Trouble on Paradise: an ExForce novella (ExForce novellas Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  “There is no need to be sorry, Lieutenant Striebich,” Nert giggled again. “He did indeed insult you with that callsign, you are right to give it right back to him. As you stated, he is an asshole. The next time you speak with him, tell him ‘fuck you very much’,” Nert said with a jaw-stretching grin.

  Irene and Derek couldn’t help laughing. It was good to see their young liaison officer had a healthy sense of humor about himself. Against her better judgment, Irene pulled back on the control stick to initiate a climb, pulling her Buzzard higher and far behind the lead ship. The Ruhar wanted space to fly? Fine, Irene would give it to him. She waited until she was ten kilometers behind and a thousand meters higher; the Ruhar pilot did not object, or he didn’t care.

  “There it is,” Derek called excitedly from the right-hand seat, sitting up straight in his seat and craning his neck to see over the console. He toggled the intercom open. “The island is dead ahead of us, if anyone wants a view. We’re passing a chain of similar islands to our right.” The islands were even more beautiful than they appeared in pictures. Lush, tropical peaks surrounded with white sand beaches, brilliantly blue water and fringing reefs. Derek couldn’t wait to get the drilling over with and hit the beach.

  “Toonal, orbit here while I circle the island and select two landing areas,” the lead pilot ordered.

  “Understood, Kiwi,” Irene said with a tight smile, pulling the Buzzard into a tight turn, so she was flying circles over a peninsula that stuck out like a finger into the azure water. “The landing area for my ship need clearance for us to unload the drill rig.” The lead pilot could land in a clearing barely large enough for his ship, and he probably would do that to show off. Irene required space to get the drill rig out the back ramp, and attach it to the sling so she could carry it to the projector site.

  “I know that, Toonal,” the Ruhar snapped, irritated.

  “He’s jealous that he doesn’t have the skill to hover with the drill rig in a sling,” Irene muttered to Derek.

  “That’s going to be tricky in this wind,” Derek observed unhappily, watching the palm trees ripple and sway in the strong winds. “I’m reading the wind fluctuating between eight and ten meters per second.”

  “Compared to the katabatic wind on our first arctic mission, that’s nothing.”

  “On this mission, we don’t have any margin for error,” Derek reminded his fellow pilot. They were not only too far away to quickly get spare parts if they broke anything. Major Perkins had explained in confidence to her pilots that this could very well be humanity’s last mission for the Ruhar. They absolutely could not afford to screw anything up.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Irene waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll use a guide cable anchored to the ground, and winch the rig down. Piece of cake. Asshole up there is going to be disappointed if he is hoping to watch us make a mistake,” Irene flipped a middle finger toward the windscreen, at the lead ship.

  “Lieutenant Striebich, you feel strong romantic affection for the lead pilot?” Nert expressed surprise from the jump seat behind Irene.

  “What? For that jerk?” She turned in her seat to glance at their liaison officer. “No!”

  “But,” Nert sputtered, confused. “You made a gesture to initiate mating?”

  “I did n-”

  Nert continued. “Is not your middle finger a human gesture meaning ‘fuck you’?”

  “Oh God,” Derek broke into laughter, as Irene’s face grew beet red. “He is right, Irene. You’re sweet on your Kiwi boy up there?”

  “I am n-” She never finished.

  Derek held up a hand. “I just lost external sensors,” he reported with alarm. “I can’t see the lead ship with the sensor field. And,” he looked at Irene, eyes wide open. “We lost satellite guidance. We’re not receiving the navigation signals.”

  “Is it us? We’re not receiving anything.” Irene scanned the console, seeking sign of a problem with the Buzzard’s antennas. “I don’t see any-”

  Ahead of them, over the center peak of the island, a bright burning streak shot up from the tree cover, striking the lead ship in the belly, directly below where the wings attached. The Ruhar’s Buzzard blew apart in an orange fireball, pieces raining down widely over the island.

  Irene reacted instantly, throwing her Buzzard into a full power dive. The cockpit computer’s Bitchin’ Betty was shouting warnings at her. Usually the computer-generated voice called out semi-useful alerts like ‘Terrain! Pull up!’ or ‘Power loss in starboard engine’. This time the voice was shouting a ‘Missile Inbound’ warning that Irene found completely freakin’ obvious, so she ignored it. “Hang on back there,” she said into the intercom, “this is going to get kinetic in a hurry.” Derek’s teamwork was perfect; he engaged the ship’s stealth field, antimissile active countermeasures and defensive maser turrets. Those actions, and their distance from the mountain peak where 39 Commando was hiding, were almost enough.

  Almost.

  Irene chopped power and flared to avoid smacking into the surface of the sea, intending to hug the tree cover of the shoreline until the highest mountain peak was masked by the smaller peak of the island. The Buzzard roared just above the waves, no more than twenty meters from the beach, when Derek called out a warning. “Three missiles inbound!”

  Irene pulled the Buzzard toward the beach, racing barely above the waves. She slammed the engines into full reverse and the Buzzard stood on its nose, before swinging the engines quickly back down into a hover. With both engines scouring sand off the beach, she tucked the aircraft between tall palms trees to slide to a rough landing, the skids gouging long furrows in the sparklingly white sand. If they got hit, she did not want to be moving fast or over water. Best to be on the ground, where the enemy missiles’ sensors might be confused by ground clutter. And maneuvering the awkward, lumbering transport aircraft at low speed was useless against missiles.

  The stealth and countermeasures either worked or they did not.

  They almost did.

  One missile got confused by ripples in the sea surface where the Buzzard’s belly jets had disturbed the water. That missile impacted the surface, plunged into the sandy bottom and exploded, throwing a fountain of sand, mud, salt water and sea creatures skyward.

  The second missile slowed its approach to evaluate the cloud of water spray thrown up by the first missile. Its hesitation gave the Buzzard’s defensive maser turrets time to lock on, and two turrets combined to burn through the nose of the missile, frying its brain and rendering it inert. That missile continued forward on momentum alone, crashing through trees a half kilometer beyond the motionless Buzzard.

  Unfortunately, the third missile detected the defensive maser fire, and homed in on that location. The maser turrets switched their focus to the third missile, hindered by that missile approaching from an angle where one turret couldn’t fire as it was behind the Buzzard’s tail. The third missile was exploded by a maser beam, eighty meters from the Buzzard. The high-velocity shape charge of warhead shrapnel struck the Buzzard, tearing into one idling engine, and hot chunks of debris peppered the fuselage.

  “Damage report,” Major Perkins shouted, once pieces of hot shrapnel had stopped bouncing about the cabin.

  “Starboard engine took a hit, I don’t know how bad yet,” Irene reported from the cockpit. “It shut down automatically before it tore itself apart. We’re got damage to multiple flight control systems, uh, a couple powercells.” She looked back at Perkins. “The starboard engine is the big problem, it’s probably scrap. I won’t know until I can look inside.”

  That wasn’t great, it also wasn’t the total disaster Perkins had feared. “Is anyone injured?”

  No one had any injury worse than minor cuts from flying shrapnel; they had been saved by the armor around the passenger cabin. “Everyone out!” Perkins ordered, worried there might be another missile on its way to them.

  Hearing Major Perkins’ order to abandon ship, Irene moved as quickly as she could, give
n the somewhat awkward seat release mechanism that was designed for larger Ruhar bodies. She had complained several times about the compromised ergonomics of the Buzzard cockpit setup, and now one item had the potential to kill her. She got the straps released, and the side bolsters of the seat automatically slid down, with the center control stand between the seats retracting forward to clear a path for her and Derek. That was all great and much better than any human-built mechanism could have done. The problem was the nanofabric parachute that the entire team wore as a fannypack around their waists. The Ruhar parachute was incredible technology, able to protect the wearer in a high-speed bailout. The parachute’s computer was smart enough to adjust to the generally smaller size of humans, even Irene’s petite frame. She still had the issue of the parachute’s strap being too long, so that when she had the damned thing properly cinched around her waist, a loop hung down, creating a snag hazard that would never be allowed for a Ruhar pilot. Irene had suggested trimming the excess material, but the loop was integral to the nanofabric storage, so the Ruhar had not allowed that.

  Now the loop was snagged on part of the central control stand, trapping her. With a lack of patience that would surprise no one with knew her, she yanked her combat knife out of a boot and sawed through the tough nanofabric with the blade she always kept razor sharp. It felt good to finally be rid of that annoyance. “Let’s go!” She ordered Derek, who had been waiting for her anxiously, his own knife ready to assist.

  They ran away from the Buzzard, stumbling over rocks and tree roots into the forest, headed for higher ground. A thin trail of gray smoke rose from the stricken engine, wafting barely above the treetops before being carried away by the steady trade winds. “Ten minutes should do it, Ma’am,” Irene advised. “If they don’t attack again in ten minutes, they think we’re already dead.”

  “Three missiles were fired at us,” Nert said through the zPhone translator, which always made the young cadet sound older. “We should be dead. Lt. Striebich, that was smart to land the aircraft; that is not a technique in our flight training. You saved our lives,” his face reflected admiration.

  Irene looked at the ground, embarrassed by the praise. “I figured we had zero chance in the air, and if we got hit, I’d rather already be on the ground. I wish we’d had time to evac before that last missile hit.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jesse used a knife to dig a still-warm piece of shrapnel out of a palm tree trunk. He held the jagged fragment up for the others to see. “I wouldn’t want to be out here when that warhead exploded. The Buzzard’s cabin is armored.”

  “Specialist Colter is correct,” Nert agreed with the overbite expression that was the Ruhar version of a frown.

  “Why here?” Shauna shook her head, dazed. Minutes ago, she had been looking forward to swimming in the spectacularly aquamarine waters. Wearing a bikini for the first time in many months. Relaxing in the tropical sunshine. Maybe finding a secluded beach where she and Jesse would have some private fun.

  “Yeah, what the hell happened?” Dave’s mind was still reeling.

  “Striebich, what’s the POO for those missiles?” Perkins asked about the Point Of Origin.

  “Just below the highest peak, Ma’am,” Irene reported. “They were all toggled off from the same area.”

  “Whoever they are, they’re here for the maser projector, then,” Perkins declared, a hand flying to her mouth as she realized the full horror of the situation. “The question is not why or what,” Perkins announced. “The question is when? Why now?”

  Nert gasped and finished her thought for her. “The transports!”

  “Two Ruhar transport ships jumped into orbit early yesterday,” Perkins explained. “The Kristang must be working to get this projector operational so they can use it against those ships.” How the fuck, Perkins thought, had Ruhar intelligence missed a Kristang combat team? A team capable of flying across the ocean, a team large and well-equipped enough to attempt to dig down and reactivate a maser projector. The official intelligence reports the Ruhar had shared with UNEF HQ stated emphatically that every single Kristang had been evacuated off the surface. Rumint, the unofficial gossip, had been going around for weeks that the Ruhar military was chasing ghosts around the planet; looking for a Kristang commando unit. The Ruhar had flatly denied any such rumors, but now Emily Perkins had a breaking news flash for them; the Kristang were still on Paradise, and still dangerous.

  “The transports arrived yesterday, and the Kristang haven’t shot at them,” Derek noted. “The Kristang haven’t been able to get the projector working yet?”

  “How many people are aboard those transports?” Shauna asked.

  “Thirty nine thousand eight hundred and sixty four!” Nert shouted through the translator, with the device being annoyingly precise as usual. “We must warn them!”

  “I tried that already,” Perkins held up her zPhone. “The island is under a stealth field, and they’re jamming all outbound signals.”

  “I tried the comm system in the Buzzard,” Irene shook her head. “Nothing’s going out.”

  “The Ruhar must have seen the crash, right?” Jesse suggested. “Or, hey, the Ruhar will know something is wrong when we don’t report in.”

  Major Perkins shook her head. “Good thinking, but the Kristang will have picked up our transmissions on the way in, and they’ll be mimicking our signals. No one outside will know anything is wrong here until it’s too late.” She wondered what type of Kristang unit they had stumbled across. Whoever they were, they had to be pissed off that a pair of Buzzards had flown out of nowhere and almost landed in their laps. Antiaircraft missiles, a stealth field powerful enough to cover an island and beyond, jammers, signal maskers, and some sort of gear for excavating down to a projector and taking control of it. This was no amateur group of Kristang who had lingered behind and hidden during the evacuation. Perkins realized her team was facing a determined and capable adversary. And her team had not a single weapon between them, not even Nert.

  Nert held Perkins’ forearm and pleaded with her in plain English, using his halting knowledge of the language. “You need stop Kristang!”

  “I would like to, Nert,” she squeezed his hand reassuringly. “We do not have any weapons to fight them with.” To her team, she shook her head. “This is one hell of a soup sandwich, people; we are black on everything useful.” It was impossible to make a sandwich out of soup, although that task might be easier than attacking Kristang, without using any weapons.

  Shauna and Dave looked at each other at the same time. “We do have a weapon,” Shauna said with confidence. “The drill rig, Ma’am,” she explained.

  “How’s that, Jarrett?” Perkins asked.

  “The Kristang, whoever they are, have been digging down to reactivate this projector, right? Somehow, they would have dug, or drilled, down from the top, the shortest distance. They only need access to the control center. But we have a real drill rig,” she regarded her toy with affection.

  “Why would we drill down to the control center, if the Kristang already have access to it?” Derek asked, puzzled. “They must have access by now, if they’re going to hit transport ships in a few hours.” Derek assumed the Kristang would act before the transport ships docked with the top of the space elevator and began unloading passengers. The space station at the top of the elevator was almost over the horizon from the island, it would be a difficult shot for the projector. It would be more effective for the Kristang to hit the two ships while they were maneuvering overhead.

  “We’re not going to the control center. Look,” Shauna pulled up a schematic of a maser projector on her zPhone. “At the base of every projector are powercells. Big banks of powercells, loaded with energy. If we use the smallest drill bit,” she opened her palm to show a drill bit thinner than a pencil. “We can reach those powercells.”

  “Won’t the Kristang figure out what we’re doing, and stop us? We’ll have to set up the drill rig close to them,” Perkins worried.
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  “No, Ma’am, we won’t,” Jesse was bursting with enthusiasm for Shauna’s idea. “Shauna is right. We don’t have to drill only vertically; this thing can drill a horizontal bore. It can even drill upward; we can steer the drill bit. We can’t do it from way out here,” Jesse looked around.

  “No,” Shauna agreed. “We will need to get the rig closer. But, Ma’am, the Kristang won’t know what we’re doing, until the drill bit gets close to the powercells. When they do,” she frowned, “we’ll need to be ready for them.”

  “All right,” Perkins considered the idea. “You can knock the powercells offline, by drilling into them?”

  “No, Ma’am, there’s too many of them, and they’re in clusters around the base of the maser projector. Even one bank of powercells is enough for a maser shot, we would need to take all of them offline,” Shauna explained. “But what we can do is cause a bank of powercells to overload and rupture. We can kluge together a surge inducer. I know how to do that,” she added with an ironic grin, “because that is in the big list of things Emby warned us not to do around a projector.”

  “An overload could destroy the projector?” Perkins asked hopefully.

  Shauna grimaced. “That could destroy this whole island. The explosion of one bank would trigger release of energy from the entire array. That is, according to one of the Ruhar I talked with on our last mission.”

  “That is not optimal for us,” Perkins stated the obvious.

  Shauna held up her hands. “It’s an all or nothing thing, Ma’am. Once one cell overloads, all that stored energy has to go somewhere; it will rupture the other banks of cells.”

  Perkins considered the entire island erupting in a ginormous explosion. “Ah, the good news is we don’t have to worry about target identification; if it’s on this island and it’s not us, we can light it up. I would rather not get blown up with the lizards.”