Black Ops recap

Joe and the Flying Dutchman crew learn that the Fire Dragons are arranging a Ruhar voyage to Earth. Their attempt to frighten the Ruhar away with two disguised Kristang attack ships fails after Skippy's anonymous warning gives the Jeraptha a major victory and makes the Thuranin support the deal. Chotek then authorizes a clandestine campaign to provoke a Kristang civil war. Human teams assassinate Fire Dragon leaders on Kobamik, Chang destroys the clan's fleeing leadership, and Skippy draws more clans into the fighting. The growing war causes the Earth agreement to collapse. During the escape, the anti-Elder worm incapacitates Skippy, leaving the crew without his systems expertise. Everyone from the surviving ground force returns, but Windsor and four others die in a dropship crash. With one reactor lost and improvised jump coils deteriorating, the Dutchman remains short of its intended refuge. Skippy is inert, Nagatha is reducing herself to remain functional, and Bishop asks her to attempt an unspecified dangerous measure.

Previously: Joe commands the human crew of the captured Flying Dutchman, aided by the Elder AI Skippy. Their mission is to protect an Earth that cannot match the technology or reach of the galaxy's major powers. Skippy and an Elder wormhole controller give humanity rare strategic advantages, but revealing either capability could make Earth a target in conflicts far beyond human strength. This forces the crew to operate covertly and preserve uncertainty about the Flying Dutchman's true operators. Humans also remain on Paradise, where Emily Perkins leads a UNEF team working with the Ruhar. Her team stopped a Kristang commando operation and caused the frigate Glory to surrender rather than complete its mission. The result left Glory in Ruhar hands while reinforcing the possibility of cooperation between humans and the Ruhar.

The crew learns that the Fire Dragons are negotiating for a Ruhar and Jeraptha-supported round trip to Earth. Chotek orders Joe to stop it covertly and forbids an attack on the Ruhar. An unexpected Thuranin cruiser then discovers personnel training near a relay station. The Flying Dutchman destroys it with an extremely close jump, damaging its own drive and irradiating the exposed French and Indian teams, but returns to recover everyone and takes the relay station along as a lifeboat and source of parts. The station's communications sub-mind has rewritten itself into a distinct intelligence, whom Skippy names Nagatha Christie. Meanwhile, Sarah Rose joins the planning effort. The command group decides that the Ruhar must be made to abandon negotiations after an apparently internal Kristang attack. A convincing false flag requires real alien craft, so Joe sets the immediate objective of obtaining two expendable Kristang ships while the Dutchman undergoes repairs and refueling.

At an uninhabited red dwarf, the crew repairs and refuels the Flying Dutchman through hazardous dives into a gas giant. Evidence on a shattered moon suggests deliberate destruction involving Elder-level power, but its cause remains unknown. Bishop and Rose replace the unattainable frigate plan with the recovery of abandoned Kristang transports. The Dutchman enters a Thuranin-monitored wormhole area under a false identity, hides through passing traffic, and clears two derelicts containing murdered Kristang civilians and numerous booby traps. It removes the ships and substitutes carefully matched asteroids to conceal the theft. Only one transport is expected to become a usable Q-ship, though the second can supply parts. Skippy also intercepts plans for a Thuranin offensive against the Jeraptha. With Chotek's approval, he sends the Jeraptha a fabricated but accurate warning because defeat could threaten Paradise and Earth. The Dutchman recovers Nagatha and heads to gather current negotiation intelligence before beginning the conversion.

Skippy's warning allows the Jeraptha to prepare for the coming Thuranin attack. While traveling to the refit system, he examines a dead Elder AI canister and becomes unresponsive, shutting down the Dutchman's reactors and cutting off Nagatha. The crew faces failing life support until Skippy returns more than seventeen hours later. Privately, he reveals that a dormant computer worm attacked his higher consciousness and apparently destroyed the canister's previous occupant. Forgotten defensive routines saved him, but the weapon's origin and purpose remain unknown. The crew completes one weak Q-ship from the salvaged transports and sends the unused hull, carrying most of the Kristang dead, into the star. Skippy warns that repeated wormhole manipulation risks dangerous network changes, while the Dutchman's irreplaceable systems are also approaching failure. New intelligence offers a solution to the shortage of attack ships: Glory, the Kristang frigate that survived the earlier Paradise operation, is being transferred with only four Ruhar technicians aboard. Joe now has a narrow opportunity to seize it without harming them or exposing humanity.

Adams devises a credible cover for capturing Glory: a boarding force posing as Razortail Kristang will spare the Ruhar technicians so they can report that a rival clan reclaimed the ship. Chotek approves, Smythe's disguised team carries out the seizure, and the four technicians are left in an emergency shelter to await rescue. Glory can make only one useful jump, but it becomes the second ship required for the mock attack. Separately, the Jeraptha use Skippy's warning to annihilate the attacking Thuranin forces at Glark, while an investigator discovers that the precise intelligence did not come from their own fleet service. Skippy pilots Glory and the Q-ship in a deliberately ineffective apparent attack on the Ruhar negotiating force. Although the Ruhar initially recoil, the plan ultimately fails: the Glark defeat makes the Thuranin support a generous Fire Dragon offer, and the Ruhar accept the Earth voyage. Bishop and Adams propose a more drastic response - provoking the overdue Kristang civil war so the Fire Dragons cannot support the expedition. After weighing the political and moral consequences, Chotek authorizes a completely clandestine operation.

Chotek, Rose, and Skippy choose Kobamik as the place to turn the long rivalry between the Fire Dragons and Black Trees into a wider Kristang war. The plan requires human teams to kill senior Fire Dragon leaders while making the strike appear to come from another clan. Five modified dropships descend unseen through a micro-wormhole cable system and hide near the target city. Skippy locates nine captive human Keepers on the planet, but Chotek permits consideration of a rescue only after the primary mission succeeds. At night, four two-person teams parachute onto city rooftops with eight guided missiles. Despite complications during insertion, all reach their positions. The missiles exploit airborne and ground access points, penetrate the leadership compound, and kill their assigned targets. Surviving Fire Dragon leaders suspect the Black Trees and put their forces on alert, establishing the desired false attribution. One Indian team is extracted, but Skippy aborts the pickup of Smythe and Robertson as the city locks down, leaving them stranded on a rooftop while the operation enters its escape phase.

The assassinations throw the city into confusion, but wreckage seriously injures Jones and prevents the planned aerial recoveries. Williams carries him through the building and into a concealed vehicle. Smythe and Robertson escape by impersonating clan police, then survive a blocked sewer route, a river patrol, and dangerous wildlife before Reed extracts them. Skippy reveals that the anti-Elder worm remains active, though he claims it is contained. In orbit, Fire Dragon leaders flee aboard a heavy cruiser with two frigates. Chang commands the Dutchman through the ambush. Mines destroy the escorts, but the cruiser traps the Dutchman in a damping field and attacks. Chang feigns engine trouble to lure it into the remaining mines, then escapes through a collapsing jump field as a missile damages Reactor 2. Nagatha alters enemy records to maintain the appearance of a Black Tree attack. When four stealthed dropships escape the destroyed cruiser, Chang returns and destroys all of them, eliminating the fleeing Fire Dragon leadership while preserving the operation's cover.

Evidence of the apparent Black Tree attack pushes the Fire Dragons and Black Trees into open fighting, but other clans initially remain outside it. Bishop authorizes a further operation at a Spike Tail communications station, where Poole reaches a link and Skippy issues authenticated attack orders that commit the clan to war. A stray missile then crashes Windsor's dropship, killing both pilots and three other occupants. Smythe's force recovers the six survivors and destroys the wreck, but Skippy reveals that he captured only a copy of the anti-Elder worm. The real program attacks him, and he becomes unresponsive after spreading further false orders that widen the conflict. With their micro-wormhole gone, the ground force uses balloons, sacrificial drone craft, and a long stealth transit to reach an alternate rendezvous. The Dutchman recovers them, and Nagatha confirms that the civil war has spread through almost all Kristang space. The Fire Dragons abandon the Earth voyage and the Ruhar cancel it, completing the mission. The crew is nevertheless stranded without Skippy. Reactor 2 is lost, Nagatha must reduce herself to function, and Friedlander's improvised replaceable jump coils degrade rapidly. Three poor jumps leave the ship short of its red-dwarf refuge with only three usable coil packages for at least two more jumps. Bishop asks Nagatha to attempt an unspecified action that may endanger her.

The covert operation achieves its strategic purpose. Fire Dragon suspicion of the Black Trees becomes open conflict, additional clans enter the war, and fighting spreads through almost all Kristang territory. The Fire Dragons abandon the proposed Ruhar expedition to Earth, and the Ruhar cancel the arrangement. The immediate danger to Earth is therefore removed. All named survivors of the Kobamik ground force reach the Flying Dutchman. Flight Lieutenant Windsor and four other occupants of her dropship die in its crash, while Jones is evacuated with serious injuries and is expected to recover. The crew's own position remains critical. The real anti-Elder worm has left Skippy cold and unresponsive, and Nagatha can persist only by reducing her consciousness. Reactor 2 is unusable, the remaining reactors have limited service life, and Friedlander's replaceable jump-coil plan deteriorates with every jump. After three inaccurate jumps toward a remote red dwarf, only three functional coil packages remain for at least two more jumps. Bishop asks Nagatha to take an unspecified risk as the crew tries to reach hiding and wait for Skippy to recover.