SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (49 page)

With the hole covered well enough, I went back into
the dropship, this time I left my helmet on. If the Kristang hit the comet with
a maser, I wanted to have a supply of oxygen, in case the dropship got a hole
poked in it. Also, I powered up the dropship's stealth field, setting it as
tight as possible around the hull. A tight stealth field drew extra power,
power I had plenty to spare as I didn't plan to run the engines. On its normal
setting, the stealth field would have extended partly outside the comet, and
the Kristang would have become suspicious why the comet had suddenly changed it
appearance.

The last thing I did was activate the dead man's
switch for the missile warhead strapped into the seat behind me. If things went
south, we could not risk the Kristang discovering a human, or human remains, in
a Thuranin dropship. Either I could let go of the switch, or, if I was already
dead or seriously injured, my hand would let go on its own, and I, the dropship
and comet would become a cloud of particles. Skippy would be safely away, not
that a mere missile warhead could hurt him. The
Dutchman
would
eventually pick him up, he would contact the ship, and Chang would continue the
mission.

That would not be my first choice, in case you were
wondering. There were many, many cheeseburgers I wanted to enjoy before I died.

Then, I waited.

It didn't take long. Skippy warned me. "Joe!
They're firing a maser at you!"

I closed my eyes and mentally prepared for searing
pain and death.

It didn't happen.

All I felt was the comet shaking slightly and moving
around. Jiggling, kind of. Gently vibrating.

"In case you're wondering why you are still
alive," Skippy said, "they're using a low-power maser. They are not
trying to blast the comet apart, that would create a bigger hazard for them, as
then they would have to keep track of many small objects, instead of one
medium-size one. The low-power maser is heating up one side of the comet,
boiling off ice, and that's making the comet change course. In case you were
wondering why I didn't mention this possibility before, I wasn't sure this is
what they would do for certain. Didn't want you to get your hopes up. Sometimes,
the Kristang like to use comets for target practice, and that would not have
been good for you. Nothing to worry about for now."

For now? Damn, it was driving me crazy that I couldn't
talk back to him. Trying to relax, I took in some deep breaths, as the comet
vibrated gently around me. Not too relaxed, I had to remind myself not to let
go of the dead man's switch by accident. The worst part, if that happened,
would not be me dying by accident. It would be Skippy concluding that, in the
end, I truly was a dumbass monkey.

Then the comet lurched to one side.

"Not to worry, Joe," Skippy called, "a
chunk of ice broke off, that's all. They've switched aim to boil that chunk of
ice to nothing, and, they're done. They're switching back to the comet. Uh,
hmm. Now this could become a problem. The comet is rotating so that the maser
will hit the hole in about twelve minutes. Voids in comets are not that
unusual, however, the hole we made is rather large, for the size of the comet.
And when the tarp is exposed, that will certainly look suspicious. Let me think
on this."

He added "And while I'm thinking, don't do
anything stupid like trying to use the dropship's engines or thrusters."
He added that, as my hand was poised on the controls to power up the engines. I
put my hand back in my lap.

"Think faster, Skippy," I said to myself.
Now that I wasn't expecting to die immediately in a sizzling maser cannon beam,
it would suck to die like this.

"Got it!" Skippy said excitedly. "Sort
of. I think. The good news is, this is going to be cool either way, because
I've never done this before. The bad news is, ah, it could be a spectacular
failure. Thus, guaranteed cool either way, huh? Coolest, of course, if you
survive. That goes without saying, right? Man, I wish you could see this, it is
majorly cool. To me. Maybe not to a monkey. Still, totally cool."

What was driving me crazy was not that I didn't know
what crazy thing he was trying, it was not being able to interrupt him rambling
on and on. The comet's vibration changed, I don't what was going on or how to
describe it, it simply felt different. Maybe like there were two sources of
vibration.

"It's working, Joe! I think. Hmm. Maybe, uh, yup,
yup, it's working. Sort of. Close enough, right? Heh, heh."

At the sound of 'heh heh', the hairs on the back of my
neck stood up. What the hell was he doing?

"In case you're wondering what I'm doing, it's
only one hundred percent, gold-plated, grade-A awesomeness, Joe! Although, when
you think about it, part of that expression doesn't make any sense. You're
trying to convince your audience that something is genuinely, indisputably
awesome, right? Then why would you brag about something being gold-
plated
?
Why not solid gold? Hmm, maybe I got the expression wrong? Cause you could
gold-plate a dog turd, and that's not awesome, that's just gold plating on a
dog turd, right? Anyway, what was I saying? Hmm, I forget, couldn't have been
too important. Oh, wait, I know, I was going to tell you the awesome thing I'm
doing! Solid gold awesome, let's get that straight, this is awesome goldness
all the way to the center, buddy-boy."

I could have prayed for death right then, if that
would get him to shut the hell up.

"Where was I," he continued, "oh, yeah,
explaining what I'm doing. Ha! Explaining high-order multidimensional physics
to a monkey, what am I thinking? I'll break it down for you Barney style. Joke
intended, thought that was pretty clever of me. Man, I never get tired of that
one. Only you, Joe, would combat an alien invasion in an ice cream truck. Not
even a nice ice cream truck. A crappy ice cream truck. So, here goes, this will
blow your tiny monkey mind. I'm warping spacetime, in a tiny, tiny area, to
make the comet spin just a bit differently than it was. Differently enough that
the maser beam will miss the hole we made. Cool, huh? Hell, you know what, I've
never warped spacetime in such a tiny local area, the math is completely
different, it's interesting. In fact, I don't think it's ever been done before.
I'm the first! Cool, huh-"

He rambled on and on like that a while, I'm not sure
how long, I stopped listening. Maybe he talked the whole twelve minutes, he
must have, he was talking when the twelve minutes passed. About what, I don't
remember. It didn't matter, it was good simply to hear his voice, to hear
someone talking to me, while my hands shook and I sat in the dropship, alone
with my fear. Being alone is bad. Being afraid is terrible. To be afraid, and
alone, is the worst, empty feeling.

"-you still listening, Joe? I think you're good, I
think you'll be safe. That maser should cut off in a couple minutes, the
Kristang are about satisfied they've pushed it safely out of the way."

The deadman switch was still tightly clutched in my
hand. Waiting out the time until the Kristang hopefully turned off their maser
beam, I held the switch in both hands, as insurance against one hand growing
tired. Finally, Skippy gave me the all-clear signal. "You're good, Joe!
Maser is off, the Kristang commander is happy the comet will miss their formation.
They are proceeding with the cross-decking operation. Wow, hmmm, they boiled
off more of the comet than I expected, more than was strictly necessary, it's a
good thing we didn't pick a smaller comet, or part of the dropship may be
exposed by now. You can turn off the stealth field to save power, Joe. Hey,
good thing they didn't need target practice to tune their masers, huh? That
would not have been good. Anywho, I'm going to stop talking in about eighteen
minutes, I'm approaching the relay station and I will need to concentrate, or
all this will be for nothing. In a couple hours, we will have drifted far
enough apart that I won't be able to talk to you. Until I have to go, here is a
medley of show tunes to keep you company. Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping
down the plain-"

Show tunes?! Freakin’ show tunes. Like, my
grandparents' show tunes. He sang one tune after another for the whole eighteen
minutes, then abruptly cut off without a good-bye. I didn't hear from him after
that, either we'd drifted too far away, or he downloaded a whole lot of data
from the relay, and was busy sorting through it. Carefully deactivating the
deadman switch, I put it away, and I also safed the missile warhead.

Fourteen hours later, the dropship's sensors picked up
a gamma ray burst, then seven others. The Kristang task force must have jumped
away. Good riddance to them.

Twenty six hours after I lost contact with Skippy, the
dropship console alerted me to a single nearby gamma ray burst, and the
Dutchman
pinged me, one brief signal, and I pinged back a short 'Ping Skippy and pick
him up first' message. They must have been curious about why the comet wasn't
where it was supposed to be, and why Skippy wasn't with me.

Sixteen minutes later, another gamma ray burst, then
nothing. Silence.

Then I was alone for another nineteen hours. Nineteen
hours, not knowing what was going on, not knowing whether something bad had
happened to the
Flying
Dutchman
. It could not possibly have taken
nineteen hours for them to contact, locate and pick up Skippy, so had something
happened to him? Had the Kristang ships somehow detected Skippy and intercepted
him? Had he been detected as he ransacked the databanks of the relay station?
No, if the ship had pinged Skippy and he hadn't responded, they would have
contacted me again right away. For some reason, they had contacted Skippy, then
whatever happened, they hadn't been able to pick me up.

Crap.

There weren't many good options for me. The dropship
could recycle oxygen for one person almost a month, and drinking water wasn't a
problem as long as I stretched out the supply to match the oxygen. Food was a
problem, I'd only brought along enough sludges for a week. What the hell was I
going to do? The navigation system told me the comet's new course was taking it
further away from the local star, and the comet's next closest approach to the
relay station would not be for over a thousand years. Projecting out ten
thousand years, the limit of the dropship computer's ability, the comet would
not get close enough to the star to boil off the remainder of the ice. The
dropship would remain hidden for at least another ten thousand years. Long
enough.

Poking around the dropship, I did not find a stash of
food that I didn't know about, other than a plastic bag, with one lonely
peanut, tucked into a pouch on the side of the copilot seat. Someone flying, or
training in, the dropship must have left it there. One peanut. I stared at that
peanut for a long time, before wedging the bag into a gap in the pilot console.
The only sludges I'd brought along were plain banana flavor, no one liked them
as they tasted bland and artificial, the only reason I'd brought them along was
to get rid of them. Now they were my only food supply. That was bad planning.
What the hell, right? I'd ration sludges to give the
Dutchman
maximum
time to come pick me up, then when the sludges ran out, I would eat that
peanut. The controls could be programmed to slowly decrease the oxygen supply,
I'd been assured that I would gradually fall asleep and it would be almost
painless.

Ha! My high school classmates had not voted me 'Most
likely to end up encased in a comet orbiting the outer reaches of an alien star
system', somehow they had missed that one. They hadn't voted me Class Clown or
anything cool like that, either.

Crap. Now that I thought about it, I'm sure that by
now, some joker had cut out a picture of Barney and pasted it over my photo in
our senior yearbook.

Like that mattered now.

Having nothing else to do, I set a timer for ten hours
until my next sludge, turned the lights down, and tried to get some sleep.

And, wouldn't you know it, just as I was drifting off
to sleep, the console alerted me to another gamma ray burst, and the
Dutchman
pinged me with a brief signal. 'Taking you aboard shortly, ETA four minutes'.

I felt some jostling, then a hard bump, then a
shudder. Then, "Hey, Joe! Good to have you back!" Skippy shouted.
"After the ship recovered me, it had to jump away, it would have taken too
long to fly through normal space to pick you up, the ship would have been
exposed for too long. We waited until you got far away from the relay, before
we risked coming back. Hold tight, they're cutting a hole for you, should only
be a minute before you can come out."

"Thanks, Skippy, it's great to hear your voice
again. Were you successful? With the relay, I mean."

"We're in luck, Joe! Although, now that I think
about it, that expression can be rather ambiguous, isn't it? Luck can be good
or bad. No matter, in this case, our luck is good. Success, yes! Sort of. Come
aboard, and I'll give you a full briefing. You, uh, better shower first,
huh?"

Skippy barely waited for me to take my shirt off
before he began the briefing. "Here's what I found, Joe, not sure if in
the end it is good news or bad news-"

"I thought you wanted me to take a shower
first?"

"Please do, however, you really don't smell a
whole lot better after a shower, so there's no reason to wait. Unless you
prefer to wait."

"No," I said as I unlaced my boots, "go
ahead."

"My expectation, that the Fire Dragon clan would
have information about the surveyor ship's mission, was partly correct."

"Great!" Before I stepped, or to be
accurate, kneeled down in the shower, I pressed the button and checked the
water temperature, in case Skippy decided to play a practical joke on me and
make the water ice cold. "You know where the surveyor ship is, and where
it's going?"

"No, unfortunately, no, the Fire Dragons have no
information about the surveyor ship, or about the single destroyer that is
serving as escort."

"Then what could be the good news? You said two
of the Fire Dragons were going on the mission to Earth, and that the surveyor
ship had to pick them up somewhere."

"I did say that. Can you hear me, Joe?"

"Yeah, I can hear you just fine," I said,
with my head under the cascading water. The hot water washing days of grunge
off my skin felt great.

"Good. Yes, two Fire Dragon clan leaders are
going on the mission to Earth, they paid extra for the privilege, because they
do not trust the Thuranin. For very good reasons, based on a long history, the
Kristang do not trust the Thuranin. The Thuranin don't trust the Kristang, also
for very good reasons. The Thuranin enjoy insulting and humiliating the
Kristang every chance they get, which is why these two Fire Dragon leaders were
not instructed to rendezvous with the surveyor ship. They will instead be
picked up by a pair of tanker support ships. To travel aboard such low-status
ships is a deliberate, very grave insult, and the Kristang know it is an
insult. They also can't do anything about it."

"I feel terrible for them, we should send a harsh
note to the Thuranin. Where are they going to meet these tanker ships? And
when?"

"’Where’ is a question I do know the answer to,
and I've programmed a course into the navigation computer. When is the problem,
Joe. The Kristang are arriving at those tankers three days from now, we can't
get there so quickly."

"Crap. You know where those tankers are going,
though, right?"

"No, I do not. That is not the type of
information the Thuranin saw fit to provide to the Fire Dragon clan."

"Well, hell, Skippy," I hit the button to
shut off the water. Damn it, why did he talk to me so often when I was in the
shower? "This was all a waste of time, then? We're too late?" That
was a bitter pill to swallow, getting messages from that data relay had been
our only chance to intercept the surveyor ship before it reached Earth.
"Wait. There's always a chance something goes wrong, that the Kristang
could be late to the rendezvous?"

"I suppose so, you haven't heard-"

I clicked the button to open the intercom to the
bridge. "This is Bishop. Skippy programmed a new course into the nav
system, initiate jump as soon as possible."

"Aye, aye," Chang responded, without asking
questions.

"We can't waste any time getting there, Skippy.
Is there any way you can shorten the trip, do some magic with wormholes?"

"I already did, Joe, the course I programmed does
include one shortcut by manipulating a wormhole. You didn't-"

"There's got to be something we can do. Let me
think on-"

"Joe! If you will please shut the hell up for a
minute, you haven't heard the whole story."

"Oh. Sorry, Skippy, that was rude, me
interrupting you. Go ahead, please."

"Thank you. As I explained, these two support ships
are primarily tankers, they carry fuel that will be transferred to the
surveyor, before it breaks off from its escorts and begins its long solo
journey to Earth. The Kristang are going to meet those two tankers in an
uninhabited star system, where the tankers will be refueling by siphoning the
atmosphere of a gas giant. The tankers logically, and the Thuranin can be
ruthlessly logical, will not want to carry their fuel load further than they
have to. That tells me the tankers will meet the surveyor ship somewhere close
to where they tank up with fuel. Before you make a typically stupid comment,
about why I'm bothering to tell you this, I believe those tankers will take
several days to complete their fueling operation. We should be able to reach
that star system before those tankers depart."

"Skippy, that's fantastic!" Man, I didn't
know how much more I could take of hopefulness, sudden crushing despair and
back to hopefulness. "Why didn't you say that first?"

"I tried to, you big dope, only you kept flapping
your lips 'blah blah blah'. Damn, you flap your lips so hard sometimes, I think
you are going to take off like a bird."

"Sorry. Ok, so, we know where these tankers will
be, and we know they will be meeting the surveyor ship after they finish pumping
their tanks full at this gas station."

"It's a planet, Joe, not a gas station. The
operation to siphon the proper gases-"

"You know what I mean, Skippy."

"It's complicated, that's what I was going to
say. We still have the problem that we don't know where the tankers are going,
after they fuel up. And we have no way to follow them, without them knowing
they are being followed."

I finished buttoning a shirt, and pulled pants on.
"Don't worry about that, Skippy. While I was stuck inside that comet,
there was a lot of time to think. I have some ideas."

“You having an idea, that’s what scares me.”

The
Flying Dutchman
was jumping like clockwork,
on our way to the star system where the two Thuranin support ships should even
then be filling their tanks with fuel. According to Skippy, we should arrive
well before those ships were ready to depart for their rendezvous with the
surveyor. Everything was going great. Great, except that, we still did not have
a realistic plan for us to successfully attack the surveyor ship. Or, equally
as important, a way for us to attack, in a way that the Thuranin would think
the surveyor had been destroyed in an ordinary ship to ship action by a
Jeraptha force. Although, an idea was forming in my mind.

"Sir, we may be missing something," Smythe
said, while we were sitting in the galley, bouncing around ideas for attacking
the surveyor and its escort ships. "I read the after action report from
your first mission. The Kristang ships that were attached to the
Dutchman
,
you decided to jump them into a gas giant planet," he looked around the
compartment and people nodded, "because you were concerned they would
eject drones that contain those ships' flight logs. A drone's logs would have
told the Kristang, or Thuranin, that a Kristang frigate and a Thuranin star
carrier had been taken over by a hostile force."

"Hey!" Skippy protested. "I wasn't
hostile. Perhaps I wasn't as polite as-"

"Skippy, that's not what he meant," I
suppressed a laugh.

"Oh. Understood. Hostile in this case means
taking over their ships and killing all of them. I guess that could be
considered hostile," Skippy grumbled. "In certain cultures."

Smythe nodded. "Right. Well, then, when we attack
these ships, assuming by that time we have some plan to destroy them, during
the attack, those ships will eject stealth drones. Those drones may tell the
Thuranin that their ships were attacked by one ship, and they might even be
able to determine that one ship is a former Thuranin ship."

"It's possible," Skippy admitted.
"During a fight, if our stealth field is damaged, our disguise as a
Jeraptha ship won't hold.”

"That's the problem, sir," Smythe concluded,
"we have to both destroy those ships, and do it in a way that the Thuranin
think it was an ordinary Jeraptha raid. Those drones will blow our cover story."

"Yeah, Joe," Skippy, said, excited.
"That's a good point. That is a very good point. You got an answer for
that, smart guy?"

"Sure, Skippy, you're going to take care of that
problem for us."

"Oh, I am? And how am I going to do that? Maybe
you weren't paying attention, so I'll summarize the problem for you," he
said, almost gleefully. "Starships carry drones which contain the ship's
flight recorder data. When a ship is destroyed, or seriously damaged, one or
many of those drones are ejected. They are tiny, and they are stealthed. Our
sensor field will not be able to detect all the drones, and that, Joey my boy,
is the problem; the Thuranin will eventually send a ship to find out what
happened to their precious surveyor and its escorts. I am hoping, of course, to
fool their sensors into thinking our ship is a Jeraptha cruiser, but that is not
guaranteed to work."

"Not a problem, Skippy. You can handle that
easily."

"Hmm. Since I left my magic unicorn back on
Paradise or somewhere, how am I supposed to find an unknown number of stealthed
drones, smart guy?"

"Simple, Skippy. By asking them to tell us where
they are."

There was a pause before Skippy spoke again, maybe
while he tried to figure out what my idea was. "Perhaps I need to explain
the concept of 'stealth' to you again, Joe."

"No, I understa-"

Adams took in a sharp breath. "Sir, I might know
what you're thinking."

"Oh,
this
is going to be good,"
Skippy laughed. "Go ahead, Sergeant Adams, enlighten me, please."

She looked at me, and I nodded, so she leaned forward
to speak. "Skippster-"

"Skippster?" He asked, surprised.

"Skippy, then," Adams said with a wink.
"These drones are stealthed, to prevent an enemy locating them, but they
will respond to a signal, the correct coded signal, from a Thuranin ship,
correct?"

"Yeah, duh, they wouldn't be much good otherwise.
Again, the problem is, oh, shit."

I laughed. "You get it now, Skippy?"

He gave another heartfelt sigh. "When I load a
virus into the Thuranin computer, to make the ship drop off a drone before it
jumps, with that drone containing their rendezvous coordinates, I am also
supposed to download the drone retrieval codes, right?"

"Uh huh," I said, "you got it. Then
we'll jump to wherever those ships went on their way to the rendezvous, you
send a signal for those drones to ping us their location."

"You can do that, Skippy?" Adams asked.

"That, yes, I can do that. Damn it, you monkeys
think you're so smart. Sergeant Adams, I thought I hated Colonel Joe the worst,
but you're moving up the list."

"I'm honored," Adams said mockingly.

"After I tell the drones to ping us their
location, we use them for target practice?" Skippy asked.

"No, no, I don't want to destroy them," I
said quickly.

"Huh. All right, apparently I'm still missing
something here," Skippy's voice had a convincing undertone of puzzlement.

"We're not going to destroy them," I explained,
"those drone aren’t going to blow our cover story. They’re going to
sell
our cover story for us. After you locate and access them, you are going to
alter their flight logs, so all the drones contain data showing their ships
were attacked by a Jeraptha task force, whatever number and types of ships the
Jeraptha would most likely assign to such a mission-"

"Two light cruisers," Skippy stated.

"Then you'll tell those drones to go silent
again, until a real Thuranin ship comes looking for them. If that ever happens.
Whatever ship finds the drones will provide convincing data about that surveyor
ship being destroyed by the Jeraptha, and they will have no reason to suspect
humans were involved. Those drones will sell the story for us."

"Damn," Skippy grumbled unhappily.
"That actually is a fairly good plan. From a monkey, amazing. That plan is
ingeniously devious, and I'm saying that as a compliment. Joe, I'm telling you,
once you're done playing soldier, you have a bright career ahead of you as a
criminal mastermind. Or, you, know, politics."

"Skippy," I laughed, "I would never do
anything as sleazy as politics."

"How about crime?"

"Crime we can talk about later, I have plenty of
playing soldier to do first." That did get me thinking. When I signed up
for the UN ExFor, my commitment was open-ended, since we were at war. Now that
Earth was, as far as UNEF Command knew at the moment, at peace, I had no idea
how many more years I had until I could either leave the US Army, or re-up. My
promotion to colonel was temporary, and, everyone knew, BS. My promotion to
sergeant must have come with a commitment to some number of years, which I
hadn't thought to ask about at Camp Alpha. It hadn't seemed important at the
time, none of us expected to live long enough to care. Fighting aliens with our
old trusty M-4 rifles hadn't made us feel particularly hopeful about our life
expectancy.