“Understood,” the ship AI hummed in his mind. “You wish me to do something similar when I am in neutrino contact with other ship minds at Kepler 62?”
“Yes!”
The green energy flows grew stronger within him. “What do I do if another ship mind threatens to reveal your presence?”
He knew he could not say kill it. “You disable it. We disable its ship. You find a way to fool it into thinking you are someone you are not.”
“How do I pretend to be what I am not?” the ship mind hummed in Bill’s brain.
He felt sudden electric tingling along his glowing arms and legs and inner body. “What are you doing?”
“Searching for your method of pretending to be someone you are not. You have a memory there, of some place called Kunduz where—”
“Stop!”
♦ ♦ ♦
Jane saw Bill’s arched body fall back into the elevated seat, his arms falling away from the armrests. It looked as if her husband had lost control of himself. Or been hurt, somehow.
“Cassandra! What’s happening?”
The orange-haired woman, still standing atop a pedestal that was up as high as Bill’s seat, looked at her tablet, then touched Bill’s right hand. “He’s cooling. His heart has stopped pumping!”
“I’m cutting that fucking optic cable!” she yelled, moving with open shears toward the silvery cable that ran down to the floor socket.
“Wait!” yelled Cassandra. “Give me a few seconds to restart Bill’s heart.” She reached out and placed two small silver disks against either side of Bill’s upper chest. She tapped her tablet. “Three seconds, two—”
♦ ♦ ♦
Bill felt pain deep inside him. Something thumped in his chest. He realized he’d lost awareness for a moment as his heart stopped working. Relief surged through him like an electrical shock as he felt the steady thump-thump of his heart beating. The tingling in his hands and feet disappeared. The green starburst glow surrounding his half-transparent body pulled back from contact with his skin.
“Get the fuck out of my body!” he mind-yelled.
“Apologies,” the AI hummed. “The memory I touched somehow connected to your heart. Why did the word-memory Kunduz create such a bodily response?”
His head swam with shock, with anger and with relief. He’d already died once when lasered through his heart on the Market world. He had no desire to repeat the event. Losing awareness was far too close to the sensation he’d felt then of being outside his body, watching as it was carried into the transport Tall Trees for the trip up to orbit and his wife on the Blue Sky.
“Cause it was a place where I almost died!” he mentally yelled.
“Explain, please, this memory of Kunduz.”
Bill took a deep breath, recalling the Pamir Hotel in downtown Kunduz, the Taliban attack that had begun days earlier, the enemy’s takeover of the city and his arrival with a few other special operations folks to serve as laser spotters for American planes that were helping the Afghan national army forces retake the city. That day, October 12, 2015, had felt like a good day. The Afghan forces had pushed out most of the Taliban fighters. He and his teammates had helped call in airstrikes, working from the roof of the hotel. Then had come Monday night. The Taliban attacked the hotel four times. He’d used his sniper rifle to take down six Taliban lurking in nearby alleys and under trees. The enemy fell back. Then had come word of attempts to blow up the Chardara and Alchin bridges on the outskirts of town. His SEAL team lieutenant had passed on the word that the Taliban’s new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, was part of the group that had tried to blow the bridges. Reportedly the man was camped out on a hill beyond the Chardara bridge. He’d volunteered to infiltrate the camp. Taking out the Taliban’s leader, the man who’d taken control of internally divided Taliban after Mullah Omar’s death, would be a great victory. It would make the Afghan army’s failure to hold the city, with the exception of a fort at the nearby airport, sound like a victory. Instead of the abysmal behavior of 7,000 troops who ran from a few hundred urban fighter Taliban. He and two fellow SEALs had dressed in robes and belts taken from dead Taliban fighters, grabbed AK-74 full-auto rifles and left for the town’s outskirts. Minutes after crossing over the 250 foot long Chardara bridge they’d run into a Taliban checkpoint on the outskirts of Rahmat-Bay village.
“What unit?” called a man from behind a cluster of sandbags, barrels and tarps. Two other Taliban were crouched low, behind the man.
The SEAL on his left side replied in Pashtu. “We are from fighter Alamaden’s unit. Our people were told to come here. We came. Allah be praised.”
The guard rose slightly, exposing his shoulders. He pointed an AK-74 at them. “Do you three hail from Kabul?” he asked in Dari.
“Curse you!” the SEAL yelled. “We are true Pashtun! Let us pass!”
Bill recalled feeling relief at his buddy’s reply. All three of them spoke passable Pashtu, and he knew a little Dari, the dialect spoken by high-class Afghan families. The people who controlled the pretend Afghan parliament and the capital of Kabul. Clearly the checkpoint guard was concerned they might be Afghan soldiers imitating Taliban members. He stepped to the right, raising his right hand and making the gesture known among mujahedeen that meant “Allah be blessed!”
“We need ammunition,” Bill said in Pashtu. “Let us pass or guide us to where we may find more bullets for our jihad.”
The checkpoint guard stood upright, moving his rifle to the left. Behind him his fellow Taliban tossed some bone dice on the ground and began arguing over a debt owed by one to the other. “Pass on. The camp is over the hill, behind the hilltop.”
With Bill’s two SEAL teammates preceding him, he followed them, combing his hand through the thick brown beard he still wore, years after the Adow raid. Unshaven men were always assumed to be infidels, whether in Africa or in Afghanistan. The beards of him and his buddies were essential to passing as locals. As were their brown-dyed skin, wherever it showed outside of the loose robes they wore. As he followed the trail that wound up the low hill that lay beyond the village, from behind he heard the musical ding of a smartphone turning on.
He shrugged at the glances from his two teammates. It was to be expected that the checkpoint guard would call ahead to warn the camp guards to expect the arrival of three more mujahedeen. While he felt they’d done well at the checkpoint, he patted the front of his robes, making sure by feel of the presence of the bullet resistant front and back vests he wore. Shifting his rifle to his left shoulder, he reached back and felt the semi-auto tucked into the waistband of his underpants. A final backup in case they ran out of ammo.
Just as they reached the top of the hill, someone yelled.
“Enemy! Fighter Alamaden says so!”
Muzzle flashes lit up the night.
His SEAL buddies hit the ground and rolled left toward a large boulder. He did the same and rolled to the right, aiming for a shell hole that looked deep enough to put him below ground level.
“Zing! Zing! Zing!”
Bullets filled the night air, passing through where they’d once stood. Bill fired back, moving the safety to full auto. It was an error he realized as soon as he did it. The rounds in the curved clip vanished in a long burst. To his left his buddies fired in three-shot short-burst groups.
Wind felt cold on his left cheek as a bullet sped past his head. He grabbed his pistol, rolled onto his back, then rolled again and sighted the green targeting dot at the spot where yellow muzzle flashes flared. He fired twice. A scream came. He sat up, aimed and fired again. His buddies did the same with their rifles. A second scream sounded in the night.
“Zing!”
Thump.
His back felt like someone had kicked him hard. He fell onto his left side, aiming his pistol back the way they’d come. The checkpoint guard had followed them, talking to someone who’d called Alamaden. A man they thought had been killed. Wrong. An error that now had them caught between
two enemy groups.
Black objects arced through the pale blue night sky, one going forward, one going back.
“Kaboom, kaboom!” sounded as they grenades blew up.
Silence came.
But Bill’s back felt sore. Wet even. Rising up, he reached for the hand of a SEAL who’d run over to him.
“Didn’t you hear my whisper?”
“No.” Bill stood up. “Back to the bridge?”
“Fuck yes,” said the other SEAL, running up to them. “The mullah’s camp is alerted. No way to sneak up on him the way they did on Masood. Mission’s blown. You need help?”
“No. I can manage. It’s just a flesh wound.”
Bill followed the dark forms of his SEAL buddies down the hillside, aiming to access the Chardara bridge by a different route than the one they’d taken to the checkpoint. His mind had a clear map of the village they’d passed through. As did his buddies. Alternative entry and exit routes were a basic part of infiltration craft. In his mind he cursed the wound he’d gotten from the checkpoint guard. Who was dead from the grenade thrown by his buddies. He also cursed the fact he’d not heard the retreat order whispered by his SEAL buddies. Neither of them would report him to the lieutenant. But sure as hell as he hurt, the problem with his left ear hearing would come up. Somehow. At least none of his team had been hurt due to his hearing issue. Just him. It felt like the rifle bullet had penetrated the backplate of his vest. Otherwise he would not feel wetness seeping down his back. Down, down—
Darkness filled his mind as blood loss made him fall against his buddies.
Bill recoiled from the memory of his brush with death. The bullet that had penetrated his back plate had been stopped by his left shoulder blade. Which fractured. Hence the blood loss. He recalled waking at the Pamir Hotel, their lieutenant looking at him with a frown. He left behind the memory of a failed mission, rejoining the green glow of Star Traveler’s mind.
“Pretending to be someone you are not is often the key to deceiving the enemy,” Bill said in mind-talk.
“Most interesting,” hummed the ship mind as its green glow still englobed him. “Traversing your mind, I have found memories of your training at a place called Coronado. Where you studied this method of deception. Or pretending. As a means to achieve your mission.”
Bill winced as his chest ached. “Yes! That and more is just exactly what you must do when talking with other ship minds. You must wear the clothing of deception. You must hide your memories of Earth and our attacks against Buyers. Can you do that!”
“Such deception can be achieved,” the AI said as the glow of thousands of green dots filled his mind vision. “Let me see more—”
“NO!” Bill yelled as his chest hurt once more. “Leave my mind! You are too intrusive! Leave—”
The mind image of Star Traveler vanished.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jane dropped the shears after cutting the optical fiber cable that gave the ship mind direct access to Bill’s mind. She’d done that when she saw Bill’s body arch out once more, as if in deep pain. “Bill?” she called.
Cassandra reached over, put her fingers under the flanges at the bottom of the helmet, then lifted as their grip on Bill’s chin vanished. Her husband’s lightly bearded face showed the wincing of pain, but the tight skin now relaxed. Bill blinked several times, then looked down at her. “That was a rather sudden ending to my mind-talk,” he said, his hazel eyes fixing on her.
“Damn right!” she muttered as Cassandra’s pedestal perch lowered to the floor of the Engine Chamber. Bill’s command pedestal did the same. How was he feeling?
“You should not have cut the linkage with Weapons Chief MacCarthy,” hummed Star Traveler from the room’s ceiling. “The mind-link was just getting interesting.”
Bill grimaced, then looked up. “She did right. You have no ability to predict what your tramping around in the mind of a bioform does to that bioform! You learned what you needed to know. Now leave us alone.”
“As you wish,” the AI hummed.
Cassandra looked down at the tablet in her hands, then reached forward to pull off the two electroshock disks she’d stuck to Bill’s upper body. “That mind-link stuff is hard on your body. Your heart stopped once. Then your heart raced to 180 beats a minute not long after it restarted. With my help. Bill, don’t do that again.”
Jane looked at Bill’s saloon buddy. The voice tone of the stocky woman who’d served in the Air Force Special Tactics squadron was worried, and caring. She felt glad the woman had been there. She’d gotten Bill’s heart restarted, then been able to monitor her spouse while he did this dangerous mind-link crap. Something she had no intention of experiencing herself.
“Bill, you want a drink, maybe?”
The man she had grown to love with all her heart looked away from Cassandra and to her. His face was nicely pink now, under his heavy tan. He lifted his right hand and gave her a thumbs-up. “Yes, my captain! Happy to follow your orders. That was no fun.” He frowned. “But it should help us when we enter Kepler 62.”
“Which is weeks away!” Jane grumbled, reaching out to take Bill’s left hand as he stepped out of the command seat. Cassandra took his other hand.
Bill glanced at his hands, then grinned big. “Hey! What guy does not love having two women at his beck and call?”
That stung her. Her hubby was too much in his macho combat mode to understand how the comment would be heard by her and Cassie. He needed a wake-up lesson. She let go and turned toward the chamber’s entry door. “Arrogant male! Follow me and obey!”
♦ ♦ ♦
Bill did as he was told, giving thanks the mind-link with Star Traveler was over and done with. He’d thought he could handle the walk down memory lane. He’d just not realized the walk would feel like an electrocution!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ten minutes out from their arrival at Kepler 62, Bill sat at his Ship Weapons station, reviewing the ship cutaway holo one more time. The image of the ship was an overhead view that showed every weapons site. The Command Bridge lay at the front of the elongated teardrop shape that was the USS Blue Sky (BBG-1). On the deck above them was the particle accelerator that created antimatter for the AM projector that exited from the upper nose of the ship. It shot a beam that stayed coherent out to 4,000 miles. The deck below them held the MITV maglev railgun for the launching of nuke-tipped missiles. To the right and left sides of the ship’s nose were blisters that were the outlet points for two CO2 anti-ship lasers. A similar pair of laser blisters adorned the narrow tail of their ship. Range for the lasers was 10,000 miles. The top hull of the ship also held a plasma battery for defense against anything that got within the battery’s 400 mile range. On their ship’s belly was a similar plasma battery. The yellow plasma balls were a decent protection against mines, small asteroids, collector pods and anything that did not emit the IFF signal unique to their ship. All weapons showed Green Operational. He looked at his other station holos.
The system graphic holo on his left was empty for the moment. Once they arrived in Kepler 62 it would fill with an overhead plan view of the system, its star, its worlds, any asteroid belts, and the red and purple dots of local spaceships or enemy Collector ships. He looked past his weapons holo at his upper left to the true space holo at the upper right. It was empty, showing only the gray nothingness of Alcubierre space-time. On his right hovered the comlink holo. It held an image of Jane as she sat above them in her carrier captain’s seat atop the command pedestal. She wore her Air Force blue jumpsuit. Atop it she wore a tube suit like all of them now did. Combat could come at any time, not just when they initiated things. She looked tense, determined and very alert. She spoke.
“Negotiator Richardson, how goes your station?” she called to the former CNO.
“Operational,” Chester said, his low baritone filling the large open space of the Command Bridge. “Ready to assist as needed. Here or elsewhere.”
“Good.” Jane looked past Bill to Brig
ht Sparkle on his right. “Fusion Power Chief, what is the status of your reactors?”
“Fully operational and capable of surge power,” spoke the speaker/vidcam unit on the naked woman’s left shoulder as the rainbow bands and dots moved over her skin in the complex mixture of color-band talk that was normal for her Megun people. The woman who had arranged for Bill and Jane’s wedding in the orbital station above her world of Harken looked toward Bill, smiled easily, then looked back to her partner Learned Escape, who sat below and to the left of Jane. Under the transparent skin of the tube suit, her skin colors flared brightly but nothing came from her shoulder unit as she shared private talk with the Megun man Bill had come to appreciate after their ground battle on the Market world. The man’s presence in his ground attack had been a big help. In his comlink holo Jane leaned forward.
“Engines Chief, how are our Magfield engines? And the Alcubierre stardrive?” Jane called firmly.
The walking snake’s yellow electrical nimbus expanded outward to two feet, a sign of controlled anxiety. “Fully operational are the normal space engines,” hissed the Slinkeroo. “As you can see from the true space holo, we still reside within the Alcubierre space-time modulus. Shut down of the stardrive will occur in eight minutes.”
“Eight minutes, twelve and two-tenths seconds,” corrected the humming voice of Star Traveler from the ceiling speaker.
Jane ignored the ship mind’s perennial habit of being hyper-exact. And of correcting bioform statements it thought were not exact enough. “Collector Pods Chief, how are your pods? And the space battle simulation units?”
Long Walker the worm twisted his mobile body so his two beady black eyes could look back at their captain. Their teammate’s circular mouth opened, showing a ring of white dagger teeth. From within came a low moan. “All pods are racked securely. Simulation units are empty of other bioforms. The Collector Pods Chamber is ready to provide ship-to-ship transport,” moaned the Zipziptoe genealogist.
Escape 3: Defeat the Aliens Page 11