Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  “Hey! Where did you go, asswipe?” Skippy shouted. “You want some of this? You want some of this? Say hello to my leetle friend Mister Maser Beam. I got plenty more where that came from, you punk-ass bitch!”

  “Damn, Skippy, chill out. You got them already,” I said as on the display, one of the stricken destroyers blew apart when its missile magazine cooked off.

  “I do not like lizards, Joe. I do not like bullies. Big Red Button again, Joe?”

  “Sure,” I said as I held the button down. “Why?”

  “One of those ships is annoyingly lucky, it hasn’t blown up yet. One of our original four projectors only has a weak shot left, but watch what happens when even a weak maser hits an unshielded ship’s reactor.”

  On the display I was watching, a light flared where a crippled destroyer had been.

  “Oops,” Skippy chuckled. “My bad! Sorry about that. Darn, I hate it when that happens. Well, I’m sure the Kristang will forgive and forget. Or not. Whatever.”

  “I’m thinking ‘not’, Skippy. Hey, that was great,” I accepted a high five from Sergeant Adams. “Keep monitoring their communications, please. I want to know if the Kristang plan to test our defenses again.”

  “Unlikely, Joe. The Kristang commander is right now screaming at his remaining ships to stay away from the planet, until his ground forces can degrade our air defense capability. There was supposed to be a follow-on attack by the other Kristang ships, but that has now been postponed indefinitely.”

  “Huh, I wonder why?” I asked with a smile.

  “Maybe they didn’t sell enough tickets, Joe?”

  “How much longer should we wait, Commodore?”

  Commodore Ferlant answered his executive officer’s question without turning his attention away from the tactical display. If Ferlant were an admiral, the Ruh Gastalo would have a captain, and Ferlant would have to concern himself only with commanding his task force. Because he was not an admiral, he needed to also act as the ship’s captain. Because he didn’t have time to act as captain in the middle of a running battle, most of the responsibility for ship-handling fell to his executive officer Tom Smeth. “We will wait until the Dalandu has a full charge,” Ferlant announced. The frigate Sas Dalandu had accompanied Ferlant’s cruiser on every jump after the projectors had thrown the situation around Gehtanu into absolute chaos. Since Ferlant’s initial order for his small task force to scatter, his ships had been hounded by the still much larger force of remaining Kristang ships. Every time one of his ships jumped, the enemy attempted to pursue, analyzing the residual signature of the Ruhar ships’ outbound wormholes to determine where they had jumped to. Each time one of his ships jumped, they dropped off quantum resonators behind them, to confuse enemy sensors and conceal the jump wormhole signature. The resonators were partially effective, as it usually took the Kristang almost an hour to determine where the Ruhar had gone. But after 39 hours of unrelenting pursuit, Ferlant’s ships were running low on quantum resonators, and his ships’ jump drives were badly in need of a rest to recalibrate their coils. They would likely get no such rest. Each time the Ruhar ships jumped with misaligned coils, their messy jump created a louder signature, and the quantum resonators became less and less effective at concealing where the ship had jumped to. Eventually, Ferlant knew, the Kristang would wear his ships down.

  The Kristang had several significant advantages in the pursuit. They still had more ships, so they could send several ships on pursuit while the others stood down for maintenance. And they could concentrate on killing Ferlant’s ships one at a time, while merely keeping his other ships moving so they couldn’t effectively support each other.

  “Commodore,” Smeth said quietly, “this can’t continue forever.” They were waiting for the Sas Dalandu to complete charging her jump coils, because that frigate’s coils were overheating due to overuse. Soon, individual coils would begin to burn out, throwing that ship’s entire jump drive system so badly out of alignment that it would be unable to sustain a jump wormhole.

  “I know,” Ferlant answered quietly. So far, he had not lost a single ship, although the destroyer City of Fah Lentan had been badly damaged in an attack. The Lentan was able to jump but not able to do much else; her stealth field and defensive shields were inoperable. Ferlant had assigned the City of MecMurro to accompany her stricken sister ship, but the Lentan might need to be abandoned, and her crew transferred to the MecMurro. He was losing the fight. It had become a battle of attrition; and his ships were wearing out faster than the Kristang ships were falling apart. “When the Dalandu is ready, we are jumping outside the system. Three jumps, maximum range.”

  “We’re abandoning Gehtanu?” Smeth asked. He agreed with the Commodore’s decision, he also wanted to understand it.

  “We are effecting a temporary strategic retreat, in order to regroup and regain the initiative,” Ferlant explained in proper military terms. Someday, high-ranking Fleet officials would review the bridge data recorder during the action, to determine whether Commodore Ferlant’s decisions had been appropriate. Hopefully, Ferlant would be alive then to explain himself. “Our ships need an opportunity to go offline and effect repairs.”

  Smeth agreed. “If the Kristang will leave us alone long enough.”

  “I am cautiously optimistic that once he knows we have left the system, Admiral Kekrando will turn his attention back to reestablishing his control of the space around Gehtanu.”

  “And after our repairs are complete?” Smeth asked.

  “Then we regain the initiative,” Ferlant said with a tight smile.

  “Sir?”

  “The hunters will become the hunted.”

  “I can walk,” Saily assured Derek. Her legs were not as assuring. She could not, in fact, walk.

  “It doesn’t look like it,” Derek said gently.

  “My right leg is fine,” she insisted. Her left leg was broken in two places, somewhere along her way crashing down through the trees. She also had internal injuries from whatever piece of the exploding Dobreh had hit her after they ejected. When Derek found Saily, she had been unconscious, tangled in parachute cords, hanging upside down. Working carefully with his injured shoulder, Derek had cut away cords and parachute fabric to make a rope, and slowly lowered her to the ground. Peeling away her blood-soaked flightsuit, he found an ugly bloody wound on her left side. Whatever magical nanobots swam in her blood had done their best to stitch the wound closed, but she had already lost a lot of blood, based on the amount that had soaked her flightsuit and dripped onto the forest floor. In her flight kit, Derek had found bandages, emergency rations, and four vials of injectable medical supplements. He couldn’t read all of the complicated Ruhar technical terms; so he used his zPhone’s camera to translate for him. The vials contained additional nanobots, vitamins and minerals and whatever type of sugars and proteins the Ruhar used as food. “Do we have a choice?”

  “No,” Derek agreed. While his zPhone wasn’t working, Saily had been able to exchange brief, encrypted messages with the Ruhar military guard system. She had sent a distress call, stating her injuries, location and that she was with a human copilot. Saily urgently needed medical care, Derek was also injured and Derek did not have any source of food. The reply was not encouraging. Air rescue was out of the question; the horrific air battle had wiped out most of the Ruhar’s combat aircraft. The few aircraft that remained were being reserved to defend vital infrastructure or to conduct strikes against the Kristang. Risking a precious aircraft with five crewmembers to rescue one downed pilot, was not an option at that time. Saily was advised to walk her way out; there was a road several days away. If she could get near the road, Ruhar command would see if any of the civilians in the area would be willing to drive out to pick her up. Basically, the reply stated that there was a war on, and they didn’t have any aircraft to spare. The reply also wished her good luck.

  Ruhar command didn’t say anything about Derek, other than to question why a human had been with Saily in
the first place. They had no suggestion what he should do about the lack of food. “If you can stand, you can lean on my shoulder,” Derek suggested. “Let’s try that.”

  Holding onto a tree, Saily managed to stand on one wobbly leg. Derek got her arm draped over his shoulders, and they practiced stumbling through the forest. “Easy enough,” Derek concluded. “This is like a three-legged race.”

  “What?” Saily asked, confused.

  Derek shook his head. That reference hadn’t translated into Ruhar as he intended. “It’s a human custom, something we do at picnics. You, ah, forget it. Let’s save our energy.” With his free hand, he checked the map on his zPhone. Getting to the road was not going to be easy, there were hills to climb and streams to cross. As they walked, Saily would grow weaker from her unhealed injuries, and Derek would grow weaker from hunger. “One step at a time. Here we go.”

  “Admiral, the Vikran reports that the entire enemy force has jumped outside the system,” the captain of the Kedwala stated. The destroyer We are Proud to Honor Clan Sub-Leader Bell-den-Oosh Vikran who Inspires us Every Day was a brother ship of the We are Proud to Follow the Shining Example of Combat Rifleman Tuut-uas-Val Kedwala, but while the Kedwala had the dubious honor of hosting the admiral, the Vikran had been off having fun and seeking glory chasing the Ruhar task force. With the admiral’s normal command ship, the battlecruiser He Who Pushes Aside Fear Shall Always be Victorious having been obliterated by a projector above Pradassis, the Kedwala had become the battlegroup’s command ship by default. Neither the admiral nor the crew of the Kedwala were happy about the situation, but whereas Admiral Kekrando was free to express his dissatisfaction loudly and frequently, the crew of the Kedwala had to at least pretend they were honored to host the battlegroup commander. Because to openly state their fervent desire to stuff the admiral and his staff into an airlock and blow them into space would not be a good career move. Although that was a totally understandable sentiment. “Confirmed. The enemy has now performed three consecutive jumps beyond the system limits, and might be preparing to jump again. The Vikran requests instructions.”

  Technically, the captain of the Vikran himself was not requesting instructions; the Vikran had been sent back to the Kedwala by Senior Captain Gerkaw in command of the pursuit squadron. That senior captain had requested instructions. And he had not so much requested instructions, as hoped that the standing instructions he already had would be changed. Admiral Kekrando had ordered the pursuit squadron to halt pursuit, if the enemy passed a certain distance from the Pradassis system, and the pursuit squadron had already gone beyond that imaginary line. The senior captain hoped the admiral would ignore that minor violation, and give permission to continue the pursuit. The enemy’s ships were worn down, the senior captain’s message said excitedly. Another couple jumps, surely a dozen at most, and the pursuit squadron would have the Ruhar trapped.

  Kekrando read the message with displeasure. Most of his demanding job, he thought angrily, was reining in overly aggressive commanders who were eager to do stupid, rash things that risked losing the considerable advantage his battlegroup still possessed. The fact that frequent use of overly aggressive, rash actions were how he had become promoted to the admiralty did not cross Kekrando’s mind. The battlegroup was his command now, and if anyone was going to something recklessly stupid, it was going to happen on Kekrando’s orders. Not on the initiative of glory and promotion seeking Senior Captain Gerkaw. With Admiral Kekrando having lost most of his combat power to a sneak attack by previously unknown projectors, he knew his position in command was precarious. If the clan leadership was looking to replace Kekrando, a senior captain in command of a successful pursuit squadron would be a convenient candidate. “Inform Senior Captain Gerkaw that he is to adhere to my standing instructions,” Kekrando said firmly. “He is not to run off and risk my ships in his personal desire for glory.”

  Nineteen hours had passed, and there was no sign of continued pursuit by the Kristang. Cautiously, Commodore Ferlant allowed two ships at a time to take critical systems offline for much-needed maintenance. His cruiser Ruh Gastalo would remain on full alert to protect the vulnerable ships undergoing repairs. Only after all other ships in the little task force had been brought to full combat readiness, would the Gastalo herself begin heavy maintenance.

  As Ferlant has risen through the ranks, to captain and now temporary commodore, he had come to rely more and more on a quote from one of his instructors way back at the military academy. She had told the class that ‘Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics’. Ferlant had not been surprised to learn that even the humans had a similar saying on their primitive homeworld. Tactics, Ferlant considered as he reviewed ship status reports, were useless without the means to implement them. The ships under his command were warships only if they were capable of performing near their designed capability; and to accomplish that, required constant attention to tasks that were painstaking and mundane. Combat action, even an action of continually running from enemy pursuit, wore down critical systems. Without a pause to rest, repair and replace vital components, his warships would become nothing more than composite tubes which held air only so long as the enemy held off attack. Despite constant demands from the government on Gehtanu for his ships to come back, Ferlant was not going to be hasty and stupid. He was going to take a pause from the battle in order to bring all of his ships back up to full fighting condition.

  All of his ships, that is, except for the destroyer City of Fah Lentan. That ship had been badly damaged in a Kristang attack, it had barely escaped from a damping field while providing cover to give the frigate Sas Dalandu time to jump away. A destroyer risking itself to protect a much less valuable frigate was a questionable tactic, but Ferlant had not criticized the Lentan’s captain. Ferlant would have done the same thing had he been in command of the destroyer. The Lentan was too heavily damaged to be brought back up to full combat capability, so Ferlant instructed that ship’s crew to perform only cosmetic repairs, and basic maintenance on the jump drive and defensive shields. Ferlant had a special task in mind for the Lentan. One last task.

  Eric Koblenz had gone from elation to severe depression to cautious hopefulness to confused disappointment in the space of a week, and now he was merely numb. When the Kristang battlegroup arrived in orbit and chased the Ruhar ships away, the Keeper faction in UNEF had been triumphant; certain that life for UNEF would now return to normal, that those humans who had been disloyal to the Kristang would be punished, and that loyal Keepers would soon return to Earth, having accomplished their mission for the Kristang. Eric experienced a joyous few days, warning disloyal non-Keepers that their fate was sealed; certain that his loyalty would be rewarded.

  Keeper leaders attempted to contact the Kristang in the days immediately following arrival of the battlegroup, but they were rebuffed. Then came a scathing message from the Kristang that was a stinging rebuke. All humans had in some way cooperated with the Ruhar, if only by growing their own food and therefore removing a logistics burden from the enemy Ruhar. Those who called themselves ‘Keepers’ were equally traitorous; the Kristang valued action, not words, and the Keepers had not done anything against the Ruhar. Also, the Kristang no longer had access to Earth, so no humans would be going home. The Kristang were not impressed by actions of some Keepers to destroy tractors and other equipment the Ruhar provided; equipment the Ruhar had already remotely disabled.

  Eric didn’t know what to do, or think. What was the point of remaining loyal to an alien species that considered him to be a traitor? His government on Earth had allied with the Kristang, now that government on humanity’s homeworld had no effective authority over the people isolated on an alien world. He had no good options. No hope.

  “Major Perkins? Ma’am?” Irene called her current commanding officer into the Buzzard’s cockpit. “I just picked up a distress call about a downed Ruhar pilot. She’s injured, and not far from here.”

  Perkins frowned. As a
pilot, Striebich might feel a call to rescue any and all of her fellow aviators in distress. Perkins couldn’t allow her team to be distracted from their mission. “I’m sure there are many pilots down after that air battle.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But this Ruhar pilot has a human with her.”

  “What? How did that happen?”

  “How I don’t know ma’am,” Irene admitted. “The distress call is from the human, a Lt Derek Bonsu. He was the copilot or weapon system officer in a Chicken when the battle started. I guess they got caught up in the furball. He tried to get air rescue from the Ruhar, but they have few aircraft left, and they are unable to assist at this time.”

  “They’ve been down since the day of the air battle?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The Ruhar is in a bad way; she’s injured and still losing blood. This Lt. Bonsu doesn’t have any food.” Irene pointed at the map on the display. “Even by himself, it would take him a couple more days to walk to the nearest Ruhar settlement, and they wouldn’t have any human food there. He says his pilot won’t last that long anyway. This area,” her finger circled the map, “is remote. No roads, and few settlements. They need air rescue.”