“You are afraid, because you are not stupid, Renee. If the pathogen gets loose aboard the Dutchman, and I can’t design and manufacture a practical cure, you monkeys will be in big, huge, major trouble. You do not need to worry, and I will explain every step of the enhanced decon process as you go through it, non?”
“Thank you, that will be very helpful. What is your good news?” Giraud asked, irritated with himself for having lost focus in an unsafe situation.
“The good news is, we jumped that Final Crushing Blow to the Enemy’s Spirit into the local star. Well, heh heh, not quite into the star. More like just above the photosphere, so those hateful MFers could experience a moment of pure pee-in-their-pants terror as a solar flare rises up to burn them to a crisp. Hmm. Jumping ships into stars, or planets, or just above so the crew lives long enough to know they are one hundred percent, thoroughly skuh-reeewed is kind of getting to be my signature move. Man, I should create a name for that, so people will understand the implied awesomeness. Maybe I’ll simply call it the ‘Skippy’, what do you think?” he began muttering to himself. “Yeah, naming it after myself will let people know right away they can’t possibly fully appreciate the awesomeness, but they-Oh, that won’t work. Stupid monkeys never give me the credit I deserve. I work and slave away in the background, and all monkeys see is the easy magic tricks I do. Ahh,” he sighed. “Greatness is never appreciated like it should-”
“Skippy!” Giraud bit his lip to keep from laughing. “That is good news. How long until the Ruhar detect the gamma ray burst of the Spirit jumping?”
“What? Never. Ah, not never. I have control of the central sensor detection grids in this system, but there are isolated ships I was not able to infiltrate because the speed of light is such a huge pain in the ass. Those ships will report their findings to the fleet authorities on Paradise, and at that point, the code I wrote to suppress the sensor grid will have to erase itself and cause a wide-spread glitch in the system, or the hamsters will get suspicious. As it is, I expect a team of hamster code monkeys to be tearing their fur out for weeks trying to understand how such a serious glitch could have happened,” he chuckled gleefully. “Hee hee, I am such an asshole sometimes. Anyway, you have plenty of time to get back to the Dutchman, and for the ship to jump safely away.”
“You have thought of everything. You are truly the Emperor of Excellence.”
“For realz?” Skippy asked sharply. “That wasn’t some sort of Napoleon joke?”
“For real. And we French do not joke about Napoleon.”
“Oh, I should have known that. Thank you, Renee.”
“You are most welcome,” Giraud replied with sincerity, grateful the Merry Band of Pirates did not have to worry about a powerful and very pissed-off Kristang destroyer. “If that was your good news, I cannot imagine your great news.”
“The great news is truly great! Now that destroyer is not occupying a big part of my attention, I have time to sing with you. How about a singalong, let’s start with the French classic ‘La vie en rose’. Des yeux qui font baisser les miens, come on, Renee, sing it with me!”
Because some Ruhar ship was sure to detect and report the gamma ray burst of the Spirit being jumped into hell, we couldn’t wait long before we jumped away also. We got the two dropships aboard and secured quickly, then we prepared to jump away, a long jump far outside the Paradise system.
Right before we jumped, I switched the main bridge display to a feed from Ruhar satellites above Paradise, to get one last look at that planet where over a hundred thousand humans were stranded. At first, I wanted a view of areas I was familiar with, like the village of Teskor, which had grown quite a bit since I was there. The Launcher complex at the equator was under heavy cloud cover from the thunderstorms that swept in every afternoon. I could have snuck a look at the Kristang jail where four of us were held, or the warehouse where I found Skippy, or the logistics base where we met Simms and Giraud, or even one of the maser projector sites that had been reactivated by Perkins and her team. That would have been too much nostalgia for me, bringing up memories and emotions I didn’t have time for right then. So I set the display for a long-range view of the hemisphere that included the continent of Lemuria, and just watched as the jump timer counted down. This might be the last time I ever saw that mostly pleasant world, and I stared fixated at the image, drinking in sunlight reflecting off the bright blue seas, the white puffy cloud tops and the shadows they cast across dark green forest and the lighter shades of meadows and rolling farmland.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Adams whispered from beside my command chair.
“Ah,” I reached up to blot away a tear that was forming at the corner of one eye, before I looked back and up at her. “A lot of memories there.”
She squeezed my shoulder with one hand, an intimate gesture that felt completely natural. Adams and I had put boots on the ground there with UNEF, when we had dreams of being a bad-ass force that would kick humanity’s enemy the Ruhar off the surface. Instead, we had been fumbling peacekeepers, realizing too late we were fighting on the wrong side of the war. Patrolling in the jungles of Nigeria had wiped away any silly boyish illusions I had about military service, but Paradise is where I really grew up, I think.
Adams and I had been there, and we had been back on the surface during the mission to help Perkins reactivate a network of maser projectors. Adams and I had history there, a history that did not need any words to express. I reached back and squeezed her hand, then she offered a fist and I bumped it solemnly. “Those people,” she whispered, “think they’re cut off from Earth forever. That human life on Earth may not exist anymore.”
“Yeah,” I breathed heavily. “If there were anything we could do for them-”
“Someday,” she declared with fierce determination. “No matter how long it takes. Semper Fidelis.”
“Never give up, never surrender?” I replied with a ghost of a smile. The problem was the only way we could bring people from Paradise to Earth was if our secret was exposed, at which point Earth might be a cloud of loosely-organized rocks drifting around the Sun.
“Never give up,” she agreed. “Never surrender.”
Then we ejected a modified flight recorder buoy and jumped outside the system. After we jumped, the buoy we left behind would wait twenty minutes, in case a Ruhar ship jumped in to investigate our gamma ray burst and the nearby one left by the Spirit. The buoy would then transmit a message that the ship the Ruhar had no doubt detected burning up in the outer layer of the star, was the ship that tried to bring infected Keepers to Paradise, and that mission was cancelled and over. The buoy also contained a detailed chemical analysis of the pathogen Skippy had run while the Keeper’s dropships were still in flight. That might help ease some of the restrictions against humans on Paradise, but our people would not truly be safe until we delivered a vaccine and cure, if Skippy could do that. The Ruhar might not believe our message about destroying the Spirit, because they didn’t know who we were and we couldn’t tell them. Besides, just because we killed one ship of murderous assholes did not mean the Ruhar were safe, some other group of Kristang could deliver the bioweapon to Paradise, or wherever humans lived with Ruhar.
With that depressing thought, and the last image of Paradise lingering in my retinas, I needed something to distract me from seeing the display was now showing only empty interstellar space. Rising from my chair, I announced “It’s time to meet those idiot Keepers. Gunny, you’re with me.”
“Sir,” she did not move, blocking my way. “Much as I’d love to slap those Keepers around, I don’t think it’s right.”
“Adams,” I cocked my head. “You don’t understand. I’m not inviting you to give them a beat-down. I need you there to make sure I don’t give them a beat-down.”
The airlock cycled and I strode into the docking bay, Adams right beside me. The two captured Dragon dropships were resting securely in their cradles, without the usual umbilical cables hooked up, and with their
flight capability and weapon systems disabled. By disabled, I mean physically we had removed any components that might create a danger to us, or to the Keepers injuring themselves. I wanted the Keepers to not have a way to hurt us, and I wanted them to know for certain they had no possibility of harming us or escaping, so they would not waste time and effort defiantly and uselessly fighting back against us.
“Ready?” I asked Adams without turning to look at her. We were wearing Kristang armored suits, sealed up to prevent us from becoming infected. The docking bay was cut off from the rest of the ship, its air supply and water being recycled independently. The only way in or out was through two secure airlocks we controlled. One airlock lead to a chamber that scrubbed the exterior of suits clean, with caustic chemicals, ferocious nanomachines and flamethrowers. Anything organic on the surface of the suits, even in the tiny gaps of joints, would be dissolved then burned to dust, while the suits would only be mildly cooked. The assault teams led by Smythe and Giraud were going through the decontamination chamber now, two of them at a time.
After the dropships were secured, Smythe had led his people through the airlock, and Skippy released the zip-ties binding the Keepers. A gentle stimulant gas was pumped into the dropship cabins, and soon the Keepers were stirring, frightened, confused and angry. By the time I walked over to stand between the back ramps of the dropships, the still somewhat groggy Keepers had lowered the ramps and a half dozen of them were angrily confronting the four armor-suited pirates who were pointing shotguns at them. As I approached, one of the pirates saluted me, a gesture we usually dispensed with aboard ship. “Colonel,” Lt. Williams acknowledged me, and I saluted him back. The exterior of our Kristang powered armored suits had a chameleon feature that could be manipulated by the wearer, or by Skippy. For our encounter with the Keepers, my suit’s exterior had been modified to include symbols for UNEF, the American flag, my eagle rank insignia, plus text spelling out ‘US Army’ and my last name.
“Colonel?” One of the Keepers looked at me suspiciously. They already knew we were humans wearing Kristang armor because our faceplates were transparent. He stiffened and saluted me, announcing “I am Colonel Chisolm, you are,” his eyes narrowed as he looked between my nametag and my face, illuminated by lights rimming my faceplate. “Bishop? The Barney guy?” He guessed with a mixture of shock and disgust. “You’re that publicity stunt colonel from Paradise. Why are you still wearing that rank insignia?”
That remark got me hot under the collar, or helmet to be accurate. “You’re a colonel now?” I barked at him, my amplified voice booming in the docking bay. “Last we heard, you were a captain. And you left the service, so you’re nothing now. I should call you Colonel Goddamn Sanders, you chickenshit. You lost the honor of wearing a uniform when you betrayed your own people.”
“You, wait,” Chisolm got a puzzled look that overrode the redness of anger on his face. “You left. You,” he snapped his fingers. “Yeah, you stole a Dodo and left Paradise. We all thought you were dead.”
“Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” I bit back a harsher reply.
“You’re still not a legit colonel,” he crossed his arms and looked to his people, more of whom were recovered enough to stumble down the back ramps. The Keepers nodded in agreement, clearly Chisolm was the de facto leader of that group of fanatical idiots.
“I have a Thuranin starship,” I pointed to the deck. “And a dozen nukes. And a cargo bay stuffed full of ship-killer missiles. And a team of Special Operations troops and pilots under my command. My authority comes straight from UNEF Command on Earth.”
“Bullshit,” Chisolm retorted but his eyes flickered with uncertainty.
“You’ve been to Earth?” Another Keeper asked in a British accent, followed by a guilty look at Chisolm.
That is interesting, I thought. The bogus Keeper colonel’s control of his team was not as secure as he pretended. Having the team’s mission to Paradise intercepted by a group of lowly humans must have shaken their confidence in him and themselves. I needed to remind myself that these Keepers knew nothing about the Merry Band of Pirates and the status of Earth, although would anything I said matter to them? In front of me were the most fanatical of the Keepers, chosen for the mission to infect Paradise because they could be trusted not to be change their minds when confronted with reality on the ground. “Yes, we have. I have been back to Earth twice. Most of this crew,” I gestured to Williams and his team, “never served on Paradise.”
“That’s true,” Williams added, his shotgun not wavering. “I joined the ship at Earth. I have only been back once, but we’re on our way home.’
“We are going home, after,” I corrected him, “we confirm the lizard op to wipe out the population of Paradise is over.”
“Excuse me, Colonel Bishop,” the British Keeper stepped away from Chisolm, but not toward me or my people holding shotguns. Wisely, he held his hands up away from his body. “We heard the wormhole back to Earth was shut down, dormant.”
“That wormhole is not closed,” I announced, prompting a gasp from the Keepers. They murmured among themselves while Adams spoke over a private channel.
“Should you have told them that?” She asked with a tone of reproach.
“One way or another, Gunny, they sure as hell are never telling the outside galaxy about our secret. And the fact that we are able to fly back to Earth will tell them that wormhole is not really dormant.”
“Good point, Sir,” she acknowledged.
“Joe,” Skippy whispered in my ear, “that British guy is Lieutenant Nigel Green.”
I enabled my helmet speakers again. “You’re Nigel Green?” I asked. The guy nodded with a glance at Chisolm. None of them were wearing nametags or were carrying any form of identification. “Your family back home is alive and well,” I recalled from the briefing packet Skippy provided before the two dropships reached the Flying Dutchman. From facial recognition, the beer can knew the identity of the Keepers, and he fed into my earpiece details about their families and friends on Earth. “Your sister Susan had a baby boy she named Trevor after one of your grandfathers.”
“He’s lying, Green,” Chisolm warned. “Don’t listen to him. You don’t have any proof, do you?” He said that last while glaring at me.
“Joe,” Skippy whispered in my ear again, “I have photos of the baby, but photos can be faked. It doesn’t matter anyway, these people are true close-minded fanatics. Facts will not sway their minds because they are desperately clinging to their beliefs, it is the only thing they have left. You have to appeal to them emotionally.”
“I know that, Skippy, and you’re wrong. I don’t have to do anything for these idiots.” Turning my external speakers back on, I addressed Green first. “I do have proof, but you won’t believe it. The proof you will believe is when you see your nephew for yourself. As our SEALS team leader,” I jerked a thumb at Williams, “said, we are headed home.” Stepping forward, I got close enough to Chisolm to touch him. To his credit, he didn’t flinch though I was taller and encased in a mech suit. “There are over a hundred thousand humans stranded on Paradise. Loyal soldiers smartened up and accepted the cold reality that we got suckered and used by the Kristang, that we were fighting on the wrong side of the war. No!” I exclaimed as Chisolm opened his mouth to protest. “You shut your mouth,” I followed that with a powered-armor jab to his chest with an index finger. It knocked him back but only made him angry. “The loyal troops on Paradise are stuck there, while you, you traitorous, dumb motherfuckers get to go home. You are going home to Earth, you get to see your families again. It makes me sick,” I said without exaggeration, as I could taste bile rising in my throat and I had to blink away tears of frustrated rage at the injustice. “I have friends on Paradise, good people who will never get a chance to go to Earth and see their loved ones. It disgusts me that your treason gives you a free ticket home. I would like to toss every one of you traitors out an airlock, but I won’t do that,” I jabbed Chis
olm in the chest again. It had to hurt, and he was starting to react by taking small steps backward. He knew he couldn’t hurt me or stop me from hurting him. I so much wanted to do a Darth Vader move on Chisolm, hold him up off the deck by his neck and squeeze with my powered gloves. “I can’t do that, because I am a soldier and I follow a code of conduct.”
“Colonel,” Adams spoke aloud, reaching out a hand to restrain my arm. Chisolm must have an angry bruise on his chest.
“Colonel Bishop,” Green called for my attention, and I turned toward him. “You said something about an operation to wipe out the population of Paradise? What operation?”
“Yours,” I stated simply. “That’s why you were out there.”
“We,” Green’s eyes shifted rapidly between me and Chisolm. “We weren’t doing that. Our mission was to infiltrate the planet, to gather intelligence and prepare for the Kristang to retake the planet.”
I laughed bitterly. “The hamsters have a full battlegroup based at Paradise now, and they’re building a Strategic Defense network in orbit. After that SD net is complete, the Goddamned lizards will have a hell of a fight to even get close to the surface. Besides, your lizard friends are in a full-scale civil war, they didn’t tell you about that?” I added as I saw Chisolm’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “Yeah, the lizards will happily be busy killing each other for a decade, most likely. The real purpose of your operation,” my focus was again on Green, “was to infect humans on Paradise, who would spread the infection to the Ruhar. Your lizard masters planned to get revenge on UNEF who broke away from their control, and they planned to make the planet unable to support a battlegroup. If even a quarter of the hamsters there died, the rest would be screaming for their government to get them away from the planet, and no hamster would ever want to move to a diseased world. The Ruhar government would need to quarantine the place, and they would pull back their battlegroup.”
Mavericks (Expeditionary Force Book 6) Page 51