“Depressingly few, Joe. Simms is aboard another Falcon, she-”
“Simms? She told me she wouldn’t sign up for another mission.”
“That may have been before she was told she couldn’t go. Jennifer is a remarkably stubborn woman, the best way to get her to do something is to tell her she can’t. Um, don’t tell her I said that. Besides, she is pissed off about your government being stupid.”
“Well, hell, I am sure glad to have her with us. Who else?”
“Of the original Merry Band of Pirates who left Paradise, only you and Simms. Giraud is being held by French authorities, the French have proven to be quite efficient at securing the entire team, we won’t get anyone from them. Desai is aboard a military aircraft over the Indian Ocean, we have no way to get to her. Chang is at a Chinese military base and we would be risking a firefight to get him, I have not been able to contact him at all. Adams is surrounded by Marines at Quantico, I am doing what I can to contact her, but she is on lockdown. Basically, Joe, the best we can hope for is maybe a half dozen people off the surface. Everyone else has been secured. This operation, the groundside part of it, was well-planned.”
I briefly considered contacting special ops people who had not been aboard the Dutchman, but might be willing to sign up now. No, that was a stupid idea that I discarded immediately. Not only would I not know the new people, I would be asking them to violate a direct order and throw their careers away on a snap decision. What worried me was, some new people might go aboard to infiltrate the crew and take over the ship. That was not practical, I could not imagine myself randomly calling a Ranger or SEAL unit and asking if anyone there felt like committing mutiny that day? “Ok, we’ll make this up as we go.”
“Standard Operating Procedure, you mean?”
“Yeah, damn it. Could we count on anyone aboard the ship, other than Poole and Reed?”
“The two CIC officers up here who blew up my escape pod are off the list, Joe, I don’t care if they have a change of heart.”
“Agreed.” To be entrusted with responsibility for taking Skippy out of the fight, those two officers must be hard-core committed to the operation. “No one else?”
“A few people here and there. Joe, the problem is the UNEF nations were prepared for this. We should have acted before the governments assigned security teams to watch all the Pirates.”
“Back then, we didn’t need to act. Hey, wait,” I remembered a news report I saw a couple days ago. “The Chinese and French dropships are really down for maintenance? That wasn’t a fake news report to make us think they only have two birds available?”
“The report was accurate, Joe. I even reviewed their maintenance plan for them last week. Earth governments control only four Dragons and their supply of replacement parts is thin to the point of becoming dangerous.”
“Ok, then the other Dragon controlled by the US is up at the Yu Qishan?”
“Near the Qishan, yes, it is conducting a training exercise now. The purpose of that flight is to bring technicians up to the Qishan to work on getting the reactor restarted, I am helping them with that.”
“Training, huh? Who is aboard that Dragon?” A roster popped up on the console in front of me. “Uh, that’s quite an international crew for an American dropship.”
“An American crew flew the Dragon up to the Qishan, now an international team is using it for training. The stated purpose of the current flight is to simulate a boarding operation.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Can you fake orders to get that Dragon over to the Dutchman, and block any real orders coming from Earth, or from the Qishan?”
“Doing that now, aaaand, done. I have control of the Dragon’s comm system, they will only hear messages I send. Transmitting orders now. Joe, I have a question; you intend to bring those people aboard the Dutchman under false pretenses? Is that not considered dishonorable?”
“Once they are aboard the ship, we can tell them the truth and they can decide whether to sign on. We need people, Skippy. I need to give Smythe options for assembling a team.”
“We do need soldiers, Joe. Doing the best I can. Starting descent now,” he said as I felt the nose drop slightly. Although I was in the cockpit and strapped into the pilot seat, I did not take over the controls, as I didn’t have good situational awareness yet and had to trust Skippy to fly me to wherever he planned to pick up Smythe.
Crap. If Smythe could make the rendezvous. “Does Smythe have a security team with him?”
“Not anymore. It’s a long story, Joe. Shut up and hang on.”
When the call from Skippy made his zPhone buzz, Lt. Colonel Jeremy Ewan Smythe was up to his chest in icy-cold water, fording a stream in the rugged Scottish Highlands. He was not plunging himself into frigid water as part of an assigned and therefore mandatory military exercise, he had volunteered for an adventure race because of course that is what Jeremey Smythe liked to do during his leisure time. He also enjoyed scuba diving, sky diving, hang gliding and plenty of other activities Joe Bishop would describe as falling into the category of ‘crazy shit’. The current activity was a hundred-kilometer foot race for teams of four, over trails and barely-visible tracks that could not truly be described as trails. Part of the race required sticking to the defined trail, other sections allowed teams to strike out away from the trail to cut straight across the countryside if they thought they could save time. To make matters more complicated, the teams had to contact checkpoints along the way, and the only navigation gear they could bring was a compass and a map provided by the race organizers. Because the map was handed out less than ten minutes before the race started, the teams did not have much time to identify the required checkpoints and plan a route before the starting gun fired. To make the experience even more jolly, there was a chilly rainstorm blowing in from the Faroe Islands and visibility at times was less than a quarter mile.
Jeremy Smythe was exhausted and hungry, his soaked shirt was chafing his neck and he had tweaked an ankle stumbling on a hidden rock while fording a stream. He had not been so happy since he left the surface of Gingerbread.
The phone kept buzzing as he slogged through the water and onto the muddy bank, last of the four-man team. Technically, the four-person team included one woman, who jogged slowly with a look of mild annoyance as she waited for her three male companions to catch up.
“One moment,” Smythe gasped, hearing his waterlogged shoes squish on the muddy trail. He kept running while he extracted the zPhone from a pouch on the side of his water pack.
“You brought a phone?” His teammate Katie Frey wagged a finger accusingly. “That’s against the rules! You’ll get us DQ’ed.” She was not alone in looking at Smythe with dismay, none of the team wanted to risk being disqualified after running for four grueling hours in bad weather. Besides, they were in third place!
“This is a special phone,” he waved the credit-card-thin alien device that Skippy had somehow smuggled to him. “It must be an emergency,” Smythe lied, for he feared a certain dodgy beer can may have simply become bored and wanted someone to talk to. If Skippy wanted to sing showtunes, Smythe planned to tuck the phone under a rock and keep going. “Hello?”
“That is what you do for fun?”
Smythe gritted his teeth. “I’m busy,” was about to fling the alien phone away when a shout stopped him.
“Sorry! We have a major problem.”
That made Smythe slow down, waving for his teammates to continue. Instead, they also slowed to keep pace slightly ahead of him. “What?”
“The UN has decided to surrender to the Jeraptha before the Maxolhx get here, in the hope that the Rindhalu coalition will protect Earth.”
“Bollocks!” Smythe stopped running, stunned. “We’ll be caught in the bloody crossfire.”
“Exactly. What matters to you right now is UNEF Command is trying to seize the Flying Dutchman, so Joe is pulling together whoever he can to take the ship out ASAP, and kill those two Maxolhx ships before they reach Ear
th.”
“Bloody hell.” The shocked look on Smythe’s face made his companions halt on the trail, and he held up a finger for silence.
“Bloody hell indeed. A Delta Force team is aboard the ship and Captain Poole is attempting to deal with those cheeky buggers. Joe needs to know, are you in? There is a dropship on the way to pick you up. It is only fair to warn you the crew roster will be very thin, most of the Pirates are on lock-down. The RAF has a pair of helicopters coming to take you into custody. Don’t worry! I scrambled their avionics gear, they will have to land soon, well away from you. So, Colonel Smythe, are you in?”
“You are damned right I’m in,” Smythe declared.
“You’re sure? Joe mumbled some blah blah blah about disobeying orders or other meaningless shit like that.”
“I have not received any orders,” he insisted, lowering his voice to avoid being overheard.
It didn’t work.
One of the team was a fellow member of 22 Special Air Services Regiment, a man named Jason Nunnally who Smythe had never served with, but who had been eager to join the race team on short notice. On hearing the team leader say the word ‘orders’, Nunnally acted instantly.
Jason Nunnally was fast. Katie Frey was faster. If the man had been casual about unzipping his waist-pack and reaching in, she might have assumed he was getting an energy bar to eat. Instead, he made an abrupt motion that set off alarms in her brain and she reacted without waiting for her decision-making capability to catch up. Trusting her instincts in hazardous situations was an ingrained habit from her training. As Nunnally pulled out the pistol and lifted it to point at Smythe, she chopped his weapon-holding arm aside with a blow to the elbow, while her other hand delivered a vicious kidney punch and slammed into the man from behind for both of them to sprawl in the mud. Nunnally grunted from pain and rolled to one side to throw her off. A kidney punch would disable most men, even a tough SAS soldier was not fully capable after such a painful injury. The two wrestled, rolling over in the sodden grass and heath, until Nunnally got a hand free and around her throat.
He froze when he felt the cold steel of his own pistol pressed hard against his temple. “You want to think twice about that,” Smythe advised in a calm manner. Seeing the futility of resisting, Nunnally slumped to the ground, his teeth grinding as waves of pain radiated from his lower back.
“Colonel,” Frey rose warily to her feet, not taking time or energy to wipe the clumps of matted grass and mud from her face. “What the hell is going on, if you don’t mind?”
“I’m sorry,” Nunnally rocked back and forth on the ground, the pain now overwhelming.
“I’m sorry,” Frey retorted. “You’ll be peeing blood for a week.”
“Orders,” Nunnally ignored her, focusing his attention on Smythe. “It was orders, y’ understand? Colonel,” he grimaced. “What the bloody hell is going on? My orders didn’t explain why the Army wants you detained.”
“I understand,” Smythe dropped beside the injured man, holding the spout of his water pack to the man’s lips. “Drink this, Nunnally. Staff Sergeant Grudzien, Lieutenant Frey,” he looked up to his team mates. “The United Nations has decided to surrender us to the Jeraptha.”
“The Jeraptha?” Frey asked, astonished. “Patrons of the Ruhar? They’re our enemy.”
Smythe shook his head. “Everyone up there is our enemy, but the real enemy at the moment are the Kristang and Thuranin.”
“You came here aboard a Thuranin ship,” Frey took a half-step backward. Had she made a mistake by not picking up the pistol?
“A Thuranin ship that we captured, then we killed the entire crew. Lieutenant, the truth is a bloody long tale, don’t believe UNEF’s cover story. Surely you have heard rumors?”
Silently, she nodded, and Grudzien joined her. They had both heard rumors, and the official story from UNEF Command had not made much sense.
Smythe stood up and discarded his water pack, dropping it gently onto Nunnally’s chest. “I don’t have much time,” he looked to the gray sky. How close was the dropship? In the gusty wind, he would likely not hear it approach until it was within a couple kilometers. “UNEF Command is attempting to seize control of the Flying Dutchman, and Colonel Bishop plans to take the ship out to-”
“Excuse me, Sir,” Justin Grudzien waved a hand, speaking carefully to be understood in his Polish accent. “Colonel Bishop? The only Bishop I know in your crew is a sergeant.”
“Bishop got a field promotion direct to colonel while he was on Paradise. I know,” he nodded at three shocked faces. “New war, new reality, new rules,” he explained. “Bishop is captain of the ship, he was in command of the raid back when they captured the ship from the Thuranin. Don’t let his youth and media image fool you, he is a bloody brilliant commander. The best I have ever served with. There are a pair of Maxolhx warships coming to Earth- I know this is a lot to process. Bishop is taking the ship out stop the Maxolhx, and I’m joining him. Apparently,” he looked with pity at Nunnally, “someone has a different idea what we should be doing.”
“My orders,” Nunnally grunted in pain, “were only to hold you until the RAF arrives. They didn’t tell me why. I might have told them to go to hell if they’d told me the truth.”
“The Royal Air Force will not be joining us as scheduled,” Smythe allowed a smile to flash across his face. “A dropship,” he pointed to the low clouds, “is on its way to bring me to the Dutchman. Then we are going out to kick in the teeth of the Maxolhx.”
“What about us?” Grudzien asked, cocking his head to listen for approaching airspace craft.
“Your best option would be to stay here with Nunnally, I’ll call in your position once I’m in orbit. The RAF can pick you up.”
“What are our other options?” Frey scrapped mud away from her face and ran fingers through her matted ponytail.
“You?” Smythe shrugged. “You have no other options,” his hand tensed around the pistol he held, muzzle pointed at the ground away from his feet. He had carefully judged the distance between himself, Frey and Grudzien, they were far enough away for him to be safe. For their safety, too, they both knew they had no chance to try anything rash.
“What if we want to join you?” Frey glanced at Grudzien.
“Er,” Justin Grudzien held up his hands. “My wife just had a baby four months ago. I can’t deploy now, not offworld.”
“I’m not married,” Katie stated, for the first time grateful her last relationship had broken up three months prior. “Can I go with you?”
Smythe suppressed a groan. Too many people in the special operations community around the globe wanted to join the Merry Band of Pirates, without full and careful consideration for the sacrifices involved. The last thing the ship needed was a star-struck amateur. Except Katie Frey was not an amateur. She was a lieutenant with the Canadian Joint Task Force 2, in Britain for joint training exercises with the SAS. Smythe had not intended to create an international team for the race, it had worked that way when he contacted people to assemble a team. Sergeant Justin Grudzien served with the Polish Army Grupa Reagowania Operacyjno-Manewrowego or ‘GROM’ anti-terrorist unit, also in Britain as part of the joint training exercise. When the exercises had ended three day ago, Frey and Grudzien had been the first to agree enthusiastically when Smythe proposed to put together a team for the adventure race. “Lieutenant, Staff Sergeant, think carefully,” he thought his ears detected the whine of a dropship’s turbines. “This would be certain suicide for your careers. You need to-”
“What if you fail up there?” Katie pointed to the sky. No one had ever accused her of being shy. “If those Maxolhx ships get here?”
“Everyone on Earth dies,” Smythe explained. “Maybe a few lucky ones will become slaves for a while.”
“Is surrendering to the Jeraptha any better?”
“No,” Smythe shook his head emphatically. “It is not.”
Grudzien shot Frey a warning glance, fearing she was caught up in th
e moment. “Colonel, then why is UNEF planning to contact these Jeraptha?”
“Because the bloody politicians have their heads up their arses,” Smythe spat. “They haven’t been out there. We have no allies in the galaxy, and the Jeraptha won’t help us. Even if they wanted to, they can’t. The war up there is too big and been going on for too long. No one is going to risk their own security to help our little planet.”
“I am going with you,” Frey looked up rather than at Smythe. They all heard an aircraft approaching, and it was not a helicopter. “Before you ask, yes, I am sure. I have only one question, Colonel Smythe.”
Smythe knew when not to argue, he also knew he was lucky to be bringing someone up to the Dutchman with him. “What is that?”
She looked down at her mud-smeared clothing and shoes. “Will there be a change of clothes aboard the Flying Dutchman?”
Smythe opened his mouth to reply with typically dry humor, then hesitated. “I actually do not know how the ship is provisioned,” he admitted. “Colonel Bishop will see to that, I am certain. The ship also has fabrication facilities,” he added hopefully, with more hope than certainty. Before the ship returned to Earth, Skippy had warned the fabricators were one of many systems that were wearing out due to lack of replacement parts.
Nunnally grimaced, pushing himself painfully to his feet. “Colonel Smythe, if you’ll have me, I would like to go with you.”
Smythe was astonished and uncharacteristically spoke before thinking. “Are you daft, man?”
“I did not know what is at stake, Sir,” Nunnally explained. “If you mission up there fails, everyone on Earth dies, you are sure of that?”
“Dead certain.”
“I have a wife and two children,” Nunnally’s eyes flicked to Grudzien briefly. “I want them to live, it is simple as that.”
Holding the pistol with his left hand and pointing it safely at the ground but ready for trouble, Smythe held out his right hand, and Nunnally shook it briefly. “I could use a good SAS man up there,” Smythe admitted.
Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) Page 9