Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  “Well, crap,” my shoulders slumped. “So we have no way to know whether an ARD ship is going to be visiting an ARD facility that has a power tap you can fix. There goes my whole idea! Damn, Skippy, I am sorry for wasting your time. Everyone’s time. You’re right, I am a dumb monkey. Shit. No we have to start over. And, ugh,” the thought hit me. “First, I need to explain to everyone how arrogant and stupid I was.”

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “As joyously entertaining as it is to watch you beat yourself up, and believe me I am absolutely tingling all over with delight, it is not yet necessary.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because, you arrogant, smart-ass pee pee head, I did not say your plan wouldn’t work. All I said was that I do not have access to the flight schedules of ARD starships.”

  Pee pee head? That was a new insult from Skippy. His comment made me pause for a moment. “This time it’s me who is not following you, Skippy.”

  “ARD’s starships are like any other Thuranin starships. While they are capable of independent interstellar travel, it not efficient for them to travel entirely on their own. So, they hitch rides on star carriers, which are controlled by the military. I do have access to military flight schedules. That means I am able to see when star carriers are scheduled to make stops at star systems which contain only ARD facilities. Logically, those star carriers must be dropping off and picking up ARD ships. By analyzing the flight schedules of star carriers that are transporting ARD ships, I can derive ARD flight schedules.”

  “You just love yanking my chain, Skippy.”

  “Oh, more than I could ever explain, Joe. However, I didn’t do it deliberately this time. Your thought process is such an incredible mess that it is difficult for me to guess what you are thinking.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was telling the truth or yanking my chin again. “Whatever. Great. So, you can predict which ARD ships will be visiting ARD facilities that have fixable power taps, and subsequently visiting and ARD facility that is a softer target?”

  “Affirmative, Colonel Joe.”

  “Outstanding. Let’s look at the potential targets, and we will select the best option. Then you can transmit our delivery order from our personal relay station.”

  “Joe?’

  “Yeah?”

  “There is one teensy weensy problem with that idea. There are no ARD ships scheduled to pass by our relay station within the next eight months. By that time, our station is scheduled for a crew change, and we will need to blow it up to cover out tracks.”

  “Damn it! This is freakin’ impossible, Skippy. There are roadblocks everywhere.”

  “Perhaps not. Hmm, give me a minute here. Do a crossword puzzle or something, I need to do some Skippy-level number crunching.”

  “I don’t have a crossword puzzle.” My tablet had plenty of crosswords on it, but I figured Skippy would be done before I got started on one.

  “Fine, I’ll give you one myself. Three letters, the clue is ‘feline’, begins with C and A.”

  “Oh, you are freakin’ hilarious.” Although I was trying to think what the answer could be, because Skippy liked to give me trick questions.

  “I’m done. The answer is ‘cat’, by the way. I believe that I have a solution, Joey. There is a convoluted route I can use to route messages to ARD ships, beginning with our relay station. The catch, before you get all excited, is this incredibly complicated method only results in one possible target for us, in the time available.”

  “Ok,” I took a deep breath. “You can get an ARD ship to pick up a fixable power tap from a facility that is strongly defended, and deliver it to an ARD facility that is a much easier target?”

  “Wow. Let me understand this. You’re asking if I can use our own personal relay station to send a highly encrypted message that contains all the proper ARD multi-level authentication codes. A message that will be routed through several ships, multiple wormholes and multiple relay stations, until it eventually gets to the one particular ARD ship we want. A ship that I selected, because I am able to predict which star carriers are playing host to ARD ships. The message needs to instruct that ARD ship to simply pick up a valuable Elder artifact, no questions asked, and just drop it off at an isolated, weakly-defended ARD facility, with again no questions asked. You’re asking if I can do all that, Joe?”

  Since he put it that way, it did sound like a lot to ask. “Uh, yes? Can you do it?”

  “Oh sure, no problem. Easy peasy for me. Come on, Joe. Trust the awesomeness.”

  “Great.” I wondered whether ‘Trust the Awesomeness’ should become the official motto of the Merry Band of Pirates.

  “Joe, the best news is that the target I have in mind has less than a dozen civilian ARD researchers, and almost no defensive capability.”

  “No neutron star?”

  “Nope. No black hole either, nothing exotic. This an uninhabited planet, it even has an atmosphere as a bonus.”

  “Mmmm. Sounds too easy. What’s the catch?”

  “Well, heh, heh, you are very much not going to like this-”

  Paradise

  The sound made General Marcellus awaken immediately. He hadn’t been sleeping well for a while, particularly not since giant maser cannons that no one had known anything about obliterated the Kristang battlegroup that had been looming above their heads. Marcellus had offered General Nivelle his resignation that very day; if the UNEF chief of intelligence had not known the planet they were on had such a powerful defensive capability, then he was not of any use to Nivelle. The French general currently in command of UNEF refused to accept Marcellus’ resignation, because Nivelle had just ended a phone call with the Ruhar Deputy Administrator of the planet, and the Ruhar government also had not known about the projectors either. It had been a hurried call, Nivelle said, the Deputy Administrator was understandably busy with a massive air battle raging above her head.

  Other than seeing ships exploding in orbit, and a few fortunate ships jumping away, the humans on Lemuria did not directly experience the resulting battle. There were some isolated, twisting contrails low on the northern horizon as fighter aircraft tangled, but none of the air action took place over Lemuria. The effect that most humans noticed was the zPhone network suddenly shutting down with no warning. Without the ability to connect to the global network, communications relied on messages being passed from one phone to the next, using the limited range backup direct transmission capability of the zPhones. Someone had attacked the Kristang battlegroup, the message from UNEF HQ stated. We have no additional information, please remain calm and attend to your duties.

  The soldiers of UNEF, whether American, Chinese, Indian, British or French, all knew what ‘remain calm’ meant. It meant that it was seriously time to panic. For the Keepers who had pledged continued loyalty to the Kristang, loyalty that was entirely one-sided, the news generated very understandable panic. Arrival of the Kristang battlegroup in orbit had made hope soar within the Keeper community, even though the Kristang said they considered all humans on the planet to be traitors. Surely, the Keepers had told each other, they could demonstrate their loyalty to the Kristang. Some had even gone so far as to damage or sabotage agricultural equipment the Ruhar had loaned to UNEF, although hurting the ability of humans to feed themselves did not make sense to most people, even most of the Keeper leaders. Taking apart a tractor was not a gesture the Kristang were likely to notice, and if humans were again to serve as ground troops for their Kristang patrons, they would need human food.

  Even people who were not Keepers felt some dismay at the unexpected destruction of the Kristang battlegroup. The ending of the cease fire meant yet more uncertainty, yet more combat in which humans might become direct targets or collateral damage. More importantly to all humans on Paradise was that with the Kristang gone, UNEF’s slim hope of a link to Earth was gone with them.

  Sitting bolt upright in his cot, Marcellus identified the sound that had
awakened him; it was an alert from his zPhone. “Marcellus,” he said as he slipped the earpiece in.

  “General, we have a situation,” reported Captain Chen. She was one of Marcellus’ aides, and the current intelligence duty officer. “An Indian village attacked a French village about 30 minutes ago. There are casualties on both sides, sir.”

  “Goddamn it,” Marcellus swore as he laced his boots. “Was it Keepers?” UNEF HQ intel had been keeping constant track of the Keeper movement, in case they became a security threat. The situation was complicated by the fact that Keepers had adherents within the officers of UNEF HQ; many adherents. Marcellus estimated that fifteen percent of the Headquarters staff pledged continued loyalty to the Kristang. It was a solid estimate; all he had to do was ask people their opinions. Being a Keeper was not against UNEF policy or regulations; he had Keepers on his own intel staff. That fact had surprised Marcellus; he thought that people who had access to the best information would be the least interested in aligning with the species that was oppressing Earth. The human capacity to ignore facts and believe what they wanted to believe was a continued source of amazement and frustration to Marcellus.

  “This doesn’t appear to be related to the Keeper movement, sir,” Chen said stiffly, and Marcellus remembered that Chen herself had expressed some sympathy with the Keepers. “This is the Indian village that had most of their crops burned out by a Kristang raid, sir. They’ve been complaining that HQ wasn’t getting supplies to them quickly enough; we explained that we have been sending what we can scrape together. The French are reporting that the Indians targeted their supply of seeds and farming tools first. They also took sacks of grain. The French were pursuing-”

  “That’s the last thing we need.”

  “Yes, sir, and we have ordered both the French to return to their village, and the Indians to drop the supplies that they,” she hesitated to use the word ‘stole’ since most food stocks technically belonged to UNEF rather than individual villages. “That they took. We need to get a jump on this, Sir. The French have one dead and three seriously injured, there is at least one fatality on the Indian side. This news has already spread by zPhone, we’ve picked up chatter in French villages, calling for retaliation.”

  “Shit,” Marcellus said. “I’ll inform General Nivelle,” who would not be happy to hear that his own countrymen had been attacked and killed. Marcellus planned to advise Nivelle that the UNEF commander needed to excuse himself from the investigation of the attack on the French village, and from deciding on any subsequent punishment. With Nivelle out, the responsibility would fall to General Tolliver. No, damn it, Marcellus thought, they couldn’t have a British officer deciding the fate of Indian troops, because of the colonial history between those two countries. Currently third in the command structure was a Chinese general, and the testy relationship between China and India back on Earth made it unworkable for a Chinese to investigate possible crimes by Indian troops. That left the Americans, and Marcellus himself could not get involved. Damn it all, UNEF was just too complicated and unwieldy an organization. When they had a common mission and a common enemy, differences between nationalities had been able to be suppressed temporarily. Now, UNEF had no mission other than survival, and troops disagreed on whether their enemy were the Ruhar or the Kristang. Or both. Or neither. “What do we have in the area?” Marcellus asked.

  “One French MP unit for security, they’re on their way and should arrive within the hour. They have been ordered to secure the French village and provide medical assistance, but not to pursue the Indians. There is a Chinese security team awaiting orders to move on the Indian village, Sir, they know not to move without orders.”

  “That’s one good thing tonight. What the hell were the Indians thinking?”

  Although Captain Chen knew that Marcellus had asked a rhetorical question, she answered. “They are desperate, General. They’re hungry, they don’t have any hope of ever getting home or even hearing from their families on Earth again.”

  “That applies to all of us, Captain,” Marcellus said quietly. Including himself. He had a wife and a young daughter back on Earth. He might never see the again. He might never know if they were still alive, and they might never learn of his fate. That was a very hard fact to deal with.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Flying Dutchman

  “Do you have any practical advice for us, Colonel?” Major Smythe asked, as we adjusted the helmets of our Kristang powered armor suits, it was a part of a test before the operation we’d be performing the next morning.

  “About what? Everyone on your SpecOps team has more parachute training than I have. Audio check.”

  “Your audio connection is confirmed,” Smythe replied. “Sir, you are the only one of us, the only human, who has done an actual spacedive.”

  “True, I guess. My spacedive didn’t involve me falling into an atmosphere, Major. That was kind of the point at the time. On this op, we’re doing that deliberately.”

  “Oh, certainly. Do you have any advice for us about the space portion of our dive, then?”

  I thought a moment. “Bring music, or an audiobook or something. We’ll be coasting through space for a long time, it gets boring after you get used to staring at the pretty stars. If you don’t have anything to occupy your time, Skippy will talk to you. A lot. Or he will sign show tunes.”

  “Oh, bullocks,” Smythe groaned. “Yesterday, he spent two bloody hours talking to me about the profound changes to European literature during the Enlightenment. After one hour, I felt like throwing him out an airlock, or jumping out myself. I will inform the team.”

  “Great. And, Major? One more piece of advice.”

  “What is that, Colonel?”

  “Everyone should make sure they pee before we jump.”

  “Poole, I see you have been cleared for duty?” I asked during an inspection of troops that would be making the spacedive with me and Smythe. The information about how injured people were healing was in my daily update, which I actually read, unlike a lot of reports that were sent to me. “How’s the ankle?”

  “Squared away, sir.” She hopped up and down on the leg that had been injured, then stood on the toes of that foot. She was rock steady on that foot, her gymnastics training must have helped. “Good as new.”

  A slight grimace on her face told me otherwise. That, and the report from Dr. Skippy that had told me that while she was healed functionally, her leg was going to be sore for another couple of weeks. Close enough. If Major Smythe had cleared her, that was good enough for me.

  The actual spacedive, at least the space portion of it, was uneventful. Boring, even, after we all got used to staring at the pretty stars, and the planet growing in front of us. The music in my helmet speakers suddenly cut out, replaced by Skippy’s voice. “Hey, Joe, are you busy?”

  “Super busy, Skippy. Practically frantic,” I said, trying to stifle a yawn. It was unsuccessful, I gave a jaw-stretching yawn. Soaring through space by yourself was boring, especially when I had been doing it for several hours already.

  “Uh huh, I can see that. You are potentially going into combat, and you’re practically asleep, Joe. Captain Giraud is half asleep also. Lt. Williams is asleep, he asked me to wake him at the appropriate time. He’s not alone; half of the special forces are taking a nap right now.”

  Damn. Those SpecOps guys, and women, were stone-cold frosty when faced with danger. I was too keyed up with fear to do more than let my mind drift and daydream. Truthfully, there wasn’t much to do. There wasn’t anything to do. Anything we did might reveal our presence, so we didn’t do anything. “When you wake Lt. Williams, do it with a rousing version of ‘The Army Goes Rolling Along’.”

  “Lt. Williams commands the Navy SEALS team, Joe.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Oh, I get it now. All right, will do. Hee, hee, that will be fun. Anywho, Joe, since you’re not busy, I’m going to take this golden opportunity to explain to you in great detail how
very, very much I hate you for humiliating me so many times.”

  “How about we not do that, and say we did?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “I control your helmet speakers, so no. Unless you take your helmet off, which I would not recommend. Ok, let’s start with Chapter One, entitled ‘Why I Hate Your Stupid Ugly Face-”

  I had to admit, Skippy had put a lot of effort into this. I mean, he had taken notes and everything. He wasn’t joking about it being broken into chapters, either. Chapter Two, or maybe it was Three was ‘How Monkeys Are Incapable Of Truly Appreciating The Vast Scope Of My Awesome Awesomeness’ or something like that. His relentless logic made several very valid points that were impossible for me to argue with; I probably would have agreed to hate me too, if I had been playing attention. Truthfully, I tuned him out after about five minutes. Overall, listening his lengthy diatribe was way better than him singing show tunes, so it was a win-win situation. It made him happy, and it wasn’t like I was busy anyway. To help, I said ‘Mmmm’ or ‘Hmmm’ or ‘Yeah’ at random intervals, while I daydreamed about going on a nice long camping, canoeing and fishing trip in Maine when I got back. If I ever got back. A camping trip, some place far from cellphone service. It would be so great to unplug for a while, no interruptions-

  “Joe?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Have you been listening to me?”

  “Mmmm.” Oh, shit. Did he ask me a question? I shook myself back to full alertness. “Of course I have, Skippy. The way you make your points is very impressive.”

  “Really. You have been saying ‘Hmmm’ and ‘Mmmm’ and ‘Yeah’ at suspiciously regular intervals.”