Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  “Thank you for the frank assessment, Mr. Bishop,” Chuckle’s voice was smooth again. “Perhaps we should all consider the situation, and resume this discussion at an opportune time in the future.”

  “That would be a good idea,” Skippy surprised me by saying that. Then he went back to being his usual self. “For the sake of efficiency, when we resume the discussions, instead of you contacting me, how about you talk to yourself in a mirror? That way you won’t waste any more of my time, and avoid the consequences of me getting seriously annoyed at you. Or, if you don’t want to talk to a mirror, you can use a sock puppet.”

  Winthorp had regained his balance, and smoothly responded. “Clearly, your time is extremely valuable, Mr. Skippy. Mr. Bishop, perhaps it would be better if you and I spoke directly.”

  Oh, crap. If UNEF had assigned Winthorp to negotiate with Skippy, the next step would be ordering me to work with him. This was going to ruin my whole freakin’ week, at least. And there was no way for me to avoid it. Winthorp would make a politely worded request to UNEF Command, and they would contact the US Army, and the Army would order me to help Chuckles the Clown. “Oh, uh, certainly, sir. It would probably be best for you to go through my commanding officer.” Except that I had no idea who my current CO was. The 10th Infantry Division was stuck on Paradise, as far as I knew. When they promoted me to colonel, I was temporarily attached to a headquarters unit, and I reported to a general who was still on Paradise, as far as I knew. Hmm. Actually, my unknown chain of command could buy me an extra day of freedom.

  I was wrong about an extra day of freedom, because Major Simms called me that same night. We had seen each other only twice since we landed, both of us had been stuck in debriefings. We had texted via zPhone, but that’s all.

  Simms had good news and bad news for me. The good news is that she had recommended me for a bronze star. But she had been told that since my meritorious action had occurred during an ‘aerial flight’, the paperwork had been changed to a Distinguished Flying Cross for my solo spacedive. Because our mission was secret, I wouldn’t be able to wear either medal on Earth, but it was a nice gesture. On the other hand, I’d been recommended for a medal before, in Nigeria, and nothing had come of it.

  The bad news was that my leave was cancelled, effective immediately. I had to drive down to Bangor that night, an Air Force transport would be flying me back to Wright-Patterson. UNEF Command had thought about the situation, and decided the Dutchman needed to go back out ASAP. That made me wonder if their foreheads hurt from slapping themselves over such an obvious decision.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Paradise

  To Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious jumped in above Lemuria again; this time the little frigate emerged at a high enough altitude that it could immediately jump away if needed. The ship’s crew was increasingly anxious; each time they raided the planet they were certain this time would be their last. The Kristang task force had lost one ship early in the raiding campaign; a frigate had been caught in a damping field by two Ruhar destroyers and blown apart in spectacular fashion. Some in the task force, including the Glory’s captain, thought the now-dead ship had pushed its luck and been showing off, hoping to impress the task force commander. All that foolish ship had accomplished was to provide the hated Ruhar with a morale boost, and place a greater burden on the remaining ships in the task force.

  The Glory’s mission on this particular raid was to test how the Ruhar would react to an enemy ship burning crops of the humans. To test whether the Ruhar would react at all; if they cared in any way about human crop losses and the potential for widespread starvation. The last time the Glory had jumped into to target the southern continent, the frigate’s mission had been hoping to lure Ruhar ships away from the northern continent again. The Ruhar had fallen for the trick the first time, and paid a price when a Kristang destroyer jumped in and struck several important sites on the northern continent. The second time, the Ruhar had been more cautious. From what little the Kristang had been able to decrypt from Ruhar messages, the commodore of the Ruhar ships was under heavy pressure to defend the Ruhar population and facilities. How much damage would the Ruhar allow the Kristang to inflict on the humans, before the Ruhar sent ships to chase the Kristang away? How many ships would the Ruhar commodore send, and what tactics would he use? Bringing back answers to those questions was the true purpose of this raid; any damage inflicted on the traitorous humans would be a bonus. It would serve the humans right if they starved to death; if they were truly honorable warriors, they should have fought the Ruhar to the last man. Instead the laid down their weapons like cowards and meekly became farm laborers.

  To Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious set its maser cannon on broad spectrum and began methodically burning out fields of human crops. Wherever the maser touched, crops withered and died, all moisture boiled away by the scorching beam. To the surprise of the frigate’s captain, a full seven minutes went by before the Ruhar commodore sent a single frigate to deal with the intruder. The Glory had been maneuvering randomly to dodge unenthusiastic maser and railgun fire from the Ruhar before the defending frigate jumped in. To show the Ruhar that the warrior Kristang were not afraid in the least, the Glory stood its ground for twenty seconds, exchanging fire with the enemy frigate, then jumped away. Its mission had been entirely successful, and large swaths of the southern continent lay in waste. Precious human crops had been destroyed, and valuable intelligence about the tactics and capabilities of the Ruhar had been gathered. That night, the Glory’s crew would feast deservedly.

  Earth

  My father drove me down to Bangor, right after we finished dinner. On the way down, we talked a lot, but not about the future. He understood that I didn’t know when or if I would be leaving again. Or when or if I’d be coming home. It was rough on my parents, but then I thought of all the parents whose children were trapped on Paradise. At least my parents had been able to see me twice, even if only briefly.

  Going back to Dayton meant I might be able to see Rachel again. I was looking forward to that.

  As soon as I got into my hotel room near the Bangor airport that night, my zPhone pinged; it was Skippy. “Hi, Joe. I couldn’t talk to you while you were with your parents. There’s something you need to hear. You don’t like me telling you about things I overheard, but you seriously need to make an exception in this case. Because it’s about you.”

  “Wait. Give me a hint first, then I’ll decide whether to listen.” Crap. I’d been hoping for six hours of sleep before I had to get up.

  “UNEF Command has been holding what can best be described as hearings, almost a court martial, about you.”

  “That’s not a surprise, they’re not happy with me, I know that.”

  “It’s more than that, Joe. This is political. They’ve decided to send the Dutchman back out, duh, and there are a lot of people on Earth who want to command the mission. They’re looking to stab you in the back, to get you out of their way.”

  “Again, no surprise there.”

  “What you don’t know is they brought Major Smythe into Wright-Pat yesterday, and he-”

  “Major Smythe?”

  “Yes, he was officially promoted. Will you shut up so I can finish the story? Here, watch your zPhone, I recorded what Smythe said. UNEF doesn’t know I recorded it, so don’t say anything, please.”

  I lay on the bed, propped myself up with pillows, and watched my zPhone. It was as interesting as Skippy promised.

  It was a typically bland government conference room. There was a table on an elevated platform at one end of the room; six generals from multiple countries and services were sitting behind the table. On the floor were other ranks of tables, and I immediately recognized Major Smythe. He looked unhappy. The quality of the video was not great; this might have been Skippy doing his surveillance through dust particles trick. One of the generals was speaking; I didn’t recognize him but from his uniform, he was US Air Force. "Major Smythe, quoting from your report,
you described Colonel, or Sergeant, Bishop, this way. 'Bishop can present himself as inexperienced, immature, inattentive to duty, and generally unsuited to command'. I notice in your report you did not refer to him as 'Colonel'."

  “Yes, I-”

  The general cut Smythe off before he could finish. “Could you explain why, despite your description of Sergeant Bishop in your report, you recommend him to command humanity’s only starship again?”

  Smythe took a sip from his water glass to collect his thoughts. “Because, sir, if Colonel Bishop told me we were going to crash the gates of Hell, and the only thing we had for weapons were plastic spoons, I would follow him without hesitation. So would every member of the SpecOps teams from the last mission. I would follow him, because I know that he would have cooked up some daft plan that any sane person would say is high and off to the right,” Smythe used a US military term. “Yet somehow, his plan would work. Sir, I've seen Colonel Bishop dream up things that would make your head spin, but it works. It works. He comes up with ideas that even the AI hasn't thought of, things the AI didn't even realize it could do. Such as how we killed that Thuranin surveyor ship. Colonel Bishop had the idea for Skippy to create an especially flat area of spacetime that would attract the business end of an enemy jump wormhole. It worked perfectly, sir, perfectly. And Skippy didn't even realize he could do that, until Colonel Bishop explained it to him. Also, sir," Smythe had gotten up a head of steam and plowed ahead before he could be interrupted, leaning forward on the table for emphasis. "Colonel Bishop is absolutely dedicated to duty. On that spacedive he did, he offered to sacrifice himself, to ensure success of the mission. Even after those two tankers jumped away and our dropship was able to recover him, when his spacesuit was leaking air, he ordered the dropship to recover Skippy first."

  “Sergeant Bishop’s admirable personal courage is not in question, nor is it relevant to this discussion. We are focused on his judgment.” The generals on the dais nodded, unconvinced. "Thank you, Major, we will take your remarks under advisement."

  "Permission to speak freely, sir?" Smythe asked.

  The generals glanced at each other again. "Getting your frank and honest opinion is why we brought you here, Major."

  "Thank you, sir. In my report, I stated that Colonel Bishop 'can present himself’ in a particular manner. I didn't say he actually is like the negative things I described. At first, I did think Bishop was immature and almost flippant, I think is the best word, about the situation. Since then, I have come to realize that is simply his personality. I have seen Colonel Bishop be deadly serious when the situation calls for it.” He coughed, took a sip of water, and continued. “In my opinion, sirs, we would be foolish not to continue with the most experienced commander we have, the only experienced commander we have.”

  “Experienced, although he took an extreme and unwarranted risk by landing on Newark. He landed in direct contradiction to a standing mission objective.”

  Smythe was unfazed. “No, sir, he did not. He ordered the landing as the only certain way to support the mission objective.”

  “He-”

  “Colonel Bishop took action to preserve the Flying Dutchman’s combat capability as long as possible. Faced with unknown future risks, he preserved our ability to take effective future action. If he had not done so,” It was Smythe’s turn to look around the room. “There would be a Thuranin ship on its way here now, and there would be absolutely nothing we could do about it. The mission objective was to prevent aliens from learning that humans have a starship, and that we were involved in shutting down a wormhole. We were able to accomplish that objective only because we landed on Newark. Orders issued on Earth cannot anticipate every situation we may encounter during an interstellar mission. We need a proven commander we can trust. Bishop is our only experienced commander.”

  My zPhone screen went blank. “Skippy?” I asked. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “Oh, the rest is blah, blah, blah more of the same. What I wanted you to see is that Major Smythe has your back. He’s a good guy, in my opinion. The other SpecOps team leaders all supported you, so did Lt. Colonel Chang, Major Simms, Captain Desai, Sergeant Adams, everybody.”

  “Wow. They brought everyone there?”

  “Huh? No, UNEF Command is holding reviews in all five UNEF countries, only Major Smythe flew into Wright-Pat. Get some sleep, Joe, I think you are going to have a tough day tomorrow.”

  Right. Like I was able to sleep after that.

  Paradise

  To Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious emerged over Lemuria in a sudden burst of gamma radiation, repeating its previous mission of burning human crops while keeping the Ruhar defenders off guard. This time, it took only four minutes before the Ruhar dispatched a single frigate to chase the Glory away, and the two frigates tangled for another full minute before the Kristang ship jumped away. The little frigate Glory had accomplished its mission once again. The Ruhar defenders could not get any rest because of the constant threat of raids. Even more important, their ships were deferring important maintenance, which would soon begin to affect their combat readiness. The Kristang were gaining important intelligence about the tactics of the Ruhar.

  And the traitorous humans were being hurt. Sixteen humans had died during the raid, and their food supply was now dwindling rather than increasing.

  Earth

  What I encountered when I got back to Wright-Patterson was not a court martial, not exactly a hearing and not quite an inquisition either. Whatever they were calling the meeting, I was facing a row of senior officers from the five countries making up UNEF, and they didn’t look friendly. The official subject of the meeting was to make preparations for the Flying Dutchman’s next mission. The unspoken subject of the meeting was my competence and fitness to command a vital offworld mission. Or my lack of competence and fitness in the view of UNEF Command, which became clear from the tone of the questions. Of the five generals grilling me, the Chinese and British were mostly neutral, while the other three acted like I shouldn’t be trusted to command a row boat. The most hostile was US Army General Ridge, who seemed to think my perceived failings as a commander reflected badly upon him personally.

  For almost an hour, we danced around the question of who would be in command when the Dutchman departed. Then there was a commotion in the back of the room. I tried to ignore it, until the row of senior officers in front of me halted the questioning. “What is it, Major?” General Ridge asked.

  A US Air Force major in the back of the room answered. “General, we appear to have lost all contact with the Flying Dutchman. We have tried contacting people directly, so far no- Wait, I’m getting another message,” the major whose name I didn’t know held the phone close to his ear. His face turned white. “General, the starship has disappeared. We’ve lost the Dutchman.”

  Ridge turned to the French man to his right, General Blanchard. “Louis, this had better not be one of your tricks,” Ridge said in an unfriendly tone. The skeleton crew aboard the Dutchman was nominally under French command that week.

  “I know nothing about this, Thomas,” Blanchard protested. “We lost the ship? It jumped away?”

  “No, sir,” the unnamed major reported. His shaky voice echoed the tone of panic in the room. “There was no gamma ray burst detected. It simply vanished.”

  “Sirs?” I spoke up hesitantly. All eyes in the room turned to me. I swallowed hard and said “That sounds like the Dutchman engaged her stealth field. That type of field warps electromagnetic radiation, such as light, around the ship. That would make the ship appear to have disappeared.”

  Ridge glared at me. “Sergeant, why would the ship engage stealth in orbit? Did the ship detect a threat?”

  “In case of a threat, the ship should have immediately jumped away to assess the situation. That is my standing order,” I coughed nervously, suddenly all-too aware that my ability to give orders to the Dutchman’s crew was over. That standing order had been my reaction to watching too many
dumbass commanders in science fiction movies, who waited until their ship had been pounded half to dust before they tried to get away. I was not taking any stupid chances with the Dutchman; if the duty pilot thought there was something squirrelly, they were to jump away without asking for permission. “Sir, if I can contact Skippy, I can confirm.”

  “Do it, Sergeant,” Ridge ordered. “You have your zPhone?”

  “Yes, sir, but I think that is not necessary. Skippy, are you there?”

  His voice came out of the projector system’s speakers. “Ho there, Joe! Yup, I’m here in my comfy escape pod man cave as usual. Right now I’m channel surfing, enjoying a bowl of popcorn and cold brewskis. How are you doing down there?”

  I had no doubt that Skippy was indeed currently surfing the content of every TV channel, radio station and website on the planet, but he also knew exactly what was going on with me. “Hey, Skippy, uh, we’ve lost contact with the ship. Did you engage the stealth field?”

  “Darn. You saw that, huh?”

  “More like we noticed there suddenly was nothing to see. What’s up with that?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two of the UNEF staff shaking their heads at my unprofessional casual language. Screw them. They didn’t know Skippy like I did. They hadn’t worked with Skippy to save the world.

  Save the freakin’ world twice.

  “I’m not feeling the love, Joe. So, I metaphorically have pulled up the rope ladder to my treehouse fort, and I’m not allowing anyone up here unless they know the secret handshake. Or, hmmm, I don’t have hands. Maybe it should be the secret password. Yeah, that’s it.”