“Everyone forgets someth-”
“Because you weren’t paying attention,” the Polish soldier finished the thought.
“Hey, I am very busy,” Skippy grumbled. “I can’t think of everything. Let’s see you try-”
Frey clapped her hands. “Boys! You can continue this after we get back to Valkyrie. Skippy, promise me you will be totally focused on this mission.”
“Of course I promise, mon cheri.”
“I’m not French-Canadian,” she reminded him. “So you can drop that.”
Skippy was hurt. “I was just-”
Smythe’s voice interrupted. “Jump light goes green in seven minutes.”
“Right,” Frey acknowledged. She hopped up and down to make sure all her gear was properly stowed, though her boots stayed clamped to the deck in the Dragon’s zero gravity. “Helmets on.”
The team donned helmets, checked the seals, verified communications, and were ready a full minute before the rear compartment began depressurizing. With ninety seconds to the drop, they shuffled backward to grab handholds on the bar across the compartment. At the thirty-second mark, they activated the disposable cold jet cartridges attached to their backpacks.
Three, two, one-
The rear ramp of the Dragon slammed open at the last second and the cold gas thrusters propelled the three outward. When the thrusters came to the end of their flexible tethers, they detached from the backpacks and were yanked back inside the dropship, just before the ramp swung closed. Having the ramp open compromised stealth and although Skippy had control of the planetary defense network, it made no sense to take additional risks.
Frey didn’t glance backward at the stealthed Dragon as it fled away, she knew it was invisible anyway. Her attention was not even on the planet below, which looked so close she could have seen her house if she lived there. In reality, they had jumped at an altitude of fifty-eight thousand kilometers, which technically was within the atmosphere. The air around them was so thin that it gave no resistance as she plunged headfirst. At thirty-four kilometers, she began to hear a high-pitched whistling sound, of air rushing past at supersonic speed.
The chute began deploying when they reached thirty-two kilometers, first gently tugging the three soldiers into a triangle formation so they did not interfere with each other’s chutes. Then the gossamer-thin parachute material flared out and filtered air was pumped in, forming a balloon above her. Speed bled off, not so rapidly that the balloon generated a detectable signature, rapidly enough that a noticeable sonic boom did not reach the ground.
Everything was going to plan. She would have preferred not to jump while the landing zone was in daylight, and she was grateful for the cloud cover. The Skippytel network’s forecast called for rain when they landed, clearing later to partly cloudy conditions. The clouds overhead would prevent curious lizards on the ground from seeing the Pirates as they descended, and she hoped the rain would keep the natives inside.
In her visor, she saw Grudzien and Durand were falling in perfect formation with her and their parachutes were operating in nominal fashion. In fact, each of them were within a half meter of the predicted descent path. A wry smile crept across Frey’s lips as she contemplated that the unnecessary precision of their glide path was the AI showing off for Camille Durand.
“Comms check,” Frey whispered, something else that was not necessary. “How is everyone doing?”
“I’m bored,” Grudzien complained. “When does the fun start? I was promised fun in this-”
The Polish soldier’s balloon flexed its shape and the bottom dropped out below him. He yelped as he was momentarily in freefall.
“Was that exciting enough for you?” Skippy was his usual snarky self.
“Yes, thank you,” Grudzien said with his heart in his throat. The straps on his shoulders tugged harder as his balloon refilled to bring him back into formation. “That was enough fun for the day.”
“Do we have better intel on the landing zone?” Durand asked. “My sensors are showing only general terrain features.”
“No, sorry,” Skippy answered. “There are no local sensors in the area, so I don’t have anything to hack into. So far, I don’t see any heat signatures large enough to be a Kristang. But they could be under shelter.”
“Right,” Frey eyeclicked a menu option in her visor’s display, and her rifle’s strap swung it around from her back to straddle her midsection, where it was ready for use. “Get your weapon ready. Remember, no shooting unless I shoot first.”
“Or they do,” Grudzien breathed.
“Let’s think positive thoughts,” Frey issued the mild reprimand. If they got into a firefight before reaching the hospital, Skippy’s control of communications all around the planet would prevent an alarm from calling in reinforcements, but it would alert whatever security forces were at the hospital. Not even Skippy could stop the sound of rifle fire from being heard for several kilometers. Her orders were to abort the operation if they ran into significant opposition, it would be her own judgment what constituted ‘significant’. The lives of three people, two of them children, were depending on her. She also was responsible for the lives of the two soldiers with her. “Please, God,” she said a silent prayer. “Don’t let me screw this up.”
At ten thousand meters, they plunged into the thick cloud layer and all she could see was a gray blanket below, around and above her. Switching her visor to synthetic view gave her a picture of the ground, but that was a composite of fuzzy sensor data plus what the suit’s computer had been told to expect. “Skippy, when are we getting active sensors?” She asked as she fell through six thousand meters above ground level.
“Patience,” the AI counselled. “The second satellite is just coming above the horizon. I told you this would be tricky timing.”
She eyeclicked to the private channel. “Grudzien and I know how awesome you are. You need to impress Camille.” The ancient AI had few weaknesses, but a craving for praise was one of them, and he especially was desperate for praise from women.
“Do you think she likes me?” Skippy asked in a whisper.
“I think she will not like you, if we come out of the clouds and trouble is waiting for us.”
“Oh. Gosh, I just discovered that satellite needs a slight adjustment to its orbit.”
Fifteen seconds later, Frey’s suit alerted her that the area was being swept by two active sensor beams. Satellites to the north and west were painting the ground, and her suit was picking up the reflections, without her suit needing to expose itself by sending out active pulses. Skippy had caused the satellites to perform an unscheduled active sensor test, just in the right position. “Got it, good work,” she thanked Skippy as she scanned the incoming data. It all looked good, except- “We’ve got trouble.”
“Ah, you mean that truck?” Skippy scoffed. “No problem, I’ll just- Huh. That damned thing is not connected to the planetary network. I can’t hack into it at all. Whoo, that thing must be cobbled together from junk parts. Um, Ok, maybe that is a problem.”
A truck, with a small bubble-shaped cab up front and a bed that was covered with a canvas or tarp, was slowly rumbling along a rutted dirt road, traveling in the general direction of the hospital. “Can you drop us down behind that ridge?” Frey highlighted the alternate landing zone.
“Affirmative.” As Skippy spoke, the parachute balloons tugged the three soldiers onto a different descent course. “It is rain and fog almost all the way to the ground there, good concealment. That ridge is covered with trees, though. You could get tangled up,” he warned.
Frey looked at the synthetic map. “How deep is that pond?”
“It’s a pond. Shallow water, but a muddy bottom. Your suits are heavy.”
She did not want to waste time fighting to extract one or more of them from a thick layer of sticky muck. The ground was approaching fast, she needed to make a decision. “Avoid the pond, eh? Lower us through the tree canopy on tethers.”
“T
hat’s marginal,” Skippy warned. “The wind is gusty.”
“Yes, but you are awesome, eh?”
“Frey,” he growled on the private channel. “Do not make me hate you.”
“Just do it.”
“Captain Frey?” Durand asked as she watched the terrain below her resolve into individual trees. “I have never practiced a tether landing.”
Frey winced. There had not been enough time to properly train for the operation as originally planned. Certainly not sufficient time to allow for prepare for contingencies. “There is nothing to it. Relax and trust your gear. If you get into trouble and you’re within eight meters of the ground, release and drop. Your suit will absorb most of the impact.” Most, but not all, she reminded herself. “Bend your knees and arch your back.”
Camille Durand bit back a reply. She knew how to conduct a proper parachute landing. There was no point getting into an argument, and she knew Frey had not intended an insult. Then there was no time for talking, as her balloon expanded to halt her descent and changed shape to steer into the wind. The balloon grew wings on both sides, using those airfoils to hover like a seagull soaring over a beach. Before she could admire the precision with which the balloon held itself motionless in the gusty wind, rain and fog, the tether holding her backpack to the balloon began lengthening, and she dropped. Crossing arms over her chest and pointing her legs and toes downward, she was rocked as leaves and branches slapped against her, a shoulder bounced off a stout tree limb, and she had a brief glimpse of a cluttered forest floor before bringing her knees up. Her boots hit first, then her backside and she rolled to absorb the impact. Wary of the tether dragging her through the forest, she held the emergency release lever, but the tether severed itself.
“Everyone down safe, eh?” Frey asked, knowing that was true from the information displayed in her visor. “Recover ’chutes first.”
The team fanned out to retrieve their parachutes, tracking the packages by faint signals. Once their charges were on the ground, the tiny computers controlling the parachutes had cut the tethers, having analyzed the tree cover and deciding the balloons would become tangled and shredded if they tried to guide themselves down through the tangled branches. The backup plan was for the balloon to reel in the tethers, drift to a better landing place, and collapse into a neat ball of nanofabric. The three balls plunged through the tree canopy without harm, except Grudzien’s parachute bounced off a dead log and rolled into the pond with a splash. “Shit!” The Polish soldier exclaimed as he waded out to pick up the damned thing, then had to wash off the layer of muck before it could be stored in his pack to recharge.
“Congratulations, Capitaine,” Frey said to the Commando woman. “You earned your jump wings.”
“Thank you,” Durand automatically reached up to brush stray hairs out of her eyes, and her hand thumped into the helmet she forgot about. “Are all your operations thrown together at the last minute?”
“Oh, no, Ma’am,” Grudzien splashed his boots in the pond water, to clean the green scum off. “We usually have to make shit up as we go. It’s nice to have a plan this time.”
“Merde.” Durand groaned.
“What she said,” Frey agreed. “Let’s move out.”
“Frey’s team is down safely, and reasonably on target, Joe,” Skippy reported. “No sign they have been detected.”
“I’m worried about that truck, Skippy. If Frey’s team can’t use the road, they will have to go cross-country, and cross two rivers. That is rough terrain, it will slow them down.”
His voice immediately took on a defensive edge. “Hey, I’m not happy about that truck either.”
“Can’t you do something to stop it? It’s just a stupid truck.”
“I can’t do anything, because it is just a stupid truck. The damned thing appears to be nothing but fuel cells and electric motors, I can’t detect any type of control system. The lizards in the cab must be manually driving it, if you can believe that. Really, I’m kind of impressed by their ingenuity in building that piece of crap from spare parts.”
“Maybe we can turn that truck from a problem to an opportunity. Frey,” I opened the command channel. “I know it’s rainy and chilly down there, so I sent an Uber to pick you up.”
“An Uber, Sir?”
“Technically, it’s a truck. The driver needs to be paid in bullets, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh. Yes. I think I know, eh?”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
After Frey’s team parachuted from the Dragon, the spacecraft continued on far out over the western ocean before descending into and through the atmosphere. That was the aspect of the mission that gave me the most anxiety. Skippy had intermittent control of the planetary sensor network, so none of the satellites or ground-based sensors would be sounding alarms about an unknown and unauthorized object coming down from orbit. What he could not control was a lizard looking up with bare eyeballs and seeing a white streak in the sky. That lizard would know that there weren’t any friendly ships scheduled to arrive in-system that day, and that would prompt uncomfortable questions about why the object was not being reported by the defense network.
So, both Dragons did not hit the atmosphere until they were far out over the ocean, away from populated areas. Just in case some aircraft or ship was below, they used engine power in partial hover mode to avoid leaving a noticeable contrail. The stealth maneuver was a strain on the engines, for they had to gulp in enormous amounts of cool air to counter the heat of the turbines. When the airspeed was below supersonic, the pilots breathed sighs of relief, and began a gentle turn back toward land. There, the Dragons separated, with Smythe’s ship turning north and Fabron’s continuing on a southerly course. The safe approach, to the site designated ‘Objective Lima’, required crossing the seacoast four hundred kilometers to the north then arcing around south to fly along a mountain range.
The task of Smythe’s team was to pull forty-seven traumatized, malnourished and generally mistreated humans from the lead pair of Storks. Those aircraft were headed toward an abandoned military base that had been temporarily reactivated for the purpose of securely holding all humans on the planet, until they could be delivered to the Thuranin. The first thought of Smythe and Kapoor had been for the Dragon to drop off ground teams in two places that were out the visual range from the base. Smythe and Kapoor would then take their teams overland in mech suits through the thinly-populated region, and infiltrate the base from two points. If it were not possible to infiltrate without being detected, they would conduct an assault. Either way, the ground team would eliminate opposition at the base, which is a polite way of saying they would kill every lizard in the area. The Dragon could provide distant air support if needed, using stand-off weapons from over the horizon. Getting the Dragon involved would be a last-resort measure, we could not afford to lose that spacecraft.
After opposition at the base had been suppressed, the ground team would clean up as best they could in the time available. To explain the carnage and inevitable smoke rising from the base, Skippy would tell the incoming pilots that a Fire Dragon clan security team had put down an attempted treasonous action by former White Wind warriors. It was a plausible story, and Smythe was reasonably confident he could take the base, which reportedly was staffed by only fourteen warriors. What made Smythe anxious about his own plan was the time required, a fire fight could still be going on when the Storks arrived, and no way could we expect those pilots to land in the middle of a shooting gallery.
There were other aspects of that plan I didn’t like at all. Extended combat carried significant risk of injury or death on our side, and a fight could get messy. In the base and surrounding town were over fifty buildings the enemy could use for cover, and the last thing we needed was a bloody and time-consuming house to house fight. I also had moral concerns about assaulting the base. Skippy thought there were fourteen warriors equipped with powered armor at the base, but he estimated possibly fifty to sixty other lizards the
re. Some of them were support personnel, others were civilians who had not left the area after the White Wind military pulled out of the base. Those civilians would be eager to work at the base, satellite images showed a crew of two dozen working to repair a wall at the base. Many of those civilians and support workers would be killed or injured in a firefight, and that thought made me sick. Yes, I had sparked a civil war which had already killed many thousands of lizards. I framed the Bosphuraq and caused thousands of innocent deaths there also. Hell, I had begun my command of the Flying Dutchman by asking Skippy to jump fourteen Kristang starships into a gas giant planet, wiping out those crews without warning. Maybe all my actions were justified. ‘Maybe’ wasn’t good enough.
Besides, while Smythe and Kapoor were planning the loud bang-bang stuff, I was mulling over a patented Joe Bishop sneaky way of getting the enemy to do what we wanted. When I explained my idea to Smythe, he was greatly relieved, with an undertone of mild rebuke for not explaining my alternative plan earlier.
Anyway, instead of getting involved in a bloody firefight, we went with the sneaky option. Ninety kilometers from the abandoned base was an abandoned village on the seacoast, with a walled compound that used to be a pleasure resort for local White Wind leaders. There were several landing pads for aircraft, and records showed the underground fuel tanks still were half full, so the Storks could refill their tanks. Speaking as the acting planetary administrator, Skippy ordered the two-ship formation of Storks to divert to the resort, explaining that the former White Wind clan members at the old military base could not be trusted. The pilots did not question their orders or object, for they were Fire Dragon clan and considered the former White Wind clan to be scum.
That left the problem that the lizards at the old military base expected four Storks to fly in, and would raise a ruckus when they were overdue. Our deception worked only because Skippy had total control of communications on and around Rikers. Again acting as the administrator’s office, he contacted the lizards at the base and explained that the Storks had been diverted because of an unspecified threat that the grunts on the ground didn’t need to know about. They were to remain at the base, continue preparing it to receive the humans at a future date, and blah blah blah. I didn’t care what those lizards did, as long as they didn’t interfere with us.
Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9) Page 52