SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (48 page)

"You have-"

"I have to-" I started to say.

"Joseph Arthur Bishop!" Skippy fairly
shouted.

That set me back in my seat. "Wow. Only my mother
uses my middle name. And only when she's pissed at me."

"Whew, well, you weren't ever going to shut up so
I could get a word in. Rest easy, Joey, you didn't screw up. To be specific,
your myriad screw-ups are not why we got ambushed by the little green men. No
way were they waiting for us, no way in hell. If the Thuranin knew monkeys are
flying this ship, they would have established a layered defense, with
battleships at the center; battleships can project significantly more powerful
damping fields. We would have had zero chance to jump away, if we had
encountered a task force centered around battleships. The Thuranin would never
have assigned such a vital mission to a single squadron of destroyers. If they
knew one of their star carriers had been stolen, and they thought they knew
where it is, they'd send an entire battlegroup, at least. The Thuranin would
not screw around with half measures."

He had not yet convinced me. "I hear you, but,
what are the odds that we would jump into a trap like that? Don't give me the
odds calculated to a hundred freakin' decimal points, I'm asking a real-world
question here, not mathematics."

"No need to crunch numbers. I think we didn't
jump into a trap at all."

"How you figure that?"

"Simple. If it was a trap, there would have been
a lot more ships waiting for us, and we would be dead. Or, you monkeys would.
I'd be drifting in space, wishing I was dead. At least being in hard vacuum for
millions of years would get the monkey smell off me. Mostly. What I think
happened is, that Elder site that I thought had not yet been discovered
actually
is
known to the Thuranin, they took everything useful out of it
a long time ago. While they were ransacking the Elder site, they built up that
system as a military base to defend the site against the Jeraptha. That star
system was closer to Jeraptha territory before the recent wormhole shift, the
Thuranin would have fortified the area to protect their assets. Since they
stripped the site, I believe the Thuranin have continued using that system as a
secret military base. As I told you, the
Flower's
crappy Kristang
sensors are lucky to detect a star in a star system, our beat-up frigate has no
chance to find a military base that the Thuranin wish to keep secret."

"Great theory, Skippy. Doesn't explain why that
destroyer squadron had us surrounded as soon as we jumped in."

"Uh, that
may
have been partly my fault. A
teensy, infinitesimal bit my fault."

"What?" That surprised me. "You got
some 'splainin' to do, Lucy."

"Actually, Ricky Ricardo never said that on the
show, that is a myth. Similar to how people commonly say-"

"I never saw the show, Skippy, that was before my
time. It's a pop culture thing."

"Oh, got it. I'll make a note of it."

"And?"

"And, I said I'll make a note of it. Duh. Man,
your mind wanders sometimes."

I rolled my eyes. "I meant,
and
, back to
how our getting ambushed may have been partly your fault. Damn, Skippy, we were
talking about that, like, five seconds ago, how could you forget in that short
a time?"

"Five meatsack seconds, dumdum. For me, your
species could have gone from ignorant apes living in trees, to sentient beings
in the same time. I say could have, 'cause, you know, you are still ignorant
apes."

"Don't try changing the subject, Skippy."

"Damn, the monkey is onto me," he muttered.
"All right, I think that destroyer squadron was there for training or
something like that. Those destroyers, or some stealthed satellites, detected
the
Flower
jumping in, because a blind man could have seen that. The
Thuranin stayed quiet, probably wondering what the hell a Kristang frigate was
doing there. By itself, a Kristang ship could not have traveled all the way to
that star system, the Thuranin must have been very, very curious. After the
Flower
jumped away, the Thuranin knew they hadn't been detected, and they figured the
Flower
would be back, with more ships. That's when those destroyers got into position,
to establish a damping field that covered where the
Flower
was likely to
jump in. That also explains why their damping field wasn't originally tuned to
prevent a Thuranin ship from jumping away, they expected Kristang ships, not a
star carrier. Us jumping in must have surprised the hell out of them. That
surprise, their hesitation before returning the damping field, is how we got
away at first."

"Uh huh. Makes sense," I agreed. "Does
not explain how it is partly your fault."

"Damn. I was hoping you forgot about that by now.
Why don't you have your typical short attention span when I need it? Here it
is, Joe; I may have been showing off a little. I programmed our jump in to be
almost exactly where the
Flower
had jumped out. Serves me right for
caring about impressing a barrel of monkeys, why should I care what ignorant
apes think, right?"

Though he was certainly an arrogant shithead, he
didn't need to feel guilty about something that wasn't his fault. "So you
were a little more accurate than you needed to be, that didn't affect anything.
Even if you were off by a thousand kilometers, those destroyers would have
surrounded us. That was the best spot for us to jump into, right?"

"Um, no, and right there is the problem. That was
the best spot for the
Flower
to jump into, considering that ship's
crappy jump drive. The
Dutchman
could have jumped in much closer to the
Elder site. That is why I feel guilty, Joe. The Thuranin surrounded the place
they expected Kristang ships to jump in, and that's where I took us. If I'd
jumped us in closer to that moon, like I should have, we could have been on the
edge of the damping field, and could have gone much further with that first
jump away."

He sounded miserable. I understood how he felt. The
conversation had started with me feeling miserable and guilty, thinking I had
nearly gotten us all killed. "Crap, Skippy. You let me feel guilty all
this time, when it was your fault?"

"A teensy bit my fault, that's all!" His
voice sounded hurt.

"I'm sorry, Skippy. I guess I was kind of, uh,
kind of hoping that if those Thuranin had a way to track the
Dutchman
,
we could do the same thing, and solve our problem of hunting down that surveyor
ship."

"They got lucky, Joe. There are no
shortcuts."

We continued racing along through empty space in our
dirty snowball, slowly tumbling at one rotation every forty six minutes. There
was no indication the relay station considered us a threat, even though their
long-range sensor grid had seen us two hours ago. We were an innocent,
uninteresting dirty snowball, no different from the billions of such objects
forming a loose cloud around the star system. We would not pass close enough to
the station to be in any way a threat. We hoped. All was going well until four
hours before the closest point of our flyby, when Skippy sounded an alarm.
"Gamma ray burst! Multiples! Seven, no, eight Kristang ships just jumped
in, they're sort of between us and the relay. Damn it! They are moving very
roughly parallel to us, unless they change course, we're going to pass
uncomfortably close through their formation, about a half hour after we fly by
the relay. Oh, this is bad. Crap!"

"They see us? They know we're here?" I asked
in a panic.

"Do they see this comet? Yes, certainly they do.
Do they know our dropship is under this ice? No way. Or, I don't think so.
Unlikely. Very unlikely."

"What the hell are they doing here?"

"Relay stations are common rendezvous points,
Joe, this is not entirely unexpected. Unfortunate, not unusual. They could be,
yes, they are, exchanging data, shhhhh, be quiet a minute, will you, I'm
listening to them." Skippy was silent a few minutes, so was I, although
Skippy wasn't holding his breath like I was. "Darn. Joe, we got a problem.
The good news is those ships are simply exchanging data and going to be on
their way, they're not aware of us and they're not looking for us. The bad news
is they are waiting for another ship to join them, and while they're waiting,
they will be engaged in a cross-decking operation. Exchanging supplies, and
crews, between ships. They will have crew outside the ships in suits, and
dropships flying around between ships, they will not want a ball of ice
creating a hazard by flying near them. It is possible they will hit us with a
maser, to knock us onto a different course, and so avoid their formation. I'm
sorry."

"Damn it! Uh, what can I do? Uh, hey, if you're
by yourself, you're small enough they won't see you, right?"

"Sure, I can make myself small as a tube of
lipstick, and I can become essentially invisible to sensors. Why?"

"Because," I said as I unstrapped him from
the seat, "you can flyby that relay station by yourself, you don't need
this dropship."

"Whoa! Wait just a minute, monkeybrain, you're
going to toss me out an airlock?"

"For real this time, and very gently. I'll give
you a little push, you float away and fly right by that relay. That way, if the
Kristang do hit this comet, you won't be affected."

"You will be affected, you ass!" He shouted.

"That's a risk. The Army did mention there might
be risks involved, when they gave me a rifle. I had to sign a form about
it."

"Yeah, risk of you shooting yourself in the foot,
you idiot. Joe, this is, and I'm adding emphasis here, a gargantuanly stupid
idea, even by monkey standards."

As I put on my spacesuit helmet, I responded "I
am open to other ideas, Skippy. Other ideas where you fly by the relay without
being detected, get the data we need, and are safely taken back aboard the
Dutchman
.
You got anything like that?"

"No."

"Great, then we-"

"In this case, 'no' means, not yet! Damn, you
monkeys are impatient."

"Listen, Skippy, in meatsack time, you've had
only seconds to think up an alternative idea. In your time, what, you had,
what, years? If you haven't thought up something yet, you probably won't,
because there is no alternative. You'll be fine floating in space for a while
by yourself, I'll be fine here."

"Define 'fine' for me, in terms of you. If they
hit this iceball with a maser-"

"I'm a soldier, Skippy, the mission comes first,
Ok? There is one of me, and billions of monkeys, damn it, now you've got me
saying it, billions of humans on Earth. This mission has almost no margin for
error, you told me our only likely chance to track that surveyor ship is to
pull data off that relay. I need you to do that for me, and not to worry about
me. Can you do that?"

"I have to worry about you, Joe, you are a
particularly dumb monkey in an unforgiving universe. You clearly can't take
care of yourself. You're the monkey who says 'ooh, leopard has pretty spots, I
should touch it'."

"Skippy," I said as I stepped into the
airlock, "you get the data from that relay, and I promise you, I will
never try to pet a leopard. Deal?"

"I do not like this, Joe, I do not like this one
tiny bit."

"It's not like I'm jumping for joy about it
either, Skippy. Do we have a deal?"

There was a heartfelt sigh, then, "I suppose.
Damn, why can't you pick this time to come up with one of your crazy
ideas?"

"This isn't crazy enough for you?"

"I see your point. Let's get this over
with."

When the hole in the comet was covered over, it wasn't
filled in all the way, what they'd done was stretch a thin tarp across the top
of the hole, then sprayed water which quickly froze, to cover the tarp about a
meter thick. To make it look like the rest of the comet, they packed dirty snow
on top. From the outside, you couldn't tell there had ever been a hole. Getting
out of the airlock, I gently flew up to the bottom of the tarp, and used a
cutter on low, power to make a hole just big enough for me to fit through.
Skippy advised me so that we timed my cutting through into space, while that
side of the comet faced away from the relay station and the Kristang ships. I
stuck my head and shoulders out, and held Skippy up. "Which way?"

"Off to your left, give me a good push, or we
won't get far enough apart for it to matter. On three, Ok? Three, two, one,
now!"

Holding on with my feet wedged into the ice and with
my left hand, I threw Skippy as hard as I could with my right. He quickly
disappeared from view. "Was that good?"

"Too late now, anyway. Yes, that was a good push,
I will come another three thousand kilometers closer to the relay station. Stop
talking now, you have to go silent. I can talk to you, but you can't reply.
Good luck, Colonel Joe."

Good luck, Skippy, I mouthed silently. Before the
comet rotated so the hole was visible to the Kristang, I covered it again as
best I could by melting snow with the cutter and trying to pack it over the
opening. The best I could do was a half-assed job, I had to hope none of the
Kristang were bored enough to look closely at a ball of ice passing by in deep
space.