SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  "What if I say no to this moronic plan of yours?" I asked fearfully. Facing certain death, I wasn't sure whether crashing into the atmosphere still wasn't preferable to getting cooked to a crisp. When I hear 'maser' I think combination of 'laser' and 'microwave oven'. Imagine a frozen burrito being zapped by a million watts, that's what ran through my mind.

  "Could you repeat that, Joe, I couldn't hear you? You said 'go'?

  "No! I said 'no'."

  "Uh, huh, 'go' it is, got it. Captain Desai, fire on my mark. Three, two, one, mark!"

  "N- shit!" The faceplate of my helmet automatically went opaque, and the visor slammed down. The suit went rigid, something Skippy should have told me about. I waited for imminent and painful death.

  It didn't happen. Skippy's plan worked. Surprised the hell out of me, that's for sure. Probably surprised him, too. He had me spin around slowly, so the maser hit different parts of the suit, he had to look, fire, look again. Then repeat. The first turkey shoot, as I called it, only lasted eight minutes, because we couldn't have a maser hitting me while either of the two Thuranin ships were above the horizon. It almost didn't work, eight minutes of being propelled by maser only boosted my speed enough to delay me falling into the atmosphere. By the time the tanker ships went behind the curve of the planet again, I was technically already in the atmosphere, and the wormhole had started to suck in atmospheric particles and blast the dropship with high-energy radiation. Inside my suit, there were occasional pinging sounds, I thought that was the air screaming past me, Skippy said it was my imagination. It sure sounded real to me.

  My second cooking session lasted twenty two minutes, and was less frightening because Skippy didn't have to rush the process, he could let my suit cool and adjust between maser blasts. The outer layer of the suit was composed partly of nanoparticles that could move around somewhat to cover exposed areas, sections of the suit that the maser had burned away. After the second session, before we had to stop because a tanker ship was about to rise over the horizon, Skippy declared that I was safe, that my orbital path was now good enough to keep me from plunging to my death for an hour, at least. Plenty of time for the Thuranin ships to climb out of the planet's gravity well and jump away.

  Skippy must have been using creative math in declaring I was safe, for it still looked like I could reach out and touch the cloud tops, they were that close. Unconsciously, I was holding my breath, afraid that my chest heaving up and down would knock me out of orbit. "You sure I'm good here, Skippy?" I asked in a fearful whisper. Right then, I was more frightened than I had been when I had thought death was certain. Life, the possibility that I might go on living, there just beyond my grasp, I was terrified of having that chance snatched away from me by the cruel math of orbital mechanics.

  "Uh huh," Skippy replied, "I'm sure. Math don't lie, bro. Tell you what, though, how about you don't move a muscle, stay perfectly still. And try not to breathe too hard, Ok?"

  "Why?"

  "Well, heh, heh, the maser really cooked your suit, and patches of it are thin as tissue paper right now. I wouldn't worry about it."

  "Of course you don't need to worry about it!"

  "Hmm. I see your point. Still, there is no point to you worrying, you can't do anything about it. When the dropship gets there, Captain Desai will open the airlock door and fly the dropship to take you aboard, without you having to move in any way. Once the airlock is closed and repressurized, you can move about all you wish."

  "How long will that be?"

  "Well, certainly not more than one hour, Joe."

  "Why's that?"

  "Because we can't risk hitting you with the maser again, and if those two tankers haven't jumped away within an hour, you're going to fall into the atmosphere, and this time there will be nothing I can do about it."

  "Oh, great."

  Ten minutes later, I heard a faint, high-pitched whistling sound. Remembering Skippy's scoffing when I thought I'd heard atmosphere screaming past me, I held my breath and tried to decide whether it was my imagination or not. And if not my imagination, what was it? A static hissing from my helmet speakers? "Skippy, am I hearing things again? There's a whistling noise, right at the edge of my hearing."

  "Wow, you can hear that, Joe? Your hearing is impressive. That frequency is almost up in the dog hearing range."

  "You know about it?" Damn that beer can. "What is it? Can you turn it off? It is very distracting."

  "No can do, sorry. I can't turn it off, because it's a tiny air leak. Well, not so tiny as it was a few minutes ago."

  "What? Crap, you knew about this? Why didn't you tell me?"

  "There was no reason to worry you about it. Not yet, anyway."

  "Skippy," I said, exasperated with him, "my air supply is leaking out into space. I have a very good reason to be worried."

  "Worrying is not going to solve the problem, Joe."

  "What will solve the problem?"

  "I am working on it. The suit has been instructed to move nanoparticles to plug the leak. So far, it isn't working, the suit's supply of nanoparticles has been severely depleted, and the remaining supply is already being used to prevent the suit from springing other leaks. Probably shouldn't have told you about that."

  That was not good news at all. "Understood. I have plenty of oxygen, right? Enough to keep me breathing, even with this, as you say, tiny leak?"

  "Ah, not so much, unfortunately. The suit mostly, and efficiently, recycles oxygen. There is a small reserve oxygen bottle. That bottle is inadequate, considering the leak."

  I kept silent for a moment, listening hard. The sound was not so high pitched now. The leak must have gotten bigger. "Where is the leak? Can I put my hand over it, or something like that? I can't do nothing, Skippy."

  "The leak is near your waist, on the left side. Do not move! Moving will only make the leak worse, and cause other leaks."

  "Great. Wonderful. What can I do?"

  "Try to breathe less?"

  "Very funny."

  "That wasn't a joke."

  "Shit."

  "Perhaps I should work on my humor, so you know when I'm joking."

  "Ya think?"

  "Sorry," Skippy said, sounding genuinely sorry.

  A leak. How to stop a leak? If only this Kristang suit came with something like a can of Fix-A-Flat. Although it did, in the form of nanoparticles that could plug leaks, make minor repairs, reinforce thin areas, and all kinds of useful things. Absent-mindedly, while feverishly trying to think of a way to stop a leak, I turned my head and took a sip from the water supply tube in the helmet. Dry. I'd sipped the last of the water an hour ago. "Huh," I said. "Skippy, I may have an idea."

  "An idea? You? This I have to hear."

  "Would water plug the leak? It would freeze, right, make a plug of ice to cover the hole."

  "Ah, not exactly, the water would freeze and boil at the same time, because of the combination of cold and zero pressure. Besides, Joe, you drank all the water, you dumb monkey, there's none left."

  "There's no pure water left."

  "Oh."

  "You know what I'm thinking?" Down next to my left leg was a pee bag, that we'd installed before I took my many-hours-long space dive.

  "Unfortunately, yuck, yes. I can puncture the bag with nanoparticles."

  "Do that. Ugh." I felt my leg growing wet. Then the wetness moved up my hips.

  "It's working, Joe!" Skippy said excitedly. "It's boiling off slowly, which is not a problem, there's plenty more. Good idea, Joe!"

  "Yes! Outstanding. Uh, hey, Skippy, this little incident, this can stay just between us, right? No need to tell anybody about it."

  "Yeah, like that's gonna happen," he chuckled. "No way can I pass up a golden opportunity to leak this info," he laughed gleefully.

  "Crap. Can you hit me with the maser again?"

  The whole time I was waiting, I was angrily urging the two Thuranin ships to get off their asses and move away from the planet. What the hell were they waiting
for? Damn! It was like getting stuck on a two lane road behind a school bus, and you can't pass. The damned thing stops at every freakin' mailbox, and you have to sit there watching the flashing lights, and you wish the driver would just move faster, or take a turn, or pull over so you can pass. You're stuck behind the school bus, and it's crawling along, and it ever so slowly grinds to a stop at a driveway, and one kid is waiting there with his mommy, and the kid slouches up the steps, and walks slowly back to a seat, with his mommy waving idiotically to him the whole way he meanders down the aisle of the bus, and then when you think the stupid kid has finally sat down and the bus can move again, the school bus driver decides to chat with the mommy, and you're tempted to lean on your car horn because you want that bus to just GET THE HELL OUT OF YOUR WAY ALREADY!!

  That ever happen to you?

  I pictured the tanker crews climbing their ships out to jump distance, and then deciding a celebration was in order, or something broke on their stupid ships, and they were fiddling around trying to fix it, while I slowly but surely fell toward the clouds below me. Maybe the Thuranin were having a cake and ice cream, and singing songs or some nonsense like that. Skippy assured me the two tankers were moving at their best speed, and would jump as soon as possible. The Thuranin, being cyborgs, didn't go much for celebrations.

  When they finally did jump away thirty four minutes later, I almost shouted for joy. Mercifully, Desai put the pedal to the metal on the dropship's engines to rescue me. Instead, I ordered Skippy to signal the Dutchman to jump into orbit, and for Desai to come pick us up. The dropship was suddenly close to us, Desai making no effort at stealth, she was burning the engines at full power.

  "Desai, take Skippy aboard first," I ordered.

  "Sir?" She asked, surprised. "Mr. Skippy said your suit is in bad condition."

  "That is true, it is also true that Skippy is more important to the mission than I am. If the Thuranin come back or whatever, I want him aboard first, in case you need to high-tail it out of here. That's an order."

  Over Skippy's protests, Giraud grappled the jetpack, released Skippy, then took him aboard and let the jetpack drift away. The dropship then flew over to me, and Desai slowly and carefully edged the dropship sideways, until Giraud was able to very gently guide me into the airlock door with his fingertips. "Got him," Giraud told Desai, "closing the door now."

  The airlock quickly filled with sweet, breathable air, and as the inner door slid open, I reached up to take my helmet off. "Desai, we shouldn't leave that jetpack floating around as evidence we were here, can you blast it with a maser?"

  "Oh, yes, sir, uh, there, done. It's a cloud of vapor now."

  "Great." Man, I was tired. My hair was plastered to my head with dried sweat, Giraud handed me a bottle of water and I drank it eagerly.

  Desai wrinkled her nose. "What's that smell?"

  "The suit got cooked a bit by the maser," I explained.

  "No," she shook her head, "it smells like-"

  "As a problem solver," Skippy laughed, "Joe is Number One."

  "Skippy-"

  "When a problem needs to be solved, Joe doesn't waste time trying to piss up a rope."

  "All right, Skippy."

  "Joe knows you can't put out a forest fire by peeing on it, but you can-"

  "Enough!" I shouted. "The maser busted the, you know, bag," I explained, and pointed to the suit's left leg. It sounded lame to me. Screw it.

  "Yeah," Skippy snorted, "uh huh, that's our story and we're sticking to it."

  "Desai," I said wearily, "I'm getting out of this suit, then I'm going to towel off and change my clothes. Our signal won't reach the Dutchman for another hour, anyway."

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  While we waited for the Dutchman to arrive and retrieve us, Skippy downloaded the data from the two drones the tanker had unwittingly dropped off before it jumped. To our great relief, we'd been successful, both drones indicated the tankers had jumped to a point consistent with Skippy’s hacked data, about the location and time where the two tankers planned to rendezvous with the surveyor ship, and a destroyer that would be acting as escort. I was worried that the rendezvous 'location' would be only a vague area of empty interstellar space, that the four ships of the surveyor task force might jump into an area half the size of a solar system, and then we'd have to try chasing them down one by one. Skippy assured us the Thuranin were much too competitive for that kind of behavior, their navigators prided themselves on accuracy in hitting targeted jump points, so we would be able to count on them jumping into their designated points within eight thousand kilometers, even the big clumsy tankers could be counted on to be accurate. That was good news.

  In the bad news department, Skippy explained that Thuranin practice for a task force rendezvous, even deep inside Thuranin territory, was for a warship to jump in to the rendezvous point first, so we could count on having to deal with the destroyer before the softer targets. That ruined my hope of us blasting the vulnerable tankers, then the surveyor, and then firing at the destroyer a few times to make it look good, before we jumped safely away. However it was we dealt with the surveyor task force, we needed to kill or disable a Thuranin destroyer first. How the hell we were going to do that, in our rebuilt star carrier, was a damned good question.

  I had an idea, the unformed kernel of an idea, I needed to think more on it before mentioning it to anyone, especially Skippy. The last thing I wanted was to give that arrogant little beer can even more reason to be smug, by shooting down a plan I hadn't thought all the way through. I needed time to think.

  And I needed to get out of my sweat and other fluid soaked clothes, and I needed a shower. Seriously.

  When the Dutchman jumped into orbit, it still took the dropship forty minutes to match speed and course rendezvous with her. I gave Simms, as the duty officer on the bridge, an order to jump the star carrier as soon as our dropship was secured in the landing bay. With the jump successful, I let Simms know I'd be on the bridge soon, and brought Skippy with me to my cabin, sitting him on a shelf while I got in the shower. As the hot water of the shower cascaded over me, washing away the grime from my spacedive, I relaxed and was able to think clearly. Out of the shower, I toweled off and sat on the bed a minute before putting on a fresh uniform. "Skippy, that didn't go exactly as planned, but we did accomplish the mission. Your maser idea was a stroke of genius, thank you for that."

  "No problem, Joe. If you're not here, who will amuse me with monkey-brained ideas?"

  "Yeah, speaking of monkey-brained ideas, you know where each of those four ships are going to jump into, right, pretty precisely? And you know when, also?"

  "Yup. I told you that. You said 'mission accomplished', I do not think that is entirely accurate. We only accomplished the first, less important part of the mission. We know where those ships will be meeting, and when. We still have to attack those ships, and we do not have a realistic plan, hell, any plan, for doing that."

  "Not a problem. I got that covered."

  "Not a problem, he says?" Skippy sounded skeptical.

  "Skippy, while I was space diving by myself, I did some thinking."

  "You? Thinking? I find that hard to believe, but, sure, what the hell, surprise me."

  "I came up with a plan for us to destroy all four of those ships. Or at least three of them, one of the tankers may get away. That shouldn't be a problem. Letting one tanker get away, if it thinks we're a Jeraptha cruiser, might actually be useful to us."

  "Hmm, a monkey plan. Does this involve, let me guess, magic bananas?"

  "Nope. No bananas at all."

  "Damn, Joe, what fun is that?"

  "More fun than no plan at all, which is what we have right now. Unless you have some super genius idea of your own, with your ginormous brain?"

  "No, I told you, I don't see any way the Flying Dutchman can be successful in combat with a destroyer. Or the surveyor. I don't even see how we could survive combat."

  "Easy, Skippy, we will survive, a
nd be successful, because we're not going to risk the Dutchman in combat."

  Silence, then, "Can I assume you do not plan to simply ask the Thuranin to surrender? Because no way would the Thuranin be intimidated by this bucket, we would need a much meaner looking ship. This is why gangsters never drive a minivan, Joe. I mean, come on, how intimidated would you be by a guy driving a minivan with one of those stupid 'Baby on board' signs, and sticky Cheerios all over the back seat?"

  I had to laugh, imagining in my head a group of tough gang bangers rolling through the 'hood in a beige minivan. "Nope, we are not asking the Thuranin to surrender. I plan to hit those ships with missiles, right as they come out of jump at the rendezvous. We will park missiles around the enemy jump target points, with the missiles programmed to hit a ship as it emerges from the wormhole. We'll hit the destroyer first, you told me ships have to drop their stealth and defensive shields to go through a jump wormhole, so that destroyer will be vulnerable as it emerges, right?"

  "About that part of your plan, yeah, sure, you're correct. Ships are at their most vulnerable coming out of a jump; they don't have shields up and their sensor fields are scrambled by quantum fluctuations of the wormhole, they're almost blind. So, yes, if you could predict exactly where a ship will emerge from a jump, you can hit it precisely. Even a single missile would destroy, or severely cripple a warship. Now, with those obvious facts established, may I point out the annoying little detail of the fatal flaw in your genius plan?" Skippy's voice had a mocking tone.

  "You're going to anyway, right?"

  "That's affirmative. We're supposed to target the missiles toward the precise point where the Thuranin ships will emerge from their jump, huh? The problem with that plan is we do not know exactly where the Thuranin will jump in. The rendezvous coordinates for each ship are only accurate to within a radius of eight thousand kilometers, because that is the limit of accuracy of Thuranin jump navigation technology. Even if we used all of our missiles to saturate the spherical area where a single ship is likely to jump in, it will take any missile too long to detect the ship and close for impact, the target area is too large. Assuming the Thuranin are accurate to within eight thousand kilometers of the target, that is an enormous volume of space to cover. The formula for the volume of a sphere is the radius cubed, times, oh, wait, why am I trying to explain even simple math to you? Joe, a radius of eight thousand kilometers leaves a sphere of over two trillion cubic kilometers to search. While a missile is closing from that distance, the ship would detect the threat and jump away, or raise shields. So, your plan won't work, dumbass."