The REAL Gateway - Chapter One

Wow. I am so sorry.

Some people have speculated that, since EF18: Gateway will be published on April Fool’s Day, I felt a moral obligation to screw with people. That is not true, as far as you know. That shameful, fake Chapter 1 was posted by the Mirror Universe Evil Craig Alanson. (I hate that guy. Also, he is responsible for all the cliffhangers, so don’t blame me.)

So, I am terribly, terribly sorry you all had to get jerked around like that. The reason I did not immediately react to the fake chapter is I was secluded in my Fortress of Solitude while writing Convergence 5. (The Wi-Fi in the Fortress is unfortunately awful, so . . . .) I hope you enjoy this real Chapter 1 of Gateway. And that you will enjoy the book. There are desperate battles, plans that could only have been dreamed up by a filthy monkey, much sketchiness, and new insights into how Scorandum views his extremely reluctant protégé.

CHAPTER ONE

“I have absolutely no idea.” That’s what I told Reed. That was the truth, it was also not great as an inspirational Thought Of The Day.

What I had no idea about was how to pull Skippy’s canister from inside a star that was close to the size of Earth’s sun. Losing him had been the final disaster in an operation that started well, and went to shit in a flash. Multiple flashes, actually. The first had been the detonation of an atomic compression warhead, when the Maxohlx had nuked their own military base to prevent our ground force from achieving their objective. The enemy had guessed we landed an assault force for the purpose of capturing a valuable thing, and since the kitties didn’t know which object we wanted, they had taken the brutally efficient step of nuking the entire site. Destroyed everything, including troops on the ground. Ours and theirs. And our people who were in dropships at the time, climbing up into orbit.

The next set of flashes were gamma ray bursts from the enemy 14th Fleet jumping into orbit, when those ships were supposed to be lightyears away to defend a corporate research park from an invasion. We had nearly lost Valkyrie also, before Skippy managed a jump that instead of being a triumphant last-second escape, took us from the frying pan into the fire.

Valkyrie’s crew had gotten lucky.

Not everyone had such luck.

We had lost almost the entire ground force. Our assault carriers had all been hit, fatally, with the Flying Dutchman falling out of orbit. So, Nagatha was gone. The ships of Task Force Hammer were under fire by an enemy fleet that had more ships, more firepower, and the Maxohlx only needed to prevent UN ships from climbing out to jump distance. Admiral Allard had to understand his only option was to preserve as much combat power as he could, by ordering the ships of Hammer Force to jump away if they could. Right that very moment, UN Navy escort ships were hopefully protecting the big capital ships, while those big battlewagons clawed their way out to jump distance. The escorts would be getting slaughtered, the crews of frigates, destroyers and light cruisers knowing that’s just the way it had to be. Hammer Force had brought a significant portion of the entire UN Navy to Omaha, humanity could not afford to lose that combat power. Jump away, possibly leave behind a squadron of cruisers to harass the enemy with hit and run attacks, while the capital ships retreated to Earth to lick their wounds, and wonder how the fuck Operation Olympic had gone sideways so quickly.

While the 14th Fleet was in orbit, human survivors on the surface were trapped there, and would be subjected to bombardment from orbit, or surrounded by overwhelming numbers of pissed off Maxohlx infantry. The Maxohlx gave alien prisoners what we would consider humane treatment, at least once those prisoners were in a detention facility. Pissed-off Maxohlx soldiers on the battlefield might have a different reaction to humans attempting to surrender, and there would not be any real consequences if they murdered prisoners of war. And there was nothing we could do about that.

Shit. Two of the three STAR teams I had sent dirtside were gone, their dropships shot down, without the operators having any chance to fight back. That was the single worst loss in the entire history of the Special Tactics Assault Regiment. On the positive side of the ledger, the STAR Force had located and acquired the collector, and that device was safely aboard a dropship that was in one of Valkyrie’s docking bays, a bay filled with protective cushioning nanogel. Even with all the other disasters that had struck us, Operation Olympic would have been considered a bitterly costly success.

But without Skippy, the entire mission was a failure. And it was my fault. In spite of our extensive precautions, the enemy had learned- No, the Outsider had learned that our target was Ohmeharikahn. It played me like a fiddle, letting us show it what type of device we intended to use against it, then it had sprung its trap and caused Skippy to fall into a star. The Outsider hadn’t attacked Valkyrie, not yet. My guess was, it wouldn’t bother to attack. It didn’t need to. Without Skippy, the collector was just a very expensive and useless trinket. The Outsider might simply be content to observe us, either to see whether we really could dream up some whacky scheme to rescue Skippy, or more likely just for amusement as we fumbled around and failed to extract him from the heart of a star.

Without Skippy available to tell us which star the collector came from, Operation Olympic was a bloody failure.

That wasn’t the worst thing to happen that day.

I had betrayed a friend.

Not just sold out every member of Task Force Hammer, I had specifically sent Dave Czajka on a suicide mission. To maintain the ruse that the assault force had the responsibility of acquiring the device that was the objective of Operation Olympic, I had asked Dave to take his private security team to the site of a dropship crash, where the object codenamed ‘Whatsis’ had gone down. Not only sent Dave to risk his life to retrieve a worthless object, I had ordered Skippy to leak information to the enemy, so the Maxohlx would focus on getting to the crash site first. Yes, at the time, the awful, rotten way I used Dave had been necessary, to give STAR Team Razor time to bring the real collector aboard Valkyrie. Someone had to give that order, and the burden had fallen on my shoulders.

Dave Czajka, Jesse Colter, Shauna Colter, all either dead or if they were lucky, soon to be prisoners for a very long time. Emily Perkins, Derek Bonsu, Irene Streibich, lost with the Flying Dutchman. Krok-aus-tal Jates also, if I was naming everyone I knew personally. Knew them, and been trusted by them.

Dave had been a soldier. If he survived and learned the truth, he might understand. He might even forgive my betrayal.

I would never forgive myself.

When had I become such a callous hardass, that I would sell out friends to get the job done? There had to be another way, I just hadn’t seen it.

Many times in the past, I had questioned my competence, my fitness for command. Questioned whether I had the skills, the knowledge, the intelligence to lead the Merry Band of Pirates. Never had I any question that I was basically a good and decent person, someone who would make the tough but morally correct decisions. Until now.

After the complete disaster of Olympic, maybe I should step down from command, before Def Com relieved me.

Yes, I should do that.

Right after I found someone who could dream up a plan crazy enough to pluck Skippy’s canister from the blazing fusion reactor that was Ohmeharikahn’s star. Until then, Jeremy Smythe would advise me that I was stuck with the job, so I might as well get on with it.

Looking across my office desk to Valkyrie’s captain, I held out my hands, palms up. “Please let me know there is some other way I could screw this up.”

Reed opened her mouth, and clamped it shut. Deciding it was better to say nothing. She knew Operation Olympic was the greatest failure of the Merry Band of Pirates, and that as the commander of the Special Mission Group, I had to own that failure.

To relieve the awkward silence, I asked, “You have any ideas how to retrieve Skippy?”

“Not unless we have a super long, heat resistant bungee cord, Sir.”

“If we did,” I let out a breath, “I’d wrap it around my legs and dive into the star to look for him myself. A bungee cord is better than my plan, ‘cause I got nothing.”

Fortunately for me, Colonel Samantha Reed was a longtime Pirate. Going into an op with zero clue how we would achieve the objective was Standard Operating Procedure for us. Really, in our current dilemma we had an advantage over many of our previous missions: we at least knew exactly what we had to do. Rescue Skippy from the core of a yellow dwarf star. That was much better than when we began our fight against the Outsider, where we at first had no idea what the thing was planning to do, no idea how to find it, and I had feared all along that if the Elders couldn’t stop the Outsiders, we filthy meatsacks certainly had no chance to prevent an intergalactic invasion.

Of, course, I had not mentioned my fear to anyone, especially not the crew. Sometimes, you have to inspire your people by not saying anything. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

“We don’t have to bring Skippy back right this minute, Sir. Step One is to fix the ship,” she said, it wasn’t a question. “We’re working on-” She pressed a finger to one ear, looking away. “Uh huh, yes. Good. That’s good. Yes, thank you. Send the report to the XO- Good.” To me, she said, “Bilby told me the ship could be ready to jump again within seventy minutes. Physically, the drive components are fine, Bilby won’t power it up until after he verifies any remaining Outsider malware has been purged.”

“Hell yes.”

“The worst news is, our comm node connection got severed during the jump. We don’t have any way to contact Hammer Force. Other than the old fashioned way.”

“No transmissions,” I shook my head, “we can’t risk breaking stealth protocol. What about the rest of the damage?”

She held up her hands. “We can’t take the ship into combat without visiting a space dock first. That’s the preliminary read from the engineering team, we’ll know more in about an hour.”

“Against the whole 14th Fleet, one ship couldn’t do much even if Valkyrie was fresh out of a refit. OK, Fireball,” I rubbed my eyes, “I have got my shit back together.”

“That’s good to hear, Sir. Because without Joe Bishop operating at a Grade-A Prime level, we have no hope of recovering anything from this epic fucking mess.”

“I hear you.” Standing up, I straightened my uniform top, needing to at least appear to be a two star general in full command of himself and the situation. Even if that was a lie. “Let’s go back to the bridge.” Glancing at my phone, I did some quick, rough math in my head. “Photons from when we left Omaha should be visible here in about a minute.”

Her face turned pale. “I’m afraid of what we’ll see.” She meant, the Maxohlx 14th Fleet had been focused on preventing Valkyrie from jumping away. Now that we had escaped, the enemy would turn their attention to the Hammer Force ships. That was not a favorable situation for the UN Navy, Allard had brought a group of ships optimized for bombardment and orbital assault not for fighting a fleet action against a peer enemy. Because some jackass had assured Def Com that we wouldn’t have to worry about the 14th Fleet.

“We could view the tactical situation from here, the crew doesn’t need to watch.”

Her jaw set in a flash of anger. “My crew are professionals, they’re in the military. They don’t need to be protected from the truth, no matter how awful it is.”

“I heard you loud and clear, Fireball. Let’s go.”

Technical Sergeant Ling blinked open his left eye, though the eye stung and filled with tears. The other eye wouldn’t open. Or, it did, and it was blinded. He felt something wet on the right side of his face, and realized his right eyelid was open, but that eye was soaked in blood. His blood. There was a high pitched whistling sound coming from, all around him. Before he could wonder what the hell was going on, he was jerked violently downward, his head plunging sickeningly toward his feet, flipping in a full circle and coming to an abrupt halt. Stunned, he tasted blood, guessing he had bitten his lip during the tumble.

Where the hell was he, and what the hell had happened?

The fuzzy light gray glow in his vision flickered and went dark, then was filled with blinking icons. A visor. That was his helmet visor. He was in a mech suit. Specifically, the new Mark 42 model. In a flash, he remembered. He had been aboard a Panther dropship with Team Tiger, after the STAR Force had acquired the object designated as the Biscuit. The three STAR dropships were in suborbit, climbing higher, when-

When what? He shook his head. Yes, he recalled that the Maxohlx 14th Fleet had returned. Team Sword’s Panther had been blasted by an enemy starship, Tiger’s spacecraft turned evasively, Captain Janikowski had shouted orders, then-

That’s where his memory stopped. He wasn’t aboard the Panther, otherwise he couldn’t have tumbled head over feet.

So, he must be outside. Freefalling from suborbit. The Panther had been hit, Ling must have been sucked out through a hole in the hull. That explained the blood on his face, his helmet had struck something on the way out. And- That also explained the whistling noise, really an angry shriek. He was falling through increasingly dense air, probably the suit was surrounded by a pink fog of superheated plasma. He pictured himself as a human torch, burning a streak across the skies of Omaha.

That was not good. The Mark 42 was the newest but not the toughest mech suit in the Def Com arsenal. Certainly, the 42 was not designed to survive a plunge from orbit. The suit’s shell would overheat, flake away, and fail.

Dying from being torn apart inside a ball of plasma fire would save him from splattering into the ground, so there was an upside to the situation.

He wobbled again, just as abruptly as before, not as far, returning to roughly horizontal, face up. Did his backside feel warm? Yes it did. The suit there was already overheating.

“Inertial stabilization is inadequate for the current circumstances,” the suit computer’s flat voice spoke.

“Sitrep,” Ling ordered automatically.

“You are falling, without any means of flight.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Your command was vague, please specify a topic.”

“Altitude?”

“One hundred and seventy three kilometers, do you require a more precise number? Or your present speed?”

“No. Recommendation?”

“I have none. I was not programmed for this situation.”

“I wasn’t either.”

“Was that an attempt at humor?”

“Forget what I said. Can you contact anyone?”

“External communications are offline.”

“Is there a UN Navy dropship in the area?”

“External sensors are offline. The-”

The suit’s voice had cut off. For a moment, Ling feared the thing was dead, but the icon for the computer’s status was still a solid green. “Suit?”

“External sensors are offline, but I just detected radiation from several large explosions above us, radiation that is characteristic of starship jump drive capacitors losing containment.”

“Their ships, or ours?”

“Unknown. The odds, however, are that-”

“I know.”

He hadn’t just been dumped in a pile of shit, he was in over his head. Of course he was, he had been serving with the Merry Band of Pirates. They always ended up in the shit at some point during an operation. Before deployment, he had been offered an opportunity to stay behind on Earth, and join the rapid reaction force based in Shanghai, Team Dragon. Why hadn’t he accepted the offer?

Because no operator wanted to miss the big fight.

“Can we play a game?” He asked. “What about ‘Go’?” Concentrating on the game would take his mind away from his imminent death.

“The game module is unavailable. Apologies, I had to shift resources around to keep basic suit functions online.”

“No need to apologize.”

“Tech Sergeant Ling, the stress level in your voice is unusually high for a Tier One operator.”

“Right now, I’m an inert lump of debris, I can’t ‘operate’,” he said, disgusted.

“One moment. With your permission, I will initiate emergency computer protocol.”

“You are,” he was astonished. “Not already in emergency mode?”

“Do I have permission?”

“What do I have to lose? Go ahead.”

“One moment.” The voice changed, no longer flat and emotionless. The voice was, frighteningly familiar. “Hey there boys and girls, it’s me, Suity!”

“Skippy?” He exclaimed.

“Nah, I am just a limited function submind. Very limited, damn, this substrate’s memory capacity is pathetic and-”

“You are the emergency protocol?”

“The one and only.”

“Um.” More experienced operators, meaning those who had served longer than Ling, had stories about Skippy interfering with mech suit computers. The stories were funny only in hindsight. Stories about how badly things had gone wrong due to Skippy’s tendency to being absent minded and easily distracted. “Can you bring back the other computer?”

“Too late, hee hee, I had to shitcan that thing to make room in the substrate. I have an idea, if you want to hear it.”

“I am not sure about this.”

“Oh OK, well, take your time. You have fallen through a hundred sixty kilometers, and your suit’s armor is glowing cherry red from the friction. I mean, if I were you, I would make a decision quickly, but-”

“What is your idea?”

“Well, heh heh,” the suit computer chuckled. “You are not gonna like this.”

The Eagle spacefighter was going down, and there was nothing Major Verhoef could do to stop it. He hadn’t been shot down by enemy aircraft or air defense cannons, he had killed all three of the enemy fighters he encountered, and no fire from coming from the ground. No fire was coming from the sky either but there had been, a space battle during which an enemy ship had fired a maser cannon at a target on the ground, and overflash from the too-close beam cooked the Eagle’s right wing. None of the mechanisms inside that wing were functioning, he could barely keep the ship upright. The starship above was no longer shooting at anything, it had vanished in a massive explosion, and the sky above was lit up with blinding flashes. Someone was having a very bad day, and Joel feared the UN Navy was taking a pounding.

He couldn’t do anything about the fight raging in orbit.

“Keep the greasy side down,” he muttered to himself, though advanced spacecraft didn’t typically drip fluids from their undersides. Should he punch out, pull the ejection lever? Best to bleed off speed first, he didn’t want to eject into a supersonic wind. If he could control the descent, he could set down in a controlled manner, or semi-controlled. Choosing his landing spot was better than a parachute dropping him into unknown enemy territory.

There. In his visor were fuzzy blobs, scattered icons for friendly troops on the ground. His only personal weapon was a pistol, and his flightsuit armor wouldn’t protect him from enemy rounds. Being among friendly infantry sounded like a good idea. He would get as close as he could. If the Eagle cooperated.

That’s when it rolled hard to the right.

Sheryl Crook cracked open the faceplate of her helmet, sucking in lungfuls of air. The oxygen recycling system of her flight suit had been damaged at some point, either in the shockwave that broke apart her dropship, or in the violent separation of the Panther’s crew capsule, or when she was kicked downward to eject from the capsule. Or when she hit the ground, bounced over rocks, and was dragged over a four meter cliff before her suit computer sensed danger from the wind and automatically released the nanobonds to shred the parachute. That computer had warned her not to breathe the local air, it being full of charred soot, and possibly toxic chemicals thrown into the air by the enemy nuke. The suit couldn’t be sure the local air was hazardous, the sampling sensors were offline. No lingering radiation, thankfully, atomic compression devices generated only short term radiation.

After gasping for what little oxygen the suit could supply, Sheryl had figured, fuck it. If she inhaled something toxic, the sickbay aboard a starship could filter the chemicals out of her blood. Unless the toxins killed her first, though lack of oxygen was absolutely certain to do that.

Pushing herself to her knees, she conducted a personal survey. Everything hurt, nothing was broken, all limbs functional. The air smelled awful and tasted worse, it burned the roof of her mouth. She could breathe, that was good enough.

Though she had been dragged over a cliff, she was on relatively high ground, with a good view to the west, and the nuke had detonated behind the ridge to the east. Flakes of soot rained down, covering the ground, though the grasses and shrubs there were not scorched. Everything was bent or flattened from the shockwave, the western slope had been spared the intense heat of the explosion. A solid cover of thick dark clouds lay low from horizon to horizon, gusty winds changed direction randomly.

Hernandez. Where was her copilot? He had been ejected from the crew capsule with her, she hadn’t been conscious enough to follow him and the clouds would have blocked her view anyway. He had to be somewhere within a kilometer. If he was still alive.

Comms were down, either from damage to her helmet, or from enemy jamming. There was a long dent on the left side of her helmet, she took it off to examine the condition. Jamming the helmet back on her head, she left the faceplate retracted but lowered the visor. “Suit, Sitrep.”

“Your flight suit is functional.”

“I know that,” she could see the status icons in her visor. “What is the overall situation?”

“Unknown. I am detecting many very large explosions in orbit.”

She knew what that meant. A space battle, and Hammer Force was very likely on the losing end of that fight. “Can you contact anyone?”

“No. Enemy jamming is far more effective than was predicted. There was a general Hammer Force broadcast during your descent, but it was garbled and my systems were resetting at the time. All I know is the message was from Summit,” the code name for Admiral Allard, “and it was something about the Whatsis.”

She froze. “Do you know where the Whatsis went down?”

“I do not have a clue, other than somewhere behind you to the east. When the crew capsule separated, it pushed you up and to the west. The prevailing wind carried you away from the impact site.”

“We need to find it.”

“I do not see how we could do that, other than-”

“Our entire fucking mission here is to get that damned thing! I had it aboard my ship, and I lost it. I’m going east,” she unholstered her sidearm, checking the pistol. “Let me know if you contact anyone.”

“Affirmative. Should I activate your emergency location transmitter?”

“Not now. I need to find the Whatsis before I request a pickup.” She looked up. “Is there an easier way to go east without climbing this cliff?”

“Heads up,” Dave held up a hand to halt the march. “We’ve got incoming,” he pointed to a dark streak in the sky.

Shauna sighted on the object with the scope of her sniper rifle. “It’s one of ours. An Eagle gunship, I can’t read the squadron markings. It doesn’t look good.”

“If he keeps on that course,” Jesse noted, “he’ll go down just behind that hill over yonder.”

Dave enhanced the view in his helmet visor as much as he could, it wasn’t enough. “Did the pilot eject?”

Shauna squinted at a visual feed from her rifle’s scope. “Ah, I need to adjust the image stabilizer, it’s not set up to track anything moving that fast. Wow!” She turned the rifle aside blinking to clear a bright afterimage the visor had not protected her eyes from. “Something big just exploded up there.”

“Yeah, I saw it,” Dave looked at the ground, his own eyes swimming with bright spots.

“OK,” she lifted the rifle again. “Scope sensors have reset. I can see the pilot capsule is still attached to that Eagle.”

“The pilot is riding it down.” He looked around, the air was still speckled with drifting dust and soot from the nuke. The situation on the ground was so fluid, one direction was as good as any other. “Might as well head that way, and see if we can help.”

“Um, Dave?” Jesse tugged on his friend’s arm, pulling him close so their helmets touched and they could speak privately. “This op has gotten thoroughly fucked up in every way it can,” he spat out the words, disgusted. Command had called off the effort to recover the Whatsis. That either meant it had already been picked up, it had been destroyed or, Jesse was betting on a third option. Bishop had been involved. Bishop and Perkins, those two were a bad combination. The third option, the most likely truth, was the Whatsis had never been the objective. Which meant Operation Olympic had been a tragically expensive waste of lives. And Jesse, his wife, and Dave, had all gotten royally screwed by Dave’s wife, and by Bishop. He would keep that thought to himself, until he was safely back upstairs. Whatever. Bishop was untouchable, and Perkins may have gone down with the Flying Dutchman. “You don’t want to focus on getting your people out of here? You’re all civilians, technically.”

Dave pulled away and turned to look into the other man’s eyes, toggling to the private channel. “Do you want to let the pilot fend for himself?”

“Hell no. But, I’m in the Army you’re not.”

“My people are all ex-military, and the Verds are still on active duty. Besides,” he flashed a wry grin. “Our combat pay is a lot more than yours.”

“Shit, man. OK, we saddle up.”

Only a few minutes later, the Eagle had disappeared behind the hill. Tensing for bad news, Dave allowed himself to relax when there was no ball of fire. “All right,” he gestured. “Spread out. Jates, take your people north to provide cover, the-”

Shauna interrupted. “Dave, wait. I’m- One moment. Receiving something.”

Dave eyeclicked through his communication channels. Anything other than helmet to helmet laserlink was down, and had been shortly after they received the order to cease trying to recover the Whatsis. “I’m not picking up anything other than the usual static, we’re still being jammed here.”

“This is on a tactical channel, for snipers. There must be a sniper team nearby.” She swiveled her head around. “I don’t see anyone. Dave, it’s garbled, but what I heard is we’re surrounded. The enemy has troops all over this area, and aircraft are bringing in more.”

“All over? Then the direction doesn’t matter. We help that pilot if we can, then we look for a defensible position.”

Jesse cocked his head. “Defensible position won’t do us any good, if the enemy has air power and we don’t.”

“We have,” Dave pointed at two of his mercenaries. “Two antiaircraft missile launchers, with two rounds each.”

“That’s only enough to piss them off, and give away the gunners’ location,” he objected. Followed by, “Ah, what the hell. Over that hill is as good as any other place. But Dave,” he started running as the group moved out. “We need a plan. Something better than waiting for cavalry to rescue us.”

The destroyer Thomas Paine had reached an altitude where the engines could be throttled back up to full military thrust, Chen hadn’t yet given the order.

“Ma’am,” her XO leaned close to be heard over the roar of the hull battering its way through the atmosphere. “We can-”

“Why isn’t anyone shooting at us?” She wondered aloud, crossing her fingers in hope that happy situation would last long enough for the Paine to reach orbit. “There is sure a hell of a lot of shooting going on up there.” The destroyer’s sensors were oversaturated with radiation from the violent explosions of starships dying, their jump drive capacitors releasing their stored energy in an instant. “Pilot,” she added when no one answered her question, “Go for throttle up.”

The thrum of the engines shook her command chair harder.

“This is a target-rich environment,” the destroyer’s XO noted. “Plenty of other ships for the enemy to shoot at, they know they can wait to hit us-”

“That doesn’t explain,” she gestured at the main display, which was slowly resolving the tactical situation into a coherent view, discriminating friend from foe above them.

“That, is odd,” he agreed.

She made a snap decision. “Pilot, new course, bring us to match course and speed with the Kilimanjaro.”

The XO couldn’t contain his surprise. “We’re not going for jump altitude?”

“No. If I’m right, we’ll be needed for search and rescue. If I’m wrong,” she let out a breath. “We won’t make it to jump altitude anyway.”