Brushfire, p.1
Brushfire, page 1
part #11 of Expeditionary Force Series
Expeditionary Force
Book 11:
BRUSHFIRE
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 THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
“Say that again, please,” Captain Uhtavio ‘Big Score’ Scorandum of the Jeraptha Home Fleet’s Ethics and Compliance Office asked, while scratching the back of his neck with a claw. The thick, leathery shell of his neck was not actually itchy, he felt a headache coming on, and rubbing the muscles there helped distract him.
Sub-lieutenant Kinsta blinked. “What part?”
“Kinsta-” Scorandum sighed.
“Forgive me, Captain,’ Kinsta waved a claw at the display in front of him. “There is a lot here that I am having trouble believing.”
“Let’s start with the apparent fact that the ghost ship is not controlled by a rogue faction of Bosphuraq, but by humans.” Scorandum’s current command, the ECO heavy cruiser Time Off For Bad Behavior, was at the planet Tohmaran to observe the Ruhar Alien Legion assisting one clan of Kristang to take a planet from another clan. That, by itself, was something Scorandum would never have predicted could ever happen. The fact that the human Emily Perkins not only thought up such a creative plan, but overcame the odds to make it happen, had Scorandum both admiring the plucky human, and seething with jealousy. After all, if anything sketchy was happening in the galaxy, the Ethics and Compliance Office was supposed to be involved. Unofficially, of course. Officially, ECO was shocked, yes shocked to see underhanded behavior going on.
Scorandum’s little squadron of ECO ships had been envious to see the operation proceeding smoothly, with the Ruhar successfully and surprisingly intervening in the Kristang civil war. Then the ECO group had been stunned when a pair of Maxohlx warships jumped in to chase away the Ruhar fleet, and demand surrender of the Mavericks. Scorandum had briefly considered a daring operation to jump in, pick up the dropship carrying Perkins and her team, then jump away before the Maxohlx could respond. He had wisely rejected that plan for many reasons, mostly because Perkins would very likely refuse to fly her dropship aboard an ECO ship. Perkins was not the type to fly away from a fight, even a hopeless fight. If she did manage to escape, the Maxohlx would take their rage out on the humans still on the ground.
So, Scorandum had kept his squadron in stealth, observing as his orders required, and dying inside as the Mavericks flew into orbit to meet their doom.
Then, the ghost ship had jumped in, engaged in a furious battle, and almost casually torn the Maxohlx warships apart.
The most surprising thing that day, was that the totally unexpected arrival of the much-feared ghost ship was not the most surprising event of the day.
“Humans are flying the ghost ship.” Scorandum shook his head slowly. “No one could have predicted that.”
“Er,” Kinsta glanced at his captain, then at the display, then back at his commanding officer. “That is not exactly true, Sir.”
The impending headache flared into real pain. “Shit. Sub-lieutenant, are you telling me that Fleet Intelligence predicted-”
“Ha!” Kinsta burst out laughing, interrupting his captain. “Sorry, Sir.”
Scorandum snorted. “If Fleet Intelligence were right about something so unusual, that would be funny.”
“They weren’t. But, Sir, someone did place a wager that humans were flying the ghost ship.”
“No.” The Captain’s mandibles drooped open in shock. “Who the hell is the lucky bastard?”
“Whanevu Ollivar,” Kinsta checked the details on the display. “According to the registry, he is a salvage equipment dealer on Bintondi.”
“Salvage equipment, huh?” They both knew that meant Ollivar actually made a living as a fence for stolen goods, and probably laundering money on the side. It was a relatively high-prestige profession, one that required having and maintaining the right connections with influential people. Also, it required knowing who to bribe, and how much really needed to be paid out. Salvage dealers could become wealthy, but most of them lived on the edge of insolvency, dodging creditors until they had cash coming in. “How did this Ollivar know-”
“He didn’t,” Kinsta gestured at the display. “According to Central Wagering, he placed that wager as a prop bet, along with several other wagers. All of his other bets that day placed out of the money.”
“Lucky bastard. I can’t imagine the odds of a bet like that. How much will he win?”
“Sir, are you familiar with the planet ‘Jamandra’, one of our Big Five industrial worlds?”
“Yes,” Scorandum had no idea why his subordinate had mentioned that trivial fact. “The major components of our jump drives are manufactured, there I believe. It is a fabulously wealthy planet. Why?”
“From now on, Jamandra will be known as ‘Ollivar’s World’.”
“Shit!” Scorandum groaned. “Lucky bastard.”
“Uh,” Kinsta looked back at his display. “Maybe. Based on his wagering history, Ollivar will probably blow through his money in a month.”
The ECO captain chuckled. “I will not wager on that. All right, Kinsta, I suppose it is time to introduce ourselves to the captain of the ghost ship. They call it ‘Valkyrie’?”
“Yes, Sir. The name is a reference to a human musical drama.”
“They named it after music?”
“Er, the name is also a myth of supernatural beings who brought fallen warriors to their eternal reward, if they were judged worthy.”
“That’s more likely the source of the name. What do we know about their commander, this Colonel Bishop?”
“Apparently, he was involved in an Alien Legion raid on the Kristang planet Rakesh Diwalen. Although,” Kinsta blushed when his captain cocked his head at him. “Er, it now appears the Alien Legion was not involved in that raid.”
“It does seem unlikely,” Scorandum stated the obvious. “Do we know anything useful about this Bishop?”
“Not much. Except, he and Perkins have a history, on Paradise. A professional history,” he added to clarify.
“They do? That is interesting.”
“Bishop was a mid-ranking infantry soldier, and she was his intelligence contact. Perkins evaluated him as inexperienced and naïve, but a fast-learner. Bishop’s earlier military records, from his service on Earth, list him as ‘overly-enthusiastic’. There was also a note in the file that his platoon leader thought Bishop was a ‘knucklehead’?” Kinsta looked up, unsure the word has translated properly.
“A knucklehead, hmm?” Scorandum looked at the distant image of Valkyrie on his ship’s main display. “Yet, he somehow obtained a Maxohlx battlecruiser.”
“The file also contains vague references to an incident on Earth involving an ice cream truck, and something called a, ‘Barney’?”
“What is ‘ice cream’?”
“It is a frozen treat enjoyed by humans,” Kinsta hoped the translation computer knew what it was doing.
“And Barney?”
Kinsta threw up his hands, the claws twitching. “Some type of ‘dinosaur’? A fierce, extinct predator from Earth’s ancient past.” He pointed to the purple image on the display.
“Hmph,” Scorandum snorted at the purple thing. “That is what humans consider to be a fierce predator? Kinsta, how the hell did humans manage to steal a senior-species warship?”
“If I had a guess about that, Sir, I would be placing a wager right now.”
“Good point. Send a signal to Valkyrie, requesting permission for a rendezvous. It would not be a good idea to jump in without an invitation.”
Kinsta looked at the jagged, tumbling pieces of debris that used to be two Maxohlx cruisers. “I think you are right about that, Sir.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Bish, what’s next?” David ‘Ski’ Czajka asked, while we were in my office aboard Valkyrie, still in orbit above the Kristang planet Tohmaran. The Legion’s job there was effectively over, but they still had a lot of work left to conduct an orderly withdrawal, and take all their gear back to orbit. The Mavericks were staying there to wrap up the transition, they would leave when the Ruhar fleet jumped away
“Next, I’m going to finish this beer,” I held up the bottle of ‘Lester Cornhut’s Paradise Pale Ale’ and took a sip. “Ah, that is good beer.”
“I hope so,” Dave laughed. “That brewery is kind of my retirement plan.”
“I mean, it’s good,” I assured him. “Not just ‘good for a beer brewed by hamsters’. I would drink this on Earth.”
“Hmm,” he looked at the ceiling. “I wonder. Maybe I could bring a couple cases to Earth. People might like a taste of Paradise.”
“Taste of Paradise?” Jesse ‘Cornpone’ Colter laughed. “That’s your slogan right there.”
When I said ‘we’ were in my office, I meant just the three of us. Our old fireteam from Nigeria, back together again. Sergeant Greg Koch wasn’t there, but he wasn’t a sergeant anymore. He had left the service, and had a substantial farm in Lemuria, the southern continent of Paradise. One item he grew was hops, which Dave purchased for the brewery, so they had kept in touch over the years.
Damn, it was good to see those guys again. Even after all the shit we had been through, even though we had been through different shit, separately, when we got back together, it was like nothing had changed. I was not ‘Colonel Bishop’, I was just ‘Joe’. Or ‘Bish’, the nickname I had since high school. What I said about Dave’s beer was true, it was good. He could easily sell a couple cases, or a couple shipping containers, of that beer on Earth, if only for the novelty value of drinking a brew from another planet.
“Are we going to Earth?” Jesse asked, looking over his beer with a question in his eyes. A question for me.
“We are,” I answered, then added “The ship is. I am.”
“What about us?” Dave asked.
“Hey, Ski,” Jesse nudged him. “We still got a mission here to wrap up. We can’t abandon the whole Legion to run home.”
“Yeah, but, then-”
“Relax, guys,” I gestured with the beer in my hand. “General Ross is working to transfer control here, the Legion will be pulling out in six days and a wake-up. That includes you. Perkins is planning to ride that ship of yours back to Paradise-”
“The Sure Thing is not our ship,” Jesse corrected me. “We just charter it.”
“It goes where you want.”
Jesse snorted. “It goes where Em wants. Half the time, I don’t know where the hell she’s taking us.”
“Hey, she doesn’t tell me, either,” Dave had one side of his mouth curled up in a grin and the other half turned down in a frown.
“You go back to Paradise with the Legion, and then,” I shrugged. “We’ll meet you there, Valkyrie will probably arrive before you. We have a couple things to do first.”
Dave stared at me like I hadn’t answered the question, because I hadn’t. “Bish, can we go to Earth?”
“If you want to, sure.”
“Want? Why would we not want to go home after all these years?”
“Ski,” Jesse patted his friend’s shoulder. “There’s a difference between visitin’ home and stayin’ there. Your brewery is on Paradise, don’t forget that.”
“What’s the use of brewing beer on Paradise,” Dave shook his head. “If the whole Force bugs out for Earth?”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “Jesse’s right, think about it. Most people will want to go back to Earth, and not just to visit. But not everyone. People on Paradise have made lives there. Started businesses, started families. It’s their home now.”
Dave wasn’t convinced. “Bish, you haven’t been there for a long time. Haven’t lived there, no matter how much sneaking around you did,” he waggled an accusing finger at me, but he did it with a grin. “Jesse and me, Derek too, we’re lucky. Most guys on Paradise will be on the first ship out, because there just aren’t enough women, you know?”
“I can understand that.” Man, I sure could understand how guys on Paradise felt about the lack of available women. Living aboard a starship wasn’t much better. “Probably most of the Force on Paradise will want to go home, but I’m pretty sure UNEF will want to rotate battalions onto Paradise, to maintain a forward-deployed presence out here. Perkins and Ross both told me they intend to keep the Alien Legion active. That decision will be made on Earth, but I can’t imagine UNEF not wanting to be a player in this war. We need allies out here, the Legion is a good platform to start with.”
“Platform?” Jesse grinned. “Listen to you, with the big fancy words and all.”
“The Army gave me a big stack of documents,” I held my thumb and index finger far apart, “to study for officer training. You wouldn’t believe the buzzwords I had to read.”
“Buzzwords go back to boot camp, Joe,” Dave reminded me.
“Yeah, but there are new ones since the Force left Earth. I’m supposed to memorize and use all of them.” Dave got a serious expression on his face while I was talking. “What?” I asked.
“We’re going back to Earth,” he said.
He didn’t appear to be happy about that. “You don’t have to go if you don’t-”
“No, I want to go. I need to show Em what good pizza is,” part of his grin returned. “But, I just realized,” he looked at Jesse. “I need to write a letter to Schmuckatelli’s family.”
Jesse shrugged. “Why do you have to write it? Lieutenant Gao was his CO.”
“Technically, yeah, but Gao died when our Dodo got smashed aboard the Big Mac. I was with Schmuckatelli when he died, he hit the aeroshell after Nert blew the tail cone off.”
“Guys,” I asked. “Who is Schmuckatelli?” I thought they were joking.
“Lance Corporal Marco Santinelli,” Dave explained. “He was assigned to our Dodo for the landing on Squidworld,” he looked at me and I nodded. I had told them we followed the actions by the Mavericks, by reading their reports. “When the Big Mac got cut in half, we had to ride down in a cargo shell.” He shook his head. “Santinelli didn’t make it.”
“Good guy?”
Dave snorted. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but he earned the ‘Schmuckatelli’ nickname.”
Jesse agreed. “First time he used powered armor, he tried to be Ironman. That guy is the reason we have safety briefings. You know the type, Bish.” He slapped his left shoulder. “Had a ‘0311’ tattoo on one shoulder, and a Punisher skull on the other.”
He was right, I did know a lot of guys like that. “At least he was infantry, he-”
Dave laughed. “He was infantry when he signed up for the Legion. Back when he shipped out for Paradise, he was a logistics weenie. Probably the Marines put him there, to limit the damage he could do. Ah,” he waved a hand. “I shouldn’t say anything bad about him. Maybe he would have been a stand-up guy once he got boots on the ground, but he never got the chance. A lot of people didn’t get the chance on that op. Good people.”
“Sorry we weren’t there for you,” I did feel guilty about that. If we had known ahead of time, maybe Skippy could have gotten better intel about the defenses around Squidworld, and passed that info to the Ruhar somehow.
“You couldn’t, we understand,” Jesse assured me. “Hey, you guys were busy out here.”
“That’s the truth,” I agreed.
“Bish,” Jesse asked, rattling his empty bottle, and setting it on the desk. “What’s the deal here? You control these Elder weapons you found? You control them?” What he did not say aloud, because it was there in his eyes, was ‘We know you, and you are a doofus’.
I couldn’t argue with that. “For now, yes. I don’t know what else to do. The more people who have access to those weapons, the more likely it is that some jackass will use them, even by accident.”
Dave looked at Jesse before asking “Yeah, but, you really want that responsibility?” In his eyes was an unspoken ‘We have seen you try to put your pants on backwards’.
“No,” I shrugged. “The question is, should we trust a bunch of monkeys to handle them?” The conversation had gotten into military matters, high-level military matters, and that was making things awkward for the three of us. They were in the dress uniforms they had been wearing for the flight up to meet the Maxohlx, though with their jackets and ties off, and Dave had his company logo instead of a U.S. ARMY patch on the front. I was wearing a standard Army service uniform, with the bright silver eagles of a colonel. Our difference in rank created a distance between us, it had to, and I hated that. “Sorry, guys. I’m so used to Skippy calling us monkeys, I’ve started to think that way.”
