the same time, or right after. This is going to be a major, major
deal." I needed to bring other people into the planning. "Will that
long-range ship have escorts?"

"Certainly. It will typically have two support
ships, to refuel and resupply the long-range ship at the point where it begins
its solo journey, the support ships will turn back at that point. And I expect
there will also be a warship escort, a pair of frigates, maybe a destroyer. The
long-range ship is basically a highly modified star carrier, with an extra pair
of reactors, triple the number of jump drive coils, and no attachment points
for carrying other ships. Also more robust self-repair capabilities than a
standard star carrier. And it has full capabilities to refuel itself along the
way. Like a star carrier, it is not intended for ship-to-ship combat."

"An easy target, then?"

"Ahhh, not for us. The
Dutchman
isn't a
true warship either. Especially now."

"Understood, we'll need the advantage of
surprise. Plus plenty of Skippy magic. Do you know where this long-range ship,
hey, is there a name for this type of ship?" Saying 'long-range ship'
every time was going to get old.

"The Thuranin do not name their classes of ships,
each class has a numeric designation. However, the Thuranin copied the basic
design from the Jeraptha, and the Jeraptha refer to such ships as survey
cruisers, or surveyors."

"Surveyors. That's good. Do you know where this
surveyor is now, and what course it is taking to Earth?"

"Nope. That data wasn't in the messages I
downloaded, the message was more clan politics and rumors than actionable
intelligence."

That made me rub my temples with my fingers, I was
going to have a headache for sure. "Damn it, this means we'll need to
shadow a Thuranin battlegroup again, to get access to their databanks?"
That was way too risky, with the Maxohlx hanging around.

"No, here's a piece of good news. The Fire Dragon
clan paid to hire the surveyor, and part of the deal is the surveyor will take
four Kristang with them, two from the Fire Dragon clan and two from the White
Wind. I'm sure the Thuranin are disgusted about having Kristang aboard their
ship. The Fire Dragons will know where the surveyor ship is going to pick them
up, and how it's getting to Earth, at least a rough outline of the ship's
course. The Kristang have gotten screwed by the Thuranin on shipping contracts
so many times, they insist on very strict and detailed terms, including metrics
about, oh, damn it, I'm using buzzwords. I sound like one of your stupid PowerPoint
slides! Being around you monkeys has infected my brain. Anyway, we can sneak
into a star system that is occupied by the Fire Dragons, and I'll steal the
data we need from one of their communication relays. The Maxohlx may still have
warships accompanying Thuranin battlegroups, we need to steer clear of
them."

"That is good news. You got any more?"

"Nothing worth mentioning, no, unfortunately.
Except that, from here, we can get to Fire Dragon territory within two
weeks."

"If you think of anything else," I stood up
and hit the button to open the door, "let me know. I need to tell the
crew, and get working on a plan. Set course for Fire Dragon territory, I'll
inform the pilot that we're changing course. Again."