SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (54 page)

And waited.

While, thanks to Skippy, we knew precisely
where
the Thuranin destroyer was going to jump in, we knew
when
only within a
span of ten hours. To be safe, we arrived at the rendezvous point twenty six
hours early, that was as fast as we could get there, considering we were racing
two slow, lumbering tanker ships to the same place. We arrived, scanned the
whole region intensely until Skippy declared it was clear, then we parked our
missiles and positioned the
Dutchman
near where the destroyer was
supposed to jump in.

And waited.

When the destroyer arrived, it was almost
anticlimactic for us humans, the whole thing happened faster than the blink of
an eye. Skippy assured us the whole thing was prodigiously, bodaciously awesome.
I had to take his word for it, until he replayed the sensor data on the display
for us in extra super-duper slow motion. The far end of the destroyer's jump
wormhole appeared first, appearing on the screen as gamma radiation in
spectacular false colors, Skippy took some artistic license with that for our
benefit. The wormhole was microscopic at first, Skippy drew 3D crosshairs in
the display, showing that the wormhole was less than thirty kilometers from the
target jump area, right where Skippy had created area of extra flat spacetime.
The next thing we noticed on the display was not the wormhole expanding, or the
nose of the destroyer emerging, it was two of our missiles accelerating hard,
straight for the wormhole. Skippy had programmed them to home in initially on
the gamma radiation of a wormhole opening, and the missiles did not hesitate at
all. By the time the wormhole had expanded, and the nose of the destroyer came
into view, our missiles had closed half the distance already, and had switched
their targeting to the hull of the destroyer.

Both missiles impacted the destroyer's aft section
almost simultaneously, when I later ran the display back and let it run forward
nanosecond by nanosecond, it still looked like they hit at the same time. One
missile hit a reactor, its warhead ripped through the reactor shielding like it
wasn't there, we could see fragments of the warhead coming out the other side
of the ship like a fountain, spewing white-hot particles out into space. That
dramatic view was brief, because the other missile scored a direct hit on a
cluster of jump drive coils, and released their stored energy in a catastrophic
flash. It happened so fast, even Skippy wasn't sure whether that missile's
warhead had time to explode on its own. Either way, the destroyer was instantly
vaporized, and Desai had to trigger a short jump to protect the
Dutchman
from high-energy debris.

One down, three to go.

Our concern then was the Thuranin might somehow have
figured out our awesome new gimmick, and our incredible advantage would turn
into a one-trick pony. We recovered the two unused missiles quickly, they had
nicks and scratches from the exploding destroyer, Skippy assured us the
missiles would work just fine. Then we jumped over to where the surveyor ship
was supposed to jump in, and parked the extra missiles there. We had previously
parked missiles around the target jump points for the surveyor and the two
tankers, those three ships were scheduled to jump in anywhere from twenty
minutes to six hours after the destroyer. We didn't know the exact timing, all
we knew was the surveyor would jump in first.

We need to kill the surveyor ship, and at least one of
the tankers.

We almost did it.

The second ship to jump in was the surveyor, which in
the super slow motion replay looked a lot like the
Flying
Dutchman
did now; a much-shortened star carrier, except the surveyor's aft section was noticeably
larger, with additional reactors and fuel tanks and other gear needed for
extreme long-range voyages. Replay was the only good look we got at the
surveyor, our missiles smoked it as soon as it emerged from its jump wormhole,
it made a considerably bigger explosion than the destroyer had. Big enough,
that the two extra missiles we had hanging around hanging around the target
jump point on standby got pelted with debris so badly, we had to order them to
self-destruct; taking them back aboard in their damaged condition would be much
too risky to the
Dutchman
. Even a tiny breach in the containment system
of an atomic-compression warhead, could result in the atoms being no longer
quite so compressed.

Two down, two to go, and the remaining two were not
really warships. There were tight, self-conscious smiles and quickly-flashed
thumbs ups going around the bridge and CIC, people needing to release tension
and celebrate just a little, balanced with not wanting to jinx us by breaking
into cheers to early. The surveyor ship would not be going to Earth, or going
anywhere. Our mission was not yet complete, we needed to destroy at least one
of the tankers, to sell our cover story of the surveyor task force being
attacked by the Jeraptha. Without that, the Thuranin might become suspicious
about why the surveyor ship was prevented from going to Earth, and render our
entire plan useless.

It almost worked.

The tankers, despite traveling together, didn't jump
into the rendezvous together. Their crews, Skippy said, likely had a rivalry,
each crew wanting their ship to jump in closer to the target location, so each
ship had been meticulously careful about calibrating jump drives, and plotting
the far end of their wormholes. Because in this case, Skippy had to project two
spots of extra flat spacetime, and those spots were separated by one hundred
fifty thousand kilometers, that strained even his awesome abilities. I know his
abilities were awesome, because he told us, several times. At least.

One of the tanker crews finished screwing with their
jump drive slightly before the other ship, because one tanker jumped in before
the other one. On the display, we saw the familiar flare of gamma radiation as
the wormhole's far end opened, and the bulbous front end of the tanker emerged
from the wormhole.

The trouble started when our first missile impacted,
it hit the center of the tanker, not the aft end. Skippy later admitted he
should have programmed those missiles to anticipate the tankers coming through
the wormhole more ponderously than the surveyor and the destroyer had. Momentum
carried the ass end of the tanker forward through the wormhole, even as the
center of the ship broke apart. All this happened in a split second, we only
realized what happened later by examining playback of the sensor data. The
second, and last missile targeted at the first tanker, did manage to hit a
reactor on the aft end of the ship, and loss of reactor containment ruptured a
bank of charged jump drive coils, effectively vaporizing most of that ship.
Unfortunately, in order to hit the vital aft end of the ship, our second smart
missile had been forced to dive slightly into the wormhole itself. The missile
knew the configuration of the ship, saw how comparatively slowly it was
traveling through the wormhole, and the missile concluded its best chance of
hitting something vital was to curve around and dive into the wormhole itself.
In retrospect, I wish that missile had not been quite so overeager for an
outstanding rating on its next performance review, for its quick thinking
caused a big headache for us.

When our missile dove into the open wormhole, and
caused release of energy stored in the jump drive coils of the first tanker, it
also alerted the second tanker that something was wrong, very wrong, with its
sister ship. And that jumping to where the first ship went, might not be so
healthy for the second ship. Destruction of the jump drive coils caused
blowback through the near end of that ship's jump wormhole, a distinctive burst
of gamma radiation that was immediately noticed by the second tanker, and that
ship's navigation AI automatically aborted its own jump wormhole as it was
forming. The command crew of the second tanker wasted no time in redirecting
their jump drive to alternate coordinates, and jumped instead to an unknown
location.

"Uh oh," Skippy said, and that was my first
indication that anything was wrong. Destruction of the first tanker, like the
destroyer and surveyor before it, had happened too fast for the human eye to
follow. As far as I knew, everything was going great; unsuspecting enemy ships
were jumping in unawares, and almost instantly becoming fireballs. To my eye, I
couldn't have been more proud, I'd thought of an idea that destroyed the enemy,
and secured the future of Earth and humanity, without my own ship being placed
at risk at all. It was all good, I was wondering whether, against orders, Major
Simms had a bottle of champagne hidden away somewhere.

So great was my confidence, and complacency, that when
Skippy spoke, I figured it was to complain about a missile hitting a nanometer
away from where he'd planned, something only a super intelligent AI would care
about. "Uh oh? What's going wrong in the world of Skippy?" I asked
distractedly, my eyes glued to the display, anticipating the second tanker to
jump in any second. Jump in, and be obliterated.

"Something is wrong in the world of monkeys,
Colonel Joe. We have a potential problem."

A quick glance around the main display told me nothing
was wrong with the
Dutchman's
major systems. What the hell was Skippy
talking about? "A potential problem? You're not sure if it's a problem or
not?"

"Whether or not it is a problem, depends on your
mission parameters. Before you ask more stupid monkey-brained questions, I'll
lay out the issue for you; the second tanker is very likely not going to jump
into the rendezvous. The first tanker exploded while it was partly in the
wormhole, it hadn't fully cleared the event horizon. Backblast would have been
visible on the other end of the wormhole, no way could the second tanker have
missed that event."

"Oh, shit." Suddenly I didn't feel much like
drinking champagne.

"So?" Simms asked from the CIC. "We
were almost hoping one of the tankers would survive, to carry our cover story
back to the Thuranin?"

"Correct, Major," I responded, "the
problem here is that tanker won't be carrying our cover story of a Jeraptha
task force marauding through Thuranin territory, they're going to have a much
more interesting tale to tell; a ship gets hit while it is still inside a jump
wormhole. When they hear that, the Thuranin command is going to want to know
how an enemy could possibly know precisely where a ship will emerge from a
jump. And you can bet they'll investigate, every sentient species in the galaxy
will want to know how we pulled off that trick, even if they don't know who did
it yet. We don't want to leave any mystery behind, we need the destruction of
the surveyor and its escorts to be seen as a routine military action, something
that happens in frequently enough in war, and not anything worth anyone taking
a second look at. We need to find that second tanker. Skippy, you know where
the other end of that wormhole is, right? Plot a jump for those
coordinates."

"Course laid in, but I expect the second tanker
jumped away to an alternate destination already, as soon as it saw something
went wrong with its sister ship."

"Well, crap, Skippy, that's no good! We need to
get there before its outbound wormhole fades away, so we can track where it
jumped to. Pilot," I ordered to Desai, "jump as soon as you're
ready."

"Aye, Captain," Desai acknowledged.

We jumped to where the first tanker had tried to jump
in from, immediately engaged our stealth field, and began hammering away with
an active sensor search, to determine whether there were any ships in the area.
The stealth field wasn't on so other ships couldn't find us, we had it active
so other ships wouldn't see that the
Dutchman
was not, in fact, the
Jeraptha cruiser that we pretended to be. Sensor sweeps came back blank, the
area was empty. Skippy began scanning for a residual wormhole signature, and
found one quickly.

"Uh oh, I was worried about this. That tanker
jumped away like we thought, problem is, it used space combat protocol for the
jump. Remember how I told you ships can mess with their jump wormhole
signatures, make it harder for a pursuing ship to determine where they jumped
to? That's what that tanker did, as it went through the jump wormhole, it
dropped off quantum resonators, they're kind of like the crude flares your
military aircraft use to confuse heat-seeking missiles. These quantum resonator
devices disturb remnant waves of the outbound wormhole, that makes it difficult
to figure out the original configuration of the wormhole. Difficult even for
me."

"So, you can't do it?" I asked anxiously.
This was our first space battle where we were the pursuing ship, it required a
complete change in thinking.

"I can do it, I can't do it with the accuracy we
would prefer. Fortunately, the Thuranin are still under the mistaken impression
that quantum effects tend toward randomness, a common misconception of lesser
developed species. Because I know how the universe really works, I've been able
to map the pattern of the quantum resonators, unwind their effect from the
residual wormhole signature, and make a reasonably good guess as to where that
second tanker ship went. By reasonable, I mean I can tell where that ship
jumped to, within six hundred thousand kilometers."

"Great!" A glance at the man bridge display
told me we had plenty of charge for an immediate jump. "Program a jump for
us, and we will-"