SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (52 page)

He went silent. For a moment, I panicked, thinking
we'd lost connection, except the music was still playing in my helmet speakers.
"And? Skippy? And?"

"Give me a minute, I'm working on an idea
here," he said excitedly. "Lots of numbers to crunch, need to run a
couple billion simulations though the model I've built."

"Okey dokey. I'll be right here, got plenty of
time and nothing to do." Nothing to do was true, the plenty of time part
was not.

"Yesssss!" He fairly shouted. "Got it.
Joe, while I don't want to get your hopes up too much, there is a possibility
that I can do something to help."

"I'm all ears, here, Skippy."

"Well, heh, heh, first thing is, you are very
much not going to like this-"

Skippy's idiotic plan, which I very much did not like,
involved him repositioning his end of the microwormhole so that it was behind
and slightly below me. He moved the other end of the wormhole directly in front,
and very close to, the dropship. Close enough that he instructed Desai to slide
the protective shield down over the composite cockpit windows, to protect the
occupants from radiation. Then, and here's the part I very much did not like,
he had Desai fire the dropship's maser through the wormhole, at me.

When Skippy told me his plan, my first thought was
that he was offering to kill me in one quick zap, so I wouldn't suffer from
being crushed inside my suit. But no, that would have been too easy. Instead,
the crazy little beer can planned to use pulses of maser light, at reduced
power, to boost my speed enough so I would miss the atmosphere. Maser photons
impacting my suit would flake off my suit's ablative layers, propelling me
forward. All this sciency BS was according to Skippy, who was, of course,
safely out of the maser's line of fire.

"What if I say no to this moronic plan of
yours?" I asked fearfully. Facing certain death, I wasn't sure whether
crashing into the atmosphere still wasn't preferable to getting cooked to a
crisp. When I hear 'maser' I think combination of 'laser' and 'microwave oven'.
Imagine a frozen burrito being zapped by a million watts, that's what ran
through my mind.

"Could you repeat that, Joe, I couldn't hear you?
You said 'go'?

"No! I said 'no'."

"Uh, huh, 'go' it is, got it. Captain Desai, fire
on my mark. Three, two, one, mark!"

"N- shit!" The faceplate of my helmet
automatically went opaque, and the visor slammed down. The suit went rigid,
something Skippy should have told me about. I waited for imminent and painful
death.

It didn't happen. Skippy's plan worked. Surprised the
hell out of me, that's for sure. Probably surprised him, too. He had me spin
around slowly, so the maser hit different parts of the suit, he had to look,
fire, look again. Then repeat. The first turkey shoot, as I called it, only
lasted eight minutes, because we couldn't have a maser hitting me while either
of the two Thuranin ships were above the horizon. It almost didn't work, eight
minutes of being propelled by maser only boosted my speed enough to delay me
falling into the atmosphere. By the time the tanker ships went behind the curve
of the planet again, I was technically already in the atmosphere, and the
wormhole had started to suck in atmospheric particles and blast the dropship
with high-energy radiation. Inside my suit, there were occasional pinging
sounds, I thought that was the air screaming past me, Skippy said it was my
imagination. It sure sounded real to me.

My second cooking session lasted twenty two minutes,
and was less frightening because Skippy didn't have to rush the process, he
could let my suit cool and adjust between maser blasts.  The outer layer of the
suit was composed partly of nanoparticles that could move around somewhat to cover
exposed areas, sections of the suit that the maser had burned away. After the
second session, before we had to stop because a tanker ship was about to rise
over the horizon, Skippy declared that I was safe, that my orbital path was now
good enough to keep me from plunging to my death for an hour, at least. Plenty
of time for the Thuranin ships to climb out of the planet's gravity well and
jump away.

Skippy must have been using creative math in declaring
I was safe, for it still looked like I could reach out and touch the cloud tops,
they were that close. Unconsciously, I was holding my breath, afraid that my
chest heaving up and down would knock me out of orbit. "You sure I'm good
here, Skippy?" I asked in a fearful whisper. Right then, I was more frightened
than I had been when I had thought death was certain. Life, the possibility
that I might go on living, there just beyond my grasp, I was terrified of
having that chance snatched away from me by the cruel math of orbital
mechanics.

"Uh huh," Skippy replied, "I'm sure.
Math don't lie, bro. Tell you what, though, how about you don't move a muscle,
stay perfectly still. And try not to breathe too hard, Ok?"

"Why?"

"Well, heh, heh, the maser really cooked your
suit, and patches of it are thin as tissue paper right now. I wouldn't worry
about it."

"Of course
you
don't need to worry about
it!"

"Hmm. I see your point. Still, there is no point
to you worrying, you can't do anything about it. When the dropship gets there,
Captain Desai will open the airlock door and fly the dropship to take you
aboard, without you having to move in any way. Once the airlock is closed and
repressurized, you can move about all you wish."

"How long will that be?"

"Well, certainly not more than one hour,
Joe."

"Why's that?"

"Because we can't risk hitting you with the maser
again, and if those two tankers haven't jumped away within an hour, you're
going to fall into the atmosphere, and this time there will be nothing I can do
about it."

"Oh, great."

Ten minutes later, I heard a faint, high-pitched
whistling sound. Remembering Skippy's scoffing when I thought I'd heard
atmosphere screaming past me, I held my breath and tried to decide whether it
was my imagination or not. And if not my imagination, what was it? A static
hissing from my helmet speakers? "Skippy, am I hearing things again?
There's a whistling noise, right at the edge of my hearing."

"Wow, you can hear that, Joe? Your hearing is
impressive. That frequency is almost up in the dog hearing range."

"You know about it?" Damn that beer can.
"What is it? Can you turn it off? It is very distracting."

"No can do, sorry. I can't turn it off, because
it's a tiny air leak. Well, not so tiny as it was a few minutes ago."

"What? Crap, you knew about this? Why didn't you
tell me?"

"There was no reason to worry you about it. Not
yet, anyway."

"Skippy," I said, exasperated with him,
"my air supply is leaking out into space. I have a very good reason to be
worried."

"Worrying is not going to solve the problem,
Joe."

"What will solve the problem?"

"I am working on it. The suit has been instructed
to move nanoparticles to plug the leak. So far, it isn't working, the suit's
supply of nanoparticles has been severely depleted, and the remaining supply is
already being used to prevent the suit from springing other leaks. Probably
shouldn't have told you about that."

That was not good news at all. "Understood. I
have plenty of oxygen, right? Enough to keep me breathing, even with this, as
you say, tiny leak?"

"Ah, not so much, unfortunately. The suit mostly,
and efficiently, recycles oxygen. There is a small reserve oxygen bottle. That
bottle is inadequate, considering the leak."

I kept silent for a moment, listening hard. The sound
was not so high pitched now. The leak must have gotten bigger. "Where is
the leak? Can I put my hand over it, or something like that? I can't do
nothing, Skippy."

"The leak is near your waist, on the left side.
Do not move! Moving will only make the leak worse, and cause other leaks."

"Great. Wonderful. What
can
I do?"

"Try to breathe less?"

"Very funny."

"That wasn't a joke."

"Shit."

"Perhaps I should work on my humor, so you know
when I'm joking."

"Ya think?"

"Sorry," Skippy said, sounding genuinely
sorry.

A leak. How to stop a leak? If only this Kristang suit
came with something like a can of Fix-A-Flat. Although it did, in the form of
nanoparticles that could plug leaks, make minor repairs, reinforce thin areas,
and all kinds of useful things. Absent-mindedly, while feverishly trying to
think of a way to stop a leak, I turned my head and took a sip from the water
supply tube in the helmet. Dry. I'd sipped the last of the water an hour ago.
"Huh," I said. "Skippy, I may have an idea."

"An idea? You? This I have to hear."

"Would water plug the leak? It would freeze,
right, make a plug of ice to cover the hole."

"Ah, not exactly, the water would freeze and boil
at the same time, because of the combination of cold and zero pressure.
Besides, Joe, you drank all the water, you dumb monkey, there's none
left."

"There's no
pure
water left."

"Oh."

"You know what I'm thinking?" Down next to
my left leg was a pee bag, that we'd installed before I took my many-hours-long
space dive.

"Unfortunately, yuck, yes. I can puncture the bag
with nanoparticles."

"Do that. Ugh." I felt my leg growing wet.
Then the wetness moved up my hips.

"It's working, Joe!" Skippy said excitedly.
"It's boiling off slowly, which is not a problem, there's plenty more.
Good idea, Joe!"

"Yes! Outstanding. Uh, hey, Skippy, this little
incident, this can stay just between us, right? No need to tell anybody about
it."

"Yeah, like that's gonna happen," he
chuckled. "No way can I pass up a
golden
opportunity to
leak
this info," he laughed gleefully.

"Crap. Can you hit me with the maser again?"

The whole time I was waiting, I was angrily urging the
two Thuranin ships to get off their asses and move away from the planet. What
the hell were they waiting for? Damn! It was like getting stuck on a two lane
road behind a school bus, and you can't pass. The damned thing stops at every
freakin' mailbox, and you have to sit there watching the flashing lights, and
you wish the driver would just move faster, or take a turn, or pull over so you
can pass. You're stuck behind the school bus, and it's crawling along, and it
ever so slowly grinds to a stop at a driveway, and one kid is waiting there
with his mommy, and the kid slouches up the steps, and walks slowly back to a
seat, with his mommy waving idiotically to him the whole way he meanders down
the aisle of the bus, and then when you think the stupid kid has finally sat
down and the bus can move again, the school bus driver decides to chat with the
mommy, and you're tempted to lean on your car horn because you want that bus to
just GET THE HELL OUT OF YOUR WAY ALREADY!!

That ever happen to you?

I pictured the tanker crews climbing their ships out
to jump distance, and then deciding a celebration was in order, or something
broke on their stupid ships, and they were fiddling around trying to fix it,
while I slowly but surely fell toward the clouds below me. Maybe the Thuranin
were having a cake and ice cream, and singing songs or some nonsense like that.
Skippy assured me the two tankers were moving at their best speed, and would
jump as soon as possible. The Thuranin, being cyborgs, didn't go much for
celebrations.

When they finally did jump away thirty four minutes
later, I almost shouted for joy. Mercifully, Desai put the pedal to the metal
on the dropship's engines to rescue me. Instead, I ordered Skippy to signal the
Dutchman
to jump into orbit, and for Desai to come pick us up. The
dropship was suddenly close to us, Desai making no effort at stealth, she was
burning the engines at full power.

"Desai, take Skippy aboard first," I
ordered.

"Sir?" She asked, surprised. "Mr.
Skippy said your suit is in bad condition."

"That is true, it is also true that Skippy is
more important to the mission than I am. If the Thuranin come back or whatever,
I want him aboard first, in case you need to high-tail it out of here. That's
an order."

Over Skippy's protests, Giraud grappled the jetpack,
released Skippy, then took him aboard and let the jetpack drift away. The
dropship then flew over to me, and Desai slowly and carefully edged the
dropship sideways, until Giraud was able to very gently guide me into the
airlock door with his fingertips. "Got him," Giraud told Desai,
"closing the door now."

The airlock quickly filled with sweet, breathable air,
and as the inner door slid open, I reached up to take my helmet off.
"Desai, we shouldn't leave that jetpack floating around as evidence we
were here, can you blast it with a maser?"