SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  "Uh huh. What if we could shrink the area where a ship is likely to jump in? Shrink it to, say, a hundred cubic kilometers, or less?"

  "Oh, sure, if you're asking for miracles. Why don't you ask for fairy elves to fly in on a unicorn and take care of the problem for us? That would be more realistic. Thanks a bunch for the vote of confidence in my predictive abilities, but even my awesomely ginormous brain power can't tell you where a ship is going to jump in, with that level of accuracy. There are too many variables in a particular ship's jump drive at that exact moment. The charge energy, how many coils are in use, the level of calibration of how the entire system works together, the-"

  "We get the idea, Skippy. A lot of variables, yup. We're not going to guess, we're going to game the system by cheating. Beat the house."

  "Ooooh, you know me, Joey, I'm all about cheating the laws of physics. However, give me a minute please, I want to get some popcorn and an ice cold brewski. That way, I can sit back on the couch and savor the moment, while you make a complete and total fool of yourself, with whatever moronic so-called idea your monkey brain has dreamed up. Ok, I'm ready, hit me with your best shot. Ha ha, this is going to be great!"

  "You can warp spacetime, right? What you're going to do for us is create an especially flat area of space time, inside the radius where we know the ship will try to jump in. When that ship projects the far end of its jump wormhole, that wormhole will be attracted to the flattest spot in the target area by default. That’s because that spot requires the lowest energy state to form a stable wormhole, or some other sciency physics BS like that you told me once, when I was actually paying attention. We will be able to predict almost exactly where a ship will jump in. Will that work?"

  Skippy didn't answer. He didn't say anything at all.

  "Skippy?" I asked. "Hey, are you crunching numbers in there?"

  Finally, he said simply "Holy shit."

  "Yup."

  "You are such an asshole! I hate you." He genuinely sounded hurt. “Damn it!”

  "Uh huh, got it. Is that a yes?"

  However Skippy emulated a heartfelt sigh, it was convincing. "Yes. Damn it. Ugh, I hate my life. A monkey has a good idea. A freakin' monkey! Unbelievable! The universe is so unfair. Yes, it will work, Joe, I can control where a ship jumps to within less than a hundred kilometers. Nowhere near as accurate as I am with our own jumps, of course, there are too many variables I can't analyze without being on the enemy ship before it jumps. A hundred, even a thousand kilometers is close enough, our missiles will be able to target and hit the enemy ship, before it can detect the missiles and raise shields. Any ship jumping in will be a sitting duck. And, hey, in case you think you're soooooo freakin' smart, I'm not going to create an especially flat area of spacetime. What I'm going to do is create an area where the flatness is negative."

  Now he had me puzzled. "Negative flatness? Isn't that a fancy way of saying it's curved in the other direction?"

  "No. Ask one of your scientist monkeys to explain it to you, if they can. Ha! For them, figuring out how the universe really works will be simple, compared to explaining quantum topology to you."

  He was entirely right about that, by the way. Because we had time while we jumped toward the rendezvous point, I stopped by the science lab to ask our team of human brainiacs how flatness could be negative, my thought was that Skippy had been screwing with me. Damn, it was like sitting next to a grandmother and asking to see pictures of her grandchildren. Which, of course, no one would ever do, unless they were insane, because any grandmother can inflict at least several hours of suffocating boredom while talking about her grandchildren. After the third photo, and hearing about the mundane accomplishments of little Maddy or Timmy, the unfortunate listener starts wishing fondly for the sweet, sweet release of death. How come heart attacks never happen when you need one? Anyway, our team of scientists were more than happy to attempt explaining quantum topology to me, which should have been my first warning sign. They were especially excited, because their understanding of the subject had taken a great leap forward during their time aboard the Dutchman, and they couldn't wait to show off their newly acquired insights. Somebody, they were certain, was getting a Nobel prize when we got home. I didn't have the heart to remind them that getting home was still more of an 'if' than a 'when'.

  They tried. They really tried. The fourth time our resident rocket scientist Dr. Friedlander attempted to explain why X is the cubed value of the Mu function, I mentally gave up. Skippy mercifully took pity on me at that point, for which I was forever grateful, he faked an emergency that required me to rush away to the bridge. That was the last time I was going to ask scientists to explain science to me. It was best for everyone involved.

  We dropped off four missiles, surrounding the spot where the Thuranin destroyer was supposed to emerge from its jump into the rendezvous point, then backed the Dutchman away half a lightsecond and engaged her stealth field and defensive shield. The missiles were hot, programmed to target the wormhole, they would go to full acceleration as soon as they detected a ship emerging, without waiting for a signal from the Dutchman. The missiles would operate in pairs; two would engage first, and if they scored hits, the other two missiles would stand down, we didn't have missiles to waste. If even one missile scored a direct hit on the destroyer, especially on that ship's aft engineering section, the destroyer would be a sitting duck, to be carved up by the Dutchman's comparatively weak maser cannons. All we needed was one precise missile or maser strike on a reactor, or charged jump drive coils, and the destroyer would become a cloud of particles. Our own drive coils would be fully charged, so we could perform a microjump if the destroyer was merely damaged and able to shoot back, or a major jump if the whole idea somehow didn't work. Skippy did his sciency physics trick with creating an especially flat spot in spacetime, in the exact center of our ring of missiles. And then we waited.

  And waited.

  While, thanks to Skippy, we knew precisely where the Thuranin destroyer was going to jump in, we knew when only within a span of ten hours. To be safe, we arrived at the rendezvous point twenty six hours early, that was as fast as we could get there, considering we were racing two slow, lumbering tanker ships to the same place. We arrived, scanned the whole region intensely until Skippy declared it was clear, then we parked our missiles and positioned the Dutchman near where the destroyer was supposed to jump in.

  And waited.

  When the destroyer arrived, it was almost anticlimactic for us humans, the whole thing happened faster than the blink of an eye. Skippy assured us the whole thing was prodigiously, bodaciously awesome. I had to take his word for it, until he replayed the sensor data on the display for us in extra super-duper slow motion. The far end of the destroyer's jump wormhole appeared first, appearing on the screen as gamma radiation in spectacular false colors, Skippy took some artistic license with that for our benefit. The wormhole was microscopic at first, Skippy drew 3D crosshairs in the display, showing that the wormhole was less than thirty kilometers from the target jump area, right where Skippy had created area of extra flat spacetime. The next thing we noticed on the display was not the wormhole expanding, or the nose of the destroyer emerging, it was two of our missiles accelerating hard, straight for the wormhole. Skippy had programmed them to home in initially on the gamma radiation of a wormhole opening, and the missiles did not hesitate at all. By the time the wormhole had expanded, and the nose of the destroyer came into view, our missiles had closed half the distance already, and had switched their targeting to the hull of the destroyer.

  Both missiles impacted the destroyer's aft section almost simultaneously, when I later ran the display back and let it run forward nanosecond by nanosecond, it still looked like they hit at the same time. One missile hit a reactor, its warhead ripped through the reactor shielding like it wasn't there, we could see fragments of the warhead coming out the other side of the ship like a fountain, spewing white-hot particles out into space. That dramatic view
was brief, because the other missile scored a direct hit on a cluster of jump drive coils, and released their stored energy in a catastrophic flash. It happened so fast, even Skippy wasn't sure whether that missile's warhead had time to explode on its own. Either way, the destroyer was instantly vaporized, and Desai had to trigger a short jump to protect the Dutchman from high-energy debris.

  One down, three to go.

  Our concern then was the Thuranin might somehow have figured out our awesome new gimmick, and our incredible advantage would turn into a one-trick pony. We recovered the two unused missiles quickly, they had nicks and scratches from the exploding destroyer, Skippy assured us the missiles would work just fine. Then we jumped over to where the surveyor ship was supposed to jump in, and parked the extra missiles there. We had previously parked missiles around the target jump points for the surveyor and the two tankers, those three ships were scheduled to jump in anywhere from twenty minutes to six hours after the destroyer. We didn't know the exact timing, all we knew was the surveyor would jump in first.

  We need to kill the surveyor ship, and at least one of the tankers.

  We almost did it.

  The second ship to jump in was the surveyor, which in the super slow motion replay looked a lot like the Flying Dutchman did now; a much-shortened star carrier, except the surveyor's aft section was noticeably larger, with additional reactors and fuel tanks and other gear needed for extreme long-range voyages. Replay was the only good look we got at the surveyor, our missiles smoked it as soon as it emerged from its jump wormhole, it made a considerably bigger explosion than the destroyer had. Big enough, that the two extra missiles we had hanging around hanging around the target jump point on standby got pelted with debris so badly, we had to order them to self-destruct; taking them back aboard in their damaged condition would be much too risky to the Dutchman. Even a tiny breach in the containment system of an atomic-compression warhead, could result in the atoms being no longer quite so compressed.

  Two down, two to go, and the remaining two were not really warships. There were tight, self-conscious smiles and quickly-flashed thumbs ups going around the bridge and CIC, people needing to release tension and celebrate just a little, balanced with not wanting to jinx us by breaking into cheers to early. The surveyor ship would not be going to Earth, or going anywhere. Our mission was not yet complete, we needed to destroy at least one of the tankers, to sell our cover story of the surveyor task force being attacked by the Jeraptha. Without that, the Thuranin might become suspicious about why the surveyor ship was prevented from going to Earth, and render our entire plan useless.

  It almost worked.

  The tankers, despite traveling together, didn't jump into the rendezvous together. Their crews, Skippy said, likely had a rivalry, each crew wanting their ship to jump in closer to the target location, so each ship had been meticulously careful about calibrating jump drives, and plotting the far end of their wormholes. Because in this case, Skippy had to project two spots of extra flat spacetime, and those spots were separated by one hundred fifty thousand kilometers, that strained even his awesome abilities. I know his abilities were awesome, because he told us, several times. At least.

  One of the tanker crews finished screwing with their jump drive slightly before the other ship, because one tanker jumped in before the other one. On the display, we saw the familiar flare of gamma radiation as the wormhole's far end opened, and the bulbous front end of the tanker emerged from the wormhole.

  The trouble started when our first missile impacted, it hit the center of the tanker, not the aft end. Skippy later admitted he should have programmed those missiles to anticipate the tankers coming through the wormhole more ponderously than the surveyor and the destroyer had. Momentum carried the ass end of the tanker forward through the wormhole, even as the center of the ship broke apart. All this happened in a split second, we only realized what happened later by examining playback of the sensor data. The second, and last missile targeted at the first tanker, did manage to hit a reactor on the aft end of the ship, and loss of reactor containment ruptured a bank of charged jump drive coils, effectively vaporizing most of that ship. Unfortunately, in order to hit the vital aft end of the ship, our second smart missile had been forced to dive slightly into the wormhole itself. The missile knew the configuration of the ship, saw how comparatively slowly it was traveling through the wormhole, and the missile concluded its best chance of hitting something vital was to curve around and dive into the wormhole itself. In retrospect, I wish that missile had not been quite so overeager for an outstanding rating on its next performance review, for its quick thinking caused a big headache for us.

  When our missile dove into the open wormhole, and caused release of energy stored in the jump drive coils of the first tanker, it also alerted the second tanker that something was wrong, very wrong, with its sister ship. And that jumping to where the first ship went, might not be so healthy for the second ship. Destruction of the jump drive coils caused blowback through the near end of that ship's jump wormhole, a distinctive burst of gamma radiation that was immediately noticed by the second tanker, and that ship's navigation AI automatically aborted its own jump wormhole as it was forming. The command crew of the second tanker wasted no time in redirecting their jump drive to alternate coordinates, and jumped instead to an unknown location.

  "Uh oh," Skippy said, and that was my first indication that anything was wrong. Destruction of the first tanker, like the destroyer and surveyor before it, had happened too fast for the human eye to follow. As far as I knew, everything was going great; unsuspecting enemy ships were jumping in unawares, and almost instantly becoming fireballs. To my eye, I couldn't have been more proud, I'd thought of an idea that destroyed the enemy, and secured the future of Earth and humanity, without my own ship being placed at risk at all. It was all good, I was wondering whether, against orders, Major Simms had a bottle of champagne hidden away somewhere.

  So great was my confidence, and complacency, that when Skippy spoke, I figured it was to complain about a missile hitting a nanometer away from where he'd planned, something only a super intelligent AI would care about. "Uh oh? What's going wrong in the world of Skippy?" I asked distractedly, my eyes glued to the display, anticipating the second tanker to jump in any second. Jump in, and be obliterated.

  "Something is wrong in the world of monkeys, Colonel Joe. We have a potential problem."

  A quick glance around the main display told me nothing was wrong with the Dutchman's major systems. What the hell was Skippy talking about? "A potential problem? You're not sure if it's a problem or not?"

  "Whether or not it is a problem, depends on your mission parameters. Before you ask more stupid monkey-brained questions, I'll lay out the issue for you; the second tanker is very likely not going to jump into the rendezvous. The first tanker exploded while it was partly in the wormhole, it hadn't fully cleared the event horizon. Backblast would have been visible on the other end of the wormhole, no way could the second tanker have missed that event."

  "Oh, shit." Suddenly I didn't feel much like drinking champagne.

  "So?" Simms asked from the CIC. "We were almost hoping one of the tankers would survive, to carry our cover story back to the Thuranin?"

  "Correct, Major," I responded, "the problem here is that tanker won't be carrying our cover story of a Jeraptha task force marauding through Thuranin territory, they're going to have a much more interesting tale to tell; a ship gets hit while it is still inside a jump wormhole. When they hear that, the Thuranin command is going to want to know how an enemy could possibly know precisely where a ship will emerge from a jump. And you can bet they'll investigate, every sentient species in the galaxy will want to know how we pulled off that trick, even if they don't know who did it yet. We don't want to leave any mystery behind, we need the destruction of the surveyor and its escorts to be seen as a routine military action, something that happens in frequently enough in war, and not anything worth anyone taking a seco
nd look at. We need to find that second tanker. Skippy, you know where the other end of that wormhole is, right? Plot a jump for those coordinates."

  "Course laid in, but I expect the second tanker jumped away to an alternate destination already, as soon as it saw something went wrong with its sister ship."

  "Well, crap, Skippy, that's no good! We need to get there before its outbound wormhole fades away, so we can track where it jumped to. Pilot," I ordered to Desai, "jump as soon as you're ready."

  "Aye, Captain," Desai acknowledged.

  We jumped to where the first tanker had tried to jump in from, immediately engaged our stealth field, and began hammering away with an active sensor search, to determine whether there were any ships in the area. The stealth field wasn't on so other ships couldn't find us, we had it active so other ships wouldn't see that the Dutchman was not, in fact, the Jeraptha cruiser that we pretended to be. Sensor sweeps came back blank, the area was empty. Skippy began scanning for a residual wormhole signature, and found one quickly.

  "Uh oh, I was worried about this. That tanker jumped away like we thought, problem is, it used space combat protocol for the jump. Remember how I told you ships can mess with their jump wormhole signatures, make it harder for a pursuing ship to determine where they jumped to? That's what that tanker did, as it went through the jump wormhole, it dropped off quantum resonators, they're kind of like the crude flares your military aircraft use to confuse heat-seeking missiles. These quantum resonator devices disturb remnant waves of the outbound wormhole, that makes it difficult to figure out the original configuration of the wormhole. Difficult even for me."