What the satellites saw was a Maxolhx frigate detaching from a star carrier, and going through the wormhole. Sending the Condor through alone was not something I wanted to do, but it was standard procedure for the battlegroup so we didn’t have a choice. With a cloud of satellites watching our every move, Skippy was not able to request the network report what was on the other side, because the satellites might be able to detect backscatter from the data feed. Since the Maxolhx could not request data from the Elder wormhole network, we could not risk the satellites seeing us do that, damn it. The Condor was going in blind, without a real starship’s ability to jump away from danger when it reached jump distance from the spatial distortion of the event horizon. My anxiety about the situation was eased slightly by Skippy’s declaration that not much was on the other side, and the Ruhar were certainly not going to interfere with hostile senior-species warships.
Everything went according to plan, until the Condor sent back a message that on the other side, there was a Ruhar ship approaching the wormhole.
“Shit!” I pounded a fist on the command chair armrest. “What the hell is it doing there? There is nothing to look at on the other side of Goalpost!” That was true, according to Skippy. The other end of the wormhole was in the middle of nowhere, the closest star system was more than six lightyears away. There was no reason for a Ruhar ship to be there, no good reason. No way could a Ruhar ship travel six, or even two, lightyears.
“How close is it?” I tried to judge distance from the display, but the data feed from the Condor was low-bandwidth due to distortion of the signal traveling through the wormhole.
Nagatha answered before the CIC crew could run the numbers. “The Ruhar ship will be in detection range within seven minutes. If we wait more than six minutes to go through the wormhole, that ship will see our true form, before the hologram is able to re-establish its coverage around us.” Helpfully, she set up a countdown timer at the bottom of the display. It read six minutes, twelve seconds. Eleven, ten-
“Colonel,” Reed called from her station. “If we are to engage that ship, we need to take Valkyrie through the wormhole. That Condor can’t survive attacking a Ruhar warship.”
“Joe-” Skippy started to say.
“Damn it!” I exploded. “The last thing we want out here is to make more enemies. I still hope that someday, we might become allies of the Ruhar. Blowing up an innocent ship is just, wrong. It’s, dishonorable.”
“Sir,” Reed turned around to look at me. “The Ruhar did not act honorably when the Alien Legion was lured into that deathtrap.”
“Uh-”
She folded her arms across her chest. “You did not read Skippy’s report about Perkins and the Mavericks?”
“I was,” I looked at the display to avid the accusing eyes around me. “Busy, you know?”
“Ugh,” Skippy was disgusted. “If you didn’t waste so much time playing stupid video games, you could have-”
“Ok, Ok!” I threw my hands up. “I don’t have time to read the report right now anyway. Could we,” I rubbed my chin while I thought. “Could we disable that ship, and capture it?”
Major Kapoor squashed that idea. “Colonel, my team is not prepared for a boarding operation,” he explained with dismay. “We don’t know anything about the target ship, and-”
“Ok, yeah,” I held up a hand to stop him from saying anything more. I had one eye on the countdown clock, and time was not on our side. Just to get a STAR team into powered armor and loaded aboard dropships would twenty minutes, if we rushed and skipped all the safety checks. We could not afford to be risking our greatly-depleted special operations team, especially not in an operation thrown together at the last minute, against an unknown threat. “Bad idea, let’s not do that. Shit, I do not want to make enemies of the Ruhar. XO,” I made a snap decision. “Recall the Condor, get it back here. We’ll take it aboard and get out of here, try again at another location. Pilot, move us back to jump distance. Signal the Dutchman to follow us.”
“Sir,” Reed said, louder than she needed to. She was back aboard Valkyrie, temporarily acting as my executive officer. “We can’t do that. The Maxolhx wouldn’t retreat just because of one Ruhar ship. We can’t do anything the Maxolhx would not do, or they won’t believe we are their battlegroup.”
“Belay that,” I called to the pilot, and he held up both hands to show he was not touching the controls. A glance at the countdown clock told me we were running out of time. “Oh hell, I guess we’re doing this. Take us through the wormhole. Valkyrie will engage that ship. I do not like-”
“JOE!” Skippy roared. “If you will shut your crumb-catcher for one freakin’ minute, I have a better idea.”
“Make it fast, Skippy. If you had a better idea, why didn’t you say-”
“I have been trying to get your attention, but you were all blah blah blah as usual. Listen, knucklehead, that Ruhar ship is a picket, it has almost no weapons. I will explain later what it is doing there, but my suggestion is you simply have the Condor order that ship to go away. Our Condor is supposed to be a Maxolhx frigate, remember? The Ruhar have been instructed to stay out of this battlegroup’s way.”
“That’s it?” I was, to put it mildly, skeptical of his rosy scenario. “We tell it to shoo, and it flies away?”
“Yes,” he sniffed. “Although I suggest we order it to jump away, at least a distance of five lightminutes.”
“XO?” I looked to her for advice.
Reed gave me a shrug, just as surprised as I was. “We should give it a try, Sir.”
“Nagatha?” I called her, even though she was still aboard the Dutchman. No way was I going to ask the Valkyrie’s AI for advice.
“I concur with Skippy, Colonel Bishop,” she answered. “Both with his very reasonable suggestion, and with his observation that you really should shut your crumb-catcher and listen more often.”
Hearing Nagatha say that stung almost as badly as knowing she was right about me. “XO, signal the Condor to order that ship to jump away. Make the wording of the order nasty, the way the kitties would do it.”
“Nasty, got it,” Reed acknowledged with a smile, as she strode back toward her station, and snapped her fingers to the crew.
We waited a tense minute, while the countdown clock approached zero. The Condor sent the order, then repeated it. There was no answer from the Ruhar ship, and I began to fear Skippy was wrong. Then, the Ruhar responded meekly that they would comply. Thirty eight seconds later, that ship jumped away.
Before taking the Valkyrie and Dutchman through the wormhole, we waited until the Condor detected the gamma ray burst from where the Ruhar had jumped to. It was six and a half lightminutes away, the captain of that ship had not taken any chances. That was far enough that the sensors of the Ruhar ship probably would not see through our stealth fields and holograms, as they reformed after the distortion of passing through the wormhole. Just in case we were wrong about that, I ordered the Condor to maneuver so it was between the Ruhar ship and the wormhole’s event horizon, blocking the Ruhar ship’s view.
None of us allowed ourselves to take a deep breath until we went through the wormhole, re-established the stealth fields and holograms, recovered the Condor, and jumped six lighthours away. Even then, my hands were shaking, like we had dodged a bullet. Because we sort of had. “Skippy,” I asked. “Plot a course to another emergence point, one that Ruhar ship can’t get to from where it is.” That ship had missed its opportunity to go through at that location, so it would need to jump to another point before it could go home.
“Course is plotted and loaded into the navigation system, I have transferred the data to the Flying Dutchman. Nagatha reports they will be ready to jump again in fourteen minutes.”
“Tell her not to rush, we can’t afford to break anything.”
“Done.”
“Hey, Skippy,” I sat back in the command chair. “I am sorry that I didn’t listen to you. I was under pressure-”
�
�You are always under pressure, Joe,” he sniffed, unappeased by my lame apology.
“No excuses. I didn’t listen, because I may have gotten kind of arrogant, and-”
“May have? Kind of?”
“Ok, so I am-”
“Joe, no matter what trifling things you accomplish out here, you are a filthy, ignorant monkey. There is never any excuse for you being arrogant about anything.”
“I greatly regret that my mere existence has soiled the fabric of the Universe, and I humbly ask for your forgiveness, Oh Greatest of Great Ones.”
“Hmmf,” he was not convinced.
“While I contemplate throwing myself into a black hole to atone for my sins, could you please tell us why that Ruhar ship was waiting on this end of the wormhole?”
“Oh, sure,” he sighed. “What the hell. It is listening for a ghost, Joe.”
“A what?” I assumed he was messing with me.
“A missing starship. It’s a long story.”
“Everyone else is busy,” I waved my hand to the crew around me, all intently working at their still-unfamiliar stations. “But I’m not. I’ve got time. How is a starship missing way the hell out here?”
“It went missing on the journey back from Earth, when the Ruhar raided your planet,” he explained. “The raid was supposed to be a quick hit-and-run. Remember, the Ruhar were not certain that Earth was the target for the Kristang to establish a staging base beyond the newly-opened wormhole. They, or actually the Jeraptha, had to conduct an extensive recon to determine where the Thuranin were taking the White Wind clan. The initial phase of the mission was supposed to be purely recon, taking no risks because they were so far from a support base. The Jeraptha established a forward staging and refueling base at Procyon, and we know the Thuranin set up a similar base at Wolf 359.”
“Ok, so what happened?”
“What happened was the Jeraptha being addicted to gambling as usual. The beetles were against raiding Earth, the whole plan was a bright idea by the Ruhar federal government, which later was thrown out of power because the raid was exposed as an expensive waste of time. Anyway, the Jeraptha admiral in command of the raiding force saw a chance for juicy action, and he planned an attack on the enemy base. So, he split his force. He shuffled ships around so most of the Jeraptha escorts were crammed onto two star carriers, and they went to Wolf 359. The other star carriers, with all of the Ruhar ships, waited to complete refueling at Procyon, before setting course for Earth. It was a big risk, and the admiral expected a big pay-off if he was successful.”
“Was he?” At first, I had been only mildly interested in the story of the ghost ship. Mostly, I asked Skippy about it because he loved to talk, so listening to him was a way to make up for my rude behavior. Now, I was intrigued.
“Eh, sort of. The Battle of Wolf 359 was a clear tactical victory for the Jeraptha, they achieved complete surprise and destroyed eighteen Thuranin ships, including two star carriers, while losing only two of their own ships. Strategically, the battle was a loss. The battle alerted the Thuranin that they faced opposition, and most of their force was already on its way to Earth. After the battle, the Thuranin ordered their force to increase speed, that is why the Ruhar raiding force had so little time at your world, before they were forced to withdraw.”
“Huh.” The Ruhar were mostly embarrassed by their raid and didn’t like to talk about it, so I had not heard many details about the operation. “How is this ghost ship involved?”
“After the raid, the Jeraptha retreated to Procyon, to refuel and refit their ships. But, they had not completed repairing battle damage before the Thuranin arrived. Those little green pinheads were pissed about the surprise attack at Wolf 359, mostly they were embarrassed because their Kristang clients knew how badly they’d been beaten. There was a battle at Procyon, the Jeraptha had a guard force so the Thuranin could only harass the beetles, but the Jeraptha were forced to jump away before they finished repairing and restocking their ships. The worst loss of the battle was the Thuranin destroyed a support ship that contained many vital supplies and spare parts the Jeraptha needed. On the way back to the wormhole we call Goalpost, their ships suffered multiple engineering failures, plus the Thuranin assigned two of their star carriers to chase and harass the beetles. The Thuranin ships only continued the pursuit for two weeks, but the Jeraptha didn’t know how long the danger would last, and they split up their force. So, the star carriers of the beetles became separated, and flew toward Goalpost as best they could. One star carrier nearly failed just about two lightyears from Goalpost, and was forced to eject the Ruhar ships it was carrying. The beetles took as many Ruhar aboard the star carrier as they could, with the remaining Ruhar crammed aboard three of their own ships. One ship, a cruiser with four hundred people aboard, was never heard from again. The three ships had been jumping in formation, but one time, the cruiser failed to arrive at the rendezvous point. Two of those ships were later rescued, half a lightyear from where the star carrier dropped them.”
“Wow,” I shuddered, because I knew what it was like to be aboard a dying ship in interstellar space. “So, the Ruhar have been sending ships out to search for the missing cruiser?”
“No. The Jeraptha conducted a brief search, before the cruiser was declared missing. The Ruhar will not risk sending another ship into empty space, so they only send ships through several times a year, to send out messages, and listen for signals. The Ruhar military do not like to leave anyone behind.”
“Yeah,” Reed muttered from her station. She had read Skippy’s report of how the Ruhar had been quick to sell of humans on Fresno during the Alien Legion’s deathtrap mission. That had given her a new perspective of the hamsters. “Unless the people left behind are humans.”
“That, unfortunately,” Skippy admitted, “appears to be true.”
We jumped to another emergence point and Skippy screwed with Goalpost, to bring us out the end of an isolated wormhole six hundred lightyears away. Our two ships coasted away from the event horizon, and when Skippy shut down the wormhole behind us, the ghostly glow of the wormhole snapped off, leaving us in empty interstellar space. “XO,” I called to Reed. “Signal to the Dutchman to remove their stealth antenna scaffolding, and get a crew working to disassemble ours.”
“Right away. Uh, Sir?”
“What?”
“Congratulations,” she smiled at me. Not the broad, triumphant, fist-pumping grin she should have enjoyed. We had lost too many people for that free-wheeling type of celebration. “We did it, again. This wasn’t the first time we succeeded when I thought we had no chance, and I hope it isn’t the last time. Or,” her face got a pained expression and she looked at the ceiling.
“I know that you mean, Fireball. Thank you. Yeah, I hope we never have to do the impossible again. But, it’s nice to know that we can.”
“I don’t to spoil the party, but,” Reed wiped a hand across her face to brush her bangs out of her eyes. “We stopped that battlegroup from getting to Earth. The Maxolhx will soon know their ships disappeared on the way to Earth, and they’ll send more ships.”
“Yeah, and that’s not our only problem. The Rindhalu, and the Maxolhx, may have Elder AIs working with them,” I reminded her with a weary sigh. Plus, I reminded myself, Adams was still in a coma. Smythe was intermittently awake, but he had not been lucid when I spoke with him. Skippy was making progress with adapting Maxolhx nanomedicine to human physiology, but he warned me not to get overly optimistic yet.
The Gateway wormhole was still under a blockade, so we couldn’t go home, or even warn Earth about the situation.
Oh, and if all that was not enough for me to worry about, we had another threat potentially looming over our heads. The galaxy was surrounded by some type of energy shield or barrier. While Skippy had not been able to tell me what that barrier was designed to do, he did think the Elders may have ascended to escape a threat from beyond the Milky Way. A threat that had scared the freakin’ Elders into leaving be
hind their physical existence.
Crap. I had enough shit to deal with already.
“Sir,” Reed asked. “What do we do now?”
“Now, Reed?” I thought for a moment, and became aware that everyone on the bridge was looking at me. We now had an upgraded Thuranin star carrier, and a bad-ass senior-species battlecruiser. But our little pirate fleet was alone in the galaxy, and she was right. All we had accomplished was to buy time for Earth. The clock was still counting down to Armageddon for our species.
Two starships could not stop the destruction of Earth.
But we could do a lot of damage before we went down fighting. “I don’t know about you, but I aim to misbehave.”
She didn’t get that reference. “Sir?”
“Reed,” I sat up straighter in the command chair. “Enough of this sneaking around shit. Let’s go kick some ass.”
THE END
Author’s note:
Thank you for reading one of my books! It took years to write my first three books, I had a job as a business manager for an IT company so I wrote at night, on weekends and during vacations. While I had many ideas for books over the years, the first one I ever completed was ‘Aces’ and I sort of wrote that book for my at-the-time teenage nieces. If you read ‘Aces’, you can see some early elements of the Expeditionary Force stories; impossible situations, problem-solving, clever thinking and some sarcastic humor.
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