Mavericks (Expeditionary Force Book 6)

by Craig Alanson

  The trailing Condor dropped like a rock in front of me, sinking so quickly it was now below me. “Reed? What happened? Reed?”

  “Joe,” Skippy’s voice broke in. “Lieutenant Reed is extremely busy, she just lost three more fan blades and vibration in the turbine was so bad, she had to reduce throttle to twelve percent. No, now she has gone to seven percent.”

  “Seven? Shit, that’s practically idling.” Reed’s Condor had sunk almost below range of my suit’s sensors and my synthetic vision switched over to a feed from the lead ship. “Porter! Follow her, we can’t lose her.”

  “Colonel, this is problematic,” Porter responded and I could feel myself dropping faster. “The target is now falling at nineteen hundred meters per minute. The air resistance on you prevents you from falling that fast.”

  Shit. He was right, I hadn’t thought of that. At the end of the cable, I was now above the lead Condor, as it was sinking faster than I was. “Screw this,” I muttered to myself. I had been flying in a belly-down position, now I tucked into a head-down posture. My speed picking up rapidly and soon I was at the level of the lead ship, then dropping below again. “More cable,” I ordered.”

  “Joe, while this is a heroic action, it-”

  “Nothing heroic about it, Skippy. I can always get reeled back in and fly safely up to the Dutchman.”

  “My point, dumdum, is that the only way you can fall quickly enough to catch Reed’s ship is to fly in head-down position. In that position, you can’t fly under her ship and contact the landing gear.”

  Shit. Double shit! He was right. I hadn’t thought of that either. Damn, I was a total freakin’ moron, what the hell was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I think ahead and- “Reed! Fireball!”

  “Here, Colonel. The turbine is tearing itself apart, I can’t-”

  “I know. Invert! Fly upside down!”

  There was the slightest hesitation, then a surprised “Sir?”

  “I’m coming in above you and I can’t get to the landing gear from here. So, flip over.”

  “Oh. Got it. This thing won’t fall any faster upside down.”

  She did it. “Porter, I need-”

  “Doing it now, Colonel,” he answered before I could finish because he had excellent situational awareness and knew what I planned to do. “Sink rate is now twenty three hundred meters per minute.”

  Crap. In the thick air, I had trouble plummeting that fast, even tucked in a head-down position. The belly of the upside-down Condor approached with agonizing slowness while I fretted I was too late. Then it loomed in front of me and I had to frantically roll upright onto my belly and spread my arms to slow down. In my third consecutive dumbass move, I had failed to consider the falling Condor would create a pocket of air above it. When I fell into that shadow, I dropped like a rock. Nothing I could do could slow me down quickly enough, I belly-flopped onto the Condor’s belly and hit hard, my suit absorbing much of the shock with airbags inflating inside to keep me from being knocked unconscious. “I’m Ok, I’m Ok,” I wheezed, out of breath. The rebound had me hitting again and I was sliding down over the side, flailing my arms and legs to stop my fall.

  Listen, Ok, yes, it was pure luck that one of my arms wrapped around the landing gear. I hadn’t even seen the thing. But when the cable end automatically looped several times around the gear and the nanofibers basically welded the cable securely in place, there was a triumphant whoop from the lead ship’s crew. Followed by grateful and excited shouting from Reed and her crew.

  “You did it! Colonel! You did it! Thank you thank you thank you!” Reed gushed.

  Hey, no way could I tell anyone it was an accident that I accomplished the mission, right? “No problem, Reed, any time. Porter, you got her?”

  “Cable is secure, Colonel, but now we have another problem. The computer is telling me that to tow the other ship, I need an airspeed that will overstress the cable and cause it to snap.”

  Breaking my dumbass pattern, I had an answer to that dilemma. “Forget airspeed, Porter. Both the Condors are empty. Your thrust-to-weight ratio is plenty for a pure vertical ascent, even carrying another ship. Reduce your airspeed and lift us straight up. When we clear the atmosphere, you can flatten our course and build up speed to get us into a stable orbit.”

  “Sir? That’s not-”

  Skippy broke in again. “Captain Porter, Joe is correct. The Pilot’s Operating Handbook for the Condor will tell you that maneuver is impossible, because the Thuranin who programed the flight control system never considered a wild-ass stunt like this. But it can be done, I just uploaded new software into your computer.”

  “Huh,” was all Porter said in response.

  “Apparently, the Thuranin who designed that dropship never met an ignorant monkey, hee hee,” Skippy chuckled.

  “Colonel, I am ashamed I didn’t think of that,” Porter apologized.

  “Don’t be,” I replied as I felt the Condor I was attached to slowing, with the cable going taught. Our rate of descent was being cancelled. “When I started flight training, Major Desai told me my best asset was my total lack of experience, I had no ingrained habits to unlearn. You naturally think of lift in terms of airspeed.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Porter agreed. “But I won’t do that again. Rate of descent is now zero, commencing climb.”

  With Reed’s Condor dangling from its nose on the end of a cable, she had to use thrusters to stop us from spinning like a top. We were climbing, and at first all was going according to plan. Then, as our rate of climb increased, I started getting bashed against the hull. It was getting rough. “Hey, Porter, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but slow down, I’m getting tenderized here.”

  “Colonel, we don’t have the fuel for that. If I go any slower, we won’t make orbit. I can’t fly vertically all the way up,” he announced.

  “Shit,” I grunted from a particularly hard rap against the Condor’s belly. “This is a problem.”

  “Joe,” Skippy’s voice sounded worried. “Captain Porter is correct; the fuel state is growing critical. Climbing at such a steep angle is consuming fuel rapidly.”

  “If we don’t slow down,” I bashed my helmet again, and was seeing stars in my vision. “I’m going to be in very big trouble out here.”

  “Joe,” Skippy scolded me. “I am very disappointed in you. You rescued Lieutenant Reed’s crew, but now your life is in danger because of a little breeze?”

  “It is not a little breeze, Skippy.

  Reed made a suggestion. “If I open a side door, could you get to it?”

  “No way,” I reported unhappily. “It is too far-”

  “Sir?” She asked after I was silent for a long moment.

  “Give me a minute here, I’m thinking. Uh, hey! Open your main landing gear doors, Reed.”

  “Good idea, Sir,” she agreed with enthusiasm.

  It was not easy getting to one of the main landing gear, because the airstream wanted to keep me in the center of the Condor’s belly, but Reed helped by skillfully and gently tilting her Condor by using thrusters, keeping a watchful eye she did not overstress the cable. With her help, I slid back and grabbed onto one of the sturdy main landing gear, then tucked myself into the bay where the gear normally rested in flight. “I’m in. Let’s be clear about something, Fireball. Do NOT retract this landing gear, understood?”

  With me mostly protected from the screeching airstream, we climbed out of the atmosphere and into a low orbit. Once there, the crew and I transferred to Porter’s ship, and I made a quick decision to discard the damaged Condor. We could have tried bringing the Dutchman down to rendezvous with us, but at low altitude she could not jump away in case we got ambushed, and the crippled ship would have struggled to get into a docking bay on thrusters alone. So, we remotely fired nose thrusters to slow it down, and by the time we were safely aboard our fine ship, the broken Condor was burning up in the thick atmosphere.

  The fuel collection op ended with the Dutchman’s tanks only sixty-three
percent full and that worried me, but it was enough to get us to Earth with a comfortable reserve. So, we considered ourselves lucky to escape without loss of life, and jumped away to our next dangerous adventure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Our jump into the Paradise system was interesting, and by ‘interesting’ I mean ‘batshit crazy’. Once we got deep into the star system, Skippy could retake control of the Ruhar sensor network and conceal our presence from the hamster fleet, but we couldn’t prevent them from detecting the gamma ray burst of our inbound jump, so we had to get creative.

  Normally, we would jump in no closer than the system’s Oort cloud and travel to Paradise the slow way through normal space, but on this mission we didn’t have time, so we needed to jump directly into the inner system. We had three pieces of luck going for us. First, after the nice pleasant habitable planet of Paradise, the next planet outward from the star was a smallish gas giant. This world is a grayish-blue ball of gas like Neptune but smaller, and the Ruhar name for it was ‘Notol’. Because there was a big gas giant farther out in the system, and that gas giant had plenty of moons with useful raw materials like metals, the Ruhar fleet used the big planet as a refueling station and they were setting up ship servicing facilities there. This means Notol was not of much use to the fleet, so they did not have any facilities there.

  The second piece of good luck was at the time we had to jump in, Notol was just over one month away from its closest approach to Paradise, while the big gas giant with its refueling station was on the other side of the star. We could jump in on the far side of Notol and its bulk would shield our gamma rays from being seen by sensors orbiting Paradise.

  Unfortunately, Skippy knew the Ruhar fleet had a deep-space sensor platform farther out from Notol, which happened to be in position to get a clear view of our inbound gamma ray burst. Thus, the batshit crazy stunt we had to use.

  Notol has eighteen moons, most of them asteroids that got captured by the planet’s gravity. Only four of those moons were big enough for their own gravity to make them spherical, and our third piece of luck was one of these moons was on the side of Notol toward the deep-space sensor platform. “Are you sure about this, Skippy?” I asked while my hands dug into the armrests of the command chair. “You checked your math twice, three times?”

  “I checked the math a billion times, Joe, even though this math is so simple even you could do it. No, wait, what am I saying? Nothing is that simple. Anywho, I got this Joe. Trust. The. Awesomeness.”

  “Has this particular type of awesomeness ever been done before?”

  “Ever? Yes, it is not superduper uncommon, but this is the first time it has ever been attempted by a star carrier that I know of.”

  “Two things, Skippy. You using the word ‘attempted’ is not making me overflow with confidence. And technically, our rebuilt Frankenship is no longer a star carrier.”

  “Oof, Ok, Mr. Smartypants. If you want to have a technicality throwdown with me, it is on, homeboy. I used the word ‘attempted’ to be totally open and accurate with you, because no ship like this has ever performed this exact maneuver, so we won’t know if it can be done until we try it, you big jerkface. Also, although the Flying Dutchman does not look like a star carrier, with the shortened spine and lack of docking hardpoints, the structure and frame are still very much that of a star carrier. Compared to a real warship, the Dutchman is spindly and flimsy, so the-”

  “This is you making me overflow with confidence?” I asked with a nervous glance at the jump countdown timer.

  “Um, maybe I should have said ‘strong and robust’ instead of ‘spindly and flimsy’?”

  “Yeah! See, that’s how you-”

  “Although me saying that would have been total bullshit,” he chuckled. “Considering the frayed layers of used duct tape holding this ship together, ‘flimsy’ is being generous. Too late for second thoughts now, Joe. Jump in two, one, holdmybeer.”

  Maybe jumping anywhere in our Frankenship was crazy, but the truly batshit part was where we jumped. You have to understand, two of Notol’s moons were big enough to have thin atmospheres, including the moon we used as cover. The jump Skippy plotted had us emerging inside the upper layer of the moon’s atmosphere, on the side of the moon facing the planet. The bulk of the planet shielded our gamma ray burst from being seen on Paradise, and the moon concealed us from the deep-space sensors. The complication was that deep-space sensor platform would have detected gamma rays being reflected off the atmosphere of the planet, which is why we pulled the crazy stunt of coming out of a jump wormhole so close to the moon I could have leaned out an airlock and touched the damned thing.

  “Skippy!” I grunted from being flung forward against the straps as the very un-aerodynamic Flying Dutchman bored a hole through the thin clouds of nitrogen and sulphur dioxide. Before we jumped, we had accelerated the ship to beyond the escape velocity of the moon, so even if our engines failed, we could coast through the thin upper atmosphere and safely away from the rocky surface. Emerging into the air, the ship’s forward hull slammed into it like a brick wall. Star carriers were not designed to operate in the gravity well of a star system, and they sure as hell were never intended to fly like a gosh-darned dropship. Skippy had the forward defense shields on full power and still there were parts flaking and peeling off the front part of the ship. My original thought was to have the ship come out of the jump flying backwards since jump physics didn’t care about the ship’s orientation in relation to the event horizon, but Skippy convinced me most of the critical systems aboard the ship were in the aft section. If we sustained significant damage to the forward hull, that might make living aboard the ship uncomfortable for meatsacks but we could still generate power, fly and jump. If the aft section were damaged, it might be adios muchachos for all of us.

  “Whoooo-hooo! Ride ‘em cowboy!” The beer can whooped excitedly. “Yee-ha!”

  “Sir, we’ve lost several of the portside nose thrusters!” Desai warned. “She’s turning and we can’t stop the yaw.”

  “If she turns sideways to the air stream-” Porter added from the copilot couch.

  “Yeah, yeah, don’t get so excited,” Skippy huffed. “Adjusting shields to compensate. We’re good, the revised shield configuration is reversing the yaw. Yup, no problem. Oh dammit, there go two of the belly nose thrusters. I mean, there they go,” he announced as we all felt a bump, “we just kinda lost a section of hull plating. Oh, what the hell, we’re almost out of the atmosphere now.”

  It was a white-knuckle thirty seconds before Desai reported aerodynamic drag was essentially zero. “We made it, Sir,” there was a slight flutter to her voice. “Commencing first course correction.”

  I saw her share a private thumbs up with Porter, as they turned the ship to skim the rim of the gas giant planet. Skim, not touch. To gain speed and get the ship turned on course toward Gingerbread, we had to slingshot around Notol, using its gravity well to gain free velocity.

  “Stealth field status?” I asked to anyone who had that data.

  “It’s fine, Joe,” Skippy answered peevishly. “Jeez Louise, that info is right on the main display.”

  “No, Your Supreme Assholeness, the main display shows the status of the stealth field generators, and the density and shape of the field surrounding the ship. It does not, as you reminded me more than once, indicate how effective our stealth capability is. The ship could be trailing a stream of ionized particles from our passage through the atmosphere, which would point straight toward the ship like a giant neon arrow.”

  “Ugh,” Skippy was supremely disgusted. “This is what I get for trying to explain technology to a monkey. Yes, fine, Mr. Nerdface, you are correct. How the hell did you get so smart?”

  I didn’t mention that Dr. Friedlander had warned me about the possibility of an ion trail after we came out of the atmosphere. “Answer the question, please.”

  “Ok, fine. No, we are not trailing a line of ionized gas. We would be, but I ad
justed the shield frequency to de-ionize the gas particles as we passed through, as yet another sterling example of my awesomeness. Our stealth is effective, more effective than any other ship in this backwater star system, that’s for sure. Eventually, Ruhar sensors will detect an anomalous disturbance in the moon’s atmosphere but they will attribute it to volcanic activity, then they will forget about it because nobody cares. Are you happy now?”

  “Happy enough. Is the first package of missiles ready?”

  “All tubes loaded and ready,” Major Simms reported from the CIC.

  “Launch and reload. Then keep going. We need a lot of birds in flight for this op.”

  Our plan relied on a lot of missiles, but that was Ok because we had plenty aboard. We had so many missiles there wasn’t enough space in the ship’s magazines to store them, so we moved stuff around to empty out cargo bays and stuff missiles in there. Yes, if the ship took a hit to one of those poorly-protected cargo bays, the ship would go ‘Boom’ in a big way, but we’d be screwed if we took a direct hit anywhere so as Skippy said cheerily, there really was no downside.

  Our surplus of missiles came from the junkyard of shattered ships floating around the Roach Motel. Yes, all these missiles were obsolete and they didn’t all come with fancy options like functional warheads, sensors and guidance systems, but we didn’t always need those. Skippy had been able to cobble together a Frankenstein assortment of parts to create sensors and guidance systems, and for our initial mission in the Paradise system, we did not need warheads. The first volleys of missiles did not need warheads, they only needed speed and stealth, for where their explosive charges used to be, they each carried one end of a microwormhole.

  The purpose of that first cluster of missiles was to provide remote sensors, far from the ship. We knew roughly where the Kristang ship was likely to be, or Skippy had the three most likely locations calculated, but we could not get the Dutchman there fast enough without violating stealth, and we needed to know exactly where that damned ship was. Our missiles could get the microwormholes in position far more quickly than the ship could have, but they still took a long time to fly to the target area, and then Skippy the Once-Again-Magnificent would have to slowly and painstakingly begin the process of passively scanning a still-huge region of space for one small and stealthy ship.