Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  When the crew of the Glory heard Kekrando’s speech, the little frigate’s captain had turned to his executive officer and muttered the Kristang equivalent of ‘blah blah blah’. Words were passing things, and it mattered not why the battlegroup was there. What mattered was the mission that had been assigned to the battlegroup, to each ship, and to each crewman. The current mission assigned to the Glory, each and every one of her crew agreed, sucked. It sucked big time. It could have sucked a bowling ball through fifty feet of garden hose, that’s how badly it sucked. After taking enormous risks as the chief raiding ship before the bulk of the battlegroup arrived, the Glory’s crew had expected a nice, cushy assignment. The frigate would tie up next to a support ship, they expected, for extended maintenance and repairs. Maintenance that was long overdue. While engineering teams worked feverishly to bring the frigate back up to full combat potential, most of the crew could enjoy some well-deserved shore leave on the planet they had been viewing from space for so long.

  But, no! That was not their assignment. After the long journey to Pradassis, many of Kekrando’s heavy ships needed maintenance and replenishment, and those much more valuable ships were given priority attention by the support vessels. The battered, worn-out little Glory was given a lonely task, a task for which frigates had been designed. She was to shadow the Ruhar Commodore Ferlant’s remaining task force. And so, the Glory was positioned roughly one light minute away from Ferlant’s loosely clustered ships; one minute closer to Pradassis. Ferlant’s ships had mostly been sitting in one spot since the cease fire, licking their wounds and biding their time. Glory’s captain considered that, no matter how unhappy the warriors of the Swift Arrow task force were about their current mission, the Ruhar of Ferlant’s task force had to be even more unhappy. They had failed. They had failed to protect their planet from damaging raids by a handful of isolated Kristang ships, and now they had completely lost control of the star system. What awaited Ferlant’s crews was a humiliating wait for negotiations to conclude, and then a retreat with their tails tucked between their legs. If the Ruhar crews had been Kristang warriors, it would be a long time, if ever, before they could hold their heads in anything but utter shame. A Kristang would enthusiastically embrace death before enduring such dishonor. Or so the Kristang told themselves with bravado, while they had such an overwhelming advantage in combat power around Pradassis.

  While their little ship performed its lonely picket duty, keeping an eye on Ferlant’s impotent ships, the Glory’s crew went about fixing up the ship as best they could. With the ship technically being constantly at battle stations, they could not take many critical systems offline for badly needed maintenance. So they did what they could, and waited for relief. Surely Admiral Kekrando’s staff would send another frigate to replace the Glory eventually, and the ship could be returned to full combat capability. Surely that would happen, soon.

  “Signal received!” The ship’s communications officer shouted excitedly. “The order is option Green?” The man sputtered in surprise. “We are to execute immediately!”

  Concealing his shock, and resigned to his fate, the ship’s captain gave the order with a calm due more to weariness than bravery. “Execute plan Green, as soon as possible,” he said sadly to his executive officer.

  “Yes, Captain,” the man replied quietly, and turned to engage the ship’s poorly maintained jump drive system. “The condition of the drive, is-”

  “I know,” the captain said without taking his eyes off the tactical display. “Do the best you can. We must jump as quickly as possible.”

  “The best possible,” the executive officer said while studying the indicators for jump dive coil status, “will barely get there in time.” The signal from Pradassis had continued past the Glory and would reach the Ruhar task force in less than one minute. Presumably, the Ruhar on the planet had sent their own signal to Commodore Ferlant’s ships. If the Glory were to have any advantage of surprise, she needed to arrive in the midst of the Ruhar formation before the signal did.

  “Understood,” the captain acknowledged. He could read the drive status on his own display. He turned his attention to the officer monitoring the sensor console. “What happened down there?” Option Green was one of five contingencies established by Admiral Kekrando, with Green being a plan to be activated only if the battlegroup somehow suffered a catastrophic loss. How could that have happened?

  The officer had been frantically pushing buttons and spinning dials. Confused and shocked, he looked up from the console. “Captain, it appears the Ruhar violated the cease fire. They attacked our battlegroup using projectors.”

  “Projectors?” The captain exchanged an astonished look with his executive officer. “You are certain?” The Glory’s sensors were in poor condition and far overdue for important components to be replaced. There must be a mistake; a sensor glitch.

  “Yes, Captain. There is no mistake. I can clearly see three projectors firing, and another is behind the curve of the planet’s horizon.”

  “Projectors?” The Captain repeated. “When did the Ruhar install projectors? How? They did it right under our noses?”

  “Fleet intelligence will have a difficult time explaining this,” the executive officer noted. “We have lost eleven ships so far, including the Victorious; she was struck first. The attack is continuing. Or, it was,” he added, remembering that the light picked up by the ship’s sensors was now several light minutes old.

  “Eleven ships?” The Captain said, stunned. This was indeed a catastrophic event. A disaster for the battlegroup, and for the Swift Arrow clan. He now understood why Kekrando ordered option Green. The order called for the Glory to abandon her picket duty, jump into the midst of the Ruhar formation, and attack. Attack and cause as much damage as she could, until she was disabled or destroyed. Option Green called for little To Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious to fight to the death; her own death. “When we jump in, had straight for the Ruhar cruiser at maximum speed,” he ordered the executive officer. The man nodded soberly. Since the Glory could not survive the upcoming fight, she would truly seek glory by attempting to ram the Ruhar cruiser Ruh Gastalo.

  “The clan will sing about the glory of our battle forever,” the executive officer said loudly, so the entire bridge crew could hear clearly. Privately, he thought of the frigate’s brother ship Every day is a Good Day to Die in Battle. That ship had died in battle already. Was this day, a very ordinary day until moments ago, a good day to die? As good as any, the exec thought. Although he would have preferred some warning to mentally prepare himself. “Jump drive is ready, Captain,” he announced. “Engaging now.”

  Aboard his command ship Ruh Gastalo, Commodore Ferlant’s mind was still reeling. What else could go wrong with this mission, he asked himself? It was supposed to be a simple and relatively easy assignment. The fleet had taken Gehtanu away from the Kristang. With their losses elsewhere in the sector, the Thuranin were in no position to support a Kristang effort to retain control of the star system. Unexpectedly, a handful of Kristang ships had stayed in the system and began raiding the planet. That was an annoyance, not a serious threat. Then, the Kristang had inexplicably began shooting at the clients the ‘humans’, and the Chief Administrator of Gehtanu had informed Ferlant that his task force needed to protect the humans also. Ferlant’s ships were already stretched thin protecting the northern continent of Tenturo. Extending coverage to the southern continent greatly strained his ships’ ability to protect the Ruhar population and infrastructure on Tenturo.

  Then, just when Ferlant thought he had discouraged the raiders, the Kristang out of nowhere had arrived with an entire battlegroup! Ruhar fleet intelligence had assured Ferlant that there was no way the Kristang would or could reinforce their few ships near Gehtanu. No way, there was no possibility that the Kristang would even be able to get weapons and spare parts to their ships. All Ferlant needed to do, Fleet Intelligence had told him, was to hang on until the Kristang ships fell apart. The impossibl
e had happened, and Ferlant had barely escaped with his tiny force intact.

  Having an enemy battlegroup appear absolutely out of nowhere, to land practically in his lap had been shocking enough. Moments before, he had received notice that projectors on Gehtanu had destroyed much of the Kristang battlegroup. The message from the Ruhar government on the planet had screamed at him why Ferlant had violated the cease fire, and why he had not informed the government about the defense capabilities of their own planet. After wasting a few precious seconds on paralyzing shock, Ferlant had replied that he knew nothing about any projectors on Gehtanu, and why hadn’t the government informed him? Then he ordered his task force to immediately begin dispersing according to Action Plan 3. Because some of his ships were undergoing running repairs, they could not initiate a jump until they switched to backup systems. Ferlant was holding his own cruiser back to cover the stragglers.

  “MecMurro reports ready for jump, Commodore.” A bridge officer behind Ferlant reported.

  Without turning away from the main tactical display, Ferlant acknowledged with a curt nod. “Wait until MecMurro’s jump is confirmed successful, then take us to the rendezvous-”

  “Enemy ship jumped in! One frigate. It, it’s that damned Target Beta Glorious something, whatever its name is,” the officer reported. “That damned lucky ship that kept raiding us.”

  Ferlant’s lip curled in a wry smile. “That little ship is annoyingly persistent, isn’t she?”

  “Commodore, if we turn to expose our starboard railgun battery, we could take that ship out with one shot,” the officer suggested.

  “Yes,” Ferlant’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the red symbol in the tactical display. That little enemy ship had been the bane of his existence. He could finally be rid of it with one shot. “You have permission to maneuver the ship.”

  By luck more than skill, the frigate’s creaky jump drive somehow brought the ship into the Ruhar formation, and miraculously less than seventy thousand kilometers from the Ruh Gastalo. Against the much larger and heavily shielded Ruhar cruiser, the Glory had no chance even for a suicide run, for the cruiser’s weapons would pound the little frigate into space dust long before the Glory approached. Glory aimed her own maser cannons and fired, with the beams easily deflected by the cruiser’s more powerful shields. The Glory had to turn more than ninety degrees to engage the Ruh Gastalo, and by the time the frigate made the turn and began accelerating with maximum force, the executive office noticed something odd.

  Where were the other ships of Commodore Ferlant’s small task force? There were only two ships within the frigate’s sensor bubble, and as he watched, a destroyer jumped away, leaving only the cruiser. As the Glory was rocked by direct maser fire from Ruh Gastalo, the executive officer’s fingers flew over his own console. The other ships had jumped away, only moments ago! He could still detect strong residual jump signatures. The ship was rocked again. “Captain!” He shouted a warning. “Shields collapsing!” One more maser volley from Ruh Gastalo, and the Glory would be defenseless. She was still over sixty thousand kilometers from the target. By the time the cruiser blew up the frigate’s reactor, Glory would be too far away for the cruiser to be damaged by the explosion. The crew of the Glory would die without having struck a significant blow against their long-hated enemy. If today was indeed a good day to die, it was not a good day to find glory in battle. The frigate would find only frustration and death, not glory.

  Why was the cruiser not firing her railguns? At such short range, a single railgun round could easily penetrate the Glory’s hull bow to stern, and-

  In a burst of gamma radiation, the cruiser vanished. “What happened?” The exec asked himself. “Captain, the enemy ship has jumped away. They all jumped away. We can,” he looked to the sensor officer for confirmation. “We might be able to follow one of the ships; their jump signatures are very recent and strong.” Catching the sensor officer’s worried look, the exec added “Considering the condition of our sensors, we would be using guesses more than science to track an enemy ship, Captain.”

  “No,” the Captain replied, suppressing a shudder of relief at having avoided death once again. “Our orders were to attack the enemy task force. It has now dispersed, and we are unable to follow. Send a signal to the Green rendezvous point,” the hopefully secret location where the battlegroup was to assemble. “Inform them that the enemy task force has dispersed, and request orders. The enemy received the news before we did,” the Captain declared with a mixture of regret and gratitude.

  “Or,” the executive officer said darkly, “they knew the exact timing of their projector attack, and fled away for safety. The Ruhar are both treacherous and cowardly, Captain.”

  The Captain nodded silently, agreeing with the obvious wisdom of his executive officer’s statement. To himself, the Captain said a prayer. With the cease fire now over, Kristang ships might again be called upon to raid Pradassis. This time, powerful maser cannons would be the primary threat to raiding ships. What could the battered little frigate do against a projector? Nothing. Except to serve as target practice. “They are treacherous, and cowardly,” the Captain observed. “And, apparently, they are very, very clever.”

  At the Ruh Gastalo’s assigned Action Plan 3 primary jump point, the cruiser emerged in a gamma ray burst. She ejected quantum resonators to cover the tracks of her next jump, and as soon as the ship’s jump drive was realigned, she jumped again to the secondary point. There would be three more jumps before she rejoined the task force; a precaution because Action Plan 3 assumed the enemy would be pursuing, chasing Ferlant’s task force around the star system.

  The cruiser jumped again, and proceeded away in a random direction at full thrust, waiting for her jump drive to recharge. “Jump successful, Commodore. No sign of pursuit. Commodore, may I ask why we did not fire railguns at that enemy frigate?”

  Ferlant turned away from the tactical display. This was an opportunity to provide coaching to the young officers of his staff. “That frigate has somehow survived against the odds, at times when it seemed certain her fate was sealed. Fate has determined this is not yet her time. I have learned that one should never argue with Fate.”

  “Eeeeaaargh!” Admiral Kekrando shouted in a frustration that felt like physical pain, and he quickly spun to find something, anything, that he could smash. His officers knew from long experience never to be close at hand when the admiral was enraged, which happened frequently. The never-ending hero of the admiral’s staff was their lowest-ranking member, who had the task of sprinkling around the bridge things that broke in a satisfying but non-lethal manner. Electronic tablet? Yes. Pistol with fully-charged energy pack that might explode if broken in just the right manner? No. Pistol with depleted energy pack that would give very satisfying sparks and, at worst, a few second-degree burns to an unlucky person on the bridge? Very much yes. It was a great system, a system that had worked many, many times over.

  The system had never been tested under such intensely stressful conditions. Kekrando had been preparing for a war game, which was why he was aboard the destroyer We are Proud to Follow the Shining Example of Combat Rifleman Tuut-uas-Val Kedwala instead of his command ship the He Who Pushes Aside Fear Shall Always be Victorious. Which was why he was currently alive rather than a random assortment of rapidly cooling subatomic particles. Kekrando had wished to observe the performance of the Victorious, and the best way to do that was to get off that ship so its captain and crew did not have an admiral looking over their shoulders. Fortunately, he had already been able observe the Victorious in high-intensity combat. Unfortunately, that combat action had told him nothing illustrative about the performance of that ship’s crew, because the battle had been a sneak attack by a ground-based projector against an unshielded ship. And because the Victorious was no longer an organized collection of components that resembled a starship.

  “Eeeeaaargh!” Kekrando repeated, shocked, enraged and humiliated at the incomprehensible defeat he had suffered.
What were projectors doing on Pradassis, of all places?! Seeing a pistol in its assigned slot on a bulkhead, he pulled the lever to release it and threw the weapon to the deck. It broke in several pieces, and its power pack came apart, spewing sparks around the bridge. One spark hit the sleeve of the officer sitting at the destroyer’s sensor station, where that officer was running an analysis of the projector attack over and over again, trying to comprehend what had happened. Instead of flinching as the hot metal burned through his sleeve and into the skin of his forearm, the officer merely brushed it away as an annoyance. He burned his fingers, and distractedly put the throbbing fingers in his mouth. His attention never wavered from the display.

  Something about that further enraged the admiral, plus the pistol breaking apart had not been as satisfying as it had been in the past. He reached over to one of his security staff, yanked the man’s pistol from its holster, and fired at the sensor console. The console exploded, sending metal and composites flying around the bridge, some pieces even striking the admiral. Because consoles were designed not to injure their operators, the sensor officer was not badly injured. He was knocked off his chair, and came shakily back to his feet, with stars in his eyes to see an angry admiral pointing a smoking pistol at his face.

  The officer did not flinch. If Kekrando wanted to kill him for any reason, there was nothing the officer could do about it. He and his family ranked too low in the clan hierarchy to even protest. “Please, Admiral, if it serves the clan for me to die, then do it quickly so the ship can pursue the enemy.”