Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  “Crap. Turn the display off the, Skippy. I don’t want to watch this slaughter.”

  “Wait! Joe, I said that I can’t do anything obvious. I didn’t say that I couldn’t do anything at all. Come on, Joe, it’s Skippy the Magnificent you’re talking to here. Trust the awesomeness.”

  “Trust the awesomeness? Will that be your new slogan?” In spite of the situation, I had to laugh. On the display, aircraft were tangling in the most gigantic air battle I had ever imagined. The Ruhar were outnumbered. “What type of awesomeness do you have in mind, Skippy?” It was probably too late to request permission from Chotek. This was definitely an act-now-and-ask-forgiveness-later kind of situation.

  “Um, you know how the Kristang are bad at taking proper care of maintenance on their equipment, because they consider that to be an inglorious task unfitting for warriors? Well, there are times when such lack of attention to detail can bite you in the ass. This is one of those times.”

  “Skippy, are you doing something now, without getting permission?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about, Joe.”

  “Of course not,” I rolled my eyes. “Let me ask it this way: if you were doing something, what might that be?”

  “Oh, well, speaking hypothetically, it is possible that the Kristang aircraft are experiencing intermittent glitches in their networked fire control systems; these glitches are degrading their already crappy sensor capabilities. And in an ironic coincidence, at the same time the Kristang are having glitches in their systems, the Ruhar aircraft have received an awesome software upgrade that they don’t know about. This upgrade enhances the effectiveness of their stealth capabilities. The combined effect of these two totally, totally unrelated coincidences is that the Ruhar have a significant advantage in air combat. Their aircraft can engage at longer ranges, while the Kristang have to fly relatively close to get a weapons lock on the Ruhar.”

  “Cool. Hypothetically.”

  “Not as cool as I would like it to be, Joe. Ordinarily, this would mean the Ruhar are able to engage and disengage from combat at will. With that many aircraft tangling across the sky, they are so mixed up that the initial advantage of the Ruhar has been diminished. At this point, both sides are about even.”

  “The Ruhar went into the fight at a disadvantage, Skippy. Making it an even fight is a great help. Thank you.”

  “Hypothetically, you are welcome. Oh, hey, if I forget, please remind me to wipe that software upgrade from the Ruhar’s systems after the battle is over. Joe, this is going to be a terrible slaughter on both sides. The Ruhar have already lost seven percent of their airworthy combat aircraft, plus another twelve percent that were destroyed on the ground. The Kristang have lost eleven percent total so far. Both sides are quickly discovering that their tactics for air combat do not apply for a battle of this size and scope. The pilots are having to make this up on the fly, no joke intended. Joe, this air battle is going to be studied for hundreds of years.”

  “I understand.” After that, we watched the action unfurl across the display. Skippy had the good sense to keep quiet, except for quietly bringing particularly significant events to my attention. Mostly, I sat silently as symbols on the display flared and blinked out.

  When the Kristang had launched waves of aircraft to attack Ruhar airbases, Saily and Derek had been headed back toward their own base. Then Saily received an order to change course and fly low and slow for maximum stealth. Ruhar air command had judged that Saily was too far away to help prevent the initial attack on her own airbase, so she was being held in reserve to strike the Kristang aircraft on the way back to their own bases to rearm and refuel. Saily had shaken with anger at doing nothing, while enemy missiles blasted the airbase where her friends worked and lived. Though the Ruhar military datalink was being partly jammed by the Kristang and the enemy had already knocked out many of the transmitters, the tactical communications system was designed to operate under wartime conditions. Derek still had a full picture of the situation across the surface of Gehtanu; he kept Saily informed of what she needed to know and didn’t mention details that would only upset and distract her. From her seat in the front of the tandem cockpit, she could call up any tactical data she wanted; she didn’t have all that much to do while Dobreh flew in lazy circles to achieve maximum stealth. Flying low to the ground meant that the fighter’s already tiny signature would be mostly lost in ground clutter to any active sensors above. Flying slowly meant the Dobreh was not leaving a long trail of disturbed air behind it. And they were flying slowly enough that Saily had only one of the two engines active; the active engine was using only its electrically-powered fan blades and therefore not radiating much heat at all. Secure inside their stealth field, Saily and Derek waited for a signal from air command.

  “Derek. Lieutenant Bonsu,” she addressed him by his human military rank. “We will be going into combat against the Kristang. We will be shooting directly at, killing Kristang. This will be crossing a line; a human involved in hostile action against your patron species. I need to know if you have a problem with this. I need to know whether I can rely on you as my Weapon Systems Officer.”

  “Yes,” Derek responded immediately. “Absolutely. One hundred percent. I know what the Kristang did to my home planet.” Derek was among a growing percentage of humans on Paradise who feared the wormhole to Earth had been shut down deliberately by the Kristang, to cover up what they were doing on that distant planet. Despite assurances from the Ruhar that the Kristang, nor the Thuranin nor even the Maxolhx had the technology to control a wormhole, Derek thought it very suspicious that the only wormhole to humanity’s home had shut down, shortly after the Kristang lost control of Paradise. That could not be a coincidence. And if Derek could not do anything to directly help Earth, he could at least kill as many lizards as he could find in his weapons range. During the brief time when the Kristang battlegroup had total control around Paradise, Derek had feared he could never do anything to avenge the loss of his homeworld. Now, a miracle had cleared the skies of Kristang, and Derek Bonsu was not going to miss this golden opportunity. “Saily, you can absolutely count on me. Let’s do this.”

  Following orders from Ruhar air command, Saily had kept the Dobreh flying slow, lazy circles as the four Kristang aircraft flew by. As soon as the enemy passed overhead, Saily went to full power on the engines to close the distance. Saily still had the ship in stealth, and was about to drop the stealth field for combat maneuvering when Derek had shouted over the intercom. “Break right and cut power!”

  Saily pulled the aircraft into a gentle turn and throttled back the engines. Before she could ask, Derek explained. “They can’t see through our stealth field! I’ve watching them ping us with targeting sensors, and they can’t get a lock. I have a perfect lock on that lead ship with the maser guidance system.”

  Saily checked her instruments. Derek was right, the enemy’s active sensors were still pinging blindly, they couldn’t get a lock on the Dobreh’s position. In air combat, both sides enveloped their aircraft in stealth fields until they began maneuvering into attack position and firing. At that point, with the range between aircraft closing, the high speed leaving turbulent air behind and the engines radiating heat, stealth gave no advantage. Except that now, somehow the Kristang were not able to lock onto the Dobreh, and her aircraft was maintaining a perfect lock as if the Kristang did not have stealth capability at all. Saily did not wait to wonder at the unexpected circumstances; that was for the experts to puzzle over later when they viewed the flight recorder data. “Missiles, full spread.”

  Derek toggled three missiles at the aircraft he had been intending to fire at with the maser cannon, and another three at that aircraft’s wingman. The six missiles dropped out the back of the Dobreh, ignited, and flew violently twisting, evasive paths to their targets. With missiles in the air, Derek activated the maser to target the same two aircraft. He was not trying to kill with the maser, he only wanted the maser to confuse the enemy�
��s sensors and prevent the enemy defensive masers from hitting his missiles. He was only partly successful. The first aircraft’s defenses exploded two missiles more than ten kilometers away; easy kills. But then its sensors seemed to go blind; the enemy fighter turned desperately as Derek watched his missile jinking side to side and up and down as it closed the distance. The enemy defensive maser turrets were not firing at all; they could not find a target to shoot at. Then the missile impacted the enemy directly, blowing it into pieces.

  The second aircraft shot down one incoming missile, and the other two were intermittently struck by defensive masers, but they were only glancing shots as the missiles quickly darted away. Both missiles flew by their evasive target, and their electronic brains concluded they did not have enough fuel to turn and reengage the enemy. Their brains also concluded they were close enough, so they both detonated their shaped-charge fragmentation warheads toward the enemy. Pieces of warheads flew through the air on both sides of the enemy fighter, ripping into it and turning it into a fireball.

  Saily was stunned by the turn of events. In simulations, aircraft almost always were able to destroy incoming missiles with their defensive masers, when missiles were launched at long range. It was only in the close quarters of a dogfight that missiles could home in before the enemy’s defenses could knock them out. Yet here, now, she had fired missiles at two targets and destroyed both targets. The enemy still had not fired a shot at her, as they did not appear to be able to determine exactly where her Dobreh was. Adapting quickly to the new reality, Saily maneuvered to maintain their distance to the two other enemy fighters.

  The enemy ruined her plan. They did not know why the Ruhar stealth field was so much more effective than they had expected, or what was wrong with their own targeting sensors, but they did know that if they let the Ruhar loiter at long range and fire missiles, they were both dead. So they pulled tight turns and went to full power, not caring whether they were that much more visible to the apparently superior Ruhar sensors.

  The range between the three combatants closed rapidly, and Saily was forced yet again to adapt.

  Derek Bonsu grunted from the strain in the backseat of the Dobreh gunship, as Saily pulled the fighter aircraft into another tight turn. The G-meter in front of him registered 8, and since gravity on the Ruhar homeworld was slightly higher than on Earth, it felt even heavier to Derek. Even in the advanced Ruhar flightsuit he wore, his vision narrowed until all he could see was a small circle directly in front of his eyes. The Ruhar pilot was taking it easy on him, he knew; genetically-enhanced Ruhar pilots could sustain 12 Gees in combat turns. Having Derek as her Wizzo was actually a liability in air combat; Saily was endangering her own life and their mission in order to avoid killing her human copilot.

  The turn completed, the Dobreh snapped back to a straight course and Derek was thrown forward against the restraints, as Saily cut power and the fighter decelerated rapidly. “Stealth field is nominal,” Derek managed to grunt. His whole world was reduced to the display and controls directly in front of him; he still had no peripheral vision. The two enemy fighters were now again in front of them. “We have target lock on the left-hand ship,” he gasped between sucking in oxygen. “Missiles?”

  “Do it,” Saily ordered. They were now too close to the Kristang for stealth to be of much use, and the Dobreh had twelve missiles left. As Derek toggled off six missiles, she felt the Dobreh lurch slightly as the aircraft suddenly weighed less. On her own controls, she pressed the button to activate the Dobreh’s maser cannon, at the same time her own ship rocked as an enemy maser hammered her shields.

  “Missiles inbound!” Derek shouted. “Ten, twelve, fourteen! We can’t track all of them,” he warned. The enemy had dumped almost all of their missiles blindly into the air, and now that the Dobreh was firing a maser at full power and its engines were glowing hot, the enemy missiles had a target to chase. “Saily, this is going to be close!” The display for their defensive computer was flashing red warnings that it had lost track of some enemy missiles. And the defensive maser turrets could only engage two missiles at once.

  A Ruhar Dobreh gunship had two escape systems for the crew. Because the Dobreh was a high-performance jet fighter aircraft, designed to operate at supersonic speed and extreme altitude, the crew simply opening the canopy and ejecting was not an option. Instead, the entire two-person tandem cockpit could separate from the disintegrating airframe.

  Moments after their own missiles turned the fourth and last Kristang fighter into a ball of fire, an enemy missile had exploded close behind them. Shrapnel took out both engines, shattering fan blades and causing a powercell to rupture. Knowing her aircraft was doomed, Saily reached down on the right side of her seat and flipped a switch to retract a safety cover then press the recessed button, saying a silent prayer that the cockpit separation mechanism was still operable. As her fingers fumbled with the switch, the flight control computer realized that the aircraft was no longer a viable flying device, and handed off control to the cockpit separation computer. That computer had been waiting for the flight control computer to make the blindingly obvious decision while the airframe broke apart around it, so it immediately engaged the separation process even before it receved input from the pilot. Saily tried to shout a warning to Derek in the seat behind her, but with holes in the canopy, the shrieking wind was too loud even to be heard in the helmet speakers. Derek must know what was happening, she had only a moment to think, and he should be preparing to use the secondary separation button if the separation control computer failed to or was unable.

  With a roar she heard over the wind, explosive bolts released the cockpit from its connection to the airframe, and a small rocket motor pushed the cockpit section upward. Because the Dobreh was falling apart and tumbling out of control, the cockpit computer’s preprogrammed maneuver to straighten out the cockpit’s own tumble and make it fly directly upward was the wrong move. As the bottom of the cockpit cleared the top of the airframe well it had rested in, the left side of the cockpit was struck by debris from the exploding left engine; a fan blade penetrated the cockpit’s armor and struck just behind Saily. When the cockpit was not more than two meters above its well, the suddenly unbalanced airframe flipped in an eye blink, and the tail of the aircraft smashed into the rear of the rising cockpit.

  Derek’s helmet was secured to the seat to prevent a pilot’s neck from snapping. That didn’t stop his brain from being bounced around inside his skull from the violent battering of the separation. Less than five seconds had passed since he shouted the warning about missiles approaching; the cockpit separation had not surprised him but he hadn’t heard a warning from Saily. When the rocket motor kicked the cockpit upward, his right arm had been reaching down for the separation button, while his left arm was still on the control stick trying to maintain some semblance of control over the failing aircraft. Separation had caught him unawares, and his left arm ached as if it had torn loose at the shoulder. Then something, two somethings, struck the cockpit, and the whole cockpit section was suddenly tumbling through the air on its own. “Saily!” He shouted, doubting the pilot could hear him. Through the canopy, blue sky and green forest flashed by like a strobe light, so quickly was the cockpit spinning.

  Too low. They had been flying at around 900 kilometers per hour when the enemy missile exploded, but at less than a thousand meters altitude. The cockpit should have stabilized, then released a steerable triangular parachute to set them down softly. Instead, all the displays were dark and the cockpit was tumbling worse than the aircraft had been. “Saily! We need to get out of here! Saily?!”

  There was no response from in front of him. Possibly the pilot was unconscious, although the genetically enhanced body of a Ruhar should have withstood the strain better than his own fragile human biology. Derek could have reached for the handle between his legs to eject his own seat. He was not leaving without the pilot. Without waiting any longer, Derek reached for the black and yellow striped handle
in front of his seat, barely able to make his right arm extend that far; his left arm hung uselessly at his side. When he had a firm grip on the handle, he closed his eyes and pulled firmly.

  First the canopy blew off, then Derek’s seat soared upward, propelled by a magnetic rail. He only felt the initial kick, before he became unconscious. The seat ejection mechanism, designed for Ruhar, had not been reset for a human on that flight, a flight in which the Dobreh was not supposed to have a human crewman. A flight that was supposed to have been a quick and simple check ride.

  As Derek’s seat blew upward into the airstream, the final crew escape mechanism activated. The straps that held Derek into the chair automatically released and he was exposed to the 500 kilometer per hour airstream. Before his limbs could be torn off by the force of the air and deceleration, a flexible tube that he wore on his back came to life and he was enveloped in an oval-shaped bubble. The computer built into the tube bent and compressed the bubble to keep him upright and he flew through the air. Once the computer decided his speed had dropped below a preset mark, the bubble disappeared as suddenly as it formed. Without the unconscious Derek doing anything or knowing what was happening, the nanofabric of the bubble retracted inside the flexible tube, and the nanofabric changed its shape in a microsecond. The top of the tube came off, and the fabric was yanked upward. It was now a parachute or technically, a paraglider. The computer activated its sensors. If the computer had been capable of emotion, it would have been greatly dismayed. It was too low, and the ground beneath was thickly covered with trees in every direction. There were no safe places to glide to within the paraglider’s range. With an electronic shrug, the computer decided that crashing into one tree top was as good as another, and it concentrated on slowing its passenger’s rate of descent. The paraglider reformed its shape from a wedge to a half sphere, and Derek was jolted again.