SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  "No, no. I mentioned it, Colonel, only to show you how woefully uninformed our decisions will be. Whatever the source of the atmospheric anomalies, they will not affect the ability of Newark to support human life, at least in the short term."

  "Great. Excellent. Has the science team selected a location?"

  "The canyonlands you mentioned appear to be the best candidate,” she said. “There are two caverns there, large enough to house our population, and deep enough into the hillsides that the heat we generate will mostly be confined underground. You said concealment is our top priority in selecting a site, infrared radiation is our greatest liability in terms of concealment. Assuming we will have advanced warning of overflights by Kristang aircraft, we can turn off lights and get everyone inside the caverns. Heat, however, will linger, the rocks of the caverns will absorb heat, and it will be slow to dissipate. Therefore, another benefit of the canyonlands is that to the south, roughly eight kilometers, is an area that is geothermically active, with hot springs. Skippy told us the Kristang have not bothered to explore the surface of Newark in detail, excess heat emanating from our caverns could be explained by geothermal activity, if we are careful not to generate heat while the Kristang are overhead."

  "Got it," I was pleased the science team had considered security, in ways I hadn't even thought about. Of course seventy humans, and our shelters and cooking, and heating water for sanitation, would generate a lot of heat. I should have thought of that. "What about stability? Are the caverns stable?" In addition to my fear of heights, I wasn't thrilled about the idea of being underground, with millions of tons of rock above my head. "You said the area has hot springs?"

  "Not in the immediate area of the canyons. These caverns, these two caverns here," she tapped the display to zoom in, "appear to be stable, the rock around them is," she paused, smiled, seeking a word I would understand, "solid. We'll know more once we get down there. We think we could live in these two large caverns, here and here, and close by are other, smaller caverns we could use to store supplies."

  "And the rivers? What happens when the glaciers melt in the summer?" There were streams, or rivers, running down the bottom of each canyon.

  "We think," she looked me in the eye to emphasize the team was making an educated guess, "based on erosion layers in the canyons, that the entrances to these caverns are safely above the flood level. There are other caverns in the canyon lands," she indicated them on the screen, "that are flooded currently Both of the two major caverns we recommend have secondary outlets, that are large enough for a person, or could be enlarged to allow a person to crawl through. If the main parts of the caverns do flood, we won't be trapped."

  All the gear we needed to survive would be underwater, he didn't mention. I nodded. "That's a manageable risk," I said. Hell, what did I know? I was an inexperienced sergeant, pretending to be a colonel. "Good. Doctor, you'll be on the first pair of dropships to land, Colonel Chang will rely on your assessment of the sites." Chang would command the Flower, and be taking the first set of dropships down to Newark. With me being almost two hours away for communications, Chang would be making all the decisions on his own, until our stolen Kristang frigate came back to get me and the remaining people and supplies. I hoped Chang knew that I was going to trust his judgment completely, and not second guess him from the other side of the star system.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "Skippy, I do not like this," I said again.

  "Colonel Joe, this is the seventh time you said that." Skippy replied. "And the third time you have used those exact same words. You are repeating yourself."

  "You sure about that?"

  "I can play back the audio recordings, if you like."

  "I would not like."

  "Didn't think so. And I predicted you would not like this, when I explained my plan to you originally."

  "I know you-"

  We were interrupted by the comm system. "Dutchman, this is the Flower, we are ready to depart." It was Chang's voice.

  I glanced over to the CIC, everyone there gave me a thumbs up sign. "Copy that, Colonel Chang, good luck to you."

  "Roger, Dutchman, we'll be back as soon as we can."

  There was a shudder as the Flower detached from its hardpoint, with the artificial gravity off, we felt all the ship's maneuvers. I watched on the main display as the Flower slowly backed off on thrusters, spun around, then fired its main engines to move away to a safe jump distance. That little ship, little only by comparison to the massive star carrier, would be making two jumps to reach its destination. One jump away from the Dutchman to an area of dead space closer to the star, where the Flower would fire engines in a long burn to match course and speed with its final destination. Then a second jump to the L2 Lagrange point above the far side of the target planet's moon. The Flower had to remain on the far side of that moon, to mask the gamma ray burst from its jumps.

  Mask the gamma rays, from the unexpected guests; the band of roughly thirty Kristang who were on the surface of the planet we needed to live on. They weren't supposed to be there; Skippy didn't expect them. The good news is there weren't many of them, and they didn't have a ship in orbit. From the limited communications Skippy had intercepted, he guessed these were a rather desperate band of down-on-their-luck Kristang, dropped off on the planet to search for Elder artifacts. Some of the Kristang appeared to be prisoners, or possibly slaves, they were all male, as far as Skippy could tell. Dropping off a couple Thuranin stealth satellites would be one of the Flower's first tasks, so we could gather more intel.

  One way or the other, the entire crew had to evacuate the Flying Dutchman, and the only place in range that could support seventy humans was Newark. Very soon, the Dutchman would run out of power for life support, and its highly eccentric orbit around the Jupiter-size gas giant fourth planet in the system had the Dutchman dipping deep into the strong radiation belts that surrounded the planet. Skippy was draining emergency power from the capacitors to power the shield generators around the forward part of the command section, the crew remaining aboard the Dutchman were crowded as far forward as we could get. When the ship reached the low point of its orbit and got fried by the radiation belts, we retreated into three interior compartments, until the orbit took us above the worst of the radiation. It was not an optimal situation.

  With most of the crew now gone with the Flower, Skippy adjusted life support so only the compartments we occupied got heat, light and ventilation, the rest of the ship was growing cold, and we'd need breathing masks to get to the Flower, when that ship returned to evacuate us.

  It was damned good that I had decided, with the original Merry Band of Pirates, to keep the battle damaged Flower, having that ship as a lifeboat was saving our lives. There were fifty two people squeezed into the Flower and the two Thuranin dropships in the Flower's docking bays. That many people needed too much oxygen, and breathed out too much carbon dioxide, for the life support system aboard the little frigate. They also generated too much body heat. That didn't even consider food, sleeping space and other biological functions. For a short trip, the Flower and dropships could support fifty two people. It had better be a short trip.

  Chang brought supplies and the first wave of people down to Newark in two trips each by the two dropships. Because we couldn’t risk the Kristang seeing contrails from the dropships scorching their way down into the atmosphere, the dropships had to come in from far over the horizon, and then fly low and relatively slowly to the landing site, burning additional time and fuel. Skippy assured us that through his control of the two Kristang satellites, the Kristang down there would not be able to see anything we didn’t want them to see, such as Thuranin dropships. Even with stealth and a slow, shallow entry profile, it was very difficult to hide the contrail of water vapor behind the dropships. Whether Skippy had control of the satellites or not, we could not prevent the Kristang from simply looking at the sky. Fortunately, the skies on Newark were most often cloudy and raining. Bonus.

&n
bsp; I was the last person to leave the Dutchman, taking the elevator up to the docking platform where the Flower was parked. Because most of the star carrier no longer had life support such as heat, lights and oxygen, I was in an armor suit. I stepped off the elevator, carrying a small bag of personal items, a very small bag. Everyone had been cautioned about their meager mass allowance, that caused some grumbling particularly among the scientists, so I wanted to set a good example.

  When the elevator stopped at the top and the door slid open, I hesitated before walking forward and stepping from one ship to another. Hopefully, I would be coming back to the Flying Dutchman, that my journey aboard her was not over yet. After all, our pirate star carrier was named after a legendary ship that was doomed to roam the seas forever with her captain. The Dutchman was my first command, probably my only command.

  With a deep breath, I took one step forward, then another. The elevator door slid shut behind me, and I had left the Dutchman, for several months at least. There was no one to greet me, I walked forward halfway to the backup bridge before I saw another person. Since the fight when we captured the ship, we had repaired some of the battle damage. There were still bullet holes, scorch marks, and impacts from shrapnel that we hadn't gotten to yet, or had not bothered to patch up. Chang was in charge of fixing up the frigate, I suspect he wanted to leave some reminders of our desperate fight. Some things we couldn't fix, not without a major effort; the frigate's bridge was still blasted apart from where Desai had shot it up with our stolen Dodo. That seemed like a lifetime ago now, like it had happened to another person. Around a bend in the corridor, I found Portillo, one of our Rangers, running a finger around a bullet hole. I caught his eye, and neither of us said anything. He pointed to the bullet hole and nodded silently. I nodded, nothing needed to be said. He knew, I knew. We'd both seen combat.

  When I got to the backup bridge, the frigate's control center, I saw that of course Captain Desai was our pilot, right back where she first flew a starship. "Colonel," she said, half turning in her seat, "we're ready to depart."

  "Dropships are secured?" I asked. The Flower's two landing bays were crammed with a pair of Thuranin dropships, packed full of supplies we needed for survival on Newark. The Thuranin dropships barely fit in the Kristang frigate's landing bays, it took some slow, delicate flying to get them in. Once inside, because they didn't match up with the Kristang docking clamps, we had to tie the dropships down with cables. It wasn't an optimal solution.

  "They're secured," she reported.

  I sat down and tightened the seat belt as far as I could, it was designed for the larger frame of a Kristang. "Proceed when ready, Pilot."

  "Aye, aye, Colonel," she replied. "Mister Skippy, drop artificial gravity, and release docking clamps, please." There was a clanging sound and a vibration as the clamps released the frigate, and artificial gravity faded away to nothing.

  "Done," Skippy said, a touch of melancholy in his voice. "Get out of here, I can't spare the power drain you monkeys create. Joe, I'll talk to you soon. Remember my advice, be extra careful not to do anything stupid down there."

  "Got it, no problem. I will be extra stupid down there."

  "I said-, oh, forget it. I'm going to be busting my ass up here fixing this ship, you'd better be around to see it when I'm done."

  We jumped in behind the moon again, even though the moon at that time was on the other side of the planet from the Kristang scavenger base. "Skip-" I stopped myself right there. I'd gotten so used to asking him how a successful a jump was, I'd momentarily forgotten that he was now on the other side of the star system. A message sent from the Flower now would not be received by Skippy for almost an hour. I cleared the lump in my throat and said "Skippy will be wondering whether we arrived safely, please send him a message."

  "Aye, aye," Desai acknowledged, and nodded to her copilot to handle that task. "Jump was successful, Colonel, we are off target by only fifty two kilometers." What she didn't say was that the Flower's return trip would not be nearly as accurate. Skippy had programmed the inbound jump for us, before we left the Flower to land on Newark, we would be programming the frigate's return jump, and I would trigger the jump remotely from the ground. On the return, we would be lucky if the Flower emerged within a hundred thousand kilometers of the gas giant planet which the Dutchman orbited. "Seems odd, doesn't it, sir?"

  "What?"

  "To not have Skippy available whenever you want to talk to him. He talks to me constantly, sometimes I wish he would go away, but now that he's not here, I miss him," she said, and turned her attention back to the pilot controls.

  "Me too," I said simply. It was odd, it felt lonely. Ever since we escaped from the warehouse the Ruhar had been using as a makeshift jail, he always been right there, in my ear, whether I wanted him or not. Until the other end of his magic microwormhole arrives at Newark, we were going to be out of communication, he could not transmit messages to us because the Kristang would detect the signals. Unstrapping from the chair, I floated free. "Let me know when you have the return jump programmed, I'm going to assist releasing our dropships."

  The dropships each made one trip down to the surface, heavily loaded with supplies and the remaining crew. As soon as they were empty, they would be remotely flown back up to the Flower, and I would trigger the return jump with my zPhone.

  Chang was there when I walked down the ramp "I can update you on the walk up to the caverns, Colonel," he offered.

  Fighting my instinct as a proud grunt to help unload the dropship, I reminded myself that I was a colonel for the moment, the commander, and my responsibility was to the entire group, not only to the people laboring to get cargo unloaded. I took a deep breath, it didn't seem refreshing. The air smelled like mud and wet grass. Looking back, I saw the wide skids of the dropships had sunk deeply into the wet soil. Skippy would no doubt complain when he saw the underside of the dropships were splattered with mud. After the dropships took off, we would need to fill in the holes the skids had made. "Yes, that sounds good."

  "You'll notice first the higher gravity, fourteen percent does not sound like much, until you have been working for a while." He pointed back to the dropship, where people in armor suits were doing most of the heavy work, "then it hits you. Everything takes more effort."

  "It's like constantly wearing a backpack?"

  "No, that's what I thought. It's worse. Lifting your arms, without anything in your hands, gets tiring, because your muscles aren't used to the extra effort. Simply sitting, if you're reading something on your lap, your neck muscles are strained like you're always wearing a helmet. Our medical doctors tell me that until we adjust, sleep will not be as refreshing, because the extra weight will make us shift more during the night, we will get sore more quickly from laying in one position. Standing will cause blood to pool in our legs, our hearts will work harder to pump the same volume of blood. Then there's the lower oxygen level."

  "Yeah," I said, already feeling the lack of oxygen. From where the dropship landed, to the entrance to the first cavern, was only maybe a bit over half a kilometer, and the climb less than fifty meters, I estimated. The terrain was rough, the canyon here narrowed, with a stream cascading down rapidly over rocks, and we had to walk part of the way in the stream bed, stumbling over wet, slick rocks. "My lungs are feeling it," I acknowledged, and struggled to keep up with Chang. He saw my distress and slowed, without saying anything that could embarrass me. I appreciated that. "How long for us to adjust?"

  "The doctors aren't sure. Normal adjustment to high altitude is several days to a week, the difference here is the atmospheric pressure is slightly higher than sea level pressure on Earth, there mix of oxygen is lower. The doctors are concerned that we may be slow to adjust, because we're taking in actually a greater volume of air with each breath, that might fool our bodies into not realizing the oxygen deficiency. We will have to monitor people, and ourselves, for signs of altitude sickness. We already have people with headaches."

 
The list of people with headaches might include me. Since our battle with the Thuranin destroyer squadron, I had not been sleeping well, nor sleeping enough, there had been too much to do, and too much to worry about. One thing I was hoping for on Newark was that, with nothing much to do but remain concealed and wait for Skippy to fix the ship, we would have plenty of time to catch up on sleep. Except Chang said we'd need to adjust to sleeping in higher gravity. Great. "What else have we learned so far?" I asked.

  "We do have news that would be good," Chang said, "except that it is useless to us. The life on Newark would be edible to humans, if there was anything here to eat." He nudged a low-growing shrub with a boot. "The sugars and proteins that make up plants on Newark can be digested by humans. Unfortunately, all we've found so far is grass, some shrubs, and a sort of lichen growing on the rocks. No land animal life, other than microscopic organisms in the soil. In the stream, there are tiny things like water insects, shrimp, and a sort of fish, nothing larger than a few millimeters. Nothing we could potentially eat. Our science team," he pointed to a group further up the canyon, up to their knees in the frigid water, "is enjoying this immensely, even the people who are not biologists are pitching in to collect samples."

  I could see Dr. Venkman, the science team leader and an astrophysicist, bending down to carefully scoop something out of the water. She looked like she had just found a gold nugget, and she was excitedly gesturing to the others. Dr. Zheng, the biologist, was actually kneeling in the stream, which had to be freezing cold. She was saying something to Venkman, with a look of rapturous joy across her face. A new biosphere for Zheng to explore, and she was the first human biologist to examine it. And the first human biologist to have access to Thuranin technology. She, for one of us, was thrilled to be on Newark.