SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  The last thing I did was activate the dead man's switch for the missile warhead strapped into the seat behind me. If things went south, we could not risk the Kristang discovering a human, or human remains, in a Thuranin dropship. Either I could let go of the switch, or, if I was already dead or seriously injured, my hand would let go on its own, and I, the dropship and comet would become a cloud of particles. Skippy would be safely away, not that a mere missile warhead could hurt him. The Dutchman would eventually pick him up, he would contact the ship, and Chang would continue the mission.

  That would not be my first choice, in case you were wondering. There were many, many cheeseburgers I wanted to enjoy before I died.

  Then, I waited.

  It didn't take long. Skippy warned me. "Joe! They're firing a maser at you!"

  I closed my eyes and mentally prepared for searing pain and death.

  It didn't happen.

  All I felt was the comet shaking slightly and moving around. Jiggling, kind of. Gently vibrating.

  "In case you're wondering why you are still alive," Skippy said, "they're using a low-power maser. They are not trying to blast the comet apart, that would create a bigger hazard for them, as then they would have to keep track of many small objects, instead of one medium-size one. The low-power maser is heating up one side of the comet, boiling off ice, and that's making the comet change course. In case you were wondering why I didn't mention this possibility before, I wasn't sure this is what they would do for certain. Didn't want you to get your hopes up. Sometimes, the Kristang like to use comets for target practice, and that would not have been good for you. Nothing to worry about for now."

  For now? Damn, it was driving me crazy that I couldn't talk back to him. Trying to relax, I took in some deep breaths, as the comet vibrated gently around me. Not too relaxed, I had to remind myself not to let go of the dead man's switch by accident. The worst part, if that happened, would not be me dying by accident. It would be Skippy concluding that, in the end, I truly was a dumbass monkey.

  Then the comet lurched to one side.

  "Not to worry, Joe," Skippy called, "a chunk of ice broke off, that's all. They've switched aim to boil that chunk of ice to nothing, and, they're done. They're switching back to the comet. Uh, hmm. Now this could become a problem. The comet is rotating so that the maser will hit the hole in about twelve minutes. Voids in comets are not that unusual, however, the hole we made is rather large, for the size of the comet. And when the tarp is exposed, that will certainly look suspicious. Let me think on this."

  He added "And while I'm thinking, don't do anything stupid like trying to use the dropship's engines or thrusters." He added that, as my hand was poised on the controls to power up the engines. I put my hand back in my lap.

  "Think faster, Skippy," I said to myself. Now that I wasn't expecting to die immediately in a sizzling maser cannon beam, it would suck to die like this.

  "Got it!" Skippy said excitedly. "Sort of. I think. The good news is, this is going to be cool either way, because I've never done this before. The bad news is, ah, it could be a spectacular failure. Thus, guaranteed cool either way, huh? Coolest, of course, if you survive. That goes without saying, right? Man, I wish you could see this, it is majorly cool. To me. Maybe not to a monkey. Still, totally cool."

  What was driving me crazy was not that I didn't know what crazy thing he was trying, it was not being able to interrupt him rambling on and on. The comet's vibration changed, I don't what was going on or how to describe it, it simply felt different. Maybe like there were two sources of vibration.

  "It's working, Joe! I think. Hmm. Maybe, uh, yup, yup, it's working. Sort of. Close enough, right? Heh, heh."

  At the sound of 'heh heh', the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. What the hell was he doing?

  "In case you're wondering what I'm doing, it's only one hundred percent, gold-plated, grade-A awesomeness, Joe! Although, when you think about it, part of that expression doesn't make any sense. You're trying to convince your audience that something is genuinely, indisputably awesome, right? Then why would you brag about something being gold-plated? Why not solid gold? Hmm, maybe I got the expression wrong? Cause you could gold-plate a dog turd, and that's not awesome, that's just gold plating on a dog turd, right? Anyway, what was I saying? Hmm, I forget, couldn't have been too important. Oh, wait, I know, I was going to tell you the awesome thing I'm doing! Solid gold awesome, let's get that straight, this is awesome goldness all the way to the center, buddy-boy."

  I could have prayed for death right then, if that would get him to shut the hell up.

  "Where was I," he continued, "oh, yeah, explaining what I'm doing. Ha! Explaining high-order multidimensional physics to a monkey, what am I thinking? I'll break it down for you Barney style. Joke intended, thought that was pretty clever of me. Man, I never get tired of that one. Only you, Joe, would combat an alien invasion in an ice cream truck. Not even a nice ice cream truck. A crappy ice cream truck. So, here goes, this will blow your tiny monkey mind. I'm warping spacetime, in a tiny, tiny area, to make the comet spin just a bit differently than it was. Differently enough that the maser beam will miss the hole we made. Cool, huh? Hell, you know what, I've never warped spacetime in such a tiny local area, the math is completely different, it's interesting. In fact, I don't think it's ever been done before. I'm the first! Cool, huh-"

  He rambled on and on like that a while, I'm not sure how long, I stopped listening. Maybe he talked the whole twelve minutes, he must have, he was talking when the twelve minutes passed. About what, I don't remember. It didn't matter, it was good simply to hear his voice, to hear someone talking to me, while my hands shook and I sat in the dropship, alone with my fear. Being alone is bad. Being afraid is terrible. To be afraid, and alone, is the worst, empty feeling.

  "-you still listening, Joe? I think you're good, I think you'll be safe. That maser should cut off in a couple minutes, the Kristang are about satisfied they've pushed it safely out of the way."

  The deadman switch was still tightly clutched in my hand. Waiting out the time until the Kristang hopefully turned off their maser beam, I held the switch in both hands, as insurance against one hand growing tired. Finally, Skippy gave me the all-clear signal. "You're good, Joe! Maser is off, the Kristang commander is happy the comet will miss their formation. They are proceeding with the cross-decking operation. Wow, hmmm, they boiled off more of the comet than I expected, more than was strictly necessary, it's a good thing we didn't pick a smaller comet, or part of the dropship may be exposed by now. You can turn off the stealth field to save power, Joe. Hey, good thing they didn't need target practice to tune their masers, huh? That would not have been good. Anywho, I'm going to stop talking in about eighteen minutes, I'm approaching the relay station and I will need to concentrate, or all this will be for nothing. In a couple hours, we will have drifted far enough apart that I won't be able to talk to you. Until I have to go, here is a medley of show tunes to keep you company. Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain-"

  Show tunes?! Freakin’ show tunes. Like, my grandparents' show tunes. He sang one tune after another for the whole eighteen minutes, then abruptly cut off without a good-bye. I didn't hear from him after that, either we'd drifted too far away, or he downloaded a whole lot of data from the relay, and was busy sorting through it. Carefully deactivating the deadman switch, I put it away, and I also safed the missile warhead.

  Fourteen hours later, the dropship's sensors picked up a gamma ray burst, then seven others. The Kristang task force must have jumped away. Good riddance to them.

  Twenty six hours after I lost contact with Skippy, the dropship console alerted me to a single nearby gamma ray burst, and the Dutchman pinged me, one brief signal, and I pinged back a short 'Ping Skippy and pick him up first' message. They must have been curious about why the comet wasn't where it was supposed to be, and why Skippy wasn't with me.

  Sixteen minutes later, another gamma ray burst, then nothi
ng. Silence.

  Then I was alone for another nineteen hours. Nineteen hours, not knowing what was going on, not knowing whether something bad had happened to the Flying Dutchman. It could not possibly have taken nineteen hours for them to contact, locate and pick up Skippy, so had something happened to him? Had the Kristang ships somehow detected Skippy and intercepted him? Had he been detected as he ransacked the databanks of the relay station? No, if the ship had pinged Skippy and he hadn't responded, they would have contacted me again right away. For some reason, they had contacted Skippy, then whatever happened, they hadn't been able to pick me up.

  Crap.

  There weren't many good options for me. The dropship could recycle oxygen for one person almost a month, and drinking water wasn't a problem as long as I stretched out the supply to match the oxygen. Food was a problem, I'd only brought along enough sludges for a week. What the hell was I going to do? The navigation system told me the comet's new course was taking it further away from the local star, and the comet's next closest approach to the relay station would not be for over a thousand years. Projecting out ten thousand years, the limit of the dropship computer's ability, the comet would not get close enough to the star to boil off the remainder of the ice. The dropship would remain hidden for at least another ten thousand years. Long enough.

  Poking around the dropship, I did not find a stash of food that I didn't know about, other than a plastic bag, with one lonely peanut, tucked into a pouch on the side of the copilot seat. Someone flying, or training in, the dropship must have left it there. One peanut. I stared at that peanut for a long time, before wedging the bag into a gap in the pilot console. The only sludges I'd brought along were plain banana flavor, no one liked them as they tasted bland and artificial, the only reason I'd brought them along was to get rid of them. Now they were my only food supply. That was bad planning. What the hell, right? I'd ration sludges to give the Dutchman maximum time to come pick me up, then when the sludges ran out, I would eat that peanut. The controls could be programmed to slowly decrease the oxygen supply, I'd been assured that I would gradually fall asleep and it would be almost painless.

  Ha! My high school classmates had not voted me 'Most likely to end up encased in a comet orbiting the outer reaches of an alien star system', somehow they had missed that one. They hadn't voted me Class Clown or anything cool like that, either.

  Crap. Now that I thought about it, I'm sure that by now, some joker had cut out a picture of Barney and pasted it over my photo in our senior yearbook.

  Like that mattered now.

  Having nothing else to do, I set a timer for ten hours until my next sludge, turned the lights down, and tried to get some sleep.

  And, wouldn't you know it, just as I was drifting off to sleep, the console alerted me to another gamma ray burst, and the Dutchman pinged me with a brief signal. 'Taking you aboard shortly, ETA four minutes'.

  I felt some jostling, then a hard bump, then a shudder. Then, "Hey, Joe! Good to have you back!" Skippy shouted. "After the ship recovered me, it had to jump away, it would have taken too long to fly through normal space to pick you up, the ship would have been exposed for too long. We waited until you got far away from the relay, before we risked coming back. Hold tight, they're cutting a hole for you, should only be a minute before you can come out."

  "Thanks, Skippy, it's great to hear your voice again. Were you successful? With the relay, I mean."

  "We're in luck, Joe! Although, now that I think about it, that expression can be rather ambiguous, isn't it? Luck can be good or bad. No matter, in this case, our luck is good. Success, yes! Sort of. Come aboard, and I'll give you a full briefing. You, uh, better shower first, huh?"

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Skippy barely waited for me to take my shirt off before he began the briefing. "Here's what I found, Joe, not sure if in the end it is good news or bad news-"

  "I thought you wanted me to take a shower first?"

  "Please do, however, you really don't smell a whole lot better after a shower, so there's no reason to wait. Unless you prefer to wait."

  "No," I said as I unlaced my boots, "go ahead."

  "My expectation, that the Fire Dragon clan would have information about the surveyor ship's mission, was partly correct."

  "Great!" Before I stepped, or to be accurate, kneeled down in the shower, I pressed the button and checked the water temperature, in case Skippy decided to play a practical joke on me and make the water ice cold. "You know where the surveyor ship is, and where it's going?"

  "No, unfortunately, no, the Fire Dragons have no information about the surveyor ship, or about the single destroyer that is serving as escort."

  "Then what could be the good news? You said two of the Fire Dragons were going on the mission to Earth, and that the surveyor ship had to pick them up somewhere."

  "I did say that. Can you hear me, Joe?"

  "Yeah, I can hear you just fine," I said, with my head under the cascading water. The hot water washing days of grunge off my skin felt great.

  "Good. Yes, two Fire Dragon clan leaders are going on the mission to Earth, they paid extra for the privilege, because they do not trust the Thuranin. For very good reasons, based on a long history, the Kristang do not trust the Thuranin. The Thuranin don't trust the Kristang, also for very good reasons. The Thuranin enjoy insulting and humiliating the Kristang every chance they get, which is why these two Fire Dragon leaders were not instructed to rendezvous with the surveyor ship. They will instead be picked up by a pair of tanker support ships. To travel aboard such low-status ships is a deliberate, very grave insult, and the Kristang know it is an insult. They also can't do anything about it."

  "I feel terrible for them, we should send a harsh note to the Thuranin. Where are they going to meet these tanker ships? And when?"

  "’Where’ is a question I do know the answer to, and I've programmed a course into the navigation computer. When is the problem, Joe. The Kristang are arriving at those tankers three days from now, we can't get there so quickly."

  "Crap. You know where those tankers are going, though, right?"

  "No, I do not. That is not the type of information the Thuranin saw fit to provide to the Fire Dragon clan."

  "Well, hell, Skippy," I hit the button to shut off the water. Damn it, why did he talk to me so often when I was in the shower? "This was all a waste of time, then? We're too late?" That was a bitter pill to swallow, getting messages from that data relay had been our only chance to intercept the surveyor ship before it reached Earth. "Wait. There's always a chance something goes wrong, that the Kristang could be late to the rendezvous?"

  "I suppose so, you haven't heard-"

  I clicked the button to open the intercom to the bridge. "This is Bishop. Skippy programmed a new course into the nav system, initiate jump as soon as possible."

  "Aye, aye," Chang responded, without asking questions.

  "We can't waste any time getting there, Skippy. Is there any way you can shorten the trip, do some magic with wormholes?"

  "I already did, Joe, the course I programmed does include one shortcut by manipulating a wormhole. You didn't-"

  "There's got to be something we can do. Let me think on-"

  "Joe! If you will please shut the hell up for a minute, you haven't heard the whole story."

  "Oh. Sorry, Skippy, that was rude, me interrupting you. Go ahead, please."

  "Thank you. As I explained, these two support ships are primarily tankers, they carry fuel that will be transferred to the surveyor, before it breaks off from its escorts and begins its long solo journey to Earth. The Kristang are going to meet those two tankers in an uninhabited star system, where the tankers will be refueling by siphoning the atmosphere of a gas giant. The tankers logically, and the Thuranin can be ruthlessly logical, will not want to carry their fuel load further than they have to. That tells me the tankers will meet the surveyor ship somewhere close to where they tank up with fuel. Before you make a typically stupid co
mment, about why I'm bothering to tell you this, I believe those tankers will take several days to complete their fueling operation. We should be able to reach that star system before those tankers depart."

  "Skippy, that's fantastic!" Man, I didn't know how much more I could take of hopefulness, sudden crushing despair and back to hopefulness. "Why didn't you say that first?"

  "I tried to, you big dope, only you kept flapping your lips 'blah blah blah'. Damn, you flap your lips so hard sometimes, I think you are going to take off like a bird."

  "Sorry. Ok, so, we know where these tankers will be, and we know they will be meeting the surveyor ship after they finish pumping their tanks full at this gas station."

  "It's a planet, Joe, not a gas station. The operation to siphon the proper gases-"

  "You know what I mean, Skippy."

  "It's complicated, that's what I was going to say. We still have the problem that we don't know where the tankers are going, after they fuel up. And we have no way to follow them, without them knowing they are being followed."

  I finished buttoning a shirt, and pulled pants on. "Don't worry about that, Skippy. While I was stuck inside that comet, there was a lot of time to think. I have some ideas."

  “You having an idea, that’s what scares me.”

  The Flying Dutchman was jumping like clockwork, on our way to the star system where the two Thuranin support ships should even then be filling their tanks with fuel. According to Skippy, we should arrive well before those ships were ready to depart for their rendezvous with the surveyor. Everything was going great. Great, except that, we still did not have a realistic plan for us to successfully attack the surveyor ship. Or, equally as important, a way for us to attack, in a way that the Thuranin would think the surveyor had been destroyed in an ordinary ship to ship action by a Jeraptha force. Although, an idea was forming in my mind.