SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  "Unfortunately, yes. Also unfortunately, I still do not see a way this ship can destroy a surveyor and its escorts. Destroy that ship, in a way which avoids the Thuranin realizing the surveyor was the target."

  "Uh huh. Damn it, there has to be a way to do that, we just haven't thought of it yet."

  "In an infinite multiverse of probabilities, you may be right. In this particular localized spacetime, I do not see it."

  Which is, again, why Skippy and I were in a dropship, frozen under the surface of a dirty snowball, hurtling out of control on the very outskirts of a star system controlled by the Fire Dragon clan. Burying a dropship in a comet was the best idea we had for how we could sneak Skippy close enough to the relay station so he could ransack it for data. He needed to fly within three hundred thousand kilometers to do that, and as the relay would not simply dump all their data to us if we asked nicely, we had to sneak in close. It was a chicken and egg problem, Skippy explained, the access codes we acquired when Skippy took over the Flying Dutchman had since been changes in the normal rotation schedule followed by the Thuranin. With such codes, we could have simply jumped in near the relay, requested a data dump, and been on our way. Data relay stations were maintained at the edge of star systems so Thuranin ships could exchange information, without having to risk traveling into the web of gravity wells and relatively close confines of the star system. The only easy way to get data from a relay, including the full set of access codes, was to have a proper access code. Which we didn't have. Thus, it was a classic chicken and egg problem.

  A dropship, even a small dropship with an optimally functioning stealth field, could not get close enough to a relay station. While a stealth field would conceal the dropship, the relay station's sensor field would detect some hidden object distorting the field, and investigate closely. Perhaps the investigation would take the form of a missile or maser beam strike.

  Which is why we, actually Captain Desai, had come up with the idea of us capturing a dirty snowball, carving a dropship-size hole in it, and covering the hole. We rendezvoused with a small comet in an uninhabited neighboring star system and got it wrestled it into a docking bay, by a dozen people in powered suits. The damn thing still massed a couple tons, and we had to be very careful even in zero gravity, not to squash anyone by a clumsy move. Once in the landing bay, which was kept in cold vacuum, we carved out a hole, Skippy and I got into the dropship, and the guys in suits carefully maneuvered us into the hole and covered it.

  "This is an awful, idiotic, terrible, terrifying idea," Skippy lamented, "an idea of epic, incredible, mind-blowing stupidity, Joe. Truly, in the history of the galaxy, I can't think of anything that even comes close."

  "What?" I asked. "This is a hell of a time to tell me now, Skippy. It was your idea to encase the dropship in a comet!"

  "Yeah, that idea is truly brilliant."

  "Then what about this is terrifyingly stupid?"

  "I didn't think you would be flying the dropship, Joe. We are doomed!"

  "Very funny. Dutchman, this is Barney, we're ready in here."

  "Roger that, Barney, you sit tight in there," Desai replied.

  Desai then accelerated the Dutchman in normal space, so that when the comet was dropped off, it would have the precise course and speed to fly by the relay station in the guise of uninteresting, ordinary space junk that hung around the edges of all solar systems. The Dutchman jumped in, gently released the comet, maneuvered to a safe distance, and jumped away. We were on our own. If all went well, we would fly by the relay station in twenty two hours, and the Dutchman would jump back into recover us in twenty six hours after that. Yay! Forty eight hours, alone with Skippy. He was as thrilled about it as I was.

  "I hope you didn't eat anything gassy for breakfast. And, damn, could you lay off the aftershave a bit?"

  "Oatmeal and wheat toast for breakfast, no worries there, Skippy. And I'm not wearing aftershave, I didn't bring any when we left Earth, you ass."

  He made a sniffing sound. "Ugh, so that's your natural smell? Next time, you should reconsider not bringing aftershave. Oh, damn, and there's not even a shower aboard this thing. This is going to be a long trip."

  "Uh huh. You want to play chess, or something?"

  "With you? Ha! Maybe a game of 'Go Fish'?"

  We mostly left each other alone after that, I read a book on my iPad, tried to nap, ate a simple lunch, and read some more, while Skippy did whatever asshole beer cans did. When I finished the book, I tried playing chess against my iPad, concluded my always miserable chess skills may have somehow deteriorated, and glanced over at Skippy, who was strapped into the copilot seat.

  "Hey, Skippy, you there?"

  "I'm here. Always. What's up?"

  "Something's bothering me. Terrifies me, actually. How did that Thuranin destroyer squadron set a trap for us?"

  "They-"

  "Because if they know humans are flying this ship, then even if they don't know we messed with the wormhole, we are totally screwed."

  "I don't-"

  "Did I screw up somewhere, Skippy? Did I get us all killed? Not the crew here, I mean, did I get all of humanity killed?"

  "You have-"

  "I have to-" I started to say.

  "Joseph Arthur Bishop!" Skippy fairly shouted.

  That set me back in my seat. "Wow. Only my mother uses my middle name. And only when she's pissed at me."

  "Whew, well, you weren't ever going to shut up so I could get a word in. Rest easy, Joey, you didn't screw up. To be specific, your myriad screw-ups are not why we got ambushed by the little green men. No way were they waiting for us, no way in hell. If the Thuranin knew monkeys are flying this ship, they would have established a layered defense, with battleships at the center; battleships can project significantly more powerful damping fields. We would have had zero chance to jump away, if we had encountered a task force centered around battleships. The Thuranin would never have assigned such a vital mission to a single squadron of destroyers. If they knew one of their star carriers had been stolen, and they thought they knew where it is, they'd send an entire battlegroup, at least. The Thuranin would not screw around with half measures."

  He had not yet convinced me. "I hear you, but, what are the odds that we would jump into a trap like that? Don't give me the odds calculated to a hundred freakin' decimal points, I'm asking a real-world question here, not mathematics."

  "No need to crunch numbers. I think we didn't jump into a trap at all."

  "How you figure that?"

  "Simple. If it was a trap, there would have been a lot more ships waiting for us, and we would be dead. Or, you monkeys would. I'd be drifting in space, wishing I was dead. At least being in hard vacuum for millions of years would get the monkey smell off me. Mostly. What I think happened is, that Elder site that I thought had not yet been discovered actually is known to the Thuranin, they took everything useful out of it a long time ago. While they were ransacking the Elder site, they built up that system as a military base to defend the site against the Jeraptha. That star system was closer to Jeraptha territory before the recent wormhole shift, the Thuranin would have fortified the area to protect their assets. Since they stripped the site, I believe the Thuranin have continued using that system as a secret military base. As I told you, the Flower's crappy Kristang sensors are lucky to detect a star in a star system, our beat-up frigate has no chance to find a military base that the Thuranin wish to keep secret."

  "Great theory, Skippy. Doesn't explain why that destroyer squadron had us surrounded as soon as we jumped in."

  "Uh, that may have been partly my fault. A teensy, infinitesimal bit my fault."

  "What?" That surprised me. "You got some 'splainin' to do, Lucy."

  "Actually, Ricky Ricardo never said that on the show, that is a myth. Similar to how people commonly say-"

  "I never saw the show, Skippy, that was before my time. It's a pop culture thing."

  "Oh, got it. I'll make a note of it."


  "And?"

  "And, I said I'll make a note of it. Duh. Man, your mind wanders sometimes."

  I rolled my eyes. "I meant, and, back to how our getting ambushed may have been partly your fault. Damn, Skippy, we were talking about that, like, five seconds ago, how could you forget in that short a time?"

  "Five meatsack seconds, dumdum. For me, your species could have gone from ignorant apes living in trees, to sentient beings in the same time. I say could have, 'cause, you know, you are still ignorant apes."

  "Don't try changing the subject, Skippy."

  "Damn, the monkey is onto me," he muttered. "All right, I think that destroyer squadron was there for training or something like that. Those destroyers, or some stealthed satellites, detected the Flower jumping in, because a blind man could have seen that. The Thuranin stayed quiet, probably wondering what the hell a Kristang frigate was doing there. By itself, a Kristang ship could not have traveled all the way to that star system, the Thuranin must have been very, very curious. After the Flower jumped away, the Thuranin knew they hadn't been detected, and they figured the Flower would be back, with more ships. That's when those destroyers got into position, to establish a damping field that covered where the Flower was likely to jump in. That also explains why their damping field wasn't originally tuned to prevent a Thuranin ship from jumping away, they expected Kristang ships, not a star carrier. Us jumping in must have surprised the hell out of them. That surprise, their hesitation before returning the damping field, is how we got away at first."

  "Uh huh. Makes sense," I agreed. "Does not explain how it is partly your fault."

  "Damn. I was hoping you forgot about that by now. Why don't you have your typical short attention span when I need it? Here it is, Joe; I may have been showing off a little. I programmed our jump in to be almost exactly where the Flower had jumped out. Serves me right for caring about impressing a barrel of monkeys, why should I care what ignorant apes think, right?"

  Though he was certainly an arrogant shithead, he didn't need to feel guilty about something that wasn't his fault. "So you were a little more accurate than you needed to be, that didn't affect anything. Even if you were off by a thousand kilometers, those destroyers would have surrounded us. That was the best spot for us to jump into, right?"

  "Um, no, and right there is the problem. That was the best spot for the Flower to jump into, considering that ship's crappy jump drive. The Dutchman could have jumped in much closer to the Elder site. That is why I feel guilty, Joe. The Thuranin surrounded the place they expected Kristang ships to jump in, and that's where I took us. If I'd jumped us in closer to that moon, like I should have, we could have been on the edge of the damping field, and could have gone much further with that first jump away."

  He sounded miserable. I understood how he felt. The conversation had started with me feeling miserable and guilty, thinking I had nearly gotten us all killed. "Crap, Skippy. You let me feel guilty all this time, when it was your fault?"

  "A teensy bit my fault, that's all!" His voice sounded hurt.

  "I'm sorry, Skippy. I guess I was kind of, uh, kind of hoping that if those Thuranin had a way to track the Dutchman, we could do the same thing, and solve our problem of hunting down that surveyor ship."

  "They got lucky, Joe. There are no shortcuts."

  We continued racing along through empty space in our dirty snowball, slowly tumbling at one rotation every forty six minutes. There was no indication the relay station considered us a threat, even though their long-range sensor grid had seen us two hours ago. We were an innocent, uninteresting dirty snowball, no different from the billions of such objects forming a loose cloud around the star system. We would not pass close enough to the station to be in any way a threat. We hoped. All was going well until four hours before the closest point of our flyby, when Skippy sounded an alarm. "Gamma ray burst! Multiples! Seven, no, eight Kristang ships just jumped in, they're sort of between us and the relay. Damn it! They are moving very roughly parallel to us, unless they change course, we're going to pass uncomfortably close through their formation, about a half hour after we fly by the relay. Oh, this is bad. Crap!"

  "They see us? They know we're here?" I asked in a panic.

  "Do they see this comet? Yes, certainly they do. Do they know our dropship is under this ice? No way. Or, I don't think so. Unlikely. Very unlikely."

  "What the hell are they doing here?"

  "Relay stations are common rendezvous points, Joe, this is not entirely unexpected. Unfortunate, not unusual. They could be, yes, they are, exchanging data, shhhhh, be quiet a minute, will you, I'm listening to them." Skippy was silent a few minutes, so was I, although Skippy wasn't holding his breath like I was. "Darn. Joe, we got a problem. The good news is those ships are simply exchanging data and going to be on their way, they're not aware of us and they're not looking for us. The bad news is they are waiting for another ship to join them, and while they're waiting, they will be engaged in a cross-decking operation. Exchanging supplies, and crews, between ships. They will have crew outside the ships in suits, and dropships flying around between ships, they will not want a ball of ice creating a hazard by flying near them. It is possible they will hit us with a maser, to knock us onto a different course, and so avoid their formation. I'm sorry."

  "Damn it! Uh, what can I do? Uh, hey, if you're by yourself, you're small enough they won't see you, right?"

  "Sure, I can make myself small as a tube of lipstick, and I can become essentially invisible to sensors. Why?"

  "Because," I said as I unstrapped him from the seat, "you can flyby that relay station by yourself, you don't need this dropship."

  "Whoa! Wait just a minute, monkeybrain, you're going to toss me out an airlock?"

  "For real this time, and very gently. I'll give you a little push, you float away and fly right by that relay. That way, if the Kristang do hit this comet, you won't be affected."

  "You will be affected, you ass!" He shouted.

  "That's a risk. The Army did mention there might be risks involved, when they gave me a rifle. I had to sign a form about it."

  "Yeah, risk of you shooting yourself in the foot, you idiot. Joe, this is, and I'm adding emphasis here, a gargantuanly stupid idea, even by monkey standards."

  As I put on my spacesuit helmet, I responded "I am open to other ideas, Skippy. Other ideas where you fly by the relay without being detected, get the data we need, and are safely taken back aboard the Dutchman. You got anything like that?"

  "No."

  "Great, then we-"

  "In this case, 'no' means, not yet! Damn, you monkeys are impatient."

  "Listen, Skippy, in meatsack time, you've had only seconds to think up an alternative idea. In your time, what, you had, what, years? If you haven't thought up something yet, you probably won't, because there is no alternative. You'll be fine floating in space for a while by yourself, I'll be fine here."

  "Define 'fine' for me, in terms of you. If they hit this iceball with a maser-"

  "I'm a soldier, Skippy, the mission comes first, Ok? There is one of me, and billions of monkeys, damn it, now you've got me saying it, billions of humans on Earth. This mission has almost no margin for error, you told me our only likely chance to track that surveyor ship is to pull data off that relay. I need you to do that for me, and not to worry about me. Can you do that?"

  "I have to worry about you, Joe, you are a particularly dumb monkey in an unforgiving universe. You clearly can't take care of yourself. You're the monkey who says 'ooh, leopard has pretty spots, I should touch it'."

  "Skippy," I said as I stepped into the airlock, "you get the data from that relay, and I promise you, I will never try to pet a leopard. Deal?"

  "I do not like this, Joe, I do not like this one tiny bit."

  "It's not like I'm jumping for joy about it either, Skippy. Do we have a deal?"

  There was a heartfelt sigh, then, "I suppose. Damn, why can't you pick this time to come up with one of your crazy ideas?"r />
  "This isn't crazy enough for you?"

  "I see your point. Let's get this over with."

  When the hole in the comet was covered over, it wasn't filled in all the way, what they'd done was stretch a thin tarp across the top of the hole, then sprayed water which quickly froze, to cover the tarp about a meter thick. To make it look like the rest of the comet, they packed dirty snow on top. From the outside, you couldn't tell there had ever been a hole. Getting out of the airlock, I gently flew up to the bottom of the tarp, and used a cutter on low, power to make a hole just big enough for me to fit through. Skippy advised me so that we timed my cutting through into space, while that side of the comet faced away from the relay station and the Kristang ships. I stuck my head and shoulders out, and held Skippy up. "Which way?"

  "Off to your left, give me a good push, or we won't get far enough apart for it to matter. On three, Ok? Three, two, one, now!"

  Holding on with my feet wedged into the ice and with my left hand, I threw Skippy as hard as I could with my right. He quickly disappeared from view. "Was that good?"

  "Too late now, anyway. Yes, that was a good push, I will come another three thousand kilometers closer to the relay station. Stop talking now, you have to go silent. I can talk to you, but you can't reply. Good luck, Colonel Joe."

  Good luck, Skippy, I mouthed silently. Before the comet rotated so the hole was visible to the Kristang, I covered it again as best I could by melting snow with the cutter and trying to pack it over the opening. The best I could do was a half-assed job, I had to hope none of the Kristang were bored enough to look closely at a ball of ice passing by in deep space.

  With the hole covered well enough, I went back into the dropship, this time I left my helmet on. If the Kristang hit the comet with a maser, I wanted to have a supply of oxygen, in case the dropship got a hole poked in it. Also, I powered up the dropship's stealth field, setting it as tight as possible around the hull. A tight stealth field drew extra power, power I had plenty to spare as I didn't plan to run the engines. On its normal setting, the stealth field would have extended partly outside the comet, and the Kristang would have become suspicious why the comet had suddenly changed it appearance.