When they got the rig into position, they had drilled down, then forward, chewing through soil, fractured shale and solid volcanic rock until Shauna judged they were close enough to the powercells that any more drilling would be detected. Dave was all for punching through the final meters into the powercells, hooking up the surge inducer, and running like the wind.
But, no. Major Perkins ordered them to stand by, while she and their two pilots did- what? What the hell could the three of them do, with no weapons and a busted ship?
“Be patient, Ski,” Jesse replied quietly. “The Major must have good reasons for whatever she’s doing. She’s been square with us all along.”
“Hey, ‘Pone, Perkins is good people, she’s a grunt by association, but she’s intel, not infantry. Our asses are hanging out to dry here,” he looked fearfully at the sky. One of the reasons Shauna had chosen that location was, it could not be seen from the mountain peak that contained the maser projector. Dave considered at the moment that meant they couldn’t see if the Kristang were coming for them.
“Dave, it’s above our pay grade,” Shauna said over her shoulder as she finished hooking up their hand-made surge inducer.
“We get paid?” Dave said with mock surprise.
“You know what she means, Ski.” Jesse wasn’t any happier about the delay that Dave was. “Uh, Shauna, is there anything we can do now, so we can move faster once we get the ‘Go’ order?”
The two Kristang pilots, happy to be exempted from the dirty, rough and dangerous duty of clearing a path down to the projector, were sitting in the cockpit of their Jawkuar, monitoring the condition of the all-important stealth and jamming fields. Behind them in the passenger compartment, the side door was open, allowing a breeze to circulate, because the dropship’s environmental control systems were offline. The pilots were speculating on what sort of poem would be appropriate to commemorate killing forty thousand of their hated enemy. The commando leader would of course officially be responsible for composing the poem himself, but he typically welcomed input from his team. To have one’s poem selected by the leader was a great honor.
“We stood unseen, shrouded by-” the lead pilot paused in the composition of his poem. “What is that sound?”
“What sound?” The other pilot strained to hear. Neither of the pilots had served on Paradise before they arrived with Admiral Kekrando’s battlegroup, and they were not familiar with the native life on the planet, particularly whatever animals lived in the tropics. With the steady trade winds rustling the dry palm fronds and whistling through the open door, it was difficult to pick out one sound. “I don’t-” Then he heard it. A whining sound, faint, increasing in pitch. It was getting closer. And suddenly, it became a screaming roar, as the Buzzard cleared the ridge and increased power into a dive.
The Buzzard’s autopilot had been programmed to aim for the center of the clearing; aiming at nothing but grass, low-growing shrubs and scattered rocks according to its stealth-blinded sensors. The Jawkuar was parked toward the east side of the clearing, so the nose of the Buzzard missed the enemy dropship entirely and buried itself in the rich volcanic soil. The remainder of the Buzzard followed its own nose, and exploded, tearing the Jawkuar apart and causing that dropship’s own powercells to explode.
“Whoa!” Irene exclaimed, pointing to black smoke and a mushroom-like, roiling ball of fire rising into the sky on the mountain peak. The actual crash site was not visible from the beach; it didn’t need to be. “I think you were right, Major. That explosion is from something more than our little Buzzard.” As she spoke, another ball of fire rose into the air, twisting in the wind. “Yup, those are secondaries for sure. We hit something, whatever it was.”
“That’s what it looks like to me, too. Striebich, Bonsu, that’s good work. Sorry about your aircraft; I’ll see if I can get you a new one. Let’s launch these boats and pick up the others.” Dragging a boat down to the water with one hand, she called Dave on her zPhone. “Czajka, get that drill going. When it punches through to the powercells, set it up for a power overload, and the four of you pop smoke down to the beach. We’ll have the boats waiting for you.”
“Done. There, it’s set,” Shauna announced, looking up from the drill rig’s console. She held up her zPhone. “I can trigger the overload from my zPhone. Major Perkins has the same capability.” Slapping the cover of the console shut, she reached under, pulled a lever to release the console, and tossed it on the ground. “Who wants to do it?”
“Do what?” Jesse asked.
“Smash it,” Shauna explained, hands on her hips, the expression on her face implying a ‘duh’ she didn’t say aloud. “So if the lizards get here before we trigger the overload, they won’t be able to operate the drill. We can’t let them screw with the surge inducer.”
“Oh,” Jesse’s face reddened. It was obvious, now that he thought about it. He stooped and picked up a large rock. “As much of a royal pain in the ass this drill rig has been, I’m going to miss it. Feels like a member of the team by now. Y’all stand back.” He heaved the rock overhead with both hands, and swung it down to bash the console. “Dagnabit!” The console’s casing cracked, but it was still intact. He tried again with the rock, and this time the console broke in two pieces. “That did it. We are outa here.”
“Uh, Shauna, we have a complication?” Dave replied. “Nert wants to stay here, to make sure the powercells overload.”
Oh, great, Shauna thought, while mentally kicking herself. She should have anticipated the young Ruhar cadet would not like the idea of running away from the drill rig before he could be certain it had completed its job. “Nert, I understand you want to be absolutely certain the Kristang can’t shoot those transport ships,” she said softly. “We don’t need to be here to do that. I can overload the powercells remotely,” she waved her zPhone.
Nert’s chin bobbed up and down in nervous agreement. “What if the Kristang come here and disable the surge inducer, before you trigger the overload?” The young man’s words sounded stilted and formal, coming through the translator. He had seen the surge inducer device the three humans had cobbled together from the drill’s power supply, and he was not confident it would work. The real problem is he did not trust three backward, primitive humans to operate technology. The lives of almost forty thousand Ruhar depended on him. “They could disconnect the power supply from here.”
Shauna could see Nert’s fear, the expression was clear even on an alien face. The boy almost had tears welling in his eyes. “Nert, we thought of that, remember? Dave and Jesse installed something we humans call a ‘booby trap’.” She paused to see if Nert understood whatever that phrase translated to in the common Ruhar language. Recognition dawned on Nert’s face, so she continued. “If anyone tampers with the power connection, the surge triggers automatically. Even if the Kristang blow up his whole drill rig somehow, the power surge will be delivered.”
Nert’s mouth formed a silent ‘O’. Without using his zPhone translator, he spoke. “It goes boom?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dave put his hands together, then flung them apart. “Big badda boom! Like, this whole island, kid. We need to make like a shepherd, and get the flock outa here.”
Jesse snorted with laughter. “Nert, he means we need to leave right now.” Twelve minutes had passed since the Buzzard crashed on its suicide run, and Major Perkins had ordered the drill to punch through the final distance into the projector’s powercells. By now, it was likely the Kristang had figured out what was going on, and were frantically on their way to the drill rig site.
Nert still hesitated, so Jesse tried another tactic. Major Perkins would not be pleased if they didn’t bring their young Ruhar liaison officer with them. “Cadet, our mission here is complete. Someone needs to report to your command what happened here.”
Whether that made sense to Nert, or he was simply happy for a reasonable excuse, he nodded vigorously. “We go now?”
Nert, even at easy jogging speed, reached the beach
before the three humans. He raced the final hundred meters, bounding along the broken terrain, waving his arms and shouting. Major Perkins waved him toward her boat. “Cadet, where are the others?”
“Behind me,” Nert pointed back along the stream bed. To the annoyance of Perkins, the young Ruhar was not breathing hard. Her three young fit soldiers stumbled onto the beach two minutes later, breathing raggedly, faces red from exertion.
“Czajka, you’re with me,” Perkins ordered. They launched both boats in the gentle surf, and motored out toward the fringing reef. Perkins had been studying the waves breaking over the reef, and had planned a path through the reef. Irene’s boat, with Derek, Shauna, and Jesse aboard, was almost tipped over by a breaking wave, but she powered over the crest and into the open sea. Both boats went to full power, headed for the west side of the closest island.
“I’m still not getting a signal from outside, Ma’am,” Dave reported, playing with his zPhone. “Whatever jamming field the lizards are using, it covers more than that one island. Should we trigger the power surge now?”
Perkins, who was steering the raft, looked ahead. They were approaching the other island, but she wanted to go around the back side, and beach the boats there. If a tsunami hit where they were, it could carry the two boats high up to crash into the island’s near shore. “Not yet. I want to get us around this point first.”
“Yes, Ma’am, I understand that,” Dave said with a frown. “I’m worried that this jamming field could interfere with our zPhone connection with the drill rig. When you called us there, the signal had a lot of static.”
Perkins looked at Dave sharply. Why the hell had he not mentioned that concern earlier? “Czajka,” she let out a breath, annoyed. “Is there a way you can tell on that phone, the strength of the signal connection to the drill rig?”
Dave’s eyebrows raised. “Uh, I can, uh, check on that.” Shit, he mentally kicked himself, I should have thought of that. “There must be a-”
There was a bright flash from behind them, then the mountaintop erupted like the extinct volcano coming back to life. Dave only had enough time to open his mouth in shock, before his view of the exploding peak was obscured by a dust cloud, and the entire island rippled. At first Dave thought the ripple was the ground shaking, until he realized the ripple was in the air. It was a shockwave, headed straight for them. Then the whole mountain exploded, sending rock upward and outward.
“Shit!” Dave shouted, his face white. “They must have triggered the booby trap! How the hell did the lizards get there so fast?”
Perkins ignored his question, yanking on Dave’s top. “Down!” She shouted so her voice could be heard by the other boat, where Irene had already ordered everyone to lay flat in the bottom of the boat. Emily had barely enough time to throw herself prone and cover her ears when the bone-shaking roar swept over them, followed by a prolonged, low, rolling thunder. Perkins was about to raise her head when the shockwave hit, and the boat was flipped over, sending her cartwheeling across the waves. Impact with the water jarred her and she briefly lost consciousness, coming back to reality laying face up, supported by the Ruhar life vest that had automatically inflated. The vest included a blinking light and emergency locator beacon, and some gizmo that kept ocean predators away. Coughing up seawater, she looked around frantically for the others. Dave floated a mere twenty feet away from her, holding onto Nert whose eyes were closed. To her other side, Derek waved a hand weakly and gave her a thumbs up on behalf of the others. The boats had flipped over and tumbled in the shockwave, with the closest one now fifty meters away.
“Dave- Czajka!” She remembered decorum a little too late. “How is Nert?” As she shouted, the Ruhar cadet’s eyes opened, and he nodded his head at Dave.
“Good!” Dave whispered, or it seemed to Perkins that he whispered, because her hearing was recovering from the shockwave. Dave saw she had trouble hearing, or his own hearing was affected also. “He is good,” he shouted slowly, giving her a thumbs up.
Nert blinked, heaved, and coughed up seawater and whatever he had last eaten. “I Ok,” he said, embarrassed. Then his eyes grew wide, and he pointed toward where the projector island had been. Most of the island above a dozen feet above the water was gone, although there was so much smoke, ash and steam not much could be seen. What could be seen were huge chunks of the island splashing into the sea, with some rocks flying toward and even beyond Perkins and her team.
But what had truly scared Nert was the wave. “No good!” He exclaimed in squeaky English. “No is good!”
“Ya think?” Dave replied without thinking. Unlike in movies, this tsunami was not a vertical, breaking wave. The entire surface of the sea had risen a dozen feet as was rushing toward them, with the front boiling foam.
“Hang-” Was all Perkins had time to say, before she was engulfed. The first part was not as bad as she feared, being like a wave you might body surf at the beach, then the wall of water hit like a concrete wall.
CHAPTER NINE
In one way, the tsunami did Major Perkins and her team a favor; the massive surge of water lifted them up high over the jagged coral reef fringing the island they had been headed for. The wave carried them along; sometimes above the surface, sometimes being tumbled over and over in the water. Emily recalled keeping her head above the water three times, gasping for air; most of the time it seemed like she was underwater even with the Ruhar life vest doing its best to keep her upright and above the surface.
The tsunami swept over the island, and climbed high into the hills, breaking trees along the way. Perkins and her team had the good fortune to be carried over a peninsula that jutted out from the island, separating two half-moon shaped beaches. The second beach encompassed a broad, deep-bottomed bay; going from shallow water to deep water dissipated part of the tsunami’s force.
Emily didn’t know how long she was in the water or what happened along the way. She was battered by strong waves and scraped against the sandy bottom of the bay and coral and debris and turned around and around so many times, she barely knew who she was. What she did know was that after a while, she felt someone hugging her from behind, and an arm around her chest. “Major, it’s me, Czajka. I’ve got you.”
She vomited up seawater, choking and gasping. When she could finally speak, she could only manage a strangled “Dave.”
“It’s me, it’s me,” he whispered in her ear. Or he was shouting and her ears were too full of water to hear properly. “You’re ok, you’re ok. Everyone made it.” He waved a hand to Shauna, who was helping Derek get to shore. Jesse, Irene and Nert were already on the debris-choked beach, coughing up seawater. Broken palm trees were scattered across the beach like matchsticks, or bobbing in the still-sloshing water of the bay.
“Everyone? Safe?”
“Yes, we all made it,” Dave assured her.
“I can move,” Perkins protested, embarrassed.
“I can help you,” Dave said gently.
“Let me try,” she said, and as he released his arm, she found her arms and legs still worked, although everything was stiff and sore. She turned to face Dave. “Thank you,” she said simply, regretting that the rank structure prevented her from saying more.
Dave grinned, the grin of those surprised and happy to be alive. “No problem, Major. Watch out for that tree.”
Side by side, neither of them swimming swiftly, they made their way through the floating debris to the shore. Emily’s boots touched the sandy bottom, and as she splashed her way up to the beach in her soaked uniform, she could not help indulging herself. Holding a hand to her lips as if smoking a pipe and striking a dramatic pose, she pointed to the shattered projector island. “I shall not return.”
That remark broke everyone into laughter, except for Nert, who of course had never heard of Douglas MacArthur.
Satisfied for the moment that no one had life-threatening injuries, she moved on to the next issue. “Does anyone still have a zPhone?” Perkins patted her pockets in di
smay. Her zPhone had been in the left breast pocket of her blouse; a pocket that had been torn away, only a scrap of the flap remained.
“No.”
“I lost mine.”
“Me too.”
“I’ve got, oh,” Irene held up her credit-card-thin zPhone, which was now bent at a forty five degree angle. “I didn’t know these things could bend.”
“Or break,” Dave held up the two pieces of his shattered zPhone.
“Nert?” Perkins asked hopefully.
The Ruhar cadet shook his head. Without zPhones to translate, he had to use his very limited English. “I not had that,” he said with an awkward grin.
“Hell,” Perkins expressed her dismay. “We have no way to contact the Ruhar?”
“The emergency locator beacons on our boats will be transmitting, Ma’am,” Irene said with as much cheer as she could muster. One of the orange boats could be seen floating, upside down, just beyond the reef. The important fact was that it was still floating.
“The beacons only tell the Ruhar an aircraft went down here, and they already know that. What I’m worried about is the Ruhar thinking there might still be a threat here, and saturating this entire area with railgun darts,” Perkins explained in exasperation.
“Oh, shit,” Irene looked down shamefacedly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I hope the Ruhar don’t think of that. Does anyone have a serious injury?” Perkins asked. Her left knee hurt, causing her to limp. It felt like it she turned it to the right at all, something important would snap. Everyone had cuts, bumps, deep scrapes, bruises and what Perkins thought were mild sprains. Everyone was bleeding here and there, none of it immediately serious. Derek had the worst injury; his left wrist was hanging at an awkward angle and he had three broken fingers on that hand. “We’ll survive,” Perkins concluded. “The Ruhar will either hit us from orbit, or send a dropship. Either way, it won’t take long.”
Trouble on Paradise: an ExForce novella (ExForce novellas Book 1) Page 16