SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  “There are two critical factors, Joe," he corrected me. "How much oxygen the landing party has in their suits, and how long the Kristang intend to remain here? Assuming Colonel Chang orders the landing party to lay down, rest, and conserve oxygen, they should have enough in their suits for thirty two hours. Considering that they will need to walk back out to the dropship, and during that time they will be increasing their oxygen usage, thirty hours is the practical limit. As to the Kristang, from their communications, I have determined they are in this system because they were dropped off by a Thuranin star carrier that is going in a different direction, and they are waiting to be picked up by a different star carrier in thirty six hours. The Kristang are here to practice fleet maneuvers, and for a refueling exercise. The support ship is capable of extracting fuel from the atmosphere of a gas giant planet, its tanks are now almost full, so it will not be going through the actual fuel extraction and refining entire process, which typically takes six to eight days for the Kristang. For this exercise, the support ship will only practice lowering its refueling line into the atmosphere and maintaining a stable position in orbit. The other ships will be conducting war game exercises, I do not have the details, as they have not been included in ship to ship transmissions."

  “Thirty six hours? That’s too late, uh, wait, if they’re going to be picked up by the Thuranin, though, they’d want to be at the rendezvous point plenty ahead of time?” For our landing party, I wanted plenty of cushion on their oxygen supply.

  “Absolutely. The Thuranin have zero patience for stragglers, their star carriers do not wait for anyone, sometimes including other Thuranin ships. They have been known to leave behind Kristang ships that have been as little as ten minutes late to a rendezvous. I expect the Kristang will want to be certain to arrive at the rendezvous point at least four hours ahead of time, so they should depart here ten or twelve hours ahead of time."

  I made a long, low whistle of dismay. "Whoooo, that is cutting it very close. Thirty hours of oxygen for the landing team, and the Kristang will be here for another twenty four to twenty six hours?"

  "The math is brutal, yes."

  "Can we get a message to the landing party?"

  "Not from here at the moment, but in roughly two hours, we and the moon will be in position to send a tight-beam burst transmission, with minimal risk of detection by the Kristang. Unless, of course, there is a Kristang ship between us and the moon at the time."

  "We're going to wait, sir?" Simms asked skeptically.

  "Skippy, what are our chances of taking on seven Kristang ships? Five warships, right," I asked hopefully, "we don't count the troop transport or the support ship?"

  "Do not ignore those two lesser combatants, Colonel Joe, they are equipped with missiles and masers, and four of the troop transport's dropships also carry missiles. The Kristang could hurt us badly in a fight, a star carrier's best defense is to run away. I do not like the odds of us engaging seven ships. There is also the problem that other Kristang ships, I do not yet have a count, are waiting at the edge of this star system. They could quickly be brought in as reinforcements."

  "This isn't a simple standup fight," I explained to Simms, "we would be vulnerable while we're standing still to recover the landing party. And as soon as the Kristang see what we're doing, they for sure will target the landing party, we won't be able to protect them. We wait. We send a signal to the landing party in about two hours, and we wait for the Kristang to go away. It sucks, but that's what we do, we wait."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We waited. It did suck. Right at the two hour and three minute mark, we shot a communications maser toward the moon, advising the landing party about the situation, the rough timelines for us to recover them, and ordering them not risk sending a reply. Then we waited some more, a lot more.

  After my duty shift on the bridge was over, I surrendered the chair to Sergeant Adams. Part of me wanted to stay in the chair for the full twenty six hours, to not miss a second while my crew stretched out their dwindling oxygen supply. The crew I had ordered to the surface, and put in danger, the crew I was responsible for. Needing something to do, I went to the gym and ran on a treadmill, headphones on and not in a mood for chit chat, other people in the gym left me alone. Following an hour of sweating on the treadmill, I took a shower, got a snack from the galley, and went to my office. Skippy pinged me through my zPhone, that meant he wanted to talk privately. Putting in my zPhone earpiece, I said "Hey, Skippy, more bad news?"

  "Since 'news' is by definition new information, there is no news. The situation has not changed."

  From the display on my iPad, I knew that already. It still felt good to have Skippy verify what I was seeing. "All right, what's up?"

  "This is a conversation perhaps best conducted in private, Joe."

  "Ah. Got it." I pinged the CIC crew, to let them know I was going to my cabin. Once there, I closed the door behind me, and sat down on the bed. The crew knew not to disturb me in my cabin, without calling me first. "What is it?"

  "Joe, I know this will not be a pleasant conversation."

  "Let me guess, you're going to tell me that I need to consider abandoning Chang's team, in order to continue the mission."

  "Um, yes?" His voice carried genuine surprise.

  "Sacrifice a few soldiers, to preserve most of the crew, and the ship."

  "Uh huh," he said slowly. "I'm kind of at a loss for words here, Joe, I was prepared for a long argument, and now I got nothing."

  "Don't be an ass, Skippy. You think I haven't considered that I may have to do that? Sit here silently, while the clock runs out on their oxygen supply, and they choke to death? I have considered that, I'm the commander. That means I have to put the mission first. It sucks, it absolutely sucks, I hate it. I'm the commander, it's my job. You think about this; we're out here for you, this is your mission, we're risking our lives for you."

  "Whoa. That's BS. You're putting all the burden on me, and you're wrong. Yeah, I need you not to risk the ship. You humans need to make sure other species do not discover that you are roaming around the galaxy."

  Damn, I had actually hurt his feelings. "That came out kind of harsh, Skippy, I didn't mean it that way. You saved our planet, and we have a deal, and I'm going to keep to that deal, even if it costs lives. I want you to understand that."

  "I do understand it, Joe."

  "Good. I have thought about this a lot, Skippy. If we don't have a realistic chance to recover the landing party without undue risks to the ship, then I am simply going to face the facts. It's plain and simple, Skippy, I can't afford to get emotional about command decisions. So, yes, I have already decided we will abandon Chang's team, if we have to. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

  "Joe, occasionally I am confronted with the fact that you are not only the good-natured dope who I joke around with. I am reminded that you shot down two Whales in cold blood, killing almost a thousand sentient beings. And that under your command, we jumped fourteen Kristang starships inside a planet, killing their entire crews. That doesn't include the seventy eight Thuranin of their ship's original crew. Or the Kristang who died when you nuked that asteroid."

  "Your point is what?" Occasionally, I was reminded that Skippy was an AI built by a civilization so far advanced, they would consider humans to be bugs, at best. He acted friendly to us, and we needed him to continue to be friendly. My most important job was not commanding the ship, not leading the crew, not making critical decisions. The most important thing I did aboard the Dutchman was making sure Skippy enjoyed having us around. If Skippy ever got bored with insulting me and busting my balls, we would be in trouble. Odd as it is to think about it, my relationship with that arrogant little shithead was humanity's greatest asset.

  "My point, I guess, is that I came into this discussion assuming I needed to force you to consider an agonizing decision, and you had already done that. I underestimated you."

  "Thank you, Skippy."

  "Of course, most
of the time, when I think I'm underestimating you, it turns out I estimated way too high, because you're such a doofus."

  "And, thanks for reminding me what an asshole you really are."

  "Oh, no problem, Joe, any time."

  Around seven hours in, I was again in my office, doing busywork that kept me from hovering around the bridge and distracting the duty crew. Skippy interrupted my thoughts with more bad news. "Hmm, Joe, I just learned a possibly interesting tidbit about this task force. The commander is the third son of high-tier clan leader, he took command of the task force only recently, and the fleet naturally gave him cast-offs from other task forces. As such, he jumped his task force in here for training exercises, to whip his new ships into shape. He is very concerned that his task force will be embarrassed during a major clan-wide fleet wargame that is scheduled for next month. With much of the next month taken up in travel time, this is his best opportunity for training."

  "Damn it," I cursed. "That means he's going to push the time limit, stay here running exercises right to the deadline." That's what I said, because that's what I would do, if I was suddenly in command of a second-hand task force.

  "My thoughts exactly. There are other Kristang ships out at the edge of this star system, he took his task force here, so they can train away from watching eyes. From what I have seen, the commander's fears about the ships he was given are entirely justified; these ships are poorly maintained, their crew are inexperienced, and morale is terrible. Thus far, the ships maneuver clumsily, respond slowly to orders, and their navigators do not seem to understand left from right. It does not help that this task force commander is, even for a Kristang, a major hard-ass. It almost makes me feel sympathetic for the crews under his command."

  "Yeah," I said with a frown. "Almost."

  At the eighteen hour, thirty two minute mark, I was once more in my office when Skippy called. Sleep, although a good idea, had been elusive, I'd laid down on my bed and tried to get some rest for an hour, until I gave up and realized there was no way I could peacefully slumber while the landing party, while my people, were running out of oxygen. So, I'd gone to my office to study flight training manuals. "Joe! One of those cruisers just jumped into low orbit of that moon, on the opposite side from the Elder base. We didn't have any warning; it was suddenly there. Four dropships are proceeding down to the surface."

  I fairly jumped around the desk and into the corridor. "Did you inform the bridge?"

  "Yes, of course I did, Joe. Major Simms is the current duty officer."

  From my office to the bridge was less than twenty seconds, that's why I'd selected a tiny closet as my office. Close enough so I could get there quickly, far enough away and around a corner, so the bridge and CIC crews didn't feel I was hovering over their shoulders every minute. When I got there, Simms was already sliding out of the command chair for me. "All we know is, a cruiser jumped in, with no warning, and launched four dropships straight down. On their current course and speed, we estimate they will arrive at the Elder base in twenty seven minutes."

  Twenty seven minutes. Because the Dutchman could jump there within seconds, we didn't need to act immediately. We could evaluate the situation, and consider our options. I was about to order Captain Desai to the bridge, I wanted our most experienced pilot at the controls if we had to go into combat. Then I remembered Desai wasn't aboard the ship, she was in a dropship, in stealth, on that moon. This situation was bad, all bad. "Is there any sign that the Kristang know about the landing party?" I asked the obvious question. Why else would that cruiser have jumped into orbit there, and launched four dropships?

  "No," Skippy answered, "there were no such communications before that cruiser jumped, and the cruiser and its four dropships are maintaining communications silence. It is, however, impossible for us to assure that we can monitor every single transmission between those ships. If they are using a tight-beam maser to communicate between ships, the Dutchman's sensors have less than a fifty percent chance to intercept the message."

  "I'm going to assume they know, somehow they know, about the landing party. It's the only thing that makes sense. Our options are, what? We jump in, launch missiles at that cruiser, and hit those dropships with the maser cannon." I pondered the main display, playing with the controls on the arm of the command chair; I'd gotten pretty good at manipulating the display. From our position, we had line of sight to the moon, the orbits of the moon and the Dutchman mean the moon was going behind the planet within forty minutes. The cruiser was a dot on the display, it was visible, but was headed behind the moon in less than five minutes. Because we weren't using the Dutchman's sensor field, we had to rely on passive sensors to detect the enemy ships. Most importantly, four dots on the display were the Kristang dropships, I zoomed in the view, and it revealed two large troop transports and two gunships. The dropships had pulled out of their steep dive from orbit, and were flying low, hugging the airless terrain. An icon on the display indicated that the ship's sensors were estimating the position of the dropships. At such distance, and with our sensors dealing with interference from the planet's magnetic field, detecting the dropships was intermittent. "Or, hey, how close to the moon's surface can we jump in? We need to shrink the distance Desai needs to get back aboard. Star carriers aren't designed to operate in a gravity well, that moon's gravity can't be a problem, right? Can we-"

  "Colonel Joe," Skippy interrupted me, "we have another option that you should strongly consider; doing nothing for now, and waiting. I don't think this is a real assault against the landing party. If they knew humans are down there, their other ships would be deployed to support the assault force. They are not at the moment; the other ships are operating independently."

  "You think this is an exercise also?" That surprised me. It also didn't make much sense. The planet had a dozen moons, having a Kristang cruiser jump into orbit of the one moon where we had a landing party stranded was too much of a coincidence.

  "Yes, I believe it is another exercise. Based on limited data, yes," Skippy said confidently. "This appears to be one Kristang ship practicing an assault drop."

  "How sure are you about that, Skippy?" I needed him to be very confident. If the Kristang dropships landed at the Elder site and their soldiers went inside, it would not matter whether their original purpose was an exercise or an assault, they were likely to find our landing party. And then there would certainly be a fight for real.

  "Fairly. Hmmm, perhaps that did not give the impression I intended to convey. To be more accurate, there is a 92% probability that this is an exercise, and that the Kristang do not know anything about the presence of our landing party. I can show you, if you like, how a Kristang task force would deploy to support and assault drop; this task force is not positioned to assist that one cruiser. Also, those four dropships have not engaged stealth, that is also unusual. The lack of stealth is a strong indicator that this is not a true combat situation for the Kristang. If their intention is to attack our landing party, the tactics of that task force are truly incompetent."

  "92% is good, Skippy, except it only tells me part of what I need to know. If part of the exercise includes those dropships landing at the Elder site, and Kristang soldiers going into the Elder site, we will need to intervene."

  "Oh," Skippy sounded disappointed. "Hmm. I hadn't considered that. We could be forced into combat, even if that is not currently the intention of the Kristang."

  "Uh huh. Also, those other ships are several light minutes away, our information on their positions and what they are doing is out of date by that much," I pointed out. That was a problem with our fancy displays; they made you unconsciously assume the data was all in real-time and it wasn't. In space combat, almost everything had a time lag of at least several seconds. When I was in Army basic training, we had to use old fashioned paper maps, in addition to computer displays, tablets and GPS equipment. Paper maps made you realize the whole time that a marker showing an enemy's position, was only as good as how old that dat
a was. We could use some of that mindset out here now.

  "True, and it is mildly impressive that a monkey like you is capable of such thinking," Skippy said grudgingly. "Well, then, in that case, I will concede that this may turn into a fight, if those dropships arrive at the Elder base. Until such time, I believe our best course of action is to wait, to determine what the Kristang are doing."

  "Waiting won't limit our options?" I asked with a frown. "That ship is going behind the moon, and our maser cannons require line of sight to hit the dropships."

  "Waiting will not substantially decrease our chance of success at rescuing the landing party, Joe, because the odds are very much not good for us. Our best chance to recover the landing party, I am trying to tell you, is to wait and hope this is an exercise. There is little downside to delaying action for up to another twenty, even twenty two minutes. If we are forced to act, delaying will only decrease our chances of success by zero point one seven percent. Overall, our chances of retrieving the landing party, in combat against this Kristang task force, are, ahh, you hate math anyway, so I won't quote numbers at you. The odds against us suck, Joe. The landing party is simply too vulnerable down there, and this ship is not capable of providing enough firepower to shield them."

  "We wait?"

  "Yes, that is my recommendation."

  I slumped slightly in the chair. "Waiting is something I'm not good at, Skippy."

  "Joe, if I listed all the things you are not good at, we would be here a very long time. I do agree that waiting is something you particularly suck at. If you were a superhero, you would be No Patience Man. You'd be the guy who thinks, if the instructions say to bake a cake at 300 degrees for thirty minutes, you can instead bake it at 1800 degrees for five minutes."