Freefall (Expeditionary Force Mavericks Book 2), page 1
Expeditionary Force
Mavericks
Book 2:
FREEFALL
By
Craig Alanson
Text copyright © 2020 Craig Alanson
All Rights Reserved
Contact the author
craigalanson@gmail.com
Cover Design By
Alexandre Rito
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
“Well, this is just freakin’ wonderful,” Derek Bonsu grimaced as he deactivated the Buzzard’s rack of missiles. The weapons would not be needed, because they couldn’t risk firing on the target, a small Kristang village that had been the team’s objective for that morning. Now the Legion soldiers in the Buzzard’s cabin were grumbling and bitching to each other. The flight from their base had been ninety minutes of bouncing through a raging blizzard, and it had all been for nothing. “I knew this day would turn to shit.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Irene had to smile. “You knew that, because you stubbed your toe?”
“Because the first thing that happened when I got out of bed, was bashing my toe on the leg of the cot. That’s a bad way to start the day, you know?”
Irene didn’t reply, she knew the reason Derek had run his toe into the cot that morning was he had tried to avoid the pile of clothes she left on the floor. Plus her gear bag. Plus he first had to awkwardly crawl over her to get out of bed, because his side of the cot was up against the wall of the shelter. “You need to tell Em.”
“Me?” Derek protested. “I told her the bad news last time, when we were on Fresno.”
“See?” She reached across the Buzzard’s center console and patted his face affectionately. “She already thinks of you as the bearer of bad news, so it won’t hurt.”
“Nuh-uh,” he shook his head. “Not this time.”
“Fine,” she relented. “Your aircraft?”
“My aircraft,” Derek affirmed, keeping the Buzzard in a lazy circle, orbiting a control point ninety kilometers from the objective. Or the place that had been that day’s objective, before everything turned to shit. The only good news was they had flown through and out of the blizzard, and the sky was mostly clear all the way to the objective. That would have been good if the Legion troops were landing to ‘assist’ the evacuation of the village’s residents. As it was, the only practical effect of the better weather was to provide a view of snow, frozen mud and the tough fir-like trees that covered the unwelcoming landscape. Since the Legion landed nine days ago, Derek had seen the sun mostly when they flew above the ever-present thick layer of clouds. Not for the first time, he wished he had never seen that world.
The mission was supposed to be quick, simple and easy: monitor the Kristang as they left a planet recently surrendered to the Ruhar. The world was called Jellaxico, and the humans of the Alien Legion had only half-heartedly given it the nickname ‘Jellybean’. The planet was just not important enough to merit an official nickname, and hopefully the Legion wouldn’t be there long enough to remember it. Jellaxico was an Earth-like planet, if Earth’s crust had significantly more rare metals, was larger, had thirteen percent higher gravity, and circled the local orange dwarf star on an elliptical orbit that took it from the middle to the outer edge of the habitable ‘Goldilocks’ zone. Also if the level of free oxygen was eight percent less than Earth normal.
Jellaxico had been settled by the Kristang for mining rare metals, though that justification for the expense of traveling there had been rendered moot three hundred years ago, when robotic mining began in the rich asteroid belt of a star system much closer to the core worlds of Kristang territory. Since mining became unprofitable, the remaining inhabitants of Jellaxico hung on mostly out of stubbornness, or because they couldn’t afford to pay for passage on the one ship per year that swung by to deliver supplies, and take aboard anyone fortunate enough to get off the miserable world. Jellaxico might have continued its slumber forever, with a slowly declining population, except the most recent wormhole shift had given the Ruhar easy access. The Ruhar needed certain rare metals, especially palladium, lanthanum and yttrium, to make their jump drives function properly. The clan that owned Jellaxico actually had no official presence there, and the seven thousand Kristang of various squabbling subclans did not like being sold out by their leaders. Accordingly, the Ruhar had assigned the Alien Legion to handle the task of kicking the lizards off the planet. It was a test, with the Legion force under the command of Emily Perkins. She had one under-strength battalion of six hundred fifty humans and eighty Verd-kris, plus two transport ships and one destroyer. She wasn’t happy with the force structure and she also knew the hamsters didn’t care. If the Legion could not manage the evacuation of seven thousand lizards who were living in isolated villages, then the whole concept of the Alien Legion needed to be reviewed.
The evac had gone well for the first eight days, with most of the warrior caste and almost all of the civilians happy to get off the frozen ball of mud they called home. Then Irene and Derek approached a village early that morning, and the local leader had a message for the platoon leader. They knew it was trouble immediately, though Major Chan had been trying to handle the problem on her own. Derek and Irene knew that Perkins would want to know what was going on, so they only felt mildly uncomfortable about going behind Chan’s back. Sometimes, officers had to be protected from themselves.
Instead of calling Emily Perkins directly, Irene sent a request up to the destroyer Wyl Chidah, a Ruhar vessel the humans referred to as the Wild Child. After a brief back-and-forth with the destroyer’s communications department and then the ship’s executive officer, Irene was connected to Perkins. “Ma’am,” Irene took a breath before continuing. “We have a problem.”
Emily Perkins’s own morning had been rather splendid, a fact that had her anticipating bad news. She had slept well considering that only four hours elapsed between closing her eyes and swing her legs onto the deck when the alarm woke her. The coffee, made from beans the Ruhar grew in a lab, was hot and delicious. Breakfast had been biscuits and gravy that tasted, if not like her mother used to make, as good as any diner in her hometown. The destroyer’s crew had greeted her cheerily while they ate whatever food hamsters ate for breakfast. When she arrived in the Wild Child’s Combat Operations Center, the overnight status reports had all been positive. Objectives secured, no casualties on either side, the overall plan was proceeding two hours ahead of schedule.
The relentless good news had her on edge when Irene called. “Striebich, are you going to ruin my day?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“Excellent. That is good-”
“I think the lizards have done that all by themselves,” Irene explained.
Perkins lowered her voice, a gesture that had no practical value. The ship’s Ruhar crew had excellent hearing, and the flight data recorder could pick up the softest whisper. “Why am I not hearing this from Major Chan?”
There was the slightest hesitation before Irene responded. “She is trying to contain the situation.”
“Is she going to succeed?”
“No,” Irene conceded.
Perkins suppressed a groan. There were two options when a problem was encountered. Try to take care of it yourself without adding to the burden of your superior officer. Or notify your superior right away, hopefully with a plan to deal with the situation. Chan was taking the first option, figuring she could resolve the issue without Perkins needing to become involved.
Choosing Option One was walking a fine line. If the situation got significantly worse before the information inevitably did go up the chain of command, then Chan’s choice of the Do-It-Yourself option could backfire on her. Perkins typically got pissed when her subordinates tried to hide bad news from her, but she had learned that she needed to balance the need for information with the need to trust her people in the field. There was a status call with Chan scheduled in two hours, so she could wait until then.
She might have waited, except the Ruhar were closely monitoring all communications, and they were looking for any sign that the human Expeditionary Force could not handle the mission. “I’ll contact Chan. Give me a quick summary of the problem.”
Irene told
Perkins swore, and didn’t care that the Ruhar in the destroyer’s Combat Operations Center all looked at her with interest. “Ok, Striebich, hold where you are.” She keyed the access code for Chan’s personal zPhone, bypassing the major’s communications staff. “Major Chan? How’s it going down there?”
Chan knew she was busted, and there wasn’t any point to concealing the problem. “We’ve got a group of lizards who are refusing to cooperate, Ma’am.”
“Refusing like, dragging their feet on turning over their weapons, or like using those weapons against us?”
“Uh, neither of those?”
Perkins raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“They’re threatening to use weapons, but not against us or the hamst- Against us or the Ruhar. They um, they have Keepers.”
“Shit!” Perkins pretended she hadn’t already heard that from Striebich.
“I’ve been trying to negotiate with the leader of the local subclan in the village, a lizard called Ashkallah. He plans a messy public execution of the four Keepers he has, unless we pull back out of his province.”
“Damn it,” Perkins knew the Ruhar in the COC were all listening intently to the conversation. “What about the lizard Administrator of the planet?”
“I contacted his staff, they told me that enforcing the cease fire and withdrawal agreement is our responsibility, Ma’am. The Administrator will not step in unless the Ashkallah guy directly violates the ceasefire, or does something against the interests of the major clan. The Keepers are considered personal property, Ashkallah can do whatever he wants with them. Basically, the Administrator told me this is not his problem.”
“Basically,” Perkins spat. “The Administrator is happy to let Ashkallah take a shot at screwing up the whole mission for us. If it works, the major clan benefits. If not, the Administrator doesn’t lose anything.”
“Basically,” Chan concluded. “Yes.”
“Ok, Major,” Perkins took a breath. “Good initiative.”
“But bad judgment, Ma’am?”
“No. You saved me the trouble of another delightful conversation with my counterpart,” she meant the Kristang Administrator of the planet. The lizards had, of course, thrown up every roadblock they could to cause problems for the Legion. The Legion, knowing their opponent, had planned for roadblocks and delays. She didn’t blame Chan for attempting to resolve the situation on her own. She also knew that the major’s plan, to try reaching a compromise with the lizards, did not have a prayer of working. Ending the call with Chan, she turned to the technician at the destroyer’s communications console. “Connect me with this asshole lizard.”
“Which asshole lizard, Ma’am?” The ship’s executive officer asked.
Keeping a flash of irritation from showing on her face, Perkins did not take the bait. “You know damned well which lizard. Don’t play games with me, I haven’t got the time.”
The exec gave a curt head nod, and the technician pressed buttons while Perkins watched. “I’m in contact, Ma’am,” the technician announced. “They’re telling me that Grand Warrior Ashkallah will call you shortly, at his convenience.”
The lizard was making her wait as a ploy, and Perkins was not going to allow that to affect her. While she waited for the Grand Asshole to decide he had sufficiently shown his disdain, she walked over to the weapons console, gesturing the exec to follow. “Colonel Perkins,” executive officer Feelax said quietly. “We received a standard request from Major Chan to stand by to provide fire support over the target village, about two hours ago. I tasked two GBU-35s,” he referred to a type of Ruhar missile equipped with fragmentation warheads. They were typically used in antipersonnel strikes, against relatively soft targets on the ground. “Also, we have a railgun locked on the target.”
“A railgun?” Perkin’s eyebrow got more exercise. “Isn’t that overkill? The objective is just a tiny village. This Grand Asshole Ashkallah commands, what, thirty troops, maybe less?”
“It’s a precaution,” Feelax explained.
“Sensible,” she agreed.
“We will automatically safe the railgun, if any of your troops are within forty-five kilometers of the potential blast radius.”
“Got it.” She knew Chan had pulled her team back from the starting line, when the major learned there were Keepers in the village.
They made small talk while Perkins waited for the Grand Jerkoff to grant her an audience. She liked the executive officer of the destroyer and the feeling seemed to be mutual, Feelax saw the Alien Legion as a net positive for the Ruhar military and their society overall, so he was eager to help the Legion succeed in what was supposed to be an easy and simple mission on Jellaxico.
The delay gave her time to think about what, if anything, she could do. The Kristang could be bluffing about publicly executing the Keepers, but she didn’t think that was the case. There wasn’t any reason to bluff, and since Ashkallah had announced his intentions to the Administrator, he and his subclan would lose face if he backed down. Unless Ashkallah was exceptionally stupid, he could not hope to actually stop the Legion from taking the planet. The world was too remote, too unimportant for his people to put up a major fight against the takeover, especially as the major clans had agreed to cede the planet without a fight. No, Ashkallah likely had more realistic goals. Boosting his own standing, and dealing a humiliating blow to the Alien Legion. If the mission schedule was delayed significantly by publicly torturing and killing four humans, that would prove the strategy the Kristang attempted on Fresno was valid, and demonstrate the weakness of the human side of the Legion.
Maybe, she considered, she could adjust the schedule so that Ashkallah and his people would be the last to leave the planet, in exchange for not slaughtering the Keepers. That would give the Grand Asshole the ego boost he craved, while maintaining the overall schedule.
It would also show future opponents how to get what they wanted from the Legion. Let the camel’s nose under the tent, so the saying went, and the camel would soon be sleeping in your bed. She couldn’t be seen as giving concessions to preserve the lives of four people. She didn’t see how to avoid that.
“The lizard is ready to talk,” Feelax interrupted her thoughts.
“Put him through,” Perkins ordered, mentally steeling herself for a difficult conversation.
“Am I speaking with the commander of the enemy force?” The voice was harsh but had a lisp that made it sound like ‘thpeaking’ even through the translation software.
Perkins had to tamp down a giggle before she answered. Ashkallah sounded like a vampire in a low-budget movie. “This is Colonel Emily Perkins, of the human Expeditionary Force. Do I have the honor of speaking with Grand Warrior Ashkallah, of the Yellow Fang clan?” Technically the Yellow Fangs were a subclan, but she figured it didn’t hurt to puff up the asshole’s ego.
“You do have such an honor. I am Ashkallah of the Yellow Fang. Grand Warrior, Keeper of the Sacred Chalice of Reen, Holder of the Nine-”
“Wanker of great frequency,” Perkins muttered under her breath and made a jerking-off gesture with one hand, as the Kristang went on naming his titles, real or imaginary.
“What?” The lizard screeched as the Wild Child’s crew laughed when they got the translation of her remark.
“My apologies, Grand Warrior,” Perkins said quickly. “The Ruhar communications equipment is experiencing difficulties.”
“Ah,” that seemed to satisfy him. “The Ruhar are widely known as incompetent in their use of the technology they have stolen from other species. My time is important. What do you wish to speak about?”
“It is my understanding that you are planning a,” she paused. A what? She didn’t want to use the term ‘public execution’. “A spectacle, for the public.”
“Oh,” the lizard replied. “That? It is of no importance. As we are being forced to leave this world, we must decide what to take with us and what to leave behind. Under the terms of the agreement, I am under no obligation to turn over any of my property in usable condition. To that end, we will be demolishing buildings, disabling vehicles, and destroying our power generation facility.”
“Yes,” Perkins clenched her teeth. “That is your right. I was referring to the humans you have.”
