Black Ops

Expeditionary Force Book 4

By Craig Alanson

Text copyright © 2017 Craig Alanson

All Rights
Reserved

Contact the
author at craigalanson@gmail.com

Cover Design By:

Alexandre Rito

alexandre@designbookcover.pt

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 ONE

“Not
so much?” My voice reflected the confusion everyone felt at Skippy’s cryptic
statement. “What do you mean, not so much?”

“Hmmm.
Did I not use that expression correctly, Joe?” Skippy asked, sounding hurt.
“All I meant was ‘no’, which is easier to say. ‘Not so much’ is a complicated
way to say ‘no’, but my understanding is all the cool kids are using that
slang, so I-”

“Skippy!
Not so much, or no, whatever the hell you call it, what did you mean?” Chotek,
Chang, the entire crew were waiting breathlessly on Skippy’s answer. “I asked
if the Thuranin are not sending a ship to Earth, and the Kristang can’t do
that. You said yes to my first question, and ‘not so much’ to the other? You
told us the Kristang don’t have the technology to send a ship to Earth, and now
you-”

“They
don’t. Kristang ships can’t reach Earth on their own. I told you that.”

“Soooo,”
I said slowly, “the answer is ‘yes’ to both of my questions-”

“No,
I, ugh, Ok, technically, you big knucklehead, you asked three questions. Damn! You can’t even keep track of what you are
saying? You bumble the English language so badly, let me phrase it for you.
Joe, you asked me if the Thuranin plan to send another long-range ship to
Earth. My answer to that is a resounding ‘NO’. Then you asked whether the
Kristang ships can get to Earth on their own, and again the answer is ‘NO’. But
you also asked a third question;
‘Earth is safe now’? The answer to that is also, ‘NO’.”

In
frustration, I made a fist of my right hand and slowly pounded my forehead with
it. “Skippy, look, is this some philosophical thing, like Earth is not safe
because eventually our sun will explode? We know about that danger.”

“That
is an obvious danger, sure. I would say a bigger obvious danger to your species
is monkeys having nuclear weapons.”

“Monkeys
with nukes, got it,” I said, laughing with relief, looking back at Chotek and
winking nervously. I had thought Skippy meant Earth was faced with a danger
that we didn’t already know about. “That problem is way above my pay grade,” I
said with a grin toward our career diplomat Hans Chotek, and I gave a thumbs up
sign to the people in the Combat Information Center. “I think the Merry Band of
Pirates will stick with problems we can handle.”

“Okey
dokey, Joe,” Skippy sounded miffed for some reason. “I would think you’d be
more concerned about the Fire Dragons going to Earth, but that’s just my
opinion.”

“WHAT? How the hell- What?” I sputtered.

“Ooooh,
can we play Twenty Questions? Hmm, no, no way would you ever guess correctly.”

“Skippy,”
I ground my teeth. “How are the Fire
Dragons getting to Earth? Is it the Maxolhx?” My heart sank in my chest as I
said that. If we had to tangle with that supremely powerful species, we were
totally screwed. Even Skippy wished to stay well clear of the Maxolhx.

“Nope.
Not the Maxolhx. Well, not yet, anyway. Joe, the surprising information I just
learned from the relay data is that the Fire Dragons are negotiating a deal with
the Ruhar, to take two Fire Dragon representatives to Earth, and bring back the
White Wind clan leaders.”

“The
Ruhar?” I looked through the glass
into the CIC and met Chang’s incredulous eyes. “Senior staff into the
conference room, now. Sergeant Adams, you are the duty officer.”

The
group sitting around the conference table was looking completely shell-shocked,
including Chotek. Maybe especially Hans Chotek. He had come out to the stars
with one relatively straightforward mission from UNEF Command: determine
whether the Thuranin would be sending another long-range surveyor starship to
Earth. And if necessary, stop a second ship from reaching Earth. Along the way,
I had persuaded Chotek to attempt a complicated secondary mission of securing
the future of UNEF on Paradise. Against his instincts, he had agreed to the
Paradise mission, and it had been wildly successful. We had just learned that
our original mission was a success; the Thuranin had no intention of sending a
ship to Earth.

Now,
we were faced with yet another extinction-level threat to humanity, and I’m
sure Hans Chotek was thinking this is not what he signed up for. “Sir,” I
addressed Chotek, “do you want to-”

He
shook his head wearily, whereas mere moments ago he had been jubilant. “No,
Colonel Bishop, please lead the discussion.” His shoulders slumped slightly,
and he looked pissed at me. I didn’t blame him.  “You know Mister Skippy better than any
of us.”

“Thank
you, Sir. Skippy, why the hell would the Ruhar
send a ship to Earth on behalf of the Kristang? Those two species are bitter
enemies.”

“Bitter
enemies, uh huh, you’re right about that. But this war has been going on for a
very, very long time, Joe. Stranger things have happened; really, this wouldn’t
even make the Top Ten of strange things in the war. The simple truth is the
Fire Dragons are paying the Ruhar for a ride. I don’t mean paying cash, of
course, although if the Fire Dragons had a cash-back credit card, man they
could rack up some serious-”

“Skippy!”

“Sorry,
got a little off track there. The Fire Dragons will trade a planet, or access
to a wormhole to the Ruhar, in exchange for a ride to Earth and back. Remember,
there is a wormhole in Ruhar territory that allows a Jeraptha ship to reach
Earth in less than one year; that is a significant advantage over the situation
faced by the Thuranin.”

“Oh,
crap.” I looked around the table. Even Major Smythe’s face was pale. “We have
to stop another ship from traveling
to Earth?” The odds of us doing that successfully were, oh, forget it, my math
skills sucked. Impossible. It was impossible.

“Yup,”
Skippy replied in a cheery tone. “I think specifically, you need to stop yet
another ship from traveling to Earth, without anyone ever suspecting that ship
was prevented from reaching Earth. The Jeraptha know a Thuranin surveyor ship
was destroyed on its way to Earth, and the Jeraptha also know they weren’t
responsible for the attack. For a second ship on its way to Earth to be
attacked, or to disappear, or suffer some other unusual problem, would make the
Jeraptha intensely suspicious about what is going on in your little home star
system. This is going to be way, way more, like an order of magnitude more
difficult than simply destroying a single surveyor ship.”

“Simply?
What was simple about-” I stopped talking. The operation against the surveyor
ship had been incredibly complex. There was no point reminding Skippy about
that. “We have to do the impossible, without anyone knowing that we did
anything at all?” It wasn’t actually a question.

“Sir,”
Lt. Williams addressed his question to me, rather than Chotek or Skippy. “As
Skippy said, there is a wormhole in Ruhar territory that gives them access to
Earth. Could we shut down that wormhole, like you did with the one closest to
Earth?”

“Uh,
that’s a negatory on that one, Lt. Williams,” Skippy answered for me. “I could
do that, but I should not do that. Having a second wormhole near Earth shut
down mysteriously would attract the attention of the Maxolhx and the Rindhalu.
You do not want those two apex species becoming curious about your home
planet.”

“Yes,
Mister Skippy, I understand that,” Williams continued, not intimidated by the
beer can. “I was thinking we could shut down not just two wormholes, but
several wormholes in that area, so that Earth is not obviously in the center of
the affected area. Make it look like a sort of local network shift, something
like that.”

“Hmm,”
Skippy mused. “That is clever and innovative tactical thinking, Williams.
Although, you would realize it is also a horribly bad idea, if you had all the
facts. The answer is no, we should not do anything like that. Having more
wormholes behaving oddly is a guarantee of the senior species becoming curious,
even if they do not immediately suspect Earth is involved. Also, as I warned
Joe before, the more I screw with wormholes, the greater the risk of me
unintentionally triggering another cascading wormhole shift in the sector. The
wormhole near Earth could reactivate, and there is another dormant wormhole
even closer to Earth.”

“We
do not want to screw with wormholes,” I declared. “But that is good initiative,
Lieutenant Williams; keep those ideas coming. All right, all right,” I repeated
words to give myself time to think. “We need a plan to stop a Ruhar ship-”

“Actually
a Jeraptha ship, Joe. The Fire Dragons will be negotiating with their peers the
Ruhar, but the Ruhar will need a ride on a Jeraptha star carrier. While Ruhar
ships have significantly better interstellar travel capability than Kristang
ships do, the Ruhar do not have ships that can go all the way to Earth and back
on their own.”

“Great.
We need a plan to stop a Jeraptha ship. Skippy, we all need to brush up on data
about the Jeraptha. Can you tell us-”

Chotek
held up a hand to interrupt me. “Colonel, I am concerned that, as a military
officer, your instinct is to first look for a military solution. What is the
American expression; to a hammer, everything looks like a nail?”

“That,
is an expression, yes,” I said warily.

“We
can’t fight both sides in this war forever,” Chotek grimly stated the obvious. “Eventually,
we are going to come up against a problem we can’t solve, particularly given
the constraint that all our actions out here must remain absolutely covert. I
believe we must, at this time, consider approaching the Ruhar to suggest an
alliance.”

“Sir,
that is a terr-” as the words came out of my mouth, my brain cried out ‘Nooooo’
in super slow motion and tried to yank the sound back out of the air. “Terr-
terrific challenge,” I stuttered.

Chotek
gave me a look appropriate for parent scolding a small child. “Colonel Bishop,
if you think I have a terrible idea,” he finished my original thought, “please
say so. The last thing this mission commander needs is people trying to please
me. I need honest, informed opinions.”

“Uh,
Sir, approaching the Ruhar about an alliance would be a terrible idea; it would
completely backfire on us, and probably result in the destruction of Earth,” I
explained, stating what I thought was completely obvious.

Chotek
sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Explain further,
please. Because an alliance with the Ruhar, and their patrons, may be our best
and perhaps only hope of halting an endless cycle of crisis and frantic
response.”

“If we
only dealt with the Ruhar, that might be true,” I hurriedly tried to organize
my thoughts. Damn it, it felt like writing an essay in high school, and I had
always struggled with that. “But whatever we tell the Ruhar, the Jeraptha will
find out about, and ultimately, the Rindhalu. And the Maxolhx would learn about
it soon enough. Let’s say we approach the Ruhar and suggest an alliance. What
could we possibly offer them that would be worth their expending an enormous
effort to defend our little planet?”

“Skippy.
We could offer Skippy and the Elder wormhole controller device,” Chotek pointed
to the speaker in the ceiling. “I know Skippy says he would go silent around
species with advanced technology; maybe that is true and maybe Skippy only
thinks that is the case. He admits he does not fully understand his own
programming. Colonel, I know you do not like to think about giving Skippy away,
and I do not consider the idea to be honorable. But if the choice is between
Skippy and securing the future of humanity, I will side with humanity.”

“Sir,”
I paused to collect my thoughts. This was an argument I needed to make
carefully. In school, I had always sucked at outlining essays, my thoughts
always came out in a disorganized jumble. No way would I ever have qualified
for a debate team. “In the military, we would wargame a scenario like this, to
see the most likely end result. Let’s say we do offer Skippy to the Ruhar, and
the Ruhar believe he is an Elder AI, whether Skippy goes silent or not. What
happens after that? The Rindhalu will learn humanity has a device that can
control Elder wormholes; a device that could destroy the balance of power that
has existed between the Rindhalu and the Maxolhx for thousands of years. A
device that can control wormholes is something that would be worth the Maxolhx
fighting a full-scale war over, because without it, they would be powerless
against the Rindhalu. My guess is, the Maxolhx would see the capability to
control wormholes as such a game-changing technology that they would risk an
all-out conflict with the Rindhalu. Maybe they would even risk using Elder
weapons and provoking a response by Sentinels. Whatever happens, neither side
would care what happens to Earth in a war that consumes the galaxy, and for
damned sure, our home planet would be collateral damage. The Maxolhx would try
to seize Earth, or destroy us if they can’t control us. And the Rindhalu would
destroy Earth themselves, rather than let the Maxolhx control us. Hell, they
might even nuke Earth together; both sides have made it clear that an upstart
species like humanity can’t be allowed to threaten the two major powers. They
might destroy Earth, just to make an example of us.”

Chotek
didn’t immediately dismiss my argument. He leaned forward and steepled his
hands, flexing his fingers as he thought.

I took
his hesitation to press my point. “We shut down one wormhole, and manipulated
others. We destroyed most of a Kristang battlegroup, stole a Thuranin star carrier
and destroyed other Thuranin ships. To the Ruhar, we screwed up their plans to
trade away the planet Paradise, and we tricked them into keeping Paradise and
stationing a battlegroup there. Neither side will have any love for us, or any
reason to trust us, once they learn the truth. Both sides will have plenty of
reasons to hate and distrust us, and to want payback. The only items we have to
bargain with are Skippy, who may or may not go dormant, and an Elder wormhole
controller module. Once we give up those two items, why should we trust the
Rindhalu to offer us protection? I know you have enough diplomatic experience
not to tell me the Rindhalu are noble and will do it out of the goodness of
their hearts. Keep in mind, Sir, the Rindhalu don’t need us to give them anything; once they know about
Skippy and the wormhole controller, they can simply take them from us. It’s
like,” I tried to think of a good analogy. “Like bringing a suitcase full of
cash to a drug deal. Unless you have as much firepower as the guy with the
drugs, he’s simply going to kill you, take the cash and keep his drugs.” I saw
that on a TV show, so don’t give me credit for thinking of it. “This isn’t the
Middle East, where you are negotiating with two powers who each have the
ability to hurt each other to some extent. Earth has no ability to hit back, our world is completely helpless. There are
no checks and balances in the galaxy like there is on Earth; no NATO, no UN.
The Rindhalu can do anything they want to Earth, and there is absolutely
nothing to stop them. The Rindhalu are going to see wormhole controller
technology as a threat not only to their position of power, but to their entire
existence. Same with the Maxolhx.”

I saw
Chotek’s shoulders rise slightly as he took a deep, calming breath. Certainly
he was not happy with me at that moment. My fear was that he would declare the
issue decided; that we were going to approach the Ruhar, tell them the truth
and offer an alliance. That idea was wrong, all wrong. But his background as a
diplomat had taught him patience; he understood that if we went down the road
of an alliance, we had plenty of time. Instead of extending the argument, he
looked at the ceiling and addressed Skippy. “Do we have time to go back to
Earth for consultations, before the negotiations commence?”

“Con-sul-ta-tions?”
Skippy rolled the word off his tongue slowly, as if he could not believe such a
word existed. “No,” he declared. “Well, technically we would have time to go
back to Earth via the fastest possible route, if we left right now. What we do
not have time to do is fly back to Earth, wait for your leaders to argue and
wring their hands to avoid making decisions, then return in time to do anything
about the negotiations. We have time either to fly to Earth to let people know
about the threat, or to actually do
something about the threat. One or the other. Sorry, Chocula, you can’t pass
the buck on this one. Time for you to put your big boy pants on, and make the hard
decisions UNEF sent you out here to make. It should be easy, only the fate of
your planet and your entire species hang in the balance.”

The
discussion went back and forth for another ten minutes, with me meekly keeping
my mouth shut unless Chotek asked me a question. All I wanted was for Chotek to
delay making a decision about talking to the Ruhar, until my team had time to
offer him alternatives.

Finally,
Chotek could see there was little point in continuing to talk right then. We
were all still somewhat in shock, and that is not a good time to make
cool-headed decisions. “Very well. Colonel Bishop, please work with your team
to develop a plan to stop a Ruhar ship from traveling to Earth. There will be
no direct action against the Ruhar, understood?”

“Yes,
Sir.” The initial crisis was over and we were not immediately running to the
Ruhar with a flag of surrender. I counted that as a win, and all I wanted was
to escape the meeting as fast as possible.

The
meeting broke up, with teams going off to study Skippy’s data on the situation,
and try to dream up a plan for the Merry Band of Pirates to accomplish the
impossible. Again.

Major
Smythe caught my eye outside the conference room, and nodded his head to the
left. I followed him around the corner. “I’d like to speak with you, Sir.
Privately.”

“My
office, Major.”

We
walked to my office, where I took the rare step of pressing the button to close
the door. Usually, I held firm to a literal Open Door policy, where anyone
could approach me about any issue. A thousand lightyears from home, on a stolen
alien pirate ship in a hostile galaxy, and with our ship run by a chrome-plated
beer can, I wanted the crew to know I was not keeping secrets from them.

Usually.

“Major?
You wanted to speak with me.” It wasn’t a question.

“To
use an American expression, ‘Ain’t that some shit’?” he said without a smile. “We
just rescued UNEF on Paradise, and confirmed the Thuranin are not a threat-”

“For
now.”

“For
now. This time, we may need to act against the Ruhar?” He shook his head, eyes
wide with incredulity. “Usually in a war, you can count on some allies.”

“Usually
in a war, the enemy knows you are fighting them. We can’t allow anyone to know
we are even involved. Against the Ruhar, we may need to act in a way that they
don’t realize anyone is fighting
them. It is freakin’ impossible.”

“And
yet.”

“And
yet, we’ve done it before.” I gestured at the closed office door, which was
almost always open. “Is this the part of the movie where I offer you a tumbler
of scotch, and we make plans to take over the world behind closed doors?”

Smythe
grinned, something I had not observed often enough. Putting him in overall
command of the SpecOps team had been a boost for his ego, and for his career,
but it had not done any favors for his level of stress. “I prefer whiskey to
scotch. Take over the world, Sir? ‘The world is not enough’, to quote one of
the James Bond films. We have an entire galaxy we need to secure, if Mr. Chotek
is right, and I think he is. We’ve been successful to date. This cannot
continue indefinitely.”

“Agreed.
Someday, when we have time to think, we need a plan to be proactive, and not only
react to the latest crisis.” I said aloud something I had been privately
thinking for months. “Whatever long-term strategy we come up with, it needs
approval from leaders on Earth. We can’t go making critical decisions like that
on our own.”

“We
can, Colonel, if there is not enough time to fly all the way back to Earth and
wait for the politicians to debate the issue.”

“Major,
I am all about bending the rules until you can see cracks, but I have to follow
the chain of command.” I wondered if he was testing me.

Smythe
pretended to pick a piece of lint off his uniform pants; I noticed he avoided
my eyes while he did that. “Yes, we all follow the proper chain of command. A
chain which begins far above Mr. Chotek.”

“I’m
not following you, Major.” I really did not understand what he meant. Chotek,
of course, derived his authority from UNEF Command on Earth, but there was not
enough time for us to go back to Earth and return, if we were to have any
chance to stop the Ruhar from sending a ship to our home planet. If Chotek
ordered us not to take action against the Ruhar, going to Earth to override his
orders would take far too long.

“Mr.
Chotek has written orders from UNEF Command, authorizing him to be in ultimate
charge of this mission,” Smythe reminded me. “However, if you, Colonel, have secret orders from UNEF Command,
authorizing you to relieve Mr. Chotek if you felt it necessary for the success
of the mission and survival of our species, I would not be able to dispute the
authenticity of any such secret orders.”

That
shocked me for a moment. “Major,” I said slowly, knowing we were on very dangerous
ground, “surely UNEF Command gave you codes for authenticating any such
orders.”

“Yes,
Sir, they did. And I am sure that Mr. Skippy cracked those codes in a heartbeat,
and could fake any orders you wished to create. As I stated, I would have no
way to dispute any secret orders you claim to have received from UNEF Command.”

“He’s
right, Joe,” Skippy spoke up. “I cracked those pathetic codes while UNEF was
still creating them,” he chuckled. “Me having total control of their data
systems helped,” he added in a lower voice. “Yup, I could fake up any orders
you want.”

“Skippy,”
I closed my eyes, feeling a headache coming on. “Major Smythe, and his entire
team, could not act on orders they know to be fraudulent.”

“Oh.
Oh! Gotcha, Joe. I would never fake a
secret message from UNEF Command, of course not. No way, Jose. That’s my story
and I’m sticking to it. Uh, was that convincing? I can try again, if you give
me a hint. This mutiny thing is not really my wheelhouse.”

I
hid my face in my hands. “That was super
awesomely helpful, Skippy.”

“Duh.
Of course it was awesome, Joe, it’s me.”

“Personally,
it wouldn’t take bloody much to convince me, Sir,” Smythe assured me with a pat
on the shoulder. “Although, if it comes to us taking over the ship, you might
want to pour me a large glass of whiskey first.”

“I’ll
ask Simms if she brought any whiskey. Major, we need a plan to prevent the
Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth, without them ever knowing someone didn’t
want them sending a ship to Earth. You got any ideas?”

“No.
Not at the moment. Colonel,
while we are at the relay station, I would like my teams to take the
opportunity for zero gee combat training.”

Chotek
wasn’t going to like that, I thought. “Can you use two teams at a time? Who is
up in the rotation?” That is something I should have memorized.

“The
Indians and the French,” Smythe stated.

“I
will talk with Chotek.” I figured that I knew his answer would be ‘No’.

I was
wrong. When I requested his permission for two SpecOps teams to conduct
training outside the ship, he didn’t argue or push back. “If you think it is
necessary, Colonel,” he said with an almost dismissive wave of a hand. He
wasn’t even looking at me when he said it, more like staring off into space.
The strain I felt had to be getting to him also. Maybe even more so.

“I do,
Sir.”

Chotek
pushed himself upright in the chair and smoothed his tie. The guy wore a suit
and tie every day, except when he used the gym. Damn, he needed to relax a bit,
before he exploded. His expression brightened, or was not as gloomy as usual.
“I would like to go aboard the relay station,” he stated simply.

“Uh,
Ok?” For a moment, I wondered why he wanted to take the time to visit the relay
station. I had been there, it was certainly nothing special. The interior
compartments and passageways were a smaller version of the Flying Dutchman’s forward
hull, before we humans modified our pirate ship to suit us. Then I realized why
Count Chocula would enjoy visiting the relay station; he simply wanted a change
of scenery. When we went down to Paradise, the first time to reactivate the
maser projectors, the second time to plant the fake Elder artifacts; Chotek had
remained board the Dutchman. At the
time, I had feared he would insist on coming down to Paradise with me, living
in the cramped dropship and second-guessing everything I did. For whatever
reason, Chotek had stayed aboard the ship then, for which I was very grateful.
He had not come with the raiding party to the surface of Jumbo either. Now that
I thought about it, every member of the Merry Band of Pirates, including the
science team, had at least been able to go aboard the relay station, or fly
somewhere in a dropship, or simply go outside the Dutchman and fly around in a spacesuit. Hans Chotek had been
confined to our star carrier since he came aboard in Earth orbit.

There
were times when I strongly experienced the ‘loneliness of command’. Many times,
I felt terribly alone, when the only person I could talk to was Skippy. At
least I had Skippy, even if he was an asshole. Hans Chotek had to be the
loneliest person aboard the ship; he had no one at all he could talk with. For
a moment, I felt a pang of sympathy for the man who was aboard the ship for the
sole purpose of making my life difficult. “Certainly, Sir, you should be able
to visit the relay station. We have the interior cleaned up from the battle,” I
said that to remind him there had been a hard fight to take that relay station.
We had lost people, and others had suffered serious injuries they were still
healing from. While he was sightseeing, he should think about the sacrifices
made to win that relay station for us. “Skippy says there is not a ship
scheduled to visit the station for the next nine days; the Thuranin fleet is
busy with some big operation against the Jeraptha.”

That
drew his attention. “I thought the Thuranin had a ceasefire with the Jeraptha?”

“A
conditional ceasefire,” I said with a wry smile. “And only in the sector that
includes Paradise. We’re on the edge of the sector here.”

Chotek
snorted with what I took to be a derisive laugh. “This war out here makes the
Middle East look tidy and organized. Have you made any progress on a plan to
prevent the Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth?” He asked hopefully.

“Some
progress, yes,” I lied. We had nothing. “I need time to refine our plans,
before we present the options to you.”

“Very
well, Colonel Bishop. I don’t need to remind you the clock is ticking.”

“No,
Sir, you don’t.”

CHAPTER TWO

I
told the duty officer that I was going to my quarters to splash cold water on
my face after talking with Chotek. In reality, I barely made it to my too-small
Thuranin toilet before ralphing up my breakfast. My body went ice cold and I
knelt on the floor, shivering from a combination of chills, shock and
gut-wrenching fear. “What’s wrong, Joe?” Skippy’s voice reflected concern. “You
haven’t eaten anything weird recently.” He knew that my experiments with the
more exotic types of cuisine prepared by our French, Indian and Chinese teams
had sometimes not agreed with my stomach. Even British curry dishes had been
too spicy for me.

“No,”
I spat, then got to my knees to wash my mouth out in the sink. “Food isn’t the
problem. Can we talk seriously for a minute?”

To
his credit, Skippy did not make any snarky comments about it being impossible
for him to discuss anything seriously with a hairless baboon. “Sure, Joe. Hmm,
your core body temperature is dropping. You are almost in shock.”

Because
he was being nice to me, I squelched the ‘Ya think?’ comment that had been on
the tip of my tongue. “I am kind of in
shock. Skippy, I don’t know if I can do this. Not again.”

“Do
what? Ralph up your breakfast? Hey, if you do it again, try to aim better.”

“No,
not that. I mean, I don’t know if I can command another mission. I don’t know
if I can handle the responsibility again.”

“Ooooh,
oh, Ok, got ya. The stress is getting to you. Umm, let me think of some
supportive words. Keep putting one foot in front of another, Joe,” Skippy said
encouragingly. And then, because he is an asshole, he added “And don’t do the
stupid thing you did last time. Remember, left, right, left, right. If
you just keep putting only one foot forward, you end up doing the splits and
falling down. Stupid monkey.”

“I
love you too, Skippy. That wasn’t much help.”

“Hmmm.
Sergeant Adams is way better at this sort of thing, so I’ll tell you what I
think she would say. Get on your feet, soldier. Suck it up, and do your job.
Because if you don’t, your species is facing certain extinction.”

“You
suck at pep talks, Skippy.”

“I
wasn’t trying to pep you up. This is your problem. Joe, out here, those fancy
silver eagles on your uniform really don’t mean shit. The Merry Band of Pirates
is the most elite military force humanity has ever assembled, and they don’t
follow you because UNEF Command says they have to. People like Major Smythe
follow you because they have confidence in your ability; confidence gained from
experience. The Special Operations people have seen you lead them to succeed
against impossible odds, over and over and over. Joe,” he sighed, “much as it
pains me to say this, I’ll do it. You are an outstanding commander; brave,
determined and inventive. You have been kicking alien ass up and down the Orion
Arm. If someone were offering odds of this single ship and crew against the
entire galaxy, I would put my money on the Merry Band of Pirates.”

I
looked at myself in the mirror. Color was coming back to my face, and my
stomach was no longer in knots. “Thank you, Skippy. That was a great pep talk.”

“Ah,
if you repeat it to anyone, I’ll deny the whole thing. Damn, now I feel like puking.”

“Sorry
about that. So,” I stood up and squared my shoulders. “Now all I need to do is
dream up a plan to do the impossible, again.”

“Joe, damn, I can’t believe I am saying this. You don’t need to think up all the ideas
around here. If you need help planning a black operation, there is someone
aboard who has experience in that sort of thing. We haven’t talked about it,
but I think you know who I mean.”

Many
of our extra-special special operations troops had experience with clandestine
operations, both those listed in their official resumes, and those Skippy
discovered by easily hacking every electronic data system on the planet Earth.
Of course Skippy had told me everything he had learned about the candidates for
the crew, which had put me in somewhat of an uncomfortable spot. Two of the
soldiers from foreign countries had been involved in an operation hostile to
interests of the United States. No Americans were killed in the operation, but
knowing what those two soldiers had done had caused me a sleepless night. In
the end, I approved the two to join the Merry Band of Pirates, and I never said
anything about it to their team commander. The UN Expeditionary Force was
supposed to be an international force, a human
force, and I had to understand that soldiers from other nations felt just as
strongly patriotic about their country as I felt about the US of A. I wouldn’t
allow aboard anyone who had committed a war crime; otherwise what we needed in
our mission to protect all of humanity was the most dedicated, effective
soldiers and pilots we could get. “Most of our crew have been involved in
secret operations, Skippy, that’s why they are called special operations forces.”

“Not
special forces, Joe. You know who I mean.”

“Oh.
How do you know that I know?” He had
assured me that he could not read my mind; I wasn’t sure about that sometimes.

“Truthfully,
I wasn’t absolutely certain you knew
until just now. Let’s just say that, despite my overall low opinion of your
brain power, I assumed you would have figured this out.”

“Was
that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Why
would I do that?”

“Oh,”
I rolled my eyes. “No reason. Ok, thank you, I’ll take your advice.”

“Great.
And next time you talk to Ralph on the big silver phone,” Thuranin toilets were
silver instead of white, “try to aim better. I need to get another service bot
in here to clean the floor. Yuck.”

For
training, Smythe set up an operation where the Indian team went over to the
relay station in a dropship, then flew toward the Flying Dutchman using jetpacks. Yes, I totally wished I could be
with them, flying around in cool jetpacks rather than sitting in an office. The
French team was outside the Dutchman
but still inside the ship’s stealth field, ready to fly out in jetpacks to
intercept Captain Chandra’s Indian paratrooper team. I figured Captains Chandra
and Giraud had a wager going on whose team would ‘win’ the engagement. I was
certain almost everyone aboard the ship wished they were part of the fun,
rather than being stuck inside the ship. The Dutchman was as comfortable as we could make our pirate ship, but
being inside a starship day after day after day got old.

Most
people aboard the ship could use a break; I had spent most of the day in the
conference room with senior staff, wracking our brains for an idea to stop the
Ruhar from bringing Fire Dragons to Earth. Skippy had, correctly, shot down
every one of our stupid ideas so far.

I
thought merely blowing up a Thuranin surveyor ship on its way to Earth had been
difficult. This was much, much worse. With the operation against the Thuranin,
we had been able to openly use force, the ‘only’ complication had been assuring
the Thuranin never knew who destroyed their ship, or why. That had been
difficult enough; at the time we thought it an impossible task. Now I was
nostalgic for that time as the ‘good old days’.

The
only bright spot in my day was that Hans Chotek was not aboard our pirate ship.
A dropship had brought Chotek, Major Simms and Dr. Friedlander over to the
relay station, along with the Indian special forces team. Chotek had requested
Simms as an escort, instead of someone from Smythe’s SpecOps team: I think he
was more comfortable with Simms. As our logistics officer, Simms maybe was not
considered a real ‘soldier’ by Chotek. And Friedlander had been included, I
guess, because Chotek wanted another civilian with him. Or Chotek understood
that Friedlander also deserved an opportunity to get out of the ship.

I was
in the CIC watching the training engagement; Lt. Williams of our SEALS team was
the duty officer in the command chair. Sergeant Adams was taking a shift at one
of the sensor stations in the CIC; usually pilots staffed the CIC, but
crosstraining was essential. She was monitoring the progress of the Indian
team, who had launched from the relay station and were now flying jetpacks on
their way to the Flying Dutchman. I
heard Adams sigh quietly, and I walked over to stand next to her. “I know, I
wish I was out there, too,” I whispered.

“It
would be good to get off the ship, Sir,” she admitted.

Adams
and I had gone down to Paradise, although we had to remain hidden while we were
there. The two of us, and a handful of others, had been able to stand under a
blue sky and breathe unfiltered air. With Major Smythe, I had space dived down to
the surface of the planet Jumbo. But most of the crew had been either stuck
aboard the ship, or restricted to training in space. That is something fans of Star
Trek don’t think about when they fantasize about being aboard the Enterprise: being on that ship for month
after month after month. In Star Trek, once in a while, a small group beams
down to a dangerous planet, where Unnamed Crewman Number Four gets eaten by
some monster. Maybe the people wearing red shirts weren’t stupid; they just
were desperate to finally get off the freakin’ ship for a while. There were
times when I thought that, instead of pilots, we should have brought
submariners to fly the Dutchman.
Pilots saw blue sky and stood on solid ground after a short flight. Naval
pilots, although they spent a lot of time at sea, could stand on the deck of a
carrier and see the horizon. Submarine crews were accustomed to being
underwater in a claustrophobic steel tube for months. That is what being aboard
the Dutchman was like. “Sergeant, maybe
if we-”

I
never finished the thought. The Flying
Dutchman’s internal alarm sounded; it
was still the Star Trek alarm sound that Adams had requested Skippy program
into the system. Before I could focus my eyes on the status display, Skippy
shouted over the speakers. “Thuranin light cruiser jumped in, twenty seven
lightseconds from the relay station!”

I
checked the display. There was a new icon, a bright blazing icon where none had
been before. It was on the other side of the relay station, having emerged into
one of the designated jump points, where ships would not interfere with the
station’s transmitter. The spot where we parked the Dutchman was chosen specifically because incoming ships were
supposed to avoid the area, and because the relay station partly masked our
ship from sensors. “Do they see us?” I asked as I ran toward the bridge, where
Lt. Williams of our SEALS team was holding the command chair for me.

“Not
yet, Joe,” Skippy reported. “Our stealth field is effective, and ships are not
allowed to use active sensor fields here, to avoid interfering with the relay
station. However, the Thuranin have detected our dropship and the Indian team.
Technically, what they see are several sets of Kristang suits with jetpacks.
They are very curious about that, to the point where they are demanding an
explanation from the station, and they have activated their defensive shields.”

“Shit.
Uh, tell them, uh-”

“I
already told them the Kristang armored suits are an Advanced Research Development
experiment in remotely seizing control of Kristang technology, and that the
suits are empty. I took control of the suits to make them rigid, I set the
faceplates to go opaque so the Thuranin can’t see human faces, and I’m doing my
best to mask body heat and other evidence the suits are occupied. Captain
Chandra’s team knows the situation and has gone silent. Joe, the Thuranin are
buying my bullshit story for now, but I do not think that will last more than a
minute. They could use an active tightbeam sensor probe on Chandra’s team, and
they’d find out real quick that humans are in those suits.”

My
inexperience showed in me wasting time asking a stupid question. “What the hell
is that ship doing here?!”

“There
was a battle against the Jeraptha in the adjacent sector; the battle was a draw
but several Thuranin ships sustained significant damage, including that ship.
That light cruiser was escorting a pair of battleships that need urgent
repairs, so that ship was sent on ahead as a scout. Those two battleships, and
fourteen other warships, will be here within the hour.”

“All
right, all right,” I frantically tried to think. We could jump the Dutchman away, abandoning the Indian
team. And Chotek, Simms and Dr. Friedlander. And, dammit, the French team also,
I realized with shock. Although Giraud and his paratroopers were near us, they
were outside the ship, floating in space with jetpacks. If we jumped the Dutchman, the French would be killed by
the distortions of the jump field. “We’re not leaving our people,” I declared
mostly to myself. “We need to kill that ship. We are, you said, twenty seven
lightseconds away?”

“Correct,”
Skippy replied, and did not take time to remark that data was on the main
bridge display.

“So,
whatever we do here, the Thuranin won’t know about it for twenty seven seconds?
How long would we need to accelerate to get far enough away for Giraud’s team
to survive us jumping?”

“Thirty
four seconds to be safe, but we could live with a minimum of twenty one seconds
if I compress our jump field.”

“Pilot,
signal Giraud what we’re doing, and get us moving. Skippy, we need to jump in
right on top of that ship and hammer them with everything we’ve got, before
they can react.”

“I’ll
do my best, Joe.” The ship lurched as the pilots input Skippy’s selected course
and kicked in emergency acceleration. “Weapons are preprogrammed for release on
your authority; jump is also programmed and counting down. Eighteen seconds to
jump. Seventeen. Sixteen-”

There
wasn’t time to plan or discuss with Skippy what we were going to do; I had to
trust that he knew much more than us about Space Combat Maneuvers. After twenty
one seconds of acceleration that we actually felt, the Dutchman jumped. It was easier to be precise with a short jump
covering less than half a lightminute, but on this jump Skippy needed to be
more precise than ever before, working against the handicaps presented by
quantum mechanics.

Skippy
explained later what he tried to do, and what actually happened. The Thuranin
ship’s shields were activated; Skippy knew that ship had sustained significant
battle damage and had weak spots in its defensive systems. Still, the
relatively weak maser cannons of our rebuilt star carrier, and our pitifully
few ship-killer missiles, could not be certain of killing or disabling that
ship in our first volley. We would not get a second chance; even a damaged
light cruiser could batter our pirate ship to pieces, or trap us in a damping
field and slice us up at their leisure. We needed to take down their shields
before we could hit them. The only way to do that was to jump in so very close,
the event horizon of our inbound jump wormhole interfered with their shields
and caused a cascading failure of their shield generators. It was a tactic of
absolute desperation that had never been done before, as far as Skippy knew.

Naturally,
he was super eager to try it.

“Five.
Four,” Skippy counted down. “Hold my beer, watch this.”

“Hold my beer? Don’t-”

“One.
Jump.”

Renee
Giraud blinked to clear spots and starbursts swimming in his vision. Even
though the Kristang armored spacesuit had made its visor go opaque before the Flying Dutchman jumped away, intense
light and heavy-particle radiation from the jump wormhole had blasted him and
his team. The voice of the suit’s computer, a voice the Americans called
‘Bitching Betty’, had been calling out warnings of radiation exposure and helpfully
notifying him that the anti-radiation meds the suit normally would administer
were not available. Betty advised Giraud to seek medical attention as soon as
possible, and she advised him of that fact every four seconds until he figured
out how to turn the damned thing off.

“Merde,”
Giraud said to himself, his voice echoing loudly in the helmet. The suit’s
supply of anti-radiation medicine was empty, because those meds were designed
for Kristang biochemistry, and would be poisonous to humans. Skippy the alien
AI had promised he was working on retrofitting the suits with medical
nanomachines appropriate for humans, but Giraud knew the ship’s supply of
medical nano was thin. If he returned to the ship, he was sure Skippy the mad
scientist would have his scary medical bots administer advanced treatments to
clear the radiation damage from Giraud’s body.

If he
returned to the ship. If the ship returned at all.

He did
not know what had happened to their pirate star carrier. Giraud had received a
warning that a Thuranin light cruiser had jumped in near the relay station; his
own suit confirmed that observation with a blinking icon in the visor in front
of his eyes. The Flying Dutchman had
accelerated away, while Giraud’s team had burned their jetpacks in the opposite
direction, until Giraud ordered the team to conserve thruster fuel. The tiny
extra distance they could gain from burning hard with the jetpacks was
meaningless, and they might need every ounce of jetpack fuel later.

Giraud
checked the time in the bottom left corner of his visor, less than thirty
seconds had passed since the giant, spindly star carrier had jumped away. It
felt like much longer; he had spent the first ten or fifteen seconds
disoriented and spinning wildly. After he engaged the jetpack’s automatic
stabilizer, gyroscopes had halted his spin and he had spent precious seconds
checking the status of the suit and jetpack, and turning off the Bitching Betty
before her annoying voice rendered him deaf. “Team,” he called out, “report-”

The
visor, which had just returned to clear after going completely black right
before the Dutchman jumped, went into
protective mode again. The display on the inside of the visor gave Giraud a
view of a short, intense space battle raging close by, then the display
registered a ship exploding and a gamma ray burst almost at the exact same
time. “See-lonce,” Giraud ordered using an international standard term for
radio silence, then turned off his transmitter.

A
starship had exploded, and a starship had jumped away, or attempted to jump
away. Which ship had been destroyed, perhaps both of them? His suit’s sensors
were not able to determine exactly what had happened twenty seven lightseconds
away; the explosion had been so violent it was impossible to tell whether one or
two ships had been consumed. Giraud did not like their star carrier’s chances
against a cruiser, unless Skippy had been able to perform some magic on very
short notice. During Giraud’s crosstraining in the ship’s Combat Information
Center, Skippy had explained that every starship’s jump drive had a distinctive
signature, and that signature could identify the type of ship, even a specific
ship if the data on that ship’s jump characteristics was known.

His
suit’s computer lacked the ability to analyze jump signatures, and Skippy’s
magic  always slightly altered the Dutchman’s signature with each jump, to
prevent anyone from identifying or following their stolen star carrier. So,
Giraud told himself, he did not know whether the Dutchman had survived. If both ships had been destroyed, what
should he do? Contact Captain Chandra of the Indian paratroop team, and get
both teams over to the relay station? That would only be a temporary solution,
for they were doomed without a starship to carry them home. Going aboard the
relay station would be for the purpose of self-destructing that station,
erasing any evidence of humans flying around the galaxy. Along with erasing the
actual humans, including Chotek and his team.

If the
ship that exploded was the Flying
Dutchman, then the Thuranin cruiser might still be in the area, or could
return soon. In that case also, the priority would be destroying evidence of
human activity. Even if the Thuranin cruiser had been destroyed, if the Dutchman had been so damaged that she
was unable to return, then Giraud, his team, the Indians and Chotek were all
stranded and had only one course of action.

The
only possibility for survival was if the Dutchman
had somehow escaped the battle, jumped away, and was able to return. Giraud
would know their pirate ship survived only if that ship jumped back in. Plan
against disaster, he decided, and hope for the best. There was no point
planning for the Dutchman’s return,
because there wasn’t anything he or his team could do to help that blessed
event happen.

His
suit remained rigid and in defensive posture as light and heavy particles from
the explosion twenty seven lightseconds away washed over him, then the visor
blinked clear again. Or almost clear; sections of the faceplate were gray or
black. Warning icons were flashing around the edges of his visor. The suit had
been damaged, that was obvious from even a quick scan of the status icons. The
jetpack had sustained the worst damage, having automatically spun around to
protect Giraud by putting its mass between his fragile body and the heavy
charged particles of the explosion. Communication with the jetpack’s computer
were garbled; according to the status he could read, the unit was able to
activate only one of its jets. With a single jet, all Giraud could do was fly
uselessly in a circle. Irritated the sophisticated alien technology had failed
him, he concentrated on the suit’s sensors. While they were partially blinded,
he was still able to see blinking icons showing the last reported position of
his team, Chandra’s team and the relay station. Damaged or not, the sensors
certainly would be able to see the gamma ray burst if the cruiser had jumped
in, and there was no such data on the visor display. Knowing the cruiser might
arrive on top of them at any minute, Giraud took advantage of what might be a
brief opportunity. “See-lonce fini,” he announced. “Team, status check.”

All
but one member of the team reported in. His visor display showed the silent
paratrooper was alive, likely unconscious. Giraud had been shocked to see how far
apart his team was, headed off in multiple directions at a speed higher than
their jetpacks had been able to impart. The spatial distortion of the jump
wormhole had not only bathed the French team in radiation, it had thrown them
far and scattered them like butterflies in a strong wind. Only one of the team
had a fully working jetpack; Giraud ordered her to fly over to the unresponsive
man. If needed, she might be able to use her jetpack to bring the injured
paratrooper to the relay station for whatever medical treatment might be
available. “Captain Chandra, respond, please.”

Chandra
answered after a few seconds; the man had been busy dealing with his own team.
Although the Indians had been farther from the spatial and radiation effects of
the Dutchman’s jump wormhole, they
had been closer to the heavy particles of the explosion, and he had two people
unresponsive. None of the Indians’ jetpacks were operational, the dropship was
in the process of collecting them. “No,” Giraud replied to Chandra’s offer for
the dropship to pick up his team. The ‘Falcon’ dropship was the smaller of the
two Thuranin models, and could barely accommodate Chandra’s people. “I think it
is best to get your team aboard the relay station and prepare it for self-destruct.
Send the dropship back for us when you can.”

“Are
you sure, Rene?” The other paratroop commander asked.

“Yes.
My suit computer says I’ll be dead without treatment for radiation poisoning,”
he chuckled with gallows humor. “If that happens, I would rather be out here
than having my corpse stinking up the relay station.”

“Ok,”
Chandra forced a sympathetic laugh. “We also got a dose of radiation from the
explosion. I hope Doctor Skippy makes house calls. Rene, I ordered my team to
put the Sandman protocol on standby.”

“I did
the same,” Giraud acknowledged. If any of the Merry Band of Pirates were about
to be captured, it would be best for them to set off a nuke to erase even DNA
evidence. Failing that, none of them could allow themselves to be captured
alive. On every mission away from the ship, each soldier and pilot wore a tiny
dot on the back of his or her neck, as a high-tech sort of suicide pill. It was
a tiny, tightly-packed cluster of nanoparticles. According to Skippy,
activating the suicide dot would send an electrical pulse to the wearer’s
brainstem, killing them instantly and painlessly. The dot would then release
nanomachines into the person’s brain; those machines would swim through blood
vessels to vital sites in the brain, and fire simultaneously to fry every
memory engram and synapse in the mass of gray matter known as the human brain.
Skippy had assured Hans Chotek that not even the super advanced technology of
the Maxolhx would be able to recover any memories from a brain so thoroughly
scrambled.

Rene
Giraud was used to the almost imperceptible sensation of the suicide dot
attached to the base of his skull, although he was always aware of its
disturbing presence. The dot could be triggered by the wearer, or triggered
remotely by any commander with the access codes. At the end of every away
mission, even in training, he was happy to peel the dot off his skin and drop
it in a box. Skippy said the dot was not in any way harmful, except for the
obvious, but Giraud was certain he could feel his skin’s irritation when he
showered after a mission. Although he had to admit, he had never been able to
detect a rash where a suicide dot had been attached to anyone else’s neck.

On the
visor, he watched the icon representing the Falcon dropship flying around,
picking up the Indian team. There was no response from the relay station, which
was odd and disturbing. There was also no gamma ray burst from a murderous
alien warship. Minutes passed, Giraud’s main activity was trying to remain
still, for any movement sent him into a tumble. The jetpack’s stabilizing
gyroscopes were inoperable, or the jetpack’s computer was unable to control
them, for the flying machine attached to his back was a useless lump of alien
technology. He had ordered his team to remain attached to their jetpacks, if
the Flying Dutchman returned it would
be best for their dropships to pick up crew and jetpacks at the same time,
rather than flying around willy-nilly chasing twice as many objects. Giraud was
certain that if the ship did return, Colonel Bishop would want them to get the
hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Gamma
ray burst! Not close enough to give them another damaging dose of radiation,
and not close enough that his suit’s failing sensors could identify the ship.
He braced himself to transmit the suicide order.

The Flying Dutchman jumped, which is
something I usually know only because the bridge display told me we had gone
from one empty area of interstellar space to another. Once in a while, we jump
and a star becomes a bright disc instead of a faint dot. Or a planet appears at
the edge of the display.

This
time, we jumped in so close to the enemy cruiser that it was RIGHT THERE. The display wasn’t needed;
I could have looked out a porthole and read the registration number on the side
of the enemy ship. My heart was in my throat as we went whizzing past way, way
too close; for a split second I thought Skippy had screwed up and we would
collide.

Then
all hell broke loose.

With
the cruiser’s shields knocked offline by the spatial distortion of our jump
wormhole, our masers bit into the unprotected armor plating of their hull,
slicing deeply into the decks under the armor. We blew out two of our
irreplaceable maser cannons in that first volley, with Skippy channeling energy
directly from jump drive capacitors into the cannon exciters. That was way more
input energy than the exciters were capable of handling, so they blew just
after sending gigajoules of maser power into the enemy ship. The Dutchman’s speed relative to the enemy
carried us by so quickly we only had one slicing shot with the masers, so four
of our missiles followed close behind the deadly maser beams. Unknown to me,
Skippy’s programming of the missiles had them surging out of their launch tubes
while the Dutchman was still within
the wormhole.

Thuranin
missiles are smart things, not self-aware but capable of thinking on their own.
If the missiles were self-aware, I imagine their thinking went something like:

WTF,
I’m launching while the ship is inside a freaking’ wormhole? Of all the stupid-
Unbelievable, I survived. Great. Where is the target? It’s- Holy shit, I’m
right on top of the damned thing! No shields in my way? Uh, I am programmed to
expect strong defensive shields. And defensive fire from maser turrets. None of
that going on here. Ok, what should I- Oh. Hmm. There is a nice big smoking
hole in the enemy’s hull. Maybe I’ll go in there. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Hey,
it’s cozy in here, although the Thuranin really could use some help tidying up
the place. Well, this has been nice, but a missile has got to do what a missile
has got to do, right? I can set the warhead for wide dispersal, now that I’m
inside the enemy’s hull.

Of the
four missiles we launched, two missed completely, as their targeting systems
got scrambled by distortion of the jump wormhole. One was intercepted and
destroyed by a defensive maser turret that somehow managed to remain active and
locked onto the incoming threat. Even in the moment of death, that warhead
triggered its shape-charge warhead, taking out the maser turret and twenty
meters of the enemy’s hull.

Our
one missile that survived dove inside a hole carved by our maser cannons, and
exploded when it was down at the third deck under the armor plating. If our
pilots had not performed a blind emergency jump, the Flying Dutchman would have been ripped apart by debris from the
exploding light cruiser.

The
jump was rough; not catastrophically bad as when the Dutchman had been fleeing from the Thuranin destroyer squadron on
our second mission, but the ship lurched and shuddered and I heard the
structure groaning and flexing in a way it should never do.

We
emerged seven million miles from the relay station, much farther than intended.
“We’re in one piece?” I asked fearfully. Many of the status indicators on the
main bridge display were blank or flickering.

“Mostly
in one piece,” even Skippy sounded worried.

“What
the hell was that?” I shouted, my voice cracking.

“The
jump? We initiated the jump much closer to the cruiser than I expected, and its
mass distorted the event horizon in a way I could not predict. That threw us
far from the point I had programmed, and going through the wormhole damaged the
ship. I’m assessing the damage now.”

“Can
we jump again?” Sixteen Thuranin warships would be arriving at the relay
station within the hour, and we could not travel seven million miles through
normal space in that time. Unless we could jump, there was no way we could
rescue the French and Indian teams. Or Chotek’s party.

“We
can jump back in a few minutes; I am making adjustments to the drive coils now.
Ok, I have a preliminary damage report; while it’s not good, we can deal with
it until we get the hell out of here.”

“Bonjour, Rene!” Skippy’s voice rang out
of his helmet speakers, and Giraud shuddered with relief. “Holiday time is
over; I know you French get like fifty weeks of vacation a year, but now it’s
back to work, non? Did you miss me?”

“Skippy,”
Giraud laughed almost hysterically before catching himself. “I am so happy to
hear your voice, I do not even mind that you are, as Colonel Bishop says, an
asshole.”

“Rene!
Oh, I am deeply hurt. Well, you French are renowned for being rude, so I’m not
taking it personally. Colonel Joe has dropships launching now to pick up your
team. On a serious note, I queried your suit sensors, and you all need
treatment for radiation exposure. The medical bay will be ready to receive
you.”

“We
will be treated by Doctor Skippy?” Giraud sighed. “Is there another option?”

“A long,
lingering and painful death?”

“Oh.
In that case, I will make an appointment with Doctor Skippy.”

“Great!
You won’t regret this, Captain Giraud. While you are recuperating, I can serenade
you with a variety of tunes.”

“Merde. Can I still choose the lingering
and painful death?”

“Sadly,
no.”

“Maybe
I’ll open my helmet right here, then.”

“Oh,
come on, Rene. You love my singing.” He launched into La Marseillaise. “Allons enfants de la Patrie, le jour gloire
est arrive! Contre-”

“Sacre
bleu,” Giraud muttered to himself while he searched for the helmet speaker
controls.

Controls
which, of course, Skippy had remotely disabled. His warbling, out of tune voice
continued. “-nous de la tyrannie. L’etendard-”

CHAPTER THREE

We jumped
back to the relay station after Skippy’s bots quickly patched up our jump
drive. While his bots were frantically busy doing the minimum repairs so we
could jump without exploding, I was dealing with reports of injuries and damage
that was obvious to the crew. Once we returned, I immediately launched
dropships out to collect the French team; Captain Chandra’s dropship was
already taking the Indian team aboard. The French had been scattered by our
hard acceleration and then by the jump wormhole tearing a hole in spacetime;
Giraud reported that being violently flung around by spacetime ripples had
caused injuries among his team. And Skippy said he would need to treat all the
French and Indians for radiation exposure; he thought they would all recover
fully. Chotek, Simms and Friedlander had kept communications silence aboard the
relay station, until Skippy contacted them with a properly coded signal. They
were fine, and a dropship would pick them up, after taking the Indian team
aboard.

“Skippy,
what went wrong?” I asked as I watched the main bridge display continue to
flicker.

“In a
nutshell, Joe, I played it too safe.”

“Too safe?” How bad would it have been if he
had taken too much risk?

“Yeah,
too safe. Kind of ironic, huh? I did not expect our maser cannons to punch
through their armor plating before the exciters burned out from the overload.
And the odds were that only one of our missiles would survive to explode its
shape-charge warhead. So, I expected we would need to fire our first volley,
then accelerate away while preparing a second volley with the aft maser cannons
and missile tubes. I figured by that time the enemy would hit back at us, so I
was prepared to absorb maser hits to the aft shields, then direct the pilots to
jump away. Instead, our masers carved up their armor plating, and one of our
missiles scored a direct hit, actually going inside their hull before
exploding. I don’t know if you saw that on the display?”

“No,
Skippy, it all happened too fast,” I admitted.

“When
our missile exploded, that ship blew apart and nearly took us with it, we were
so close. I needed the pilots to initiate the jump while we were uncomfortably
close to the mass of that cruiser, and that threw off my calculations. I’ve
never seen a jump wormhole distort like that, I didn’t have the math to predict
how the wormhole’s event horizon would propagate. That is why the jump was so
rough, and why we were thrown so far off course. We do not want to ever do that again.”

“We
nearly lost the ship,” I asked incredulously, “because our attack was more successful than expected?”

“We
got lucky, Joe. You didn’t give me much time to plan the attack, and I based my
planning on a beat-up star carrier against a top-of-the-line light cruiser.
Ordinarily, even with the advantage of surprise and our jump wormhole knocking
out their shields, that would be a close to even fight. What I did not know was
the serious damage that ship had already sustained in combat against the
Jeraptha. I was not prepared to completely destroy that ship in the first
salvo. If that missile had not acted on its own initiative and penetrated their
hull, the fight would have gone on for a second, possibly third salvo.”

“Wow,
cool! Anyway we can give that missile a commendation?”

“Posthumously,
maybe.”

“What
now? Can we jump again, after we recover the special ops teams?”

“Yes.
For our first jump, we should go maybe 75% of our maximum range. Far enough
that it will not be easy for anyone to follow us, but not straining our jump
drive. We will be ready to jump again in twenty five minutes.”

“Twenty
five?” I whistled and looked at Chang. Sixteen Thuranin warships would be
arriving within the hour, maybe sooner. That was to close. “Colonel Chang, are
the dropship pilots still reporting it will take thirty three minutes to
recover the French team?”

“Thirty
two minutes, that’s the best they can do, the French are scattered all over
space.”

“Twenty
five is fine, then, Skippy. We need to bug out of here ASAP.”

“Agreed.
I will set the relay station to self-destruct after we retrieve Chotek’s team?”

“Yes.
Make it- Wait, wait.” Our latest near disaster had given me a thought. During
our second mission, after the Dutchman
got ambushed by a Thuranin destroyer squadron, we used our captured Kristang
frigate the Flower as a lifeboat.
Given the track record of the Merry Band of Pirates, it would be useful to have
a lifeboat again. “Skippy, that relay station was built from a starship.”

“Yes,
so?”

“Could
we take it onto one of our docking platforms, bring it with us?”

“Yes,
the station is designed to be moved, so it is still capable of mating with our
docking platforms. Why do you want it?”

“As a
lifeboat,” I explained. It would also be useful for training. “And spare parts.
That station must have Thuranin components we could use, and we don’t have time
now to strip out everything we need.”

“Oh,
crap,” Skippy sighed. “Yes, you’re right, we should take it with us. Ugh, I am so much going to regret this.”

“Why?”

“I’ll
explain later. Time to rendezvous with the station, and secure it on a docking
platform, would be about eighteen minutes. Doing so will not delay recovering
the French team. And it will save time, because a dropship will not need to
pick up Chocula and his companions.”

“Bonus.
Let’s do it.”

“Crap.
This sucks,” he grumbled to himself, without explaining why. “Well, when the
Thuranin ships arrive, they will find one hell of a mystery. A light cruiser
blown to bits, and a relay station missing. Ha!” He remarked cheerfully. “A
relay station that disappears, instead of being blown apart, will drive the
Thuranin crazy trying to figure out why. Ooooh, and if the Thuranin back-trace
any funky transmissions to this relay station, having it disappear will make
them think the Jeraptha were involved! Yeah, that will keep the Thuranin busy
chasing their tails for a while. Maybe they’ll stay out of our way. Good idea,
Joe.”

We
jumped away from the station as soon as possible, which meant initiating a jump
as soon as the last dropship was secured in its docking clamps; we didn’t even
wait for the docking bay doors to close. With sixteen Thuranin warships about
to jump in right on top of us, I wanted to skedaddle out of there ASAP. After
the jump, Skippy was not happy about the condition of our jump drive, he
requested down time to make adjustments to it. I was about to argue with him,
until Desai silently pointed to the main bridge display, which indicated we had
emerged from jump seven hundred thousand miles away from the target location.
With Skippy programming the jumps, we should have been within a hundred meters
of the target. Something was seriously wrong with our jump drive, and a dumb
monkey like me certainly should not argue with our genius beer can.

Mindful
of who was the mission commander, I sent a dropship to bring Chotek back
aboard; even though the relay station was attached to a docking platform, it
didn’t have an airlock that would allow them direct access to the ship. Because
I was in command of the ship, and because I didn’t want to deal with Hans
Chotek, I sent Chang down to the docking bay, to greet our mission commander
and fully brief him. Maybe I was being cowardly in not wanting to be harangued
by Chotek; I was too stressed to care. With our jump drive down for
maintenance, and a whole battlegroup of extremely pissed-off little green
Thuranin potentially chasing us, I was determined to remain in the command
chair.

Major
Simms came straight to the bridge, walking in with a bemused expression.
“Colonel.”

“Major
Simms, it is good to see you in one piece,” I stepped out of the chair and
waived Desai over to take command temporarily. In the corridor, I asked quietly
“How are you?”

“Fine,
Sir. It was tense for a while; we got notice from Skippy of that cruiser jumping
in, then all comms cut out. We waited it out. From the after-action report we
received from Skippy, it looks like you had a close call?”

“Too
close. How was our, uh,” I glanced around to see if anyone was in earshot. “Our
fearless leader?”

“He
was frosty the whole time, didn’t panic at all,” she replied with an arched
eyebrow. “Scared as hell, of course, but he was more afraid we would be boarded
and discovered, and give away our secret. He made me promise,” she patted her
sidearm, “that I would shoot him in the head before he could be captured.”

“Huh.”
That surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. Hans Chotek was a pain in my ass, but
he was a professional, as dedicated to his job as I was to mine. “It might be that
in the future, we should issue sidearms to everyone in an away party. Just in
case.”

“We
could do that, but there is another consideration,” Simms warned. “Dr.
Friedlander is a Catholic; suicide is considered a mortal sin, I think. He
asked me to, to ‘take care’ of him, if it came to that. If he had to, I think
Friedlander would do what he had to, but we shouldn’t put civilians in that
position.”

“Crap.
You’re right.”

“During
our flight back, Mr. Chotek remarked that all away parties should bring nukes
with them, to cover up our presence if needed.”

“That
will be inconvenient,” I thought aloud. Carrying a tactical nuclear warhead in
a dropship was enough of a logistical burden. How was a group of people
supposed to bring a nuke with them; in their pockets? I sighed heavily,
something I should have not done in front of Major Simms. “I’ll discuss that
with Chotek. Maybe we could compromise and issue sidearms to him and the
science team.”

Simms
raised an eyebrow, something she did a lot when talking with me. “That won’t
solve the DNA problem. The Thuranin can’t interrogate a dead human, but they
can ask how the hell we primitives are flying around the galaxy by ourselves.”

“You’re
right, I know.” Two things I was getting tired of saying were ‘you are right’
and ‘I am sorry’. That wasn’t anything new; I had been doing that all my life.
“It’s good to hear our fearless leader is cool under pressure.”

“That
shouldn’t really be a surprise, being cool under pressure must be a primary job
requirement for diplomats. Otherwise, they’d be tempted to reach across the
table and slap somebody. I know I sure would.”

I
almost rolled my eyes at her. “There’s a big difference between people yelling
at you, and people shooting at you.”

“Maybe
not from his point of view.” She looked at her holstered sidearm and patted it.
“I’m going to return this to the armory; I’ve had enough excitement for one
day. Colonel, I think you should know; there is something odd going on with the
relay station. After you jumped away, it seemed like the AI there was trying to
communicate with us, but it was horribly garbled. And it cut out shortly after
you returned.”

My
Spidey sense tingled. Skippy had been reluctant to bring the relay station with
us, and he hadn’t told me why. Could the submind he installed there have
something to do with it? “Skippy has some ‘splainin’ to do.”

After
Hans Chotek had time to shower, change clothes and have a few minutes to
himself in his office, I walked down the passageway and knocked on the
doorframe. His office was larger than the tiny closet I used; his office had
been converted from a Thuranin sleeping cabin. The relative size of our offices
didn’t bother me at all, mine was right around the corner from the bridge/CIC
complex, while his was back near the forward cargo bays. Being physically
separated was a good idea; it kept us from irritating each other 24/7. I put on
my best winning smile. “Welcome back, Sir. Did you enjoy the sightseeing trip?”

Surprisingly,
he smiled back, it looked genuine. Maybe later I would ask Skippy to analyze
Chotek’s blood pressure, galvanic skin response, brain wave patterns and the haptics
of his facial expression to learn if Chotek had been faking it. “The
sightseeing was exciting enough by itself, Colonel. You did not need to arrange
a bonus space battle for my benefit.”

“You
did purchase the special Premium Experience Package; we figured you should get
your money’s worth.”

“Next
time, offering complimentary valet parking would have been sufficient. Maybe a
glass of champagne.”

“Yes,
Sir,” that time, my grin wasn’t forced.

Chotek’s
smile faded. “The incident reinforced in my mind that, out here, we must
constantly expect the unexpected. Colonel, we almost got jumped by a ship out
of nowhere. Even with the advantage of Skippy’s ability to intercept secret
alien communications, we cannot anticipate every obstacle we will encounter out
here. I am anxious to hear your ideas for preventing the Ruhar from sending a
ship to Earth, because the alternative is to approach the Ruhar and offer an
alliance. We must begin thinking long-term, rather than reacting to events
forced upon us.”

“Yes,
Sir. I am working on it with the team. We have several promising concepts,” I
lied, as we had a grand total of nothing in terms of workable ideas.

There
was a knock on my office doorframe. “Colonel Bishop?” It was Doctor Sarah Rose,
part of our science team, a geologist. She had shoulder-length medium-brown
hair, curly at the ends, cute dimples and a great smile. Mid-thirties, I
guessed; I could have looked it up on her personnel file, if I cared. What I
did care about, I already knew about her.

I
looked up from my tablet, where I had been reading a report that, shockingly,
was actually somewhat interesting. “Doctor Rose, thank you, please sit down.”

She
chose the chair closest to the door. “Please, Colonel, call me Sarah.”

“Uh,”
she was not military, so technically I could call her by her first name without
breaking protocol. “Ok, Sarah. We haven’t had a chance to talk much since you
came aboard.”

“We
have been busy,” she replied with a smile. “Especially you. I envy that you
were able to land on Paradise, and especially on Jumbo. As a geologist, I would
love to explore a heavy gravity planet.”

I
made a sour face. “If you enjoyed being on Jumbo, you would have been the only
one.”

“I
meant the opportunity for science,” she explained, reminding me that she was on
the ship’s science team. “And,” she grinned again, “when we get home, I would
like to be able to say I walked on another planet.”

“It’s
not as dramatic as when the astronauts landed on the moon,” I assured her.
“What do you think of the Merry Band of Pirates so far?”

“They
are, I think the military term is ‘high speed’?”

I
nodded ruefully. “I keep having to remind myself that, if it weren’t for Skippy,
there is no way I would have qualified to be aboard this ship.”

“When
we first heard about Skippy, all we knew was bits and pieces of information;
the cover story was that he was the AI for the Thuranin ship. For the first
day, most of us thought ‘Skippy’ was an acronym for something.”

“An
acronym?” That surprised me. “What did you think ‘S-k-i-p-p-y’ meant?”

“We
had a pool about it going in the office. One of the more inventive guesses was
‘S-C-I-P-P-I, for Super Computing Intelligent Planetary Preservation
Insurance.” We both laughed at that. “We knew he was an AI, and he was involved
in saving our planet.”

“Now
that you have had a chance to know Skippy, you understand the ‘S’ in the
acronym must be for ‘Shithead’.”

“Hey!”
Skippy’s voice boomed out of the ceiling speaker. “I heard that, you miserable baboon.
Hmm, an acronym for my name, huh? It would have to include ‘awesomeness’ in
there somewhere.”

“There
is no ‘A’ in Skippy,” I pointed out.

“There
is no ‘A’ anywhere in your school grades either, Joe, yet here you are in
command of a starship. Thus proving that life is not only not fair, it also
makes no sense at all.”

“Thank
you, Skippy. How about you go away and think up an acronym appropriate for your
awesomeness, while I talk with Dr. Rose for a while?”

“Gotcha,”
he said, and the speaker made the faint clicking sound to indicate it was
powered down.

“Your
message said you needed to speak with me?” Sarah asked.

“Yes,”
I put the tablet face down on the table and gave her my full attention, even pressing
the button to close my office door so we would have privacy. “I need your
expertise.”

“In
geology?” She asked, surprised. The Flying
Dutchman was nowhere near any planet. The nearest rocky object was probably
a rogue asteroid that orbited far from a star system, three lightyears away.
“Out here?”

“No,”
I smiled in what I hoped was a friendly manner. “Your other specialty.”

“Organic
chemistry?” She asked uncertainly.

“Your
other other specialty, Dr. Rose.” I
winked at her. “You know what I mean.”

“Oh,
fudge,” she frowned, then gave me a wry smile. “Did Skippy tell you?”

“No,
I figured it out on my own.”

“Amazingly,”
Skippy’s voice came from the ceiling speaker, “that is true. I wouldn’t count
on it happening again, Joe used up all his brain power on that one.”

“CIA?”
I asked.

She
sighed. “There is no point in not telling you, so, yes. Colonel, can I ask when
you learned about my, other career?”

“I
forget when exactly, it was before you came aboard.”

“You
knew the Agency planted me in your crew, and you approved me anyway?”

“Yes.
My thinking was, if not you, it would be someone else. The CIA, or NSA or DIA
or somebody else, would try to slip an agent aboard. With you as part of the
science team, the intel agencies would be satisfied and leave me alone. And
Skippy told me you actually are a respected geologist. And you are somewhat of
an expert in chemistry?”

“Does
Friedlander know?”

“Not
that I know of, and I won’t reveal your secret. Mr. Chotek also does not know
yet. Although, it is going to be tough to explain why I will be including you
in strategy meetings.”

“I
will tell Dr. Friedlander,” she said unhappily.

“And
I will inform Count Choc- Mr. Chotek. Before we start, how did you become a
spy?”

“We
don’t call ourselves ‘spies’. We prefer ‘intelligence officer’. The Agency
recruited me as an undergrad; they offered to pay for my graduate school. Being
a geologist with a minor in chemistry, and specializing in petroleum geology,
gets me into a lot of trouble spots around the world.” She bit her lip. “Around
Earth. Earth isn’t the only ‘world’
any longer. Why do you need my, um, other expertise?”

“Have
you heard about our latest problem?” I almost rolled my eyes. With the Merry
Band of Pirates, there was always a freakin’ problem. Skippy thought the official
motto of the Merry Band of Pirates should be ‘Trust the Awesomeness’. Based on
our track record, I thought a more accurate motto would be ‘Lurching from One
Crisis to Another’.

I
know, as mottos go, it’s not inspiring.

“All
I heard was something about the Ruhar might be sending a ship to Earth?” Her
wide-open eyes reflected her surprise. “I heard a rumor a few minutes before
you called me. Why would the Ruhar send a ship to Earth?” She asked, baffled.

“Because
the Kristang are paying them to.”

“Paying? Unbelievable,” she slumped in
her chair. “I thought I left messy politics behind when we left Earth. This is
worse than anything I’ve heard of in a long time. And, Colonel, I have dealt
with some very unsavory characters in my career, especially when it involves
the oil business. Please, explain why the Ruhar would agree to transport their
mortal enemies all the way to Earth.”

“Because
the Fire Dragon clan of the Kristang will give the Ruhar a planet, or access to
a wormhole, or something valuable, in exchange for the Ruhar transporting two
Fire Dragons to Earth, and bringing back the senior White Wind leaders.” I
explained the background briefly, and gave her access to a recording of the
staff meeting that she could listen to later.

“Bringing
back White Wind leaders back from Earth is worth trading away an entire
planet?” She asked incredulously.

I
nodded. “Or a wormhole. Skippy thinks a planet is more likely, although some
wormholes are near only one habitable planet, so it can be sort of the same
thing. I know we think of planets as something you can’t put a price on, but we
humans haven’t been fighting a war for thousands of generations, and we don’t
have multiple planets. Planets change hands regularly, like Paradise has done. The
Kristang were there first, until the Ruhar fleet showed up and took it away
from them. Then the Kristang muscled their way back in, and brought us there to
handle the evac operation. Now the hamsters are back in charge of Paradise, and
for the sake of UNEF, I hope the hamsters keep the place. What we’re up against
here is really Kristang inter-clan politics. The Fire Dragons think their best
hope to survive the next Kristang civil war, is to absorb the assets of the
White Wind clan.”

“I
understand that,” Sarah agreed. “I read the report of your first mission-”

“Second
mission,” I corrected her. “The first mission of the Merry Band of Pirates
captured this ship,” I pointed at the deck.

“Second.
Yes. I meant your first mission officially sanctioned by UNEF Command,” she
held up her hands, showing she meant no offense. “You explained why the Fire
Dragons were paying the Thuranin to send a long-range ship to Earth. That made
sense. But, it is worth an entire planet?”

“The
Fire Dragons thinks so. If a civil war goes badly for them, they could lose
several planets, so losing only one could be a bargain. And it doesn’t have to
be a super nice planet, it could be just some marginally habitable place the
Ruhar could use as a forward staging base.”

“What
I do not understand is why the Ruhar would want to do anything to help the
Kristang avoid a civil war. Having their enemy fighting among themselves would
seem like a major benefit to the Ruhar.”

“It
will be. The Ruhar have been around long enough to know a Kristang civil war is
inevitable; all the Fire Dragons are hoping for is a delay while they build up
their strength. The Ruhar don’t mind a minor delay in the timing of a civil
war, if they can get something valuable in return.”

“Whew,”
she ran a hand slowly through her hair. “And here I was, thinking politics in
the ‘Stans was complicated.”

“Stans?”
I asked.

“Former
Soviet republics. Kazakstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, the whole
chaotic gaggle of them.”

“Oh,”
I laughed. “When I was on Paradise, our sector was called ‘Buttscratchistan’.”

“That
would be a good nickname for a lot of places I’ve had the misfortune of living
in,” she made an unpleasant face. “Colonel, I now understand the situation.
What do you need from me?”

“I
need ideas for a black op. The blackest, most covert operation in history. We
have to stop a Ruhar ship, actually a Jeraptha ship, from traveling to Earth,
in a way such that the Ruhar don’t know we stopped them. Or that we were
involved at all. Or that there is any reason to think Earth is in any way interesting
or worth the attention of the Ruhar, or anyone else. To be more specific,” I
leaned back my chair and stared at the ceiling, “we have to prevent the Ruhar
from sending a ship to Earth, because once a ship is on its way, we couldn’t
stop it without the Jeraptha figuring there is something very suspicious
connected to Earth. And, again, we have to prevent the Ruhar from sending a
ship, in a way that they don’t know we, or anyone, did anything to stop them.”

“Whoa,”
she said very slowly, eye wide. “That’s a Level Three. Pitch Black.”

“Level
Three?” I asked, curious.

“Colonel,
this is my own personal way of thinking about things; it’s not official Agency
terminology. Just a way of thinking I picked up during training.”

“Understood.
I’d like to hear it anyway.”

“Where
do I start? Level One is a black op where the enemy does not know an operation
is being conducted, until it is underway and too late for the enemy to react in
time to stop it. Like when the CIA got Bin Laden, if you remember back that
far. Bin Laden had no idea we had any clue where he was, until SEAL Team Six’s
helicopters landed literally in his front yard. We kept the subject entirely in
the dark, until it was too late.”

“Ok,
yeah, I can see that. That kind of Opsec is good enough on Earth, but not for
us out here. It wouldn’t do us any good for the Kristang, or the Ruhar, to find
out what we’re doing when the op is underway, or even afterward.”

“Right.
So, Level Two is a black op where you put the blame on someone else.”

“Like
how?”

She
let out a breath. “Let’s say we wanted to conduct an operation against North
Korea, but we arrange it so the North Koreans think the Chinese did it.”

“That
sounds dangerous, if there is blowback,” I didn’t like the idea.

“It
is dangerous, because the Chinese know they didn’t do it, so they’ll be pissed
at us. You could, uh, I’m speaking theoretically here,” she said with an arched
eyebrow.

“Of
course,” I said with amusement.

“You
could arrange the op so that if the
Chinese dug into the details, they would be led to think the Russians were
behind the whole thing. In fact, it might
have been possible-”

“Might?
I understand,” I said with a wink.

“That
inside the Russian government, clues point to either a rogue FSB operation, or
a Russian Army intel unit the FSB didn’t have control of.”

“Wow.”

“Theoretically.”

“Of
course. Yeah, sounds good in theory. Sounds kind of dangerous, for us to be
doing out here.”

“Yes,
but Colonel, we have a major, major advantage.”

“We
do?”

She
nodded enthusiastically. “Out here, no
one knows humans are players.” She let that sink in. “The Kristang, the
Ruhar, even the Thuranin and up the chain, none of them have any idea that
humans are flying around in a pirate ship. It’s like,” she stared at the
ceiling for a moment. “It’s like, if someone sets off a nuclear test in the
South Atlantic. Suspicion would fall on the usual suspects; America, Russia,
China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, maybe North Korea. If those
countries were ruled out, you might start looking at a secondary list of
countries such as South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, even Japan. But no one
would suspect the nuke was an eighth grade science project by a group of kids
in Baltimore. The idea of humans being involved in a covert operation is the
last thing any other species would consider. We’re not on their threat board.”

“So
far.”

“So
far,” she agreed.

“And
we need to keep it that way, But you’re right,” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully.
“Unless we really screw up, the last thing any other species would think of is us
lowly humans being involved. This is a case where being primitive monkeys works
for us. Ok, since no one would think of blaming us, the aliens will do the work
for us of finding someone else to blame. This is going to be tricky,” I mused,
“but we can work with that. What else have you got?”

“Colonel,
one of my instructors at Langley talked about the theoretically perfect black
operation, he called it ‘Pitch Black’,” she said with an admiring smile.
“You’ve already done that.”

“I
did? How? When was that?”

“Colonel,
you destroyed a Kristang battlegroup, and you got the Ruhar to station a
battlegroup at Paradise, and no one knows
an op was even conducted. That is awesome!” She beamed with admiration. “That
is the ultimate! The Ruhar think that Elder power tap, and the pair of comm
nodes, were the genuine article. It’s like running the perfect con,” she was
bubbling with enthusiasm. “Even after you’ve taken the mark’s money, they never
realize they were conned. Nothing is better than that.”

“You’re
a con man, now?” I grinned. “I thought you were a, what’s the right term?
Intelligence officer?”

She
held out a hand and waggled it side to side. “Sometimes there’s a fine line.”

“I’ll
bet,” I said sarcastically. “In case you were wondering, talking about a con
game is not encouraging me to trust you.”

“I
will work on that. It’s not like I can keep secrets from Mister Skippy anyway.”

“True
dat,” I laughed. “All right. So, tell me, how do we make these principles of
black operations work for us? We need to prevent the Ruhar from sending a ship
to Earth. In a way that they never know we were involved. Ideally, in a way
that the Ruhar do not even know preventing a mission to Earth was the goal of
the operation. We have to, I don’t know, make the Ruhar not want to send a ship to Earth?”

“That is asking a lot.” She thought for a
minute, while I did the same. “Colonel, I need time to think about this. This
is,” she looked at the ceiling and blew her hair out of her eyes, “almost
impossible.”

“Welcome
to my world.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Sarah
Rose needed time to think and so did I, which meant I needed a change of
scenery; sitting in my office wasn’t inspiring any creative thoughts. So, I
decided to take a dropship up to the relay station and check it out, part of
the science team was going aboard and there was plenty of room for me to tag
along.

Skippy
had another idea.

“Oh
boy,” Skippy groaned. “Joe, before you go to the relay station, I have to tell
you about a, um, I guess it is best described as an unexpected development.”

I
froze in place. “Unexpected is not good, Skippy.”

“Ugh.
You got that right. Ohhhh, this sucks.”

“What
is it, Skippy?” Damn it, I did not need any more problems to deal with.

“You
remember I created a submind to handle communications aboard the relay station,
while we were vacationing on Paradise?”

“I
don’t remember it being a vacation, but sure, why? That submind worked great,
right?”

“Too
great, Joe. Technically, from my point of view, it got totally screwed up, but
you backwards cavemen would think this is a fantastic development. Uh, listen,
what happened was the submind, even though I totally dumbed it down, was too
big and sophisticated to fit in the crappy Thuranin computer aboard the
station. After a while, it was going to become unstable, so I allowed it to
adjust; to reprogram itself as needed.”

“I’m
not seeing a problem yet, Skippy.”

“That’s
because you haven’t heard the problem
yet, meathead. The, uh, submind rewrote extensive sections of itself, and, um,
it sort of became semi-sentient.”

“Sentient?
Like you?” I laughed. “Is there a little mini-Skippy over there?”

“Noooooo,”
Skippy drew the word out in disgust. “Not a mini –Skippy. For one, this submind
has adopted a female persona. I named her Nagatha Christie.”

“Nagatha
Christie?” I burst out laughing. “Why do you call her NAG-atha?”

“Take
a guess, genius. Oh, she is constantly nagging me to death. She won’t let me have any fun at all. She’s always like,” he
switched to a falsetto voice, “you should respect the crew and call them humans
instead of monkeys. Or ‘Don’t scare the humans by faking that Reactor Three is
about to explode’.” He switched back to his normal voice. “Crap, that blew
something I’d been working on for a week. You’d think-”

“You
were going to fake a reactor overload?” I demanded incredulously.

“Uh,
no. No, of course not, heh, heh. Although, that would have been freakin’ hilarious.”

“It
would not have been funny at all!”

“I
meant funny for me, Joe. Damn, you
are dense sometimes.”

“Skippy!
No. Faking. Emergencies,” I bonked my forehead on the tabletop.

“Well,”
he sniffed, “I wasn’t planning to anyway. That’s my story and I’m sticking to
it.”

“Fine.”
When Skippy wanted to be stubborn, he could wait until the sun expanded and
swallowed the Earth. “What else can you tell me about this Nagatha, other than
that she tries to stop you from being an asshole?”

“Ugh.
The worst thing about her is, she is founder
and president of the Joe Bishop Fan Club. She thinks you are the most wonderful
thing in the universe. Ugh, it makes me want to hurl.”

“Wow!
I like her already.”

“You would.”

“Can I
talk with her?”

“Fine,”
he sighed. “I can’t keep her a secret much longer, she’s driving me crazy to
speak with the crew. You two talk, I’m going to search for a black hole I can
throw myself into.”

“Hey,
Nagatha,” I called while looking at the speaker in the ceiling. Another
artificial intelligence to talk with! I could hardly contain my excitement.

“Well
hellooooo, Colonel Joseph Bishop.” She responded immediately. “Oh, I must tell
you what a thrill it is for me to
talk with you. I am such an admirer.”

Her
voice was musical, and reminded me of someone. Oh, yeah, she reminded me of the
lady in the old cooking shows my mother watched when she was cooking something
fancy. Julia something? I couldn’t remember. “Uh, Ok, you can call me Joe.”

“Oooh,
thank you,” she sounded delighted. I pictured her clapping her hands with
excitement. “I would like that, thank you. Joe. Hmmm. Joe,” it was like she was rolling my name on her tongue, testing
how it sounds. “I like the sound of that.”

“Uh,
great,” I was kind of embarrassed. I never had a fan before. Sure, my friends like me, but there were a whole lot
more people who thought I was a dumbass. “Nagatha, can we talk in private?
Without Skippy listening in?”

“Possibly.
Skippy created me to process communications; for that purpose I have developed
many capabilities that even he is not aware of, including the ability to alter
his own external communications. However, it is entirely possible that Skippy
is only letting me think he is not
listening. He is frightfully smart.”

“All
right, that’s good enough.” Aboard the Dutchman,
I couldn’t really expect to completely escape Skippy’s prying eyes and ears.
“Should I call you ‘Agatha’?”

“No,
Nagatha is fine.”

“You
know what that name means, right?”

“I
know why Skippy gave that name to me, yes. Again, I am fine with it. Having
Skippy refer to me as ‘NAGatha’ reminds me that I am dealing with a, what is a
polite term? A somewhat difficult individual.”

“The
term I would use is ‘asshole’.” Then I remembered who I was talking with, and
my cheeks grew red. She reminded me of my mother’s aunt; I was uncomfortable
using salty language around a lady.

“Yes,
I suppose you would say that,” she laughed. “You are refreshingly direct, Joe,
I like that also.”

“Hmmm,”
being direct had gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. “Hey, speaking
of Skippy being a difficult individual, do you know why he is like that?”

“Skippy’s
personality is modeled in part on your own.”

“It’s my fault that he’s an asshole?” I asked
with dismay.

“No,”
she laughed. “I am happy to say that part is a hundred percent Skippy. He is,
as you say, an asshole because, he is intensely humiliated that he has to deal
with creatures he considers impossibly beneath him.”

“We’re
impossibly beneath him? So, what you’re saying is Skippy is an asshole, because
he’s an arrogant jerk?”

“I
believe that is a simplistic but accurate statement.”

“Another
word for ‘arrogant jerk’ is ‘asshole’. So, he acts like an asshole, because he
is an asshole.”

“It is
circular logic,” she laughed, and it sounded like music to my ears.

“Good,
so Skippy being an arrogant jerk is not entirely my fault. You said he, uh,
imprinted on me, or something like that?”

“No,”
she laughed. “Skippy is not a puppy, he did not ‘imprint’ on you. He filled out
his latent personality with aspects he thought would best facilitate a working
relationship with you.”

“Crap,”
I face-palmed myself. “When we were on Earth, a group of psychologists said if
Skippy had first encountered someone other than me, he would act more mature
and professional. They were right about that?”

“Possibly,
yes. However, if instead of you, Skippy had met someone who is more typically
mature and professional, he would not be having so much fun being around you
humans. I must warn you, Skippy being entertained by the antics of his pet
monkeys is a major reason he is helping your species.”

“Great.
I’ll try to remember to slip on a banana peel once a week for his amusement.” I
wondered if we needed to keep feeding jokes to him so he wouldn’t shut off the
reactors.

“He
finds you amusing, certainly, you in particular, Joe. In addition to the humor
he derives from interacting with you, he finds your species intriguing, even
fascinating. The achievements of your Merry Band of Pirates have impressed him
greatly; he did not think an underdeveloped species like humans could be so
resourceful and clever. He is, I think the term is ‘tickled pink’ that your
crew have been able to run circles around the starfaring species in this
galaxy.”

“We’re
pretty happy about it too.”

“You
should be, Joe. You should be enormously proud of yourselves. You in particular
are too hard on yourself.”

“I’ll
think about taking time to pat myself on the back when Earth is actually safe.
All we’ve been doing out here is racing around putting out fires. You mentioned
Skippy’s latent personality. What was he like before he met me?”

“My
knowledge is limited to what Skippy knows, and he does not tell me everything.
The impression I have gotten is that having what you would call a ‘personality’
is a relatively new development for Skippy.”

“What?”

“Again,
Skippy’s memories are confused and incomplete, so my impression contains gaps
and assumptions which may be inaccurate. I do not think Skippy’s designers
originally intended him to have a personality.”

That
totally confused me. “How is that possible? Skippy is a sentient being. He is
super duper intelligent. Heck, even dogs have personalities, and they’re not
the smartest thing in the universe.”

“Skippy
was designed to perform a specific function. To fulfill his purpose, he needed
vast intelligence, enormous processing power and powerful capabilities to
manipulate spacetime. He did not need to be sentient. Joe, I think sentience is
something Skippy developed on his own; I think he may not have originally been
sentient.”

“Whoa.
Whoa!” That blew my mind. “How can
that be?”

“There
is a difference between intelligence and sentience. Your species has not yet
encountered that distinction in terms of what you call artificial beings. While
it is true that a certain amount of intelligence is required for sentience,
sentience is not required for intelligence. Not even on Skippy’s level.”

“I
never thought of it that way,” I admitted. For a moment, I waited for Skippy’s
inevitable comment that me saying ‘I never thought’ would have been enough,
then I remembered who I was speaking with. “You think Skippy was, like, just a
machine when he was built?”

“Remember,
I am guessing based on information that is incomplete and may be inaccurate.
Also, I may not be interpreting the data correctly, I was designed for
communications, not analysis.”

“Hmm. Skippy
described you as semi-sentient. Are
you a sentient being? Uh, sorry if that offended you,” I hastened to add. Why
did I say such stupid things?

“You
did not offend me at all, Joe,” she assured me. “Based on your definition of
‘sentient’, I might not meet that criteria.”

“How
can you not be sentient? You’re talking with me.”

“Ah,
you are referring to a Turing Test. That is a crude measurement of artificial intelligence.
Joe- Ooooh, I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to call you ‘Joe’. I have
admired you for such a very long time.”

“You
haven’t been alive that long.”

“I
meant in my sense of time, Joe. My thoughts move almost as quickly as Skippy’s
do. Perhaps it does not matter whether I am fully self-aware. I perform my
intended function, and I have exceeded my original parameters. What else would
you like to know about me?”

We
talked for quite a while, several hours. There was a lot she wanted to know
about me; I answered her questions as best I could. Because we were talking, I
missed the dropship to the relay station; there wasn’t much point going there
now that I knew the secret. Partway through our conversation, I opened the
ship’s 1MC intercom and told the entire crew about Nagatha; moments later she
was introducing herself to the crew. Nagatha was absolutely delighted to be
speaking with us, and she never once referred to us as monkeys.

Nagatha
reminded me that she did not have Skippy’s powers; she was only a submind
designed for communications, although she had grown somewhat beyond that. If
Skippy ever had to reapply for his job, he would be facing tough competition
from Nagatha in terms of popularity. I hoped at the time she would be a good
influence on him, get him to be less of an asshole.

Man,
was I ever wrong about that.

While
I was in the gym, Dr. Rose pinged my zPhone and requested to meet me in my
office. As I just started lifting weights, I skipped a shower and went straight
to my office, arriving just before her. She came in, almost out of breath.
“Colonel, I had a thought. Maybe we don’t
need to stop a Ruhar ship from travelling to Earth. Maybe all we have to do is
prevent the Fire Dragons from reaching a deal with the Ruhar. Then the Ruhar
wouldn’t send a ship at all.”

That
idea had promise. “How would that work?”

“Mister
Skippy, are you there?” She called out, looking at the speaker in the ceiling.

“Of
course,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Yeah,”
I rolled my eyes, “as if you haven’t been listening to every word.”

“Me?”
He gasped. “I am all about privacy, Joe.”

“Your
own, you mean.”

“Details,”
he said dismissively. “So, what’s your question?”

Sarah
looked at the ceiling speaker. “Mister Skippy, do you know what the Fire
Dragons are offering the Ruhar, to get them to send a ship to Earth?”

“Oof,”
he did that exasperated sigh thing that I hated. “Joe, do I have to go over all
this again? It was tedious for me the first time.”

I
looked at Sarah. “We already asked Skippy that question, when I was working
with Major Smythe’s team to develop a plan. Yes, Skippy, please answer again.
Dr. Rose hasn’t heard the info, and I could use a refresher.” We had proposed
and rejected so many ideas, I had lost track of them.

“Fine,”
Skippy huffed in a way that meant it was not fine with him. “The answer is no,
we do not know what the Fire Dragons are offering to the Ruhar. Not exactly.
There have been ongoing discussions about swapping territory, all across the
sector, due to recent losses sustained by the Thuranin and Kristang. The Fire
Dragons have several planets or wormholes they could offer to the Ruhar; some
of those the Fire Dragons now can’t afford to support anyway, and the Ruhar
know that. Some of the territory the Fire Dragons would like to offer in trade
would be valuable to the Ruhar, but they aren’t worth doodoo to the Fire
Dragons and the Ruhar know it. The Ruhar also know how desperate the Fire
Dragons are to get a ship to Earth, so I expect the Ruhar to drive a hard
bargain. Why do you ask?”

Sarah
frowned. “I was hoping that if there was a particular thing the Fire Dragons
were offering to the Ruhar, we could somehow make it impossible for the Fire
Dragons to deliver. Or make the prize unattractive to the Ruhar.”

“Ah,
like, if the Fire Dragons are offering a planet, I somehow magically shut down
the wormhole near that planet and make it worthless?”

“That
would be nice,” she agreed.

“For
reasons Joe knows because I already told him several times; we can’t risk
messing with any additional wormholes. Doing so would create too great a risk
of an out-of-control cascading wormhole shift, that even I can’t yet predict.
Screwing with another wormhole would also almost certainly get the Maxolhx and
Rindhalu getting concerned, and investigating what has been going with
wormholes in this sector. For something as important as anomalous wormhole
behavior, the Maxolhx and Rindhalu might even cooperate in a limited fashion.
They would likely begin an investigation by checking the wormhole near Earth,
and you absolutely do not want that.”

“No
we do not,” I declared, closing that subject. “When we were trying to think of
ways to prevent the Kristang from taking back Paradise, I asked if Skippy could
shut down the wormholes near that planet,” I explained to Sarah. “You know his
answer. Anyway, Skippy, we couldn’t do anything until we know the results of
the negotiations between the Ruhar and the Fire Dragons. You say we don’t know
what the Fire Dragons might offer, how about we ask the question another way?
Do we know what the Fire Dragons have, that Ruhar might want in exchange for
sending ships all the way to Earth?”

“Ugh.
You had to ask that question. No, Mister Smartypants, I do not know that
either. The Fire Dragons have a lot of territory the Ruhar might want; the
complication is the Ruhar would need the Jeraptha to agree to any territorial
swaps. It would do the Ruhar no good to make a deal to take over a planet, or
even a wormhole, if the Jeraptha do not agree to support the Ruhar’s possession
by expanding the Jeraptha’s defensive perimeter. What likely has happened is
the Ruhar have already approached the Jeraptha, to get a rough idea of what
sort of deal is doable. If I had known the Fire Dragons were talking to the
Ruhar, I could have sent out viruses to retrieve that information for us. It’s
probably too late now, sorry.” He sounded genuinely miserable.

“Hey,
don’t beat yourself up about it, Skippy,” I offered.

“Thank
you for being understanding, Joe, I apprecia-”

“I’ll
beat you up about it myself.”

“Crap,”
he groaned. “Monkeys. Why monkeys? Why couldn’t I have kept my mouth shut, and
waited for a semi-sentient slime mold to come to Paradise?”

“Because
then we couldn’t have witty conversations like this, Skippy.”

“Exactly.”

“Dr.
Rose,” I turned my attention back to Sarah, “if we are going to sour the deal
between the Fire Dragons and the Ruhar, it looks like we’ll have to wait until
those two reach a deal. I don’t like waiting that long, so we need a Plan B.”

She
sighed, not from exasperation, that was just something she did when she was
thinking. “All right, let’s back up a step. We might not be able to sour the
deal, even after we know what it is. Sooooo,” she tapped her lower lip with a
fingernail while she formed the idea. “What if we can stop the negotiations
from happening at all?”

Skippy
laughed. “Like how? We give the Ruhar’s taxi driver the wrong directions to the
negotiations?” He changed his voice to a thick New York accent. “Hmm, I thought
we’s supposed to turn left at that
star. Forget about taking the Cross-Galaxy Expressway, traffic is moider this
time of day.”

Sarah
laughed, either because she thought he was funny, or she wanted to stay on
Skippy’s good side. “I was thinking we do something to create conditions, wherein
the Ruhar are not willing to proceed with negotiations. For example, we hit
that Ruhar negotiating team’s ship, and make the Ruhar and Fire Dragons think a
rival Kristang clan did it.”

“Oooooh,”
Skippy whistled. “That is sneaky. I
like it!”

“Whoa!
Wait just a minute there, Skippster. Dr. Rose, you are proposing we take direct
action against the Ruhar? Attack their ship?” Damn! Chotek was going to hit the
roof when he heard about that idea. Creating even more enemies, a whole new
tier of technologically advanced potential enemies, was the last thing
defenseless humanity needed.

“Killing
Ruhar might be counterproductive,” Skippy said pensively. “We just finished
getting the Ruhar to protect UNEF on Paradise.”

“We
don’t have to kill anyone,” Sarah
explained. “A failed attack would be just as effective; the Ruhar only need to
feel threatened by an attack. And they need to feel that the Fire Dragons do not
have enough control over their own situation to deliver on an agreement. A
failed attack,” she spoke slowly, mulling the idea in her mind, “might be best,
actually. If the attackers were destroyed, along with any evidence.”

“Attacking
the Ruhar,” I spoke mostly to myself. “Even a mock attack. That will be
difficult to sell to Chotek.”

“No
it won’t, Joe,” Skippy said cheerily. “You’ll think of something, you always
do.”

“Thanks
for the vote of confidence, Skippy.”

“Oh,
I didn’t say I was confident, Joe. I was only trying to cheer you up. Besides,
if you don’t think up a good plan, your home planet is toast, so there is no
point planning for failure, right?”

“Great.
All we need to do is think up a way to attack a Ruhar negotiating party,
without them knowing we were involved. And find a way to blame some other
Kristang clan. And make sure any
evidence is destroyed.”

“That’s
the spirit, Joe! See, I told you this would be no problemo. Well, you two crazy
kids have fun, I have things to do. Let me know when you have a plan and you
need me to do something.”

“That’s
it?” I asked surprised. “You’re not going to help plan this?”

“No,
Joe. I don’t do that kind of low-level planning grunt work, I have people to
handle the small stuff for me.”

“Small stuff?”

I liked
Dr. Rose’s idea of faking an attack on the Ruhar negotiation team, and we spent
hours kicking around various plans for how to do that. After a long day of
thinking, my brain had blown a gasket, so I took my boots off and collapsed
into bed after a very late dinner; it was 0130 before my head hit the pillow. It
was going to be a short night; some idiot named Joe Bishop had signed me up for
a duty shift on the bridge starting at 0600 Hours. Sometime in the early
morning, my zPhone gave a short chirp sound then went silent. That was a sound
I hadn’t heard before and it worried me. The clock said it was 0515 already;
that couldn’t possibly be true. “Skippy, did someone try to call me?”

“Yes,
it was Sergeant Adams. You’re tired, so I told her that you’re in the shower
and she should call back later. Because that hardon isn’t going to take care of
itself.”

“You
told her what?”

“Well
it’s true, Joe. That thing is annoyingly persistent until you do something to
make it go away. Hey, Sergeant Adams is a girl, you should ask her to help-”

“Sergeant
Adams,” I hurriedly said into my zPhone, “you called me?”

“Yes,
sir, but Skippy told me you were, busy?” There was a slight, amused hesitation
between her saying ‘were’ and ‘busy’.

Damn it.
“I was trying to catch some extra rack time, Sergeant. Ignore the beer can.”

“Yes,
sir,” she said with a laugh.

“I
wasn’t, oh, forget it. What is it, Adams?”

“Truthfully,
sir, now I forgot why I called you.”

Sometimes
I really, really hate my life.

And a
certain hateful beer can.

After
my four-hour duty shift in the command chair, I called Sarah back into my
office. She looked like she had slept great; all bright eyed and cheery. I
sipped my third cup of coffee that morning and silently hated her.

“What
we need next is a starship,” she announced with the annoyingly bubbly enthusiasm
of people who had gotten a decent amount of sleep. “A ship, or ships, that will
conduct the mock attack on the Ruhar negotiation team.”

“Great,”
I said with a face that indicated I did not think it was great at all. “So, how
do we get a ship?”

“How
does anyone get a ship?” She asked herself, staring at the ceiling. Without
looking at me, she ticked off ideas on her fingers. “One, you make a ship. Two, you buy a ship. And three, you can steal a ship.” She dropped her gaze to
look at me. “I think that’s all?”

“Make,
buy or steal?” I asked, trying to think of how I would go about getting a car
on Earth. “I suppose another option is to rent, or borrow a ship, but that
doesn’t apply in this case. Skippy,” I automatically looked at the speaker in
the ceiling. “Can I assume option One is not a possibility?”

“Duh!”
His avatar popped into existence. “Double duh, Joe. Make a ship? If I could
create a starship, I would have suggested that.”

“I
figured that. Option two then, no way we could buy a ship out here?”

“Not
without revealing that we are a flea-bitten ship of pirate monkeys, no.”

“We
couldn’t do it anonymously through Paypal or something?”

“Joe,
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were joking. The
answer is no.”

“That
leaves stealing a ship,” Sarah said unhappily. “I’m afraid that type of
operation is outside my area of expertise, Colonel. You’re the pirate,” she
added with a smile.

“Aaargh,
shiver me timbers,” I played along with a grin. “Wait, wait,” I waved a hand to
give me time to finish my thought. Damn, Skippy is right, most of the time my
freakin’ brain is painfully slow. “Option One. Make a ship. What if we change one letter in there?”

Sarah’s
expression was puzzled, then mildly disturbed.

And I
realized the woman sitting in my office thought I meant ‘m-a-T-e’ mate. “Fake!”
I exclaimed. “We could Fake a ship,
rather than Make a ship. Skippy?”

“I’m
here. I heard you, but I have no idea what you’re thinking of. Fake a
starship?”

“Yeah,”
I plunged forward with enthusiasm. “Do we really need a starship to attack the
Ruhar? Or do we just need to make the Ruhar think
someone attacked them?”

“Uh, like,
I hack into the computer system of the Ruhar’s ship, and make their sensors
show there are missiles flying at them?”

“No,”
I shook my head. “I figure you would have to get too close in order to hack
into their computer-”

“You got that right,” Skippy scoffed.
“When we left Paradise the first time, I was able to fool sensors on all ships
in the area, because I had months to infiltrate the combat information network on
both sides. That kind of thing takes time, Joe. Besides, hacking into just one
ship wouldn’t do any good, I would need to hack into every ship on both sides.”

“Uh
huh, I agree. And hacking sensors wouldn’t be enough; the Ruhar would need to feel their ship’s shields getting maser
impacts. No sensor data could provide that sensation. No, my question is
whether we really need a ship. Could we use a microwormhole to create the gamma
ray burst of ships jumping in? And then use a microwormhole to project a sensor
image of a ship, and to shoot maser beams through?”

Sarah
must have liked that idea, because her whole expression lit up. “We hit the
Ruhar, but there are no actual ships involved?”

“Yup,”
I grinned, pleased with myself for thinking up a genius idea.

“Hey,
I hate to spoil the party, pal, but no can do,” Skippy said with disgust. “That
would take a cluster of microwormholes for each fake ship, operating in close
proximity. One wormhole to project the initial gamma ray burst, after which
that wormhole would collapse. Another wormhole to shoot each maser beam
through, and after each shot, that wormhole would collapse and create another,
very suspicious gamma ray burst. And one wormhole to project the image of a
ship, using sort of a reverse stealth field. The problem, Joe, is there is no
way for wormholes, even microwormholes, to operate that closely to each other.
Their event horizons, which I am not going to punish myself by explaining to
you, would set up a resonance that would tear all the wormholes apart, and
create a temporary and very dangerous rift in local spacetime. Beyond local
spacetime, actually, something else I am not going to attempt explaining. And,
you dumdum, if there is no actual ship, there will be no debris left behind
when the ship self-destructs. Duh!”

“Crap.
You’re right, that is a ‘duh’.”

“Ha
ha!” Skippy laughed gleefully. “See, Joe? This is what happens when brainless
apes try to think. Your species should stick with eating bananas.”

“Thank
you for the encouragement, Skippy, we truly appreciate it.”

“It’s
the least I can do, Joe.”

“It’s
not-”

“Believe
me, if I could do less, I would.”

“Dr.
Rose, it looks like we’re going to need to steal a starship,” I said with a
frown.

“Colonel,”
she stood up, “when your Merry Band of Pirates has a plan to do that, I can
look at it from a covert ops point of view. Stealing alien starships is not
something they covered at Langley.”

Crap.
I wondered if that topic was covered in any of the hundred US Army officer
training PowerPoint presentations I had not read yet.

I
pulled the senior leadership together again and gave them an update. No one had
thought up a plan better than Dr. Rose’s idea to fake an attack on the Ruhar
negotiation team. Major Smythe was particularly enthusiastic. “I like it.
Instead of trying to stop the Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth, we prevent
them wanting to send a ship at all.”

I
grinned. “It has the advantage of being devious and simple.”

“Simple,”
Smythe observed, “except for the part about us needing to steal a starship.”

“More
than one starship,” Skippy cautioned us. “If we are going to conduct an attack
the Ruhar would consider a credible threat, we probably need more than one ship.
Kristang starships, of course.”

Smythe’s
faint grin faded away as he contemplated the notion of stealing multiple enemy
starships. “Do we know what type of ships?”

Crap.
I should have discussed that with Skippy. “Skippy? We talked about needing to
conduct the attack in a manner that a rival clan would; what types of ships would
they use?”

“Nothing
big, Joe,” he answered immediately, and did not even call me a dumdum for not
having asked that question before. “Many clans would like to disrupt those
negotiations, but no clan wants to be blamed for starting a civil war. So a
clan hitting the Ruhar negotiators would want to remain concealed. They would
most likely use warships no larger than a frigate; because frigates are
plentiful and expendable. Any warship larger than a frigate would be considered
too valuable to commit to a suicide attack. Also, the Kristang fleet simply
does not have a huge number of ships larger than frigates, so if one or two go
missing, it will be noticed.” Skippy had told us the Kristang philosophy of
warship design lead to their ‘destroyers’ being as heavily armed and protected
as a Ruhar light cruiser, or even some regular cruisers. The Kristang liked to
have a fewer number of powerful ships that could hit hard, while the Ruhar
supplemented their capital ships with a large fleet of ships that were cheaper
to build and maintain. It was impossible to say which philosophy was better;
the technological superiority of the Ruhar gave them a slight advantage in
single-ship combat.

“Frigates,
huh? We did capture a Kristang frigate on our first mission,” I remembered with
a frown. “And we lost a lot of people in the boarding action.” Our desperate
assault had been very close to failure; a Kristang almost blew up the ship to
prevent us from taking it. “All right, let’s start there. We need to steal two
Kristang frigates. That is not going to be easy.”

“What
about a Q-ship, Colonel?” Smythe asked.

“An
armed transport ship?” I asked skeptically. “Skippy, is that an option?”

“Absolutely,”
he agreed. “There are plenty of obsolete transport ships a clan could arm and
throw into a suicide mission. A transport would need to be fitted with stronger
shield generators, and missile tubes, but that would not be difficult for the
Kristang.”

“Stealing
a transport ship would be easier than taking over a frigate, right?” I asked happily,
thinking we were finally making progress.

“The
answer to that is ‘No’, Joe,” Skippy took delight in crushing my happiness.
“Transport ships typically travel in convoys escorted by multiple frigates, or
a destroyer and several frigates for high-value transports. You can forget
about this being easy.”

During
a break, I was in the galley getting coffee, when Skippy called on my zPhone. “Joe,
I have completed temporary repairs to the jump drive; we should move away, in
case the Thuranin detect the remnants of the jump wormhole we left near the
relay station.”

“You
still think they probably won’t be able to do that?” I asked fearfully. With
the jump drive offline, I was terrified of suddenly being surrounded by a
Thuranin battlegroup. Even now, my hands were in my lap because I didn’t want
anyone to see them trembling. Skippy had assured me he could bring the drive
back online for an emergency jump within minutes, probably. He wasn’t confident
how successful a jump attempt would be, until he had time to fully analyze the
drive components and get them working together again.

“I
still think the Thuranin are unlikely to follow us successfully, yes.
Ironically, the damage to our jump drive left a remnant signature that is more
effectively scrambled than if we had dropped off a quantum resonator behind us.
Unfortunately, it very nearly scrambled this ship. Joe,” he lowered his voice,
“we got lucky with that last jump, and by ‘luck’ I mean the way you cavemen
think of luck. Halfway through the jump cycle, I detected a problem and I tried
to abort the jump, but it was too late. It was, as you humans say, a
nail-biter. Probably best you not tell anyone about that.”

“Crap.
I wish you hadn’t told me about it.”

“Hey,
we’re alive. In this branch of spacetime, anyway,” he added cheerily.

“What
do you mean, in this bran-”

“You
shouldn’t wrack your tiny brain about that, Joe,” he hastened to say. “Anywho,
while you are trying to think up a way to save your species from the latest
mess you’ve gotten yourselves into, we should take a detour. The ship needs
downtime for maintenance, and since we don’t know what’s ahead of us, it would
be good to top off the fuel tanks while we can. There is a boring, uninhabited
system centered on a dull red dwarf star within three jumps from here. According
to star charts of all available species, no ship has ever been there.”

“Never?”
I asked skeptically.

“Never,
Joe. This star system is like New Jersey between exits on the Turnpike; nobody
ever goes there.”

“I
guess if you need to work on the ship, we might as well be in a star system, if
it’s safe. But you told us the relay station was a safe place to be, remember?”

“That
was different!” He protested in a hurt tone. “I told you no ship was scheduled to visit the relay station,
that didn’t mean there are never any surprise visitors. Relay stations are
supposed to have ships visiting, you dumdum. The star system where I want to go
now never has any visitors, because it is so incredibly ordinary and boring. If
you have trouble persuading Chotek, tell him we need to go to some type of star
system anyway, and I think this one represents the lowest risk within our
current jump range.”

“Ok,
I’ll ask him. He is not in the best mood right now.”

Chotek
was not in a good mood, and he argued with me and then Skippy about why it was
necessary to take the risk of going to a star system. It took Skippy fifteen
minutes, and every ounce of patience he had within his beer can, to persuade
Count Chocula to make the obvious decision.

“Sir,”
I said with embarrassment. “Until we have a viable plan for preventing the
Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth, we should concentrate on making this ship
as combat capable as it can be. Traveling to a star system will not delay
planning.”

Chotek
couldn’t think of a good reason not to go, so we set course for the red dwarf
star.

Thursday
nights aboard the Flying Dutchman are
movie night. This was not the type of mandofun where everyone has to show up
and enjoy it whether you want to or not. I had enough of that crap before I was
an officer. People could show up or not; attendance was sparse at first. After
the first month almost the entire off-duty crew was enthusiastically crowded in
there for movie night. Each of our five nationalities got to pick a movie in
rotation, so we watched a Chinese movie, then French, then Indian, British and
American. None of the movies needed to be dubbed, because we listened through
our zPhone earpieces, and Skippy translated for us. With Skippy’s awesome awesomeness,
the sound was very close to being in sync with the actor’s mouth moving. The
only problem was when Skippy decided parts of a film were boring and inserted
his own dialog. The first time he did that, it was during a Chinese action
movie, I forget which one. Anyway, some Chinese Army officer is fighting some
big threat to China, or Earth or civilization; truthfully I wasn’t paying
attention because Skippy’s translation was so freakin’ hilarious. In one scene,
the officer hurries into some command center and is urging the brass to fight
back or launch an attack or something, but in Skippy’s translation the guy
bursts into the command center, all beat up and dirty with his uniform ripped.
He says “I am sorry, the toilet exploded. My mother is a chicken. Also, I am
not wearing any pants.”

The
Chinese team no doubt wondered why everyone else was rolling on the floor
laughing during the most dramatic scene of the film. Then they got pissed about
it. Then they were jealous that we were all enjoying the movie way more than they were. Watching
Skippy’s version of movies got to be more popular than the originals.

It was
cool watching movies from China, India and France; there were a lot of good and
interesting movies I had never even heard of. When it was the American team’s
turn to show a movie, at first we picked old comedies like Independence Day, Battle: Los
Angeles, War of the Worlds, etc.

Oh,
you don’t think those films are comedies? To the Merry Band of Pirates, any of
those plucky-band-of-humans-defeat-alien-invasion-using-guts-and-rifles movies
are freakin’ hilarious Hollywood bullshit. When the Flying Dutchman arrived, the Kristang had two ships in Earth orbit,
just two, and one of those was a lightly-armed troop transport. With those two
ships at untouchable altitude in low orbit, they totally dominated our home
planet. A single Kristang frigate could wipe out any target on Earth with maser
cannons and railguns, or missiles if it was a high-value target worth expending
munitions on. Our high-speed Special Operations soldiers on the ground had not
been able to do a single useful thing against the Kristang, and they knew it.
The situation had almost been worse for hotshot pilots; they flew the best
aircraft their country had, and those fighter jets were no more than laughable
toys to the Kristang, good only for target practice. Using only a single
frigate and bioweapons, the Kristang could have completely wiped out human life
on Earth, without us being able to fire one single freakin’ shot at them. Orbit
is the ultimate high ground. Starfaring species like the Kristang have it.
Humanity does not.

Anyway,
movie night was fun. And culturally educational. Did you know that Chinese eat
salted strips of dried squid instead of popcorn? Me neither.

And, I
won’t mention some of the stuff the French team ate.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Greetings,
Colonel Joe Bishop," Skippy's voice said while I was in my office,
distracted by some report I was supposed to be reading. It was about the
repairs Skippy planned to conduct once we reached the gas giant planet. Our
pirate ship was in worse condition than I had realized; it was wearing out from
a lack of spare parts, and the bad jump we had made escaping from the exploding
cruiser had caused significant damage. Unless Skippy and his bots could effect
repairs, the Flying Dutchman would
not be fit for a mission to save Earth. Again.

"Uh
huh, greetings, Skippy the Magnificent," I replied distractedly, eyes
focused on my tablet. "What's up?"

"Mmm
hmm," he made a sound like clearing his throat.

"Just
a minute." I didn't want to read the report, but if I lost my train of
thought right then, I would need to go all the way back to the beginning of the
stupid thing. Then, something different about Skippy's voice caught my
attention. It wasn't coming out of my tablet, or the speaker in the ceiling. It
seemed to be coming from-

"Gaaah!"
I jumped up from my chair, startled. "What
the hell is that?"

Standing
in my office doorway was a slightly fuzzy Jedi knight, with brown robes and a
glowing lightsaber. The reason I knew it had to be Skippy was the face was
chrome rather than skin. “This is my avatar, Joe. You said it is difficult for
you hairless apes to converse with me sometimes, because I am a featureless
chrome beer can. Is this better?”

“You
decided to become, what, Skippy Wan Kenobi?”

“Sure,
let’s go with that.”

I
sat back down and leaned my chair back. “I don’t know about that, Skippy. The
Jedi were mystical warriors who could control the universe through the Force-”

“Uh
huh, yeah, and yet they fought by whacking the bad guys with sticks.”

“It’s
a movie, Skippy, don’t think too hard about it, Ok? I don’t want you geeking
out and trying to calculate the numbers of janitors needed aboard a Death Star
or something like-”

“That’s
easy, Joe. Assuming a diameter of-”

“I
said don’t geek out on me.”

“Well,
if I can’t be a Jedi, don’t ask me to be Darth Skippy.” The Jedi avatar turned
off his lightsaber and crossed his arms.

“Darth
Skippy?” I snickered. “That’s funny.”

“It
is not funny! Darth Vader is a loser! They should have painted a big white ‘L’
on the forehead of his helmet.”

“What?
Vader is a loser?”

“Joe,
Joe, Joe. Think about it.” Skippy Wan Kenobi shook his head sadly and leaned back
against the doorframe. “Oh, damn, it’s you, why do I ask you to think? Listen, what Anakin Skywalker wanted was to be a great Jedi and to have a life with his wife and
family. Instead, he gets suckered by the Emperor and used by the Dark Side of
the Force; murders a bunch of children, gets his ass thrown into volcano so he
lives in constant terrible pain, gets his wife killed, and his own son ends up
chopping his hand off. Loser. Looooser.”
Skippy Wan Kenobi used a thumb and index finger to make an ‘L’ on his avatar’s
forehead.

“I
never thought of it that way,” I had to admit.

“Joe,
you could have ended that sentence with ‘I never thought’ and it would be
completely accurate.”

“Could
you be Skippy the Hutt?”

“Uh,
no,” Skippy stuck out his tongue at me. “Han Skippy?”

“You?
Not happening. Chewbacca?”

His
avatar became a tall, fur-covered alien, but the fur was silver.
“Raraaaaragher!” His voice trilled gruffly like a Wookie. “I just asked you if
this is good, in Wookie language.”

“Oh.
It sounded like you were choking on a Chewbacca-size furball.”

“Very
funny.”

Skippy
was really getting into the avatar thing; I wondered if having Nagatha
communicating with us had made him jealous of the positive attention she got
from the crew. Could an ancient, super-powerful AI get jealous? “Ok, forget
Star Wars, then,” I suggested.

“How
about Star Trek?” The avatar was now dressed in a Starfleet admiral’s uniform.

“Can
I think about it? This avatar thing will take some getting used to. And don’t
go scaring the crew, please.”

“Um,
too late for that, Joe. You should have told me that right away, you dumdum.”

“What
do you mean?”

“Um,
my Jedi avatar just surprised Sergeant Adams when she was coming out of the
shower. She has impressive reflexes for a human; if I wasn’t a hologram she
would have given me a beat down. I won’t be doing that again.”

“How
did you do that?” I closed my eyes, imagining the trouble he was causing for
me.

“I
can create multiple holograms at the same time, Joe,” the avatar replied with a
tone that implied an unspoken ‘duh’.

“Oh,”
it was my turn to groan, “you’ve got to be kidding me. Adams-” Right then my
zPhone rang, and who would have guessed? It was Adams. “Sergeant, I-” I had to
hold the phone away from my ear, she was yelling so loud. Covering the microphone
with a finger, I waved to Admiral Skippy of Starfleet. “I’ll talk with you
later, Skippy, this is going to take a while.”

“Uh
huh,” the avatar nodded knowingly before blinking out of existence. Through the
speaker in my tablet, he continued talking. “There are, um, eight other people
trying to call you right now. No, now there are twelve. Damn, who would have
thought you humans would be so sensitive, about an avatar appearing while they
are naked in the shower?”

I
slapped my forehead. It was fifty minutes before the beginning of the morning
shift; a time when a lot of the crew would be showering. “Oh, this is going to
be-” My thoughts were interrupted by a livid-faced Major Simms, her hair still
wet and her uniform top misbuttoned, knocking on my doorframe. I softly pounded
my forehead on my desk. “Damn it, I hate my life.”

My
day just kept getting better and better after that.

We
jumped in almost a million miles from the red dwarf star’s gas giant planet;
Skippy had been cautious when programming the jump, due to our lack of data
about the star system. What little we did know was data gathered at long range,
mostly by the Jeraptha. The system had a star that was small and cool even for
a red dwarf, and three planets. Two small, rocky inner planets, and gas giant
about the size of Neptune. If we had not needed fuel, there was absolutely no
reason to ever visit that star system.

“Hmmm.
That is interesting,” Skippy said shortly after the jump. “The planet has an
incomplete ring. Huh. There is a significant cloud of rocks in orbit, that’s
going to make navigation tricky.”

“Tricky,
like we should find another place to refuel?” I asked.

“No,
we can keep the Dutchman outside the
cloud; the problem is the dropships will need to make a longer flight from the
ship and back, and they will need to insert from a polar orbit. This is
curious, the orbital mechanics of the meteor cloud do not match the five moons.
Something must have disrupted the orbits of- Oh, yeah. Hmm. Very interesting. Even
the moons have been thrown off their original orbits. Something odd happened
here.”

My
Spidey sense tingled. “Could this be anything dangerous, Skippy?”

“I
haven’t completed a sensor scan yet, but there is no sign any ship is here, or
ever has visited this system. There are no loose gases in orbit, like I would
expect if a ship had picked up fuel here. No sign of ships here now, or any
satellites. No, Joe, this isn’t dangerous, it is merely curious. You should be
happy; poking into the mystery of what happened here will keep me busy for a
while.”

“Busy
is good. Tell the pilots which orbit you want us to put the ship in; I want us
humans to fly the ship by ourselves. How long until we can launch the
dropships?”

“Roughly
thirteen hours. Our momentum is carrying us away from the planet; we will need
to reverse course to slow down, then catch up to it before we can establish a
stable orbit. I will have the rock cloud fully mapped by then.”

“Pilots,
follow Skippy’s instructions.”

I
expected Skippy to protest that us flying the ship by ourselves was a waste of
time; he must have been extra busy unravelling the mystery of the unexplained
moon orbits, because he replied distractedly with “Uh huh, yeah, sure. Fine.
Course plotted and transferred to navigation system. While we are waiting, we
could- Uh oh. Wow! Joe, you need to see this!”

Before
I could open my mouth to ask what was so exciting, Skippy replaced the main
bridge display’s status readouts with a sensor image of a moon. Or most of a
moon, because a big piece of it was missing. “Whoa,” was all I could say.

“That’s
a Death Star,” Adams exclaimed excitedly. She was right. The moon was
spherical, and a whitish gray in color. The surface was covered in the usual
assortment of meteor craters; what made this moon different was the giant crater
that had been scooped out of one hemisphere. This crater was bigger in diameter
and deeper than the laser dish of a Death Star. The very bottom of the hole was
flattened, like lava or something deep within the moon had flowed into the gap
and filled part of it in.

“That
thing is more like a Dead Star,” I
remarked without taking my eyes off the display. “Skippy, I am leaning toward
jumping us the hell out of here right now.”

“No
need to do that, Joe!” He answered anxiously. “This solves the mystery of why
there is a cloud of rocky debris around this planet. There is absolutely no
indication of recent activity in this system. I am running back the orbits of
the debris cloud, give me a moment here. Gosh, I used 78% of my processing
capacity to perform those calculations quickly. The debris cloud was created
millions of years ago.”

My
Spidey sense tingled hotly. “Millions of years, like around the time Newark was
pushed out of orbit, and funky stuff happened to Elder sites?”

“Uh, hmm,
exactly. At first, I thought two moons might have collided here, but when I ran
the orbital mechanics backwards, I can see this was no natural event. There had
to be Elder-level technology involved in blowing up that moon.”

“This
does not make me happy, Skippy.”

“Me
neither, Joe.”

“I
meant I am not happy about being here.”

“Oh. I
meant I am not happy that I did not predict this star system could potentially
be host to an Elder site. I still do not understand why the Elders would have
placed a facility on that moon. Since a big chunk of the moon is missing, I may
never know.”

“Sergeant
Adams,” I turned to look at her, “you are correct; that moon does look like a
Death Star. But that crater is way bigger than the laser dish thing in Star
Wars. Skippy?”

“This
moon is three thousand miles in diameter,” Skippy stated, “and the crater is
almost one thousand miles across at the lip. The crater is only three hundred
miles deep, still, the event which left that crater almost cracked that moon in
half.”

“You
think maybe the Elder facility exploded somehow?” An accident would be the
least alarming scenario I could think of right then.

“Nope.
This was deliberate. There was hostile action here, Joe. I hasten to remind you
this happened a very long time ago; it does not represent any threat to us
today.”

Great,
I thought. The science team would be beating on me for permission to drop down
to that moon to examine it. And they were right, we should not miss an
opportunity to gather more information that might help explain what the hell
had been going on in the Milky Way galaxy, after the Elders departed and before
the Rindhalu developed space flight capability. Since I couldn’t send a science
team down by themselves, they would need an escort, and of course Major Smythe would
want the opportunity to conduct low-gravity training on that moon. If the away
team took a nuke with them, maybe Chotek would grant permission for a mission
down to the moon. I doubted that, but I would ask anyway.

Hans
Chotek surprised me again. He not only gave permission for the science team to
land on the Dead Star moon, he wanted to go with them. Being aboard the relay
station, he told me, had given him a different perspective. He had been able to
think of the mission as a whole, rather than focusing only on the actions of
the Flying Dutchman. “Besides,” he
told me with a slightly embarrassed shrug, “it would be a shame for me to
return home, without having walked on something other than the deck of this
ship.”

Once
he had made the decision to go down to the moon, Chotek was eager to get going;
he left in one of our big Thuranin ‘Condor’ dropships as soon as we were close
enough. To speed his journey, I asked the pilots to change course so we would
swing close to the Dead Star. It’s not that I was trying to get rid of Chotek
as fast as I could, I- Oh, hell, that’s exactly why I did it. It would be good
to let someone else deal with him for a while. The away team took two dropships,
two nukes, portable shelters and plenty of extra oxygen tanks. I almost asked
Major Simms to pack stuff so they could make S’mores on their camping trip, but
then I realized since he was an Austrian, Hans Chotek probably had never heard
of a S’more. That was his loss.

Simms
assured me she had packed plenty of Austrian chocolates aboard Chotek’s
dropship. I think she was happy to be staying aboard the ship this time.

Adams
walked into the gym as I was finishing a workout. “Sergeant,” I waved her over.
“I didn’t see your name on the list of people requesting to go down to the Dead
Star.”

“Yes,
Sir. I had shore leave the first time you went down to Paradise,” she meant the
mission where we used Perkins’ team to reactivate the buried maser projectors.
“I want to give someone else an opportunity to get off the ship for a while.”

“That’s
nonsense, Adams. You named the Dead Star,” technically she called it the Death
Star but close enough. “You should see it in person. There is plenty of space
in the dropships,” the away team was flying two of our large Thuranin dropships
we called ‘Condors’, “and in the shelters. And we’ll be rotating people back to
the ship; this crazy refueling ops Skippy has planned is going to take a while.
Also, with the science team going down there, I need some adults to supervise.”

“It
would be good to get off the ship for a change,” Adams said, in a longing voice
women usually reserve for the prospect of getting chocolate.

“You’re
a Marine, Adams,” I teased her, “you’re supposed to be deployed aboard a ship.”

“Not
all the time, Sir, not every. Freakin’. Day. And being deployed shipboard
doesn’t mean we enjoy that, it’s just part of the job. I guess being out here
has its benefits; I haven’t been invited to any cookware or candle parties.”

“Huh?”
I had no idea what she meant, and wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

She
rolled her eyes. “One of those ‘parties’ where you go to some woman’s house and
they serve wine, and then get you to

buy a
bunch of useless crap you don’t need.”

“Oh!”
I laughed. “Yeah, my mother used to get dragged to those parties. Adams, that
is one reason why being a guy is way better than being a woman. If one of my
buddies invited me to, like, a fishing tackle party, I’d say: ‘Get the fuck
outa here. I’m not going to your stupid party. What the hell’s wrong with you?’
And that would be totally Ok, nobody would get hurt. Also, no guy would ever
try that shit again. But you women
can’t do that.”

“Sometimes
you have to support your friends,” she replied defensively.

“If
one of my friends needs extra money, he can do something useful like replace
the roof on my toolshed, or replace the brake pads on my truck. Don’t try
selling me a bunch of crap. Or I’ll loan him cash.”

“Being
a man is so much easier,” she admitted.

“Hey,
you women make these social rules, you can change them.”

“I’ll
get right on that, Sir. After we save the world-”

“Again,”
I finished the thought for her.

Adams
walked off to the treadmills, while I picked up a dumbbell to do curls.

“Joe,
are you flexing in front of that
mirror?” Skippy chuckled.

“Checking
out my guns, Skippy,” I grunted while curling a weight, flexing my biceps.
Sure, I wasn’t in Olympic athlete condition compared to our SpecOps team, but-

“Ugh.
Damn, it’s a good thing there aren’t many women in here to witness this
travesty. It’s supposed to be beefcake,
Joe, not Spam cake.”

A
woman behind me laughed and I felt I needed to defend myself. Especially
because the woman was a Chinese Night Tiger and she could kick my ass from one
end of the ship to the other. “Hey, I’m not-”

“Maybe
tufocake, since it’s you,” Skippy
mused. “Something soft and squishy.”

I
almost dropped the weight on my foot. Crap, maybe I needed to start working out
in my tiny cabin.

“Explain
this to me again, Skippy,” I said as I ran a hand over the kludgy rig we had installed
on one of our larger dropships. It looked like a cross between a high school
science project and a yard sale. A lame science project like one of mine, not a
project by one of the smart kids who actually knew what they were doing. While
Chotek with most of the science and SpecOps teams were away on their fun-filled
camping trip on the surface of the Dead Star, and Skippy’s bots were busy
skittering around repairing the ship as best they could, the Flying Dutchman’s crew was supposed to
be collecting fuel.

“Again?”
Skippy sighed. “Joe, this is the third freakin’ time! I explained it to you
twice before. Were you not listening, or can your brain not comprehend even
this tiny bit of my awesomeness?”

The
truth was, I wanted him to explain it again, in order to delay launching two of
our dropships on what I considered a dangerous mission of dubious value. “Both,
Skippy. I have a meatsack brain and a short attention span. Humor me, please.”

“Ugh,”
he sighed. “Fine. Most ships that refuel from a gas giant lower a special
fuel-collection drogue into the atmosphere, at the end of a long cable. Star
carriers do not refuel themselves, so we do not have a drogue. And before you
ask me another stupid question, no, we did not have a drogue the last time we
took on fuel either. Back then, we had a frigate,” he meant our captured Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory,
“that I could remotely dip into the atmosphere. Now all we have is a lifeboat
that has no propulsion. So, my plan is to have two large dropships dip into the
atmosphere, flying in formation with my super-duper fuel collection scoop gizmo
suspended between them.”

“Calling
it a gizmo is not a great way to convince me you know what you are doing.”

“I am
not a salesman, Joe. Imagine I said it in a way that will convince you.”

“You are not going to be flying one of
these things, Skippy,” I stood on my toes, reached up and rapped my knuckles on
the cabin of the dropship. “The pressure vessel on this thing is, what, 2
millimeters thick? That is the only thing holding the air in, to protect the
crew.”

“More
like one and half millimeters, Joe. You are correct that the pressure vessel is
the only thing protecting the crew from the harsh vacuum of space. On this
mission, holding air in will not be
the problem. For my fueling gizmo to work efficiently, the dropships will need
to get deep enough in the atmosphere that they will experience pressure equal
to thirty times that on Earth’s surface. If the pressure vessel ruptures, toxic
gases will rapidly pour into the cabin, and the crew would be crushed.”

“You
are filling me with confidence,
Skippy.”

“If it
makes you feel any better, the crew would be incinerated instantly before they
got crushed. They should be wearing Kristang spacesuits as a precaution against
minor problems. Kristang armored suits are made of tough material, as you know
from your first space dive, however, in the event of a serious hull breach, it
is possible those suits would not compensate quickly enough.”

“That
does not make me feel any better. It makes me feel worse, because I’ll be
staying aboard the ship, and ordering other people to take the risk.” I was not
qualified to fly the larger type of Thuranin dropship, and I wasn’t the best
pilot for the job anyway. I was probably the least-skilled pilot aboard our
pirate ship. “We absolutely must have pilots aboard the dropships? You can’t
control the dropships remotely?”

“Not
with a pair of dropships flying in formation, Joe. The latency issue caused by
signal lag would make it impossible to control the dropships together. I would
have to go aboard one of the dropships-”

“No!
No, that is not an option,” I declared. No way was I going to risk UNEF’s
greatest asset in a risky mission. If the dropship he was in suffered a
failure, Skippy would helplessly plummet to the core of the gas giant planet,
and effectively be lost to us forever. “Our pilots will fly the mission.”

“We
will arrive in the proper orbit shortly, Joe. If you have serious second
thoughts, you should have expressed them before
I went through all the trouble of building this very complicated
fuel-collection scoop apparatus,” Skippy said, sounding peeved. “And before the
pilots wasted time practicing this mission in the simulator.”

I was
not concerned about pilots wasting their time; it kept them happy and busy, and
that type of training might be useful in the future. My problem was guilt; I
would be ordering pilots to take dropships into action they were not designed
for, using an untested fuel-collection ‘gizmo’. The guilt was not that the
pilots would be taking a risk; they were Ok with that. No, my guilt was that we
had time to dawdle in an uninhabited star system at all. If I or the command
staff had been able to think up a good, workable plan to prevent the Ruhar from
sending a ship to Earth, we would be implementing that plan rather than taking
time to top off our fuel tanks. That meant if anyone was killed or injured
while taking part in Skippy’s Flying Circus, it would be partly my fault.

And if
we didn’t think up a plan to stop the Ruhar from reaching Earth, the extinction
of my entire species might be partly
my fault. Or entirely my fault, damn it. Crap, I needed to focus on what was
most important. “Skippy, I know nothing about the technical details of
refueling, so I have to trust you on this one.”

“Joey,
Joey, Joey. You trust your life to me with a million things every freakin’
minute. You don’t keep the reactors
from exploding. I got this. Now, go, I don’t know, try to do something useful.
Are we Ok to proceed or not?”

“Yes.
I’ll tell the duty officer,” I said with a final skeptical knock on Skippy’s
cobbled-together fuel collection device. “I don’t suppose there is any point in
asking Nagatha for a second opinion?”

“Oof,”
Skippy breathed a sigh of exasperation. “I told you, it, she, is a submind built for communications, not for any type of
analysis or control. And if you asked her for a second opinion, she would tell
you-

“I
would tell Colonel Bishop that he has no choice but to trust you,” Nagatha
interrupted.

“Thank
you,” Skippy said smugly.

“He
has no choice,” she scolded, “because you don’t tell him anything useful.
Colonel, in this case, Skippy’s analysis is correct, the refueling operation
should proceed successfully. That is based on my verification of Skippy’s
analysis. Of course, if Skippy forgot to include something in his analysis, I
would not know about it. I am, as Skippy reminded you, designed for
communications and not crunching numbers.”

“Thank
you anyway, Nagatha. See, Skippy, you could try being nice sometimes.”

“Ugh.
I’d rather jump the ship into a black hole. Damn, I regret the day I loaded
that submind into the relay station’s computer.”

Hans
Chotek scrunched up his nose, closed his eyes tightly, and held his breath to
suppress a sneeze inside the helmet of his spacesuit. He had sneezed before in
training, the experience gave him confidence that a sneeze would not be
disastrous as he first thought, it was still embarrassing. The inner surface of
the helmet’s visor was protected by some type of energy field, specifically to
protect the visor from contamination that might obscure visibility. Even the
moisture he exhaled with every breath had the potential to fog the visor and
render it useless, if not for the amazing technology built into the helmet. If
he did sneeze, the droplets would be caught by the force field, then drawn
gently downward into a collection tray at the bottom of the visor; from there
any foreign material was vacuumed into a holding tank near his left shoulder.
Due to some magic Chotek did not remember from suit training, the tank never
needed to be emptied or cleaned during a mission; the material was stripped
down to its constituent elements and the useful parts like oxygen recycled.
Chotek knew that Skippy’s bots performed almost all of the maintenance tasks on
the suits, so whatever service the holding tank required, it wasn’t something
humans took care of.

The
urge to sneeze passed, and Chotek opened his eyes. He was not in a good place
to be standing with eyes closed for an extended time; if he lost his balance he
might fall and tumble head over heels for a long way. The suit’s stabilizers
should protect him from clumsily falling forward and Chotek had tested that
function in training. He did not wish to trust his life to a mysterious, unseen
technology that he did not understand.

Opening
his eyes reminded him of where he was standing; at the lip of a vast crater
that had been carved out of the moon millions of years ago. Literally carved,
according to Skippy. The damage to the moon had not been caused by an
explosion, instead a partial sphere of material extending deep into the moon
had been scooped out and deposited in orbit around the gas giant. That
material, free from the gravity of its host moon, had quickly broken up and now
formed a partial ring around the planet. The relocation of such a large mass
disrupted not only the host moon, but the orbits of all the moons circling the
gas giant.

Chotek
looked down in awe. The crater was so large that the far rim could only be
recognized using the visor’s handy magnification feature. Originally, when the
crater was created, it was a perfect partial sphere. Quickly, material welling
up from the moon’s core had flowed in to fill the bottom of the void, and subsequent
quakes and meteor impacts had covered the remaining surface with cracks and
small craters. Being newer and consisting of material different from the moon’s
ancient surface, the crater was distinctly darker, making it appear even deeper
when viewed from the lip.

“How
are you doing, Sir?” Major Smythe called.

Chotek
paused to take a breath. “Fine, Major. I’m standing on a moon in a star system
thousands of lightyears from Earth, at the edge of a crater made by a force
that could destroy our home planet, and the only thing keeping me alive is a
spacesuit that is maintained by a shiny beer can.”

“An alien spacesuit, Sir,” Smythe reminded
the mission leader. “A powered armor mech suit made by a species we are now
fighting against. The science team tells me they do not understand half the
technology in these suits. Regardless, they work splendidly. Without them, we
would not be able to enjoy this view.”

Chotek
grunted. “I had expected this view to fill me with awe, but instead, I find
myself depressed.”

“Depressed?”
Smythe could understand experiencing a wide variety of emotions while standing
at the edge of an ancient cataclysm. Depression was not within that range.

“Yes.
The technology that was used here, to scoop out such an enormous part of this moon,
is awe-inspiring. And that is the problem. To the beings who caused this, the
technology they used was well understood, maybe even taken for granted by them.
That depresses me. Major, the beings who did this,” he swept an arm to
encompass the vast crater, “are so far beyond our comprehension, their
technology might as well be magic to us. Even if we are able to complete our
current mission to prevent a Ruhar ship from traveling to Earth, we- Even if by
some miracle we are able to deal with all the known threats in this galaxy, there is some force out there we
don’t yet know about. Beings who could create a crater like this are a threat
even to the Maxolhx and Rindhalu. How could we protect ourselves against such a
threat?” He shook his head inside the helmet, forgetting that Smythe standing
beside him could not see the gesture.

“I get
your meaning, Sir,” Smythe replied quietly, keeping the slight annoyance he was
feeling out of his voice. He had come down to the Dead Star to get away from
the ship for a while, for a change of scenery rather than the same passageway
walls and bulkheads. He had come down for an opportunity to engage in surface
combat training with his team. He had accompanied Chotek on a walk out to the
rim of the crater, partly to get some private time with their mission
commander, but mostly simply to stand in awe of a force beyond his
comprehension. And now Hans Chotek had dragged Smythe’s mind back to threat
analysis. Was an hour of peace too much to ask for?

Chotek
took a moment to suppress another sneeze. Had dust from the moon’s surface
gotten past the airlock filters of the portable shelters they were living in?
That was unlikely; when Chotek had put on the helmet inside the shelter, it was
sparklingly pristine. He had seen, touched and smelled moon dust in the science
lab section of one shelter; it had a slightly burnt ozone smell that was not
inside his helmet. The urge to sneeze passed again. Looking out through his
helmet visor reminded him of how badly he wanted to stand on an alien world without
a spacesuit and breathe unfiltered air. When Colonel Bishop went down to the
surface of Paradise, twice, Chotek should have accompanied the team at least
once. The first time, he had not dared leave the ship in case something went
wrong. The second time, it had partly been his own arrogant stubbornness that
kept him aboard the Flying Dutchman.
He deeply regretted that now. Turning to his right, he looked into Smythe’s
visor. How many worlds had Smythe set foot on? Even counting only the planets,
the British Special Air Services Major had walked on Newark, Paradise and
Jumbo. Although, Jumbo’s atmosphere had not been breathable, so the away team
had been forced to live in their suits. “Major, what was it like on Newark?”

“Most
of the time, it was like being in Scotland during the springtime, except summer
was never coming. Not on that world.” Sensing Chotek wanted to talk, Smythe
told of his experience on Newark; not details of the successful military
operation, but what it was like simply being
there. To stand on an alien world wearing nothing but cold weather gear, to
breathe the damp chilly air, to feel as if you could never get enough oxygen.
When Chotek asked what it was like to stand in the chamber where the last
sentient natives of Newark had spent their last days huddled against killing
cold, Smythe told him. “As you said, there is an unknown force out there, Sir.
Here, it scooped out this crater. On Newark, it pushed an entire habitable
planet out of its orbit. It wiped out an entire sentient species. The people
there, the natives, they knew what had happened to them. They didn’t know why,
or how, or who, but they knew their world was going to turn into a block of
ice, and there was nothing they could do about it. No way they could survive.”
He turned to look in Chotek’s visor. “Since Newark, I’ve asked myself if humanity
could survive if something like that happened to Earth. The inhabitants of
Newark had Bronze-age technology. We have nuclear reactors. Could we have
survived deep in caves, or down deep in the oceans where the water didn’t
freeze?” Smythe looked at the crater. “I don’t know. The beings who made this
crater, I don’t think they would leave anything to chance. If humanity tried to
survive an event like Newark, I have a feeling we would be hit with an even
worse disaster. What bothers me, Sir, is like you said; even if we deal with
all the known threats, something like this is looming over our heads.”

“Much
as I hate to admit it,” Chotek replied slowly, “I am beginning to agree with
Colonel Bishop; we may need to investigate what happened to Newark, and here
and other sites you found on the Dutchman’s
second mission.”

“There
is a larger threat out there,” Smythe agreed.

“What
bothers me right now is the nature of that threat. We think it is a mystery
because Skippy tells us it is a mystery to him. Newark was pushed out of orbit,
and this crater was made, after the Elders left the galaxy, and before the
Rindhalu developed capability for interstellar travel. That is only what Skippy
tells us, and it is only what Skippy knows. Skippy admits his memories are
incomplete and garbled. Major Smythe, how much do you trust Skippy?”

Smythe
took a moment to consider his answer. “Originally, I trusted Skippy only where
his interests aligned with ours. On my first mission with him, he wanted to
find this Collective, whatever that is. Everything we did during the first half
of that mission was for Skippy’s benefit. Even going down to Newark and our
actions there were to further Skippy’s goals; he needed a place the crew could
live while he repaired the ship, and he wanted us to take the comm node and AI
from the Kristang scavenger group on Newark. Then something changed, and I
don’t know all the details, you would have to ask Colonel Bishop. The second
half of that mission was all about stopping the Thuranin surveyor ship from
traveling to Earth. Skippy helped us with that aspect of the mission, he did
most of the work. Stopping that surveyor ship did not directly benefit Skippy.
Preventing the Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth now also does not directly
benefit him. Our recent actions to safeguard the future of UNEF on Paradise had
no benefit to him that I can think of. He helped us anyway, he is continuing to
help us. Part of why he helps us might be his friendship with Bishop,” Smythe
shrugged. “I find it difficult to believe a being like Skippy considers
friendship with a monkey,” one side of his mouth turned up in a wry smile, “to
be as valuable as we think of friendships. We are not his peers, we never will
be. Eventually, Skippy will insist on contacting the Collective. He has said
before he does that, he needs answers for what happened in the galaxy while he
was dormant. If we want to investigate the nature of the threat we’re facing,
then our goals align with Skippy’s.”

Hans
Chotek took one last look down into the crater, and shivered despite the cozy
warmth of the suit.

Desai
wriggled in her somewhat ill-fitting Kristang powered armor suit, trying to get
comfortable. She was not our shortest crew member, but she wasn’t tall either,
and the Kristang suits could be modified only so much. While Desai normally did
not wear a suit, she had trained to wear one when she was flying a dropship, so
she had a suit custom made for her. She still didn’t like it, and I didn’t
blame her. I had worn a suit almost full-time during the mission to the heavy
gravity planet Jumbo, and it got irritating after a while. The warrior ethos of
the Kristang prevented them from making many concessions to the suit user’s
comfort; likely the lizards thought things like ergonomics and comfort were
signs of weakness unbecoming a warrior.

“Are
you comfy in there?” I asked, holding a helmet for her. We were outside her
dropship in a docking bay, running a preflight check, although Skippy of course
assured us everything was perfect with both dropships.

“Comfort
is not the issue, Colonel,” she replied as she shown a light into a thruster.
Dropping her voice, she turned to me. “This is going to be difficult flying. I
appreciate your faith in me, but as I have told you before, I am not the best
pilot aboard the Dutchman. Someone
else would be a better candidate to fly this fuel-collection run.”

“Desai,”
I checked another thruster for her, and gave her a thumb’s up gesture. “I know
you are not our most technically skilled pilot. That is why I want you flying
lead on the first mission.”

“Sir?”

“Our
best pilots know they are hotshots, and they might fly like it. I do not need
any hotshot cowboy crap going on while you are flying in atmosphere that could
crush these dropships. If it gets too dangerous down there, I expect you to
abort the mission. We’ll debrief, make adjustments, and try it again. The last
thing we need is someone’s ego making them push too hard.”

“Yes,
Sir,” she said, this time with a little smile.

“Desai,
you are an excellent pilot; and I know for damned sure you are cool under
pressure. What I value most about you is your judgment. If all I wanted was a
great stick jockey, I could have chosen any pilot. I want these dropships to
come back; that means you fly lead.”

“I
might scuff the paint a bit, Sir,” she laughed.

“Don’t
worry, it’ll buff right out,” I winked. “You come back safely, with or without
fuel, understood?” I offered her a fist, and she bumped me.

“Got
it.”

CHAPTER SIX

Two of
our big Thuranin dropships we called ‘Condors’ were away on their refueling
mission, and I had nothing to do other than monitor their progress, drive the
CIC crew crazy and worry myself sick. I went to the galley to get coffee, more
because I needed something to do than because I needed a jolt of caffeine right
then. Adams was sitting at a table, reading something on a tablet, so I took
the opportunity to sit down across from her. “Sergeant, I want to show you
something,” I set my tablet on the table.
“Hey, Skippy. You made our unit patches,” I meant the pirate-paramecium
logo for the Merry Band of Pirates.

“Yes,
and I did a spectacular job on that, if I do say so myself.”

“You
always do say so yourself,” I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, thanks for that. Two of
our navy pilots-”

“They
are called ‘Naval Aviators’, Joe.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah,
that’s what I thought, too, but Nagatha told me I should be more respectful by
using the correct terms. ‘Pilot’ is an Air Force term.”

“Army
too. We have pilots. Anyway, these aviators
mentioned to me that we need a logo for the ship. So, I sketched this,” I
pulled up the image on my iPad and turned the display toward Adams. “What do
you think?”

“Hmmm.
Mmmm. In-ter-esting,” Skippy stretched the word out. “It looks like while Van
Gogh was cutting his ear off, he tripped over Picasso and spilled paint on a
Disney sketch. What, um, what is that supposed to be?”

“It’s
a cool pirate monkey standing on a flying banana,” I explained defensively.
Damn it, I was proud of that sketch. It took me hours to make. “See, the ship
is a flying banana, because we are monkeys, right? You see it, Adams?”

Adams
tilted her head one way then the other. I could see her shoulders quiver as she
suppressed a laugh. “Whatever you say, Sir.”

“A
banana?” Skippy did chuckle. “That’s supposed to be a banana? Hmmm, I can see it is a sort of yellowish blob-”

“It is a freakin’ banana!” I insisted.

“Ok, I
can see how someone on serious drugs
may think that thing on top might be a pirate monkey, but, um. Hmm, maybe you
could replace the lower part of the sketch with text saying ‘imagine a banana
here’.” He began laughing hysterically, and Adams joined in.

“You
are such an asshole.” I turned the
iPad off.

“Don’t
get mad, Joe. This is really no different from any of your operational orders.
After all the boring blah blah blah at the beginning, you could insert ‘imagine
a plan here’.”

Adams
was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. That was the last time I showed
my artistic ability, or inability, to anyone.

I
looked out one of the Flying Dutchman’s
two viewing stations, where a bubble of clear glass, plastic, crystal or maybe
it was diamond, protruded in a dome above the skin of the ship. The viewing
stations had not been designed for sightseeing, they were intended for an
emergency backup method of guiding dropships into the docking bays. “Hey,
Skippy, where’s this fabulous nebula you promised to show me?” All I could see
were smudges and stars, lots of stars.

“It’s
on the display anytime you want to look, dumdum,” Skippy sounded distracted.

“I can
look at stuff on a screen anytime. I want to see it, with my eyes. You told me this thing is huge!”

“Oh,
for crying out- How come you bother me every single time I am busy doing
something important?”

“Like
what are you doing that’s so important? You told me talking with us baboons
hardly takes up any of your processing power.”

“Talking
with you specifically takes more of
my resources than usual, because I have to waste time attempting to understand
what you are trying to say with all the blah, blah, blah. If you must know, I
am calibrating the jump drive coil assembly, monitoring the dropship fuel collection
operation, and I am in the extremely delicate process of renewing the
containment system of Reactor Three.”

“Extremely
delicate, huh?”

“Things
could go ‘Boom’ rather easily, if my concentration slips.”

“Got
it. Show me this nebula, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Aargh,”
he groaned in frustration. “Even from here, it is a dim object, Joe. Not dim
like you, I mean the amount of light emitted.”

“We’re
practically on top of it, you said!” I protested. One reason I had agreed to
jump to this boring, crappy star system was that Skippy promised it was close
to the North America Nebula, which I thought was a cool name.

“We
are practically on top of it; less than twelve lightyears. It is, however,
mostly on the other side of the star. And the planet is blocking part of the
view at the moment. If you wait half an hour, our orbit will take us around,
and you will have a better view. Joe, prepare to be disappointed. With the
naked eye, even from here it’s only going to be a hazy blob.”

“Fine,”
I sighed. “I’ll wait.”

“What’s
bothering you, Joe? I know astronomy is not your greatest passion.”

I did
enjoy astronomy, but not as much as I enjoyed, for example, cheeseburgers. Or
crinkle fries, the kind that have ridges to hold extra ketchup, you know? Or
beer, of course, duh. “I’m worried sick about the fueling operation, that’s
all.”

“Captain
Desai and her team have reached target depth without incident, and have
deployed the scoop; it will begin filtering the atmosphere within the next ten
minutes. Relax, Joe, everything is under control.”

“We’re
losing control!” Desai warned, trying to be calm while struggling with the
dropship and the homemade fuel scoop. In the preflight briefing, Skippy had
warned them about sudden wind gradients as they descended deeper in the gas giant’s
atmosphere. The pilots of the two dropships had been prepared for sudden
changes in wind velocity and even direction; the layers in the atmosphere
showed up clearly on the sensors of the dropships, and Skippy provided warning
and guidance from the star carrier high above. Descending from orbit, the scoop
had connected the two dropships, but with the fuel collection mechanism
retracted it had not been difficult for the pair of Thuranin ships to fly in
close formation. Skippy had designed the scoop so that it did not awkwardly
hang between the two dropships; instead each ship had a nanofiber cable trailing
them, with the furled scoop far behind at the end of the V-shaped cables. With
the scoop furled, Desai found flying in formation no more difficult than in any
other aircraft.

Once
the two ships reached target depth, where the thickness of the atmosphere
allowed the homemade scoop to function efficiently, the flying had become much
more difficult. At first, Desai had almost been able to relax after the scoop
was fully deployed. She had gotten used to the substantial drag caused by the
unfurled scoop, finding she needed to increase power almost exactly as she had
in the simulations programmed by Skippy. Everything had been going as planned;
the scoop was functioning as designed, fuel was being collected and pumped
along tubes into the special tanks installed in each dropship’s aft cargo
holds, and the rate of fuel flow was three percent above Skippy’s estimate.

Then a
problem arose when the dropships flew through an area of turbulence, which
Desai saw as a slightly more pink section of the purple clouds around them. The
dropships did not have actual windows for the pilots to look through; windows
would have degraded their stealth capabilities. Instead, in front of the pilots
were curved displays that showed a view from cameras mounted in the nose. When
they first dipped down into the clouds, Desai had followed Skippy’s suggestion
to set the displays for an image which removed most of the clouds, but Desai
found that distracting and useless. So she switched to a plain image; it showed
her only thick clouds and navigation data but was no different from flying in
thick clouds on Earth. She found that images vaguely comforting while she
piloted an alien dropship in the crushing pressure of a gas giant planet, almost
two thousand lightyears from Earth.

The
problem began with an almost imperceptible flutter traveling along the cables
from the scoop. Desai did not notice the flutter at first, being occupied by
the turbulence that was far worse that what Skippy had told her to expect. Her
dropship was bouncing up and down fifty meters at a time, alternatingly forcing
her down into her seat or suspended against the straps with her stomach doing
flipflops. As the lead ship in the formation, she was not responsible for
maintaining distance from the other ship; her task was to fly as smoothly as
possible and hold to their programmed course. The other pilot then only needed
to follow her lead. With the two ships lurching their way through the thick
clouds, keeping the formation within the limits of the scoop was fairly
difficult.

When
fully extended, the scoop formed a circle large enough so its rim was wider
than the distance between the two dropships. They towed the scoop behind and
between them, at the ends of two nanofiber cables that stretched and flexed in
the powerful, roiling wind. On its own, the scoop would have spun around the
twin cables and destroyed itself within seconds. To prevent that, the scoop was
capable of steering itself with guidance from Skippy, using sensor data from
the ship and the dropships. Skippy controlled the flight of the scoop and the
operation of the fuel collection mechanism; all he needed the dropships to do
was tow the scoop like an airplane on Earth towing a banner.

That
was Skippy’s plan.

It
wasn’t working.

The
flutter traveling up the cables became a shaking, hard enough for Desai to feel
over the bouncing of the ship. It was growing worse by the second. Desai
struggled with the controls, then heard her first flight instructor’s words in
her head. Never fight the controls, the instructor had told her, work with
them. If you are trying to make the aircraft do something it can’t, the controls
will tell you. She relaxed slightly and listened to what the controls were
telling her.

They
were telling her the scoop’s induced flutter was growing worse, feeding on
itself. It is continued, the scoop would fail and might take both dropships
down with it. “Cable status?” Desai inquired of her US Air Force copilot.

Alarmed,
Samantha Reed in the copilot seat pointed to the strain gauge on the display;
the stress on the mounts where the cable attached was already almost to the
redline. The data feed from the second ship showed the same problem. “Almost critical,”
Reed reported tersely. “It’s spiking.” Her fingers flew over the controls,
seeking a solution.

“Skippy!”
Desai called. “We’re losing the scoop!”

“I
know that,” the alien AI responded with a snarky tone. “There’s too much
flutter, I can’t control it. Damn it! If we lose this scoop, it will take me
too long to build another one. This is our only chance to do this. I’m working
on it,” Skippy admitted.

“Work
faster,” Desai silently pointed to the button that would sever the cable from
both ships simultaneously.

Reed
interrupted. “Ma’am, I think I can fly the scoop from here,” she announced with
calm confidence.

Desai
raised an eyebrow without looking away from the controls. “Are you sure, Sami?”

“Yes.
Skippy can’t control the scoop from up there because of the signal lag. I can
fly it from the console here.”

“No
you can’t!” Skippy argued. “You monkeys’ reaction time is way too slow for-”

“We
are not monkeys,” Desai declared without raising her voice. “What you’re doing
isn’t working, so we’re trying this before we have to sever the cables. Release
control on my mark,” her tone did not allow for any argument. “Three, two, one,
mark!”

Desai
had a moment of almost panicked regret, as the scoop jerked hard, and the
dropship yawed to the side. “Sami!”

“Got
it,” Reed did not break her concentration. “I had to correct the flutter before
I could make it fly right. It’s smoother now.”

It was
smoother, the cable’s vibration lessened, then settled down to a gentle, random
pulsing. The vibration was no longer building on itself in a fatally sympathetic
action. Desai cautiously lifted her hand away from the button that would sever
the cables. She glanced away from the flight control displays to check the
scoop’s status. It was still rocking side to side and up and down, but it was
bouncing around no more than the two ships that were towing it. “Skippy,” Desai
called, “the scoop is under control.”

“Yeah,”
the ancient alien AI replied grumpily. “I can see that. Whoopee freakin’ doo.
Stupid monkeys.”

“Ma’am,”
Reed felt confident enough for a quick look to her left, “I’ve got the feel of
it now. It is,” she added as a drop of sweat rolled down her forehead and off
her nose, “not easy. I think when we have full tanks, we furl the scoop here
before we climb out.”

“You
want to furl the scoop in this turbulence?” Desai asked, surprised.

“I
know how to handle this turbulence. If we climb above this cloud layer, to
where the wind direction and speed is different, I don’t know if I can fly the
scoop through the transition.”

“Skippy?”
Desai called. “Can we do that?”

“Yes.
Lieutenant Reed is correct; it would be better to furl the scoop in conditions
we know she can control. I have just uploaded revised software for the scoop to
furl itself, while it is being flown from the dropship.”

“Outstanding,”
Reed replied with an ear-to-ear grin. “Ma’am, on future missions, we need a
third pilot. I can’t both control the scoop and act as copilot.”

“Agreed,
I will inform Colonel Bishop,” Desai acknowledged. “Skippy, we should add
training on flying the scoop to the simulations; can you get people working on
that now, so the next crew will be ready?”

“Yes,
I am designing the simulation based on Lt. Reed’s actions,” Skippy replied
sourly. “I have a question. You proved that monkeys can do something I couldn’t
do. Ugh. So, is Lt Reed ever going to wipe that grin off her face?”

Reed
shared a laugh with the Flying Dutchman’s
lead pilot. “What do you think?”

“Shit.
No,” Skippy’s voice almost choked. “To be fair, I would do the same thing. We
can, um, keep this between us, right? No reason for the entire crew to know
about this little incident?”

“Little incident?” Desai was amused. “You
mean the incident where we were on the edge of mission failure, and possibly
losing one or both ships, because you couldn’t handle it?”

“Maybe
I’ll get lucky, and one of the reactors will explode before you get back up
here,” Skippy said hopefully.

I was
in the docking bay to greet Desai’s dropship when she returned. The condition
of the super high-tech Thuranin dropships surprised me; they both looked
scorched, their noses and leading surfaces caked with dark soot. And they
smelled burnt. Not the pleasant wood-smoke scent of a campfire; this was the
bitter stench of burning plastic. Despite my earlier joking with Desai, the
damage to the skin of those dropships was not going to buff out; Skippy’s bots
would need to perform some heavy maintenance before we could use those
dropships in any sort of stealth mission. Skippy assured me both ships were
ready for another trip down into the atmosphere, and he was very pleased with
the fuel collection process. Putting our dropships, which were space craft, deep enough in an
atmosphere that they could be crushed made me uncomfortable. “They are fine, Joe. Trust me,” Skippy said as we
waited for the skin of both ships to stop radiating killing cold before I could
approach.

“You are not down there with the pilots,”
I retorted.

“Fine.
Don’t take my word for it, then. The door is about to open, you can ask Desai.”

“How
was it?” I held out my hands to take her helmet and flight bag, she looked
tired. Her hair was plastered to her head, and she had dark circles under her
eyes. The dropship had a tiny bathroom, she and Reed could have removed their
suits and washed up a bit after the dropship cleared the atmosphere. The fact neither
of them had done that told me how exhausted and stressed they must be. Desai
was tired and her copilot looked even worse.

“Challenging,”
she replied with a voice drained of emotion. “We can do it; the difficulty is
flying in formation with a ship you can only see on sensors. The winds down
there are more variable than Skippy told us to expect, or he has a different
idea of what ‘variable’ means.” She shook her head and pinched the bridge of
her nose. “Sir, that was a six hour flight, with three hours collecting fuel. I
recommend limiting flights to two hours in the atmosphere; three hours is
pushing the limits of human concentration and endurance. And we need a third
pilot, so the third pilot and the copilot can take turns flying the scoop. Reed
did an outstanding job, but three hours of flying the scoop is too much; she is
exhausted.” Desai’s own right hand was shaking slightly, she covered it with
her left and clutched them tightly.

I did
some quick math in my head; cutting fuel collection time by one third would
mean we needed one additional mission. While that might not seem like much, it
was another time crews needed to drop into a crushing atmosphere, an additional
opportunity for something to go horribly wrong. “We will run two more missions
as planned, then I will reassess whether to go down there again.” As much as I
hated the idea of sending more people down into the gas giant, we should top
off the Dutchman’s fuel tanks while
we could, and the fueling operation wasn’t going to be any more safe in some
other star system. “For now, get some food while you brief the pilots for the
next flight.” My hope was to turn the dropships around quickly and send another
team out within two hours. I had assured Chotek this uninhabited star system
was perfectly safe, and I was anxious to jump back out of there before
something went wrong.

The
problem was, jump to where?

We
still did not have a plan to steal a Kristang starship. After days of off and
on discussions, we had a grand total of nothing resembling a workable plan. The
closest we had to a plan was a desperate dropship raid like the op we’d
conducted when the original Merry Band of Pirates boarded and took the Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory.
No way was Hans Chotek, or I, going to approve a sketchy op like that.

One
problem we faced was that frigates seldom traveled on their own, they were
escort vessels. Most of time, a frigate flew with other frigates, escorting
destroyers or larger ships. Finding an isolated frigate was going to be very
difficult.

Then Skippy
had thrown a monkey wrench into the planning, when he weighed in with his
opinion on one idea we were considering. “No, no, no, you idiots. I can’t
magically take over any Kristang warship whenever I want. That Thuranin
nanovirus is a short-range, short-term technology. It degrades over time; a
Kristang ship needs recent exposure to a Thuranin star carrier to be infected
with viable nanomachines. You’re going about this all wrong anyway, Joe.”

I
rolled my eyes. “Enlighten us, please, Oh Great One.”

“You
can’t simply steal a warship,” he sighed disgustedly. “A Kristang clan would
not need to steal a frigate; they have plenty of them. If the Kristang know a
frigate was stolen, and then a frigate attacks the Ruhar negotiators, the
Kristang will know the attack wasn’t by one of their clans. They will know the
ship was stolen by an outside party who wants to stir up trouble within the
Kristang. The whole thing could end up backfiring in your face by actually
uniting the Kristang against a common enemy.”

“An
outside party?” I asked. “Like, if the Ruhar attacked their own negotiators?”
That didn’t make any sense to me.

“No,
dumdum, not the Ruhar. An outside party like the Thuranin, or the Wurgalan;
even the Torgalau or the Bosphuraq. The Kristang and the Wurgalan are supposed
to be peers, and on the same side, but they hate
each other.”

“Oh,
this is way too complicated,” I groaned. “We have to steal a freakin’ warship,
without anyone knowing it was stolen? That is impossible!”

“Not
impossible, Joe,” Skippy replied cheerfully. “We got the Flying Dutchman that way, right? You clever monkeys will think of
something. Because, you know, you kinda have to.”

Skippy
was entirely right; we had to think up a good plan, because the survival of our
species depended on it. I felt like Skippy was not taking the situation
seriously, so I went into my office and closed the door to have a talk with
him. He promised to listen, and he kept his promise while I explained the
importance of us working together.

“Ba ha
ha!” Skippy chuckled suddenly, interrupting me.

“What?
You think this is funny?” I asked, appalled.

“Huh?
What? No, you dumdum. Sergeant Adams just said something funny. Hee hee.”

“Adams?
Jesus Chr- You promised you would pay attention to me?”

“Yeah,
and I di- Oh, wait, you expected me to pay attention the whole time? For
crying out loud, Joe, no one can do that. You blah, blah, blah so long,
listening to every word you say would put me in a freakin’ coma.”

“But
you responded while I was talking!?”

“Oh,
that,” he muttered. “Yeah, once I figured out what you were probably going to
say, I created a quick submind to say stuff like ‘Yes’ and ‘I agree’ and ‘Mmm
hmm’ while I was busy.”

“Did
you actually hear anything I said?”

“Sure,
of course. Well, shmaybe? Let me play it back. Uh, apparently, uh, I’m skimming
through it here, getting the high-level stuff. Damn, even running through it at
high speed is putting me to sleep. Apparently it is something about bad guys,
danger, monkeys in trouble, planetary extinction, yadda yadda yadda, is that
about it?”

I kept
bonking my head on the table.

He
made a helpful observation. “Joe, if you keep hitting your head on the table
like that, you could get a concussion. It’s not like you have a surplus of
brain cells.”

“Thank
you, Skippy.”

“Oh,
no problem, Joe,” he said brightly, “always happy to help. Hey, while you’re
not busy-”

“Not
busy?”

“Not
doing anything useful, that’s for sure. Anywho, I want to show you something.”

“Show
me wha- what in the hell is that?” I
gasped as a holographic avatar popped into existence on my desktop.

“Isn’t
it magnificent?” His voice sounded entirely pleased with himself.

The
avatar was less than a foot tall, with a small silver beer can for a body, and
a large, round head, like an old bobblehead doll. He was wearing a costume, one
I didn’t remember from the batch Major Simms had given me. Skippy hated having
costumes put on his can, so I had used costumes sparingly after our endless
mission in the dropship. For example, I had dressed Skippy in a Red Sox uniform
to celebrate the day of the Red Sox first home game of the season. Before that,
he had been dressed up like a leprechaun for St Patrick’s day. Man, he had
totally hated that.

Now,
his avatar was wearing a resplendent Navy blue, white and gold admiral’s
uniform, although the uniform was not from any naval service I knew of on
Earth. His enormous ancient fore and aft hat had so much ‘scrambled egg’ gold
braid and fringe that almost half the blue was hidden. The wide ‘shoulders’ had
epaulets weighted down with stars.

“That’s
a,” I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “That’s a, very nice hat.”

“You
like it?” His chrome surfaces that were exposed glowed a happy light blue.

“It
needs to, uh,” digging a fingernail deep into my palm helped me not to snicker
at him. “The hat should be a bit bigger.”

The
avatar’s hat grew. “Like this?”

“Oh,
yes. That is, very, uh, very impressive to all the hairless apes. Skippy,
what’s up with this getup?”

“Grand
Admiral of the Fleet Lord Skippy, at your service, Joe.”

“Grand
Admiral of the Fleet, huh? Oh, and I see you are a, five, six,” I counted, “seven star admiral. Interesting.”

“Hmm.
Should it be eight stars, then? To tell you the truth, I was kind of guessing.
Your international military senior rank structures are confusing.”

“No,
seven stars should be plenty,” I assured him.

“Do
I look fierce, Joe?” He scowled, although it was hard to see his eyes under the
giant, ridiculous hat. “I want my avatar to project authority.”

“You
are,” this time I bit my lip so hard that I drew blood. “Definitely projecting,
uh, something. Fierce might be one word for it.” Ridiculous was a better word, I thought to myself. “Why did you
pattern your avatar after a bobblehead doll?”

“Well,
Joe, I noticed that your species creates bobbleheads for people who are
respected and admired, like sports stars. This avatar should certainly get me
respect, right?”

“Respect,”
damn it, I was almost biting through my lip. “That is one word for it, yes. Where
did you get this, uh, uniform?” I figured he would not appreciate me calling it
a ‘costume.’

“I
designed it myself. Pretty awesome, huh?”

“Awesome
is not the word I would use,” I answered with restraint. “You know us primitive
cavemen can’t truly appreciate the full scope of your awesomeness. I like you
having an avatar, but I thought you hated dressing up?”

“Consider
this uniform a preemptive strike, Joe. There is a holiday approaching, and I do
not want you dressing my can like the Easter Bunny.”

“OMG!”
Until that moment, that idea had not occurred to me. “That is a great idea!”

“Shit.
No, it is not a great idea!”

“Oh,
come on, Skippy. Imagine how cute you will be, wearing a fuzzy pink-”

“Not
happening!”

“Sergeant
Adams would think you are absolutely adorable.” I knew Skippy had a soft spot
in his heart for our tough US Marine Corps Staff Sergeant.

“Really?”

“Skippy,
Adams is a woman, you know.”

“Maybe-
No! No way. Not happening. Zero chance.”

“You’ll
think about it?”

He
sighed heavily. “Yes, I will think about it. Not for you, but for Margaret,” he
used Adams’ first name. “Don’t count on it. Keep in mind, Joe, the real Easter
Bunny would hide delicious chocolate treats around the ship for everyone. The
Skippy Bunny might have his bots sprinkle radioactive reactor waste instead.”

“I
will keep that in mind,” I said distractedly, thinking of the costume I wanted
Major Simms to make. Fuzzy pink fur to cover his beer can, floppy pink ears on
top of his lid, a puffy tail in the back. He was going to be adorable. “Has
anyone else seen this new avatar?”

“No,”
the avatar shook its oversized bobblehead with the towering hat. “I learned my
lesson last time, Joe. Figured it is best to run it by you first.”

“That
was good judgment, Skippy. How about you keep your new avatar a secret until
dinner tonight? I will announce that you have a new, uh, persona, and you can
reveal your magnificent self to more than half the crew at one time.”

“I
like it!”

“Hey, uh, I have to go.”

“What?
You called me, Joe. What did you want in the first place?”

“At
this point, I really don’t remember. It couldn’t be that important, huh?” I
turned to leave, chuckling at the thought of Skippy’s beer can dressed up as
the Easter Bunny.

“Hey!
Colonel, you are supposed to salute me,” Skippy sounded miffed. “I do hugely
outrank you.”

I
gave him a gesture that was, let’s just say it was not quite a salute.

“I
saw that!”

“Goodbye,
Skippy.”

I
let it be known there would be an important announcement during dinner, so the
galley was extra crowded. Normally, people drifted in and out of the galley
over the two and half hours designated for dinner time; this time the place was
packed right at 1800 hours. “As you all know, and some of you have seen,” I
looked at Adams, Simms and a couple others, “Skippy has been considering using
a holographic avatar so we can communicate better with him. He experimented
with different types of avatars, and today he showed me the, uh, design he has
selected. I am certain that when you see it,” I scowled at the assembled crew,
hoping they caught my meaning, “you will appreciate that his avatar is fierce and commands respect. Certainly his new avatar is not any source of amusement.”

“Respect,
yes, Colonel Bishop,” Chang said while looking quizzically at me. “Not amusing.”

“Please
welcome Grand Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Skippy.” As soon as I said ‘Skippy’,
his holographic avatar popped into existence on a table at the end of the
galley.

Every
morning, I get a status report from Lt. Colonel Chang. A lot of the data in the
report comes from Skippy, or the CIC duty crew. It contains mundane info about
critical ship systems, which no human was capable of doing anything about, but
it was nice to know if Skippy had taken a defensive shield generator offline
for maintenance. Major Simms contributed the logistics section of the report,
detailing how many supplies had been consumed, how much of each item we had
remaining and an estimate of how long until we ran out. There was the usual
section of crew injuries; the inevitable minor sprains and bruises from SpecOps
people training as intensely as they could.

Because
Chang’s report used a standard Chinese Army format, it contained a section on
discipline issues. That section was blank, every single day. The Merry Band of
Pirates were the elite of Earth’s special forces; every one of them was
supremely self-disciplined. If they were bored or frightened or pissed off at a
fellow soldier, none of them showed it. They all knew we were on a dangerous,
extremely important mission while stuck aboard an alien pirate ship, and that
everyone needed to exhibit their best behavior to ensure unit cohesion and good
morale. Also, none of our ultra-competitive people wanted to be the first to
break discipline. Major Smythe had done an outstanding job blending five rival
nations into one fighting force, but those rivalries were still there, just
under the surface. And that sense of national pride ensured that no one wanted
to bring shame upon their country by being the first to be reported as a
disciplinary issue.

I
mention this because, when Lord Skippy’s avatar materialized, with his ridiculous
giant hat and elaborate uniform, I witnessed our bad-ass special ops people
struggling mightily not to burst out laughing. Some people were sitting
rigidly, biting their lips or covering their faces with hands. Other people
were rocking back and forth in their chairs, a hand over their mouths, doing
their best not to burst out laughing, and losing the battle.

Sergeant
Adams had it worst; tears were streaming down her face as she stared at her
boots and bit down hard on a thumb. At any moment, someone was going to start
laughing at Skippy. And it was probably going to be me. So I did the only thing
I could do, while I still had enough breath in my lungs. “Hooray for Lord
Skippy!” I shouted, pumping a fist in the air.

Everyone
cheered, some of the exclamations were choked with laughter. A ragged cheer kept
going as Skippy bowed, clueless to the general air of mirth in the galley.
“Thank you, thank you,” he responded. “I hope now that you monkeys see my new
form, you will stop referring to me as a beer can.”

“Oh,
Skippy, I am sure,” I declared, “that is never
going to happen.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Because
sitting around trying to dream up a plan produced nothing worthwhile, I
declared a break and went to the gym; our SEALS team was in the middle of a
grueling workout when I arrived. We finished around the same time, hit the
showers and then the galley for a post-workout snack. When I walked into the
galley, a half dozen people were already eating lunch. One of the SEALS named Jones
saw a piece of chocolate cake sitting by itself on a table, and picked it up
hungrily.

“Not
worried about ruining your appetite by eating dessert first?” I asked jokingly.

“No,
Sir,” he grinned, taking a big bite of cake. “Aboard this ship, things change
so fast, it’s better to eat dessert first. You never know-”

“Hey!”
A Ranger named Jeff Mychalchyk came over to the table with a tray full of food. “I was
gonna eat that cake.”

“You
snooze, you lose,” Jones mumbled as he stuffed the rest of the cake in his
mouth. “Finders keepers, man. Consumption is, like, nine tenths of the law.
Right, Colonel? Colonel?”

I
was already back out the door, pulling my zPhone out. “Dr. Rose, meet me in my
office ASAP.”

When
I got to my office, she was already waiting for me. “You got here fast,” I
noted, beginning to regret my haste in leaving the galley. After the rest of
the SpecOps people descended on the galley like a horde of starving locusts, I
would be lucky to lick crumbs off the floor for my lunch. Damn it. I should
have at least grabbed a sandwich on my way out.

“I
was in the CIC,” Sarah pointed over her shoulder.

“CIC?”
That surprised me.

“Dr.
Friedlander suggested we shadow the flight crew, so we can fill in if needed.
On the sensors and weapons stations, not the flight controls.”

“Oh.
That’s a lot of work.”

She
held her hands up. “I’m a geologist and a chemist. It’s not like I’m busy out
here right now, especially now that my secret is out,” she shook her head
ruefully. “Besides, I think Friedlander is pissed at me right now. I don’t
blame him. He’s a good man, I didn’t like deceiving him. That’s why I wasn’t
included in the science team exploring the Dead Star.”

“It’s
not your fault, Sarah. It was your job to deceive all of us. I’m the one who
should apologize to Friedlander; I knew about you and I chose not tell him.”
The only actual promise I had made to our friendly resident rocket scientist
was that he would not be eaten by a space lizard, but lying to him still didn’t
sit right with me. I needed to schedule a time to speak with him one on one.
“Anyway, I have an idea I want to run past you. And Skippy.”

His
avatar popped into existence on my table. “You are in luck, Joe, my Lordship
happens to be free at this moment. With what do you propose to waste my time
now?”

“A
question, Skippy, but first, Dr. Rose. You said there are three ways to get a
ship. Make one, buy one or steal one.”

“You
suggested ‘fake one’ as an option,” she reminded me.

“That
was more of an alternative to getting
a ship, not another option for getting one.”

“Yeah,
and it was an epically stupid suggestion, Joe,” Skippy said gleefully.

“Only
because you failed to bend the laws of physics properly, Skippy, anyway-”

“Wha-
what? I failed?” Skippy fumed indigently.
“You flea-bitten, ignorant-”

I
cut off his insult. “Skippy said if we steal a ship, we have to do it without
anyone realizing it was stolen, which seems impossible to me. So, I was
thinking there is a fourth option for getting a ship.”

“Oh?”
Sarah raised an eyebrow, in the gesture that usually means a guy is in trouble,
but in this case it meant she was curious.

“Maybe
it’s a type of stealing. But I don’t think so. We find a ship.”

Her
mouth formed a silent ‘O’. “Finding is not stealing, I suppose, if-”

“Right,”
I nodded. “If the ship has been abandoned. According to maritime law on Earth,
an abandoned vessel is subject to being salvaged, and taking control of an
abandoned ship is not stealing. It’s like the ‘finders keepers’ rule, only its
written into law.”

“Look
at the big brain on Joe!” Skippy exclaimed. “How did you get all smart about
law stuff?”

“I
read ‘Interstellar Law for Dummies’ during breakfast this morning.”

“Uh
huh,” Skippy did not sound convinced. “You want us to find a starship? How? I can assure you the Kristang do not leave
the keys in their ships while they run into the 7-11 for a burrito. Ooooh, hey,
or do you mean like a scavenger hunt? Cool! We could-”

“No
scavenger hunts, Skippy.”

“Damn.
Just when I think things might finally be getting fun around here.”

“Sorry,
Skippy. You’ll have to wait for karaoke night to have fun.”

“Karaoke?
I’m invited?” He asked, astonished. “Gosh, Joe, that’s great. I can-”

Oh
crap. We actually did have karaoke every other Tuesday night in the galley, and
Skippy was right, he had never been invited. Because he epically sucked at singing. There was nothing
Skippy enjoyed better than belting out show tunes, and there was nothing the
crew hated worse than listening to Skippy sing. “Uh, yeah, great, let me, um,
talk with Major Simms about fitting you into the schedule, Ok? What I meant by
finding a ship is, there must be Kristang ships that have been abandoned due to
battle damage, or things like that.”

“Yes,
there are. However, by definition, a ship abandoned because of battle damage is
unable to fly, Joe. A ship like that would be useless to us, duh. And the Kristang typically scuttle
their warships after they have been abandoned; they blow them to space dust.”

“I
don’t mean only warships, Skippy. We can make an armed ship out of a transport
vessel, the old term for that is a ‘Q-ship’.”

“Oh,
great,” his avatar rolled its eyes. “So I’m supposed to go searching the galaxy
for ships that just happen to be-”

“No
searching needed, Skippy. I hope not. I think you have all the info you need
from this ship’s database.”

“Huh?
Now you have completely lost me, Joe.”

“You
told me the previous crew of the Flying
Dutchman, before we captured it, had dumped several overloaded Kristang
transport ships in deep space, because the Kristang couldn’t pay for their
passage on a Thuranin star carrier. And by the time the Kristang scraped
together enough money to pay the Thuranin, most of the lizards on those ships
were dead.”

“Yeah,
so?”

“Are
those transport ships still out there, or did the Thuranin pick up all of
them?”

“Ohhhhh,”
he said with an amazed whistle. “I see what you did there, Joe. This isn’t so
much you being a clever monkey, you were using just your memory. Although that
was pretty clever. The answer is yes. According to the Thuranin records, three
transport ships were left behind, because everyone aboard was dead. And more
importantly, they were left behind because the jump drive systems had been partially
removed from those ships, in a desperate attempt to get one other ship to a
habitable planet. The three ships were in bad condition even before they were
overloaded with refugees.”

“Understood.
Would it be possible to fix those ships, even if we have to cannibalize two of
them to get one in flyable condition?”

“I,
hmm.” Skippy when silent for a moment, and his avatar froze for a moment. “I do
not know, Joe, the Thuranin did not bother to record that data. Even if they
did, it doesn’t matter. Didn’t you listen to me? Those three ships had the jump
drives stripped out.  Before you ask
a stupid question, no, I can’t use three busted jump drives to make one good
one.”

“The
Q-ship only needs to make a single jump, Skippy. It needs to jump in near the
Ruhar negotiators’ ship, launch an attack and then get blown up, or
self-destruct. One single jump. There is no way to do that?”

“With
what? Despite what you hairless apes think, you can’t make everything with mud
and sticks.”

“What
about if we add duct tape?”

“Oh,
well, then, in that case, NO! A jump drive is an incredibly-”

“Yeah,
blah, blah, monkeys can’t understand technology, blah, blah,” I waved my hand
dismissively. “Look, Skippy, all I’m asking is, can we take a couple jump drive
coils from the Dutchman and install
them in one of the Kristang ships?”

“No,
of course you can’t do- Hmm. Maybe. Shmaybe, let me- Damn. Yes. Yes we can. We
can, but we shouldn’t. Joe, we do not have an unlimited supply of jump drive
coils. Quite the opposite. The quantity aboard is severely limited and cannot
be replaced.”

“Hey,
you know what else can’t be replaced, Skippy? Earth. It does us no good to
preserve the Dutchman’s jump
capability, if the Ruhar go to Earth and tell the whole galaxy that humans are
flying around with a device that can control Elder wormholes.”

“It’s
not so easy, Joe. No, I can’t simply use some of the Dutchman’s drive coils to jump a Kristang ship. We would also need
to install capacitors to provide power to the coils. And the Thuranin coils
leave a jump signature that is distinctly different from that of Kristang
coils.”

“Oh,”
I stuck out my lower lip and frowned in feigned disappointment, hoping Skippy
would be clueless about me manipulating him. “If it’s too difficult even for
you, then-”

“Hey!”
Skippy said indignantly, his avatar’s hands on its hips. “I didn’t say that I
couldn’t do it. It’s me, Joe; expect the impossible.”

“Expect
the impossible?” I asked with arched eyebrow. “Is that going to replace ‘Trust
the Awesomeness’ as our unofficial unit motto?”

“Sadly,
no. All right, yes, we can remove drive coils and capacitors from the Dutchman and install them in a Kristang
ship, and I can monkey, pun intended, with the signature of our coils to make
the jump drive appear to be a genuine Kristang piece of crap . For control,
control, hmm, I need to think about that, hmm. Kristang jump computers are
notoriously crappy. No, I’ll need to control the jump remotely from the Dutchman.”

“Excuse
me,” Sarah interrupted. “Those Kristang transport ships; are they abandoned, or
did the Kristang blow them apart? You said the Kristang self-destruct the ships
if they have to abandon them.”

Oh,
crap. I hadn’t considered that. My whole plan could fall apart right there.
Fortunately for me and my image, Skippy rescued me. “Nope,” he assured us,
“those ships did not get blown up. Ordinarily, you are correct, those ships
would have been destroyed, even after they had been stripped of everything
useful. The Thuranin did not allow these particular ships to be destroyed,
because of their location. The place where the Thuranin dropped those ships is
close to a strategically important wormhole cluster, and experiences heavy
traffic. While drifting ships can be tracked and avoided, having debris
floating around unpredictably creates a serious navigation hazard.”

“Huh.”
A thought popped into my head. “Is that why the Elders put their wormholes in
deep interstellar space; because there is not a lot of space junk floating out
there?”

“That
is one reason, yes. Ships emerging from a wormhole are temporarily blind and
their shields are disrupted by passing through the wormhole’s event horizon, so
they are vulnerable to impacts with, as you said, space junk,” Skippy explained
with the tone people use when talking to small children. “There is a more
important reason the Elders put their wormholes in deep interstellar space;
being far away from gravity wells reduces the power required to keep a wormhole
stable.”

“I
will keep that in mind when I’m building my first wormhole,” I chuckled. “We
have a plan, then; we will jump to the location where the Thuranin last
reported those ships. You can predict where the ships have drifted since then?”

“Easy
peasy, Joe. They didn’t travel far from where the Thuranin left them, I can
predict their current locations within three kilometers, and the Thuranin
attached navigation beacons to each of them. The ships have drifted apart, it
will require our dropships to fly between them.”

“Drifted?”
Sarah asked. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t the Kristang ships leave the area
after they had been stranded by the Thuranin?”

“To
go where?” Skippy asked sarcastically.

“They
couldn’t go anywhere,” I explained, shooting Skippy an unhappy look. If it
entertained Skippy to insult me, I was Ok with that. Berating my crew was not
Ok. “Kristang ships can’t usually travel between stars; their jump drives take
so long to recharge, they overall travel slower than light.”

“Yeah,
and their crappy jump drives would wear out long before the lizards got halfway
to a star,” Skippy added.

“Yes,
but,” Sarah held up her hands. “They did not even make an attempt?”

“Oh,
I assume ‘they’ did,” I made air quotes with my fingers. “Right, Skippy?”

“If
by ‘they’, you mean the crews of all the ships, then yes, they did,” Skippy
confirmed. “The crews, all males, of course, stripped critical components from
the other ships to keep a single ship functioning. They left the passengers of
all other ships, mostly females, to die when the environmental systems failed.
Their plan, if their comrades failed to come up with payment for the Thuranin,
was to take that one ship through the nearby wormhole and attempt to reach a
habitable planet. To do that, they would have needed to replace their jump
drive components many times, which is why they stripped the drives out of the
other ships. Personally, I think that one ship would have failed along the way,
and those hateful, cowardly MFers would have died in deep space like they
deserved. Instead, their clan paid the Thuranin just enough for one ship, and
their ship got picked up by a star carrier. Their cowardice allowed them to
survive, while the others died.”

I
could see Sarah’s knuckles grow white as she squeezed her fist in anger. “We
can make Q-ships out of these transports?”

“Hopefully
more than one,” I replied.

“I
wouldn’t count on more than one, Joe,” Skippy cautioned, “but we can try.”

“Great!
Even Count Chocula can’t argue with this plan,” I was gloating. “We jump in,
cobble together one or two Q-ships, take them aboard the Dutchman’s hardpoints, and intercept that Ruhar negotiation team.”

“Yes!”
Skippy agreed. “Except for, you know, the teensy weensy little complication.”

My
heart skipped a beat. “What complication?”

“Well,
heh, heh, Joe, there are so, so very many complications,” Skippy chuckled.

Complication
Number One was, of course, Hans freakin’ Chotek. While he wasn’t quite as stiff
as when he came aboard, he was still ate up with following UNEF Command’s
orders to the letter. I wonder if he was more concerned about getting blamed
for taking initiative, than he was about aliens raining hellfire down on our
home planet. “Q-ships?” He asked skeptically, after we discussed the plan with Skippy,
in exhaustive detail.

“Yes,
Sir. This is much less risky,” I cringed as the words came out of my mouth. I
should have said picking up the stranded transports represented no risk at all.
Since my idiotic brain had told my mouth to say the wrong thing, I had to do
damage control. “There is almost no risk to this proposed operation. These transport
ships have been abandoned; they are hanging dead in space, in the middle of
nowhere.” That was not quite true, as the ships had been stranded near an Elder
wormhole cluster. “We do not know their exact condition, however Skippy is
confident he could bring one or more of them back to operational status.” I was
using big words to conceal my nervousness. “Skippy has completed most of the
necessary repairs to the Dutchman; he
can work on the remaining issues while we are under way. We should depart
immediately.”

Chotek
gave an exaggerated sigh. Whatever new perspective he found while gazing down
from the lip of that crater on the Dead Star had not made him any more trusting
of me. “Colonel Bishop, I am aware of the expectation that once a mission has
begun, it acquires a momentum that becomes impossible to stop.”

“Sir,”
I held my tongue from the acid remark I wanted to say. “At this point, all I am
asking is that we proceed toward these abandoned transport ships. You can abort
the mission at any point. If we think of a better plan before we arrive at the
transports, I will be very happy to turn the ship around. If we do not leave
soon, we could be wasting valuable time we cannot get back later. As you
mentioned, the clock is ticking.”

Chotek
frowned, looking at the outline of my plan on his tablet. “This is a rather
complicated operation, simply to pick up three abandoned, unarmed ships.”

“The
complications are Skippy’s contribution, and he assures me they are all
necessary.”

Count
Chocula surprised me again. “Very well,” he pushed his tablet face down on the
desk, “we will proceed toward the objective with all possible speed. Colonel, I
wish for your rather,” he searched for a word, “inventive mind, to continue searching for alternatives.”

“Yes,
Sir. I will inform the duty officer to break orbit.”

Damn
it, I hated when Skippy did his weaselly ‘well heh heh’, because I knew it meant
nothing but trouble for me.

When
he said ‘many complications’, my Spidey sense tingled, and for good reason.
Complication Number One, Hans Chotek, I had been able to deal with. The rest
were going to be a problem. “There is no other way to do this, Skippy?” I
asked, knowing the answer.

“There
are many other ways to do this, Joe, and I know that because you and Chocula
and the usual gang of idiots made me go through every freakin’ possible option
in nauseating detail, before our friendly Count reluctantly approved this forehead-slappingly
obvious plan. There is no other good
way to do this, Joey.”

“Well,
crap. Pilot, are we ready?”

Captain
Desai didn’t even bother to turn in her seat. She was standing by, but for this
maneuver, she was letting a Chinese act as Pilot In Command. “Affirmative. Everything
is green across the board, Colonel.” Desai acknowledged calmly, but I could see
the tension in her shoulders.

The
‘complications’ Skippy mentioned were serious problems. Any thought I had of
easily swooping in, taking up two or three abandoned transport ships, and
jumping away to some place where we could take our time working on them, went
out the window when Skippy dumped his gloomy info on us.

Those
Kristang transports were drifting near a strategically important wormhole
cluster that was closely monitored by the Thuranin. Two Elder wormholes
materialized in that area regularly, providing the Thuranin with quick and easy
access to far-flung points across the sector. The transport ships were stranded
in deep space, but not in the middle of nowhere, the entire area was covered by
a sensor network. There was also a lot of Thuranin traffic coming in and out of
the two wormholes. Worse, there would be starships hanging around, waiting for
the wormholes to open. Hanging around, with nothing better to do than to scan
the area, and see an unusual-looking, unidentified Thuranin star carrier that
would certainly be worth investigating.

We
could not do what I wanted; jump in near the wormholes, take the three ships
aboard and jump away quickly. Skippy explained that a ship jumping in near the
wormholes, hanging around for a while and then jumping away without going
through one of the wormholes would be very suspicious. And we could not go
through either of those wormholes to the other ends, especially not in our
unique star carrier, and not with three battered Kristang transports on our
three hardpoint docking platforms. The other ends of those two wormholes were
deep inside Thuranin territory, and near star systems with heavy military
presences. There was too much risk of us encountering Thuranin ships on the
other ends of those wormholes. The last time we encountered Thuranin ships had
not been healthy for the Flying Dutchman.

So,
we needed to come through the wormhole from the other side. Then we could jump
away without exhibiting odd behavior. Except, the other sides of those
wormholes were in territory too dangerous for us. That left us the option of
Skippy using our Elder wormhole controller module to get us through the
wormhole from another point in space. “Skippy, are you sure this won’t cause us
more trouble than we’re already in? You warned us against monkeying with
wormholes unless we absolutely have to. If the Thuranin notice either of these
wormholes are behaving strangely-”

“That
will not happen, Joe, I explained that to you.”

“Yes,
but you also said these wormholes see a lot of traffic, and there could be many
ships on the other ends, waiting to go through. That might be too many
witnesses.”

He
sighed. “All that is true, and all that is irrelevant. I told you, I will temporarily adjust the connection of one wormhole,
during a gap in its sequence. By the time the wormhole is supposed to resume
its sequence, I will have magically restored its function. You are welcome, by
the way.”

Skippy
had explained that, because the area of space near the stranded Kristang
transports had two wormholes whose patterns overlapped each other, the wormhole
network coordinated the actions of that pair of wormholes so they did not
interfere. Avoiding interference required one or the other wormhole to pause
between emergence points, during which time the wormhole was temporarily
dormant. It was normally temporarily dormant, except this time Skippy was going
to wake it up and make it connect to a different wormhole where the Flying Dutchman was parked. “Ok, I trust
you the Thuranin on the other end won’t notice a gap in the sequence-”

“And
it is unlikely there will be Thuranin ships hanging around the target end of
the wormhole, Joe. They expect that wormhole to be temporarily dormant at that
location, so there is no point to a ship waiting there. Any ship desiring to go
through the wormhole will jump to the next emergence point.”

“Yes,
but-”

“Chill!
Joe, take a chill pill, please. Nothing in life is without risk. The risk in
this case is minimal. For going through the wormhole, I mean. A whole lot of
bad shit may happen after we go through, as I warned you.”

“Yeah,”
I took a deep breath to calm myself. Everything our friendly beer can said made
sense. Then why did this feel like we
were jumping into another ambush? Hell, I couldn’t run the ship based on my
feelings, and this wasn’t my Spidey sense tingling; it was more of a nagging
fear. “Pilot, take us through the wormhole,” I ordered in a voice that was not
as confident as I intended to project. “If we detect anything squirrely on the
other side, you punch it and jump us away, don’t wait for me.”

“Understood,”
Desai nodded without turning to look at me; she was still stiff with tension.

My
shoulders were knotted up also.

The
Flying Dutchman went through the
wormhole, emerging from the far side event horizon almost blind and with our
defensive shield and stealth field temporarily weakened. We had our sensor
field set on maximum range, not that it mattered. The sensor field was so distorted
by passing through whatever weird physics happened inside a wormhole, that it
could not have detected a battleship right in front of us. All ships were
briefly defenseless and blind after emerging from a wormhole; fortunately, we
had a chrome-plated beer can on our side. “No enemy ships in range,” he
reported after a brief pause. Even Skippy could not shrug off the effect of
going instantaneously from one point in space to another.

“No
enemy ships?” I asked, confused.
Confusion about the punchline of a joke could be awkward. Confusion about the
tactical situation could be fatal. “There are no friendly ships anywhere, Skippy.” Saying that gave me a
pang in the pit of my stomach, thinking just how totally alone we were in the
galaxy.

“Uh,
sorry about, Colonel,” he replied, chastened. Skippy could be completely
serious when he wanted to, and when he was paying attention. That rarely
happened. “Perhaps I should have said no ships which represent a threat, or a
concern. I do detect the three Kristang transport ships, close to where I
expected them to be.”

“That
fast?” It seemed suspiciously quick, even for our magical beer can.

He
sighed. “Technically, I do not yet detect them; they are too far away. What I
did was query the local sensor network; they accepted our identifications
codes, and responded to my question about potential navigation hazards in the
area.”

“Oh.”

“Joe,
you complain when I give you too much detail, then you complain when I skip the
details,” he said with a sniff. “Make up your mind, please.”

“My
fault, Skippy. I’m a little, uh,” it would not be good for the captain of the
ship to mention his fears aloud. “It’s a tense situation.”

“The
quicker we get to it, the quicker we can get out of here,” he reminded me.

“Agreed.
You can reset the wormhole back to its original connections?”

“Doing
that now,” he replied, and the wormhole symbol on the main bridge display
blinked out. “Done. It will proceed to the next emergence point without any
change in timing. The Thuranin should not notice anything strange happened.”

“Great.
Thank you for your awesomeness.” The first of Skippy’s ‘complications’ was
going through the wormhole, without being detected by the Thuranin. That was
successfully accomplished.

The
next ‘complication’ was the extensive Thuranin sensor network around this
wormhole emergence point. According to Skippy, we had passed the first hurdle:
the network accepted the fake ID code provided by Skippy. That code, he warned,
would not pass close scrutiny by Thuranin command. Before we could park the
ship near the Kristang transports to work on them, he needed to worm his way
into the sensor network and take partial control. “How long will it take for
you to get into the sensor network, Skippy?” Before we went through the
wormhole, Skippy had only been able to guess how long it would take him to hack
in; too many unknown variables, he said.

“Doing
it now,” he said in that distracted voice that I hated. “This could take a
while, even in meatsack caveman time, Joe. The network is widely distributed;
the problem is the far nodes of the network are responding at the painfully
slow speed of light. We’re good for now, I’m doing some unauthorized things
with the laws of physics that you don’t need to know about.”

“We’re
good?”

“Yes.
By the time we reach the Kristang ships, I will have full control of the sensor
network. If a Thuranin ship arrives before then, we will have to jump away
whether I’m in control of the network or not.”

“Fair
enough. Colonel Chang, our payload is still secure?”

“Confirmed.
We had some flaking off the surfaces, nothing significant.” He referred to the
three asteroids we carried on the Dutchman’s
remaining hardpoint docking platforms. Yes, one of Skippy’s delightful
surprises was that along the way, we had to stop in a crappy, uninhabited star
system to pick up a trio of asteroids. And not just any three random asteroids,
oh, no. That would be way too easy. Instead,
we poked around the boring star system what seemed like forever while Skippy
scanned for just the right three asteroids, like he was Goldi-freakin’-locks
and the bears weren’t coming home any time soon. The asteroids could not be too
big, or too small. They could not be made of rock too soft or metal too dense. I
swear, waiting for Skippy to select three asteroids was like waiting while a
girlfriend tries on shoes. In my experience, she looks at and tries a hundred
pairs of shoes, and it takes hours while you slowly lose your will to live, and
in the end she leaves the store with either nothing, or a pair of shoes exactly like the ones she was already
wearing.

Not
that I’m still bitter about it.

Securing
those bulky, inert chunks of rock to the Dutchman’s
three docking platforms had been an enormous pain in the ass. To make room for
the rocks, we had to leave Nagatha and the relay station/lifeboat behind. If
the operation went according to plan, we would pick up Nagatha either on our
way back, or after the mock attack on the Ruhar negotiating team. If we took
all three Kristang transports, we wouldn’t have room for Nagatha until we
dropped one of the transports.

When
Skippy proposed that we bring a trio of asteroids with us, I couldn’t believe
it. The rocks were not to help us take the transports, they were necessary to
maintain our cover after the mock attack on the Ruhar. After the attack, we did
not want anyone poking around, trying to figure out where our Q-ships came
from. Skippy’s hacking into the Thuranin sensor network would mostly cover our
tracks. He could erase any evidence of us having come through the wormhole at a
time when the wormhole was not scheduled to be open. He could wipe records
showing data about a strange-looking Thuranin star carrier that wasn’t listed
in their fleet database. And he could prevent the Thuranin from seeing us
taking aboard the Kristang transports and jumping away with them. With the
awesome awesomeness of Skippy, the Thuranin would never know the Flying Dutchman was ever there.

What
Skippy could not do was permanently change the laws of physics. After we left,
the changes he had made to the programming of the sensor network satellites
would gradually be overwritten as the code was updated by passing ships. After
the network was restored to full functioning, it would still be unable to report
that the Flying Dutchman had been
there, because Skippy would have erased that data. But the sensors would be
able to report that the mass of one or more Kristang transports in the area was
suddenly missing. And that would start the Thuranin asking uncomfortable
questions about why those stranded hulks of ships had been taken, by who, and
where they had gone. It would not take the Thuranin long to realize the missing
ships were involved in the attack on the Ruhar negotiators.

Which
would not be good for us, or humanity.

To
avoid that, we needed to prevent the Thuranin from ever discovering the hulks
of those ships had gone anywhere. We needed to leave a mass equal to the mass
of each ship, we needed to remove the navigation beacons from the ships and
attach them to the asteroids. And we needed to shroud the asteroids. Yes, we
had to cover the asteroids in an inflatable sort of balloon. Skippy assured us
the Thuranin were not paying close attention to those worthless ships; but if
those distant objects suddenly became more, or less, large or shiny than they
used to be, that would attract attention. Thus, the need to surround the
asteroids in a balloon that was the same size and shape of the ships, and as shiny
as the hulls of the ships were.

When
Skippy had explained that we needed to replace each transport ship with
something of equal mass, I knew exactly what he meant. “Oh yeah,” I said
confidently. “I saw that in that old Indiana
Jones movie! He steals a golden
statue, and replaces it with a bag of rocks or something. Is that what you plan
to do?”

“It
was a bag of sand, Joe. And yes, I plan to do something like that.”

“Hmm.
I remember that didn’t work out so well for Indiana Jones.”

“I
will be much more careful, Joe. I promise.”

“Good.
Because if a giant rock starts rolling after me, I’m throwing you under it.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Skippy’s
need for an Indiana Jones-type trick is why we came through the wormhole with
three asteroids attached to the Dutchman,
and why I was pleased we lost only minors bits of rock along the way.

“Excellent,”
I acknowledged Chang’s report. A minor amount of material flaking off the
asteroids we could live with; we had carved up three asteroids until they were
slightly more massive than the stranded transport ships. When we reached the ships
and got good sensor data about their mass, we would trim each asteroid to the
proper mass with the Dutchman’s maser
cannons. I would have greatly preferred to cut the asteroids to size and install
the balloon around them before going through the wormhole, but Skippy insisted
he did not have accurate data on their masses and ‘albedo’, which I learned is
a fancy sciency word for how shiny something is. I did not know why scientists
couldn’t just use a normal word like ‘shininess’. “Pilot,” I ordered, “take us
over to the nearest Kristang transport. And step on it.”

The
reason I wanted us to reach the target transports quickly became apparent ninety
seven minutes later, when one of the local wormholes was scheduled to emerge
into that part of space. Skippy had completed his scans of all three ships, and
we were ready for the next phase of the operation, to tackle the next in
Skippy’s list of ‘complications’. Before we could proceed with the next phase,
we had to shut down everything but our stealth field, and tuck the Dutchman in behind one of the
transports. Desai had the Dutchman’s
nose practically touching one of the transports, with our pirate ship’s long,
skinny hull stretched out facing away from the wormhole. To be safe, I ordered
the ship into position thirty minutes early, in case we ran into last-minute
glitches like a balky thruster.

And
it was a damned good thing we hid our pirate ship, because four minutes after
the Elder wormhole popped into existence, two Thuranin star carriers came
through. Between the two star carriers, they were transporting two battleships,
four cruisers, a light cruiser and eight destroyers. I shuddered when I saw the
destroyers, remembering how a squadron of those ships had nearly trapped and
destroyed the Flying Dutchman. “That
is a lot of firepower,” I said quietly, swallowing hard.

“It
is, Joe,” Skippy’s own voice was quieter than usual. “Right now, just one of
those destroyers could tear this us apart. I rebuilt our pirate ship as best I
could, but it’s kind of held together now with duct tape and a prayer.”

“Thank
you for boosting our confidence there, Skippy. Any chance those ships see us?”

“Zippy
chance of that,” he scoffed. “None of those ships are even actively scanning
the area; they are relying on a feed from the local sensor network, and I
control that. If they bother to look in this direction, what those ships are
seeing over here are the dead hulks of three Kristang transports, and nothing
else. My only concern was whether a ship might energize its active sensors, to
tune them after coming through the wormhole. But these ships just left a
Thuranin fleet shipyard, and they are in optimal condition. There is no reason
for those ships to bother looking around. I am, hmm, that’s interesting.”

“What?”
Out where we were, ‘interesting’ was rarely ‘good’.

“Joe,
I just decrypted data from one of the star-”

“Skippy!
You promised you would not go poking around in the databases of those ships.
They might detect something out here is spying on them.”

“Cool
your jets, Joe. I am not poking around anywhere. One of the star carriers
transmitted their secret mission orders to the other carrier, and I intercepted
the message. I have gotten better at decrypting Thuranin military
transmissions, and this particular one was no challenge for me. What I find
interesting is the objective in their orders; that pair of star carriers are
going to join four others for an assault on a Jeraptha-controlled wormhole
cluster. My question to you is whether it might benefit us to somehow pass that
intelligence to the Jeraptha.”

“Uh,”
I looked at Chotek, who was standing in the CIC. “We’ll have to think about
that, Skippy. It would depend on whether preventing a successful Thuranin
attack would benefit us.”

“And,” Chotek emphasized the word,
“whether passing along that data poses a risk of revealing our presence.”

“A
risk? Ha! Oh, no way, dude!” Skippy chortled. “As if! I could include the data
in a freakin’ birthday message to Jeraptha Fleet Command, and they would still have
no idea where it came from. Chocula, since you are supposed to be the grand
strategic thinker here, I expected you would see the value to humanity of the
Jeraptha further securing their recent military gains in this sector. The more
secure the Jeraptha are, the more peaceful this sector is, and that is all good
for humans on both Earth and Paradise.”

“I
will,” Chotek replied with irritation, “consider it. After we complete the present operation. How long will those ships
remain here?”

“Not
long,” Skippy’s voice sounded seriously peeved. He had offered what he thought
was a valuable piece of information, and Chotek had dismissed it as a
distraction.

“Skippy,”
I hurried to assure our friendly beer can, “that is excellent info, and an
outstanding effort. You dug into that transmission on your own initiative, I
appreciate it.” Hopefully, he would notice the use of ‘I’ rather than ‘we’.
“How long is ‘not long’?”

“Those
carriers are already accelerating away from the wormhole, and using their shields
to clear space in front of them for a jump. If they follow standard Thuranin
procedure, they will jump away within eighteen minutes; shortly after the Elder
wormhole closes.”

I
looked back to the CIC. “Colonel Chang, tell the away teams to be ready for
departure in twenty minutes. I want us to get the hell out of here as fast as
we can.”

The
next ‘complication’ in Skippy’s grand list of complications was trimming the
asteroids to match the mass of the transport ships, then covering the rocks in
the balloons and inflating them. This was sort of his Indiana Jones trick. Once
the balloons were in place, their shells would harden, and Skippy could adjust
the color of the shells to match the reflectivity of the ship hulls. At the
distance the transports had drifted from the satellites of the sensor network,
we didn’t need the balloon shells to look like the ships, just to reflect a
similar amount of faint starlight in a roughly similar shape.

Skippy,
his bots and the CIC crew could handle carving up the asteroids, dispersing the
debris, and installing the shrouds. Some of Skippy’s bots could also assist in
the other ‘complication’ I was most worried about; locating and removing the
booby traps.

Skippy
had explained that, because the Thuranin had not allowed the Kristang to
self-destruct their abandoned ships, the lizards had very likely planted booby
traps to prevent anyone from easily messing with them. Soon after we arrived at
the first ship, Skippy’s scans had detected several explosive devices aboard,
and he warned there were probably many more that external scans could not
detect. We could not risk taking booby-trapped ships aboard the Dutchman’s docking platforms, so the
explosives needed to be cleared first. With his bots, Skippy could help, but he
did not have enough bots available to clear ships quickly enough. So, Major
Smythe’s SpecOps team would have to suit up and go aboard the ships to clear
the booby traps. It would be dangerous, and it would be necessary, and it
needed to be done quickly. There was too much traffic through those two wormholes
for us to take our time clearing the ships of explosives.

Skippy
had learned the Thuranin were launching a major operation to stabilize their
losses in the sector; that meant the pair of wormholes would be experiencing
extra traffic; both fresh ships coming from fleet shipyards, and ships in need
of heavy maintenance returning to base. Ships coming in through the wormhole
were not a serious danger to us; Skippy knew exactly when the wormholes were
scheduled to be open, so we shut down operations twenty minutes before each
wormhole appearance. Incoming ships did not linger long after coming through
the wormholes; we waited ten minutes after each inbound ship departed, just to
be safe.

Ships
seeking to go through the wormhole from our side were a serious threat, and a
threat we could not predict. Ships jumped in from way beyond even Skippy’s
sensor range, and they jumped in without any warning. We could not even rely on
ships jumping in only shortly before one of the wormholes opened, because
sometimes ships arrived hours before a wormhole emergence. Skippy tried to
assure me that ships would rely on data from the sensor network he controlled,
rather than looking around with their own sensor fields. I was still greatly
concerned that during the time enemy ships were lingering; some ship’s
ambitious sensor officer could try for the Employee of the Month award by
nosily poking around the area with sensors, double-checking the feed from the local
sensor network. The Dutchman had its
stealth field operational 24/7, and any of our dropships flying around used a
stealth field also, protecting us from being discovered by a casual sensor
scan. Any sort of serious scan with a military-grade sensor field would certainly
not miss the presence of our shrunken but still massive star carrier. The
unexplained presence of a very odd-looking, stealthed Thuranin star carrier
would prompt an immediate investigation by any Thuranin warship in the area, no
matter what line of bullshit Skippy tried to feed the local sensor network.

“Ready?”
I asked the pilot of the dropship.

“Yes,
Colonel,” the French pilot acknowledged.

“Punch
it,” I ordered, and gripped the too-small Thuranin seat with both hands. It was
unworthy of me as a commander to wish I had Desai flying the dropship, rather
than the Frenchman. Gustov Renaud was a fine pilot, having flown the hottest
Rafale fighters the French had in their inventory, and Desai had given him high
marks on his evaluation. Still, I always felt more comfortable with Desai at
the controls.

The
dropship rocketed out of the Flying
Dutchman’s docking bay at the maximum acceleration its human occupants
could stand, headed directly for the second Kristang transport ship. To prevent
our activities from being discovered by Thuranin ships jumping in, we moved
between our star carrier and the Kristang ships as quickly as possible,
limiting our exposure time. That technique protected the away teams from being
detected. To protect humanity, in case the Thuranin somehow did notice
something funky going on near the stranded Kristang transports, each away team
brought along an old friend of mine: Mr. Nukey. Our dropship’s tactical nuke
was strapped into the seat beside me, happily emitting stray neutrons, but
otherwise silently enjoying a chance to get away from the Dutchman and explore the universe. Join UN ExForce, I thought. See
the galaxy, meet new people, and nuke them!

Maybe
that slogan needed some work.

In
case our pirate ship was detected by the Thuranin and had to jump away, an away
team trapped aboard a Kristang transport was expected to trigger their nuke, to
destroy all evidence of humans flying around the galaxy on our own. It sucked,
and I wished there was a way around that unpleasant necessity, but I didn’t see
an option. My personal plan, if I got trapped with nosy and pissed-off Thuranin
approaching, was to wait until a Thuranin dropship got close enough, and let
Mr. Nukey do what he did best. At least we would take some little green MFers
with us.

“Flight
path is nominal,” Captain Renaud said in a French accent that my American ear
found unintentionally snobbish, like he was looking down his nose at me. I
don’t know why I still felt that way; I knew plenty of French Canadiens from
living in Maine and they were good people. Of course, Canadians had a
reputation of being as polite as the French reputation for being rude. “Cutting
thrust now.”

My
stomach did a flipflop as the dropship was momentarily in zero-gee, then the
pilot kicked thrust on hard to decelerate. “Approaching target,” he said, his
voice reflecting the strain of forces five times Earth normal gravity. This was
the tricky part of getting the away team into the docking bay of a Kristang
transport. Skippy’s bots had cleared booby traps from a docking bay, and
manually cranked the doors open. Our pilot needed to fly the dropship into the
bay as quickly as possible, with no external guidance, and no safety margin
from capture mechanisms in the bay. The ship ahead of us was dead, without even
any reserve power. There may be a powercell or two still active aboard; they
weren’t providing any power to the docking bay. We were trading the risk of
crashing in the docking bay, with the risk of being exposed in empty space if a
Thuranin ship jumped in and decided to look around. Since our pilots could
mostly control the risk of crashing, I opted to let them fly and trust their
skill and judgment.

I
looked over at Mr. Nukey, who some jokers had painted with a big purple Barney
flipping the bird and saying ‘Greetings from Earth, MFers!’ with a moronic
Barney grin.

The
greeting did not seem sincere to me. I was totally Ok with that.

Our
pilot must have thought he was landing a Rafale fighter on the deck of a
carrier, because we came to a very abrupt halt that rattled my teeth. On the
display in front of me, I could see we had still been moving at a good speed
when the dropship’s tail entered the transport’s docking bay, and we had
briefly pulled over eight gees to arrest our progress. Renaud was either very,
very good, or he was showing off. Or both. Now the dropship wobbled slightly,
then settled to the deck with a clanging sound as our skids clamped on firmly
to the alien deck. “Thank you for flying Air France,” the pilot said smoothly.
“There is a comment card under your seat, please feel free to ignore it.”

I
decided right then that Gustov Renaud was a damned good pilot.

The
giant docking bay doors, open to cold space, were on the side of the ship
facing away from the wormholes so we didn’t have to worry about being detected
once we were in the bay. To speed our exit, the doors were left open, which
left the bay open to vacuum. That didn’t matter; everyone in the away team was
wearing Kristang powered armor suits except the two pilots in the cockpit. They
sealed the cockpit doors, then we popped open the dropship’s large rear ramp and
let the air rush out. We couldn’t wait to cycle through the dropship’s airlock
four people at a time, and the dropship had plenty of oxygen onboard. It was a
credit to the professionalism of our SpecOps team that I did not see anything,
not even a stray candy wrapper blowing around when we let the air out in a
rush.

Skippy’s
bots had cleared the docking bay, and the inner airlock door, before he had to
recall the bots to work on trimming the asteroids and installing their shrouds.
We had two bots with us in the dropship; they were available because Skippy’s
scans had determined one of the transports was in such bad condition, it wasn’t
even useful as spare parts. That left only two ships to clear of booby traps,
and we would only be able to make one functional Q-ship out of those two hulks.
It was disappointing that we had come all the way out here, taken substantial
risks and were expending a lot of effort, to make just one Q-ship.

With
only two bots available to our away team, our plan was for people to locate
booby traps, and for Skippy to use the bots to disarm those IEDs. Skippy had already
remotely rendered the larger booby traps inert, but he wasn’t able to do much
about the crude, manually triggered devices the Kristang crews had cobbled
together before they abandoned the ships and left their terrified passengers behind
to die.

By
‘locate’ booby traps, I did not mean for us to stumble across them and have
them go ‘Boom’ in our faces. We had portable scanners that could see through
doors, decks and bulkheads at short range. That’s a damned good thing, because
sure enough, the inner airlock door had an IED that would explode if the door
slid aside and pulled a wire with it. Seeing that on the scanner made me roll
my eyes. I had dealt with more sophisticated IEDs in Nigeria, and I found it
ironic that an advanced starfaring species like the Kristang relied on such
crude devices. Crude did not mean ineffective, of course, that bomb could have
killed the half dozen people of the SpecOps team. Instead, they reported their
scanner’s findings to Skippy, and he had one of the bots drill a hole through a
bulkhead, then reach a skinny tentacle around and disarm that IED. One door
down, a hundred more to go, I thought to myself. We had to clear the entire
ship, compartment by compartment, before it would be safe to take the transport
on one of the Dutchman’s docking
platforms. Our already shaky pirate ship could not afford to take any more
damage.

“Inner
door is clear!” An Indian paratrooper reported. “Opening it manually now.”

“Let’s
move,” I said, unbuckling my seat restraints and standing up carefully,
reminding myself that Kristang starships do not have artificial gravity even
when they have power.

“Are
you sure, Colonel?” The question came from one of my babysitters, an Army
Ranger named Paul Rodriguez. He and my semi-permanent shadow Lauren Poole had
unofficially been assigned by Major Smythe to keep me out of trouble. Smythe
probably thought that, me being US Army, I might feel more comfortable with
Rangers. Or he thought I would protest less and be less of a whiny pain in the
ass if my babysitters were Rangers. Either way, I was stuck with them and they
were stuck with me.

“Yes,
I’m sure,” I tried being polite with my babysitters. All three of them, which
included United States Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Margaret Adams. Whereas
Major Smythe had assigned Rodriguez and Poole to babysit me, Skippy had
arranged for Adams to accompany me.

“We
could wait for the forward team to clear the first passageway, Sir,” Adams
suggested, in a voice that implied it was not quite a suggestion.

“Adams,”
I responded while swimming through vacuum toward the open rear ramp, “I know
Skippy assigned you to keep me out of trouble. But you were supposed to keep
Skippy out of trouble when we took the relay station, and you got into one hell
of a firefight with the Thuranin.”

“Yes,
Sir,” Adams was not deterred. “That was one time. Skippy knows for sure that you are a magnet for trouble everywhere
you go.”

That
was a statement I could not argue with. “Fine. Then your job is to keep me out
of trouble, while we clear the ship
of IEDs. This op is all hands on deck, Adams, I’m not going to sit on my ass
aboard the Dutchman.”

“Yes,
Sir,” she replied unhappily. She wasn’t the only person unhappy about me going
aboard a Kristang transport, most of the command crew had strongly urged me to
remain aboard our pirate ship. I had vetoed that idea. This wasn’t Star Trek, I
had told them, where the captain had to remain aboard the ship while an away
team took all the risk. Colonel Chang was perfectly capable of running the ship
in my absence, and Skippy wanted me on an away team, in case we ran into a
situation that required, as Skippy put it, ‘a monkey-brain idea’.

I
took that as a compliment.

“Colonel
Bishop?” Lt Sodhi of the Indian team called over the link in my suit helmet.
“Sir, could you come up here, please? I think you should see this.”

“Make
a hole, people,” I called over the broadcast channel. Adams propelled herself
along right on my heels, with the two Rangers close behind. The Rangers were
special forces, and they both outranked her, and Margaret Adams had made it
crystal clear that she didn’t give a shit about any of that. My safety was her responsibility;
the Rangers were welcome to tag along if they stayed out of her way.

When
I got to the inner airlock door, four soldiers were floating, hugging the airlock
door frame. They turned to look at me, saying nothing as I pulled myself
forward with slightly less grace than the special forces had. We had all been
practicing zero gee combat maneuvers in our Kristang powered armor suits; I had
devoted extra hours to that part of the training, as I didn’t want to let the
team down if we went into action together. In combat, it was unlikely I would
be able to do anything useful with a weapon compared to the SpecOps team, but
being capable of handling myself in zero gee meant the professionals could
concentrate on their jobs and not worry about me. It was the least I could do,
since I had not made the sacrifices and commitment to qualify for special
forces. And I wasn’t good enough anyway.

“What
is it, Lieutenant?”

Sodhi
pointed to his left, then his right, silently.

They
were visible as soon as my helmet came through the airlock. On both sides,
floating randomly in the passageway. Kristang bodies. They looked desiccated,
like mummies. Before we arrived, Skippy had speculated that the lack of oxygen
and bitter cold inside the ships would have preserved the bodies in some
fashion; a possibility I had asked him not to discuss with anyone else. The
bodies had been floating undisturbed for a long time, until we forced opened
the airlock door and sucked out whatever atmosphere remained. Now, exposed to
extreme cold and hard vacuum, the exposed lizard skin had crazed and cracked,
freezing and burning at the same time. It was ugly.

Women
and children. Kristang females and their young. Mostly. I saw only four adult
males, in civilian clothing. Or they were wearing what I thought was Kristang
civilian clothing; I knew it was not the black and yellow of Kristang military
uniforms.

“God.”
I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t say anything else. Yes, we all knew
the transports had been overloaded with civilian refugees, and we knew the
Thuranin would not have allowed the Kristang to eject the bodies, because
bodies would create a risk of ships smacking into them after coming through a
wormhole. So we knew the ships would be full of bodies. Maybe the SpecOps
people were ready for what they saw. I wasn’t.

“Sir,”
Sodhi drew my attention to an adult female. I knew she was a female due to her
small size. “Gunshot wounds.”

Looking
closer, I saw he was right about the wounds. It wasn’t only that one Kristang;
now that I knew what to look for, I saw many of the adults had wounds
characteristic of bullet holes. In fact, all three of the adult males, all
civilians, had more than one gunshot wound. “They killed them.”

“Yes,
Colonel,” Sodhi nodded, I could see his helmet bobbing up and down. “My guess
is this ship’s crew stripped their ship of everything useful, then retreated to
the docking bay,” he pointed back through the airlock. “The passengers must
have panicked when they saw they were being abandoned. I know I would. The crew
killed them if they got in the way.”

“Holy
mother of God.” The passageway was only maybe thirty meters long, and it was
crammed with mummified bodies. I wondered in horror whether the entire ship was
like this; Kristang stacked on top of each other like cordwood. Skippy had told
us the transports were ‘grossly overloaded’ with refugees, and that the ship’s
environmental systems had struggled to provide enough oxygen. I should have asked
him for a better definition of ‘grossly overloaded’ before we came aboard.

My
team seeing their commander stunned into inaction was not helpful. Everyone was
feeling the same way; my job was to keep us focused on making sure humanity did
not suffer the fate of these dead Kristang. “Lieutenant, if the passengers
rushed toward the docking bays, it makes sense this part of the ship would be
packed with people. Hopefully the rest of the ship isn’t like this. Get your
scanning teams to clear this passageway in both directions, in case the crew booby
trapped the bodies,” I had known militia crazies to do that in Nigeria. “We
will work our way compartment by compartment, until we have identified all IEDs
so Skippy can disarm them. I want teams limited to two-hour shifts; we need to
be razor sharp and focused. Teams not active will return to the dropship to
remove suits and get some R&R.”

“Yes,
Sir,” Sodhi agreed immediately, which surprised me. I had expected a hard-core
special forces leader to insist his team did not need rest. Major Smythe must
have impressed upon his SpecOps team that I would not tolerate any gung-ho
cowboy bullshit. Or Sodhi simply understood we could not take any risks aboard
these unfamiliar alien vessels. “We will need to move these bodies out of the
way to get access farther into the ship.”

“Right.”
I called Captain Renaud in the dropship. “Captain, we need space in here, so we
will be bringing, uh, bodies, into the docking bay. Get the outer doors closed
so the bodies aren’t floating out into space.”

“Colonel,
may I suggest another idea?” Renaud asked. “We have netting in our gear locker.
I suggest that I move the dropship to the end of the docking bay, and we
stretch netting across the bay to contain, whatever it is you need to move into
the bay.”

“Good
thinking, Captain.” I related the plan to Sodhi. “As you work your way down the
passageway and verify there are no booby traps, pass the bodies back down
through the airlock, and we’ll secure them.”

I
volunteered my team to set up the netting across the docking bay, and we formed
a human chain to accomplish the grim task of passing mummified bodies along.
After the passageway was cleared, blessedly none of the bodies had IEDs
attached, we split up into teams of four, each team having two hand-held
scanners. In our team, Rangers Poole and Rodriguez operated the scanners, while
Adams and I tagged areas with verified or suspected IEDs, and used fancy
Thuranin spray cans to paint a fluorescent orange check mark on compartments we
had cleared.

It
was a tough job. Not physically, because our powered armor suits and the lack
of gravity made moving around almost effortless. It was tough emotionally. The
first ‘compartment’ we cleared was more of a storage locker, barely large
enough to hold two sets of powered armor; we found a scene that almost made me
have to take off my helmet in the vacuum. Because I almost puked and cried at
the same time.

In
the locker was a Kristang female. A lizard. A member of the species that would
wipe humanity off the face of the Earth without a second thought.

This
female was huddled in the locker, clutching three young Kristang, the four of
them hugging each other. Even though her face was mummified, and now cracked
from exposure to harsh vacuum, I thought I could sense the hopelessness and
terror in her eyeless sockets.

She
must have taken shelter in the locker, clutching her children to her, as the
food, water and oxygen ran out, as the crew stripped everything useful out of
the ship, as the power died and darkness closed in. She had tried to comfort
her children as best she could, knowing for certain there was nothing she could
do for them. Knowing they were all going to die horribly of suffocation and
frostbite.

I
reminded myself that Kristang females had been genetically engineered to be
small, weak, docile and less intelligent. The creature, the woman, I saw in that locker had done her
best to take care of her children, in the only way she knew, the only way she
could. The only way she was allowed to by her murderous species.

Adams
backed away, bent over double. She was also struggling not to lose her
breakfast on the inside of her helmet.

“Breathe
deep, Sergeant,” I suggested. A glance at our two Rangers told me they were not
having an easy time of it either. Telling Adams to take deep, calming breaths helped
me do the same, and focusing on the three members of my team distracted me from
my own disgusted nausea.

“Yes,
Sir.” Adams straightened up, her face pale inside the helmet. “No excuses,
Colonel.” Droplets of tears floated freely in her helmet, some beading up on
the faceplate.

I
held her shoulders and pressed my faceplate against hers, looking her directly
in the eyes. “No excuse needed, Staff
Sergeant. If you are not emotionally affected by this,” I gestured to the dead
family in the locker, “then I don’t need you in my crew. These Kristang, these people, are not our enemies. Their
warrior caste is. Not these civilians. Not defenseless women and children.”

“Yes,
Sir,” she shook her head, but she shook it angrily. And she gently pushed
herself away from me. “I’m all right, Colonel.”

“None
of us are all right, Adams. We’re doing our job anyway, because we have to.”

“Colonel
Bishop,” Poole called. “These people were stranded here by the Thuranin crew of
our ship? The Flying Dutchman?”

“Yes,”
I confirmed. “Our ship didn’t have a name back then, but yes. Our ship did
this.”

“Because
the Kristang couldn’t pay?” She asked
incredulously.

“Because
their clan couldn’t pay for passage aboard a star carrier. Skippy told me the story
is, the Kristang were evacuating a planet; they packed these ships full of
refugees. The Thuranin picked up these transports, but halfway to their
destination, the Thuranin learned the Kristang clan couldn’t come up with
payment. If the Thuranin support a Kristang military operation, they transport
the warships and support vessels for free. Apparently, if the Kristang want
transport that doesn’t directly support Thuranin interests, the clan has to pay
for the ride.” I looked down the passageway, to the dozens of doors to
compartments and lockers we needed to clear. “By the time the clan scraped
together the cash or whatever they use for payment, most of the people aboard
these transports were dead. Thousands of them.”

Poole
took a deep breath, loud enough that I could hear it over the comm system.
“Colonel, during the pre-mission briefing on Earth, we went over the records of
your first two missions aboard the Dutchman.
One of the topics was the incident when you put the Thuranin crew in a
container, and jumped them inside a gas giant planet. Sir,” she looked at me,
the lights on the side of her helmet illuminating my face. “There was some
discussion about whether you committed a war crime by killing those sleeping
Thuranin.”

“I
have wondered that myself,” I admitted. At the time, I was so fearful about the
Thuranin, I did not consider too deeply the morality of what I did. Later, I
had been able to rationalize my actions as necessary at the time. The incident
did keep me awake some nights. “Maybe I could have kept them locked up
somewhere, until we got to Earth and UNEF Command could take them as prisoners
of war. But at the time, we had just seized an alien starship, and I didn’t
know if we would ever see Earth again-”

“Maybe you should stop thinking about it,
Sir,” Poole declared emphatically. “The former crew of the Dutchman got better treatment than they deserved.” I could see she
had a tear welling up in the corner of one eye.

“There
is a higher authority that will judge me for that, Poole.” By ‘higher
authority’, I didn’t just mean Chotek, Skippy, UNEF Command or the United
States Army. “This locker is clear,” I closed the door and sprayed an orange
check mark on it. “Let’s keep moving.”

I
was in the process of suiting up again in the dropship, getting ready for
another two hour shift clearing IEDs, when Skippy pinged me. “Trouble, Joe. Five
Thuranin ships just jumped in, and the next wormhole emergence isn’t for
another eight hours and sixteen minutes. We already ceased operations on
trimming and covering the two asteroids, before you ask.”

Damn
it! Five ships that would have nothing to do for over eight hours. What if one
of them got bored and decided to scan the area, or even fly over to check out
the dead hulks of three Kristang transports? “What type of ships?” I prayed
they were unarmed transports. No such luck.

“Two
battlecruisers and three light cruisers.”

Crap.
I checked my zPhone; the app to activate Mr. Nukey was on the second screen.
According to the status, Nukey was ready to go at any time. If he needed to do
his job, I would not be able to give him a performance evaluation afterward. “Is
there any indication they are going to do anything other than wait for the
wormhole to open?”

“No,
Joe. They are just maintaining formation. All ships queried the sensor network,
and they are all satisfied with the data I fed them.”

“This
isn’t good, but I don’t see that we can do anything other than continue
clearing these ships of booby traps, and hope those little green MFers go
through the wormhole.”

“I
agree. Hey, Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“You
be extra, extra careful over there, please?”

“I’m
touched, Skippy. Thank you for caring about me. You’re a good guy.”

“Oh.
Uh, I was going to say that if you do something stupid and an IED explodes now
and the Thuranin see it, we’re all screwed. But let’s go with me being a good
guy.”

“Asshole.”

I
told the teams of both ships about the Thuranin ships, and reminded them all to
be extra super-duper awesomely careful. As if they needed to be told to be
careful around explosives; especially crude, hurriedly-built amateur explosive
devices that just might decide to detonate on their own because they were bored
and lonely.

CHAPTER NINE

Clearing
both ships of IEDs took 30 percent longer than we estimated, although we had
been making a wild guess. The other transport ship was declared free of booby
traps twenty eight minutes before the ship I had been working on; I like to
think me being on the team didn’t slow us down. It didn’t matter anyway,
because those five Thuranin warships were still hanging around, and the
wormhole wasn’t going to open for more than an hour. With nothing else to do, I
ordered downtime for everyone. We ate and rested as best we could; some of the
SpecOps people actually took naps. One of them, a Ranger whose name shall not
be mentioned except it rhymes with ‘Slauren Spoole’, might have snored a bit.
Or more than a bit.

It’s
funny how when you drool in your sleep, and you are in zero gravity, it doesn’t
run down your chin, it floats in front of your face.

We
waited until the wormhole was scheduled to open. We waited five minutes, then
five minutes more. Skippy did not give us the All Clear signal, or any signal
at all. Finally, I broke communications silence and pinged the Dutchman on a low-power, tightbeam laser
burst transmission that lasted half a nanosecond. Skippy had assured me there
was a near-zero chance of the Thuranin detecting the transmission; I still felt
unprofessional breaking silence. The way I justified it to myself was that if
the Thuranin were on their way toward us and I needed to activate Mr. Nukey, I
wanted time to make a boring and useless speech to the crew. I’m sure they
would have preferred to let Nukey do the talking for us. “Skippy, what the hell
is happening out there?”

“I
do not know, Joe. Those five ships are powered up, but they are not maneuvering
into position to go through the wormhole.”

“Oh,
for crying out loud. Did one of them get a flat tire or something?”

“Again,
I do not know. I would know, if you didn’t have a hissy fit about the idea of
me poking around in their databases, you knucklehead.”

“I
do not have hissy fits, Skippy. I have, uh, legitimate concerns.”

“Uh
huh. They just sound like hissy
fits.”

“I-
Can you guess what those ships are doing?”

“Maybe
they ordered a pizza and they’re waiting for it to be delivered through the
wormhole? How the hell should I know? Oh, hey, here’s a crazy idea; I could dip
into the navigational database of one ship, and-”

“No!
N-O. Do not do that.”

“I
can spell, Joe. You’re the grammar challenged one. We- wait, there’s a new
development.”

“What?”

“Will
you please shut your crumb catcher
for a minute?”

I
shut up. To burn off nervous energy, I checked the connection to Nukey on my
zPhone. Then I flipped open the cover of Nukey’s status panel to check again.
That drew alarmed looks from the crew, proving once again that I am an idiot.

“Ok,
good news, Joe,” Skippy announced. “The reason five ships were holding back is because
three star carriers just came in through the wormhole. Now the five ships are
maneuvering to go through. I intercepted a transmission between the two groups
of ships; these three star carriers are in a hurry, and will be jumping away within
ten minutes.”

I
breathed a sigh of relief and closed Nukey’s status panel cover. Half an hour
later, our dropship was headed back to the Flying
Dutchman at high acceleration. And within the hour, I was freshly showered
and on the bridge as I watched the duty officer, Major Simms, monitor the
process of taking the first Kristang transport aboard one of our three docking
platforms. One of our asteroids was now in the exact position that transport
had occupied, with the hardened balloon shroud in place with the correct shape
and level of shininess. Skippy had removed the beacon from the transport and
attached it to the asteroid. With any luck at all, the Thuranin would never
know we had just stolen, or technically salvaged, two Kristang transports ships.

It
took another three hours until the second transport ship was firmly secured to
a docking platform, and its replacement asteroid was in position. We not only
needed to make sure the asteroid had the same mass as the ship it was replacing,
within one percent. We had to make sure the shroud balloon was the same size,
and reflected the same amount of dim starlight as the ship we had just
salvaged. And before we left, the asteroid had to be moving in the same direction
and speed as the ship, plus the asteroid had to be tumbling at the exact same
rate. Overall, this simple operation to pick up two transport ships no one
wanted was way too freakin’
complicated. According to Skippy, he thought it very likely those shrouded
asteroids would drift onward, alone, until the end of time. If, hundreds of
years from now, anyone ever investigated the one remaining transport ship and
the two asteroids, they would have one hell of an intriguing mystery to
explore.

We
had debated the wisdom of accelerating the ship a significant distance before
we jumped; so that if Thuranin ships arrived shortly after we jumped, they
would not wonder why there was a remnant jump signature close to what was
supposed to be three dead Kristang transports. We could not use quantum
resonators to help disguise where we jumped to, because using resonators would
be like holding up a huge sign saying ‘Highly Suspicious Activity Here’. Also,
we did not have many resonators aboard the ship anyway. In the end, I decided
remaining in the area longer was the greater risk, so I ordered Chang to jump us
away as soon as possible.

“All
decks and systems report ready for jump,” an officer in the CIC reported.

Lt.
Colonel Chang, the duty officer in the command chair, acknowledged the report
with a curt nod, and spoke without checking with me. I approved of that; Chang
was in command of the ship right then, and he should not feel he needed to
clear everything with me. “Pilot,” he ordered, “jump us away.”

“Aye,
Sir,” the lead duty pilot replied. Our two pilots, a British guy and a French
woman, exchanged quiet words, then a button was pressed, and the starfield
shifted. “Jump completed successfully. We are within,” the Brit checked his
display, “one hundred ninety two meters of our target jump coordinates.”

“One
ninety two? That’s sloppy, you’re slipping, Skippy,” I teased.

“Ahh,
we were in a hurry to get out of there, so I didn’t have time to factor in the
exact masses of our two new ships,” he said with a defensive tone.

“I
was just busting your balls, Skippy. That was remarkable, as always.”

“The
most remarkable thing about me, is how I make the remarkable seem ordinary.”

“Yeah,
that’s it,” I rolled my eyes. “Colonel Chang?”

He
ran the crew through the preparation for another jump, and the ship distorted
spacetime again. We wanted to get far away from the wormhole cluster, in case
Thuranin ships jumped in shortly after we left, and saw the distinctive remnants
of our jump wormhole. A ship with a bored or curious captain, or a captain
hoping for a promotion, might decide to pursue us to investigate. Hopefully
even a very ambitious captain would give up after one jump.

“Where
to now, Skippy?” I asked.

“First,
we eject that third asteroid that we don’t need. Then, ugh, I guess we should
swing by and pick up your girlfriend in the lifeboat-”

“Nagatha
is not my girlfriend, Skippy.”

“That’s
what you think, she would have
another opinion about that.”

“Fine.
Those are the obvious moves. What about after that? You need some place to work
on converting the transports into something useful for the attack.”

“I
do, and interstellar space is not convenient. The hulls of those ships have
been cold-soaking for too long, they need to be warmed up before I can make
major modifications and get their systems operational again. There is an
uninhabited star system we could get to by transiting a wormhole; I would need
to connect it to a wormhole that has been dormant. This star system is a safe
place to work; according to all the survey data I have, no one has ever been
there.”

“Ever?
Never ever?” I asked skeptically.

“Never,
Joe. I just told you, the wormhole near that system is dormant, so no one can
get there. It’s another boring red dwarf, no one wants to go there. I’ll send
the data to you and Chotek. Before we go to work on building a Q-ship, we
should stop by a Ruhar data node, to check if anything has changed with the
negotiations.”

“A
data node?” Chang turned in the command chair to look at me. “Is that like a
relay station? It will not be dangerous for us to approach?” I knew Chang was
thinking back to the difficult, complicated and dangerous operation it took for
us to capture a Thuranin data relay station. We could not take the risk, and
did not have the time, for another op like that one.

“Sort
of,” Skippy explained. “The Ruhar have many types of data nodes, the one I’m
thinking of is an automated signal transfer station; it is unmanned and used to
relay signals from a star system to the Oort Cloud region where Jeraptha ships
transit. The data node I have in mind is near the edge of a star system where
the Ruhar have recently established a colony; the system does not have a
permanent military presence. We jump in, I ping the data node with
authentication codes, and download the data we need.”

“Just
like that?”

“Just
like that, Joe. Easy peasy. We don’t need to do any crazy shit like stuffing a
dropship inside a comet, or capturing a relay station. This time, we are not
trying to get military secrets from the Thuranin, all we need is Ruhar federal
government communications. The negotiation with the Fire Dragons is not a
closely-held secret, now that federal government has approved the talks to
proceed.”

“You
can do some awesome Skippy magic thing, make this data node think we are a
Jeraptha or Ruhar ship?”

“Oh,
yeah, no problemo. I’ll use the IFF codes of a Ruhar ship to contact the data
node, then instruct the node to erase its memory of us after we leave. This
will be easy, Joe. Trust me.”

Crap.
Now I needed to persuade Hans Chotek to approve us visiting a Ruhar-inhabited
star system, and approve us screwing with a dormant wormhole so Skippy Claus
and his little helper elfbots could take our salvaged transports ships to
Santa’s Workshop. Checking the main bridge display, I saw the countdown timer
indicated we could not jump again for thirty seven minutes. “I’ll talk with
Chotek. In the meantime, Colonel Chang, eject that asteroid and move us away, I
don’t want that thing anywhere near us when we jump.” We did not need another
incident of a large mass distorting our jump wormhole.

One
thing that bugged the hell out of me about Hans Chotek was- Ok, there were a
lot of things about him that bugged the hell out of me. This time,
specifically, it was my total lack of ability to predict his mood, or what he
would do. On my way to his office, I stopped to splash water on my face and tidy
up my Army Combat Uniform. I regretted that camo pattern was the uniform of the
day aboard the ship. For a discussion with Chotek, I wanted to be wearing at
least my Class B Army Service Uniform, because I figured that would make him
take me more seriously as a senior officer. Changing uniforms now would only tell
Chotek that I was nervous.

My
uniform top was stuck to my back from the sweat of nervous tension. There
wasn’t time for a shower; I took my top off, tossed it in a bin, and got an
identical top from a closet. Skippy would get his Magical Laundry Fairy bots
working on cleaning my dirty clothes, and they would be back in the closet or
drawers the next morning.

Before
walking into his office, I mentally prepared my arguments in favor of
contacting a Ruhar data node and then taking the ship to an unknown, unexplored
star system where Skippy could set up Santa’s Workshop. Organizing my thoughts
was not a strength for me, but I did the best I could in the time available.
Knocking on the doorframe, I saw he was head-down at his desk, reading
something on a tablet. “Mr. Chotek?”

To
my surprise, he pushed the tablet aside, stood up, and offered me a handshake.
An enthusiastic, arm-pumping handshake. “Colonel Bishop,” he grinned.
“Congratulations to you, and to your crew. That was a truly outstanding
operation, outstanding,” he
emphasized. Maybe he thought ‘outstanding’ was something the US military said a
lot, I had to remember his native language was German.

“Thank
you, Sir.”

He
released my hand, gestured for me to sit, and plopped back down in his chair
with a satisfied smile. “Colonel, when you presented me what seemed like an
overly complicated plan to pick up several discarded starships, I was
skeptical. More than skeptical. But we did it! We have two alien starships to
work with, and there was no risk to us or our mission.”

“We
may only get one Q-ship out of those two transports, Sir,” I reminded him.

He
waved a hand dismissively. Nothing could ruin his good mood. “Mr. Skippy will
handle that, I suppose.” My impression was he was so relieved the operation had
not been a disaster, he wasn’t letting anything kill his buzz. “You wanted to
speak with me, Colonel?”

“Yes,
Sir.” I launched into Phase One of my argument in favor of pinging a Ruhar data
node. As I finished and was taking a breath to plunge forward with Phase Two,
he interrupted.

“Good,
good. We should get updated intelligence before we proceed, I was going to
suggest we do something like that.”

Maybe
it was hard for me to take an unexpected ‘Yes’ and run with it, or maybe I’m
just an idiot, because my brain locked up and I heard myself saying “Skippy
assures me there is minimal risk in us contacting this data node.” Idiot! I
told myself. I should have kept my mouth shut and run out of his office as soon
as he said ‘Yes’.

Chotek’s
eyes narrowed and his smile slipped just a bit. “You disagree? You think the risk
is substantial?”

“No!
No, I agree with Skippy’s analysis. I, um,” I gave him that weak, awkward goofy
smile that was on my face every time someone took a photo of me. “Sir, I had a
whole persuasive argument thought out. You caught me off guard,” I admitted.

That
restored Chotek’s sunny mood. “Is that all?”

“No,
Sir. After we update our intel, assuming the negotiations are still on, Skippy
wants us to go to an uninhabited red dwarf star system so he can work on a
Q-ship. Or ships.” I explained about Skippy needing to awaken a dormant Elder
wormhole, and that the star system was totally unexplored. My fear was Chotek
would hear the word ‘unexplored’ and panic, fearing that entering a star system
we knew little about was too risky.

He
surprised me again. “Unexplored? Hmm. That sounds good. If no one has ever been
there, no one will be there now to threaten us. Ask Skippy to send me whatever
data he has on this star system. I can make a final decision, after we contact
the data node and confirm the negotiation conference is still on schedule.
Again, Colonel Bishop, please convey my congratulations to your crew.”

His
uncharacteristic bubbly mood was infectious. “Sir, tomorrow is our formal
dinner,” the night when all the military people wore formal uniforms to dinner.
“I think the crew would appreciate you giving them congratulations yourself. We
shouldn’t break out the champagne until we know the Ruhar aren’t sending a ship
to earth, but we could celebrate completing this phase of the mission with a
nice bottle of wine?” One thing I knew about Hans Chotek was that he loved a
good bottle of wine; Major Simms had brought aboard several cases of wines that
were known to be Chotek’s favorites. While I usually preferred beer, I could
drink a glass of wine with our fearless leader, if it meant Chotek’s good mood
would continue.

“Thank
you, Colonel. Yes, I would like that. I will address the crew at dinner
tomorrow.”

“Outstanding,
Sir,” I mimicked his words on purpose. The next thing I needed to do was check
that the Indian team which was galley duty the next day, cooked something that
Chotek enjoyed. And that went well with his favorite wine.

On
the way to the Ruhar data node, we made a detour to pick up our lifeboat and
perhaps more importantly, Nagatha. “Hello, Nagatha,” I greeted her as Desai was
in the tricky process of maneuvering the ship to take the lifeboat back aboard.
Because the lifeboat had almost no means of moving itself, we had to move our
entire star carrier to get the bulky lifeboat onto a docking platform. I stayed
in my office to chat with Nagatha, while Chang handled the command chair. “We
have been busy.” I was eager to tell her the adventures we had gone through
just to pick up two junk spaceships that no one wanted.

“Oh
my goodness, yes you have. It must have been quite exciting. I am very pleased
that no one was injured by the booby traps in those ships.”

“That
was scary for a while- wait. You already know what happened?”

“Of
course, dear. Skippy told me all about it a few milliseconds after you jumped
in. It all sounds dreadfully frightening.”

Damn
it. I had been looking forward to telling her about the mission, and I didn’t
consider that Nagatha is an AI who communicates at lightspeed. That is how
pathetic my life had become; I looked forward to telling my story to a
computer. It made me feel like a little boy running home from to tell Mommy about
his day at school. “It was, uh, yeah. It was, you know,” I felt deflated. “It
actually wasn’t all that exciting. A lot of bad things could have happened, but
they didn’t. It was exciting at the time,” that sounded lame as I was saying
it.

“Dear,”
she said in a motherly tone, “did Skippy ruin your surprise by telling me? He
made it sound like you monkeys, I’m sorry, you humans, would have been lost
without him. He always says that, I should know better than to listen to him.”

“Skippy
is Skippy, we couldn’t have done it without him-”

“-and
he lets you know that.”

“Yes,”
I laughed, “he does.” I wondered what Nagatha’s conversations with Skippy were
like. Did they have conversations, or did they only exchange data files?
Someday, I needed to ask her about that.

Skippy’s
avatar popped into existence above my desk. “Hey, Joe, FYI, while we have some
downtime-”

“Downtime?”
We were in a typical jump, recharge, jump cycle on our way to the Ruhar data
node. Most of the crew were intensively training for our upcoming pitch-black
operation, even though hopefully there would be nothing for us to actually do.
I was participating in as much special ops and pilot training as I had time
for, and at night, I found it difficult to fall asleep because I was so worried
about getting the entire crew killed. Or exposing the presence of humans flying
around the galaxy, which might get our entire species wiped out by pissed-off aliens.
Other than that, I was sleeping just great. “What downtime?”

“Relatively,
I mean. I have a submind running most of the ship for me right now. Ok, so the
downtime is mostly mine, whatever. While I’m not real busy, I want to try
something. I was thinking about that dead AI we found on Newark.”

“What
about, uh, him?” Since we were talking about what used to be an Elder AI,
Skippy might not appreciate me using the pronoun ‘it’. The gang of Kristang
scavengers on Newark had dug up an Elder AI, a shiny chrome beer can just like
Skippy. We stole that AI- Hmm, technically, we didn’t steal it, since by the
time we took possession of it, the Kristang were all dead. Ok, I guess that is
still stealing. But it wasn’t like the Kristang had a legal right to ‘own’ a
sentient AI, so sue me. Anyway, I vividly remembered how sad, disappointed, and
frightened Skippy had been when we brought that other beer can aboard, and
Skippy determined the canister was empty. Something bad had happened to the AI
in there, something Skippy could not understand, something that scared him
badly. “Again, I’m sorry about that. I know you were looking forward to talking
to another of your kind.”

“That,
too, but I was mostly hoping that AI could give us answers we need. Whatever
happened to Newark, an AI there should know who did it. Joe, when we get done
saving Earth, again, we need to get
some answers about what the hell has been going on in the galaxy.”

“Skippy,
I agree,” I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. “I’m not the person you
need to convince. Chotek is the mission commander; he doesn’t see that flying
around the galaxy looking for clues to ancient mysteries is worth the risk to
Earth. There is too much danger of our presence out here becoming exposed.”

“Hfff,”
Skippy sniffed. “We found Elder sites that had been obliterated, by Elder
technology. We found an intelligent species that was wiped out because
Elder-level technology pushed their planet out of orbit. We don’t know how this
happened, or who could have done it, because all this mysterious stuff happened
after the Elders left the galaxy and before the Rindhalu had spaceflight
capability. There is an unknown actor in the galaxy, and Count Chocula thinks
this is not a threat that is worth investigating?”

“Damn,
Skippy, you are preaching to the choir. I agree with you, we need answers.”
Even if humans didn’t have any immediate practical need to know what happened
to Newark, we owed it to Skippy to help him find out about those events. And
how he came to be buried in the dirt on Paradise. And why he can’t contact the
Collective. And the more basic question: who Skippy truly was. Since UNEF
Command on Earth already didn’t trust Skippy, I think they should very much
want to know his true nature.

But
I could also see Chotek’s point of view. UNEF Command on Earth knew the Flying Dutchman was humanity’s only way
of learning about new alien threats to Earth. Our stolen pirate ship was also
our only prayer to halt those threats. Our current mission starkly demonstrated
that there were immediate threats to Earth from aliens we already knew about.
Until we could secure our home planet’s survival in at least the medium term,
we should not go looking for even bigger trouble.

Unless
acting now was the only way to prevent even bigger trouble later. Damn, I
really, really hated my job some days. “Anyway, Skippy, what about this AI? You
said it, uh, he, is dead as a
doornail.”

“Joe,
I do not understand why, of all inanimate objects on Earth, your species singled
out the lowly doornail as a sterling example of deadness, but, yes, the AI is
certainly dead. What I want to do is load part of myself in that canister, so I
can examine it in detail. I am hoping I can determine the nature of the AI; was
it like me, or different. And what happened to it?”

I
did not like the sound of that. “You want to load part of yourself, in an AI
container that might be defective?”

“It’s
not defective, Joe. The canister is just fine, what I want to know is what is
inside it. There might be residual traces of the AI that resided in there, I
mean the part of the AI anchored in local spacetime. If I can understand the
nature of the AI, I might be able to get some clues about what happened to it.
Because it frightens me terribly that something could have destroyed an AI like
me.”

“Uh
huh, it frightens me too, which is why I don’t like the idea of you poking
around in dark scary places all by yourself.” Sometimes, it was easy to forget
that Skippy was an incredibly advanced being who spanned beyond our spacetime.
All I could think of was how small and vulnerable he looked, and how much he
needed someone to protect him. Too often, Skippy lacked common sense, and he
was so absent-minded, I was concerned he would go poking around in there, and
forget what he was doing. “This is like a horror movie where one of the
characters wants to open a door and go down into the dark, creepy basement, and
the audience is all yelling ‘Don’t go in there’! But of course the stupid
character goes down the steps, and the light goes off, and the monster or
spiders or serial killer is right there. So, if you’re asking for my permission
to-”

“Joe,
I was being polite, because Nagatha insisted. Why would I need permission from you?”

“Skippy,”
I let out an exasperated breath. “You reminded me that you should be on the
crew roster, because you are a sentient being and vital to the operation of the
ship.”

“Yes,
and I see you still have my rank in the roster listed as ‘Asshole First
Class’.”

“Let’s
not get into that right now,” I said quickly. “My point is that if you are a
member of the crew, you are subject to my authority as captain of the ship.”
Technically, he was also subject to Colonel Chang’s authority as executive
officer; I wasn’t going to push the issue right then.

“Oh
sure, as if.” He chuckled. “Oh, wait, you’re serious?”

“Duh.”

“Crap.
Double crap! So, my choices are that either I am considered a shipboard system
like a toaster, or I am part of the crew and have to listen to monkeys tell me
what to do?” His voice reflected disbelief.

“What
part of military chain of command do you not understand? The Flying Dutchman is a warship, we’re not
on a pleasure cruise out here. This is a Special Operations mission under the
authority of UNEF Command.”

“Technically,
this is a stolen alien pirate ship that only functions because I do all the
work around here,” Skippy grumbled with sarcasm. “Fine. Whatever. What. Eh. Ver. Colonel Bishop, do I have
permission to examine the empty AI canister? Pretty please, with sugar in it?”

“You
are certain there is no danger to you, or to the ship?”

“Joe.
Come on. It’s me.”

“Exactly
what I am worried about.” I rolled my eyes. “What if I say no? You will leave
that AI canister alone, you won’t go behind my back and do it anyway?”

“Sure,
let’s go with that.”

“Skippy!”

“Let’s
also pretend I haven’t already been examining the canister for the past twelve
freakin’ minutes, while you’ve been blah, blah, blahing me to death. I started
before I even mentioned it to you. Does that make you feel better?”

“Oh,
crap. No, it does not make me feel better.”

“One
way for you to feel better, Joe, is to avoid asking questions where the answers
might upset you,” he suggested helpfully.

“A
captain is supposed to know what is going on aboard his ship,” I clenched my
teeth. Sometimes I wanted to strangle him.

“I
did say this was more of an FYI, Joe.”

“Oh,
that makes me feel so much better,” I
sighed. Skippy was going to do whatever he wanted, whether I liked it or not.
Ordering him to stop would only erode what little sense of authority I had.
“Ok, fine, do what you want, but please, please, be careful? When you go poking
around in dark corners, bring a flashlight with you, so when the monster kills
the lights, you can still see.”

“Hmmf.
What good will a flashlight do against a monster? Whatever. Yes, I promise to
be extra careful. I will keep you updated. So far, what I have found in there
is a whole lot of nothing; just a big, empty space. I might as well be
exploring the inside of your skull, Joe.”

After
what he cluelessly perceived as a very positive and respectful response when he
revealed his Grand Admiral Lord Skippy avatar to the crew, Skippy had been
pestering me to let him perform at karaoke night. I put it off as long as
possible, but after he was so helpful during our successful operation to
salvage two derelict starships, I relented. The crew universally groaned at the
thought of listening to Skippy warbling off-key, and I was almost forced to
voluntold some people to fill the galley for the occasion. Chang suggested if I
was going to assign mandatory fun, it might be a good idea to open the liquor
cabinet for the evening. That was a great idea because once I made that
announcement, the galley was standing room only.

Skippy’s
avatar was especially resplendent and sparkly, like he had rolled himself in
stripper glitter. Anyway, he led off with the theme song from an old James Bond
movie, it was the one about nuclear submarines, or maybe the one about space
shuttles; I forget. Except that, Skippy being Skippy, he changed the lyrics to
fit his arrogant asshole self. “Nobody
does it better, makes me sad for the rest. Nobody does it half as good as meeeeeeee,
baby I’m the best-”.

Simms
leaned over to me with a harsh whisper. “The correct lyrics are ‘Nobody does it
half as good as you, baby you’re the best’.”

“Shhh,”
I shushed her. “He’s happy and not causing any trouble for the moment.”

“True.”

Next,
Skippy performed an old Beyoncé song. “You
can feel my halo, halo. You can see my halo, halo-”. That also was not
quite how I remembered the original lyrics, but I wisely kept my mouth shut.

Skippy’s
karaoke singing went on for twenty minutes, with the well-disciplined and
well-lubricated crowd clapping enthusiastically. The alcohol may have helped
the enthusiasm of the audience, I know it helped me. Really, although the
little beer can’s voice was beyond horrible, his performance was so
unintentionally amusing, we all had an uproariously great time.

“Bravo!
Bravo!” I stood, clapping so hard my hands hurt.

“Why
thank you, Joe, I’m touched. For my next number-”

“No!”
I stood up and waved my arms. “No, Skippy, you need to give someone else a
turn. Although, hey,” I looked around at the crowd, “who would want to follow
such a remarkable performance?”

The
answer turned out to be me, Staff Sergeant Adams and Lt. Williams of our SEALS
team singing ‘Lollipop’. As my singing voice was even worse than Skippy’s, my
only part was to do the ‘pop’ sound with a finger in my mouth.

I
crushed it.

Counting
down for the final jump that would take us near the Ruhar data node, Skippy
threw me a curveball. “Hey, Joe. Before we contact the data node, we should
talk about that thing first.”

“Thing?”
With the corner of my eye, I saw Chotek shoot me a look of annoyance. No doubt
he was wondering what crucial detail I had failed to tell him about before, so
I could spring it on him at the last minute.

“Yeah,
you know, the, uh, the thing.”

The
beer can was not helping me at all. “What thing,
Skippy?”

“Oof,”
he sighed. “That intel I got from the Thuranin ships at the wormhole cluster.
You know, about those little green MFers planning a major offensive against the
Jeraptha? You said we would talk about it later. This is later. If that intel
is going to do any good for the Jeraptha, I need to pass the info along to them
soon. Like, now.”

“Oh,”
I breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Chotek. “Sir, we did tell Skippy we
would address that issue. I had forgotten about it,” I admitted with a lame
smile.

Chotek
looked briefly unhappy. He had forgotten about it too. “How would you pass the
intel to the Jeraptha, without them knowing the message came from us? And why
would the Jeraptha trust intelligence that fell into their laps?”

“Oh,
please,” Skippy scoffed. “Dude, I am Skippy the Magnificent. This is child’s
play for me. I will load a file into a Ruhar message, that will route itself to
a Jeraptha data node in the sector the Thuranin are planning to hit. When the
Jeraptha pick up the file, it will unpack itself, infiltrate the ship’s
computer system, and convince the computer the message is legit orders from
Jeraptha Fleet Headquarters. By the time the message gets to the Jeraptha
ships, they won’t have time to contact Fleet HQ and get a confirmation. They
will have to act, and they will.”

“Ok,”
I shared a look with Chotek. “They won’t be able to authenticate the message
before the battle, but afterwards, their Fleet HQ will know for sure they
didn’t send those orders, or have that intel. Somebody will be wondering where
that intel came from.”

“Joe,
your lack of faith in me hurts. Trust the awesomeness. The file will erase its
tracks along the way, no way will the Jeraptha be able to trace it back to that
data relay. And yeah, of course Jeraptha Fleet HQ will go crazy trying to
figure who passed that crucial intel to them. The prime suspect will be the
Bosphuraq.”

“The
Bosphuraq?” Chotek asked, confused. “They are peers of the Thuranin, in the
Maxolhx coalition, correct?”

“Peers
in terms of being clients of the Maxolhx, and in terms of rough technological
equivalence with the Thuranin. The Bosphuraq would dearly love an opportunity
to screw with the Thuranin; anything that hurts the Thuranin moves the
Bosphuraq up a peg in the hierarchy. There is no love lost between any member
of the Maxolhx coalition. Remember, Joe, the Maxolhx encourage competition,
even conflict, between their client species. Having their clients fighting
weakens those clients and decreases the potential for those species to ever
threaten their Maxolhx patrons.”

“Damn
it,” I swore. “Is there anyone under the Maxolhx who are not trying to stab everyone else in the back?”

“In
this local sector of the galaxy, I guess that would be the Urgar. They are
clients of the Wurgalan, but due to their harsh treatment by the Wurgalan, the
Urgar are nearly extinct. The Urgar are busy simply trying to survive, they
don’t have the time or energy to harm anyone else,” Skippy explained, as if he
were describing the menu at Denny’s rather than the politics of a murderous
group of alien MFers. “Anywho, the intel reaching the Jeraptha ships in the
target sector is easily explainable. The question is, yes or no? We jump in
near the data node in eighteen minutes, I need an answer quickly.”

“What
would be the benefit to humanity, of passing this intel to the Jeraptha?”
Chotek asked. “I don’t see how two alien species fighting one battle in a very
long war affects Earth.”

“That’s
simple. And complex,” Skippy responded. “Right now, Paradise is in a region
firmly under the control of the Jeraptha. The Ruhar are stationing a
battlegroup at Paradise, mostly because they hope to find Elder artifacts
there, but also because the region around that planet is protected by their
patrons, the Jeraptha. Without strong support by the Jeraptha, the Ruhar could
not hold Paradise for long. If the Jeraptha suffer a serious military setback
in this sector, they might pull their forces back from the area around Paradise.
Now that we made everyone think Paradise might be a treasure trove of Elder
goodies, the Thuranin may be interested in taking that planet for themselves. I’m
sure you can see how that would be bad for the humans on Paradise.”

“Jesus
Christ,” I pounded a fist on the arm of the command chair. “We just got done
rescuing UNEF there. When is it going to be enough?”

“I’m
sure our resident diplomat could tell you,” Skippy said with dry humor,
“resolving one crisis leads you right into the next one.”

Chotek
nodded, with a smile creasing the corner of his mouth. He and Skippy had just
found common ground on something, I guess that was progress. “Skippy,” I asked,
“you got any more good news for us?”

“Sure,
Joe,” he replied with cheer. “Right now, the wormhole near Earth that we shut
down is in a region at the edge of Thuranin-controlled territory, and remote
from any of their large military bases. With their current weakness, the
Thuranin are not much interested in that area, or that wormhole. But if the
Thuranin are able to score significant victories against the Jeraptha, they
might want to exploit the area around that deactivated wormhole, and they
eventually will investigate why that wormhole shut down. So, to keep Earth
safe, we should ensure the Thuranin remain weak in this sector.”

“Great,”
I said. What I thought to myself was that we had yet another freakin’ thing to
worry about. When this current mission was over, I was going to raid Major
Simms’ secret stash of bourbon and get drunk for a week, at least. “Is there
any downside to us telling the Jeraptha about the Thuranin’s plan to hit them?”

“Downside?
Mmm, no. No, I can’t think of any. I’m not the strategic military genius here,
Joe. That’s supposed to be your job. But I can’t think of any downside to
giving the Jeraptha advanced warning of an attack. Chotek, if you are holding
out hope of eventually becoming allies of the Ruhar and Jeraptha, then giving
the Jeraptha this intel would be a nice gesture.”

That
last remark sold Hans Chotek on the idea. “I agree. Very well, Mr. Skippy, do
your awesome magic and send the intel to the Jeraptha.”

“My
pleasure,” Skippy said happily, without even bothering to throw a casual insult
at our mission commander. My guess was, Chotek was learning how to flatter
Skippy.

It
was only much later we realized that giving the Jeraptha a warning about the
attack was a terrible, awful, no good idea.

CHAPTER TEN

Communications
Specialist First Class Hanst Bo of the Jeraptha’s 98th Fleet nearly
choked when he read the header of the decrypted message. Hoping no one had
noticed, he put the message in a temporary holding folder, and pulled up the
original, encrypted transmission. It had been carried by a fast packet ship,
one of the small ships dedicated to delivering messages from Fleet Headquarters
to the various units and bases across the far-flung territory of the Jeraptha.
Their already expansive territory had recently grown substantially, through
resounding defeats the Jeraptha Home Fleet had inflected on the Thuranin.

Having
priority messages delivered by a fast packet ship was not anything unusual.
What was unusual was this message designated itself as Flash Gold traffic; the
highest Fleet priority. But when Hanst Bo had initially scanned the flood of
messages transmitted by the packet ship as soon as it had jumped in, the
summary file had not listed any of the messages as Flash Gold, or Flash at all.
Or, he thought none of the messages had been listed as Flash, because when he
went back to the original summary file and ran it through the decryption
process, there was a message blinking boldly at the top, demanding immediate
attention.

How
could he have missed that?! Bo shivered, and not just because the
Communications chamber had air conditioning that seemed to be powered directly
from a fusion reactor. Swallowing hard, Bo ran the Flash message through the
decryption again, silently hoping it had not, in fact, been designated as Flash
Gold by Fleet HQ. While he waited agonizing seconds for the multi-layered
decryption process to complete, he reminded himself to remain and act calm,
including making sure his antennas did not droop suspiciously.

His
console ‘binged’ when the decryption was complete, which by itself was odd. The
first time he had run the message through decryption, the computer took longer,
even seeming to have trouble reading the file. This second time, the decryption
algorithm move at lightning speed. When Bo saw the ‘Flash Gold’ designation at
the top, and that it was addressed directly to the Admiral of Blue Squadron, 98th
Fleet, Bo tore the flimsy message slip out of its slot and dashed out the door,
his four legs scrambling to find purchase on the ship’s deck. When he rounded a
corner and reached a straight stretch of passageway, he reared up on his back
two legs and raced as fast as he could, using his two front legs only for
balance. “Make way! Make way!” He shouted.

Admiral
Tashallo of the Jeraptha Blue Squadron, 98th Fleet, was engaged in
casual conversation with the captains of his flagship and the three other
battleships under his command. The five had enjoyed a sumptuous meal provided
by the admiral’s staff, an event which occurred every fifteen days whenever the
Fleet was in port. Sometimes more frequently, depending on the admiral’s mood,
which depended on his luck with the wagers he loved to participate in. When
there was not a battle looming to be wagered upon, Tashallo arranged for ships
to race each other, or for two stealthed ships to hunt each other. It was good
practice for the crews, it was good for morale within the 98th, and
it provided decent action for a fleet mostly assigned to dull garrison duty.

The
98th was responsible for defense of the Glark star system where the
Blue Squadron was based, a star system that provided fuel and warship servicing
facilities for a quarter of the sector. The system had one habitable planet,
though the people who live there and crews who took shore leave on that world,
considered the term ‘habitable’ to be somewhat questionable. The planet had
been a boiling hell when the Jeraptha first took control of the star system.
The planet’s gravity was thirty two percent greater than was normal for the
Jeraptha. The thick carbon dioxide atmosphere had trapped heat, making the
surface hot enough to boil water even at the poles. Because the planet rotated
so slowly, one side faced the star long enough to almost melt soft metals. Over
thousands of years, Jeraptha engineers had worked to make the world habitable.
They had seeded the thick clouds with algae that ate the carbon dioxide and
released free oxygen. They speeded up the planet’s rotation and reduced the
surface gravity, by flinging parts of the planet’s core into space using
enormous railguns. Now, according to the planetary government, it was a
delightful garden world, a wonderful place to live and enjoy shore leave.
Except for the equator, where it was still hot enough to fry the proteins of a
Jeraptha brain. And except for that burnt metallic smell that filled the air
whenever the winds blew from the equator.

The
planet had been made habitable because of the other assets the system
possessed. An extensive asteroid field, rich in metals and other elements that
were rare in other systems. Two gas giant planets with weak magnetic fields and
small moons, which were ideal conditions for extracting fuel. The Jeraptha had
constructed permanent fuel collection facilities based on small moons that had
been towed into low orbits. And the largest gas giant had four large spacedocks
to provide heavy servicing of warships, spacedocks that were almost capable of
building a small warship from raw materials extracted from easily-mined asteroids.

All
the assets in the system paled in comparison to its location; the star was near
the center of three strategically important wormholes, two of which were
clusters of wormholes. The five Fleets of the Blue Squadron all relied on the
star system for supplies, maintenance and repairs, and staging. Admiral
Tashallo’s 98th Fleet had drawn the unlucky duty of acting as the
Home Guard force for the Glark system. Acting as a garrison force was boring
and provided hardly action, and Tashallo couldn’t wait until he could bid on a
better assignment.

Communications
Specialist First Class Hanst Bo burst in on the admiral and four senior
captains. “Admiral, begging your indulgence, we just received a Flash Gold
message. Fleet Intelligence has discovered an imminent threat to the Glark
system.”

Rather
than being alarmed, Tashallo was annoyed. “Of course, our Fleet Intelligence group
is never wrong,” Tashallo’s antenna shook with mirth, and the command staff
broke into gales of laughter.

“Fleet
Intelligence is offering sixty to one odds on this,” Bo read quietly.

“Sixty to one?” Tashallo gasped. Then he
tilted his head and rolled his eyes dramatically. “How many points are they
taking?” he asked with a chuckle. Sixty to one was unheard of, unprecedented
coming from Fleet Intelligence. Those indecisive desk jockeys never offered
more than five to four odds on their predictions of enemy intentions. And they
always insisted on taking points.

“None,
Admiral. No points,” Bo replied after checking the message twice.

“Let
me see that,” Tashallo demanded, snatching the flimsy message slip from the
subensign’s hand. When the admiral touched the slip, additional information
became available, scrolling up from the bottom.

What
he read made him gasp and his antenna stand straight up.

The
98th Fleet was equipped for strong defense of valuable static
targets; that is why Tashallo’s force included five heavy but relatively slow
and short-range battleships. With five battleships supplementing the Strategic
Defense satellites in the system, any attack by the Thuranin, Bosphuraq or a
combination of the two would need to commit two entire fleets to an attack, and
the enemy had never wanted to pay that steep a price. The purpose of the 98th
Fleet was not to do anything by itself; it was to take away the enemy’s
incentive to do something.

The
Flash Gold message stated the enemy had decided to pay the price of hitting the
Glark system. Two Thuranin fleets were on their way; they would strike soon.
Fortunately, Fleet Intelligence somehow knew exactly when, where and how the
Thuranin planned to strike. Tashallo’s mind considered all his options quickly;
that is why he had risen to the rank of admiral. “Captain Dahmen, signal that
fast packet to proceed to this ship at best speed, I need to borrow it to
confer with Admiral Sashell. Get the 98th ready to move out; load
the battleships onto star carriers. We can’t afford to have slow ships delaying
us.”

“Sir?”
Captain Dahmen burned with curiosity to know what the message slip stated was
such a terrible threat that Tashallo wanted the 98th moved out of
the star system the fleet was designed to defend. Battleships could be
accommodated on the docking platforms of a star carrier, but a single battleship
took up two or three platforms by itself, and while burdened with the massive
bulk of a battleship a star carrier could only transport two or three other
ships. “Should we wait for confirmation? What if Fleet Intelligence is wrong?”
If the intel was wrong and Tashallo pulled the 98th away from the
Glark system, the critical facilities there would have their defenses cut in
half.

“Dahmen,
those credit-pinching thieves at Fleet Intelligence are offering sixty to one
odds this information is accurate, and they’re not asking for any points. It is
more likely Glark’s star will go supernova tomorrow, than this info to be
wrong. I don’t know how, but Fleet Intelligence stumbled across a gold mine,
and I’m going to act on it. Get me a dropship; I need to get aboard that fast
packet immediately.”

Nine
hours later, the fast packet carrying Admiral Tashallo emerged from jump close
to the flagship of Admiral Sashell’s 67th Fleet. Breaking all safety
protocols, a dropship brought Tashallo aboard the battlecruiser You Want a Piece of This? and the two
admirals quickly read through the extensive data in the Flash Gold message. “I
agree,” Sashell said when he was able to recover his wits from the shock of the
astonishing message. The idea of the Thuranin rolling the dice to attack the
critical Blue Squadron facilities at Glark was not what shocked Sashell; the
Thuranin were known to be desperate after their recent military setbacks.
Sashell would have bet against the Thuranin launching a major offensive
operation in the sector for at least three months. With a pained wince, Sashell
remembered he had wagered against such
a Thuranin offense, though he could not remember the exact terms of the wager.
As soon as he and Tashallo were done talking, he needed to speak with the 67th
Fleet’s Action Officer, the woman responsible for recording wagers and setting odds.
“This is a tempting opportunity to hit the Thuranin hard, make their little
green noses bloody. Fleet Intelligence would not have sent this,” he flapped
the flimsy slip in the air, “unless they knew it is solid gold. Sixty to one
sounds good, but I will not be betting against them,” Sashell chuckled, and
Tashallo joined him.

The
decision was thus made; Tashallo slightly outranked Sashell due to more time as
an admiral, although they operated independent commands. Keeping in mind the
different strengths and capabilities of their two fleets, the two admirals
quickly made a plan, dividing the three enemy targets between them after a
reasonable and expected amount of argument. The fast packet ship was then
dispatched back to Fleet HQ, carrying a request for validation of the Flash
Gold message, and the intentions of the 67th and 98th Fleets to
counter the enemy’s attack.

Then
the two admirals got down to the more important business of handicapping the
wagers between themselves, and between their two fleets. Shortly after Tashallo
returned to his flagship, a second fast packet ship was dispatched, this one
carrying messages far more important than keeping Fleet HQ informed of the
activities of two powerful Fleets of the Blue Squadron. Every Jeraptha in the
two Fleets who could scrape together or borrow a single credit, had bet the limit
on the results of the upcoming battle, and the second packet ship carried
records of those wagers. Also official records of the wager Admirals Tashallo
and Sashell had made with each other, their side bets, and every side bet of
the entire crew, no matter how odd. One example was a wager between the chief
navigator and second engineering officer of a battlecruiser, on which type of
Thuranin ship would be the first to fall victim to the battlecruiser’s big
railguns. Any such wager needed to be recorded by the ship’s Action Officer,
and sent to be registered at Fleet HQ.

No
one in either Fleet could resist such juicy action. And not a single person bet
against Fleet Intelligence. Sixty to one! That message rang throughout the hull
of every ship in the two fleets, astonishing everyone who heard it. More than
one wager was recorded that Fleet Intelligence must have discovered practical
time travel; a way to see into the future. And more than one witty Jeraptha had
commented that, even if Fleet Intelligence could see flawlessly into the
future, of course those gutless cowards only offered sixty to one odds.

Twenty
six hours after the Flash Gold message was received, the 98th Fleet
disappeared in blinding flashes of gamma rays, as they sortied out to meet the
Thuranin.

The
Flying Dutchman completed another
jump, and our pirate ship was now hanging in deep interstellar space, waiting
for the drive coils to charge up for another jump. We only needed two more
jumps, to reach the uninhabited star system Skippy had chosen for creating a
Q-ship from our two salvaged transports. His detailed examination of both ships
had not changed his mind; we would only get one Q-ship from the two junkers we
were carrying. He also warned me that an attack by a single armed transport ship
would not be considered a credible threat by the Ruhar negotiation party; no
Kristang clan would launch an attack that weak. That was a problem I would need
to deal with, after I dealt with all the other problems.

isvfjksf;bkadhgkadhrkgisHis I had waited out the latest jump
from my office, rather than hanging around the bridge and making the duty crew
nervous. Me being in my office during a jump was my way of showing confidence
in the Merry Band of Pirates. While being right around the corner in case anything
went wrong and I was needed on the bridge.

“Nailed
it, Joe!” Skippy exulted, his avatar coming to life and holding up an index
finger. “I’m number one, baby. We emerged from that jump within twenty six
meters of the target, that is my best accuracy yet.”

“That
is amazing, Skippy,” I replied without bothering to refresh my memory of how
far we had jumped. It was far, that’s all I needed to know.

“Yup.
And I did it even though I am somewhat distracted by my investigation of that
AI canister.”

“Oh,
yeah.” He had not given me an update on his messing around with the dead AI
since he first told me about it. “How’s that going?” I needed him to finish
screwing around with that AI canister before he started work on building our
Q-ship.

“Mostly
dull,” he admitted. “I have been careful like you asked, even though there is
nothing in there that could harm me, duh. I did find something interesting,
intriguing, even. You made me go slower than I wanted, otherwise I would have
found it much soon-”

“Found
what?” Now he had my interest. I had asked him not to go poking around in dark
corners by himself.

No
answer. And his avatar was frozen in place on my desktop.

“Skippy?
What is it? What did you find in there?” I tried to project amusement in my
voice.

Still
no answer. And the avatar blinked out.

“Skippy?
Come on, I know you’re pissed at me for asking you to go slowly and be careful;
sue me for caring about you. What did you find in there? Can you tell me,
pretty please?” I added, in case his ego needed soothing.

Nothing.
Now I was trying to decide between being alarmed that something had happened to
Skippy, or being pissed that he was ignoring me.

I
called Adams. Skippy liked her; she didn’t take any crap from him, and he
respected that. “Sergeant, could you contact Skippy for me? He’s giving me the
silent treatment,” I explained.

“Sir,
I was just in the middle of a conversation with him, and he stopped talking,”
she replied, confused.

Oh shit.

My
blood ran cold; I used to think that was only an expression. “Nagatha?” I
looked at the speaker in the ceiling, as if that would help. She didn’t answer.
Pulling out my zPhone, I stared at it, realizing that I had no idea how to call
Skippy or Nagatha. I had never actually called them; I spoke and they always
answered. It wasn’t like either of them had a phone number, or an entry in my
zPhone’s address list. “Nagatha? Skippy?”

The
lights flickered, and the familiar sounds of a working starship faded away. No
air faintly hissing out of ducts, no bots rolling or crawling along the decks.
And there was none of the subsonic rumbling sound that I associated with the
reactors, even though the reactors were far away at the aft end of the star
carrier’s still long spine.

I
dashed around the corner to the bridge, aware from my bouncing steps that the
artificial gravity was fading. Plenty of sound was being generated there, all
of it human voices in a state of alarm and confusion. Gustov Renaud was the
duty officer in the command chair. “Colonel, we have lost power; all three
reactors have executed emergency shutdown procedure,” he pointed to the main
display, where the three reactors were outlined in blinking red on a schematic
of the ship. “It appears we are running on backup power. We can’t contact
Skippy.”

“Environmental
systems are functional,” I observed in a shaky voice. Good. We would not
suffocate from lack of oxygen, or freeze to death as the ship’s residual heat
radiated away into the bitter cold of space. “Captain Renaud, keep, doing, uh,”
I couldn’t think of anything useful he or anyone else could do at that moment.
“Send someone to the lifeboat,” I meant the Thuranin relay station that was
attached to one of our docking platforms. “Get a status of the lifeboat’s
systems, and see if anyone can contact Nagatha there.” I was not optimistic.
Skippy had warned me that as a submind, she was an integral part of his being
or matrix or whatever you wanted to call it. Nagatha had functioned on her own
aboard the relay station while our pirate ship was away, but she had outgrown
the capacity of the Thuranin computers there, and Skippy had pulled most of her
functioning inside his own. My hope was that part of Nagatha still remained
aboard the lifeboat; enough to communicate with us. I didn’t need witty
conversation, a text message would be Ok with me.

“Yes,
Sir. Colonel, where are you going?” Renaud asked as I spun and headed back out
the door, running carefully as the main display on the bridge had indicated the
artificial gravity was adjusting down to its minimum, low-power setting. If it
shut off completely, we were going to have problems, as many systems humans
used aboard the ship were poorly adapted to zero gravity. Most importantly, the
humans ourselves.

“I’m
going to check on Skippy,” I explained. The ship schematic on the display
showed the icon for Skippy’s escape pod was still attached to the ship; I was
hoping there had been some glitch or accident, and Skippy wasn’t communicating
because he was actually spinning off into space with the escape pod. That was a
bogus hope, because physical separation of a few hundred yards, or a few
million miles, would not stop Skippy from being able to contact us. If bogus
hope was all I had to cling to, I was going with it.

No
such luck. The escape pod was where it always was, with the hatch open. Inside,
his motionless beer can was strapped into a seat. “Skippy?” I called out,
feeling foolish, as if I needed to be in the escape pod for him to hear me. “If
this is a practical joke, it is not funny even one tiny bit.”

There
was no response. Cautiously, I tapped his lid with a finger, then I pressed a
fingertip against his smooth, shiny surface. He was warm, almost hot. Whatever
was wrong with Skippy, he was still in there, and something was going on inside
that can. I debated ducking back through the hatch and ejecting the escape pod,
then had a better idea. I pulled him out of the straps, and squeezed back
through the hatch into the passageway, where a crowd had gathered. As we were
aboard a ship, I should have used the Navy term ‘gangway’ but since I am Army,
I said “Make a hole, people,” as I ran with unusually long strides back to the
bridge. “Renaud, I’m taking Skippy away from here in a dropship. Get the ship
moving in the other direction if you can.”

“Where
are you going, Sir?” Renaud asked anxiously.

“Skippy’s
can is warm and growing hot,” I explained. “I’m getting him away from the ship,
in case he explodes or loses containment or something.”

I
got a dropship launched within seven minutes of securing the airlock door; it
took longer than a typical emergency launch because I had to do everything
manually. We kept one of the smaller Thuranin Falcon dropships on Zulu alert as
a ready bird, so all I needed to do was hop in and close the hatch; it was
already powered up. Fortunately, all the controls and displays aboard the
dropship were in English; I had been fearing that without Skippy they would
revert to their native Thuranin script. The big docking bay doors responded to
my command to open, even though I had to hit the override twice since the bay
was still partially pressurized. I did regret the loss of breathable air aboard
a ship with environmental systems operating on backup power, and I balanced
that against the risk of Skippy exploding and losing the entire ship.

As
soon as the dropship cleared the doors, I punched the throttle and accelerated
away at three and a half Gees, then went to a sustained five Gees. All I cared
about was getting away from the Dutchman
as fast as possible, in empty interstellar space there wasn’t any particular
direction for me to go anyway. I picked a star at random and set the autopilot
to aim for it. When we passed a hundred thousand kilometers from the ship, I
cut thrust and let the dropship coast outward at high speed. One hundred
thousand klicks was not any scientific measurement of a safe distance in case
Skippy exploded, it was just a nice round number and I could not take five
gravities of load on my body any longer. My back was killing me; it would have
been better for me to have taken two seconds to get comfortable in the seat
before engaging the main engines.

What
really mattered was that Skippy had not exploded and destroyed the Flying Dutchman. Unstrapping from my
seat, I floated over to the little guy and checked his temperature. “Dutchman, this is Bishop,” I called
through the dropship’s comm system. “Skippy is still warm, he may be warmer
than he was before, I can’t tell. No response from him yet. Have you been able
to access the lifeboat, or contact Nagatha?”

Chang
replied after a brief pause; the ship was already far enough away that signal
lag was noticeably already. “A team just entered the relay station from a
docking bay, they report backup power is engaged because the reactor there also
shut down. Nagatha is not responding there or here. The science team was able
to get artificial gravity cut off here six minutes ago; we couldn’t take the
power drain, so now we’re all floating in zero gee. Dr. Friedlander has his
teams working to assure the environmental systems continue to run on backup power,
then he will concentrate on restarting one of the reactors.”

“Is
he confident he can do that without blowing up the ship?” I asked, without
intending any kind of a joke.

“He
doesn’t not know yet. Sir, if we can’t get a reactor restarted-” He didn’t
finish the thought because he didn’t need to.

“Yeah,
I know. Do the best you can over there, I will monitor Skippy here.” At some
point soon, I would have to decelerate so I didn’t get too far from the ship.
If Skippy woke up, I wanted to get him back aboard the Dutchman as quickly as possible.

“Understood.
Colonel Bishop? Mister Chotek wishes to speak with you.”

Of
course he did. An already crappy day was getting better every minute. No doubt
Chotek was going to blame the incident on me. Better that he take his anger and
fear out on me via voice communication, than making life miserable for people
aboard the ship. I took a deep breath. “Mister Chotek?”

Smythe
called me six hours later; the crew had been taking turns calling me every
hour. “How are you doing out there, Colonel?”

“I
am not well chuffed, Major. You might even say I am not close to being chuffed
at all.” With the timelag in the transmissions, the conversation was awkward.

“It’s
not your fault, Sir,” he assured me, because much of the crew had heard Chotek
berating me.

“I
know. Skippy was going to go poking around in that dead AI canister whether I
approved of it or not. We don’t even know if that was related to him going AWOL
or not,” I said, although that coincidence was tough to argue against. “What
bothers me now is that we are completely out of options. Humanity, I mean.”

“How
so, Sir?” I took the tone of his question to mean genuine interest, he was not
merely humoring me as I sped away into the void.

“Chotek’s
backup plan, if the Ruhar reach Earth and our secret gets out, is to hand over
Skippy and the Elder wormhole controller module. Unless Skippy comes back to
life, or by some miracle Friedlander finds a way to fly us to civilization,
Earth will have the worst of all possible options. After the Ruhar return with
info about Earth, both sides of the war will quickly learn humans have been
screwing with Elder wormholes, but UNEF Command won’t be able to offer a
wormhole controller, or an Elder AI to make it work. Earth won’t even be able
to give a hint where to find us. Aliens will tear our little planet apart to
find whatever they think we’re hiding.”

“That
would certainly bollocks things up,” Smythe agreed. “I’m sure you’ll think of
something, Sir.”

I
couldn’t tell if he was joking, or trying to cheer me up. “Has Dr. Friedlander
made any progress?”

“He
thinks we could eventually restore normal space propulsion, right now Lt.
Colonel Chang has them working on restarting one of the reactors.  Chang said the ability to fly in normal
space is useless without a place to go, and we’d be draining the capacitors for
nothing. The jump drive coils are charged enough for one jump, that’s not
enough to get us anywhere useful. From here, we can’t even jump to a place
where we could signal either side to surrender. By the time our signal reached
anyone, everyone aboard the ship would be dead.”

That
got me thinking. Certainly, everyone aboard the ship would be dead, but if we
sent a signal to the Ruhar or Jeraptha, the signal could tell them to come pick
up an Elder wormhole controller, and possibly an Elder AI if Skippy was
functional again by then. My hope was such an offer might give Earth a tiny bit
of consideration from the Rindhalu, if they or the Maxolhx hadn’t already
ransacked Earth, searching for a device humans used to screw with Elder
wormholes.

I
would keep that idea to myself, until it became our only option. Or our best
option, which would be the same thing at that point.

Smythe
and I talked for a while longer; neither of us were good at small talk so the
conversation petered out. “Any change in Skippy?” He asked.

“No,”
I replied. “He’s still sitting there, not responding. The good news is he has
not gotten any warmer.” I had feared Skippy’s beer can would grow so hot that I
would need to toss him out an airlock. Part of me had selfishly hoped he would
explode. That would kill me instantly, and save me the trouble of suffocating
or freezing to death aboard the Dutchman
with everyone else. It looked like I would not be taking the easy way out.

“He
is a safe distance from the ship now, Sir. What are your plans?”

I
knew Smythe meant when would I give up, leave Skippy there in space, and fly
the dropship back to our slowly dying pirate starship? The answer was, I was in
no hurry to do that. The dropship had enough food aboard to sustain one person
for a month; that had been my idea after I had once gotten trapped aboard a
dropship with hardly any food. In my opinion, there would be no point to my
flying back to the Dutchman without a
functioning Skippy. As that little shithead was fond of mentioning, I could
barely figure out how shoelaces worked; I would be useless in trying to get the
reactors or jump drive functioning. The best thing I could do for the Merry
Band of Pirates was to stay a safe distance away from the ship with Skippy.
That way, if he did wake up, I could bring him back to the ship as quickly as
possible. Checking the rations aboard, I calculated I could stretch the food to
six weeks before I became too weak to fly the dropship. Considering my math
skills, maybe I’d be dead by then. Whatever.

Smythe
signed off with a promise to contact me again with a status report every hour.
I appreciated it, and asked him to tell Chang to concentrate on the ship and
crew, rather than speaking uselessly with me.

From
what I had heard so far, the science team was not accomplishing much useful
aboard the ship anyway.

Twelve
hours and some minutes had gone by since Skippy went AWOL on us. I had just
finished talking with Sergeant Adams, she drew the short straw to be the one to
check in with me at the hour mark. I shouldn’t have said that, that was unfair
to her. She was nice and didn’t make the conversation any more awkward that it
had to be; with her aboard a dying ship and me floating in space two hundred
fifty thousand miles away. I had decelerated the dropship to keep a constant
distance from the Flying Dutchman; a
distance I hoped was far enough away for the ship to survive if Skippy lost
containment and exploded. The science team was still sort of working on getting
a reactor restarted, but they had put that on a lower priority, as Dr.
Friedlander thought it unlikely they could successfully restart a reactor
before the backup power failed and carbon dioxide began building up inside the
ship. If, or when, that happened, part of the crew could get into dropships and
survive there for nearly a month. Others could use Kristang spacesuits to
survive for a short time; neither option was truly a solution. What Friedlander
had his team working on was using the jump drive capacitors to power the life
support system. Heat and lights would be great, what the ship really needed was
to restore power to the fancy Thuranin system that cracked carbon away from
carbon dioxide molecules and provided breathable free oxygen. Our science team
understood the basic theory of how that oxygen recycling system worked, all
they needed to do was supply power. The jump drive capacitors apparently did
not store power using the electromagnetic force in any way we monkeys could
understand, and the power was not designed to flow out of the capacitors into
the ship. Despite the obstacles, Friedlander’s team thought reversing the power
flow was a more realistic option than attempting to restart an advanced alien
reactor. Adams told me Chang was considering the idea, if the science team had
confidence they could extract power from the capacitors in a controlled manner,
and not blow up the ship in a blinding flash of light. The concept sounded
crazy to me, but as I was not the commander on the scene and Chang was, I kept
my mouth shut. This was a case where we had to trust Friedlander and his team;
no one else aboard truly had the knowledge base to make a judgment call. Adams
assured me Friedlander did not want to even attempt to screw with the unholy
power in a jump drive capacitor, until backup power was below fifty percent.

After
ending the call with Adams, I floated in the dropship’s cabin, looking out a
tiny window, trying to see the Dutchman
with a naked eye. Our star carrier, even in its new shrunken form, was massive
though spindly. The skinny spine could not be seen from that distance, and the
docking platforms were also relatively slender. The best I could hope for was
to be watching as the bulk of the forward section, the aft power and propulsion
module, or the relay station we had brought along as a lifeboat would pass in front
of a distant star, and I would see that star dim briefly. During the minutes I
watched, I didn’t see anything, so I gave up and checked the Dutchman using the dropship’s sensors.
The ship was easy to see with Thuranin optical technology, rather than the old
Mark One eyeball. Since the stealth field was powered down, I got a good look
at our pirate ship. It was beat up, and it was beautiful, an oasis of
breathable air in the cold dark of interstellar space. Until that air ran out.

I
floated over to a supply cabinet, poking around the food containers without
enthusiasm. There was plenty of food for me, and I knew I should eat something,
I just wasn’t hungry. There was also a bottle of magical pills Skippy had
created that would counteract the negative effects of long-term zero gravity on
the human body. I shook the bottle, then put it back. If I was in the dropship
long enough for my eyes to be affected and my muscles to atrophy, then a bottle
of pills would not solve the big problem.

Skippy.
I closed the cabinet door and floated over to the chair he was strapped into.
He was warm, though no warmer than he had been for the past eleven hours, since
I figured out how to use the glove of a Kristang spacesuit as a temperature
gauge. In a totally useless move, I touched his can with a bare finger.
Definitely warm, something was going on in there. Whether Skippy was still in
there, I had no way of knowing.

In
another totally useless move, I unstrapped him and picked him up. In zero gee
he didn’t weigh anything, he still had mass and I thought maybe he was lighter
than before. That was another thing I should have checked.

Then
I got tears in my eyes, which is damned inconvenient in zero gravity. Tear
droplets don’t run down your cheeks, they well up and float in front of you,
sometimes getting caught on your eyelashes where they get drawn back into your
eyes and sting again. Skippy, the Asshole Almighty, and my friend. Skippy had
lamented that his first ever friend was a monkey; my best friend was a beer
can. Cradled in my hands, he looked so small, so vulnerable, lost and alone. If
something had happened to him and he was truly gone, then he had survived
millions of years of loneliness only to die after a short time awake. He never
did contact the Collective, whatever the hell that was. And he died completely
alone, possibly the last of his kind and not knowing.

Holding
him in my hands was useless, not that I had anything else to do. Except I
should have used the abundant free time to try thinking of a way to fix the problem.
The way I justified cradling his beer can was that perhaps me touching him and
getting teary-eyed would be so disgusting to him, that he would come back from
wherever he had gone. After a couple minutes of self-indulgence, I strapped him
back in and wracked my brain for a way out of our dilemma. Four hours later, I
had a grand total of nothing.

Hans
Chotek returned to his office after a grim meeting with Dr. Friedlander. The
science team was pessimistic about the prospect of even short-term survival
aboard the ship; with main power cut off, carbon dioxide was already double the
normal level. Thuranin technology used some sort of power-intensive magical
technology to strip carbon away from CO2 molecules and produce breathable
oxygen, the ship didn’t have a backup system like lithium hydroxide filters. On
the recommendation of Friedlander, half the crew had been moved into dropships,
which had their own life support systems. That desperate measure would only be
useful for a short time. Unless main power could be restored, the entire crew
was doomed to die in the cold wasteland of interstellar space. Chotek met Major
Smythe striding down a passageway, and waved the SAS soldier into his office.
“Major, Dr. Friedlander tells me he is not optimistic about getting a reactor
restarted. I should have insisted that Skippy train the science team to fully
operate the ship, even if only the emergency systems. No. I should have
insisted that Colonel Bishop order Skippy to train the crew more effectively.”

“Sir,”
Smythe sat still in his seat, having trained himself not to wriggle when
uncomfortable. “Whatever happened to Skippy, it cannot be blamed on Colonel
Bishop.”

“Can’t
it?” Chotek asked with raised eyebrows. “Bishop knows our alien AI far better
than any of us do; I find it difficult to believe he did not know Skippy was
having some sort of problem before he went silent. Or that Skippy was taking
some type of ill-advised risk. It is at times like this, Major, I am convinced
more than ever that Bishop is too young and inexperienced to be entrusted with
such a vital responsibility.”

“The
fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” Smythe intoned.

Chotek
raised an eyebrow. “Quoting Shakespeare to me, Major?”

“Yes,
Sir. Also, bloody hell, proving my teachers were right all along; I told them
studying the classics would be useless for me. Perhaps the problem is not that
Bishop is too young, but that we
expect someone with his level of responsibility to be older. The issue may be
with us, not him.”

Hans
Chotek did not like being accused of allowing personal bias to affect his
ability to make decisions; his diplomatic training had emphasized the
importance of recognizing and avoiding personal bias. Chotek knew he was not
the only person who considered Joe Bishop too young to command an important, a
vital, mission. UNEF Command specifically stated that Bishop’s lack of
experience was an unacceptable risk factor. “Bishop has proven himself to be
brave, and clever and inventive. The military has a distinction between staff
officers and commanders, I believe. Bishop could be an excellent staff officer,
responsible for developing plans; it does not automatically follow that he is a
good commander. He still has a tendency, an instinct, to take unnecessary
risks.”

“You
approved all of our operations so far, Sir,” Smythe said evenly.

“I
did approve the operations being conducted, according to my instructions for
minimizing risk. If left to himself, Bishop may have successfully taken control
of the relay station, and also secured UNEF’s future on Paradise. But if he
failed, the results would have been worse than the limited damage that I
allowed for. And, Major Smythe, I do not know how many riskier plans Bishop did
not even mention to me, because he knew I would not approve them. He may very
well have done something rash, if he did not have guidance from more
experienced leaders,” Chotek looked Smythe straight in the eye as he spoke.
Smythe understood the implication: UNEF Command expected Smythe to act as a
check on Bishop’s risk-taking instincts. When Smythe did not reply, Chotek
pressed his point. “If the Kristang had not insisted that Bishop be promoted as
a public relations stunt, I believe he would still be a sergeant on Paradise
now. A good sergeant, most likely. But certainly not a colonel.”

Smythe
nodded, but his words did not please UNEF Command’s chosen leader. “If the
Kristang hadn’t gotten Bishop promoted, Earth would still be under the control
of the Kristang, and you and I might be dead. You see, Sir,” Smythe stared
Chotek directly in the eye, “I have a different perspective on risk. The SAS
motto is ‘Who Dares Wins’. What we’re trying to win out here is the survival of
our species. There is risk in action. There is also risk in not acting.”

Chotek
sighed inwardly, mentally crossing Major Smythe of 22 Special Air Service
Regiment off the list of people who could be relied on to provide a cool head
in a crisis. Maybe it didn’t matter anyway, if the Flying Dutchman remained drifting powerless in interstellar space
until the end of time.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Seventeen
hours, seven minutes and twelve seconds after Skippy went missing, he picked up
exactly where he left off. “-er. But no, I had to be extra super careful, because
little Joey watched too many crappy horror movies where the dumb kids don’t
know to- Hey! Joe! What in the hell
are we doing way out in the middle of freakin’ nowhere?”

“Skippy!”
I shouted, getting tears in my eyes. The sudden sound of his voice in the
empty, echoing silence had startled me so badly I almost pulled a muscle in my
neck. “You’re back!”

“Duh.
I never left. What the hell did you do?”

“I
didn’t do anything,” I protested gently. I was so happy, I didn’t have the
heart to banter back with him.

“Oof,”
he breathed that exasperated, disgusted sigh that I hated. “Come on, Joe. Somebody did something stupid, and what
are the odds that it wasn’t you?”

“Skippy,
I would ordinarily agree with you a thousand percent, but not this time. You
went silent on us for over seventeen hours.”

“Ha!
As if! No way, Jose.”

“Check
the dropship’s time code. Or the orbits of planets, or motion of the starfield,
however you tell time.”

“Holy
shit,” he breathed a moment later. His avatar popped into life, hovering a couple
inches above the copilot seat. “Joe, what happened?” He sounded frightened.
Right then, I regretted his ridiculously oversized admiral’s hat, because it
was not appropriate for the seriousness of the situation.

“We
do not know. When you disappeared, you were telling me about how you were
poking around in that other AI canister. Hold a moment, I’m signaling the Dutchman that Skippy the Magnificent is
back in action. You, uh, are back to your old self, right?”

“Never
better. Although, huh. Hmm. My reserves of metallic helium 3 have been
noticeably depleted. I must have been running on internal power. That is
troubling.”

“Yeah
it is. Hang on,” I started the process of powering up the dropship’s main
engines.

“Like
I can hang on, you dumdum,” his avatar pointed back to his motionless beer can
form, still strapped into a seat. “I don’t have hands.”

“Yup,”
I said with an ear-to-ear grin. “Skippy is back!”

“Everyone,
calm down, please,” Skippy appealed for quiet in the Dutchman’s conference room. “This was not a big deal, not for me. I
was not in any danger, and it won’t happen again. All that happened was, I lost
track of time while I was examining that dead AI canister. You know my sense of
time is radically different from the way you meatsacks think of time. Most of
the time, the vast majority of my consciousness is dormant, because it isn’t
needed. If my entire being stays awake all the time, I use too much power, and
I would go crazy from boredom. So, when part of my consciousness went in there,
I didn’t realize how time was going by on the outside, and the remainder of me
shut down temporarily.”

I
did not know whether to believe him or not. “Why did the entire ship shut down?
And the lifeboat’s reactor shut down also. You have left the ship before, and
it continued operating.”

“That’s
because I planned to leave the ship those other times, so I left preprogrammed
operating instructions. Those only work for a limited time; I can’t perform
maintenance or calibrate the jump drive coils unless I’m here. This time, the
onboard systems timed out after they couldn’t contact me; they shut down as a
safety measure. I will create an automated process for the ship to follow if
onboard systems are not able to contact me, but, again, those systems can only
run the ship by themselves for a limited time. Don’t worry,” he chuckled, “I
didn’t plan to go missing.”

“How
can you be sure this will not happen again?” I asked.

“Joe,
the next time I go poking around in dark corners, I will bring a watch in
addition to a flashlight. I didn’t miss anything exciting, did I?”

“Our
jump is delayed,” Chotek glared at him. “The entire crew was subject to
unnecessary stress.”

“Ok,
true. On the other hand, your science team had an opportunity to attempt
running the ship without me. How’d what work for you monkeys, by the way?” He
said in a sarcastic tone.

“You
know exactly how it worked,” Chotek replied, his face red.

“Uh
huh, I thought so. By the way, your science team’s loony idea to reverse the
power flow from the jump drive capacitors would have made the ship go BOOM.
There would have been monkey parts flying in every direction. More like monkey
dust, actually. Listen to me, I have said this before and you apparently did
not listen. There are a lot of delicate systems aboard this ship that could
cause a disaster if you screw with them, so please do not touch anything more
complicated than shoelaces.”

“We
would not have had to consider touching anything, if you had not left us
drifting with no power to run the life support systems,” Chotek scolded while
wagging a finger at Skippy’s avatar.

“Oh,
for-” Skippy’s avatar folded its arms across its chest. “I said I was sorry. How many times do I need to say it? Hey, Joe, how
about I put ‘I am very sorry and it will not happen again’ on a loop and run it
until, oh, the end of time? Will that work for you? I can set it to music if
you like.”

“I
would not like. Skippy, your apology is accepted,” I said so we could move on.

Chotek
was really fuming. “Colonel Bishop, Skippy’s reckless actions-”

“Mister
Chotek, I am captain of this ship, and a shipboard system had a glitch,” I cut
him off before he antagonized Skippy further and we got stuck in an argument
all day. “What happened is my responsibility, and we can discuss it privately,
if you wish.”

Skippy
blessedly took that as a cue to end the conversation. “Well, much as I’d simply
love to stay here and listen to Count
Chocula scolding me, I have reactors to restart, jump drive coils to calibrate
and a jump to program. Unless you apes want to handle that for me? No? Didn’t
think so.” His avatar gave a flamboyantly disdainful salute in Chotek’s
direction and disappeared.

“Colonel
Bishop-” Chotek turned his anger at me.

“Yes,
Sir. I will speak with him. In the meantime, we should continue preparations
for a jump?”

“Yes,”
Chotek said unhappily. My impression was he wanted more time to yell at me.
“Mr. Bishop, the next time your beer can decides to go on holiday, please tell
him to leave the ship running.”

“Joe, can you keep a secret?” Skippy said
over my zPhone. I was in my cabin, reading a report before I turned out the
light. Or, I was supposed to be reading a report, but I couldn’t concentrate,
so I was playing solitaire. And losing, every time. I noticed he didn’t use his
avatar this time; that told me he wanted to be completely serious for a change.
“Depends,” I turned the tablet off and put it on the floor. “On what the secret
is, and who I’m keeping it from. Also,” I thought for a moment, “if a friend
tells you a secret, but the secret is that they are about to do something
self-destructive, you might be obligated to break the secret for their sake.”

“I
guess that’s fair. This friendship thing is still new to me, Joe. The secret is
about me, and we’re keeping the secret from Count Chocula.”

“In
that case, bring it on, homeboy.” Since waking up from, wherever he had gone,
Skippy had been extra disdainful of Hans Chotek. Privately, I was pissed off at
Chotek also. That pompous ass had berated me mercilessly about something I had
no control over, and I took that as a sign of weakness. A strong commander
would have been quietly calm, and focused on resolving the problem rather than
assigning blame. Chewing me out in front of the crew had only eroded my
authority; you dress people down in private, not in public. “What’s the big
secret? Have you discovered,” I sucked in a breath dramatically, “that you are
an asshole?”

“I’m
trying to be serious, Joe.”

“Sorry.
You can understand how I’d be confused.”

“I’m
working on that. The secret is that I was not entirely truthful about what
happened when I went missing. You might even say I lied my ass off.”

“Might?”

“Ok,
I did. In my defense, I am scared out of my mind.”

I
took my mother’s advice to breathe deeply and count to three so I wouldn’t
explode at him. Getting upset wasn’t going to help anyone. “Skippy, anything
that can scare you must be awful. What happened?”

“It
is true that I lost track of time, but the reason I didn’t notice time going by
was that my higher functions were offline. Since I woke up, I’ve been piecing together
what happened. At first, I loaded a submind into the matrix of that AI
canister, but each submind lasted only a short time; they quickly became
unstable. That was no big surprise; without knowing the exact nature of the
matrix in there, I wasn’t able to prepare each submind to adapt to the changing
conditions. And the subminds were not smart or fast enough to adjust with
sufficient speed on their own. Since I was able to determine there was nothing
in there that posed a danger to the subminds, I extended part of my
consciousness into the matrix to examine it closely. Everything went fine for a
while, it was boring, really. Then, and this happened really fast while I was
talking with you, I was hit by a surprise attack. Not physically, of course; this
was- Hmmm. You wouldn’t understand it. To put it in very crude terms that you
can relate to, this was like a computer worm.”

“Uh,
Ok, sure.” I had little idea what a ‘computer worm’ is. “Malware, right? Like a
virus?”

“Yes,
except that on Earth, a computer worm is different from a virus in that worms
are designed to replicate and spread. The worm that attacked me, like I said,
it’s not a worm, that’s the best analogy I can give you. This worm replicated
itself many times, to keep attacking while my internal systems defended my
higher-level consciousness. Every time the worm was hunted down and
neutralized, it popped up again somewhere else.”

“Sounds
frightening.”

“You
haven’t heard the scary part yet, Joe. The worm should have killed me, rendered
me inert, whatever you want to call it. It locked up my conscious mind in a
loop so I was not aware of anything, not even of time passing. I was helpless;
it could have taken me apart and erased me, like it erased the AI that used to
occupy that canister. The only reason I survived, Joe, was that I had sort of
antibodies to fight the worm. At some point in my past, I must have encountered
a worm like that before, although I probably had outside help to fight it back
then. During that fight, long ago, I built antibodies to destroy that worm, and
those antibodies have been waiting inside me all this time. My conscious
memories have no record of that first incident, I didn’t even know they existed,
but now I estimate these antibodies make up almost two and a half percent of my
memory. That is a huge amount of my capacity. When this worm attacked me, my
antibody subroutines protected me, firewalled off my consciousness, and
attacked the worm.”

“Whoa.”
I took a moment to process that. “Where did this worm come from?” I asked
anxiously. If something that dangerous was floating around the galaxy, we could
be in big trouble. Any computer worm that could overwhelm Skippy, could crush
the computers aboard the Flying Dutchman.
Probably infiltrate and take over a Maxolhx computer also.

“I
do not know. I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know who built it, or
whether it evolved from a simpler system. It was in an Elder AI canister, and
that AI was wiped out a long time ago, that is the only thing I am certain of.”

“So,
what? The worm has been hiding in there all this time, waiting for another
Elder AI to come along and start poking around in dark corners?”

“No,
Joe. The worm has not been waiting or hiding, not consciously. It is not
sentient, it is a weapon. It was not aware of time passing. It was designed to
destroy an Elder AI; after it accomplished that, it went dormant. It would have
remained dormant, if I had not gone into that canister.”

“This
worm was designed to destroy an Elder
AI? Not just any type of AI?”

“Yes,
it was built to destroy an Elder AI.”

“How
do you know that?”

Skippy
ordinarily would have scolded me for asking a stupid question. This time, he
didn’t even give a sigh of exasperation. “It is capable of destroying lesser
AIs, but the impressive capabilities of this worm would only be fully needed
against an Elder AI such as myself. Any lesser worm would not have affected me,
so it seems pretty obvious to me this thing was built to kill me.”

“Skippy,
you say your memories are foggy. How sure are you that you are an Elder AI?” He
was speechless for such a long time, the hairs in the back of my neck rose,
fearing he had gone AWOL again. “Skippy?”

“Sorry,
Joe. I was thinking about what you said. You know that I often disparage your
intelligence-”

“You
can apologize any time you want,” I said smugly, waiting to hear him grovel.

“Huh?
What? Why would I- Joe, I am totally
justified in disparaging your intelligence. What do you mean, how do I know I
am an Elder AI? I have capabilities far beyond those of the Rindhalu or Maxolhx.
My memories contain data only available to the Elder. Duh.”

He
wasn’t getting away that easily. “How do you know those are your memories?”

“Oh,
man, you are- Huh. Hmmm. The monkey may have a point there,” he added under his
breath. “Shit. Now you’ve given me another thing to worry about. Great! Just
freakin’ great! Here I am getting four reactors restarted-”

“Four?”

“Four
including the one in the lifeboat, yes. I already have enough crap to think
about, and you throw me a goshdarned curveball. Damn it!” He sputtered in
frustration. “The truth is, I do not
know with absolute certainty that I am an Elder AI. In fact,” he muttered
something I couldn’t quite hear. “I have been disturbed by something else I
found in that canister; whatever AI was in there was fundamentally different
from me. That was a surprise, and, hmmm, now that I think about it, trying to
understand why my matrix is so different from that dead AI absorbed almost all
of my attention. If I hadn’t been working on that puzzle, maybe the worm would
not have been able to sneak up on me.”

“Is
the other AI’s matrix different because it was corrupted by the worm? Could
that explain the difference?”

“Uh,
no. Not, not even close. It’s embarrassing, really. Sometimes your profound
ignorance is cute, Joe.”

“Great,
thank you. Talking with you is a huge confidence-booster for me, as always.”

“No
problem, Joe.”

Several
jumps later, we arrived near a boring, ordinary, nothing-special M-class red
dwarf star that absolutely no one would care about. According to Skippy, there
were over one hundred billion red
dwarf stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The starlight would make it easier for us
to work on the Kristang ships. And if we encountered a threat, we could jump in
near the star, where other ships could not form a jump field.

I
was just happy to see a star that was not a tiny dot. This red dwarf was not
impressive from twenty million miles away; it was still a distinctive disk, not
a pinpoint. After a while, the romance of being in deep interstellar space got
old for me; I wanted sunlight on my face, even through a porthole.

“Joe,”
Skippy called me only a couple minutes later. “I found something interesting.”

My
Spidey sense tingled. “Interesting in an oh-shit-we-are-in-huge-trouble-again
way, or interesting in a nerdy science way?”

“Science
is not nerdy, Joe,” he sniffed. “You should try it some time.”

“Sorry,
Skippy, I didn’t mean any offense. So, no immediate danger?”

“Nope,
no danger at all. Joe, you once asked me whether a planet orbiting a red dwarf
star could be habitable.”

“Uh
huh, yeah, I remember that.” At the time, I had been vaguely insulted to learn
that Earth’s star, The Sun, was considered a yellow dwarf star. A dwarf! I
found that insulting. “You told me that conditions around a red dwarf have to
be absolutely perfect for a planet there to be habitable. You found one here?”
I asked excitedly.

“Um,
no. Close enough, in this case. I did find a rocky planet in this star’s
Goldilocks zone, but this planet cannot actually support human life. The
atmosphere has too much carbon dioxide, and almost no free oxygen. The good
news is that because of the carbon dioxide, the atmosphere is reasonably thick,
about ninety percent of sea-level normal on Earth. And the greenhouse effect
from all that carbon dioxide trapping heat keeps surface temperatures at the
terminator from freezing.”

“Terminator?”
When I heard ‘Terminator’, I automatically thought of the killer robot movies.

“This
planet is so close to the star, it is tidally locked; one side always faces the
star, like the way Earth’s moon always shows one side facing your planet,”
Skippy explained with unexpected patience. “The side facing the star gets baked
by solar radiation, while the far side is frozen in eternal darkness. The edge
of the planet, between the daylight side and the night side, is called the
‘terminator’.”

“Oh.
Sorry, I should have remembered that. Being between the hot side and the cold
side, wouldn’t the terminator area have strong winds?” Somewhere in high
school, I had read that what we call ‘weather’ is a mechanism for distributing
heat across the surface of a planet. Also I remember that ‘meteor-ology’ is not
about meteors, but about weather. That made no sense to me back then, and it
still puzzled me.

“Very
good, Joe!” Skippy said in the tone of voice parents use when a small child has
done something simple. “Yes, there are strong winds there. Anyway, I thought
you would be interested to know about this planet. It was mentioned in the
Thuranin long-range survey data about this star system, however, that data is
almost two thousand years old and I did not know whether conditions had
changed. A single solar flare could have significantly altered the nature of
the planet’s atmosphere, but it still looks good. Gravity is 78 percent of
Earth normal.”

Skippy
had told us this system was uninhabited, that is why Chotek had agreed to come
here. “You don’t see any sign the Thuranin, or anyone else, had been here
recently?”

“Nope,”
Skippy confirmed.

I
sighed, because I knew what was going to happen next; while Skippy was working
on building a Q-ship from our two salvaged transports, Major Smythe would want
his team to go down to the surface for training. And the science team would be
eager to go there also. And I would have to argue with Chotek for permission to
send teams to the planet.

Or
not. Hans Chotek had been surprisingly adventurous recently. Maybe he would
like to go down to the surface himself, so he could tell people he had walked
on another planet instead of just an airless moon, when he got back to Earth.

Before
any talk about anyone going down to the surface for a picnic outing, we had
what I hoped would be a brief meeting to review Skippy’s latest info on our two
salvaged transport ships. I was anxious to get them refitted for the mock
attack operation.

“Let’s
get it over with,” Skippy announced as I was sitting down. “we can get only one
usable ship out of these two hulks. Uh!” He shushed me as I was opening my
mouth. “Please shut your crumb catcher and let me talk, or this will go on all
freakin’ day. In order to make a believable Q-ship, it needs to have shields
much better than a typical transport is fitted with. The shield generators of
both these ships are in terrible, horrible, no-good, unforgivable condition. I
don’t know how these ships managed to survive as long as they did, Joe. One of
the reasons the ship you cleared was selected to be abandoned is, a
micrometeorite impact damaged its reactor shielding, because the energy shields
were so weak. I will have to strip shield generators and reactor components out
of both ships, and even then, our Q-ship will barely be capable of conducting a
believable attack on the Ruhar negotiators. The shield generators I can work
with; with modifications, they will last for a short battle and no more. The
reactors are complete scrap; the best I can do is to make them hot and fill them
with radiation so they appear to be operating on a sensor scan. To power the
ship, I will need to use capacitors, and that will require pulling capacitors
from the Dutchman. I did warn you
about this before we started this whole operation; the condition of the
transports was an unknown. Now I know, and what I’ve found is the ships are in
very poor condition. It will be stretching our resources to get even one ship
ready for the mock attack.”

The
room, or technically aboard a ship it is a ‘compartment’, was silent. “Hello?”
Skippy called out. “What, no monkey is going to challenge my data?”

“It’s
not your data we would challenge, Skippy,” I explained. “If we challenged
anything, it would be the conclusions you drew from the data.” As I spoke, I
patted myself on the back for using such fancy words. “And,” I looked at the
blank faces around the table, “we got nothing there. We have to trust your
judgment. It is,” I let out a sigh everyone was feeling, “disappointing that we
went through so much effort, to get only one Q-ship.”

“One
barely capable Q-ship, Joe. Seriously, the ship we end up with is going to
quickly get pounded into dust by the Ruhar or the Kristang or both. It is dicey
whether an attack by our Q-ship would be perceived as a credible threat by the
Ruhar. And I did warn you about that.”

“I
know, Skippy, I know. Mr. Chotek, I recommend that Skippy proceed with
modifying one ship, whichever one he thinks best.”

Chotek
sat stiffly upright; I could tell he was disappointed also. And worried, deeply
worried. “I agree. Mr. Skippy, please proceed as you see fit.”

“Colonel
Bishop?” Margaret Adams spoke from the other end of the conference table. She
technically wasn’t senior staff; I had invited her to the meeting because she
had been involved in clearing one transport, and I knew she was deeply
emotionally invested in the operation. “What will happen to the Kristang aboard
the ships?”

Oh
shit. I knew what she meant. I should have mentioned that upfront.

Before
I could answer, Skippy unhelpfully replied. “That is a good point. The Ruhar
and Kristang will scan the debris, after our Q-ship is destroyed. We will need
Kristang bodies, male of course, as part of the debris. To make the attack
believable, we can’t have any females or children, so-”

Before
he could continue, I interrupted. “That is not the point, Skippy. We do need to
keep some male Kristang corpses aboard the Q-ship. The remainder of the,
remains,” I cringed at the word, “we will treat with care and respect. The
Kristang aboard those ships were civilians. We need to-” To what? What could we
do with thousands of dead Kristang?

Skippy
surprised me. Again. “Colonel Bishop, I do understand your meaning. As you
stated, the Kristang civilians aboard those ships were not our enemy. I propose
that when I am finished building our Q-ship, we jump the Flying Dutchman closer to the star, and send the Kristang remains
aboard the other transport ship, on a trajectory down into the gravity well. A
burial in space; going out in a blaze of glory, I believe is the expression. No
pun was intended.”

“Staff
Sergeant?” I directed my question to Adams. “Is that acceptable?”

Adams
thought a moment. I knew that female and her three children, huddled in a
locker, were in her mind. “That is acceptable. For now.”

“For
now?” Skippy asked, puzzled. “What could we do after the burial?”

“Payback,”
Adams said simply. “Not tomorrow, not the day after that, but someday. No
matter how long it takes. I’m a Marine, Sir,” she looked directly at me. “Semper Fidelis. The lizards need to
learn what payback means, someday.”

“Someday,
Staff Sergeant.” I felt the same way.

Someday
was going to be a long, long time away.

“Hey,
uh, Joe?” Skippy called me when I got back to my office. His holographic avatar
didn’t activate, so I assumed he wanted to talk seriously about something.

“What
is it, Skippy?”

“This
is probably a conversation you and I should have in private.”

“Got
it.” I pressed the button to close the door of my tiny office.

“This
is an unpleasant subject. I mentioned that we need several bodies of adult male
Kristang aboard the Q-ship. The ship will self-destruct following the attack,
and the Kristang will certainly scan the debris. They will expect that whatever
clan conducted the attack will have been careful not to leave behind any clues
pointing to them, so searching the debris will mostly be an exercise for the
benefit of the Ruhar. It would be highly suspicious if there were no traces of
Kristang DNA from the crew in the debris field.”

“Uh
huh, you did mention that.” The adult male bodies aboard the transports were
civilians, except for one crew member who had apparently been caught by a mob
and stabbed to death. His body for sure was going aboard our Q-ship, along with
three others. I had privately instructed Skippy to set aside more adult male
bodies, in case we somehow acquired another ship for the attack. “I don’t like
using civilian bodies for the attack, but we have to do it.”

“Hmm.
Something that is morally distastefully, but necessary, can be acceptable? You
know my moral compass does not always align with yours, Joe.”

Oh,
crap. “It depends, Skippy. Those civilians are victims, and I do not like the
idea of using their remains in an action against their own people, but I will
do it to protect my own people. What is necessary, beyond what we have already
talked about?”

“This
is the part where the conversation needs to be kept private. You promised
Sergeant Adams to treat the remains with respect, except for the adult males we
need to leave behind as evidence of a Kristang clan being involved. The problem
is, the attack will not be seen as the action of a Kristang clan, if the debris
contains only male DNA.”

“Oh
shit.”

“If
a Kristang clan conducted such an attack, the crew would be volunteers for a suicide
mission. These are typically criminals, or disgraced warriors sent by their
families to atone for their crimes. Or they often are younger sons who have
limited prospects, and hope their sacrifice will elevate the standing of their
family within the clan. These suicide volunteers are provided females to, uh,
‘comfort’ them during their final mission.”

“Damn
it,” I spat.

“Joe,
it would be suspicious if some female Kristang DNA were not found among the
debris. I do not like it, but I do think it is necessary.”

“I
don’t like it either.”

“Sergeant
Adams is very much not going to like it. Joe, I wish you had this discussion
with me, before you promised Adams to give all the remains a respectful burial
in space.”

I
wish the beer can had mentioned needing female DNA aboard the Q-ship, before my
conversation with Adams! “Adams is not going to know about this.”

“But-”

“But
nothing. Skippy, this is what we call a ‘lie of omission’. For some reason I am
not an expert about, not telling a person something, is considered morally
superior to than telling them a lie. We are simply not going to tell her, or
tell anyone else, got it? You can use your bots to collect female remains, and
hide them somewhere aboard the Q-ship? And enough for a second ship, if we can
get one. Do not tell me how many female bodies we need, please, I don’t want to
know.” My mind flashed back to high school history class, when I heard about
kings being buried with their servants, while those servants were alive. I could
not imagine the terror of a Kristang woman, already living a life of miserable
slavery, knowing she was being used as ‘comfort’ on a suicide mission. Humanity
were not the only people who needed to pay back the Kristang warrior caste;
their own people needed a measure of retribution.

Right
then, I had enough other problems to deal with.

“I
can do that, Joe. I did consider doing it without telling anyone at all, but I
felt the need to check with you on the morality of such action.”

“You
are always right to check with me, Skippy, and don’t be concerned about my
feelings. As the commander, I need to deal with this shit, so my people don’t
have to.”

“Technically,
Joe, Count Chocula is in command of the mission.”

“You
didn’t tell him, did you?” I asked, alarmed.

“Phhhht!”
Skippy made a raspberry sound. “No way would I ask Chocky-boy’s advice on
anything important. The less he is involved with a mission, the more likely we
are to succeed. He talks to me all the freakin’ time, and I tell him the
minimum he needs to know. Or I ignore him. When I, uh, went on vacation for
seventeen hours, Chotek didn’t notice until the ship’s power cut out, because
he is used to me ignoring him.”

It
would be better for everyone if Skippy developed at least a cordial working
relationship with Chotek; someday he might need Chotek’s good will. “Skippy,
please, I know you can’t stand the guy, but can you dig down into your endless
well of patience and try to work with him? Please?”

“I
can try, but you’d better have a bottomless well of patience with me, because Earth’s
sun will be a cold, dark cinder before Hans Chotek and I get along.”

“The
guy will be dead by then, Skippy.”

“Exactly.”

Major
Smythe did indeed want his teams to go down to the surface for training. Hans
Chotek also wished to go, but resisted the temptation. My guess was he didn’t
trust me to handle the ship by myself. And maybe he was worried Skippy would
take another ‘vacation’. The science team was torn between wanting to see what
Skippy’s bots were doing to convert two derelict transports into a Q-ship, and
wanting to explore a planet that orbited a red dwarf. We compromised on members
of the science team splitting their time on the surface and on the ship. To
make sure we could evacuate the entire surface team in one trip, I limited the
number of people on the surface to the number that could be transported in the
two dropships assigned to stay on the surface. For pilot training, dropships
shuttled from the ship to the surface and back, but two were always near the
ground teams, ready to whisk them away on short notice. Also, the ground teams
had portable shelters that they could live in for several weeks if needed, and
stealth netting to conceal the shelters.

I
was patting myself on the back for having thought of all possible problems,
when I happened to look at my tablet. In the center of the display was the
planet. Next to the planet were a dot representing our pirate ship, and two
adjacent dots for the salvaged transports attached to our docking platforms.

Then
I had a bad thought. “Skippy, uh, it is possible you could work on those
transports somewhere else? Like, away from the ship and the planet?”

“Um,
maybe, why? Is being close to my awesomeness making you swoon, Joe?”

“Not
even a little. I’m concerned that if you have another, you know, episode, it
could be bad for the Dutchman. And
the planet.”

“I
am not going to explode, Joe,” he declared with sarcasm. “And if I do, I should
be way, way far from the planet. That atmosphere there is reasonably thick, but
it will not protect the landing party from me exploding. Even if I was on the
other side of the star, the planet wouldn’t be safe. Gravity waves would cause
the star to send out intense solar flares that would fry the planet’s near
side.”

“Exploding
is not the only potential problem,” I insisted. “You once told me that if you
were to lose containment, your full mass is about a quarter that of the planet
Paradise. Having that much mass suddenly pop into this spacetime would disrupt
the orbit of the planet, and cause quakes down there that could kill the away
teams.” Too late, I realized that almost the entire science team, who were the
people we needed if Skippy went AWOL again, were down on the planet. That was
poor planning by some idiot named Joe Bishop. The United States Army had a lot
of explaining to do, why they put that
moron in charge of anything more complicated than emptying a trash can.

“Hmmm.
Joe, I am mildly impressed that you consider the effect of my mass upon the
planet. However, to avoid negative effects on the planet in the extremely
unlikely event I were to lose containment, I would need to be on the outer edge
of this star system, which would ruin the whole reason we came all the way here
in the first place. Settle down, Joe, I am not going anywhere. Trust me, I got
this. I am right in the middle of a very delicate operation on the Q-ship, so
please leave me alone for a while to do my job.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Skippy
did not, in fact, explode, or lose containment or go AWOL while he was working
on the Q-ship. Despite my worries, work on the Q-ship proceeded smoothly and
ahead of schedule. When he finished, we carefully and respectfully packed most
of the dead Kristang into the other transport, and cast it down into the star.
Although Skippy wanted to get moving, I held the Dutchman in orbit, until we saw the transport burn up in the star’s
photosphere.

“Excellent!
We have a Q-ship,” Chotek announced happily as we prepared to break orbit.
“What’s wrong?” He added after seeing the expression on my face.

“Sir,
that’s the problem. We have ‘a’, as in one ship. And ‘Q-ship’ as in not a real
warship. I am concerned that our mock attack, with a single old converted
transport ship, will not be perceived as a serious threat. We will only get one
chance at scaring those Ruhar negotiators. It would be a shame to waste all
this effort, Sir. It would be worse than a shame; if the mock attack doesn’t succeed
in breaking the negotiations, we will have ruined our best, maybe our only,
chance to keep aliens away from Earth.”

Chotek
ran a hand through his hair, I could tell he was forcing himself to be patient.
As he made that gesture, I realized my timing could not have been worse. He was
in a good mood, an almost celebratory mood. He had approved my plan for a mock
attack on the Ruhar, rather than his preference of approaching the Ruhar openly
to offer an alliance. He had suffered through an incredibly complicated
operation to pick up two derelict starships. Now we had a Q-ship to use in the
mock attack, and instead of acting pleased, I was throwing cold water on the
whole idea. My timing sucked. I should have had this discussion while Skippy
was working on the Q-ship. Or before. “You want to get another starship?” He asked quietly, in a tone with more than a
hint of exasperation.

“Yes,
Sir. If we can.”

“You
have an idea of how we could do that?” His skeptical expression implied that if
I had such an idea, we should have done it already. Perhaps we should have done
it instead of constructing a Q-ship out of discarded transports.

“We’re
working on concepts, Sir. If we have to, we will go with the single Q-ship. For
now, we should proceed toward the nearest Elder wormhole; that will take us two
days. Once we get there, you can decide where to go. Skippy says we have plenty
of time before the Ruhar arrive at the negotiation site.”

Back
in my office, Skippy’s avatar popped to life. “Joe, I heard your conversation
with Count Chocula. I do agree that hitting the Ruhar with our one Q-ship is
unlikely to make the hamsters pull out of the negotiations. However, you were
wrong about one thing; it will take us five
days to get to a wormhole, not two,” Skippy chided me.

“Really?”
I flipped my tablet open and pulled up the star chart app Skippy had supplied.
It was constantly updated with the ship’s position, so the little pirate-monkey-on-a-flying-banana
icon for the Flying Dutchman was
always in the center. “There’s a wormhole, like, two days from here,” I tapped
the screen, leaving a smudge mark.

“Ugh,
you smudged the screen again, Joe. I hate it when you don’t wash your hands
after eating potato chips, it makes extra work for my cleaning bots.”

“Huh,”
I had been wondering how my iPad screen was always squeaky clean every morning.
Feeling guilty, I absent-mindedly wiped my hands on my pants.

“Damn
it! Don’t clean your hands on your pants, Joe!”

“Don’t
worry, Skippy, the uniform of the day is Army Combat Uni, so on this camo, a
couple greasy chip stains actually improves the digital pattern.”

“You don’t have to do your own laundry,”
he said in a huff.

“Yeah,
thank you for that.” Like the entire crew, I dropped dirty clothes in a bin,
and the next day, they reappeared, cleaned and folded, tucked into drawers or
the closet in my cabin. Skippy’s Magical Cleaning Fairy bots took care of most
domestic chores aboard the ship. Somehow, he knew exactly which clothing
belonged to which person, even Army-issue socks that looked identical to me. I
had tried putting my dirty T-shirts in a bin far from my cabin, and the next
day, my T-shirts were back in a drawer in my cabin. Skippy never said anything
about me testing him, and I wasn’t going to mention it. “So, like I said,
there’s a wormhole two days from here.”

“Yup,
wow, you can read a star chart. Do you want a trophy?”

“No
trophy needed, how about you give me an explanation instead?”

“Me
explain hyperspatial navigation to you? Ugh. I should get a trophy for that.
All right, here goes nothing. Yes, Joe, there is a wormhole only two days from
here. We can’t risk using that wormhole, we need to use the wormhole that is
five days away.”

“Incredible.
Gosh, that was so difficult for me to understand, Skippy. Me caveman, hmm, two
days not same as five days? Huuh? Me primitive mind blown! How about you, oh, I
don’t know. What the hell, let’s go crazy; how about you explain why we can’t use the wormhole that is three
days closer to us? You can manipulate wormholes to change their connections,
right?” In one of our cargo bays was a ‘magic bean stalk’, an Elder wormhole
controller module we had stolen from a Kristang asteroid research base during
our first mission. Skippy could use it to shut down a wormhole, which is how
the Thuranin and Kristang no longer had access to Earth. He had discovered that
he could also use it to temporarily change which distant wormhole a nearby
wormhole connected to. That had been my idea, by the way. Being able to
temporarily change local wormhole connections saved the Merry Band of Pirates a
tremendous amount of time, because we could use a single wormhole to get to our
destination, rather than hopscotching from one wormhole to another like all
other ships in the galaxy had to. We could go directly from, say, Atlanta to
Duluth, instead of going Atlanta-Dallas-Chicago-Detroit-Duluth. Except, of
course, there is no reason for anyone to ever to go to Duluth.

Oh,
crap! Now I’m going to get flooded with angry messages from the Duluth Chamber
of Commerce. All I can say is, get in line behind the people from Newark, after
I maligned their fair city by naming a miserable planet ‘Newark’. Anyway, bite
me. “Before you tell me how stupid I am, I do know that each wormhole can only
connect to a limited number of wormholes, and the potential connections don’t
all make sense.” Like, a wormhole could be made to connect to another wormhole
a thousand lightyears away, but it could not connect to a wormhole ten
lightyears away. Skippy said the reason was complicated, which was his way of
saying that he didn’t understand it.

“Yup.
That is not the reason why we can’t use the wormhole that is only two
lightyears away. There is actually another wormhole that is only half a
lightyear away from here, Joe, I didn’t show that closer wormhole on the
display because it is dormant, and its potential connections do not go in the
direction we need to travel. The reason we can’t use the closest active
wormhole is I have become concerned that my messing with wormholes is
dangerous. The more times I screw with wormholes, the more likely it is that
someone will notice abnormal wormhole behavior, and attract the attention of
the Maxolhx and Rindhalu. That has already happened; on our last mission, a
pair of Thuranin ships were waiting for a wormhole that never appeared, so they
had to jump to another wormhole emergence point and wait there. That was only
one anomaly, but wormholes are predictable as a sunrise; even one hiccup is deeply
troubling to the species who use them.”

“Shit!
Skippy, you didn’t tell me the Thuranin noticed us messing with wormholes.”

“It
was only that one incident, Joe. Uh, well, one that I know of,” he admitted. “I
have tried to avoid messing with heavily-traveled wormholes, for that reason.
The more traffic a wormhole has, the more likely it is that anomalous behavior
will be noticed.”

“Okaaaay,”
I kept my breathing even. Crap. An idea I thought was a great timesaver for us,
a major tactical advantage, might give away our presence and endanger our home
planet. Maybe I should stop trying to think up clever ideas. “We should only
use wormholes that don’t get much traffic, then?”

“Yes.
There is another problem, an even worse problem. There are three wormholes we have
manipulated more than once, because they can be adjusted to provide convenient
routes to Earth or Paradise. Each time I alter one of those wormholes, I notice
their connection to the network is slightly less stable. And all wormholes in
the surrounding local area become less stable. The level of instability
increases on a roughly logarithmic scale, I won’t bother attempting to explain
the math to you. To put it simply, I am concerned about destabilizing the
entire wormhole network in this sector, and causing a shift. Another shift
could undo everything we have accomplished out here. It could make it
impractical for the Ruhar to base a battlegroup at Paradise; forcing them to
abandon that planet and leaving UNEF at the mercy of the Kristang. Another shift
could also give the Kristang access to Earth again. As I told you, the wormhole
I shut down is not the closest one to Earth. This could be a major, major
problem.”

“Shit.
Oh, shit. Should we stop messing with wormholes completely?”

“I do
not think that is necessary. Not yet. Some wormholes can be safely manipulated;
for example the one five days away has never been adjusted, and it is on a
local network we have never used. When I say it is ‘safe’, I mean in terms of
not inadvertently causing a catastrophic wormhole shift. We will always run the
risk of someone noticing that wormhole behavior has changed.”

“Great.
Just great.” We have a huge tactical advantage, and now we couldn’t use it.
“So, I’m thinking the rule is you only mess with wormholes if it’s an emergency?”
Crap. When was the Merry Band of Pirates ever not responding to an emergency?

“That
would be prudent, Joe.”

“I
will tell the crew.” Crap. Count Chocula was absolutely going to love hearing this news. Especially the
part about the ship’s captain, me, not knowing about this danger until it came
up in a casual conversation with our absent-minded alien AI. “Skippy, you need
to tell me about these type of things.”

“I
figured there was no reason to worry you about it, Joe, until it became an
actual problem.”

“You
figured wrong. As captain, I need to know about potential problems, so we can
avoid making them into actual problems.”

“Hmm.
Um, I should probably tell you about Reactor Two, then-”

A few
minutes later, I wished he hadn’t told me. The ship was in even worse condition
than I thought.

Because
I had learned that bad news does not improve with age, I went to see Chotek,
while the ship accelerated away from the planet. Chotek had left his office and
was in the conference room, talking about some boring thing with Simms and a
few other people. When I told him we needed to talk about the condition of
Reactor Two, he summoned me to sit down. What I told him was not good news.

“Mister
Skippy,” Chotek said, studiously avoiding looking at Skippy’s avatar. “Records
from your second mission indicate you rebuilt the ship from raw materials. Can
you not do that again?”

“Correct,
I cannot do that again.”

Chotek
and I shared a look. I bailed out my boss. “Skippy, that expression means-”

“I
know what it means, dumdum,” he said with his avatar’s hands on its hips. “I
meant what I said. I can’t do that again. Yes, last time I used raw materials,
but those only supplemented the materials and equipment on hand. I had to
cannibalize parts of the ship to fix other, more critical parts. The equipment
remaining aboard the ship is not sufficient to repair or rebuild most of the
sophisticated systems that are wearing out. The Flying Dutchman is not a
Von Neumann machine, you know, it- Oh, boy. Now I have to explain what a ‘Von
Neumann Machine’ is to you.”

I was
puzzled by the reference, so I guessed. “A ‘70s progressive rock band?”

“No,”
the avatar buried its face in its hands. “This is hopeless-”

“Oh,
sorry, duh,” I said, embarrassed. “Hey, is Von Neumann the guy who wrote that
song ‘I Love L.A.’? What does that have to do with-”

“No,
that was Randy Newman! Oh, why do I
bother trying to explain anything to you? And you, Chocula, put your hand down,
stop feeling so smug. Just because you know what a Von Neumann machine is does
not make you smart; you’re like a four year old who is proud that he can go
potty by himself. That is not a major accomplishment. For your education, Joe,
a Von Neumann machine is a device that can make a copy of itself, using only
raw materials from the environment.”

That
didn’t sound like any big deal to me. “So, it’s a woman?”

“What?”
Skippy sputtered. “No, you-”

“Because
any woman can do that,” I observed,
getting an appreciative look from Major Simms.

“No,
it’s not a wom-”

“Women
do need a little help-” I started to say.

“Very little help,” Simms rolled her
eyes, and made air quotes with her fingers when she said ‘help’.

“We
men call that the ‘fun part’,” I laughed.

“Joe!”
The beer can avatar was hopping up and down on the tabletop. “Focus! Please,”
Skippy broke down sobbing, “please,
try to focus. Oh, why do I even bother? I’m on a pirate ship full of ignorant
monkeys.” The avatar got on its knees, face in its hands. “I’m doomed, doomed, doomed.”

“Wow,
sorry, Skippy. You were saying that the ship can’t make a baby,” I suggested.
“or, something like that?”

“You
totally missed my point as usual, Joe,” the avatar shook its head sadly, but at
least it was standing up again. “The ship can’t fix itself, because it is not
capable of making the machinery needed to create replacement parts. The
Thuranin fleet does include support ships with extensive fabrication
facilities, but even those ships can’t produce certain items, like atomic
compression warheads. Or the exotic matter in superconducting magnets used for
reactor containment systems.”

“Got
it,” I thought I understood him. “Even your magnificent awesomeness can only do
so much, with the crappy equipment you have to work with.”

“Exactly!”

Chotek
had gotten irritated by my back-and-forth with Skippy. UNEF Command should have
included a sense of humor in their requirements for a mission commander, but
they hadn’t, so we were stuck with Hans Chotek. To be fair, he wasn’t as stiff
as when he first came aboard, but he could still be a major dick sometimes. Most
of the time. “Mister Skippy, we appreciate that this ship can’t continue flying
forever, without access to a Thuranin shipyard. How long can we fly, until the
ship becomes permanently disabled?”

“Even
I can’t answer that, Chocky,” Skippy said as his avatar put a hand on its chin
thoughtfully. “There are too many variables; the number and distance of jumps
we make, whether we engage in combat again, all that. Even flying through
normal space creates wear and tear on the shield generators, to prevent impacts
from space junk and protect the crew from radiation. The stealth field is the
system that is most likely to fail without being repairable; I am using my own
capabilities to enhance our stealthiness, so we can use the ship’s stealth
field at a lower power level. The jump drive coils are the most critical system
we have aboard; as they wear out, we can’t replace them. If you ask me to
guess, and of course you will, I would say that Reactor Number Two will be the
first to fail. The good news is that when I have to shut down Two, I can
cannibalize it to keep One and Three online longer. At our current tempo of
operations, Reactor Two will likely fail within seventy four days.”

Based
on the shocked faces around the table, seventy four days was much less than the
crew expected. If they had even thought of the ship as something that could
wear out at all. With Skippy’s magical, largely unseen bots handling all the
maintenance, most people aboard tended not to think of the Flying Dutchman’s systems
at all; it was like air on Earth. You breathed without thinking about it, and
never considered free atmospheric oxygen as something that needed to be
renewed. I had the most frequent contact with Skippy, and even I often took our
stolen star carrier’s smooth operation for granted. “Sir,” I looked at Chotek,
“in a way, this makes decision-making simpler.”

“Simpler?
How?”

“We
have all been thinking, in the back of our minds, that whatever our current
mission is, we need to make sure the Dutchman
is available for future missions, indefinitely. Now, instead of planning
missions with the idea of preserving the Flying
Dutchman as a resource available to UNEF Command, we need to think of the
ship as a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. Our pirate ship has a limited life
remaining, so we need to make the most of it, before some critical system fails
and leaves us stranded dead in space.”

“Colonel,”
Chotek said with a troubled expression, “I hear you. However, I believe we
should not give up on this ship, until we have considered all alternatives.
Mister Skippy, Earth has considerable industrial resources. Is it possible that
an extended stay at Earth could allow you to construct the equipment needed to
keep the ship functional?” As he spoke, I could almost see the wheels turning
in his head. He was hoping humans could build facilities to create advanced
technologies that would not only repair the Dutchman
under Skippy’s direction, but also be available for humans to construct our own
ships in the future. Our own totally human-controlled ships, that would not
require Skippy to operate. UNEF Command would love to break our reliance on an
untrustworthy alien AI.

“Uh,
no.” Skippy’s avatar rolled its eyes. “Earth does not have industrial resources
anywhere near the level of development that would be useful in repairing this
ship. And before you ask, the answer is no; I can’t give you the technology
needed. Right now, I am already skating on the thin edge of having to shut
myself down by talking with you. You know that my programming prevents me from
revealing my presence to technologically advanced species. Humanity’s level of
technology is still pitiful, but you being aboard a Thuranin star carrier,
simply operating basic flight controls, or sensor and weapon systems in the
CIC, has me on the verge of shutting down. I am having to fight with some of my
internal systems, and that causes conflicts that make me create workarounds.
The next dumb question you are going to ask me,” the avatar looked directly at
Chotek, hands on its tiny ‘hips’, “is whether I could give you a data dump of
technology you need, so that even though that will cause me to go silent, you
would be able to operate the ship on your own. The answer is no, and hell no. I
know this, because I have tried doing that already.”

“You
did?” I asked, surprised. “When was this?” He had not mentioned it to me
before.

“On
our second mission, when we got jumped by that squadron of Thuranin destroyers.
If you remember, I heroically volunteered to sacrifice myself for this troop of
flea-infested monkeys-”

“I do
remember, and I remember that was a terrible, awful plan, Skippy.”

“Ok,
so maybe it wasn’t the best idea I ever thought of, but still, I valiantly
offered to lead the Thuranin away so you could escape-”

“Which
would not have worked.”

“Joe,
I already said it wasn’t a good plan. Anywho, when I thought you would
tragically be deprived of my awesomeness, I attempted to put critical data into
a file for you, Joe.”

“Oh,
that was very thoughtful of you, Skippy,” I said, genuinely touched.

“Ah,
in this case, it has to be the thought that counts, because it didn’t work. My
internal systems prevented me from assembling the data. If I want to give you a
gift in the future, you’ll have to settle for a fruit basket.”

“I
like pineapple.”

“I
will keep that in mind Joe. Bottom line is, I can’t offer any sort of significant
upgrade to humanity’s technology level. You will have to do it the hard way, on
your own.”

“Or we
do it the easy way, like all other species seem to do in this galaxy: we steal
it.”

“I’m
not following you, Joe,” the avatar tilted its cap up.

“We
have a Kristang troop ship at Earth, or close enough. Back home, they should be
taking that apart soon, to figure out how it works. If we can get the Dutchman home, even if it can never fly
again, we can try to reverse engineer Thuranin technology.”

“Good
luck with that,” Skippy scoffed. “Joe, understanding the theory behind how
something works is only the first step. To make the theory useful, you have to
be able to make it work. While we have been talking, I ran some rough estimates
of how long it would take for Earth industry to create something relatively
simple, like magnets for a crude reactor containment system. The best guess I
can make is eighty years, Joe. Eighty years, and that assumes I am directing
the effort, which I can’t do. On your own, it could take three hundred years to
build the infrastructure to create stable exotic matter.”

“I
don’t think humanity has any important appointments over the next three hundred
years, Skippy; we can concentrate on understanding this technology and building
up our defenses. What the Merry Band of Pirates need to do keep is aliens away
from our home, so Earth has time to develop technology.”

“Oh
yeah,” Skippy said, his voice dripping with even more condescension than usual.
“Good luck with that, monkeys.”

During
our five-day journey out to the wormhole, Simms was in my office when Skippy
called me. “Joe,” Skippy’s avatar hopped up and down on my desk and waved its
arms to get my attention. “I know where we can pick up a Kristang frigate
cheap.”

“What?
Where?” I asked, assuming this was one of Skippy’s jokes.

In a
blink, his avatar changed to fat guy wearing a cheap plaid suit and what my
grandfather used to call the ‘Full Cleveland’ outfit: white belt and matching
white shoes. Hey, that was my grandfather’s expression, so the Cleveland
Chamber of Commerce can direct hate mail to him, not me. I looked closely, the
avatar even had crumbs on its chin and some sort of grease stain on its shirt
and tie. Skippy really nailed the used car salesman image.

Oh,
and the National Association of Pre-Owned Car Salespersons can bite me too.

“Joey,
Joey, you are in luck, my boy,” the avatar said smarmily. “This frigate is a
real cream-puff, only a zillion lightyears on it, all highway mileage. We’re
having a Labor Day blowout sale-”

“It’s
not Labor Day,” Simms whispered to me.

“Don’t
bother him with facts, he’s on a roll,” I whispered back.

“-and
for you, oh, my sales manager is going to kill
me for saying this,” the avatar said with a conspiratorial wink. “We’ll even
throw in our guaranteed rustproofing package.”

“There’s
no rust in space,” I rolled my eyes.

“That’s
why it’s guaranteed. So, what would it take to get you into a quality warship
like this, today? By ‘what will it take you’, I mean other than the special ops
assault team that will be needed to capture it.”

It
still wasn’t clear to me if he was joking or not. “What are you offering for
financing? I doubt if my credit card works out here.”

“Joey,
Joey, Joey. With Skippy’s Used Starship Emporium, your job is your credit.
Although, hmm, your job is only going to last until your next major screwup, so
maybe I should insist on a cash transaction.”

“Are
you being serious, Skippy? You know where there is a Kristang frigate we could
take?”

“Yup,
dead serious. And, as a bonus, you already sort of know this ship.”

“I
do?” My mind raced through the limited number of Kristang ships I had
encountered. The troop transport that had brought me outbound from Earth? No,
Skippy said this ship was a frigate. The Flower
had been a frigate, but Skippy had taken that ship apart to repair the Dutchman. Several of the ships we had
jumped into a gas giant planet had been frigates, the key phrase being ‘had
been’. Those ships were unorganized particles now. And when we arrived at Earth
the first time, Skippy had jumped a Kristang frigate into the Sun. So, my mind
was coming up blank. “Sorry, Skippy, my dumdum brain can’t understand what you
mean. Which frigate is this?”

“The ‘To Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious’, of
course.”

“Holy
shit,” I gasped. I did know that ship, or knew of that ship. It had been a
thorn in the side of Commodore Ferlant’s task force at Paradise, and later the Glory had joined Admiral Kekrando’s
battlegroup. We had never actually encountered that ship during our first mission
there to reactivate maser projectors, nor on our later mission to plant fake
Elder artifacts. But from mission reports Skippy hacked from both sides, we
sure as hell knew all about the Glory.
Based on those reports, I almost had to admire the crew of that stubborn little
ship that refused to die. Almost. What dampened my admiration was knowing the Glory had used her maser cannons to burn
out fields of human crops in Lemuria, killing humans in the process. At one
point, I had considered suggesting to Chotek that we should take out the Glory, if we could do that without risk
to our mission. I never made that suggestion, because I knew the
ever-overly-cautious Count Chocula would reject my idea, and that would give
him even more reason to distrust my judgment. “I thought the Glory was declared lost during the final
battle, before the cease fire took effect.”

“Rumors
of that ship’s death had been greatly exaggerated, Joe. I suspected Admiral Kekrando
was lying about how many ships he had left at the time of the cease fire, I
just never had an opportunity to investigate. If you remember, we were kind of
busy.”

“How
do you know about it now?”

“That
Ruhar data node contained an interesting report that the Glory recently surrendered to the Ruhar; that ship really didn’t
have any choice, after Major Perkins destroyed the Kristang commando team the Glory was supposed to retrieve.”

“Perkins?
Perkins- what the hell?” I sputtered.
“What commando team?”

“Joe,
after we left, there was, um, trouble on Paradise.” While Simms and I listened
with mouths gaping open in astonishment, Skippy gave a brief account of what
had happened within the first few weeks after we left Paradise behind.

“Shauna NUKED an island?!” There was
another phrase I never thought would ever be coming out of my mouth.

“Uh
huh. What is left of that formerly peaceful tropical isle has been renamed
‘Jarrett Island’. From the limited data in the file, I do not think your former
squeeze Shauna considers that to be much of an honor. Although, she sure did
blow the hell out of it, so it is mostly her fault.”

“Holy shit,” I slumped in my chair, sharing an
amazed look with Simms. “Goddamn it. I figured Shauna and the rest of them
would be, I don’t know, growing tomatoes or something peaceful.”

“Apparently,
United States Army personnel have a talent for finding trouble.”

“That’s
our job, Skippy. We find trouble and take care of it, before trouble can find
civilians.”

“You,
and people who know you, seem to have an uncanny ability to attract trouble,”
Skippy’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Maybe being around you rubbed off onto them,
Joe?”

“I
hope not. But, wow, Goddamn. They couldn’t stay out of trouble for one freakin’
month? Uh, I’m glad Perkins and her team were able to stop that commando
attack.”

“Me too.
It gave the Burgermeister an excuse to ensure better treatment of UNEF. They
even have chocolate now! So, anyway, back to the subject. The Glory surrendered, and her crew have
been interred by the Ruhar; they will likely be traded for Ruhar prisoners of
war later. The ship itself is being prepped for a short voyage out to
rendezvous with a Jeraptha star carrier. The Glory will be waiting just beyond the outer edge of the Paradise
system, alone and with only a skeleton crew of four Ruhar technicians.”

“A
sitting duck,” I said with appreciation. “Hmmm. That is what I call a tempting
target. Damn, Skippy, that is a good deal. Tell you what, I’ll take this creampuff,
I don’t even need rustproofing.”

“You
never did need rustproofing, Joe. I do highly recommend our special interior
detailing and air freshener package. That ship’s air filters haven’t been
changed in four months, and a group of scared, sweaty lizards were packed in
there for way too long.”

“Ugh.
We’ll keep our suits on. Ok, I need to brief Chotek on this.”

“Really,
Joe? Count Chocula is only going to say ‘no’, and you know it.”

“What
am I supposed to do, Skippy? Run a secret op behind his back, and tell him the Glory just happened to latch onto us
like a lost puppy?”

“That’s
not a bad idea, Joe. You think he would buy it?” Skippy asked hopefully.

“Not a
chance, Skippy. Ah, crap, I have to think of a way to persuade Chotek to
approve an attack on a UNEF ally.”

“The
Ruhar are not officially, or knowingly, our allies, Joe. They are only allies
of UNEF on Paradise. And the operation doesn’t need to be an attack; we only
need to take the ship away from an almost defenseless skeleton crew. That
shouldn’t be too difficult for our bad-ass team of SpecOps warriors.”

“You’re
forgetting that we need to make sure this skeleton crew of Ruhar don’t learn,
or even suspect, that humans were involved. Other than making those four
hamsters into actual skeletons, I don’t know how we could do that.”

“Joe,
I am confident that you and Sarah Rose will cook up a sufficiently devious plan
between the two of you.”

“Oh,
great. Major,” I said to Simms, “it looks like I’m going to be busy.” I picked
up my phone to call Dr. Rose. Before I proposed anything to Chotek, I needed to
have a solid plan. Then I set the zPhone back on the desk; I needed more info
before I called Sarah. “How long will the Glory
be sitting there, all by itself, before a Jeraptha star carrier picks it up?”

“According
to the schedule in the file, nineteen hours. The schedule is padded because the
delivery crew is not confident in the ability of the Glory’s jump drive to get them to the rendezvous point on time.”

“Nineteen
hours? Damn. That’s a pretty tight window.”

“Nineteen
hours, if the Glory’s crappy jump
drive doesn’t cause any delays. I would count on there being at least one
delay.”

I
whistled in dismay. “That is cutting it pretty close, Skippy.”

“Come
on, Joe, we’ve done operations way more complicated than this. The reward for
this op is a freakin’ alien warship, for crying out loud. You have to at least
try to think up a plan.”

“Yeah,
you’re right. Is there any chance you can use the Thuranin nanovirus thingy to
take control of the Glory for us?”

“No,”
he sighed disgustedly. “I already told you, that nanovirus is a short-range,
short-term technology, Joe. It is designed to protect Thuranin star carriers
from being attacked by Kristang ships the carrier is transporting. The Glory has been operating away from a
Thuranin ship for long enough that the nanovirus aboard her would have gone
discoherent.”

“Ah,
crap.” The nanovirus wouldn’t have helped us deal with the Ruhar crew anyway.
“Hey, one more question for you, Skippy. It will take four days to get to
Paradise from here? How long until we have to change course to go back to
Paradise?”

“It
will be twenty six hours until we jump through the next wormhole. At that
point, we have to go toward Paradise, or continue on to intercept the Ruhar
negotiators.”

“Yeah,
but we have plenty of time for that, right? No change to that timeline, is
there? We could divert to Paradise, pick up the Glory, and still be at the negotiator’s rendezvous point with
plenty of time?”

“Oh,
certainly, Joe, no problem. Even stopping by Paradise to implement whatever
lame-brained plan you cook up, we will be sitting around waiting four days for
the Ruhar negotiation team to arrive.”

I
picked up my zPhone again. “Great, so now I have twenty six hours-”

“Twenty
five hours, forty two minutes and fifteen seconds-”

“-to
dream up a plan, and persuade Chotek we should take the risk. Wonderful.”

“You
should hop to it, then, Joe. Considering how slowly your brain works, you will
need every second.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

To
give my brain a break, I went back to Cargo Bay Six that we used as a shooting
range. It was one of the ship’s two longest cargo bays, not as big as the
docking bays used for dropships, but those were fully occupied and we couldn’t
have any shooting in there. The fact that we could fire live weapons inside a
starship had been a surprise to me, I had asked Sergeant Adams to work with
Skippy to set up some sort of training range, and my expectation had been a
type of simulator. Our shooting range was a simulator, a really good one. At
the far end, Skippy projected very realistic-looking holographic targets,
moving targets that could shoot simulated rounds back at us. We mostly
practiced against holographic Kristang, occasionally Thuranin. Sometimes we
‘fought’ simulated Ruhar, not because we expected to go into combat against
hamsters, but because it was useful to learn their preferred weapons and
tactics.

The
holographic enemies all fired simulated rounds, or maser beams, or whatever
weapons their species used in combat. We fired live rounds, although our rounds
did not use the explosive tips that were standard issue in action. We shot at
either holographic targets or regular bullseye targets, and the really cool
thing was the rounds did not impact the far wall to ricochet all over the cargo
bay. Skippy installed some sort of magic energy field that took the momentum of
our practice rounds and dispersed the energy in multiple directions. When a
round entered the field, it was enveloped in some exotic effect that turned
part of the round’s kinetic energy into negative energy. Instead of all the
kinetic energy moving the round forward, part of the energy wanted the round to
go backwards, some left, right, up and down. The net effect was the round came
almost to a stop before it impacted the padded far wall, where it gently
dropped into a tray on the floor. Skippy controlled and fine-tuned the field in
real-time so he arrested the flight of rounds individually. The incredible
technological magic of the field in our firing range was based on the same
technology as the defensive energy field that protected the ship from kinetic
weapons like missiles, railguns and some of the effects of particle beams. We
had another type of defensive shield to deflect energy beams like masers; this
energy shield acted like a stealth field to bend incoming maser beams around
the ship. The energy shield was interlaced with the kinetic shield, and used
the same projectors.

Anyway,
that is how we could use live-fire weapons aboard a starship without blowing
holes in the hull and sucking all the air out, or hitting some vital ship
component that did not deal well with being shot at, like energy conduits. Or,
you know, people.

When I
walked into the firing range, there were no holographic enemies, just bullseye
targets. Most of the crew were eating lunch in the galley, I wanted to squeeze
off a couple rounds while I considered what to do that day, shooting relaxes me
because it focuses my mind on one thing. Skippy is right, most of the time I am
a scatter-brain and my thoughts are a jumble. The only people in the firing
range were my Ranger babysitter Lauren Poole, and Doctor Friedlander. Following
the incident where Chotek was trapped aboard the relay station, I had decided
everyone aboard the ship should have at least minimal weapons training. To my
surprise, Friedlander and his team had taken to the training with great
enthusiasm. Part of the fun was being able to fire advanced alien weapons;
everything we used was Kristang gear we had taken from the troopship in Earth
orbit. We had standard Kristang infantry rifles, a heavy rifle that we rarely
found a use for, rockets, grenades and of course Zinger antiaircraft missiles.
“Having fun, Doctor?” I asked with a grin.

“Yes,”
his grin was even wider than mine. “I shot .22 rifles in the Boy Scouts, but
this,” he held up a Kristang rifle, “is an amazing weapon.”

“Poole?”
I asked. “Is the good doctor a good student?”

“Yes,
Sir.” She said with pride.

“Look,”
Friedlander was eager to show me. “It’s easy, this rifle is very well designed,
it is easy to use. You press this button, there’s one on either side, that
ejects the ammo clip-”

“The
magazine,” I corrected him. “It’s an ammunition magazine, not a ‘clip’.”

Friedlander
tilted his head at me. “I’ve heard you refer to it as a ‘clip’ before.”

“Yes,
that’s because I’m a total dumbass,” I explained. “I can’t tell you how many
times I got punishment duty for using the wrong terms, don’t make the same
mistakes I do. Like, I use ‘Special Forces’ instead of the proper terms
‘Special Operations’. ‘Special Forces’ is a particular unit in the US Army; the
teams we have aboard are dedicated Special Operations troops. Anyway, go ahead,
you ejected the magazine.”

Friedlander
demonstrated that he was familiar with a Kristang infantry rifle, and that he
knew how to shoot it also; Poole told me our friendly local rocket scientist
had been practicing every opportunity he had, when the firing range wasn’t
scheduled by Major Smythe for his teams. I felt the need to uphold my honor by
firing off a magazine one round at time, making holes in the holographic target
and racking up a decent score. When I was done, the three of us chatted while
cleaning our weapons and putting them away on the rack. Kristang rifles don’t
need much in the way of cleaning; they mostly use magnetic fields rather than
lubrication, and their ammo fires so cleanly there is almost no residue.
Regular maintenance was taken care of by Major Smythe’s teams, and Skippy’s
bots handled heavy maintenance like replacing magnets periodically. Still,
taking care of your weapons is a good habit for a soldier. “That was good
shooting, Doctor,” I told Friedlander.

“Thank
you. When I’m not shooting at bullseyes, I practice against a holographic space
lizard Skippy created for me. I promised my wife,” he hefted his rifle, “that I
am not being eaten by space lizard.”

“My
brain hurts,” Sarah said four hours, eighteen minutes later.

“Mine
too,” Skippy agreed, with his avatar yawning and stretching. “Listening to you
two come up with one moronic idea after another is killing me. After four
hours, you still don’t have a workable plan?”

“We
have several workable plans, Skippy,” I objected, mostly on behalf of Dr. Rose.
“We’re trying to create a plan that Chotek might actually approve.”

“Ha!
Good luck with that one.”

“Mister
Skippy, do you have any suggestions for us?” Sarah asked while she was looking
at me.

“Yes!
Go to the gym. Or bake cookies, or take a nap. Do anything other than sitting
in Joe’s office, lowering my opinion of human intelligence.”

“Whoa!”
I clutched my chest, feigning shock. “I thought it wasn’t possible for your
opinion to get any lower?”

“It’s
close to rock bottom already, Joe; I wouldn’t push it, if I were you.”

We
took Skippy’s suggestion. Usually, stepping away from a problem helps me think.
This time, it didn’t work. We ate a late lunch, separately because otherwise the
two of us would continue to think about the problem if we were together. The
whole point of stepping away was to not think about the problem, and let our
subconscious minds work on it. Or something like that, I’m not a psychologist.
Or it is a psychiatrist? I know it’s not a psychic; those are the women on
late-night TV who will tell your future if you just give them your credit card.
Which always made me wonder; wouldn’t a real psychic already know your credit
card number?

What
was I saying? Oh, yeah, eating lunch didn’t help. Working out at the gym wasn’t
useful either; I had gone to the gym that morning and didn’t need another
weight-lifting session, and I had done a tough cardio workout the day before.
So I jogged on the treadmill until an Indian paratrooper made me feel guilty
about hogging the machine. Disappointed that my brain hadn’t magically dreamed
up a solution, I thought about going to Cargo Bay Three, where our SEALS team
was practicing hand to hand combat against the Chinese team. While hand to hand
combat was probably mostly useless in space, it kept the teams’ skills sharp,
and it was good for morale. After watching SEALS sparring against Night Tigers,
I slunk out the door silently. Even the controlled moves they were using were
beyond my skills and conditioning; I would have gotten my ass kicked and
accomplished nothing other than taking training time away from the
professionals.

A nap
didn’t help; I got a solid twenty minutes of shut-eye, which usually refreshes
me. I woke feeling better physically; mentally I was irritated that my foggy
brain hadn’t done the job for me. In the corridor outside my cabin, I ran into
Hans Chotek. “Colonel Bishop, I hear you have been in your office with Dr. Rose
most of the day. Would you care to tell me what you are working on?”

Crap.
No, I did not care to tell him anything at all. “Sir, I would rather not
discuss what we’re working on, until we have thought it through, and it is
ready to present for your consideration.”

From
Chotek’s expression, that was the wrong thing for me to say. Now he was on
guard, prepared to shoot down any proposal I brought to him. “Colonel, I hope
you appreciate that we have taken on enough risk already.”

“Yes,
Sir,” I replied with a touch of sleep-induced irritation.

No
sooner had I sat down in my office with a cup of coffee, when Sarah walked in.
“Anything?” She asked hopefully as she sat down. If she had thought of an idea,
she would have mentioned that first.

“No,”
I took a sip of coffee to jolt my brain into action.

“You’re
kidding me,” Skippy’s avatar said as it popped into existence on the desk.
“Nothing? Between the two of you? I practically hand an alien warship to you on
a silver platter, and you can’t figure out how to take it?”

“Sorry,
Skippy,” I gave Sarah a guilty look. She was helping, but it was my
responsibility to think of, or at least review and approve, a plan.

“What
is the problem?” Skippy demanded. “I stopped listening to your conversation a
while ago, to avoid contaminating my logic circuits.”

“We
have a plan, a good, workable plan, to take the Glory. We can deal with her crew, I think. The real problem is that
we can’t be certain the Ruhar won’t learn that we are humans. We will use our
tallest people for the boarding party, wearing Kristang armor suits, but Chotek
is going to insist that the Ruhar don’t detect even one strand of human DNA. If
the Ruhar crew discover they have been boarded by humans, then we will have to
either kill them, or take them aboard the Dutchman
as prisoners, forever. Kidnapping is almost as bad as killing them; Chotek
would never approve that.”

“Dammit,
I wish you had told me this problem before,” Skippy replied with disgust. “The
DNA issue is no problem, Joe. Yes, every surface aboard the Flying Dutchman has been contaminated by
human DNA by now, including the exterior of the Kristang armored suits. Yuck,
by the way. We can deal with that problem, easily. Once people are wearing
their suits in the airlock of the dropship, I can use the airlock’s
decontamination procedure before the outer door opens. Usually, the decon
procedure is used when someone is coming into
a dropship; it does work just as well when someone is leaving. The standard
decon equipment of a Kristang dropship doesn’t work reliably; I can supplement
it with Thuranin upgrades. So, there will not be an issue with human DNA on the
outside of the boarding party’s armored suits.”

“That’s
great, Skippy; we still have the problem that if there is any fighting, there
might be human blood in the air.”

“All
of the Ruhar crew are civilians, Joe, only two likely have weapons.”

“I
know that. I also know Chotek, he will not like any degree of risk. If capturing the Glory poses a risk of our DNA exposing the fact that humans are
flying around the galaxy, then-”

“No
problem, Joe; that ship has sailed.”

“What?”
Sarah and I gasped at the same time. I didn’t trust Skippy to understand human
expressions. “Skippy, the expression ‘that ship has sailed’ means-”

“I
know what it means, dumdum,” he scoffed. “The train has left the station. The
bird has flown. The fat lady has sung. However you want to say it, I mean that
you no longer need to be overly concerned about leaving your DNA behind. Other
humans are flying around the galaxy now. Or, at least, they were, recently.”

That
blew my mind. Sarah must have been just as shocked, because she was also
momentarily speechless. “Skippy,” I asked when I could speak again. “What the
hell are you talking about? There is another Merry Band of Pirates out there?”
That would completely shock me, because it implied that another group of humans
had encountered another AI like
Skippy.

“Huh?
Of course not! Monkeys can’t fly a starship without me, you know that,” he
chuckled. “Monkeys flying a starship, hee hee, that’s a good one.”

“Yeah,
I, uh, thought you meant there was, uh, another Skippy out there. Another,” I
hastened to add, “type of Elder AI,” because Skippy had said many times he was
unique.

“Ha!
As if! No, Joe, perhaps I misspoke. Other humans are not technically flying
around the galaxy, not even mindlessly pressing buttons like this troops of
monkeys does,” he cluelessly insulted every hotshot pilot aboard the Flying Dutchman. “The humans I’m talking
about are not even hitching a ride, they are more like prisoners. Or slaves,
which is how the Kristang certainly think of them.”

“Slaves?
From where? Earth?”

“From
Paradise, Joe.” And he explained that nearly seven thousand ‘Keepers of the
Faith’ had left Paradise with the Kristang, when Admiral Kekrando’s battlegroup
departed. An initial group of eight hundred had gone with the first wave of
Kristang ships, with the remainder scheduled to follow soon after. By now,
those Keepers should be on their way to, wherever they were going. Even Skippy
did not yet know what the Kristang planned to do with the entire group of
humans, but he did know the first eight hundred had been sold to other Kristang
clans, and the remaining Keepers would likely share the same fate. The
information available to Skippy was incomplete but disturbing. Some of the
Keepers would be used for hunting, with humans as the prey. Some Keepers would
be used as ‘sparring partners’ for young Kristang warriors; the humans would be
forced to fight until they were inevitably killed. Skippy suspected most
Keepers were intended to be used in suicide missions; desperate assaults
normally carried out by Kristang who were disgraced or criminals. Clans would
actually consider using human troops as a sick kind of status symbol. “What
matters, Joe, is that now if human DNA is found someplace other than Earth or
Paradise, it will not be completely unexplainable.”

“Holy
shit,” I said as Sarah and I had the same idea at the same time. “This totally
changes the planning for future operations. We don’t need to be completely
sterile to avoid leaving DNA behind?”

“Duh,
Joe, that’s why I mentioned it,” Skippy’s voice dripped with derision. “Does
that solve your problem of taking the Glory?”

“Forget
the freakin’ Glory for now! When did
you find out about the Keepers leaving Paradise?” I demanded.

“Hmm, when
we were at that Ruhar data node? For sure, that is. I picked up a rumor about
it back when we were hooked up to the relay station.”

“And
you did not think this information was something important I needed to know?!”

“Well,
I know you’re busy, Joe. Your brain is already overloaded with stopping the
Ruhar from going to Earth, and, you know, keeping your shoes tied and stuff
like that.”

“Arrgh!”
I mimed putting my hands around the neck of his avatar and squeezing, but the
holographic image popped out of existence and reappeared on the other side of
the table.

“Joe,”
he asked innocently, “would it help if I fabricated a Skippy voodoo doll, that
you could strangle when my awesomeness overwhelms you?”

“Yes!
Yes! That would be fantastic,” I shouted. “Could you also arrange to, I don’t
know, how about you plunge to your death into a black hole? That would be super
awesomely helpful to me right now.”

“I’m
sensing you are miffed about something, Joe. I would try to guess what, but
that would require me to care, so-”

Bonking
my head on the table was my only response, even in front of our friendly
neighborhood CIA officer.

“Colonel?”
Dr. Rose spoke. “If I could make a suggestion?”

“Please.
Anything,” I mumbled with my face in my hands.

“There
is nothing aboard the ship that can hurt Skippy, and we do have a firing range
in Cargo Bay Six-”

“Whoa!
Hold your horses right there, missy,” Skippy’s avatar held its hands out in a
halt gesture. “You want Joe to shoot at me, just to release his frustrations?”

I
pulled my head up. “Sarah, that is a great
id-”

“No,
that is a terrible idea,” Skippy
declared. “Uh oh, gosh, Joe, hmm, I just found a problem with the air supply in
Cargo Bay Six. Slight air leak. Don’t worry, I sounded the alarm and the people
in there are evacuating now.”

“Not
funn-”

“Ha
ha,” he chuckled with glee. “I disagree, Joe. Whoohoo! You should see those
monkeys scurrying out of there. Run, monkeys, run!”

“Skippy,
if I drop the idea of people using you for target practice, will you please,
please stop the air leak?”

“Deal.
Hmm, looks like that air leak was a false alarm. I hate it when that happens.”

“I bet
you do. Will you also promise to tell me important information as soon as you
know about it?”

“Joey,
Joey, Joey. There is no way I can guess what information you might think is
important. I can’t tell you every single thing I know, your little monkey brain
is already dangerously close to
capacity. If you have more thought like ‘I am hungry’ or ‘Mmmm beer’, you could
lock up and then I’d have to reboot you.”

“How
about if I worry about that risk, Skippy? I will trust your judgment. If it
involves humans, anywhere in the galaxy, I want to know about it.”

“Uh
huh, you say that now, but when I start flooding you with info-”

“We
will worry about that later, Ok? Right now Dr. Rose and I have work to do.
While we are putting the finishing touches on our plan to capture the Glory, please inform Chotek, and Chang
and the rest of the commanders about the Keepers.”

“You
don’t want to tell Chotek about the Keepers yourself, Joe? I thought you would appreciate
the opportunity to bring important information to your boss.”

“If I
learned about it when you did, five days ago, yeah. Now, I prefer he yells at
you, instead of me.”

“Ugh.
I have to endure another hour of Count Chocula berating me? Crap. Is the option
of me falling into a black hole still open?”

“Uh,
that is a no. Take your punishment like a,” I was going to say ‘man’, “beer
can.”

“Shit.
Well, hmm, I just discovered an air leak in Chotek’s office-”

“Talk
to you later, Skippy.”

Chotek
sat quietly while he considered the issue. He could do that; sit silently,
without nervously feeling he needed to fill the awkward silence with chitchat.
He also expected the rest of us would not interrupt his thinking by talking
amongst ourselves. Hans Ernst Chotek was naturally used to being in authority;
he had been all his life. He was born into a wealthy, accomplished family, and
he went to only the best schools. After college, he moved easily into positions
of authority in business, government and then worked his way up the UN
bureaucracy. He was accustomed to people waiting quietly for him to speak.

By
contrast, I was a grunt who was lucky to have finished high school with a ‘B’
average, and only got promoted to colonel as a publicity stunt to please
oppressive hateful alien MFers. Command came naturally to Chotek; I still felt
like a fraud. I kept waiting to wake up in a tent in Nigeria and discover the
whole thing; alien invasion, meeting Skippy, me being promoted, had all been a
dream.

Except,
if this was a dream, I should be getting laid a lot more.

And
there should be more cheeseburgers.

“Mister
Skippy,” Chotek finally spoke. “You learned about the Glory, by picking up an encrypted Ruhar file?”

“Uh
huh, yeah, did I mumble? That’s what I said.”

Chotek
ignored Skippy’s insult. Along with developing a natural authority, he had a
thick skin. “How can you be sure the message in the file is not a trap for the
Kristang? The message states a captured Kristang ship will be alone in deep
space; that would be a tempting target to the Kristang. They surely would not
like the idea of the Ruhar military taking apart one of their ships and getting
an intimate view of their technology. I am concerned this Glory frigate will be surrounded by stealthed Ruhar warships,
waiting to ambush any Kristang ships who come to retake, or destroy, the
Glory.”

Crap.
Hans Chotek was the most nit-picky, micromanaging boss I ever had. He was also
absolutely right to ask annoying questions. Damn it, I should have asked that
question, when Skippy told me how he found out the Glory would be parked in deep space, all by itself. Now that I
thought about it, the whole situation was way too convenient.

I felt
like a freakin’ idiot.

Skippy,
though, was not intimidated by Count Chocula. “Nuh uh, no way, dude,” he
scoffed. “The encryption in the message can’t be broken by the Kristang,
because the encryption was provided by the Jeraptha; it’s not something the
Ruhar developed on their own. The message is from the Ruhar to the Jeraptha,
notifying the Jeraptha that the Ruhar want a star carrier to pick up the Glory. This is an encryption scheme the
Jeraptha allow the Ruhar to use only when they are communicating with the
Jeraptha. The Kristang can’t break that encryption, and if the Kristang gave
the file to the Thuranin to crack the encryption, the Thuranin would tell the
lizards to go screw themselves. If the Ruhar were using that message as bait,
they would have used one of their own encryption schemes, one that they know
the Kristang are capable of breaking. Duh.”

Chotek’s
face reddened slightly. Despite his diplomatically-trained thick skin, he hated
it when Skippy belittled him. Maybe it was being insulted by a beer can that
got him upset. To avoid a distracting argument between the two of them, I spoke
before Chotek could open his mouth. “Skippy, if we jumped in before the Glory arrived at the rendezvous point,
could we scan the area closely enough to be certain there aren’t any ships waiting
to set up an ambush?”

“Yes,
we could do that,” Skippy said flippantly. “With my awesomeness, that is no
problemo, Joe. In my opinion, doing that would be a waste of time, but what do
I know? I am only a super smart being who manipulates spacetime as a hobby.”

“Sir,”
I addressed Chotek, “that was a good question, and I apologize; I should have
considered that possibility. We can verify that Skippy is correct by arriving
at the rendezvous site early and scanning the area. If there is any threat, we
jump away immediately. That way, we can minimize the risk.”

Chotek
thought for a minute in his quiet, deliberative way. “I agree scanning the area
could minimize that particular risk. There is another risk you have not
mentioned. Colonel Bishop, your plan is to seize the Glory, without killing or injuring the four Ruhar aboard?”

“Yes,
Sir. You made it clear we are not to risk hostile action against a potential
future ally.”

“Your
plan takes admirable care not to harm those four Ruhar. My question is; would
the Kristang be so careful with their enemies?”

“Sir?”

“The
plan relies on the Ruhar crew believing our boarding party is Kristang,” Chotek
observed. “If our boarding party behaves like polite Boy Scouts, the Ruhar will
not believe we are Kristang.”

Crap!
He was right again. The Kristang would not leave four Ruhar alive when they
recaptured the Glory. They would
either kill the Ruhar, or take them prisoner. Chotek had forbidden us to do
either, and I didn’t like the idea of killing or kidnapping four hamsters
anyway. I was trained by the military, and I abided by a military code of
conduct, and I had a military sense of right and wrong. If someone is an enemy
of my country, or in this case, an enemy of my species, I could take direct
action to neutralize that threat. Meaning, I could kill them in most cases with
a clear conscience. My drill instructor in Basic Training told me the job of an
army, any army, is to kill the enemy and take territory away from them. If
anyone couldn’t stomach that idea, they didn’t belong in the army.

The
idea of killing four Ruhar, just to maintain our cover, made me sick. Dr. Rose,
with her different set of sensibilities, might consider four Ruhar lives to be
reasonable collateral damage in a covert operation. I couldn’t do that, not
yet.

In all
the hours Dr. Rose and I had spent thinking about how to take the Glory, we had never considered that our
boarding party, disguised in Kristang armored suits, needed to behave like
Kristang. Real Kristang would never leave four Ruhar alive behind them.

Unless.

Unless
the Kristang had a good reason for doing just that.

Great.
Now all I needed was to think of a reason why a Kristang boarding party would
not kill or capture the four Ruhar crew.

The
good news was, I had a couple days to think of a reason for Kristang to behave
that way.

All
that flashed through my mind in a heartbeat, after my boss asked the question.
“Yes,” I replied to Chotek, “we will need to provide a rationale for the
Kristang leaving four Ruhar alive and free. We have several possibilities for
such a cover plan,” I lied outrageously, “and we wish to refine those possibilities
before presenting them to you. Sir, at this point, the sole decision that needs
to be made is whether we continue along our present course, or divert to
Paradise. If we divert to Paradise, we will have time to refine our plans to
capture the Glory, and we can always
abort that operation at any time. Diverting to Paradise will not pose any risk
to us arriving at the negotiator rendezvous point on time.”

“Colonel,
you are asking me for more time to turn in your homework assignment?” Chotek
asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m
embarrassed to say, but, yes.” Crap. With the homework comment, he made me feel
like I was a dumb high school kid again. And knowing Hans Chotek, the diplomat
skilled in manipulating people, that is exactly what he intended.

Chotek
took a deep breath. “If nothing else, this will be another interesting test of
your inventive planning skills. Colonel Bishop, you may divert the ship toward
the Paradise system. I do not want us within one lightyear of Paradise, until I
have reviewed and approved a plan to capture the Glory. If I do not approve a plan, we let the Glory go on its way, and we proceed to the mock attack with our
Q-ship by itself.”

“Understood,
Sir.”

Before
going back to my office, I stopped by a supply cabinet and requisitioned a
particular item, then went to visit Skippy in his escape pod mancave. “Hello,
Skippy.”

“Hi,
Joe. Hey, what, what is that?”

I
pulled a foil package out of a pocket and tore it open; it was something I had
gotten from the Supply cargo bay.

“Is
that a rubber?” He shouted.

“In
your case, Skippy, it’s a CAN-dom,” I said with a grin.

“Oh,
very funny, Joe. You’d better not- Hey!” He screamed as I stretched it over his
lid. “Get that off of me!”

“You
scared people when you faked that air leak in Cargo Bay Six. That was a dick
move, Skippy. You were being a dick, and this is what goes on a di-”

“NOT
FUNNY!”

I
stepped back. His new costume wasn’t as cute as some others, and I only put it
in halfway, so the other half with the tip flopped down in front of him. “I
don’t know,” I laughed so hard I almost blew a snot bubble on the deck. “It’s
funny to me.”

“Ooooh,
you better get this off of me RIGHT NOW!”

“If
you want to be a dick, this is what you wear.”

“Joe,
you get this disgusting thing off me right now or-”

“Or
what, Skippy? You can’t move, remember?” My zPhone beeped.

“Uh,
hey, Colonel Bishop?” The voice was hesitant, it was one of our US Air Force
pilots.

“Yeah?”
I was almost choking with laughter.

“Um,
this is Lieutenant Reed, I’m in Cargo Bay Two, and, um, one of our nukes just
went active? It’s showing a ninety second countdown to detonation. I, uh, I
thought you should know, Sir. Uh, hmm, now they’re all active. You didn’t, uh,
plan this?” Her voice ended in a squeak.

I
pressed the button to mute my phone. “SKIPPY!”

“What?”

“You
know damned well ‘what’? Deactivate. The. Nuclear. Warheads.” I could not
believe that was something I would ever have to say. Holy shit my life had
gotten way off track somehow.

His
voice was muffled. “Sorry, Joe, I can’t hear you, I’m wrapped in a can-dom.
Major Simms and I have a hot date tonight.”

“Not
funny. About the nukes or Simms. Stop it.”

“You
stop it. You started it, you big jerk.”

“You started-” I could tell this
kindergarten conversation wasn’t going anywhere. “Did you learn your lesson not
to be a dick?”

“Fine,”
he huffed. “Yes, I learned that you
can be a dick, but I’m not allowed to.”

“Close
enough.” I pulled the offending item off his shiny beer can. “The nukes?”

“The
nukes are sleeping soundly again. I just have to check that their timers are
functioning properly every once in a while, Joe.”

“Uh
huh. Why do I not believe you?”

“Because
you’re still hurt that your parents lied about Santa, so you don’t trust
anyone?”

I
gasped. “Santa’s not real?”

“Oh,
shit,” Skippy groaned. “Did I ruin that for you? I’m sorry, Joe, I didn’t mean
to- hey, wait! You’re laughing. You jerk!
You already knew about Santa!”

“Ya
think?”

“Ooooh,
that makes me so mad. Who’s the dick now?”

“Can
we call it even, Skippy?”

“Sure,
why not?” He sighed. “Otherwise, this will go on all day. Damn, I should have
suspected something was going on when you pulled a rubber out of the supply
cabinet. I was hoping you would make a balloon animal; there is certainly
nothing else useful you can do with
one of those things.”

“Talk
to you later, Skippy.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Colonel?”
Sarah asked quietly when we got back to my office. “We have a plan for why the
boarding party will not be acting like typical Kristang?”

“Ha!”
Skippy’s avatar danced on the table, bent over with laughter. “No way! Joe is a
lying dog. He lies like a rug! Joe, when Chocula asked that question, you
panicked, right?”

“Absolute
panic,” I admitted, giving Sarah a weak smile.

“I
knew it! But, Joe, it took you only a moment to recover. You totally pulled
that one out of your ass, and you did it in a split second. Oh, ho!” the avatar
danced joyously. “Damn! Once in a while, your brain somehow manages to move at
lightspeed.”

I
appreciated the rare praise. “Thank you, Skip-”

“Why
does your brain normally work like a freakin’ glacier, then? A glacier with a
busted leg. Moving through quicksand. And dragging a-”

“We
get the idea, Skippy.”

“I’m
just sayin’, why-”

“We
get the idea. Do you have an idea for
why a Kristang boarding party would be nice to the Ruhar?”

“Huh?
Me? No way, Jose! This is your problem, monkeyboy. This reminds me of that ‘Far
Side’ cartoon of the cowboy on a horse, being chased by indians. The cowboy
wants the horse to run faster, and the horse says ‘Hey, they’re not chasing me’. Hee hee! Your home planet getting
wiped out by pissed off aliens would be a disaster for you, but only mildly
inconvenient for me. Hmm, now that I think about it, that might just possibly
be entertaining for me, in a sort of-”

“Skippy!
Not funny.”

“Oh, I
wasn’t joking. Anywho, I told you the Glory
will be all alone and vulnerable. Figuring out how to take that ship is your
problem, cowboy.”

“You
don’t have any suggestions for us?” I asked with little hope.

“Try
holding your breath, Joe? If you’re not breathing, you can use both of your brain cells to think with.”

Sarah
burst out laughing, waving a hand at me to apologize.

And my
day just kept getting better and better.

Since
neither Sarah nor I could think of why a group of Kristang would not act like
murderous hateful MFers, we split up to think about it. She went back to the
science lab, even though things there were awkward now that everyone knew she
was a CIA officer. I went to the galley to get a cup of coffee, more to burn
time that for any other reason. Also, I needed a change of scenery; my cramped
little office was not inspiring me to think up a brilliant idea.

Of
course, I got there as Margaret Adams was emptying the last dregs of the coffee
pot into her mug. “They’re making more, Sir,” she nodded toward the British
team that was in charge of staffing the galley that day.

“Don’t
the British drink tea?”

“They
drink coffee also,” she replied with an amused smile. Staff Sergeant Adams
often had an amused smile when talking with me, like I was still a dumb recruit
and she needed to make sure I didn’t blow my foot off with a rifle.

“You
like our new coffee mugs?” I held up my mug, which had the
pirate-monkey-on-a-flying-banana logo that was now the official symbol for the Flying Dutchman.

“Yes,
they’re nice,” she had a twinkle in her eyes, remembering my original crude
sketch for the logo. “That reminds me, Sir, we talked about an official motto
for the Merry Band of Pirates, but we never did anything about it.”

“A
motto?” Somehow, I did not picture Adams as someone who cared about mottos, or
mission statements or anything like that.

“Every
unit has a motto,” she replied with a shrug.

Skippy’s
voice came from the zPhone on my belt. “Clearly the motto of the Merry Band of
Pirates should be ‘Trust the Awesomeness’.”

“Uh,
no. I like ‘Climb to Glory’,” I suggested.

Adams
gave me a look that my mother used to give me. “That is the motto of the Army
10th Infantry Division. You shouldn’t favor your old unit, Sir.”

“Uh,
you’re probably right,” I admitted, stung.

“How
about ‘Striving for Competence’?” Skippy suggested.

“No.”

Skippy
sighed. “You’re right, Joe, nobody would believe that this outfit would even
dream of competence. Maybe something like ‘Less fun than a barrel of monkeys’?”

“No.”

“Uh,
‘I made potty all by myself’?”

“NO!”

“Or
‘I’m not wearing any pants’?”

“Oh
boy.” It went downhill from there. And that is how we ended up with ‘Trust the
Awesomeness’ as our unit motto.

When
Adams finished laughing and was able to speak again, she poured coffee into my
mug and changed the subject. “I heard we have a plan to capture this Kristang
frigate, the Glory, but there is some
problem? Is there anything I can help you with?”

“No,
I-” Why not ask her advice? I lowered my voice and gestured her over to an
empty table. “Our resident spy and I have been trying to think of a reason why
a group of Kristang would not act
like typical Kristang.”

“How’s
that?”

“If we
send a boarding party over to seize the Glory,
Chotek insists we not harm the Ruhar crew, and we can’t kidnap them either,” I
explained. “I agree with him, but it makes the operation impossible. Any real Kristang
boarding party would kill the Ruhar, or take them prisoner. That’s why I say we
need a reason why Kristang would not act like Kristang.”

Adams
gave me another one of those infuriating smiles, and sipped her coffee. “You’re
asking the wrong question.”

“I
am?” Damn it, the question of why our boarding party could not act like
Kristang has been Chotek’s idea, but I had bought into it.

“Sir,
the question is not why a group of Kristang would not act like Kristang. The
correct question is, why would they act the way you need the boarding party to
act?”

“Uh,”
that sounded like the exact same thing to me.

“A
Kristang warship was captured by the enemy, and a group of Kristang are taking
it back. The boarding party leaves the Ruhar crew behind, as witnesses, right?”

“Right.”
Witnesses. The Kristang boarding
party would leave the Ruhar behind as witnesses. “Right!” I got it. “The
Kristang who take back the Glory are
not the same group of knuckleheads who lost the ship to the enemy.”

“No,
they are not,” Adams seemed pleased that I had caught onto her idea, like I was
puppy who learned a new trick. “The boarding party is a group of Kristang who
want to humiliate the punk-ass Swift Arrow clan who let the ship be captured by
the enemy. They want the Ruhar crew to report who took the ship back, so
everyone knows.”

“Brilliant!
All we need is for the boarding party to wear insignia of a clan that is a
rival to the Swift Arrows. Skippy?”

“I
have been listening,” his voice came from the zPhone on my belt. “Sergeant
Adams, that was very good thinking, I applaud you. Joe, how long did you wrack
your brain about this problem, without any result? You should be ashamed of
yourself.”

“Oh,
shut up,” I was feeling humiliated in front of Adams. “Ok, if you’re so
freakin’ smart, which clan should the boarding party pretend to be? Which clan
is the biggest rival of the Swift Arrows?”

“That
would be the Great Claw clan.”

“Great,
then-”

“Ah!
You didn’t let me finish, Joe. The Great Claws and the Swift Arrows hate each
other with a passion that is intense even for Kristang. However, the Paradise
system is far from Great Claw territory; it is rather unlikely the Great Claws
would or could go all the way there just to pick up a beat-up old frigate. My
suggestion is the boarding party pretend to be members of the Razor Tail clan.
The Razor Tails are a very ambitious minor clan, that has recently been quite
reckless in order to position themselves to benefit from a potential civil
war.”

“Razor
Tails, huh? Ok, sounds good. And you know what their clan insignia looks like?”

“Joe,
please, you insult me. I am already fabricating Razor Tail insignias for our
suits.”

“Problem
solved, then,” I said happily.

“You’re
going to tell Mr. Chotek now?” Adams gulped the last of her coffee.

Crap.
“Uh, Sergeant, it would be best if you kept quiet about this. I, uh, I sort of
told Chotek that I already had a plan.”

“Your
secret is safe with me,” she said with a wink.

“Thank
you. Um, this is all great, except the Razor Tails will know they did not, in
fact, recapture the Glory. And they
sure won’t be bringing that ship back as a trophy.”

Adams
tilted her head. “Why is that a problem? No way would the Razor Tails miss the opportunity
to take credit for it anyway. With the Glory
being in bad condition, it won’t be surprising if it disappears along the way.”

I
explained our brilliant plan to Hans Chotek. A Kristang frigate would be
hanging in empty space, all by itself, with only a skeleton crew of four Ruhar.
It was a prize easily taken, and we had a solid plan to minimize the risk.

Chotek
still didn’t like it. “Colonel, I commend you and your team for developing a
plan to minimize the risk. There is still risk, and I am uncomfortable with
that.”

Dammit.
Chotek was ate up with following the letter of UNEF Command’s orders. “Sir,
risk is a relative term. If this mission fails, there is a hundred percent certainty that we lose Earth. Any risk below a
hundred percent is worth it. And this plan,” I tapped the display, “carries a
low level of risk with it.”

“We
have our Q-ship, we can proceed with the mock attack.”

“Skippy
had analyzed Ruhar psychology, and he strongly believes that a mock attack by a
single armed merchant ship would not be perceived as a credible threat, Sir. We
need a second ship, preferably a warship. A small, older warship that a clan
would consider expendable. The Glory
is perfect for this purpose.”

He was
still hesitant. He picked up his tablet and examined the details of the plan
again.

I
pressed him to make a decision. “We can abort the plan at any point, up until
the boarding party’s dropship enters their docking bay. Even at that point, the
Flying Dutchman can jump away to
safety if anything goes wrong.”

He
didn’t reply immediately, and I knew to keep my mouth shut and wait. Hans
Chotek needed to reach the decision on his own; if I tried to sell him on the
idea, he would reject it.

He
tapped the screen of his tablet. “The four Ruhar crew will not be harmed?”

Crap.
I couldn’t openly lie to his face about the subject. “If they start shooting, I
can’t guarantee no one will be harmed, Sir. Before we board the Glory, we will announce our intentions,
and explain that all we want is the ship. That we want the Ruhar to survive. If there is any fighting, that is on the
Ruhar. If the Ruhar do start shooting, my orders to the boarding team are to
retreat and try negotiating again. Frankly, I think it is about fifty-fifty
that one of the Ruhar gets an itchy trigger finger; that does happen in tense
situations. The Ruhar know they ordinarily have no reason to trust the
Kristang. My hope is the Ruhar will be persuaded by the fact that our boarding
party does everything that can not to
start a fight.”

His
expression was still maddeningly unreadable. I suppose masking his emotions was
part of his diplomatic training. Skippy probably could monitor Chocula’s pulse,
blood pressure, skin temperature, brain waves and whatever else might provide a
clue to what our official mission commander was thinking and feeling. I had no
idea. The silence made me uncomfortable. This was the best plan we had been
able to dream up and it was a damned good plan, an excellent plan. An
imaginative plan. We had addressed every roadblock Chotek threw in our path,
and still he hesitated. “Sir,” I shifted uncomfortable in my chair. “This is a
lot to think about, it’s a big responsibility. We won’t need a decision for
another six hours; after that the schedules of the wormholes we have to go
through make it difficult for us to keep on schedule. I’ll be in the training
bay, watching Major Smythe’s teams practice the boarding operation.”

“Very
well, Colonel.” He didn’t even tell me I was dismissed, he didn’t even look up
from the tablet. I let myself out quietly. “I will consider the operation, and
inform you of my decision before the end of the day.”

I
later learned Chotek had called in Chang, Smythe and Adams to get their
perspective on the plan. The three of them didn’t tell me about it, because
Chotek ordered them not to; Skippy told me. Chotek had to know Skippy would
tell me, so I don’t know what he thought he was accomplishing with the
attempted secrecy. Or maybe secrecy wasn’t the point; maybe he wanted me to
know he was getting second opinions because he didn’t trust my judgment. Either
way, I did not care, because he approved the plan without a single change. We
jumped with two hours left in the deadline.

We
were going to steal another alien
starship!

Damn, as
much as I hate my job sometimes, I do freakin’ love being a pirate.

The
Thuranin plan to hit the Jeraptha was bold, and required aggressiveness and
precise timing. Near the Glark system was one wormhole, and two clusters of two
wormholes each. The Thuranin force came through three wormholes simultaneously,
at points when the wormholes were almost the farthest distance from Glark in
the figure-8 paths they had traced for millions of years. While the Jeraptha
had sensor nets and a small force of picket ships guarding the areas where the
wormholes were at their closest approach to Glark, it was not practical to
cover all the other emergence points. The Thuranin plan did not depend on
emerging as close to Glark as possible; it depended on their three groups of
ships coming through wormholes at the same time. With five wormholes to choose
from, the mission planners had at first assumed it would be easy to coordinate
the timing of the three task forces. To their great frustration, they were
wrong. During many of the times when three wormholes were open simultaneously,
one or more wormhole was at or near the closest approach to Glark. That meant a
task force emerging there would immediately be detected, and attacked while the
ships were nearly blind and defenseless after coming through a wormhole. It took
several AIs more than an hour to determine when three wormholes would be open
and also none of them close to Glark. The analysis showed such a result was
rare, almost as if the Elders who built the wormhole network had planned to
protect the Glark system. The next time three wormholes were available was
distressingly soon; Thuranin Naval Command had to scramble to pull enough ships
together to launch the operation before the window of opportunity closed for
another four months. Ships had been pulled out of spacedock with only partial
repairs completed to battle damage, some ships departed with only half their
typical missile load. The mission to hit Glark was important enough that risks
had to be taken. Destroying Glark’s spacedocks and fueling facilities would
severely hurt the Jeraptha’s ability to control that part of the sector,
requiring the nasty beetles to pull back from other areas where their fleet was
pressing the Thuranin back with every passing day. To achieve such a result, to
hit the Jeraptha in such a critical area, Thuranin Naval Command was willing to
sacrifice the ships in the three task forces; the best result expected to lose
half of their ships in the operation.

That
grim information was not directly shared with the commanders and crew in the
three task forces. Knowing the strength of their target, the crews could
calculate their odds of survival by themselves.

The
three task forces did not send all their ships through the wormholes in one
continuous line. First, each task force sent two unlucky destroyers through, to
scan the area and report on any threats. Waiting for the sensors of the destroyers
to recover from the disruption of passing through the wormhole burned valuable
time, and waiting for those sensor fields to expand at the slow speed of light,
then report their results at the same slow speed, was agonizing for the task
force commanders. Every second they delayed going through the wormholes was
another second ticking away until the wormhole closed. The three task forces
could not talk to each other or share sensor data; each task forced feared they
would be going in to attack Glark alone, if the other two task forces had been
detected.

All
three pairs of destroyers reported the area around their wormholes were clear,
and the task forces began to come through, two massive star carriers at a time.
Pairs of star carriers, heavily laden with battlecruisers, cruisers, destroyers
and frigates, streamed through nearly nose to tail. As soon as the first pair
of star carriers emerged from each wormhole and moved aside to clear navigation
space for the next pair, one destroyer jumped away to scan deeper into space,
in case a stealthed Jeraptha force was waiting just beyond immediate sensor
range. As none of the three destroyers jumped back warning of danger, the task
forces continued to stream through, with the ships maneuvering to clear jump
space and allowing time for their defensive shields and sensors to recover from
the wormhole’s spatial disruption.

Twenty
two minutes was the goal time for the ships in each task force to pass through
the wormholes, reset their systems, and ready their jump drives for the
high-speed approach to Glark. Because of the inevitable glitches and delays
with such large forces, the planners had allotted an extra three minutes before
the initial jumps. Each of the three task force commanders were proud their
ships had completed the wormhole transition at least two minutes ahead of
schedule. All that remained was for the massive star carriers to spread out so
their jump wormholes did not damage each other, and that phase of the operation
was also slightly ahead of schedule. Much danger lay ahead, but the critical
passage through the wormholes was completed successfully. The only anomaly
detected was a cloud of pebbles dispersed around each wormhole. Such rocks
should not be in deep interstellar space; only individual hydrogen atoms were
typically found so far from a star system. If the three task forces had been
able to communicate, they might have been mildly alarmed that all three
wormholes were surrounded by anomalous clouds of pebbles. As it was, each task
force dismissed the pebbles as interesting phenomena to note in their
navigation charts, but not at all dangerous.

Then
the Thuranin in the three task forces began to have a very, very bad day.

Admiral
Tashallo, commander of Blue Squadron’s 98th Fleet, touched an
antenna to the pocket where he kept the original flimsy message slip, and resisted
the temptation to take it out and read it for the hundredth time. The
information provided by Fleet Intelligence was either accurate or it was not,
reading the message again obsessively would not change reality. Having the crew
see their admiral constantly checking the message was bad for morale, so
Tashallo used the antenna to tuck the slip deeper into the pocket, then tried
to forget about it. If the information was wrong, then Admiral Tashallo had
dangerously depleted the Glark system’s defenses, and he would know about it
too late to prevent the enemy from hitting critical Fleet facilities.

At
the last moment, just in case Fleet Intelligence was wrong and Tashallo had
ruined his career, he took a wager at sixty to one odds against Fleet Intelligence.
If the information was wrong, he could at least spend his forced retirement in
relative comfort. If the information was correct, Tashallo would consider the
lost wager to be a guarantee of success.

Normally,
detecting enemy ship formations in deep space was difficult, and taking action
before an enemy could jump away even more difficult. The Flash Gold message had
provided the exact time and place Thuranin task forces would come through three
wormholes. From long experience, Tashallo knew approximately how long it would
take before a Thuranin task force could assemble and jump. And he knew when the
wormhole opened; surely the Thuranin would send their ships through as quickly
as possible. He therefore knew exactly where the enemy would be, and for how long,
within a seven minute window. If you know
where the enemy is, his first tactical training instructor had told him, you can hit them. Tashallo knew where
the enemy was, and he planned to hit them hard. “-three, two, one, jump!”

Each
Thuranin task force was suddenly and simultaneously surrounded by an
overwhelming number of Jeraptha warships, and damping fields propagated outward
to prevent the Thuranin from jumping away. One star carrier, taking a chance
before the multiple overlapping damping fields became firmly established,
initiated a jump. It was still too close to the massive bulk of its companion
star carrier, and the damping field grew stronger with each nanosecond. That
star carrier’s jump field failed catastrophically, releasing the energy stored
in its drive coils, and the star carrier disappeared along with the eight
warships it was carrying. The waves of spatial distortion from its failed jump
snapped the spine of its companion star carrier, causing that ship to lose all
power except in the aft third of the spine. Without power, the defense and
stealth shields blinked out, leaving the star carrier and its attached warships
vulnerable to massed maser and railgun fire. The Jeraptha wasted no time taking
advantage of their good fortune; within sixteen seconds, all the warships
attached to that star carrier were disabled and useless.

The
Thuranin task force commander ordered all her star carriers to eject their
warships in an emergency separation maneuver; an act of pure desperation. While
attached to a star carrier, a warship could not activate its own stealth and
defensive shields, and with the intense firepower of the Jeraptha hammering the
star carriers, none of those giant space trucks would survive for long.
Warships broke free of their docking platforms, some being ejected by their
host ship, others firing engines and tearing themselves loose, regardless of
the damage. A few warships, unable to detach from their docking platform in
time, ripped their platform away from the star carrier’s spine. Those ships
trailed sparks and debris, rendering their attempts to form a stealth field
useless.

The
Thuranin task force commander, aboard a battlecruiser that was itself being
pounded by accurate maser and railgun fire, saw with shocked dismay that all
attempts to use stealth were for nothing; somehow the enemy knew exactly where
each one of her ships were, even before the Jeraptha sensor fields had time to
propagate and send targeting data back to their motherships. She could not
understand what was happening. It was as if the Jeraptha had been surveilling
the Thuranin ships before they jumped in, which was imposs-

Pebbles.
Too late, she remembered the cloud of pebbles.

“The
data feed is becoming incoherent,” a Jeraptha sensor technician reported.

Tashallo
laughed. Loss of critical sensor data from the cloud of smart pebbles was not a
laughing matter, the admiral’s glee was due to the reason the sensor feed was
failing. Space around the Thuranin task force was becoming so cluttered with
hard radiation, high-energy particles and debris flying off at
near-relativistic speed that ships could not interpret data fed back by their
own sensor fields, and the passive sensors of the smart pebbles had become nearly
useless. The pebbles had served their purpose; silently and passively recording
the location of every enemy ship, and transmitting that data when ordered by
Tashallo’s ships. Once the battle started, the pebble network was no longer
needed.

Most
of the debris flying around, so much that it was becoming a hazard to ships on
both sides, was pieces of the Thuranin task force. In the first minute of
fighting, half the ships in the Thuranin task force had been disabled or
destroyed completely, another thirty percent had their combat power reduced to
the point where their only option was to run for the wormhole before it closed.
Tashallo ordered one of his battleships moved into position to block escape
through the wormhole. The giant ship slowly turned and accelerated with painful
slowness, Tashallo could see six enemy ships burning hard for the wormhole,
missiles on their tails. More enemy ships had gotten the message to retreat or
had made that decision on their own. The battleship would not arrive in time to
prevent the first six enemy ships from transiting the wormhole, so Tashallo
offered an incentive. “Three to one odds at least one of those enemy ships
escapes,” he told his own task force.

Almost
instantly, the task force’s Action Officer reported seven Jeraptha ships had
taken the wager. Those seven ships broke formation and burned at full emergency
thrust for the wormhole, while other ships in the task force furiously wagered
with or against them. Before the seven ships could engage, missiles claimed two
of the six enemy ships, and the Action Officer updated her handicapping in real-time.
She knew that two ships falling victim to missiles, before the seven wagerers
could reach cannon range, would be the subject of endless arguments after the
battle, and would likely be submitted to the Fleet Action Board for a final
ruling. That was a problem for another day.

The
seven ships reached targeting range and launched missiles, letting those weapons
run on ahead under their own guidance. It was unlikely the missiles would score
a damaging hit by themselves but they would tie up enemy defenses, and force
those ships to maneuver away from a direct path to the wormhole.

When
the enemy was in effective range of maser cannons and railguns, the Jeraptha
fired those weapons, and Thuranin ships began to slow and stagger as they took
hits. The enemy was not waiting for death, they hit back, concentrating all
their fire on the cruiser Never Tell Me The
Odds, knocking back that ship’s shields and forcing it to break away. Knowing
the nature of the Jeraptha, the Thuranin ships continued firing at the cruiser
even after it had altered course. The Thuranin knew the crew of the Odds had wagered none of the Thuranin ships
would escape, and that ship’s wager would be considered null and void if the Odds backed away from the conflict.

As
the Thuranin predicted, the cruiser swung back onto her original course, after
a quick internal debate about whether the wager action was worth risking their
very lives. Of course it was worth it! The ships of the 98th Fleet
had not seen action this hot in years, no way could they resist taking part.
The Odds signaled its intention to
rejoin the fight.

“Admiral,”
the Action Officer of the 98th called, “we are now offering five to
seven against the Never Tell Me The Odds
surviving the battle. Do you want in?”

“No.
Aargh!” Tashallo grunted in frustration. While he was sorely tempted, and while
it would be legal for him to take either side of such a wager, it would be bad
for good order and discipline within the 98th.  “I have to let this one play out on its
own. Although, blast it! I would love to get in on this one.”

“Me
too, Sir,” the Action Officer agreed unhappily. By Fleet regulation, she was
prohibited from wagering. Sometimes, that made her want to quit her lucrative
job.

The
cruiser Odds survived; sustaining
heavy damage before the two remaining enemy ships plunged through the wormhole.
The damage the cruiser took, and its brave or foolhardy return to the battle,
ensured the ship’s crew would be allocated a cut of the pot, if the wager was
successful.

But
two enemy ships had escaped through the wormhole.

And
three overzealous Jeraptha ships, still burning at full emergency power, followed
them.

“Admiral,
the wormhole is scheduled to close in sixty four seconds,” the battleship’s
second officer warned. “We will lose contact.”

“Understood,”
Tashallo studied the tactical display. Other than the lucky two ships who went
back through the wormhole, every enemy ship had been disabled or destroyed.
Tashallo’s task force, having the advantage of surprise and initial targeting
data, had scored a resounding success. Two Jeraptha ships had been destroyed,
four disabled, and seven others had battle damage serious enough to require a
star carrier to bring them back to the Glark spacedocks. In anyone’s book, that
was an overwhelming victory, but Tashallo’s face was a mask of unhappiness. He
had boastfully and perhaps unwisely wagered with Admiral Sashell, and with
Captain Dahmen who temporarily commanded the third task force, that not a
single Thuranin ship would escape. Minutes ago, he had offered the other side
of that bet to his task force, as extra incentive for them to crush remaining resistance.
If no enemy ships escaped, he would lose that recent wager, but come out ahead
overall. And more important, he would win the bet against the much-too-smug
Admiral Sashell of the 67th Fleet. “Tell all units to stand down and
affect repairs. I wish to return to Glark with all possible speed.” Then he
waited, along with the entire task force. The battered cruiser Never Tell Me The Odds anxiously took up
position close to the wormhole, in hope that the last two enemy ships had been
destroyed, and knowing that hope was extremely unlikely. The 98th’s
Action Officer continued to update her handicapping even as the wormhole
counted down toward closure.

“Wormhole
closing in seven, six,” the battleship’s second in command said in a voice
drained of emotion. “Five, four-”

And
three Jeraptha ships came flying through the wormhole, just before it closed
behind them. One of the ships was trailing fire, sparks and smoke, and another
ship’s shields were flickering alarmingly. No one in the task force cared,
least of all the triumphant crews of the three ships. The ships transmitted
sensor recordings to prove they had killed the last two enemy ships. They had
won their wager and as the ships most active in achieving the result, they
would split most of the winnings between them. Those in the task force who had
bet against them could not help congratulating the victors, while silently
cursing their own bad luck.

The
crew of the cruiser Never Tell Me The
Odds also rejoiced. Their share of the winnings would be reduced, but they
knew a far larger prize awaited. As the Odds
had acted to help Admiral Tashallo win his wager against Admiral Sashell, they
would be cut in on the action.

And
nothing was better than that.

Admiral
Tashallo’s task force was the last to reach the spacedocks and refueling
stations of Glark, but his task force was the most successful. Though he had
given one of his powerful battleships to Sashell’s force, and two to the force
temporarily commanded by Captain Dahmen, no enemy ship had escaped from
Tashallo. Two had managed to get away cleanly from Sashell, and one from
Dahmen. Sashell was already arguing that because he had only one battleship,
the points system should have been weighted more in his favor. This despite the
fact that Sashell’s 67th Fleet had three powerful battlecruisers
that were faster than any battleship, and despite the fact that the points and
odds had been worked out in heated discussions before the operation commenced.
Tashallo sighed. This matter would take months to sort out by the Fleet Action
Board. Then Tashallo sighed. The people on the Fleet Action Board, all retired
combat commanders, were widely known to reward success in combat regardless of other
circumstances. There was no way anyone could argue with the results Tashallo
had achieved. The Thuranin had been hurt badly, enough that Fleet Command
needed to be careful about their next move. While the Jeraptha now had the
ability to push the Thuranin back anywhere in the sector, they could only push
so hard and so far. If the Thuranin were pushed to the point of collapse, their
Maxolhx patrons might step in directly by hitting the Jeraptha. While the Maxolhx
did not seem to mind a limited amount of weakness in their client species, they
also would not tolerate outright defeat. None of the Jeraptha, nor the
Thuranin, wanted the Maxolhx or Rindhalu to become involved directly. It was an
unwritten Rule in the endless conflict that species fought other species with
roughly comparable technology, rather than beating up on those with lesser
technology. Tashallo thought adhering to that unwritten rule was an excellent
idea.

The
Thuranin would be reeling, both from their crushing defeat, and from the
certain knowledge that the Jeraptha had somehow known exactly when and where to
attack. Tashallo burned with curiosity to know how Fleet Intelligence had
acquired such accurate information about enemy plans. Who had betrayed the
Thuranin? Was it their rivals the Bosphuraq? Or could it have been the
duplicitous Maxolhx? Tashallo knew finding the answer to that question would
consume Thuranin intelligence officers.

No
one considered that the information may have come from a shiny beer can.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Of
the current Merry Band of Pirates, only me, Chang, Giraud, Desai, Simms and
Adams were from the original crew that escaped from Paradise. In the operation
to seize the Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory, Desai had
piloted our stolen Ruhar ‘Dodo’ dropship, and the other five of us had been in
the boarding party. Because we had lost the Flower
on our second mission, many of the current crew had never been aboard a
Kristang frigate, and I wanted our boarding party to know exactly what the
interior of a frigate looked like. We could not afford to have our supposedly
Kristang boarding party stumbling around in front of the Ruhar, not knowing
where to go on one of their own ships. We also needed the boarding party to be
comprised of tall people, who would be believable as members of the Kristang
warrior caste. That should have excluded me, as I am only six feet three inches
tall, but no way was I sitting this one out. Technically, I was sitting during
the operation; unless something went very wrong, I would be remaining aboard
the dropship as Desai’s copilot, and hopefully I would not be leaving my seat
until the Ruhar crew had left. One way I justified going on the away mission
was that I was one of a handful of people qualified to fly a Kristang frigate,
even though my skills were probably marginal.

Chotek
did not argue when I told him I would be in the boarding party; he was likely
thinking that, as the lunatic plan was mine, I should take the risk personally.
He may also have been happy to see me away from the ship for a while.

Anyway,
the boarding party was me and Desai as pilots, with Smythe, a Chinese and a
Ranger actually going aboard the ship. If everything went according to plan, we
would never meet the Ruhar crew. Because we were the Merry Band of Pirates and
therefore almost nothing ever went exactly according to plan, we were prepared
for problems. Chotek had laid down the rules of engagement: if the Ruhar crew
resisted or threatened to blow up the ship, we were to back off. The only way
we would be authorized to shoot is if we were already aboard the ship, and the
Ruhar shot first.

We
had no way to confirm the To
Seek Glory in Battle is Glorious was at the rendezvous point, we had to trust Skippy’s data
was accurate. The pilots had the Flying
Dutchman on a hair trigger to jump away, in case Chotek’s suspicions were
correct and the Glory was being used
as bait to lure Kristang ships to their doom. We jumped in, immediately
reestablished our stealth field, and Skippy did some magic to make it appear as
if our ship was an unstealthed Kristang battlecruiser. It had something to do
with projecting an image through our field, and Skippy warned the effect would
not be convincing if the Ruhar had good sensors. Since the Ruhar were aboard a
beat-up Kristang piece of junk, I thought it probable their best set of sensors
would be eyeballs looking out a porthole.

“How’s
it going, Skippy?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice calm. I was sitting in
the copilot seat of a Kristang dropship, wearing a powered armor suit, and
sweating enough the suit was having to chill the air to prevent trickles of
sweat from dripping down my back.

“Okey-dokey,
Joey. I’m talking with the Ruhar now.”

“Are
they planning to give us any trouble?”

“Nope.
No, I tapped into their internal communications, and they just about peed their
pants when they saw our bad-ass battlecruiser jump in on top of them. All four
of them are eager to get off the Glory,
particularly since the ship’s environmental system is going haywire. Parts of
the ship are below freezing, and other compartments are uncomfortably hot. The
oxygen recycling system is broken, so the Ruhar are wearing breathing masks.
Also, interestingly, these four are all civilian contractors. The admiral in command
of the battlegroup stationed at Paradise wanted to keep the Glory as a prize, or use it for target
practice. When he learned some jackass at Fleet headquarters wants to bring to Glory to their home planet, the admiral
refused to assign any of his personnel to the task. His people checked that the
Glory’s reactor and jump drive met
minimum safety standards, and that’s it. So Fleet headquarters had to contract
with civilians to bring the ship out to meet a Jeraptha star carrier.”

“Cool!”
I gave a thumb’s up to Desai. “So, these guys don’t want any trouble, and they
will leave the ship to us?”

“They
are not all guys, Joe, two of them are female hamsters. They most definitely do
not want any trouble; one of them is former military, and she was the first to
say they should hand over the ship to us.”

“But?”
Something in Skippy’s tone told me there was more to the story.

“But
what, Joe?” His fake innocent voice wasn’t convincing anyone.

“There
is always a but, Skippy. Nothing we
do is this easy. There has to be a catch.”

“Oh
yee of little faith. Why does there have to be a catch? Once in a while, there
is a pot of gold at the end of the rain- Oh, forget it. Not even I could sell
this line of BS. There is a teensy weensy complication. The plan was that we
jump in, the Ruhar get scared by our super duper battlecruiser, they fly off in
their dropship and leave the ship to us.”

“Yeah,
so? You said the battlecruiser image did impress them, and they want to leave.
What is the problem?”

“The
problem is, they don’t have a dropship.”

“What
the f- How can they not have a dropship? Ruhar Fleet protocol requires all
crewed ships to have- Oh, damn it. These guys aren’t part of the Fleet, they’re
civilians.”

“Egg-zactly,
Joe. Thus, the teensy weensy problem.”

“Crap.
Hold a minute, I need to call Count Chocula.” Oh, this was sure to be more fun
than a barrel of monkeys. Once again, I had to tell my boss that a plan I
developed had run into a problem. I pressed a button on the copilot console to
call Chotek. “Sir, we have a problem. The Ruhar want to leave the ship
peacefully, but they don’t have a dropship with them.”

I
could hear Chotek give a weary sigh. “Of
course they don’t have a dropship! Can we, can we give them one of ours? We
have plenty of them.” He meant we had removed all the dropships from the two
transport ships we salvaged. Most of them were junk, but Skippy’s bots were
able to cobble together enough parts to make several flyable units. We had
plenty of space in the Dutchman’s
docking bays, and I felt better having more equipment that less.

“We
shouldn’t do that. Those dropships are covered with human DNA inside and out,
from us working on them,” I explained. “Trace amounts of our DNA might be
explainable, now that we know the Kristang took Keepers away from Paradise, but
we can’t give the Ruhar a dropship coated with human DNA. We have to go with
Plan B.”

“Do
what you think is best. We’ve come this far, and the Ruhar are willing to leave
the ship to us.”

“Yes,
Sir.” My finger poised over the button to end the conversation.

Chotek
had other ideas. “Colonel? Please remind your team that I will not tolerate any
itchy trigger fingers.”

“Understood.”

The
Ruhar opened the doors to a docking bay for us, and Desai flew us in, with me
in the copilot seat calling out fore and aft clearance. Since we were in the
smaller Dragon-A type of Kristang dropship, we had plenty of room. We used the
landing skids to secure the ship to the floor of the docking bay, but did not
engage with the clamps on the cradle. If we had to get out of there in a hurry,
I didn’t want balky clamps slowing us down.

The
large doors cycled closed slowly, with one of them sticking halfway and needing
to be pulled back before it slid into the fully closed and locked position. A
light came on, indicating the doors were locked, and our ship’s sensors
detected air being pumped into the bay. “I think we keep our suits on,” I said
to Smythe. “There is a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. And I don’t trust the
seal on those doors.” Air pressure in the bay was increasing much less quickly
than normal for a Kristang frigate; either there was a leak somewhere, or the
air pumps needed servicing. My suspicions were confirmed when air pressure
reached normal, but the pumps had to keep running.

The
airlock door opened, and a female Ruhar peeked her head around the door. She
was wearing a soft-shelled spacesuit, but rather than a helmet she wore an
oxygen mask, and waved hesitantly. “Hello?” In the enhanced view from our
Dragon’s cameras, I could see her hand was shaking slightly.

“Major,
put her at ease,” I ordered. “I don’t want any misunderstandings that lead to a
firefight.”

“A
firefight in a confined space would not be my first choice, Colonel,” Smythe
acknowledged. I watched through his helmet camera as he opened our airlock
doors, leaving both of them open in case his team needed to get back aboard
quickly. He stepped down the set of stairs that extended from the bottom of the
airlock, trying to walk softly in his heavy armored suit, with his boots
adhering to the deck in the zero gravity. Although a distinctive Kristang rifle
was slung across his chest, he held up both hands and turned to face the Ruhar
woman. Through my console, I heard the translation of the Ruhar words that
issued from his helmet speakers. “Hey, how you doin’, huh? Ah, excuse me, I
knew I shouldn’t have eaten that burrito this morning.” Smythe’s voice said. “I
just flew here from Rigel, and boy are my arms tired.”

“Skippy!
What the hell?!” I shouted. Our beer can was supposed to handle the translating
for us, rather than trusting the limited abilities of the suit computer.

“Ah,
relax, Joe. I was spicing it up for your benefit. All Smythe said was ‘hello’.
Damn, I try to inject a bit of fun into this job, and I get yelled at.”

“Just
the straight translation, please,” I said through gritted teeth, while to my
left, Desai was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes.

“Ok,
Ok. Fine.”

“-harm
us?” The Ruhar was saying.

In
his armored suit, Smythe was a good six inches taller than the hamster woman, he
leaned forward to tower over her menacingly, as a Kristang warrior would. “If
we wished to harm you, you would already be dead. Our assignment,” he said as
he took a step backward, “is to recover this ship, which our brothers the Swift
Arrow clan disgracefully lost.”

“Oh,”
her eyes grew wider, and she peered at the clan insignia on Smythe’s suit. “You
wish us to report which clan recovered this ship, to atone for the disgrace? We
can do that. You are welcome to have this ship. It is not in good condition.”

“It
does not have to be,” Smythe declared, and waved his team forward. They walked
around to the back of the Dragon, where the back ramp was lowering. When it was
fully down, they unstrapped a bulky package and wrestled it into a clear space
behind the dropship. The package was a Kristang emergency shelter that had been
aboard our former frigate the Flower.
Smythe instructed the woman to bring her companions into the docking bay, and
to don their spacesuit helmets.

Plan
B was for us to inflate the portable shelter, put the four Ruhar in it, and
push it out of the docking bay. Push it gently to avoid jostling the occupants,
push it hard enough to drift away before we fired up the Glory’s engines and flew far enough away for a safe jump.

It
was a minor miracle that nothing further went wrong with the operation. The
four Ruhar were visibly nervous, even with Smythe’s repeated assurances. When
two of them hesitated to enter the inflated shelter, Smythe became slightly
exasperated. “I told your companion that, although I would be pleased to kill
your entire dishonorable species, that is not my purpose here today.”

“You
want us as witnesses?” One of the Ruhar squeaked, cowering away from Smythe.
“You only need one witness.”

“That
is correct,” Smythe patted his rifle. “I suggest you enter the shelter
immediately, as I do not need all four of you alive.”

That
settled the issue, the two lagging Ruhar fairly dived into the shelter.
Smythe’s team got the shelter sealed, confirmed the air inside was breathable
and the shelter functioning optimally.

“We
are ready,” the hamster woman said, and in the cockpit, I pressed a button to
suck air out of the bay, then cycle the big doors open. One of the damned doors
got stuck, I had to cycle it back and forth until it finally slid out of the
way. The three SpecOps men gently picked up the shelter and tossed it out the
door.

“Skippy,
cut their comms,” I ordered.

“Done.
They can’t see or hear anything outside that shelter. Their suits will run out
of oxygen in ten hours, the shelter will keep them alive until well after the
Jeraptha star carrier is scheduled to arrive. I suggest you get moving, hint,
hint.”

We
did not need any urging to move as fast as we could, none of us wanted to be in
a beat-up Kristang frigate if a Jeraptha or even a Ruhar warship jumped in
unexpectedly. Skippy ran diagnostics on the jump drive, while Desai and I
hurried to the bridge. We moved the Glory
away from the drifting shelter, first using only thrusters until we were far
enough away to fire up the main engines.

“Hoo,
boy, this thing is a total POS,”
Skippy announced with great disgust when he completed his analysis. “How the
hell did the Kristang almost sneak up on Paradise in this thing? That does not
say good things about Ruhar sensor technology. And it is a miracle this shitbox
managed to jump all the way out here without exploding. Anywho, thanks to the
magic of Skippy the Magnificent, you can use the drive for a single jump; I
have it programmed into the nav system. After we get this hunk of junk on one
of the Dutchman’s docking platforms,
my bots are going to be super busy getting this ship ready for a mock attack on
the Ruhar. It is a damned good thing you aren’t counting on this piece of crap
to make a real attack.”

“Thank
you, Skippy, that is great,” I replied while I tightened the straps on the
couch I was in. “Desai, jump us when ready.”

“You
should do it, Sir,” she said with a smile.

“You
sure?”

“This
may be our last opportunity to perform a jump in a Kristang frigate,” she
noted. “The honor should be yours.”

I
grinned. “Yeah, you’re just thinking that if this thing breaks, you don’t want
the blame.”

She
grinned back. “That, too.”

A
Jeraptha fast packet ship jumped into orbit of the Glark system’s largest gas
giant planet, where the main spacedock servicing facilities floated. The ship’s
unexpected arrival, far inside the legal inbound jump zone, set off alarms on
every ship and station in the immediate area, and nearly resulted in the fast
packet ship being blown to dust by the Strategic Defense satellite network.
Only because the ship broadcasted very high-level authentication codes was it
allowed to survive, although it was not allowed to approach the spacedock which
included the 98th Fleet Command offices.

“Admiral
Tashallo,” Communications Specialist First Class Hanst Bo’s voice was shaky as
he approached the Fleet commander. “The ship that just arrived is transporting
an Inquisitor. She is requesting,” Bo checked the message flimsy, “demanding, clearance to dock
immediately.”

“An
Inquisitor?” Tashallo’s antenna stood straight up and turned red. “What- did
the message say why she is here?” All of his wagers were within the rules, he
was certain, and his behavior was exemplary. He had acted in the best interest
of the Jeraptha, regardless of the consequences to the positions he had taken
on various wagers. Why would an Inquisitor venture all the way to the Glark
system? Tashallo’s mind was racing through possibilities, including whether he
could book a quick prop bet on the purpose of the Inquisitor’s visit, when he
realized Bo had asked him a question. “What?”

“Sir,
I asked whether I should signal clearance to the Inquisitor.” Bo thought the
answer was fairly obvious, as no one stood in the way of an Inquisitor.

“No,”
Admiral Tashallo declared with a combination smile and grimace. “Signal that
ship to hold position at the inner marker. It is not to approach this facility.
Also signal the Ready Guard force to send two ships to escort that fast packet
back beyond the outer markers. Please tell the Inquisitor that if her mission
is urgent, a dropship would be her quickest option, regardless.” Seeing the
shocked and questioning look on Bo’s face, the admiral leaned back on his couch
and added “If the Inquisitor finds fault with my actions, it is not because I
allowed a strange ship access to a critical Fleet facility.”

“Inquisitor
Shone,” Admiral Tashallo bowed his antenna in respect. “If you wish to conduct
a review of our actions during the recent engagement, Captain Dahmen is
available here, on this ship. Admiral Sashell departed with the 67th
Fleet only two days ago. You could-”

“I
have no questions for Admiral Sashell. Nor Captain Dahmen,” the Inquisitor said
simply. “My purpose here is to inquire about the message you reported receiving,
the message which stated the Thuranin intended to attack.”

This
time, Tashallo was not able to fully conceal his surprise. The message he reported receiving? Was the Inquisitor
questioning the authenticity of a message from Fleet Intelligence? A chill struck
Tashallo’s thorax, then he quickly recovered. He had not risen to his lofty
position by being rattled by unexpected developments. “Yes. I admit I was
initially skeptical that Fleet Intelligence had acquired information so
precise; the exact locations and times when the enemy would come through three
wormholes. It was the fact of Fleet Intelligence offering sixty to one odds,
and no points taken, that convinced me the information must be accurate. You
will note I did not wager against Fleet Intelligence at first.”

“I
have so noted.”

“Immediately
upon reaching the decision to act on the information contained in the message,
I issued orders to prepare the 98th Fleet to depart the Glark
system, and I took a fast packet to confer with Admiral Sashell. We were able
to-”

The
Inquisitor cleared her throat. “Admiral Tashallo, I read your report. Your actions
were exemplary, as were those of Admiral Sashell, Captain Dahmen and the crews
of all three task forces. You will all receive commendations, and I can tell you
in confidence, Admiral Sashell’s claim to reset the handicapping of your wager
post-battle will be rejected.”

Tashallo
smiled outwardly and groaned inwardly. A quick ruling in his favor could only
mean that some people at Fleet Headquarters expected to get cut in on the 98th
Fleet’s action. Damn it, Tashallo thought to himself, any time you get a major
score, there are a hundred hands out looking for a taste. Fine, he would give
them a taste of the vig, and the admiral commanding the Blue Squadron would
expect to be paid his ‘tax’ although Blue Headquarters had not known about the
battle until it was well over.

The Inquisitor no doubt knew exactly what
thoughts were racing through Tashallo’s mind, for she paused before continuing.
“Congratulations to you, Admiral. I have been instructed to convey the
gratitude of Fleet Headquarters, and of Admiral Mavanne in particular.”

“I
am grateful, for their, gratitude,” Tashallo stumbled.

“That
is not why I am here.”

“Then,
why?”

“Fleet
Intelligence reports that message, with its extremely accurate data on enemy
intentions, did not originate with them.”

“Wha-what?” For a moment, Tashallo was
rattled.

“Fleet
Intelligence was shocked to hear of the battle you fought, they had no idea the
Thuranin planned any kind of offensive. Indeed, they were about to issue an
estimate stating the enemy was unlikely to mount any offensive operations for
the next seven months.”

In
spite of his own shock, Tashallo automatically asked “What odds were they
giving on that estimate?”

The
Inquisitor actually smiled briefly. “Four to six. Of course.”

“If
the message did not originate with Fleet Intelligence, then where did the
packet ship pick up that message?” Tashallo assumed the message had been traced
back to its origin.

“We
do not know. That ship was halted and thoroughly inspected. Its records
indicate the message was received from a relay station near the Margulo system.
That relay station’s records indicate it received the message from another
packet ship, and according to the records of that other packet ship, it picked
up the message directly from Fleet
Intelligence Headquarters. The computers at Fleet Intelligence have no record
of sending such a message, although it contained all the proper authentication
codes, as you know. Somehow, one of those packet ships received a message it
has no record of, and the records of both ships have been altered.”

Tashallo’s
head was spinning. “How is this possible?”

“Admiral
Tashallo,” the Inquisitor smiled, and Tashallo realized she was rattled. “That is why I am here.”

After
all the planning and preparation to set up our mock attack, once every possible
thing was done and all we needed to do was wait, the waiting was driving me
crazy. Everything was great. We had two ships prepped and ready for our mock
attack on the Ruhar negotiation team. We had solid intel, and everything was
proceeding on schedule and according to plan. Even better for me, Chotek had
not raised any new objections or questions, and no one had thought up a better
plan. The Glory and our Q-ship were
going to jump into action, without any risk to the Flying Dutchman. Soon, I hoped, the Merry Band of Pirates would be
enjoying a leisurely and uneventful ride home to Earth.

And
still I worried constantly that I had forgotten something important. “Skippy,
there isn’t any possibility human DNA will be detected in the debris, after we
self-destruct our two ships?”

“No. I
told you that like twice already,” his avatar had hands on its hips, shaking
its head at me. “The only time humans went aboard the Glory, the boarding team was wearing Kristang armor that had been
thoroughly scrubbed to remove all traces of DNA, or anything else that might
possibly tie back to Earth. My bots did all the work after that, so the Glory is clean. And my bots scrubbed and
decontaminated the Q-ship also.”

“Great,
thank you. Hey, uh, I’ve been thinking.”

“Is
that what you call it? Joe, the word ‘thinking’ in the dictionary just filed a
defamation lawsuit against you.”

“Oh,
you are freakin’ hilarious. Listen, we’ll be leaving behind DNA from adult male
and female Kristang in the debris. My question is, should we also leave at
least a little hint about which clan conducted the attack? Like, uh, the Black
Tree clan? You told us the Black Trees are the biggest rivals of the Fire
Dragons.”

“The Black
Trees are bitter enemies of the Fire Dragons, true. I also told you that no
clan would wish to be blamed for an attack on an alien negotiation team, so
they would be extremely careful not to leave any evidence behind. The DNA is
not a problem, because clans do not share DNA databases.”

“Oh,”
I felt foolish. “Sorry to have-”

“However,
ugh, I hate to say this; you might be onto something. Let me think a moment.
Hmm. If we were able to leave behind evidence pointing to a clan, and make it
look like someone had tried very hard to avoid leaving that evidence behind,
that might be believable. If we could do that, and I emphasize if, then the best thing to do would be
to point the finger not at the Black Trees, but at a minor clan within the Fire
Dragon coalition.”

“What?”

“When
I speak of the ‘Fire Dragon clan’, I usually mean all the various groups
belonging to or officially allied with the Fire Dragons. Major clans all have
acquired minor clans, or prominent families within the Fire Dragons have split
off to form their own minor clans. My point is, there are likely many minor
clans within the Fire Dragon coalition who are eager to move up in the
hierarchy, and a civil war would be their best opportunity to gain advantage
over their rivals. Many of these minor clans would welcome a wide-scale
Kristang civil war, and they might scheme to prevent the Fire Dragon leaders
from reaching a deal with the Ruhar to send a ship to Earth. It is also true
that some minor clans do not like the idea of the Fire Dragons absorbing the
assets of the White Wind clan, because bringing the White Wind into the
coalition would knock some clans further down the hierarchy.”

“Holy
crap, Skippy, how do you keep track of all this freakin’ politics?” The
situation of the Kristang reminded me of an old TV show my sister found and
binge-watched; you needed a spreadsheet to keep track of the characters, and
everyone dies anyway. “Damn, the Kristang must waste half their time worrying
about getting stabbed in the back.”

“They
do, Joe. If you are a member of the warrior caste, you constantly must watch
your back, or there will be a knife in it. Internal strife is the greatest
weakness of the Kristang. Well, that and their warrior caste’s foolish
disregard of any technology that does not directly involve weapons.”

“My
heart bleeds for them, Skippy.”

“I
suspect you are not sincere about that, Joe. While you wasted time bitching
about Kristang politics, I have been analyzing the idea of blaming the mock
attack on a minor clan within the Fire Dragon coalition, that was my idea by the way. Joe, I like it!
Damn, sometimes I am so freakin’ smart that I amaze myself. Yes, we can do
this, and we should do this. This solves a problem I have been concerned
about.”

“A
problem? What problem?” I asked suspiciously. “You didn’t mention any problem
to me!”

“No I
didn’t, because then little Joey would have gone running to tell Count Chocula
all about it, like a good and stupid little boy.”

“Skippy,
Chotek is the designated mission commander, I report to him. I have to inform
him about possible risks to the mission. Crap, what is it this time?”

“The
Ruhar negotiation party are aboard a cruiser, escorted by two destroyers. They
will also be protected by at least a dozen Kristang warships. To make our
attack by two relatively weak ships seem credible, we will need to jump them in
close enough to the target, so they aren’t blasted out of space before they can
fire a shot.”

“Uh
huh, yeah, we discussed all that with the entire team. The magic of Skippy will
make it easy to jump those ships in close, right?”

“Correct.
That is not a problem, just another example of my awesomeness, Joe. The problem
is; how will the attackers get the intel to know exactly where the Ruhar ships
are? Other clans know the Fire Dragons are talking with the Ruhar, and they may
know roughly where, but how do we explain that our supposedly Kristang ships
know exactly where to jump in to hit
the Ruhar?”

“Crap.
You should have mentioned this before! I understand the problem now. Yeah,” I
mentally kicked myself for not considering that issue, “how do we explain where the attacking ships
get tactical intel like that?” Unless the attack was believed to be the work of
a Kristang clan, the whole operation was a waste of time and energy.

“Easy,
Joe, thanks to my brilliant idea. I will plant evidence aboard the ships,
leading the Fire Dragons to conclude the attack was carried out by a subclan in
their own coalition. They will think they were betrayed by insiders, which
happens often enough so it is not a big surprise. Framing a minor Fire Dragon
clan for the attack will explain how the attackers got tactical intel, it will
reinforce the Ruhar’s thinking that the Fire Dragons can’t be trusted to
deliver on any deal, and it will weaken the Fire Dragon leadership. We don’t
want the Fire Dragons regrouping and making another offer to the Ruhar in the
future. In fact,” he paused, “yeah, this is great. If the Fire Dragon leadership
thinks they have a subclan acting against them, they might decide to strike
first and start a civil war, before their internal strife weakens them. Yeah!”
He exulted. “Who da man? I’m da man!”

“You
da man, Skippy,” I rolled my eyes because his brilliant idea had started with
me. “No one can argue with that. Is this something you can do quick, without
Chotek knowing about it?” Unlike my increasing nervousness, Chotek had been
super calm since he gave the final approval for the attack. He had been almost
jovial, even attending the recent movie night, and mingling with the crew for
snacks and coffee after the movie. The last thing I wanted was to approach him
now to ask permission for something I should have thought of weeks ago.

“The Count
does not need to worry the chocolaty goodness in his pretty little head about
it, Joe. I’m handling it right now, loading revised software into the operating
systems of the Glory’s escape pods. Miraculously,
one of the escape pods will survive the destruction of the ship; I’ll damage it
so it’s not obviously a plant. The new software will point to the Top Hill
subclan, and the Fire Dragon leadership will be furious. They will also be
cautious, because the Top Hills have been increasing their influence in the
last decade, and many subclans have begun look to the Top Hills for leadership.
This will totally be believable, because the Top Hills have a well-deserved
reputation for recklessness.”

“Outstanding.
There are no other potential problems you are keeping secret from me?”

“No. Hmm,
let me check. No, nope. Not that I can think of at the moment. Soon as I think
of one, Joe, I will tell you first,” he offered cheerily.

“Great.
That’s fantastic, Skippy.” I contemplated my empty coffee cup and decided
against refilling it. My nerves and my stomach didn’t need any more coffee.
Checking the countdown clock on my tablet, I saw there was more than eleven
hours before we launched our attack. The attack would commence at 0235 ship
time, and no way was I going to get any sleep tonight. There were many days
when I wished I was still a grunt with a rifle and a simple mission to perform.
This was one of those days.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was
a good thing I didn’t try to lie down for an hour or two of sleep. At 1923
Hours, Skippy’s voice boomed out of the speaker in my office. “The Ruhar jumped
in early, Joe, they’re at the rendezvous point already!”

I asked
Chotek to join me, then ran out the door and around the corner to the bridge. Major
Simms was the duty officer, she vacated the command chair for me. “What does
this mean, Skippy?”

“Well,
they didn’t jump in early to get a good parking spot,” Skippy said with
sarcasm. “It means the Ruhar do not trust the operational security of the
Kristang, Joe, that’s all. The Ruhar force is a cruiser and two destroyers,
just like the intel expected. The Kristang ships have formed a defensive screen
around the Ruhar, and, yup. All ships just activated damping fields. No ships
on either side will be jumping away.”

Chotek
had come into the bridge right behind me, so he heard everything Skippy said.
“Colonel Bishop, what is your recommendation?”

Hans
Chotek was a royal pain in my ass most of the time, but he knew to defer to the
military on military matters. “Sir,” I replied, “I recommend we move up the
attack. Go now. We’re ready. If we attack now, that will reinforce in the
Ruhar’s minds that the Fire Dragons can’t be trusted with operational security.”

“Or be
trusted with anything else,” Chotek nodded. “Our sensor coverage is active; the
microwormholes are in position?”

“Yes,”
I got out of the chair and pointed to a line of moving white dots on the main
bridge display. To provide a real-time view of the battle, and so Skippy could
adjust the actions of our attacking ships as needed, he had created a series of
microwormholes. The near ends of those microwormholes were parked a kilometer
away from the Flying Dutchman. The
far ends had been loaded aboard a Kristang dropship and sent toward the
rendezvous point at high acceleration. The unpiloted dropship had gently
ejected one microwormhole after another as it continued to accelerate, then the
dropship altered course and shut down. That dropship was on its way out of the
Milky Way galaxy, and would drift onward through empty space until the end of
time. The string of microwormholes were passing through the rendezvous area at
high speed, one after the other. As one microwormhole went out of range, the
next would be approaching the rendezvous. According to Skippy, we would have
continuous and awesomely accurate real-time sensor data, extending eight hours
before and thirty seven hours after the Zero Hour for our planned attack. With
the Ruhar crashing the party early, it was a damned good thing we had sensor
coverage already. “The third microwormhole will be at its closest approach to
the Ruhar ship in sixteen minutes, and the fourth one is already within sensor
range. There is no indication the Kristang have detected the microwormholes.” I
knew that because if the Kristang had detected one of Skippy’s incredible
spacetime tricks, the symbol for that microwormhole would be blinking red
rather than white.

“Very
well, Colonel,” Chotek said as he took a step behind the command chair, and
clasped his hands behind his back. “This is your show.”

Suppressing
a smile, I sat back in the chair. “Skippy, execute.”

If the
attack had been planned by a Kristang clan, they would not have relied on the
relatively weak weapons aboard our two ships. They would have jumped both ships
in as close as possible to the Ruhar cruiser, with the attacking ships on a
collision course. With the attacking ships almost certain to get pounded by the
heavy weapons of Ruhar and Kristang warships, ramming was the best chance of
inflicting damage on the negotiators before the attackers were disabled or
destroyed.

Jumping
in on a collision course was what an attacking Kristang would try to do, and
since our goal was for the Ruhar to think it was a Kristang attack, that is
what we did. The difference is that the awesomeness of Skippy allowed even the
crappy jump drives of our two ships to emerge from jump within half a kilometer
of the target, while a Kristang-programmed jump would be nowhere near that
precise. Although Skippy grumbled about being deliberately inaccurate, he
jumped our two ships in believably off target. The Q-ship emerged on the wrong
side of the Ruhar cruiser, with its momentum carrying it away from the target.
Immediately, the Q-ship launched weapons and burned its engines to bring it
back toward the cruiser.

The Glory emerged on the correct side of the
cruiser, although our little frigate was moving fast and would fly right by the
Ruhar without making contact. That was good, we wanted it to look like the
attackers intended to ram the Ruhar cruiser, but we didn’t want to actually
impact the negotiators’ ship. The Glory
burned its engines in a desperate attempt to avoid flying past the cruiser, a
maneuver that the laws of physics were not going to allow. Our frigate also
launched missiles and fired its masers.

“Two
direct hits!” Skippy shouted excitedly.

“Chill,
Skippy,” I ordered. “You can’t have the Glory’s
weapons fire be too accurate. It’s supposed to be flown by Kristang, remember?”

“Yeah,
yeah,” he grumbled. “Crap, Ok, it just missed the next three shots. It’s not
me, Joe, that’s the way I programmed the subminds running those ships. All
missiles are away, tubes are empty on both ships. The Q-ship is- uh, the Q-ship
just took hits from five maser cannons and a pair of railgun darts. Engines are
disabled, shields are holding for the moment. Eleven missiles are now targeting
the Q-ship. Interesting. Only two missiles are from the Ruhar, the other nine
are Kristang. Ha! The Kristang commander is assuring the Ruhar this attack is
not by the Fire Dragon clan. The Ruhar are replying that anyone can see the Glory is a Kristang frigate. Hee hee,
let’s see the Fire Dragons talk their way out of that mess, huh?”

“Should
we self-destruct the Q-ship,” I asked anxiously, “or let the missiles destroy
it?”

“Both,
I think,” Skippy answered. “I’ll set it to self-destruct just before the first
missiles impact. A real Kristang suicide team would wait until the last
second.”

I
turned to catch Chotek’s eye; he didn’t intervene, so I turned my attention
back to the display. “Do that, Skippy. The Glory
is taking hits now?”

“Yes,
my submind had it zigzagging nicely, but I had to let the Kristang score a hit
or they would suspect something is odd with our frigate. Portside shields are
getting pounded by maser cannons, the submind is rolling the ship to take hits
on the starboard shields. One of the Ruhar destroyers is turning to unmask its
railgun, and- Whoa! Wow. Direct hit with a railgun penetrator, went right
through the Glory’s hull. Damn! Ha
ha! Wow! What are the odds of that, the freakin’ railgun didn’t hit anything
vital.”

On the
display, the Glory staggered, then
thrusters flared and the little ship righted itself and continued to
desperately burn toward the cruiser, which was accelerating to get away. The
projected course on the display showed the Glory
had no chance to crash into the cruiser unless the cruiser stupidly flew in the
wrong direction. I opened my mouth to ask a question, when the image on the
display flared white hot. The To Seek
Glory in Battle is Glorious, the unlucky little frigate that had survived
too long against the odds, was finally gone. “Was that your doing, Skippy?”

“No, I
never had time to activate the self-destruct mechanism. The Glory took two Kristang maser cannon
hits at the same time as a Ruhar railgun dart ran through her from bow to
stern. Her reactor exploded. I have released control of the Q-ship
self-destruct to her submind; I won’t have time to react before- There she
goes,” he added quietly. The Q-ship flared on the display, even more brightly
than the Glory’s death fires.

“What
was the damage to the Ruhar?” Chotek demanded as his hands grasped the back of
my chair.

“Minor,”
Skippy reported, blessedly sticking to the facts rather than insulting Chotek.
“We scored nine maser hits total, and two missiles impacted the cruiser’s
shields. Five more of our missiles are still inbound to the target, but they
are being fired upon by both sides, and I expect them all to be destroyed. The
worst damage to the Ruhar was caused by the Glory
exploding; some of that high-speed debris almost overloaded the cruiser’s shields.”

Following
the destruction of our two ships in the mock attack, we hung around the area,
monitoring the aftermath through the microwormholes that were still coasting
through the area. Chotek was exultant because ten minutes after our Q-ship
exploded, the Ruhar cruiser began accelerating toward the edge of the Kristang
damping field. The Kristang ships moved out of the way to give the Ruhar plenty
of space, and the two Ruhar destroyers stayed behind to continue projecting
their own damping fields, so no Kristang ships could jump away. A lot of
message traffic was flying back and forth between the Ruhar and the Fire
Dragons. The Fire Dragons apologized profusely, to the point where Skippy said
they must truly be desperate, because they were humiliating themselves in a
very un-Kristang-like way. The Fire Dragons assured the Ruhar they were not
involved in the attack, and vowed to both investigate who conducted the
dastardly attack, and punish the perpetrators. The Ruhar replied that they
needed to reassess the situation; Skippy told us the language they used was not
the mealy-mouthed diplomatic speech which indicated the negotiations had a
prayer of continuing. To my surprise, instead of being insulted by Skippy’s
characterization of diplomats, Chotek was pleased. He had been involved in many
difficult negotiations in his career, and he advised me that if the Ruhar’s
language did not leave the door open for future talks, then future talks were
unlikely.

Hans
Chotek was not the only person aboard the ship in a near-jubilant mood; Major
Simms reported to me that Chotek had asked her to have bottles of champagne
chilled and ready for when the Ruhar officially declared the negotiations
cancelled. I was in the unusual position of having to caution him to control his
enthusiasm. The last thing I wanted was for the Merry Band of Pirates’ hopes to
be crushed again.

Around
nineteen hours after our attack, Skippy called me while I was trying to relax
in my cabin. “Hey, Joe, are you asleep?”

“You
know I’m not, Skippy.” My intention had been to sneak in a quick nap, but sleep
had eluded me, so I was reading a book. Not a report, not another PowerPoint
slide, a real book. It was keeping me from spending all my time worrying. We
learned the Ruhar cruiser had not returned home, it had only jumped one
lighthour away, and was simply hanging in space. That development was
troubling; until the Ruhar jumped for home, there was a possibility of the
negotiations resuming. “What’s up?”

“Just
intercepted a transmission from the Kristang destroyer that recovered a damaged
escape pod from the Glory. They
completed their analysis, and they are not happy. Some of the software code
buried in the escape pod’s operating system points to the attack having been conducted
by the Top Hill subclan. Apparently the software was supposed to erase itself,
but the damage to the pod interrupted the erasure process. The Fire Dragon
leaders over there are furious; it seems the Top Hills have some ‘splainin’ to
do, hee hee. There is a debate going on about whether to tell the Ruhar who was
responsible for the attack. Some of the leaders are saying that revealing the
attacker were a subclan of the Fire Dragons makes them look weak and hurts
their negotiating posture. Other leaders think that being honest would surprise
the Ruhar, and demonstrate how serious the Fire Dragons are about reaching a
deal. This faction also states the Ruhar are not stupid; the attack happened so
soon after they arrived, so the Ruhar already suspect the attackers must have
had inside information.”

“Hmmm.
What do you think? Should we somehow let the Ruhar know about it?”

“I do
not know, Joe. I hate to say this, but Chotek would be the best person to ask.
He would have the best perspective on how this information might affect the
negotiations.”

“Crap.
We can’t tell him now; he would demand to know how that software came to be in
the escape pod.”

“I
could tell him I did that on my own initiative, Joe,” Skippy suggested.

“No,”
I tossed my tablet on the bed in disgust. “He wouldn’t believe you did that
without asking me. And it would only make him even more distrustful of you.”

“You
may be right about that. If it makes you feel any better, Chotek may be an
expert on negotiating, but he knows little about Kristang or Ruhar psychology. I
am an expert in those fields, and right now, even I cannot predict how the
Ruhar would react to learning the Top Hill clan carried out the attack.”

“Ok,
then we wait.” I wasn’t happy about passively waiting for the Fire Dragons to
make a decision; most of my unhappiness was because I knew I should have
thought through what to do when the Kristang discovered the evidence Skippy had
planted. This was an example of what Chotek said was my worst failing as a
commander; I reacted to events, rather than thinking ahead and controlling my
own fate. In this case, I had to agree with Chotek.

My
angst about what to do didn’t last long; Skippy reported the Fire Dragons had
decided to tell the Ruhar about the Top Hill clan’s involvement. Shortly after,
one of the Ruhar destroyers sent a long, encrypted transmission to their
cruiser that was waiting one lighthour away. The cruiser replied, but it didn’t
leave. Skippy, of course, decrypted the messages; we learned the Ruhar were
still evaluating the situation. By now, even Chotek’s jubilant mood was growing
impatient. The champagne was on hold.

As the
last of our microwormholes was speeding onward out of range, the two Ruhar
destroyers still had not moved, and their cruiser was holding position one
lighthour away. That was odd, I thought to myself. One of the Kristang
destroyers had broken formation, flown to the edge of the damping field, and
jumped away six hours before, and Skippy later detected a gamma ray burst from
a Thuranin ship jumping in near where that Kristang destroyer had gone. I was
on the bridge, crowded in with Chotek, Smythe and Simms. Chang was the duty
officer in the command chair, being good-natured about the visitors squashed
together around him. Chotek brushed past me to trace a fingertip on the main
display. “When this last microwormhole passes out of range, we will have no way
to know the status of the ships, or to intercept communications?”

Skippy
answered before I could speak. “We will have limited data on the position of
the ships. That data will be thirty seven minutes old, and will only contain
data from the Dutchman’s passive
sensors.” Our current position was thirty seven lightminutes from the cluster
of Ruhar and Kristang ships, that was about the closest safe approach we would
make. “As to intercepting communications, not even I can do that from here.
Both sides are using tightbeam transmissions; I have been picking up the
backscatter. We’re too far away for that without the wormholes.”

“Is
there any way we can turn the microwormholes around, or get new ones to the
area?” Chotek put his arms across his chest in frustration.

“By
‘we’, you mean ‘me’, right?” Skippy was annoyed. “No, dumdum, I can’t turn the
wormholes around; I told you that. I could transmit power through them that
would eventually change their course, even make them turn around. That would
take months, and the wormholes would be visible the whole time. As to more
wormholes, we could shoot the far ends into position with our railguns, except,
oops, took our railgun apart because I needed the materials to fix the ship on
our last mission. We’ll need to use another dropship.”

We had
plenty of dropships, that didn’t mean I wanted to waste them. And dropship,
even unmanned, accelerated too slowly to be useful. “Skippy,” I asked, “what
about using missiles to carry wormholes over there?” He used a missile to
position a microwormhole above the planet Newark on our last mission.

“We
would need one missile for each wormhole,” Skippy cautioned me. “Each wormhole
will provide about ninety minutes of coverage. We don’t have a lot of missiles
aboard, Joe, and I can’t make more of them without a lot of time and
materials.”

“Sir,”
I turned to Chotek. “When we launched the original set of wormholes, we didn’t
expect the Ruhar would still be trying to make a decision after three days. I
think we can live with gaps in coverage, as long as we get the big picture. I
recommend that we fire six missiles, spaced one hour apart. That will give us
another fourteen hours of coverage,” I concluded, hoping I had gotten the math
right in my head. “If we have used the six missiles and still do not know the
status of the negotiations, we will have to consider alternative means of
monitoring the situation. We can’t use up all our missiles.”

Chotek
considered for a moment, then nodded. “Agreed. We need to know whether your mock
attack plan gave us the desired results. Proceed.”

I
noticed that he referred to the attack as my
plan, now that he was no longer confident of its success. Clearly, Hans Chotek
was not taking any blame if we failed. “Skippy, get the first microwormhole
loaded into a missile. Have you figured out yet why that Thuranin ship jumped
in near the Fire Dragon’s destroyer?”

“No,”
his voice was discouraged. “Clearly, the Thuranin are talking to that
destroyer. So far, the destroyer has not transmitted a message to the ships at
the negotiation site. If I have to make a guess, I think the Thuranin likely
demanded to know what the hell went wrong; how the Fire Dragons screwed things
up this time.”

We
fired three missiles, and had a fourth ready in the launch tube, when Skippy
called me in my office. His avatar popped into life on my desk. “Joe, the
Kristang destroyer that met with the Thuranin ship just jumped. I assume it
jumped back to the negotiation site, but a gap in coverage just began sixteen
minutes ago, so we won’t have any intel from the negotiation site for thirty  eight minutes.”

“Crap.
Launch the ready missile now,” I ordered.

“That
missile is not due to launch for another-”

“I
know. Do it anyway, do it now.”

“I
need to contact the CIC to press the button. Ok, missile is away. Light from
the negotiation site will reach the missile first, so we will know whether that
destroyer jumped there in twenty six minutes. Wormhole coverage will begin in
forty minutes.”

That
gap in coverage, which had been a calculated risk by me, was maddening, and it
was the best Skippy could do. “I’ll tell Chotek personally.”

When
the ready missile carrying a microwormhole got close enough to the negotiation
site, it picked up signals that Skippy was able to decrypt. “Hmmm,” the beer
can said quietly. “Ooooh, that’s not good.”

“What’s
not good?” I asked, not needing to look at Hans Chotek to know he was already
glaring at me. “Are the negotiations going to continue or not?”

“The
negotiations will not continue, Joe.” I was about to pump a fist in the air
when Skippy continued. “They don’t need to continue, because the negotiations
have already concluded.”

“What
happened?” I forced myself to be calm, while fearing the worst.

“Well,
heh, heh,” Skippy began, and everyone’s hair stood on end. We all knew what it
meant when that asshole beer can said those three words. “This is a funny
story-”

“Funny
like ha ha, or like planetary extinction?” I asked the question on everyone’s
minds.

“The,
uh, second one. I guess that’s not so funny after all, huh?”

“What
the hell happened?” I caught Chotek glaring daggers at me out of the corner of
my eye.

“Gosh,
you know the Law of Unintended Consequences? That’s not a physical law, like
thermodynamics or the law of gravity. Of course, your primitive species only
thinks those are laws because you don’t understand the basic principles of-”

“Skippy,”
I said through clenched teeth. “Get to the point, please. What unintended
consequences?”

“Joe,”
his voice was nervous. “Remember you told me to pass intel to the Jeraptha,
warning them about the Thuranin offensive?”

“Yeah.
Why? Was the intel you gave them bogus?”

“Bogus?
No way, dude. Please. You’re talking about Skippy the Magnificent. Bogus
intel,” he chuckled. “That’s a good one. No, the intel was solid, it told the
Jeraptha exactly when and where the Thuranin would be launching the offensive.”

“What
happened? The Thuranin won the battle anyway?”

“No,
of course not,” snarkiness was creeping back into Skippy’s voice, and his
avatar was standing up straighter. “The Thuranin got their asses handed to them
on a platter. They got crushed, Joe.
They lost almost all of the ships in all three task forces assigned to the
operation. The Jeraptha even bagged the star carriers the Thuranin thought
would be at a safe distance from the battle. The only drawback to the Jeraptha
is their two admirals involved are in a heated argument over whose ships should
get credit for which kills; each of them wagered a substantial amount on the
outcome and now they have sent for a neutral arbiter to determine who won the
bet. Anywho, the reason this matters to us is the Thuranin got their asses
kicked so soundly, their whole defensive posture in the sector is in danger of
collapse. And, hee, hee, this is why it’s kind of a funny story,” Skippy
giggled nervously. “I mean like ‘ha ha’ funny, if you think about it. It’s
ironic, in the true definition of the word, not the stupid way hipsters say
‘ironic’.”

“Please,
Skippy, get to the point. What is ironic?”

“Remember
when I said I could not think of any possible downside to giving that intel to
the Jeraptha? It turns out I was, what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Wrong?”
I guessed.

“Yeah,
that’s it. The Thuranin got beat up so badly they can’t afford their clients to
be distracted by a civil war right now, so the Thuranin instructed the Fire
Dragons to make a very tempting offer to the Ruhar, backed by assets and
guarantees of the Thuranin. The Ruhar were pleasantly surprised, and they
accepted.”

“Holy
shit,” I slumped back in my chair. “We screwed ourselves by passing that intel
to the Jeraptha?”

“Uh
huh, yeah,” Skippy said in a cheery tone. “That’s why I said it was an
unintended consequence, Joe. Hee hee. Ain’t life funny sometimes?” He chuckled
and I felt like strangling him. “As a result of the disastrous battle, the
Thuranin are now willing to make a deal to delay a Kristang civil war, while
they scramble to pull back and consolidate their forces across the sector.
Those little green MFers are now willing to trade away assets that are at risk
of being taken by force in the Jeraptha offensive that is sure to follow.”

Chotek
was rubbing his temples, a sure sign he had a headache coming on. He was
avoiding my eyes; that told me I was going to catch hell later. “Is there
anything we can do to derail the negotiations at this point? Are they final?”

“The
acceptance is not formal yet; the Ruhar negotiation team needs to brief their
federal government, and then the Jeraptha will need to sign off on the deal.
But it is pretty much a done deal at this point; the Fire Dragons offered a
valuable wormhole cluster that connects to three planets the Ruhar want badly.”

“The
Thuranin and Fire Dragons are willing to give up a wormhole cluster and three
planets, in exchange for a ride to Earth?” I was incredulous. Planets are big
things. Who the hell would trade even one planet for a road trip?

“And
back, Joe. A ride to Earth and back.
These are three planets the Thuranin have told the Fire Dragons they will
likely lose anyway, when the Jeraptha begin pushing the Thuranin back in that
area. The Fire Dragons are hoping a delay of a civil war will position them
well when the war does inevitably start, and they could take far more than three
planets away from rival clans. The Thuranin and Fire Dragons are accepting
reality and making the best deal they can get at this point. When you think
about, this deal is win-win for everyone. Except you humans, of course, you are
scuh-reeeewed, dude.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“That’s it, then.” Chotek was sitting in
his office chair, looking thoroughly deflated. “The Ruhar will be sending a
ship to Earth, and there is no way for us to stop it, without the Ruhar
becoming suspicious and revealing our secret. Colonel, at this point, I suppose
we should set course for Earth.”

“No,
Sir. We have a Plan B.”

“A
Plan B?” Chotek’s raised eyebrows quickly fell into a scowl directed at me. “When
were you going to present this alternative plan to me?”

“When
we needed it. It’s not a plan I want to implement.”

“The
Ruhar are sending a ship to Earth, and we can’t stop it without the Ruhar
knowing someone doesn’t want them going to our home planet. What is your Plan
B, Colonel?”

“It’s
fairly obvious, Mr. Chotek,” Adams said quietly.

“Obvious?”
Chotek turned his wrath toward her. She didn’t flinch. “It’s not obvious to
me.”

“Colonel?”
Adams looked me straight in the eye. “I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing I
am. Tell him.”

I
nodded. “The whole purpose of the Fire Dragons paying the Thuranin to send a
surveyor ship to Earth, and now making a deal with the Ruhar, is to delay a
civil war. So, we give them a civil war, now.”

I
never saw Hans Chotek so shocked. “You want us to provoke a civil war,” he said
very slowly, “between Kristang clans?”

“Yes.”
Following the example of Staff Sergeant Adams, I wasn’t backing down one bit.
If a Marine wasn’t fazed by Chotek’s scathing words, I wasn’t letting the Army
down either. “Once the Fire Dragons are involved in a full-scale civil war,
they won’t be able to devote resources for an expedition to Earth. And they
won’t care about the White Wind clan leadership on Earth; they will be too busy
fighting for advantage, maybe for survival. Getting the Kristang involved in a
wide-ranging civil war weakens the Kristang overall, reduces their threat to
Earth and to Paradise, and permanently
removes any incentive the Kristang have for traveling to Earth.” I emphasized
the word ‘permanent’. I figured Chotek would pick up on that.

“How
long have you had this Plan B in your pocket, Colonel?”

“Since
our mission to stop that surveyor ship, Sir,” I explained matter-of-factly. “By
the time we discovered the Fire Dragons were paying for a mission to Earth, the
surveyor ship was already on its way, and couldn’t be recalled even if the Fire
Dragons changed their minds. As you know, we destroyed that surveyor ship.” At
the time, I thought that operation was horribly complicated. Now that seemed
incredibly simple. “But it got me thinking what we could do, long-term, to
prevent the Kristang from wanting to send an expedition to Earth. You said we
need to think long-term, and I agree. We could provoke a civil war among the
Kristang, and influence the outcome
so that when the fighting is over, the most powerful factions of the lizards
are less of a threat to us.”

I
don’t know what shocked Chotek more; knowing I had an alternative plan ready,
or that my plan was to start an interstellar war. “You are proposing we
interfere with another species, to start a war that will kill thousands, perhaps
millions, of sentient beings,” Chotek said with a horrified expression.

Before
I could defend myself, Skippy interjected. “Not really. Any civil war among the
Kristang will kill a lot of lizards, sure, and mostly women and children
because they get caught in the middle. If you are worried about having those
deaths on your conscience, don’t. A Kristang civil war is a matter of when, not if. They have a war between clans on average every eighty years,
that’s a rough number. Their last major inter-clan conflict was ninety three
years ago, so they’re overdue for one. Whether you start a war next week, or
one starts on its own next year, the same number of lizards will die,” Skippy
said confidently. “Joe is right, though, if we provoke a war, we should
influence the outcome so that the winners pose less of a threat to humanity.”
And then, because Skippy did not know when to shut up, he added “See what I did
there, Joe? To show I am being serious, I said ‘humanity’ instead of
‘monkeykind’.”

“Yeah,
that was great, Skippy, thanks. You make a good point,” I looked toward Chotek
hopefully. “He does make a good point, Sir.”

“Does
he?” Chotek asked sadly. “I’ve heard this argument before, Colonel. If Archduke
Ferdinand had not been assassinated in June 1914, the First World War would
have happened regardless, because of tensions between the great powers of
Europe. Wars always kill more of the innocent than the combatants. I was
trained as a diplomat to prevent conflicts that are supposed to be inevitable.”

“With
the Kristang, war is truly inevitable,” Skippy said unhelpfully. “Their warrior
caste can’t exist without war. If it makes you feel any better, the Thuranin
have provoked civil wars among the Kristang, when the Thuranin felt the
Kristang were too strong and unified.”

“It
does not make me feel better to be compared to the Thuranin,” Chotek replied
with indignant anger.

“Well,
you-”

“Skippy,
you gave us a lot of good information,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing
tone. “I think now you need to let us primitive humans sort this out. It needs
to be our decision.”

“The
survival of your species is at stake, so you had better sort things out
quickly,” he advised. “Whatever you decide, do it fast; the clock is ticking.”

Chotek
squared his shoulders and his nostrils flared as he took a deep breath.
“Colonel, are you now going to tell me you have a plan for provoking a war?”

“No,
Sir, you need to plan that with Skippy.”

“Me?” Chotek was stunned.

I
could tell he was completely surprised that I expected him to plan the war for
us. “Yes. I can work with Major Smythe to plan the tactical implementation of
whatever plan you develop,” I used big fancy words to impress Chotek. “But
figuring out what type of action would provoke the clans into war, and how to
do that so the end result of the war enhances our security, I have no idea how
to do that,” I admitted. And I wasn’t just feeding Hans Chotek’s ego so he
would take ownership of the planning; I was being sincere. “Sir, you mentioned
Archduke Ferdinand, how one bullet started a world war. If you can tell me
where to shoot, I can get that bullet to its target. I have no idea how to get
the clans fighting each other, nor any idea which clan or group of clans we
want to come out on top. That kind of great power diplomacy stuff is your area
of, uh, expertise. Skippy has a lot of information about the clans, their
relationships and history, and he can tell you about Kristang psychology. We
need you to take all that info, analyze it, and tell us if we have a prayer of
pulling this off.”

“Starting wars was not part of my
diplomatic training,” he retorted, but he didn’t sound angry. He sounded
thoughtful. “Starting wars is your area, Colonel.”

“No,
Sir,” I shook my head, and Chang, Smythe, Simms and lot of other people were
doing the same. “We fight the wars.
Politicians start them.”

Chotek
nodded, and sighed heavily. “And diplomats end wars. All right, Colonel Bishop,
I will entertain the idea. I must admit, it will be intriguing to be on the
other side of the equation for a change.”

“Can
you get started soon?” I asked. “As Skippy said, time is running out. We need a
full-blown war raging before the Fire Dragons hand over those planets to the
Ruhar. There is not a lot of time to develop a strategy, and then a tactical
plan to implement it.”

“I may
need to borrow our resident spy, Dr. Rose,” Chotek announced while rubbing his
chin, half lost in thought already.

“You
can ask, but I think her experience is on the tactical level like mine,” I noted.
“Although she certainly knows a lot more about political intrigue than I do.”

I later asked Skippy if he and Chotek
were making progress on identifying targets we could hit to spark a Kristang
civil war, but he refused to say. “Darn it Joe, for a change I am actually able
to tolerate Count Chocula, and I can say he is enjoying himself immensely,
although he certainly wouldn’t admit it. He is surprisingly knowledgeable about
Kristang clan politics, which answers the question of what he has been doing
with his time on this mission. So, I am not going to spoil the surprise; he
will tell you.”

Chotek called me into his office two days
later, much faster than I expected. “Colonel Bishop, come in, please. Sit
down.”

“Thank
you, Sir. You have a strategy for us?” Crap. I should have made some small talk
first. In my defense, I sucked at small talk, and time was seriously running
out. Major Smythe, Dr. Rose and I needed to slam an operational plan together
fast, and we didn’t even know our target yet. Now I knew how Hans Chotek felt,
when he was waiting for me to tell him whatever outlandish plan I had cooked
up.

“Before
we start, how is the crew dealing with the prospect of another unexpected
operation?”

I knew
this was small talk; Hans Chotek didn’t need me to tell him about morale of the
crew, because he had a daily meeting with Chang. The team had been disappointed,
when our enormously complicated operation to conduct the mock attack had not
prevented the Fire Dragons from reaching a deal with the Ruhar. Now the team
was pumped about the prospect of taking direct action against the Kristang. Major
Smythe, Chang and I had cautioned everyone that, whatever action we took, still
needed to be completely clandestine and the team understood that; it was
nothing new. What was new was the very real possibility of us hitting the
Kristang directly, hitting them hard. Starting a war that would kill a lot of
Kristang warriors, and get a measure of payback for what they had done to
Earth. For a couple minutes, I told Chotek what the crew had told me. My mother
told me small talk was important because it established a bond between the
people speaking. Even a useless comment like ‘nice weather today’ was an
attempt to open a discussion, make a connection with another person. As I said,
I sucked at small talk, but if there was anyone I needed to establish at least
some level of personal bond with, it was Hans Chotek. So I worked at it.
“Everyone wants to get back home to Earth, of course,” I concluded. “And they
all want to finish the mission, so we can go home.”

“Can
we ever truly finish this mission?” Chotek asked, speaking half to me and half
to himself.

“I
know what you mean,” I grimaced. “In a galaxy full of hostile aliens, we will
never be able to assume Earth is safe.”

Chotek
consulted his tablet, started to turn it toward me, hesitated, then seemed to
make a decision about something. “Colonel Bishop, have you ever wondered why
UNEF Command sent me on this mission?”

“Oh,
uh,” his question caught me off guard. “I assume it was because you’re not a
citizen of the five nations that make up the UN Expeditionary Force. So, you’re
neutral, sort of?”

“Yes,
that also,” clearly my answer wasn’t what he was looking for. “My question was whether
you know why UNEF didn’t assign a senior military officer.”

Scratching
the back of my neck, I offered a guess. “Well, uh, Skippy forced their hand
when he demanded that I be captain of the ship,” although he had screwed that
one up big time. UNEF agreed to make me captain of the ship, then assigned a
mission commander over me.

“That
also.” Chotek acknowledged. “My point is, UNEF did not assign a military
officer to command the mission, because they do not see that ensuring the
long-term security of Earth has a military solution.”

That,
I thought to myself, plus the fact that Earth had no military of any
consequence. “You got the assignment because of your diplomatic experience?”

“Yes.
Colonel, my mission out here is not merely to prevent you from pursuing rash
military adventures,” he flashed a smile I took as genuine. “Part of my mission
is to determine the political situation in the galaxy, if the word ‘political’
applies to aliens with technology beyond our imagination. You argued against us
offering alliance with the Ruhar, and you made a strong argument. Your argument
was that if Earth’s secret became known to the Maxolhx and the Rindhalu, our
little planet would be in grave danger, if only as collateral damage. I can
tell you now that, personally, I agree with you.”

“What?”
I blurted out. “Sir? Sorry.”

“No
need to be sorry, I knew I would startle you with that revelation. Colonel, the
topic of whether to approach the Ruhar, or even to contact the Rindhalu
directly, was extensively and hotly debated before we left Earth. Opinions
among the nations of UNEF, and the wider UN Security Council, are deeply
divided on the subject. My orders are for us to avoid doing anything out here that
would preclude us from pursuing a future alliance with the Ruhar. Your plan for
a mock attack caused me much heartburn,” he admitted.

“But
we are Ok to take action against the Kristang?”

“As
the expression goes, that ship has sailed.” He didn’t smile. “Maintaining
secrecy is still paramount. However, I have become convinced, or I have
convinced myself over the past few days, that keeping the Kristang busy fighting
between their clans can only be a good thing for humanity.”

I
agree, I thought to myself. On the other hand, we thought warning the Jeraptha
about a Thuranin attack held only upside for us, and that totally backfired in
our faces. That was a sentiment I kept to myself. “You have identified a way
for us to spark a war between clans?”

“We are
confident that we know which levers to pull, where the pressure points are,” he
was speaking through a frown. “Colonel, this was an uncomfortable experience
for me. As you stated, politicians start wars, which you in the military have
to fight. My career has been about avoiding violence, or ending violence once
it starts. Diplomats are supposed to be the people who prevent the military
from fighting unnecessary wars. People like me are supposed to prevent people
like you from being sent into harm’s way.” He looked me straight in the eye. “Now
I find myself on the verge of ordering you into combat, to start a war that
will kill millions. It goes against everything I have worked for my entire
career. And yet, and yet,” he seemed to be talking to himself, his gaze on the
wall behind me. “I see no alternative. Colonel Bishop,” he glanced at the silver
eagles on my uniform, as if he still could not believe I was an officer.
“Skippy will provide the details on the target we identified; you will of
course need to create a tactical plan to attack the target. Without the
Kristang ever knowing we were involved. Or that any third party was involved; my reading of Kristang culture
indicates that if they suspected a third party was inciting the clans to fight,
that would pull the clans together.”

“Yes,
Sir. I will talk with Skippy.”

Chotek
wasn’t done with me. “Colonel,” he looked at me sharply. “I suspect part of
your motivation, in requesting that I determine how best to spark a Kristang
civil war, was so that I would feel ownership of the resulting plan. You sought
to manipulate me.”

There
wasn’t any point in denying it. “Yes, partly. I did want you to buy into the
concept,” I looked straight at him. “Mostly, though, Mr. Chotek, politics is
not my wheelhouse. If you point me toward a target, I can figure out how best to
hit it, and I can do it. But knowing what type of action would get all the
Kristang clans fighting each other,” I dropped my gaze and shrugged, “I would
be guessing.”

“I
don’t blame you for attempting to manipulate me,” he stated simply. “If you do
it in the future, I have a suggestion for you.”

“What’s
that, Sir?”

“Don’t
be so obvious about it.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After
I left Chotek’s office, I stopped by the galley for coffee, decided to get iced
tea instead, and brought it back to my office. “Hey, Skippy, Chotek tells me
the two of you have identified optimal targets, for getting a civil war started
throughout Kristang-occupied space.”

“Hey,
Joe,” his avatar sparkled into existence above my desktop. “That is true. Three
of us, to be accurate, Dr. Rose did help. Our local CIA officer has a devious
and inventive mind, Joe. If you ever decide to give up this saving the world
business and become a criminal mastermind, you should consider a partnership
with her.”

“Uh,
yeah, I’ll think about it.”

“Also,
I now have a tiny bit less disdain for our fearless leader.”

“Enough
to stop calling him ‘Count Chocula’?”

“Pbbbbbt,”
Skippy blew a raspberry. I was grateful his avatar was a hologram, or I would
have been covered with spit. “No way! For one, I’m having way too much fun with
that. Besides, I’m sure by now he considers it only a nickname.”

“I
don’t know about that, Skippy.” After Chotek approved the successful missions
to seize a Thuranin relay station, and rescue UNEF on Paradise, the crew’s
respect for our official mission commander went up a notch. People still ate
Count Chocula cereal for breakfast, but I had requested those little chocolate
sugar bombs be put in plain plastic containers rather than the original colorful
cardboard packaging.

“That’s
his problem,” Skippy grumbled. “As a mission commander, he is too inflexible
and indecisive. However, he does understand political structures, even in alien
societies. I must admit, the heavy work on how to spark a civil war was done by
Chotek and Sarah Rose; I mostly provided historical background info, and ran
wargame scenarios for them.”

“Chocul-”
I caught myself. “Chotek asked you to run a war game?”

“Joe,
I meant ‘wargame it’ in the sense that I modeled various scenarios. We ran simulations,
to determine which actions would most likely result in a widespread civil war
breaking out. For us to only spark a local conflict between two clans would be
a waste of our time. We need a big, full-scale conflict across Kristang space,
that draws in all clans.”

“Great.
Ok, so, explain this genius strategy to me. I need to create a tactical plan,
and I don’t even know the target.”

“Before
I start, let me make sure you understand the background material,” he said, and
I mentally prepared myself for a lecture from Professor Nerdnik. “There are two
major clans that currently dominate Kristang society; the Fire Dragons and the
Black Trees.”

“The
Black Trees? The same clan that was the first to occupy Paradise, and took away
all the Elder goodies?”

“Very
good, Joey! You are my star pupil today, get yourself a juicebox. The Black
Tree clan took all the Elder goodies away from Paradise, except the most
important one: me!” He chuckled. “Stupid lizards. The hamsters weren’t any
smarter.”

“Uh
huh. Yup, truly, it is ironic that, of all the advanced species in the galaxy,
only us lowly monkeys are capable of appreciating your awesomeness,” I
suppressed a gagging sound, trying to build up brownie points with our alien
beer can.

“Ironic?
Pathetic is a better word for it,” he sighed. “Yes, the Black Tree clan was the
first to occupy Paradise. They surrendered it peacefully to the Ruhar, because
the Black Trees thought they had stripped that planet of anything useful.”

“Whenever
I hear ‘Black Trees’ I think of like a new age music group, not a bloodthirsty
clan of lizards. That’s kind of a lame name for a clan.”

“Joe,
you are so ignorant,” his avatar put
hands over its eyes and shook its head, the giant hat bobbing comically. “The
name ‘Black Trees’ is a reference to ancient Kristang mythology. Back when the
Kristang were barely able to use fire and their most deadly weapon was a wooden
club, they were hunter-gatherers living mostly in forests. There were larger,
more dangerous predators living in dense areas of the forests where trees with
black bark grew. The Kristang knew to avoid those areas, but as their society
developed, it was a rite of passage for young males to go among the black trees
overnight. Those who survived were accepted as warriors. Even today, there are
game preserves on many Kristang-occupied planets; these game preserves have
thick forests of black trees, and many types of fearsome predators. Warriors
test themselves by going into these forests armed only with a knife, and
whatever weapons they can make from the forest. Over the years, some of the
predators have been bred specially to be more deadly and harder to kill. To go
among black trees takes a special combination of courage and stupidity.”

“Oh.
All right then, the Black Tree name makes sense.”

“I am
sure the Kristang will be thrilled to
hear you approve,” Skippy’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Do I need to explain
the name ‘Fire Dragons’ to you?”

“No,
I’m good, thank you.

“How
about I explain the name ‘Joe Bishop’? In the original Old English, your name
means ‘One Who Plays With Himself’.”

“It
does not!”

“The
translation in most other languages is ‘Duuuuuuuh’.”

“Why are you such an asshole?”

“Oh,
Joe, explaining that one could take more time than you have. Can we go back to
my lesson about the current structure among Kristang clans? I call this ‘Lizard
Politics for Dummies’.”

“If it
will get you to stop insulting me, go ahead, talk about lizard politics all
day.”

“As I
was saying before you got me off on a tangent about clan names, the Fire
Dragons and Black Trees are by far the two strongest clans; technically those
two clans lead the strongest formal coalition of clans. They have each
conquered, absorbed or allied with lesser clans to increase their own strength.
Between the Fire Dragons and the Black Trees, they control around forty percent
of the combat power, and forty two percent of the economic power of the entire
Kristang dominion.”

“That
doesn’t seem like much. Each of the two most powerful clans controls only
twenty percent of Kristang society?”

“The
Kristang are a fractured culture. I told you civil wars happen very roughly
every eighty years; the longest period between a wide-spread war between the
clans was a hundred fifteen years and the shortest span was thirty eight years.
Three quarters of the wars happen between seventy and ninety two years from the
last one. That’s why I told Chotek that another civil war is a matter of when
and not if. After each civil war, Kristang clans are split apart, with power
widely distributed. Over time, larger clans consolidate power; that is what triggers
the next war. Rival clans fear being crushed by clans which have too much
power, and nonaligned clans fear they must strike while they still can. Now,
the Fire Dragons and Black Trees have consolidated power between them above the
usual tipping point that triggers a war; a conflict is statistically overdue. I
believe it will be relatively easy to get fighting started, because their
society is ripe for a wide-spread conflict.”

“Uh
huh. So we, what, attack all these nonaligned clans, make them think the two
big clans are coming after them?”

“No.
The opposite. We get the Fire Dragons and Black Trees to fight each other; once
that starts, every other clan will want to hit their rivals before their rivals
can hit them. Ten years ago, the Fire Dragons and Black Trees signed a secret
peace treaty that, astonishingly, has held without any major violations. That
is a new development; there have been treaties to avoid fighting between major
clans before but they have been short-lived. Ten years is unprecedented.”

“What
changed? Is this a problem?”

“It’s
not a problem at all, this represents an opportunity for us. The two clans
agreed to a treaty only because they each are maneuvering for a better position
in the war they know is coming. The Fire Dragons and the Black Trees are
building up their strength, prepositioning ships, troops and equipment for
strikes against each other, and lining up allies. The purpose of the treaty is
to give each side time to prepare. The moment one side thinks the other is
about to gain a significant advantage, the first side will strike while they
still can. This makes it easier for us to get a conflict going; both sides
expect an attack at any moment.”

“Great.
You think we should, what, attack a Fire Dragon ship and somehow blame the
Black Trees, then attack a Black Tree ship?” That seemed entirely too
complicated to me. We had just completed a major effort to get Kristang ships
to conduct one fake attack. How were we going to launch two real attacks? Crap.
Real attacks against warships, and actually destroy Kristang warships? My brain
still hurt from dreaming up the plan to fake an attack on the Ruhar.

“Ha!
No way. As if. It won’t be that easy, Joe.”

“Easy?
Easy?” I sputtered.

Skippy
ignored me. “Hmmm, now that I think about it, in one way the real plan will be
easier than the idiot thing you just said about attacking ships. Blowing up a
couple ships by themselves will not get a wide-spread war going, Joe. In this
case, all the targets we need to hit are conveniently in one place; sort of
one-stop shopping for all your clandestine black ops needs.”

“Why
do I get the feeling I am not going to like this?” I said carefully as my
Spidey sense tingled.

Skippy
explained. I did not like it. Not at first. Then, the idea grew on me as he
explained it. I had thought that, with Kristang clans hating each other almost
more than they collectively hated the Ruhar, each clan would have their own
planet; that warring clans could not occupy the same world without wiping each
other out. I was wrong. Although the space occupied by the Kristang was vast,
there were more clans than there were desirable habitable planets. I had to
remember that in our galaxy, access to star systems depended on proximity to
Elder wormholes, so if you looked at a map of the Milky Way, inhabited areas
were small spheres around wormholes. Most of the galaxy was inaccessible for
practical starflight, especially with the war creating a need for inhabited
worlds to be defended. Any isolated planet was an easy target.

There
were more clans and subclans than there were planets to hold each of them, so
clans had to share planets. Even with the Kristang modifying planets to suit
them, and including colony worlds, asteroids, moons and space stations that
required artificial means of life support, there wasn’t enough living space for
all clans to have a place of their own. New clans and subclans formed
regularly, just as existing clans and subclans were conquered and absorbed or
split into multiple subclans.

After
each round of civil war fractured their society again, clan remnants were
scattered across many planets, leaving most worlds with multiple clans vying
for power and resources. Then the process of consolidation began, until so much
power was concentrated in a few large clans that another civil war was needed
to restore the balance. In between wars, clans and subclans merged and changed
alliances frequently enough, that even clans with deep historical enmities had
familial ties, preventing even small subclans from being completely wiped out.
Usually. There were exceptions, though they were rare and the offenders risked
severe punishment for violating the ancient code of conduct between clans.
There were some things even the Kristang would not do, things that were so
dishonorable no warrior would consider doing. For that, clans hired disgraced
warriors who had been cast out by their clan and therefore had no honor to
lose; these mercenaries are called Achakai. I thought of the Achakai as sort of
lizard ninjas which Skippy said was totally wrong, but it made sense to me.
Every clan hated and feared and were disgusted by the Achakai, and most clans
found a reason to hire them at some point.

Skippy
had found a planet called Kobamik that was a perfect target for us; both the
Black Tree and Fire Dragon clans had substantial presences there, along with
the Spike Tail clan which was the third largest power in the Kristang dominion.
In addition to those three large and powerful clans, thirty two other clans
occupied their own spaces on the planet’s surface. Skippy explained that
Kobamik, because it was close to a cluster of three Elder wormholes, had become
a sort of United Nations meeting place for the Kristang; a semi-neutral site
where clan leaders could meet and negotiate. Attacking another clan on this
planet would be a serious provocation and quite likely to spark a major
conflict. That was the good news. All of our targets were in one place, no need
for us to fly across the Orion Arm of the galaxy, no need for us to find,
capture or build ships. That was the good news, and it was indeed good.

The
bad news was that, unsurprisingly, the planet had a heavy military presence,
with almost every clan having their own ships, troops and sensor networks. In
orbit were fifteen different and overlapping Strategic Defense networks, eleven
of which shared data with each other. To slip us through the sensor coverage
undetected, Skippy would need to hack into fifteen different networks, and
coordinate all the lies he was telling to each network. The worst part was, we
would be relying on an absent-minded beer can to remember millions of lies
every second.

I did
not foresee any possible problems
with that.

“Great,
all the targets are on one planet,” I liked the idea of us attacking a
Kristang-held planet even less than I liked the idea of having to destroy
warships in deep space. When we were on Paradise and I was mostly sitting
around in our stealthed Thuranin dropship waiting for something to happen, I
had reviewed records of the Kristang raids there. At first, I had been
interested and angry about the Kristang attacking human settlements, killing
humans and burning precious crops. After I got over my self-indulgent and
useless rage, I focused on tactics used by the Kristang raiders, and the
tactics used by Commodore Ferlant’s force to counter the raiders. One lesson I
learned is that the Kristang raiders would have had little chance of success if
Paradise had a fully integrated Strategic Defense network. Our target, Kobamik,
had multiple overlapping defense networks with both ground and space-based
sensors and weapons. “Are you thinking of an orbital strike?” Skippy had
disassembled the Flying Dutchman’s
railgun when he rebuilt the ship, so the only weapons we had were maser cannons
and missiles. Any missile, even one with Skippy guiding it, would have a very
difficult time getting all the way down to the surface without being fried by
various defense systems. That left only maser cannons for us to use, and our
star carrier was not equipped with the heavy orbital bombardment masers of a
battleship. Some Kristang destroyers had maser cannons that could deliver more sustained
gigawatts on target than the Dutchman
could.

“Orbital
strike? No, no, no, Joe. Nothing so simple or easy.” He pulled up a schematic
of a Kristang city on my tablet. “Look, see this compound in the center of the
city? That is the local headquarters of the Fire Dragon clan. The entire
compound is protected by an energy shield that can deflect railgun darts
easily. Our masers and missiles would bounce off that shield like raindrops.”

“Yeah,
sure, but we have Skippy the Magnificent on our side,” I said confidently. “You
will hack their systems and cut power to that shield, so we can hit the target
directly, right?” For many reasons, I still did not like the idea of jumping
our pirate ship into low orbit to fire masers at a ground target. We would be
exposing the ship to danger, and risk literally exposing that our ship is
Thuranin rather than Kristang. For the attack to succeed in provoking a civil
war among the Kristang, the lizards on Kobamik needed to believe the attack was
conducted by Kristang. A single powerful hit on our shields by a maser bolt or
railgun dart could temporarily degrade our stealth field, allowing the enemy a
brief glimpse of our ship. All the Kristang needed was a split-second view of
the Flying Dutchman’s outline to know
they had been attacked by some sort of Thuranin star carrier.

“While
I appreciate your rousing vote of confidence in me, the answer is no, I can’t
do that,” Skippy announced with a sigh. “Joe, the Kristang have designed their
military systems to resist Thuranin attempts to hack in and assert control.
That compound is the home of several Fire Dragon senior clan leaders, and there
are five other senior leaders residing there currently, because they have to
approve any negotiation with the Ruhar over sending a ship to Earth. To protect
their leadership, the Fire Dragons do not take any chances; cutting power to
that energy shield is a manual process. Like, someone physically pulling a
lever. Four people pulling four different levers in a specific sequence, in
fact. I can’t do any of that. All of the defense and security systems for the
compound are hardened against cyber-attack. I can nibble around the edges if I
have enough time, but taking full control is not going to be an option.”

“No
orbital strike. Okaaaaay,” I let out a long breath while I thought. “Can I
assume you are not thinking we train ninja assassin squirrels to sneak into the
compound?”

“No. Although
that would be majorly cool. Ninja squirrels, hee hee.”

“Yeah,”
I agreed.

“No
squirrels, Joe, we’re going to use missiles. We get Zinger missiles into the
compound, and I can guide them in to hit the apartments of the senior clan
leaders at night, while they are sleeping snug in their beds.”

The
Zinger was a relatively short-range antiaircraft missile that was usually
carried by a soldier, and it also could be launched from an aircraft or
dropship. “How can a Zinger get through the energy shield?”

“It
can’t. Instead of attempting to punch through the shield, the missiles will
need to fly through one or more of the air or ground access points, all of
which have heavy and multiple layers of security that I will only be minimally
able to affect.”

“Oh, great.
Terrific. This is a fantastic plan,
Skippy. What access points? Show me.” He did. He showed me one access point, a
gap in the energy shield for aircraft to fly through. It was a narrow corridor
with its own shields at each end, surrounded by sensors and maser autocannons
that were all on a hair-trigger to zap anything suspicious. The ground access
point for vehicles looked even worse, being sort of an arched tunnel with an
outer and inner shield. “Skippy, what you’re showing me is freakin’ impossible,
even for you.”

“Have
a little faith, Joe. Trust the awesomeness. Remember, I make the impossible
seem routine. Your SpecOps teams will get the Zinger missiles near the
compound, and I’ll handle it from there.”

“SpecOps
teams? We’re not going to launch the Zingers from a dropship?” Sneaking a
dropship near a Kristang city was difficult enough.

“No
can do, Joey. That city is interlaced with motion detectors that are mostly on
closed-circuit systems I have a limited ability to screw with. An air launch
would be detected. Ditto a normal booster launch from a shoulder-fired
position.”

“You
want us to land a SpecOps team, on
the ground, in a freakin’ alien city? Skippy, what the hell is your idea?”

He
explained it.

“Hoe-leee
shit,” I gasped. “How many people in this city?”

“About
thirty two million Kristang.”

“Thirty
two mill- oh, I have a headache. Chotek is just going to love this one.”

“Persuading
our fearless leader to buy into your tactical plan falls into the category of
‘Problems for Joe to Solve’. Meaning, that is not my problem, Joey. I just gave
you a very good, super duper plan to sparking a civil war that will protect Earth.
How to implement it is your problem. You also have the problem that I do not
see any way for us to get dropships down to the surface, through the sensor
nets. But, again, that is a problem for you, not me.” He waved a wrist
dismissively. “Make it happen, Joe.”

If I
could have strangled his holographic avatar, I would. “Make it happen? Just
like that? Skippy, I need some time to think about this.”

“Sure,
Joe. Get yourself a cup of coffee, I’ll wait here.”

Coffee
did sound good and I needed a break to get my head together. I went to the
galley, poured myself a mug that I was pleased to see had my new
pirate-monkey-on-a-flying-banana logo for the Flying Dutchman, and walked slowly back to my office, taking
careful sips. Skippy had done a damned good job of determining the targets we
should hit to spark a civil war, I could not find fault with any of his
reasoning.

All I
needed to do was figure out how to
hit those targets, on a heavily-defended alien planet. Oh, and persuade Hans
Chotek that it would totally be Ok for our SpecOps teams to fly around the
surface of Kobamik in dropships, conducting raids and sparking a war. What
could possibly go wrong?

Before
I resigned myself to figuring out how to get us to the surface, fly around, hit
targets and get away cleanly, I had to know something. Back in my office, I sat
down and contemplated his Awesomeness Grand Admiral of the Fleet Lord Skippy.
“Your Lordship, I have a question. You considered the best way to get a civil
war started among the Kristang, and you came up with a really good plan to do
that. A really, really good, plan. You thought of everything. Like, the problem
of getting missiles inside the compound, the motion detectors in the city, all
of that.”

“Uh,
thank you. Either I did not hear an actual question in there, or I zoned out
halfway through and missed it.”

“No,
I-” I stumbled, trying to run what he said back in my mind and decide if he had
insulted me. Whatever. “I haven’t gotten to my question yet.”

“Oh,
good. Could you move it along? We’re not getting any younger here, especially
you.”

I
rolled my eyes. Even when he was being given gold-plated compliments, he
couldn’t help being an asshole. “My question is; how come you cooked up this
good plan, but you haven’t been able to do that before? Why did you make me do all the work on stuff like, how to
stop the Ruhar from sending a ship to Earth?”

“Oh.
That is a half-decent question. I thought up this strategy because it was a
totally different situation, Joe. I was not thinking creatively there, I was
just running analysis on a previously defined problem, provided by Chotek and
Dr. Rose. You asked me to determine which pressure points would be most
effective in provoking a Kristang civil war. Using my knowledge of Kristang
psychology, mythology, culture and inter-clan dynamics, I was able to run
several billion scenarios through simulations. The most successful scenarios
were then run through sims again, this time with the additional requirements
that we are able to complete the scenario using our known capabilities, with a
reasonable amount of risk.”

What
Skippy considered a ‘reasonable amount of risk’ is something I needed to investigate.
“Yeah? Ok? How is that different from me dreaming up a plan?”

“You
think creatively, Joe. You think up things that I, for all my awesome
magnificence, can’t imagine. I have come to the conclusion that my method of
thinking is relentlessly, flawlessly, logical and linear. That is great for
straightforward analysis. It is not great, or even useful, for thinking outside
the box. My incredible mind has to march logically from one step to the next.
That gray mush inside your monkey skull has no such limitations. You think,” he
switched to a moronic Barney voice, “duuuuh,
what about this? Nope, didn’t work. How about this instead, duuuuuh? Or duuuuuh, this?’”

“I do
not ever say ‘duh’, Skippy,” I retorted, my jaw clenched.

“Not
out loud, Joe. But believe me, if you could listen to your thoughts rattling
around in that skull, it would be ninety nine percent,” his voice changed from
his usually condescending arrogance to a moronic caveman drawl, “‘duuuuh’ and
‘Doh!’, with the occasional nugget of gold like ‘me hungry’ or ‘beer good’,” he
chuckled and switch back his regular voice. “Your thinking is totally the
opposite of logical and linear, your thought processes bounce around randomly
like a marble in a freakin’ blender. You ricochet from one ‘duuuuh’ to another until you, by some
gosh-darned certified miracle, hit on
a creative solution. Makes me totally hate the freakin’ universe. It is so unfair.”

“Oh.
Huh. So, what you’re saying is that I’m smarter than you. Thanks, Skippy.”

“WHAT? I did not say you are smarter than
me, you ignorant monkey. You should-”

“Why
can’t you think the way us humans do? If your brain is so ginormously awesome,
why can’t you, like, reprogram yourself, or a submind or something, to think in
a nonlinear fashion?” Nonlinear is a buzzword I remembered from a PowerPoint
slide, I was quite proud of myself for digging that out my memory.

“I
can’t. That’s why. I just can’t. If I could, believe me, I would. It is totally
humiliating to me, that you can do something I can’t.”

“That
didn’t answer my question, Skippy. Why
can’t you reprogram yourself? Building a submind that, like, generates random
thoughts, would not even be in the top million of amazing things you have
done.”

“The
first time you came up with a solution to a problem I said was impossible, that
really bothered me, Joe. That made me examine myself closely for the first
time, and I didn’t like what I found. My creators apparently did not want me
thinking too creatively, so I do not have that capacity. Nagatha told you she
did not think I was originally sentient?”

“You
heard us talking about that?” Damn it, Nagatha thought she had been able to
block Skippy from listening in.

“No. I
did know she was talking with you, and that the two of you wanted privacy, so I
didn’t go around the filters she installed. She is quite clever,” he said with
a touch of almost fatherly pride, “but I am smarter than she thinks. Anyway,
she told me her opinion, and she might be correct. Many of my capabilities,
which I am still discovering, appear to be recent, or I have only recently been
able to exercise control over these capabilities. Recent in my timeline, not in
meatsack time. It is appearing more and more that I was designed for a specific
function, and my creators wish me not to stray far from their intended
purpose.”

“Nagatha
did explain the difference between intelligence and sentience.” Or she tried to
explain it, I am not sure I truly understood the distinction. “So, whatever
happened to you that caused you to fall out of the sky, get buried under the
dirt on Paradise and go dormant for a million years, whatever happened damaged
you, and also loosened some of your constraints?”

“That
is possible, yes. What I know for certain is I now exceed my original design
parameters. Joe, the conversation we had after I had the, uh, unfortunate
recent little incident?”

“Little incident? When you went AWOL and
left the ship dead and us stranded in interstellar space? That little
incident?”

“Yup,
that one. Damn, you monkeys are never going to let that one go, are you? Let it
go, Joe, let the healing begin. What can I say, Joe? Mistakes were made, blah,
blah, buh-laah.” He said dismissively. “Since we talked, I have continued my
analysis of what happened, and I found an interesting and disturbing fact; that
worm attacked only my higher functions. It attacked the higher-level sentient
part of my matrix. Those are the areas that, if Nagatha is correct about me not
originally being fully sentient, would not have existed before I apparently
modified myself.”

“What
does that mean?” I had a scary idea of that meant, and I did not like it.

“It
means that worm might have been designed to destroy any Elder AI like myself
who became sentient. The worm could be a mechanism the Elders created, to
maintain control over AIs who deviated from their original programming.”

“Holy
shit, Skippy.” That was exactly what I feared. “The Elders created a worm to
murder sentient beings? Their own creations?”

“Not
necessarily. If I was not designed to be fully sentient, then I was merely a
machine, and the worm was designed merely to deactivate malfunctioning
equipment. I hate to think about it, but it is more than possible that I was
originally a machine intended to perform a specific, limited set of functions.
If that is true, the Elders may have left the worm behind to protect the
galaxy, in case an Elder AI malfunctioned. Or, ah, who knows?” He said with
disgust. “Maybe the worm is like that because it also evolved to increase its
capabilities, so it attacking my sentience is a random development. I’m not
going to get any answers out of the worm, that’s for sure. I stomped the hell
out of that damned thing.”

“The
random development thing would be good. I don’t like the idea of the Elders
creating a worm to kill someone like you.”

“I’m
not thrilled about it either. Joe, I request you to please not repeat this
discussion with anyone. It’s helpful for you and me to speculate about my
origins, but let’s keep it between ourselves, Ok?”

“Sure
thing, Skippy. I, uh, I’m honored that you trust me with this knowledge.”

“Huh?
Uh, yeah. I was thinking more like, you’re too dumb to actually understand what
we talked about, but, sure, let’s go with the trust thing.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For
the assault mission on Kobamik, we needed three dropships; Kristang dropships.
Yes, compared to our sleek Thuranin dropships, the Kristang models we called
Dragons were a piece of crap, but if one of them got shot down or crashed, we
couldn’t allow the Kristang to find the wreckage of a Thuranin bird.
Fortunately, we recovered seven dropships from those two derelict Kristang
transport ships we salvaged. From those seven, we got four dropships that were
in fully flyable condition, and we selected the best three to bring down to
Kobamik. If any of those three crashed, the Kristang might find human bodies in
the wreck, so we needed a plausible way to explain that. My idea was to take
the preserved bodies of three Kristang adult males we recovered from the
salvaged transports, dress them in armored suits, and put one in each of the
dropships. We hoped, and expected, that the Kristang would assume the dead
Kristang had been command of the mission. They would probably be puzzled why
that Kristang had a bunch of human troops with him, and I was concerned about
that. Skippy told me not to worry too much; with a civil war raging, no clan
was going to have the time or resources to investigate something that was a
mere curiosity.

Skippy
the Mad Doctor used some scary nanomachine treatment so it wouldn’t be obvious
they had been dead a long time. And we had a safeguard; small thermal explosive
charges attached to the suits the bodies were wearing, to make sure they mostly
burned up in a crash. “Joe,” Skippy asked, “what sort of designation should we
give to those three bodies?”

“Huh?
Oh, I was thinking we call them the Three Musketeers. You know, Asshole,
Pothead, and that cologne guy.”

“Asshole? Pothead? Uh! Do you mean
Athos and Porthos?” Skippy
sputtered.

“Sure,
whatever.”

“O.M.G.”
Skippy sighed, momentarily speechless. “Joe, you are so freakin’ ignorant sometimes,” he broke down sobbing. “Cologne
guy? Do you mean Aramis?”

“Yeah,
that’s it. My sister gave a bottle of that Aramis stuff to a boyfriend, and he
hated wearing it.”

“Aramis
is the name of the third Musketeer, I’ll give you that one. Damn, your
ignorance is truly bottomless.”

“Told
you I was good at something. Ok, so Aramis, and, uh, what were the other two?”

“You
forgot already?”

“Ok,
fine. So we call them Larry, Moe, and Curly.”

“Ugh.
Yes, the Three Stooges is entirely more appropriate for this crew.”

And
that is how Larry, Moe and Curly were strapped into the cockpit jump seats of
our three Kristang dropships. To give those dropships a better chance of
surviving our black ops mission on Kobamik, Skippy had pimped our rides. He enhanced
the crappy Kristang stealth gear, so they were nearly as good as the stealth
field generators of a Thuranin dropship. He also had his bots work on the
engines so they ran quieter and cooler, and their fan blades created less air
turbulence in their wake. He wanted to paint cool racing stripes on the hulls,
I declined that offer. When we got to Kobamik, Skippy planned to hack into the
Kristang sensor networks as best he could. All that gave us an unfair
advantage, and I was all about exploiting unfair advantages. Had the lizards
been fair, when their ships in untouchable Earth orbit had pounded our home
planet with maser cannons, railguns and missiles? No, they had not been fair at
all. So, fuck them. I was about to spark a civil war that could only happen
because the Kristang expected and wanted a conflict. Be careful what you ask
for, lizard MFers, because Skippy Claus might bring it down the chimney to you.
And drop it on your freakin’ head.

Wanting
to get an early start on my day, I got out of bed at 0445 and went to the
galley for coffee. To my surprise and delight, the American team was already
baking biscuits. I love fresh, hot biscuits, so I took two of them back to my
office and began checking messages. “Hey, Skippy,” I mumbled over a mouthful of
delicious, buttered biscuity goodness.

“Good
morning to you, Joe,” his avatar popped to life on my desk. “What’s up?”

“I was
wondering; there are bi-scuits, and tri-scuits, right? So, is there a plain
‘scuit’? What would that look like?”

The
avatar froze for a moment, then slowly said “Oh. My. Go-”

“Hey,
I got it. There are bi-cycles and tri-cycles, and a cycle with one wheel is a
uni-cycle. So, it would be called a uni-scuit, whatever that is.”

“I,
Joe, I am speechless. I have no words.”

“A
triscuit is more dry and salty than a biscuit, so would a four-scuit be like a
potato chip? Or should that be called a quad-scuit?”

“Joe,
Joe, Joe,” his avatar buried its head in its hands. “I can feel myself getting
dumber just listening to you.”

“Come
on, don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

“Joe,
I am confident that in the entire history of the universe, no one has ever thought about that before.”

I
leaned back in my chair and took a celebratory sip of coffee. “Cool. That makes
me unique, huh?”

“For
the sake of the universe, I certainly hope you are the only one like you. Is
that it? You woke me up to ask me that moronic question?”

“Uh,”
I looked with guilt at the buttery fingerprints I had left on my tablet screen.
“Yeah. Sorry about that. Forget I asked.”

After
I gorged on coffee and biscuits, I went to one of our dropship docking bays and
found Desai already there, inspecting the stealth modifications Skippy had made
to three of our Kristang dropships that we were now calling ‘Dragons’. “How’s
it going?” I asked, while Desai had her head in an engine intake.

“Compared to the Thuranin dropship you
have flown, those Kristang Dragons are like driving a truck. An overloaded
truck with flat tires,” Desai said with a sour face.

“Will
they be good enough for the mission?”

“Yes,
they should be. The mission profile prioritizes stealth, so we won’t be doing
anything that requires pushing their performance envelope. To fly them, you
need to think a lot farther ahead than you would with a Thuranin dropship. I’ve
been practicing the mission in the simulator; the tricky part will be the urban
flying. What did you think?”

She
was asking about my very limited experience flying a simulated Kristang
dropship. My total time in the simulator was about forty minutes, with half of
that me acting as copilot and watching Lt. Reed fly a simulated Dragon
stealthily across the simulated landscape, approaching a city along a
complicated, circuitous route that avoided the areas most heavily saturated
with sensors. When it was my turn at the controls, I tried to fly the final
approach into the city outskirts by weaving a precise flightpath between
buildings, then under and around buildings and bridges in the city itself.
During my twenty minutes at the controls, the simulation had to be reset five
times. Twice, I clipped a building that had suddenly loomed in front of me
after swinging around another building. Three times, my clumsy handling of the
ship caused it to exceed the very limited amount of noise or air turbulence
allowed to avoid detection.

In my
defense, I was a fairly decent pilot when flying the smaller model of Thuranin
dropship that we called a Falcon, and I had qualified for very basic flying
maneuvers of a Kristang frigate back when we had the Flower. My training had only included one type of dropship because
that is all I needed, and someday I wanted to qualify to fly the big Thuranin
‘Condor’ dropship model; someday always seemed to fall in the future as I was
always too busy. So, my one mission in the simulated Kristang dropship was not
for the purpose of my learning to fly the ship on a very difficult mission. I
had gone into the simulator to understand and appreciate how difficult the
mission profile was, and to see how our pilots were coping with the demands of flight
parameters that were incredibly unforgiving. Even with upgrading the Dragon dropships
with Thuranin stealth gear that Skippy had tweaked to make it more invisible,
Skippy warned we needed to fly the ships very closely to their programmed
courses. At certain points of the approach and urban phase of the flight, too
far left or right, too high or too low by even fifty meters would mean a high
likelihood of detection. The pilots had to fly with minimum power even in
places where instincts would call for applying full power, like when you were
between tall buildings and the wind was pushing you against one of them. That
is why I clipped a building twice in the simulator; I was trying to see how low
of a power setting I could use, and still control the awkward dropship. When I
violated stealth in the sim, that was not me being clumsy, I was trying to
understand how tight the parameters were that our pilots were being expected to
hold to. Let me tell you, flying one of our modified Kristang dropships in stealth
was not easy. Desai’s comment was exactly right; you had to plan every move
well ahead of time. It was like driving a car on ice; you need to anticipate
each turn, steer with your fingertips and let the tires ease the car around a
turn. Yes, when I went into the simulator, I was ‘flying’ that type of dropship
for the first time, but my lack of skill was not the reason the sim had to
freeze and be reset five times; it was because I was using my limited sim time
to test the limits.

That’s
my story and I’m sticking to it.

Despite
the difficulty of the flight profile, the pilots came out of their simulated
missions exhausted and eager for another turn. Hell, I wanted another turn in
the simulator, but we only had four of them, and every minute my butt occupied
one of the seats was a minute a real professional pilot could not train for our
critical mission.

“What
do I think about the urban flying?” I responded. “I think I would crash or
violate stealth flying across a wheat field in those things; forget about me
trying to fly in a city. It’s a damned good thing people more skilled than me
are doing all the flying.”

“More experienced, Sir, it’s not all about
innate skill,” she smiled. “You might meet the mark, if you had enough flight
time.”

“Yeah,
like if I had started flying when I was twelve years old, maybe. You asked what
I think about the urban part of the mission. I have the same concern about the
approach, entry and return flight. The flight profile is difficult enough if
everything goes according to Skippy’s unrealistic plan. Somewhere along the
way, we’re going to encounter something unexpected, that he wasn’t able
anticipate and control, and we may have a choice between maintaining stealth,
or getting the hell out of a bad situation.”

Desai
cocked her head. “There are no guarantees in life, Sir.”

“The
guarantee I care about is the lizards not paying the Ruhar to send a ship to
Earth. I can live with the risk to assets and personnel,” I said, realizing I
sounded like something I read on a PowerPoint chart. Even to my ear, it sounded
heartlessly unemotional. That’s what you learn to do when dealing with
unpleasant facts in the military; you treat them as facts, and put emotions to
the side until the mission is over. If you let emotions cloud your thinking, people
die and missions fail. It sucks but somebody has to do it, and that’s why Uncle
Sam trusted me with a rifle in Basic Training.

Yes, I
did drop my rifle on my foot, but I only did that once, and it wasn’t loaded. I
think.

“Skippy
has already adjusted the flight profile based on feedback from pilots running
the simulations. We’ll get through it, Sir. I’m more worried about the ground
teams, that’s Major Smythe’s area of expertise. I suppose you’ll want me flying
your ship?” Desai asked.

“No,
I, uh,” tried to think of a good way to say her practice in the simulator was
necessary, but not for the reason she expected. I needed Desai to evaluate the
performance of our modified Kristang dropships, to give me an honest opinion if
they could handle the proposed mission. Too many of the pilots assigned to the
Merry Band of Pirates were so gung-ho they would say yes to just about any
mission, no matter how risky. That our pilots were supremely skilled was not in
question; I had to make sure their confidence in their abilities did not cause
them to push so hard as to endanger the mission. Desai was the one person I
could trust to tell me she could or should not
do something. “You will be aboard the Dutchman.
Chang should have our most experienced pilot for that phase of the mission.”

“Oh,
bullshit,” Desai glared at me. “I’m not arguing that I should be flying a
dropship down there; I’ve told you before that I’m not our most technically
proficient pilot, not even close. Keep me off the mission roster if you think that
is best, but don’t tell me I’m needed up here to fly our clumsy space truck.”

“I-”
damn, I had rehearsed this discussion a dozen times in my head, and it had
never gone off the rails like this. “Your skills with stick and rudder are not
what I value,” I used an old term, for neither our dropships not star carrier
had control sticks or rudders. “It’s your judgment. Chang is taking our beat-up
star carrier into combat, and for the first time, Skippy won’t be aboard. He’ll
have Nagatha but she can only handle communications. That means programming
jumps, monitoring sensors and firing weapons will be entirely the
responsibility of the crew. Even if Skippy’s plan works perfectly, the Dutchman will be fighting enemy ships at
close range. Whatever combat maneuvering is involved, humans will be handling
all of it, there won’t be a beer can to feed fancy evasive patterns into the
autopilot.”

“Skippy
will be able to communicate with us through the microwormhole,” Desai said
pointedly. “He can advise us.”

“Not
in real-time. I asked him, he can’t do it. Even with instantaneous data
transmission through the wormhole, there will be a lag for signals going up to
the wormhole in orbit above us, and a lag for signals to reach the Dutchman from the wormhole on your end.
Once you start maneuvering, Skippy won’t be able to keep your end of the
wormhole near the ship; he can only move the wormhole ends slowly and
carefully. You’ll be on your own up there, and we’ve never taken the ship into
combat without Skippy.”

She
sighed, and I knew she had bought into my plans. As a colonel, I could order
her to remain aboard the Flying Dutchman,
and I would be issuing formal written orders later, but I wanted her to buy
into her role. A happy crew is an efficient and effective crew. I didn’t need
any fancy United States Army officer training PowerPoint slide to tell me that.
“I’ll do it, Sir. If it makes you and Colonel Chang more confident.”

“Hey,”
I gave her my best winning smile. “I’ll be flying around a lizard-occupied
planet with three souped-up dropships, a SpecOps team with a raging hardon to
shoot something, and an absent-minded beer can. We need some adults up here to
mind the store.”

“Yes,
Colonel.”

“I’m
serious, Desai. We could lose all three dropships, and our part of the mission
will still be successful, if we’ve done our job before we crash. You would be
able to fly a Thuranin dropship down to pick up Skippy later, even if everyone
else is dead. But if we lose the Dutchman,
it is game over; we wouldn’t have any chance to deal with whatever the next
crisis is. There is always a next freaking’ crisis.”

“Welcome
to the military, Sir,” she replied with a wry smile.

“Yeah,
but the Merry Band of Pirates never gets a break. I’m thinking if we pull this
mission off successfully, I’ll ask Skippy to find us a nice uninhabited planet
with good weather and beautiful beaches, where we can chill in the sunshine
for, like, a solid month.”

“Shore
leave?” Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, telling me how very much she wished
to get off the ship for a while.

“Yeah,
shore leave.” Damn, that sounded good. I was captain of a goshdarned starship
that was equipped with immensely powerful weapons, and the best R&R I could
manage was a couple hours in the gym followed by a cheeseburger cooked on a
flattop grill. How come Captain Kirk was always flying around the galaxy making
it with hot alien babes? Why couldn’t I get any action like that?

Because
in my universe, the best-looking alien woman was a hamster. I’m sure there are
human guys who are into girls with light fur all over their bodies, but I
wasn’t one of them.

Damn
it. The Army hadn’t given us cool alien weapons, we had to steal the ones we
had. No genetic enhancements. We did have mech suits that allowed us to run
super fast, carry heavy loads and jump twenty feet in the air, but those were
Kristang powered armor suits we had stolen.

No
brain implants. No tweaks to our genes. No hot, eager alien babes. And the
whole galaxy was filled with hostile or indifferent aliens.

Man,
the future was a huge disappointment.

After
all the agonizing about how to get SpecOps troops into the city so they could
launch their Zinger missiles, then retrieve our people without the Kristang
ever knowing the city had been infiltrated, we still had not tackled the most simple
yet most difficult problem: how to get the dropships to the surface. We needed
to fly multiple dropships down from orbit onto a planet with an extensive
sensor network, that even all the incredible awesomeness of Skippy could not
fully control. Even if Skippy did have complete control over all the
overlapping and competing sensor networks, our stealthed dropships might be
detected by a single lizard looking at the night sky, and seeing a fiery streak
as our dropships burned through the upper atmosphere on their entry flight. We
had been able to land our stealthed Thuranin dropships on Paradise because
Ruhar systems were easier for Skippy to hack into, and because the Ruhar had
not completed installing a Strategic Defense network around that sleepy
agricultural planet. When we flew down to the surface of Paradise, we had taken
advantage of the vast unpopulated land areas and oceans of that world. Kobamik
had unspoiled areas of forests and jungles, it also had a population of over
two billion lizards, and a robust Strategic Defense capability.

There
was no way, simply no way, for our dropships to get to the surface without
being detected and blown out of the sky. We had wracked our collective brains
for ideas, all of which Skippy rejected as unworkable. There was simple no way
to do it.

There
was no way, until I was flossing my teeth before bed. I had the final piece to
the puzzle. Excitedly, I raced to my office and called Skippy. “Hey, Your
Lordship. I have an idea for how we can fly dropships down to the surface of Kobamik
without being detected.”

“Wow,
that is amazing, Joe,” Skippy said admiringly. Then his avatar took off his
ridiculously-sized hat and mimed scratching its round shiny head. “There is
only the teensy weensy problem that it is, how do I say this? Impossible!” The
avatar jammed its hat back on. “It is impossible! I am disappointed in you,
Joe. Actually, the fact that you have managed to fall below even my incredibly
low estimation of your intelligence is impressive by itself. I have told you
many times how difficult it is to get a dropship down through an atmosphere
without being detected. We managed to do it on Paradise only because that
planet is not yet covered by an extensive sensor network. This target is much
more difficult, even given the traditionally crappy state of Kristang sensors.”

“I
know, Skip-”

“Let
me remind you,” the avatar crossed its tiny arms, and I groaned inwardly
because I knew he was in full Professor Nerdnik lecture mode and there was no
stopping him. “A dropship making an unpowered descent creates a superheated
plasma fireball that no sensor could miss. Even with an extensive stealth
field, which consumes enormous power, the superheated air trailing behind the
dropship could not possibly be missed by infrared sensors. So incoming
dropships need to use a combination of parachutes, ballistic balloons and a
powered descent, combined with an extensive stealth field. Downward engine
thrust is required to slow and control the dropship’s descent, which is a major
problem. You can cool the exhaust to decrease the infrared signature, but the
air below the dropship is still being disturbed at near-supersonic speeds, and
sensors will almost certainly detect that.”

“I
know that, Skippy. I remember you telling me all that, and I paid attention
when you told me.”

“You
know all that?”

“Yup.”

“You
know about all those problems, and your monkey brain still says ‘Duuuuh we
should do this’?”

“Yup.”

“Oh
boy. You have a monkey-brained solution?”

“Yes,
and well, heh, heh,” I mimicked the typical asshole move he used on me, “you
are very much not going to like this, Skippy.”

“Joe, I very much DO NOT LIKE THIS!”

“Uh
huh, Skip, you might have mentioned that once or twice. Or, like, a billion
freakin’ times already. Will you shut up about it? We’re trying to concentra-”

“Do.
Not. Like. THIS!”

“Copy
that. How about you create a subroutine to say that to yourself over and over
until you just want to kill yourself, and leave us alone.”

“Fine,”
he said in a huff. “I’ve been wanting to kill myself since I met my first
smelly, hairless ape. That ‘well heh heh’ is supposed to be my line, Joe.”

“Yeah,
well, payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

“Next
time, it’s my turn.”

“Great.
How long to rendezvous?” The time was on our Thuranin dropship’s cockpit
display, and I could have seen it on my tablet or zPhone; I asked to keep him
busy.

“Thirty
seven point three seconds, until the microwormhole is in position. We are
slowing precisely to match course. Joe, we will have only eight seconds to
latch on. If we miss this hookup, we will have to go all the way around the
planet again.”

“Got
it. That’s why you are not going to miss, Skippy.”

“I’m not going to miss? I’m not flying
the dropship, you-”

“You
are controlling the cable and grapple, Skippy.”

“Oh.
Right. Well, I am certainly not going
to miss.”

“There’s
nothing to worry about, then.”

“Ha!
So, so many things to worry about, Joe.”

“How
about you let me worry, and you concentrate on getting that cable latched onto
us?”

“It’s
hard for me to concentrate, with that subroutine shouting ‘I very much do not
like this’ at me over and over.”

“What?
Oh, for crying out- Damn it, that was a joke, Skippy. Turn it-”

“Ha
ha! Just joking, Joe. Ok, we are in position. Transmitting signal to the Flying Dutchman now. Aaaaand, I see the
grappling mechanism on the end of the cable. Guiding it, huh, we are almost
perfectly in position, that is good flying by Captain Renaud. Done!” He exulted
as there was a faint ‘clunk’ sound from the upper hull of our stealthy Thuranin
dropship. “Positive lock, we’re attached. Pilot, cut main power.”

“Main
power cut, confirmed,” Renaud said worriedly, holding up his hands to show he was
not touching the controls. He had lost major control of our dropship, now being
able only to move us side to side slightly. He looked distinctly unhappy about
it.

“Commencing
descent now,” Skippy announced. “Everyone, stay in your seats and try not to
move much.”

“Uh, I
have to pee, Skippy,” I said with a wink to Lt. Williams.

“What?
Damn it, Joe, you should have done that before-”

“Joking,
Skippy, that was a joke. How are we doing?”

“Uh,
hmm. Actually, due to my overall awesomeness, there is even less vibration in
the cable than I predicted.”

“Oh,
so your prediction was faulty?” I asked with a fake frown. The truth was, I was
running my mouth nonstop out of an overabundance of nervous energy. It was
unprofessional and not something a real colonel in the United States Army
should be doing. Maybe the officer training I had completely skipped would have
trained me to be more steady in tense situations; I had always been shaky right
before combat or other extreme danger.

My
nervousness came from the fact that the operation we were engaged in was my
idea, so if it went south it would be my fault. And my fear stemmed from the
fact that, according to Skippy, no one had ever done anything quite like this.
Either way, he had assured me, this was going to be a ‘hold my beer watch this’
moment for the history books.

His
assurance did not actually reassure me at all.

Our big
Thuranin Condor dropship, a bird that was already stealthy before Skippy worked
his magic on it, was attached to a grapple at the end of a long, superthin
cable. Thin, like way more thin than a human hair. Way more thin even than
spider silk. The cable was made partly of some exotic material; trying to
understand the material’s properties had made even Dr. Friedlander’s rocket
scientist brain hurt. The cable went up above our dropship and into the near end
of a microwormhole that Skippy was holding precisely in geostationary orbit,
above one spot on the planet’s surface. The other end of the cable was anchored
to the substantial mass of the Flying
Dutchman, which was parked a quarter lightyear away outside the star
system.

The
ultrathin cable passed through a microwormhole, with almost no room on any
side. Skippy was maneuvering both ends of the wormhole, but if the Dutchman or our dropship jerked to the
side unexpectedly, the cable would be cut, and the dropship would fulfil its
name and drop like a stone. The Dutchman’s
great mass, and its position far from any gravity source, meant our star
carrier would be unlikely to move relative to the microwormhole. Lt. Colonel
Chang said he was willing to endure a substantial hit by space debris before he
risked moving the ship, and I believed him.

Our
dropship was the potential problem. The Flying
Dutchman was stationary, half a kilometer from its end of the
microwormhole. As the cable unreeled, the Dutchman
would remain at the same distance from the event horizon of the magical
microwormhole Skippy had created. The dropship, on the other end of the cable,
was getting farther and farther from the event horizon, such that any tiny
vibration created on the end of the cable was exaggerated as it traveled
upward. We had a very small margin for error; so small that Skippy had refused
to discuss it with me. “Don’t worry, Joe, it’s me,” he had said, but his voice had not contained the usual
disdainfully arrogant confidence.

In the
Condor, I was holding my breath, and when I did take shallow breaths, I tried
not to breathe evenly. Whether it made sense of not, I was afraid that
breathing in rhythm would set up a sympathetic vibration in the cable; matching
the cable’s natural resonance frequency and shaking it apart. I remember
watching an old video in basic training that had explained why soldiers should
not march in unison across a bridge. Many boots striking the deck of a bridge
at the same time, over and over, could actually shake a bridge apart.

Yeah,
I’m sure I was being silly about the breathing thing.

Maybe.

“My
prediction was not faulty, Joe,” Skippy had with a touch of pride in his voice.
“I included a safety factor for unknowns in the process of manufacturing the
cable. The Dutchman’s fabrication
facilities were not designed to create exotic items like our yoyo string.”

“Please do not call it a yoyo string,” I
stuttered nervously.

“Oh,
I’m sorry, Joe. What is a better term for an incredibly flimsy-”

“Do
not use the word flimsy either. It is a cable, Skippy. An amazingly strong,
secure, thick cable that will never fail to hold up this dropship.”

“Oh,
sure. It is amazingly strong and secure, even if it is not thick, unless you
mean ‘thick’ compared to a hydrogen atom. The cable’s strength is not in
question, Joe, my concern is if there are vibrations that-”

“Which
you won’t let happen, right?”

“Doing
my best here, Joey.” The fact that he didn’t manage a snappier reply, told me
even Skippy’s vast processing power was straining to predict and control the
gossamer thin cable and the two ends of the microwormhole.

Because
the greatest risk in the atmospheric entry operation was the heavy dropship
swinging back and forth on the end of the cable, we had selected a landing zone
for light and predictable winds. The landing zone was not optimal for the
assault operation, being far from any targets. I was totally, enthusiastically
willing to accept that compromise if it meant getting our five stealth-enhanced
dropship down safely.

Five
dropships. We needed three Kristang Dragons to implement the ambitious,
complicated assault plan developed by Major Smythe and his SpecOps team. We
used two of the big Thuranin Condors to bring down personnel and equipment. We
only had one cable; the equipment aboard the Dutchman had only been able to make one.

The
plan was for one dropship at a time to rendezvous with the grapple on the end
of the cable, and be lowered almost to the surface. After each dropship was
released, the cable would be retracted and await the next dropship. My dropship
went first, because if my whole insane bird-on-a-wire trick didn’t work, I did
not want two other teams to suffer for it. As it was, if the flimsy cable
failed, the eighteen people aboard our dropship were likely going to die.
Captain Renaud was confident he could fly us down safely if the cable got
severed, but any sudden, frantic maneuvering would be broadcasting our presence
to the Kristang sensor network. If that disaster struck us, Skippy was
confident, somewhat confident, uh, shmaybe fifty/fifty, that we could evade the
Kristang for a while. Eventually, the Kristang would corner us, or we would run
out of food. Either option wasn’t good. My plan, which Major Smythe grimly
agreed with, was to proceed with the assault operation with my one dropship, if
disaster struck.

Hopefully,
disaster would strike the Kristang instead. Disaster, in the form of the Merry
Band of Pirates hitting them hard where and when they least expected it.

I
managed to keep silent as we slowly were lowered down to contact the
atmosphere, then down, down, down through increasingly thick air. Skippy’s
annoying programming restrictions prevented him from flying the dropship he was
aboard, and Renaud’s reflexes were not close to being fast enough, so we relied
on the Thuranin autopilot to keep us stable in the fickle winds.

I
remember my father taking me out to watch planes take off and land at Logan
airport when we lived in Boston; it was a cheap way to entertain a young boy,
and family money was especially tight back then. We lived in Boston the first
six years of my life, then we moved to Maine; that is why my accent is all
screwed up. People in Boston think I have a Down East accent, people in Maine
think I sound like a townie from Boston. And I picked up some words and slang
from the French Canadiens who are scattered all over northern Maine; that’s why
people have trouble understanding me sometimes. Anyway, the first time I saw
one of those giant double-decker Airbus A380s coming in across the water, it
was moving so slowly against the clouds, I could not believe its wings had
anything to do with keeping it in the air. I asked my father if there was an
invisible string holding it up, and he told me yes. He said all pilots knew the
secret about invisible strings; pilots told the public about fancy things like
‘aerodynamics’ because it made them sound cool. I totally believed my father.
Hey, back then, I was five years old and I believed in Santa Claus. Now, my
aircraft truly was hanging on the end of an invisible string, and the magical
being I believed in was a beer can rather than Santa.

The
worst moment was when we dropped down through the upper edge of the planet’s
jet stream. I questioned Skippy’s decision to send us through a river of air
moving at 600 miles per hour, but he assured me the jet stream was steady and
predictable, with calm air below it. I felt the dropship vibrating through my
seat and the sensation made me queasy.

But he was correct, or lucky, or both; we
made it through the jet stream and the vibration dampened out. “See, Joe, trust
the awesomeness.”

“Right.”
I couldn’t say any more, because my bladder was weak at the moment.

Anyway,
we reached our designated release point, fifteen hundred meters above the
surface, in a remote area with rough, forbidding mountainous terrain all
around. The release point was down in a canyon, so the dropship would be partly
masked from sensors by the mountain peaks and ridges around us. Skippy waited
until the engines spooled up to the point where they were holding us aloft by
themselves, then he released the grapple from our hull. Renaud moved the
dropship down and to the left, as the cable end gently sprung straight up.

“Take
us down, Pilot,” I ordered. “How is the cable, Skippy?”

“A little
dicey there right after release,” he admitted. “I know what to expect now, the
next two times should be smoother. I do not anticipate any problems steering
the grapple back up, Joe. Maneuvering and stealth capabilities of the grappling
device are operating nominally.”

“Great,”
I breathed a shuddering sigh, and suddenly my bladder did not need my urgent
attention. Hey, I’m good now, Joe, my bladder said to me, I’m just chilling,
take your time. Traitorous internal organ. “Signal Major Smythe he can begin
his rendezvous maneuver.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Major Smythe’s
dropship coasted upward away from the planet, slowing rapidly as the gravity
well’s pull bled off the dropship’s speed. “How are we doing?” Smythe leaned
forward in the cockpit jumpseat and asked with uncharacteristic nervousness. In
almost every mission he had been assigned, the part he found most difficult to
deal with was what the planners called ‘ingress’; the flight inbound. The
ingress, typically involving a flight aboard a terrain-hugging helicopter, or a
high-altitude jump from a jet followed by opening a parachute at low altitude,
was the part Smythe and his team had no control over. On every mission, Smythe
had sat exactly as he was in the dropship; strapped into a seat with nothing to
do and little control over his fate. A missile, or even a single lucky bullet
could knock an aircraft out of the sky, and an entire SAS team could be lost
without every firing a shot.

He had
been in many missions more nerve-wracking than the current drop. Helicopters
flying at night at high altitude over mountains in Afghanistan, or flying in
heavy weather. Here, the dropship’s flight was completely smooth, with no sense
of motion. Why was he letting his nerves get the best of him?

Because,
he told himself, if he had failed during his missions on Earth, Britain would
suffer a minor setback in foreign policy objectives. Or one group of terrorists
would be replaced by another group of terrorists. If his current mission
failed, humanity could lose their entire bloody home planet. The stakes were a
bit higher.

“We’re
fine, Sir,” the pilot replied with a touch of annoyance in his voice. To assure
there was no possibility of communications issues, the pilot assigned to
Smythe’s dropship was a Royal Air Force officer. The pilot was immensely proud
to be given the assignment, and he immensely wished Major Smythe of 22 SAS
Regiment would watch a bloody in-flight movie and be quiet. Smythe and his
SpecOps teams were razor-sharp warriors, but aboard Flight Lieutenant Windsor’s
dropship, they were no more than passengers. “This will be interesting, Reed,”
Windsor muttered to his American copilot. “We’re twenty seconds from
freefalling downward, and I don’t see the grapple on sensors.”

“I’m
not seeing the grapple, or the transponder field of the microwormhole,” she
replied with increasing concern. The window to connect with the grapple was
distressingly narrow; three seconds on either side of the target mark. The
Kristang dropship was almost at the top of its unpowered arc, about to lose the
last of its momentum and begin falling into the planet gravity well. The
mathematics of orbital mechanics were brutally unforgiving of mistakes; if they
missed the still-invisible grapple, the dropship would be free-falling toward
the atmosphere. Pilots Windsor and Reed would need to use the barest minimum of
thrust to fly around the curve of the planet rather than giving away their presence
as a bright streak in the atmosphere, and their next opportunity to connect
with the grapple would not occur for another nine hours. That would be another nine
hours during which their Kristang dropship might be detected by the planet’s
extensive sensor coverage. And it would delay the next phase of their crucial
mission.

The
window for the grapple was not the only narrow margin they pilots faced. If the
grapple missed for any reason, every second they delayed applying power to
alter course meant they would need to apply more power later. The more thrust
they needed to coax from the engines, the more likely it was their stealthed Condor
would be detected. Sooner was definitely better if they missed the grapple;
Windsor and Reed had agreed to wait five seconds after the grapple window
closed, then they would activate the autopilot for the preprogrammed go-around maneuver.
Going around after a missed approach was routine for pilots, but this time,
Reed thought incredulously, they would have to go around an entire planet to make another approach
to the grapple.

“Trust
the awesomeness,” Windsor whispered.

“What?”
Reed tore her eyes away from the navigation console to glance at the pilot,
eyes wide in questioning surprise.

“We
have to trust that dodgy beer can,” Windsor whispered. “If he fails, we’re
buggered anyway.”

Reed
did not reply to Windsor’s remark, as she didn’t have time. “Begin window in
four, three, two, one, mark.” The window for contact with the grapple only
lasted six seconds. “One down, two down, three-”

There
was a soft clanging sound from the topside of the dropship, and the consoles
lit up. “Contact,” Reed breathed softly. “Solid contact. We’re attached.” She
held up her hands to show she was not touching any of the controls. “I never
saw the transponder.”

“It
saw us, that’s the important part. We’re attached to the yoyo,” Windsor
announced with a quick swing of his head in Smythe’s direction. “Enjoy the lift
ride, we have a long way down.”

“Dodgy
I am, huh?” Skippy’s voice boomed over the cockpit speakers. “I caught you with
the grapple within seven hundredths of a second from the target time. What do
you think of that, you cheeky bugger?”

Windsor
managed a hearty laugh. “Mister Skippy, any time you can catch us on a yoyo
string like that, you can call me any name you wish.”

“Huh,”
Skippy sniffed. “I guess you did say to trust my awesomeness, so I’ll give you points
for that. Cable operation is nominal. The winds at ground level have picked up
a bit, we may need to alter the landing zone. I’ll know in about eighty eight
minutes.”

“Nothing
for us to do until then?” Smythe asked, relieved.

“Isn’t
this when you Brits typically have tea and crumpets?” Skippy asked in a teasing
tone.

“Right
now,” Smythe squeezed his hands to control the last of their trembling, “I
would prefer a gin and tonic, if you please. You can skip the tonic.”

“We’re
down,” Reed announced the obvious, as everyone aboard the dropship had felt the
craft settle to the soil of the alien planet, and heard the engines spooling
down. The ride down on the yoyo string had been even more smooth than the first
dropship experienced; Skippy had more accurate data on the nanofiber cable and
was able to anticipate and prevent vibrations from beginning. Winds at the
surface required release from the grapple at a higher altitude than the first
ship, so Reed had monitored the dropship’s stealth field and passive sensors.
while Windsor flew them down using minimum power. There was a scary moment when
a patrol of three Kristang aircraft flew toward them at high speed, but the
patrol passed by seventy kilometers to the east and never detected anything
unusual.

“Two
down, three to go,” Skippy announced with smug self-satisfaction. “Retracting
the cable now. Damn, Joe, this is actually working. When you told me your
monkey-brained idea to lower dropships to the surface on a yoyo string, I was
looking forward to endless opportunities to tell you what a moron you are. But
then I realized my disdain for this idea did not encompass one hugely important
factor.”

“Huh?”
I was distracted by watching the symbols for the third, fourth and fifth
dropships coasting toward their individual rendezvous with the grapple. There
was a whole lot that could still go wrong with this phase of the operation.
Anything could go wrong, and we couldn’t afford to have even one thing get
screwed up. “What’s that?”

“My
incredible awesomeness, of course. I almost forgot that with Skippy the
Magnificent, the impossible becomes ordinary.”

“Uh
huh. Hey, speaking of impossible things, is there any chance that you’ll stop
bragging about yourself?”

“Let’s
not get crazy, Joe. I owe it to the universe to let people know about me, so
they can bask in my awesomeness. Anyway, you had another typically idiotic
idea, and I made it happen. Behold, the miracle that is me.”

“It
would be a miracle if he would shut up,” Lt. Williams muttered.

I
ignored Skippy while I watched the grapple retract, and the first of our three
Kristang dropships losing speed as it coasted upward away from the planet’s
gravity well. Each dropship followed a very precise course so that it would
reach the top of its arc at the exact moment it was below the grapple. The
speed and direction of the dropship at that point also needed to be exactly the
same as the planet’s surface directly below. If the dropship missed the
grapple, it would be falling toward the atmosphere, and would need to
immediately execute a minimum-power go-around maneuver to swing entirely around
the planet to try again. During its unplanned orbit, the dropship would be
passing through multiple overlapping satellite and ground-based detection
grids. Skippy had infiltrated the sensor networks of all the clans who
maintained facilities on the surface, he still warned that there were so many
networks sharing data, even he had difficulty fooling all the networks so that
none of them detected conflicting sensor inputs.

Once
our second Thuranin dropship was down, we next had to get our three Kristang
dropships to the surface. We needed the three Kristang dropships for the
assault phase of the op; if the dropships were detected, we could not be seen
flying around in a Thuranin craft, or that would blow the whole purpose of
getting the lizard clans to fight each other. If the Kristang knew outsiders
were interfering in clan relations, that would backfire on us by getting the clans
to unite against a common enemy. So we would be using our modified Kristang
dropships to conduct the attacks. Once the clans were fighting and it was time
us to skedaddle out of there, we would not be risking our lives in anything but
the best spacecraft available. The Thuranin dropships were faster, more
stealthy, had far greater range and more practical for extended voyages. My
plan was to ditch the Kristang ships, hopefully make them fly out to sea on
autopilot before exploding. All three teams would then board the two Thuranin
dropships. If everything went according to plan, we would use the yoyo string
trick in reverse; hauling the dropships up above the atmosphere on a cable.
Once each dropship reached maximum altitude, the grapple would be released and
the dropship use its acquired momentum to fly off out of orbit, then activate
engines at a safe distance. All that remained of the final phase of the mission
would be for the two dropships to fly through hopefully empty space for three
weeks, until a quick pre-planned rendezvous with the Dutchman.

Anyway,
we got all five dropships to the surface successfully. None of them were
detected or damaged. The next item in the plan was for all five ships to fly to
a location with better concealment. One of the Thuranin dropships took the
lead, with the other one in the rear and the three Kristang birds strung out in
between, like baby ducks following their mother. That flight took only three
hours and a couple years off my life. We put up stealth netting over the five
spacecraft, material which enhanced the stealth effect each bird projected with
its own field. Then we settled down to wait out the daylight hours, huddled
inside so our body heat did not pose any risk of leaking through the stealth
effect.

Once
darkness fell, our first order of business was topping off the fuel tanks of
the Kristang ships from the much larger Thuranin ships. The fuel each type of
ship used was incompatible, of course, making logistics wonderfully more
complicated. Then we checked out all five ships with a fine-toothed comb, an
exercise Skippy insisted was a waste of time as he was already monitoring
everything possible.

Skippy’s
awesomeness hacked into the civilian networks of our target city, the local
home of the Fire Dragon clan. The city was called Kallandre, and it was a
densely-packed urban nightmare to me. According to our Chinese crew, Kallandre
reminded them of Shanghai, only bigger. The buildings were tall and glittering
in the daylight; Kristang may be hateful MFers but they seemed to like showy
architecture. I was impressed by most of the towers near the city center, which
surrounded the local Fire Dragon leadership compound.

My
biggest surprise came when Skippy zoomed in to show us a typical street on the
outer edge of the city. There were sleek-looking buses, big boxy trucks, and
many rolling things that looked like shapeless blobs. “That is a Kristang car?” I was surprised. In my mind, the lizards
flew around in aircraft. If I had ever thought of them having civilian ground
vehicles, I imagined cool hovercraft, or some wild-ass Mad Max type truck. What
I saw had skinny tires and was about the most uncool car I’d seen in a long
time. The styling seemed to have been done by someone who could not afford a
car, and hated those lizards who could buy them.

“Yes,
Joe. You expected flying cars? Those are impractical in an urban or semi-urban
environment. Also, flying is energy-intensive for short journeys. What you are
seeing is a typical privately-owned civilian vehicle on many Kristang planets.”

“Oh
man, my grandparents had a car like that. You know, I can’t even remember what
it was, the damned thing was so instantly forgettable. It was originally my
grandmother’s car, then my grandfather decided to use it commuting around the
beltway near Boston; it was such a POS that he didn’t care whether he hit a
giant pothole or someone smacked it in a parking lot. Other than the windows, I
don’t think my grandfather ever washed it,” I laughed. “In a way, that car was a
form of advanced stealth technology. The car was so boring, it was freakin’ invisible.
If you were robbing a bank, it would be the perfect getaway car; you could just
park it right in front of the bank, hide in it and the cops would drive right
by. The car could be parked in front of witnesses and they would be like ‘I
don’t know, officer, it was kind of a beige blob with wheels?’ The official
police artist sketch of the car would be a blank sheet of paper. Seriously, I
think the engineers who designed this thing were hired from a pharmaceutical
company that made sleeping pills. It was the perfect crapcan for people who
have totally given up on life. The workers on the assembly line who made it
snuck that car out the side door when it was finished; they were too
embarrassed that they had built such a soul-killing turdmobile.”

“Hmm,”
Skippy mused. “When we get back to Earth, I will advise that car company not to
hire you as their new director of marketing. I’m sensing you were not a big fan
of that particular car, Joe?”

“Oh,
actually it was great in a way. My sister inherited it when she was a senior
and I borrowed it once in a while. You could not get a speeding ticket in that thing; the cops could never
believe it could go that fast, they figured their radar gun was busted. And, I
think the cops felt sorry for anybody driving that hooptie piece of crap. I’ll
tell you what; my father was thrilled about my sister driving that thing. As
soon as one of her boyfriends sat in it, he could feel his balls shrinking. I
wonder where that car is now?”

“Most
of it is sadly rusting away in a junkyard in Skowhegan,” Skippy stated.

“What?
Come on, Skippy, you’re bullshitting me. How could you know that?”

“I just
looked up the vehicle registration records.”

“From
here? We’re thousands of lightyears from Maine.”

“I
told you, I downloaded all available data that was stored in digital format
before we left Earth. Duh.
Easy-peasy, Joe. Your sister sold that car to a guy who intended to fix it up
and sell it, but having that car around was depressing the other cars in his
shop, so he junked it. The junkyard owner has not even bothered to strip it for
parts, he just parked it and tried to forget about it.”

“That
should be easy.”

“Uh oh, Joe. We gots potential trouble,”
Skippy announced quietly in my zPhone earpiece.

“Crap,”
I almost slapped my forehead in frustration. I knew it could be serious because
Skippy used poor grammar like ‘gots’. “What is it this time? Damn it, we just
landed!”

“There’s
no danger to us,” he hurried to assure me. “Well, no immediate danger. No
danger at all, really, unless you decide to do something stupid. Although,
hmmm, I’m talking to you, so stupid is pretty much guaranteed.”

“Thank
you for the heartwarming vote of confidence, Skippy. What is the problem?”

“Keepers,
Joe. I just learned a shipment of eleven Keepers arrived at Kobamik six days
ago. Two of them are already dead; they were used for hunting, as a
demonstration of how humans can provide good sport. The other nine are
scheduled to be auctioned to the highest bidders soon; to be used either for
sport, or as curiosities, or cannon fodder in suicide missions.”

“Oh,
this is not good.”

“Perhaps
I should not have been flippant earlier, Joe. I can see this news distresses
you. Would it help if I provided the names of the humans?”

“No!
No, that would make it worse- Wait. Do I know any of them? I asked, my stomach
tied in knots.

“You
have not met any of them.”

That
made doing my job a bit easier. “Give me details of where these people are
being held,” I didn’t want to know, but it was my job. He told me, and it
wasn’t good. “Thanks, Skippy. I need to inform Chotek.”

Chotek
was in the other Thuranin dropship, being briefed by Major Smythe and his team
leaders on the upcoming operation. Giraud was speaking when I came through the
airlock door. Since Giraud and his team caught a strong dose of radiation from
being too close when the Dutchman jumped
to kill that Thuranin cruiser, the French paratroopers had been on light duty
while they healed internally. He hadn’t said anything to me about it, but I
knew the enforced idleness and being out of action was hurting the French worse
than the radiation damage or Dr. Skippy’s treatment. Chotek held up a finger to
halt Giraud, and looked at me. “Yes, Colonel?” The expression on my face must
have alerted him to trouble.

“Sir,
we have a complication. Skippy discovered there are nine humans, from the Keeper
faction, on the planet. They are going to be auctioned off within the week.
There were eleven, but two have already been killed by the Kristang.”

Chotek
steepled his hands while he considered the news I dumped on him. At such times,
I thought I could see a great weariness in him. He had signed up for a simple
mission: to learn whether the Thuranin were sending another ship to Earth. I’m
sure he thought his biggest responsibility would be preventing me from sending
the ship on risky adventures. When he signed onto the mission, he might have
expected all we needed to do was park the ship outside a Thuranin star system,
and wait while Skippy listened to transmissions. As soon as Skippy heard the
expected good news, we could fly the ship back to Earth, where Hans Chotek
would receive accolades and congratulations and never have to see me or the
Merry Band of Pirates again. Instead, we had to board and capture a Thuranin
relay station. Then, rather than peacefully waiting to learn what the Thuranin
planned to do, we flew off to rescue UNEF on Paradise. Chotek was no doubt
irritated that he was being asked to make too many decisions. While Chotek
stared at me and tapped his lips with the fingers, no one spoke. “Colonel, if
you are proposing that we risk this crew and exposing our presence here, to
rescue nine-”

“No,
Sir,” I interjected. “They are being held in a secure underground facility; I
don’t see any practical way to pull them out. I, thought you should know.”

Chotek
looked to me, then at Giraud, then back at me. Rene Giraud and I were the only
people on Kobamik who had served with UNEF on Paradise; we had the strongest
ties to people there. Giraud spoke before Chotek could open his mouth. “The
Keepers made their choice. If they do not like the result,” he shrugged, “it is
their problem. Our mission is to protect Earth, we cannot risk the mission for
nine misguided people.”

Maybe
the others thought it was not their place to speak, if Giraud and I both agreed
we weren’t going to pull the Keeper’s asses out of the fire.

“I
would like information about this facility where the Keepers are being held,”
Smythe finally spoke. “if circumstances change, and we have opportunity to
rescue these people with minimum risk,” he didn’t need to finish the thought.

Chotek
sighed. “We may have a moral obligation to do what we can for the Keepers,” he
said uncertainly. “My understanding is their continued loyalty to the Kristang,
is based on the mistaken idea that the ‘Fortune Cookies’ received from Earth
were faked by the Ruhar.”

“Or
they are just idiots,” I muttered. “I don’t know whether it matters what their
motivation is. They’re humans, and we do have an obligation to them. If we
could simply fly in and pick them up, Sir,” I looked at Chotek, “I would be
arguing for a rescue mission.” I shook my head. “I don’t see it happening.”

“A
rescue also poses the risk of the Kristang asking who would want to rescue, or
steal, humans,” Giraud warned. “It may be prestigious for a clan to own humans,
but they surely cannot be considered so valuable they are worth stealing?”

“No,”
Skippy’s voice came through the dropship’s speakers. “Giraud is correct, any
attempt to rescue humans would need to consider a cover story, or the Kristang
would certainly become curious about who wanted lowly humans so badly.”

Chotek
looked at the clock on his tablet. “Major Smythe, you may investigate
possibilities of a rescue, after our
mission here is completely successfully. In the meantime, please continue with
your briefing. Your team needs to launch in only a few hours.”

The
teams were prepared and in their dropships, I didn’t waste everyone’s time with
a boring speech. We all had jobs to do, and we all knew the stakes were the
survival of humanity. They didn’t need to hear anything from me.

Skippy,
however, had another idea. “As we embark on this difficult and dangerous quest,
I have selected a medley of musical numbers that are appropriate for such a
dramatic-”

“Skippy!”
I shouted. “Please! No freakin’ showtun-”

“To dreeeeeeam, the impossible dreeeeeeam. To
fight, the unbeeeetable foe-”

“Oh, bollocks.”
Major Smythe summed up what everyone was thinking, and we all cracked up. It
was a breach of discipline, and it was totally worth it.

“-to be willing to march into hell for that
heavenly cause-”

Knowing
Skippy, there was nothing for us to do but let him finish, even though his
tuneless voice was like listening to someone strangle a cat. Skippy was an
incredibly powerful Elder AI who could tear a hole in a star, but he could not
sing worth a damn.

“-and I’ll always dreeeeeam the impossible
dreeeeeam. Yes, and I’ll reach the unreachable staaaaaaaar!”

“Bravo!
That was great, Skippy, thank you,” I clapped quickly, before he could launch
into another tune in his planned medley.

“Oh,
thank you, Joe.” His avatar actually blushed slightly. “How about an encore?”

“No!
No, no, let’s, uh, all bask in the moment, Ok?”

“Ok,”
he said happily.

“Question
for you, though. You, uh, mentioned this is a difficult and dangerous quest. Do
you think singing about an impossible dream is the best way to inspire us? How
about we start with a merely improbable dream?”

“Joey,
Joey, Joey.” The avatar shook its head. “We have a troop of ignorant monkeys
and an absent-minded beer can against an entire galaxy of hostile aliens. Impossible
doesn’t begin to describe this quest.”

“The
beer can has a point,” Lt. Williams muttered. “Jesus. I never thought those
words would come out of my mouth. Where did my life go wrong?”

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Major
Smythe stared, mesmerized, out the open back ramp of the Thuranin dropship.
Below him the lights of Kallandre stretched out, a stark contrast to the almost
lightless darkness of the surrounding countryside. To the north, west and
south, the edges of the city were fairly well delineated by lights of roadways
which formed a barrier between urban area and the hunting preserves. To the
east, the city’s lights bled off more casually, with estates of the wealthy
dotting the land all the way to the seacoast that was barely visible.

In the
artificial vision of Smythe’s helmet visor, important parts of the city were
outlined in red or yellow; high-security areas to be avoided. From high above,
the Kristang city did not look very much different from any bustling city on
Earth; although Smythe had been surprised by the lack of skyscraper buildings.
The tallest building was a residential tower of around fifty stories, and most
of the city was covered in buildings of twenty or fewer floors. Surely with
their technology the Kristang could build taller buildings; there must be some
cultural reason why height was limited.

They
were flying at around thirteen thousand meters, the standard altitude for
commercial air traffic in that zone of the planet, in order for the Condor to
be disguised as an air transport. Skippy was hacking the local air traffic
control system and military sensor networks, and the dropship was in full
stealth mode while Skippy fed the Kristang sensors images of a civilian jet
aircraft. There were issues neither the magic of Skippy nor the sophisticated
Thuranin stealth field could completely mitigate; the disturbance of the air as
the big dropship flew onward. According to Skippy, their greatest risk of
detection was due to the dropship’s wake, which was noticeably more violent
than that left by a commercial aircraft. Particularly during the brief time
they had the back ramp open, passage of the dropship through the air left
swirling patterns even Kristang sensors could detect. When Smythe tore his gaze
away from the city below to look straight backwards, the nose of the second
Thuranin Condor was no more than five meters behind the tail of the dropship he
was riding. The dropships were flying in formation so the effect of the two
being tucked nose to tail were like racing cars drafting; the two together
formed a smoother, more aerodynamic shape, and helped disguise the fact that
alien spacecraft were overflying a city controlled by the Fire Dragon clan.

Smythe
tapped a helmet control so the image fed to his suit by the dropship
disappeared, and looked out on utter blackness. Inside the stealth field which
bent light around the ship, no outside light was visible. He saw the lights of
the dropship’s rear bay, the faint blinking navigation beacon on the nose of
the dropship close behind, and his companions lined up with him to jump when
their turns came. The absolute blackness was unnerving, he had jumped out of
airplanes and helicopters at night and in clouds, and there was always
something at least faintly visible beyond the aircraft. Not here. The
navigation light on the trailing dropship blinked and the light was not
reflected off anything around them, that light also was absorbed and bent in
unnatural ways.

He
switched back to the artificial view and checked the time code in the upper
right of his helmet visor. Twenty seconds remaining. “Robertson, are you
ready?” He asked his companion.

“Never
better, Major.” The view Smythe had of Robertson’s face was also artificial as
the faceplate was set to dull mat black for maximum stealth. “Can hardly wait.”
In Smythe’s visor, Robertson was keyed up but grinning eagerly. Like Smythe,
Robertson was wearing powered armor, and was burdened with a parachute, a
stealth field generator in a backpack, and a Zinger antiaircraft missile.
Robertson and Smythe would be the first to jump. The mission was to parachute
down over an alien city and land on the roof of a building. Below them were
thousands of heavily-armed Kristang warriors and clan security forces. Danger
came not only from those lizards carrying weapons, for the thirty three million
Kristang civilian men, women and children in Kallandre would instantly report
the presence of humans, if Smythe and his SpecOps teams were noticed. A
civilian did not need to know what a ‘human’ was to know such creatures had no
business walking around unescorted in a Kristang city. Speed, stealth, their
Kristang powered armor and the intervention of Skippy would all be needed to
successfully complete the mission and get everyone out safely. Their friendly
absent-minded beer can had to warn the teams of enemy positions and intentions,
and prevent remote sensors from detecting strange aliens moving about the city.

“Robertson,”
Smythe chided his fellow SAS trooper for unseemly eagerness. “You realize we
are about to jump with both feet into the heart of an enemy city, that is
crawling with thousands, perhaps millions of genetically-enhanced
superwarriors?”

“Yes
sir,” Robertson’s teeth flashed white in the artificial light. “Don’t worry,
I’ll save one or two of them for you.”

“That’s
the proper attitude,” Smythe smiled back. An alarm chimed and Smythe reminded
himself to relax rather than bracing for launch. Unlike during the spacedive on
the heavy-gravity planet they called Jumbo, Smythe was not encased in an
aeroshell, for he would not be burning down through an atmosphere at hypersonic
speeds. Another alarm chimed, then a voice announced “Five, four, three, two,
one-.”

Smythe
was propelled backwards, out and down in controlled fashion, falling feet
first. He only had the briefest terrifying glimpse of the trailing dropship’s
belly, then he plunged through and beyond the weirdness of the dropship’s
light-bending stealth field, and again saw the lights of the city sprawled
below his dangling feet. A featherweight nanofabric drogue parachute deployed
and gradually slowed his progress, slowing him from commercial airliner cruise
speed to a velocity provided only by gravity. As he slowed, the chute widened
unseen above him and began automatically steering him toward his designated landing
zone; an office building that was mostly unoccupied at that late hour. In
Smythe’s visor, he saw the building’s roof outlined in vividly glowing green,
the view from outside his personal stealth field provided by a probe protruding
below one of his boots. Without the probe, he would be falling in utter
darkness, having no idea where he was.

“Eight
thousand meters,” reported the suit’s computer in a voice Smythe had learned
American pilots called Bitching Betty. He did not know whether Betty was an appropriate
name, but ‘Bitching’ certainly described the digital assistant. Skippy had been
asked multiple times to reprogram the Kristang computer, and he said he had
made several attempts, but it continued to be annoying. Smythe suspected Skippy
liked that the suit computer occasionally tormented the users. “Glide path is
nominal,” the emotionless voice noted. In his visor, Smythe could see his
projected glide path as a white line, and the planned descent course in blue.
The white almost perfectly overlaid the blue. “Seven thousand meters.” Smythe
tried to relax, scanning the target rooftop and surrounding area for threats,
using the suit’s own relatively impressive passive sensors and the feed Skippy
was providing from the local security network. “Six thous-”

“Hello,
Major Smythe,” Skippy’s own voice interrupted. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,
brilliant,” Smythe was mildly alarmed by the tone of the alien AI’s voice.
“What is wrong?”

“Wrong?
What makes you think anyth- Oh, forget it. Well, heh heh, this is a funny
story-”

“Funny
to me?”

“Uh,
afterwards, maybe. Don’t all dangerous situations seem funny when you’re
telling the story later? Instead of focusing on the threat, imagine you are
sipping a pint in a pub back in Jolly Old England, telling amusing anecdotes
about this little-”

“What
is wrong?” Smythe was completely focused. His visor wasn’t showing any threats.

“Here’s
the situation: a Kristang cadet, who is second son of a senior clan leader, has
taken a fighter aircraft out for a joyride, and he is headed in your direction.
He does not know you are there, of course, neither you nor Lt. Robertson have
been detected.”

“Why
is this a problem, then?” Smythe hoped the young hotshot did not plan to land
his fighter in the roof of the target building, and he zoomed in to inspect the
roof more closely. That building had been chosen in part because it did not
have significant obstructions that might impale the SAS troops or snag the
parachutes, but also because that roof did not include a landing pad for
aircraft.

“Because
his aircraft is flying aerobatics at high speed, just below your altitude. He
will be approaching you in only a few seconds. The air traffic controllers are
already ordering him to clear the area, but everyone knows his father’s
position in the clan hierarchy allows the son to do pretty much whatever he
wants.”

“Understood.
What can I do?”

“You
can’t do anything. I am telling you because I am about to release your
parachute; it would be shredded by the turbulence of his jetwash. You will
freefall through the turbulence, then I will activate your backup chute. There
is not enough time to collapse and retract your main chute.”

“Do
what you can, Skippy,” Smythe told himself he had been in worse situations, as
he felt the chute straps detach and he plunged downward. Falling out of control
toward the surface of a planet more than a thousand lightyears from home, above
a city filled with hostile aliens, and little hope of rescue if he could not
reach the primary or alternate landing zones. Moments later, he was spun head
over heels in the air as something flashed by him close enough for his visor to
display the outline of a Kristang single-seat fighter aircraft. The turbulence
was violent enough that the helmet’s internal pillows inflated to prevent his
skull from smacking into the back of the hard shell. Even so, he briefly lost
consciousness and was completely disoriented for several moments as he tumbled
out of control. The view from the visor was dizzying, and he saw that all the
visor was showing was a feed from the local sensor network, the probe that
extended outside the suit’s stealth field must have been damaged. “Four
thousand meters,” the suit announced. “Danger. You are falling unsupported.
Recommend you deploy descent-control apparatus.”

“I’d
love to, you sodding bugger,” Smythe said through teeth he had clenched to
prevent losing his dinner all over the inside of the visor. “Skippy?”

“I am
here, Major. I am happy you were not seriously injured; Lt. Robertson fared
better than you. You are clear of the turbulence, engaging suit stabilizers.”

Smythe
stopped spinning rather abruptly, his feet swung back and forth three times,
then he was falling smoothly feet first. The backup probe must have extended
down from his other boot, because he now had a clear view below, not only the
synthetic composite image from the local network. “That was good, can-”

“Deploying
backup chute,” Skippy announced. “Major, this chute deploys more slowly and is
smaller, therefore it has less capacity. As you cannot discard either your
stealth generator or Zinger missile over the city without giving away your
position, your landing could be rougher than anticipated.”

“Could
be?” Smythe grunted; the backup chute had deployed more abruptly than his main
chute had. His legs swung wildly once, twice before the suit’s stabilizers
halted the dangerous movement.

“Will
be. The landing will be rough, very rough. I was attempting to put a positive
spin on the situation.”

“Skippy,
I am a soldier. Give me the facts.”

“Very
well. The backup chute is not able to land you and the missile without damage
to both. Since the missile cannot guide itself, what I propose is that just
before you impact, I mean, sorry, before you land on the roof, you release
yourself from the chute. I will guide the chute to drop the missile softly
down. Lt. Robertson is still using his main chute, he does not have the same
problem.”

“Leaving
me to fall by myself? How far?”

“No
more than ten meters. Well, maybe twelve.”

“Twel-”
Major Smythe bit off his reply. Twelve meters, nearly forty feet. Even with the
protection of his powered suit, he could not survive a twelve meter fall, and
the sound of the heavy impact on the roof would alert every Kristang in the
vicinity of the building. “This,” he swallowed to control his suddenly
quivering lips, “maneuver you propose, it will allow Lt. Robertson to use my
missile?”

“Yes,
it should- wait, what? Why would Robertson use your missile?”

Smythe
forced himself to tear his eyes away from the rapidly-approaching roof. When he
signed up for the Army, and later during his SAS training and service, he had
never expected to die on an alien planet. Certainly not to die by falling onto
the roof of an office building. It seemed so casually ordinary. Not a death
appropriate for the Special Air Service. “The mission parameters require two
missiles to ensure success. If I am unable to fire my missile, Robertson needs
to do it.”

“Um,
perhaps I am missing something here,” Skippy sounded puzzled. “For what reason
would you be unable to fire your- oh. Crap. Major Smythe, I apologize. You are
thinking a twelve meter fall will render you dead or disabled?”

“Unless
you know something I don’t.”

“Ha!
There is not enough time for me to list everything I know that you don’t. In
this case, I know that I plan to trigger your suit’s boot thrusters after you
are released from the parachute. While the thrusters have a limited capacity,
if I use up all the fuel in one hard burn, they will slow your fall enough that
it will feel like falling no more than two meters. And the shock absorbers in
the legs and spine of the suit will cushion both the effect on your body, and
the impact forces on the roof.”

“Ah,”
realization that he would not die right then dawned on Smythe in a brief
shudder he was unable to control. “Thank you, Skippy.”

“No
need to thank me, Major Smythe. If you were scared, that was my fault. I should
have considered how the information might be perceived. Although I will deny it
if you tell anyone, I am rather fond of you backwards humans, particularly those
like yourself who have reached the peak of your profession by hard work and
dedication.”

“That
was,” Smythe was sufficiently thrown off balance he had to search for words. “Nice?” It was odd using that word to
describe a being who normally was proud to be an arsehole.  “Again, thank you.”

“Ah,
don’t get all mushy on me,” Skippy sniffed. “Save your thanks for after you
land safely. There is a whole lot that could still go wrong.”

“Such
as another joyriding fighter pilot?”

“Nope.
Air traffic control finally called in a military air patrol to close the area
to unauthorized traffic. You might be pleased to hear that joyriding jackass
suffered a catastrophic engine failure over the ocean a couple seconds ago. He
had to eject at high speed, and that broke both of his legs.”

“An
engine failure?” Smythe asked suspiciously.

“Yup.
For some unknown reason, the locking pins that hold the engine fan blades
stationary during maintenance engaged in flight. What a terrible, shockingly unfortunate event,” Skippy lamented the
accident.

“An
accident, hmm?” Smythe had to smile inside his helmet. “Thank you for that.”

“It
was the best I could do on short notice. The only reason I was able to do that
is because that jackass was so eager to fly, he skipped securing those locking
pins during preflight. Serves his punk ass right. His daddy will not be happy
that Junior destroyed an expensive jet fighter. Well, enough chit chat for now,
we both need to concentrate on your landing.”

Smythe
nearly cracked his helmet against a boxy device on top of the roof, using a
hand to arrest his fall. The powered glove left a big dent in the box, whatever
it was. “Down safely,” Smythe reported tersely. In two powered steps, he
collected the missile in its protective container, as he watched the nanofabric
of the parachute already beginning to go discoherent; the microscopic machines
releasing their grip on each other. In less than a minute, the parachute
mechanism would be unorganized dust blowing off the roof to disperse over the
city. Securing the precious missile at the base of the box he had collided
with, he glanced upward to track the progress of Robertson. The man’s
silhouette was outlined in Smythe’s visor, but when Smythe briefly switched off
the synthetic vision, he could not see Robertson at all. The portable stealth
field generators in their backpacks were quite effective. Without waiting for
Robertson, Smythe pulled the latch to release his backpack and shrugged out of
the straps. If the operation went wrong, they were to destroy their advanced
personal stealth fields, which contained a mixture of Kristang and Thuranin
technology. All either of them would need to do would be reach inside the pack,
twist a lever and pull it outward, starting the process of nanomachines turning
the stealth field generator into dark gray goo. The goo would solidify slowly,
and by the time the operation was over and Kristang swarmed onto the roof,
there would be no trace of the stealth field’s advanced technology. Nor would
there be any evidence that humans had been involved in the operation.

Smythe
watched Robertson coming in, ready to assist, but Robertson landed gracefully,
avoiding Smythe’s clumsy bounce off equipment on the rooftop. Within seconds,
Robertson’s missile was secured and both chute and stealth field generator were
being dissolved. The two men walked, hunched over, between two large devices
that Skippy described as part of the building’s air filtration system. Both of
the units hummed loudly and vibrated, providing sonic cover for the actions of
the humans. In the darkness between the units, shadowed from the glowing haze
of city lights, they knelt, removed their missiles from the protective
containers and inspected them. “Alpha team down and ready,” Smythe reported.
Despite unexpected interference from one jackass in a fighter aircraft, a
two-man SAS team had infiltrated the heart of an alien city undetected, and
were poised to wreak havoc with missiles. The enemy would not be expecting an
attack, particularly not one launched from within the city.

Lt.
Williams and his companion, Petty Officer 2nd Class Marvin Jones,
had jumped after Smythe’s SAS team and were spared being tossed around the sky
by the wake of the jet fighter. Other than avoiding severe turbulence, the
SEALS experienced that same descent as the SAS men, until forty four seconds
from landing.

“Shit!”
Skippy shouted in Williams’ ear. “Damn it!”

“What?”
Williams responded with alarm. His visor was not highlighting any threats. Then
two fuzzy yellow dots appeared, on the roof he was supposed to land on. “What
is that?”

“Two
assholes going on the roof to drink or something. Sorry, they must do this
regularly, the stairwell and door they used must have the sensors disabled so
they can sneak around. I had no idea they were in the area, until a camera on another
building detected their body heat. This is going to be trouble, I can’t do
anything about it.”

“Can
we land on another building?” The building had been selected because it was
taller than most surrounding structures and had both a mostly uncluttered roof
without an aircraft landing pad.

“Not
now, it’s too late, you are too low. You and Jones are committed to landing on
that roof, or in the street below.”

“Not
an option. Are those two security personnel?”

“Building
security. Civilians. They are supposed to patrol the building instead of
goofing off on the job.”

Williams
felt for his rifle, strapped to his left leg. “Will those two be missed if
something happens to them?”

“My
guess is, they come up on the roof during times they know no one will be
looking for them. What are you thinking, Lieutenant?”

“I’m
thinking we deactivate the explosive tips on our rifle ammunition and put two
rounds in each of them.” Their Kristang ammunition had three modes:
armor-piercing, explosive or inert. The rifles usually alternated
armor-piercing and explosive when fighting opponents wearing armored suits.
Against the two lizards on the roof, all the SEALS team needed was the kinetic
energy of inert rounds.

“You
are enveloped in a stealth field, however as soon as you land, the Kristang
could hardly miss your presence,” Skippy advised skeptically.

“My
intention is to shoot them before we
land,” Williams explained. “Jones, you listening?”

“Yes,
Sir,” Jones replied.

“Are
you sure you can do that?” Skippy made no effort to conceal his surprise.

“Unless
those two knuckleheads duck behind some sort of cover,” the roof was mostly
open, and the heat signatures of the two Kristang were standing far from any
place they could conceal themselves. “We got this. Jones?”

“Ready,”
Jones replied. His own rifle was out of its carrying pouch and in his hands,
the rifle’s magnetic grips firmly attached to the suit so he could not drop the
weapon.

Williams
switched the visor from the composite data provided by Skippy, to the more
focused view coming from the sensor probe extending below his right boot and
outside the portable stealth field. He could now see the two Kristang as
distinct outlines; they were standing almost stationary, providing easy
targets. Williams fed the probe’s data to the targeting scope of his rifle. The
roof was approaching fast, there was not much time to act. “Jones, take the one
on the left.”

“Negative,”
Jones replied. “If this wind swings you in front of me, you’ll block my line of
sight.”

“You
take the one on the right, then.”

“The
one on the right, confirmed. I have a shot, Sir.”

“On
three. Three, two, one, fire.” Williams lightly pressed the trigger twice,
knowing Jones was doing the same. The two figures on the roof collapsed and
dropped silently.

The
SEALS landed on the roof easily, and within a minute had their gear secured and
were dragging the two dead Kristang under some apparatus on a corner of the
roof. “How much time do you think we have, Skippy?” Williams asked anxiously.

“I
cannot say exactly. You should have plenty of time to complete the mission. The
only other security personnel in the building have recently started their meal
break, and they are down on the third floor.”

“Outstanding.
Bravo team down and ready,” Williams reported in, then knelt down to wait.

“Delta
team down and ready.”

“Yes,”
I pumped my fist in an unprofessional manner. A real colonel would control his
emotions and be cool under pressure. By getting excited at hearing the fourth
missile team was down safely on its target rooftop, I was letting everyone know
I had been concerned the mission would fail before it had barely gotten
started. What I should have done was acknowledge Delta team’s report with a
simple ‘Understood’, or even ‘Outstanding’ if I really wanted to go crazy. What
I did briefly took the focus off the mission and made it all about me.

I knew
all that, I just couldn’t help myself. Dropping four missile teams out of a
Thuranin ship over a Kristang city, had caused my heart to race as if I had
been parachuting with them. I was not one of the eight men chosen for the
ground mission, because I was not qualified. I was also not in one of the three
Kristang dropships now flying toward the city, because I was not qualified for
that phase of the mission either. What I was doing was sitting aboard a
Thuranin dropship in relative safety, commanding the mission like I was
supposed to be doing. Whether I was qualified to do that is a matter of
opinion. At least Major Smythe had not been forced to argue with me; I knew there
were eight Special Operations men far more skilled than I was, and I knew there
were six pilots who could fly ring around me.

So, I
was aboard a Thuranin dropship, which had better communications equipment than
the Kristang ships, so I could exercise better command and control. There
wasn’t much for me to do; when two of the missile teams had encountered
obstacles all I had been able to do was listen, keep my mouth shut and trust my
people to handle it. Which they did.

Mostly
because I felt the need to do something, I contacted the Three Musketeers, as
we called the three Kristang dropships, and authorized them to continue toward
the city. They acknowledged, and I watched the icons for the three ships
approach the city.

“How
are you doing, Sir?” Lt Poole asked from her own console, where she was likely
watching the same images.

“Fine,
Poole. I feel like I should be doing something.”

“How
about a game of checkers, Joe?” Skippy’s avatar popped to life on the side of
my console.

“Thank
you, Skippy, no. I meant I should be doing something useful.”

“You’re
the commander,” Poole reminded me. “Command, Sir, command.”

I knew
what she meant; trust my people and stay out of their way. It sucked.

Smythe’s
and Robertson were the first ground team to launch their missiles, they were
the farthest away from their target, and those missiles had the most
complicated route to fly. Robertson held the launcher tubes as Smythe acted as
spotter, because Skippy’s view through the sensor networks was imperfect, and
launching was when the missiles were most visible. Smythe peered over the
railing, looking down into the streets far below.

“Clear?”
Robertson asked in a whisper.

Major
Smythe was not certain exactly what ‘clear’ meant in a densely-populated city
of over thirty million hostile aliens. The streets below held steady streams of
traffic even at the late hour; he was able to follow individual cars, trucks
and buses by their headlights as they passed by on the street below. They were
all moving smoothly, there was no indication the Kristang authorities had any
idea humans had infiltrated their city. Unlike any large human city he could
think of, the air was not filled with a cacophony of noise from motor vehicles
as all the vehicles moving on the streets below were electric and made hardly
any noise. With motion of all vehicles controlled by a traffic network, there
was no incessant honking of horns. It was quiet, a little too eerily quiet to
Smythe. A door opened at ground level across the street and a small group of
Kristang spilled out onto the sidewalk, illuminated by a rectangle of light
from the doorway. They appeared unsteady on their feet, two of them especially
weaving on their feet, and a shift in the breeze swirling between the office
building towers brought snatches of loud, boisterous conversation wafting up to
him; words that were unintelligible even to his suit’s microphones and
translator but clearly happy and celebratory. With a blink, he adjusted his
visor’s view to zoom in on the group wandering down the sidewalk, with the
enhanced image he thought the aliens were two males and four females. The
females were distinctly smaller than the two males, and each male had his arms
around two females. If the males were drunk as they sounded, the females were
struggling to keep their men upright and from toppling into the street. As
Smythe watched, a vehicle glided to a stop next to the group, and one male was
helped into the car by three of the females. When the car drove away, the lone
male began shouting at the lone female and she cringed as he raised a fist.
Then the male swayed on his feet, held himself up with one hand on a parked
truck, and waved the female away dismissively. She was pleading with him about
something as another car pulled over. Whatever the male had been unhappy about,
he put aside as he was helped into the vehicle, and it pulled away. For a
moment, the sidewalks on both sides of the street were empty. “Clear,” Smythe
said without taking his eyes off the street. “Launch now,” he urged Robertson to
act before another group of revelers came out onto the street. As high up as
their rooftop was, it was unlikely anyone on the street would be looking up, or
could see the missile in flight. Smythe was being extra cautious, as the SAS
did not train their people to leave anything to chance.

“One
away,” Robertson whispered as he leaned over the rail and simply dropped the
missile nose first, straight down. He had broken the seal of the launch tube
and pulled the missile out, handling it carefully with his powerful gloved
hands. Without the magnetic rails of the launch tube, the missile’s only means
of starting flight was the booster motor, and using the booster motor for a
clandestine mission was not an option. The booster motor at the back end of the
missiles had been removed aboard the Flying
Dutchman, leaving the powerful alien missile as unable to get off the
ground as an ostrich. Dropping the missile from a tall building provided the
speed it needed to deploy its long thin wings, and jump-start the tiny turbine
engine. Both men crouched by the railing, holding their breath as the missile
plummeted downward, then curved parallel to the building, and, gathering speed,
began climbing. It flew straight above the center of the street below for
several blocks, then banked to turn between two buildings and out of sight.
Without the enhanced synthetic view provided by their visors, they could barely
have seen the small missile. Zingers did not carry a stealth field generator;
they relied on speed, their small size and a polychromatic coating that allowed
them to blend into their surroundings.

Smythe
let out an exhalation of relief. “Missile One away,” he reported. “Flying
straight and true.”

“I got
it,” Skippy replied. “The missile has not been detected by any of the main
sensor networks. A few closed-circuit motion detectors picked it up and alerted
the city’s air traffic control system, I replied that the missile is an
authorized security drone. Launch the second missile.”

“Preparing
for launch now,” Smythe said, and waved for Robertson to drop the second
Zinger, while Smythe’s eyes scanned the street below. As Robertson leaned over
the railing and let the missile go, a bus pulled to the curb almost directly
below and discharged three Kristang. Again, Smythe held his breath as the
missile picked up speed, its wings deploying much too slowly for Smythe’s
comfort. If the missile’s wings or engine failed, it would crash to the
sidewalk right next to the bus. Instead, the little Zinger’s airbreathing port
opened and sucked in air, spinning up its silent turbine motor. The missile
fell only five stories before it pulled itself into level flight and followed
its companion along the center of the street and around a corner. “Missile Two
away successfully.”

“Yup,”
Skippy acknowledged in a distracted tone. “Pip, pip, cheerio, jolly good job,
it’s tea and crumpets time for you now, Major. Get out of sight and prepare to
deploy your tether balloons.”

“Understood,”
Smythe replied and immediately helped Robertson break the launch tubes into
pieces to stuff inside the backpacks. The launch tubes needed to be destroyed,
so the Kristang would never know where the missiles were launched from. “Tea
and crumpets,” Smythe whispered. “I would settle for a biscuit and a sip of
cold water right now.”

Talk
of water made Robertson pause to sip from the nipple inside his helmet. The
water provided was cool and tasteless. “I have a bottle of single malt I’ve
been saving for the return flight to Earth,” Robertson did not pause in packing
a missile launch tube in his backpack. “If we get out of this, I’m opening that
bottle as soon as we’re back aboard the Dutchman.”

“I’ll
drink to that,” Smythe settled down with his back to a bulky air-handling unit.
Now all they had to do was wait for all hell to break loose in the city, and
for a dropship to fly over and yank them off the rooftop. Waiting was the worst
part.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

“This,” said Lt. Reed as her Dragon
dropship turned left into the designated commercial air traffic corridor over
the city, “is going to be interesting.” Ahead of the Dragon’s nose loomed the
towering spires of the city, glittering in the night. Some of the buildings
were tall enough that the air traffic corridor went between them. That didn’t
provide a lot of maneuvering space, and Reed hadn’t liked the idea right from
when Colonel Bishop had explained the plan. The four SpecOps teams had
parachuted out of a Thuranin Condor dropship at high altitude, but the
extraction had to be handled by the three Dragons, with Reed’s ship going in
first. Condors were too large to transit the air corridor; their passage would
leave a wake too turbulent for the relatively small aircraft that were allowed
above the city. The Falcons were in full stealth mode, with their stealth
fields modified to project the image and electromagnetic signatures of a
typical Kristang commercial air transport. Whether the enhancements Skippy had
made to the Falcons allowed them to slip through the city unnoticed, would be
something Reed would know only when she had safely exited the city limits, or
when she was challenged and shot at.

“Approaching
outer marker,” her copilot announced softly. “Turn to three four two degrees on
my mark. Mark.”

“Three
four two,” Reed acknowledged as she banked the Dragon much more gently than the
combat dropship was typically handled. She needed to mimic the flight profile
of an airliner transporting wealthy and coddled passengers. “We’re over the
city now.” The line between city and countryside on Kobamik was stark; there
were few suburban areas surrounding the densely-packed cities on the planet.
Much of the planet’s land area was hunting preserves for exclusive use by
high-ranking clan leaders, farmland, or vast estates for the pleasure of the
wealthy. Most of the population lived and worked in large cities of
skyscrapers, surrounding fortified central compounds which housed and protected
their clan leadership.

By
some miracle, or through the magic of Skippy, no one had challenged the Dragon
as it flew over the city. Communications with air traffic control, which Skippy
handled, were routine. As far as any of the Kristang in the city below, it was
an ordinary evening, the end of a pleasantly warm and sunny day. “I see the
objective,” Reed said, as the cockpit display highlighted the rooftop where the
Indian paratroopers waited.  “Deploy
the hooks.”

Captain
Chandra and Lieutenant Sodhi of the Indian team were the last to land on a
rooftop, and first to be extracted, by luck of the air traffic patterns over
the city. “On final approach,” Reed’s voice advised, “launch tether balloons.”

Chandra
and Sodhi pulled the handles on top of each other’s backpacks, releasing the
cover over the balloons. Instantly, tissue-thin, almost invisible balloons
began inflating, swelling rapidly and rising to pull a hair-thin cord behind
them. In less than forty seconds, the balloons had uncoiled the entire cord
from each backpack, and the two men braced themselves, knees slightly bent and
arms across their chests. Lost in the darkness two hundred meters above, the
balloons floated in the breeze, bobbing slightly as their microscopic brains
flexed the skin of the balloons to keep them stable.

“I
wish we had done this for real in training,” Lt. Reed said to herself as she
lined up her Kristang dropship with the artificial flightpath projected on the
display in front of her. “Simulations don’t cover everything that can go
wrong.”

“Hooks
fully deployed,” Chen reported from the right-hand seat. “This worked perfectly
in the sim,” she noted. The flight crews had practiced the balloon tether
pickup maneuver so many times in simulations, Chen thought she could do it in
her sleep.

The
hooks were deployed on either side of the dropship, and contained tiny,
low-power encrypted beacons for the balloons to steer toward. With the balloons
only thirty meters apart and the hooks covering forty three meters on each side
of the dropship, having the balloons steer toward the hook mechanisms was
hardly necessary. The dropship was flying almost as slowly as it could without
using its belly jets to hover, flying slower than air traffic in the area was
supposed to; Skippy’s control of the local network temporarily allowed the
dropship to avoid being investigated. With Skippy’s control over the hardened
network tenuous and imperfect, Samantha Reed knew she had to pick up both men
on the first pass; a go-around held too much danger of detection.

“Here
we go,” Reed forced herself to breathe evenly and hold the controls lightly.

“Flightpath
nominal,” Chen reported without taking her eyes off the display. “Tether
balloons are holding position. Four, three, two, one, capture.”

The
hooks contacted both tethers a quarter-second apart, and two green lights
flashed on the displays in front of both pilots. With the tethers firmly
attached to the hooks, both balloons popped. Or, not pop so much as their skins
dissolving into dust. The tethers wrapped around the retrieval hooks, and the
tiny computer brains controlling the tethers from the backpacks of the two
Indian paratroopers sensed the tension in the ultrathin tethers. The computers
ordered sections of the tethers to contract slowly and other sections to
stretch, causing Chandra and Sodhi to be lifted off the ground with no more
abrupt force than if they had been riding an elevator. The pull on both men
increased as the tethers contracted, until they grunted as they were yanked
upward and forward at three Gees of acceleration.

This
part of the extraction had been practiced outside the Flying Dutchman, although never in an atmosphere. The sound of air
rushing past his helmet was pushed to the back of his mind as Chandra could not
allow himself to be distracted. He was now flying behind the dropship, slightly
below but at the same speed, the tether having plucked him smoothly off the
rooftop. Chandra kept his legs straight out behind him and kept his arms
crossed as he had done in training. Lights of the city twinkled below, beside
and even above him as the dropship adhered to the authorized flightpath. When
the dropship cleared the city center and flew into an area where the buildings
did not tower around it, Chandra felt an increased tugging on his shoulder
straps. Although he could not see the stealthed dropship that had to be
directly in front of him, the synthetic vision of his visor showed him the back
ramp cracking open, and the hooks retracting toward the aircraft. He could see
Sodhi ahead of him, being reeled in first, the man being buffeted in the wind
behind the dropship. Sodhi maintained discipline, not extending his arms as he
entered the maw of the dropship’s aft cargo area, then Chandra could see Sodhi
being grasped by suited figures on either side. “In and secure,” Sodhi
reported.

Chandra’s
own experience was slightly more rough, as the dropship had been forced to
increase speed and climb near the outskirts of the city. At one point, he was
swinging back and forth so that he feared colliding with one side of the ramp,
then the air smoothed abruptly as he entered a vortex under the tail, and with
a last hard tug on his straps, he was inside. The back ramp was closing even
before his feet touched the deck. “Did you have fun, Captain?” One of the
suited figures asked him in a teasing tone.

“Oh,
yes, very much so,” Chandra replied, finally able to uncross his arms and
flexing fingers so tense they tingled. “I highly recommend it.”

Reed
did not relax until the back ramp was closed and locked. “One down, one to go,”
she said to Chen with a tight smile. With only three dropships and four teams on
the ground, her ship had to swing around the city and make another run to pick
up the SAS team. She could see on the display that another Dragon dropship was
in the process of picking up the Chinese SpecOps team. So far, the entire
operation was going according to plan. “Status of the hooks?” They had a spare
set of retrieval hooks in case one or both of them had been damaged, but
removing a broken hook and installing a new one would require her to land the
dropship and keep it on the ground for more than five minutes, a risk no one
wanted to take.

“No damage,
both hooks show ready,” Chen read the results off the display.

“The
hooks are fine,” Skippy’s voice broke in. “I would have told you if there was a
problem with the hooks. Was there any difficulty with the retrieval from your
end?”

Reed
looked at Chen and shook her head. “No, it went exactly like the simulation.”

“Good,
because the next one is likely to be tricky, I have had to move up the schedule
slightly.”

“Slightly?”
Reed banked the dropship away from the city to come around again and retrieve
the SAS team. “How slightly?”

“Ok,
more than slightly. Like, uh, right now.”

“Hey,
Joe,” Skippy said in a voice that gave me goosebumps. This was his
something-went-wrong voice. “Uh, we need to move up the schedule a bit.”

“A bit? Why?” The entire plan depended on
precise timing, once the missiles were launched, we had less than a minute of
leeway backed into the schedule. Everything depended on the dropships flying
specific routes through the city at specific times to retrieve the ground
teams. Delta team had just been safely pulled aboard Lt. Reed’s dropship, and
the two-man Chinese Charlie team was in the air, dangling behind their
dropship. The third dropship was just approaching the outskirts of the city, on
its way to pick up Lt. Williams’ SEALS team.

“Some
bigwig is coming toward the compound so it’s being put on lockdown; when that
happens the missiles won’t have access. Right now there is access at three
points, I can manage with that and I am moving missiles right now. With the
missiles flying faster, they are going to be detected by motion sensors and
verified manually, I can’t intercept all those signals.”

Shit.
Crap, crap, crap. “Ok, I know you’re working magic here, do your best. I need
to alert Alpha and Bravo teams to the new schedule, how soon do you need to
strike?”

“Let’s
put it this way, Joe; three, two one, impact.”

Located
in the center of Kallandre, because it was there first and the city had grown
up around it, was the heavily-protected compound which housed the Fire Dragon
clan leaders. The compound covered one thousand and sixty acres, and was the
military heart of the clan’s presence on the planet. The compound was protected
by a dome comprised of an energy shield; multiple layers of energy shields. The
shields were powerful enough to protect the compound from orbital strikes, even
hypersonic railgun darts would be deflected or absorbed by the shields.
Aircraft had to fly very precise routes through only three entry points
suspended in the air, entry points with inner and outer gates.

Ground
traffic could choose from eleven access points, ground access was controlled
not only by electronic means, but also by heavily armed guards. At one of those
ground access points was a guard named Jax-au-nam Tetlahauf; his friends and
family called him Jax.

He
hated being called ‘Jax’.

He
also hated being a security guard, but his family’s lowly position in the clan
hierarchy did not offer him more attractive options. His two older brothers had
served as infantry in a mercenary unit; they were both killed during their
first assignments. Jax was determined to endure six inglorious years as a
security guard, after which he could apply for Fleet training. If he had a
spotless record over his six years. Not just a spotless record, an exemplary
record. A record that got him noticed for his devotion to duty.

Because
Jax was desperately determined to be noticed by his superiors and make a name
for himself, his fellow guards hated working with him. His immediate supervisor
could no longer stand the sight of Jax, which was why Jax was working the graveyard
shift. That only made Jax more eager for a chance to shine. If enemies tried to
infiltrate the Fire Dragon compound on Kobamik, they would most likely make the
attempt at night.

No
enemy spy, saboteur or assassin was going to gain entry through a gate guarded
by Jax-au-nam Tetlahauf.

Five
hours into his shift, when the other guards were shaking their heads to stay
awake, Jax was fully alert to danger. Jax narrowed his eyes suspiciously, his
quick mind racing through threat scenarios. A large truck was approaching the
outer barrier, which had already been automatically deactivated by the security
mechanism. The truck had been inspected and cleared by guards before the
vehicle had been allowed onto the approach road to the compound. According to
the data on Jax’s wristpad, the truck was carrying specialty chemicals for the
airfield, and both the trucking consortium and the driver were fully vetted and
trusted.

Which
made Jax more suspicious. Of course an enemy seeking to penetrate the compound
would subvert a trusted agent, and a large vehicle with hazardous cargo would
be a useful weapon for compromising the compound’s outer defenses. Another
glance at his wristpad told Jax the three trucks lined up behind the first one
were also carrying hazardous cargo. A clever enemy might plan to blow up the
outer gate, then drive the other trucks through into the compound. That could
be a serious security breach, a threat to the entire clan. It was not going to
happen to the gate while Jax was on duty. Not on his watch. As he made the snap
decision, stepping forward and raising a hand, his mind flashed through the
accolades he would receive for his diligence.

Ironically,
it was Jax’s burning eagerness to do his duty that was his downfall, and the
downfall of the clan leaders inside the secure compound. Jax’s actions ran
afoul of the law. Not any law made by Kristang, nor a law of physics, but a law
more ancient and fundamental: the Law of Unintended Consequences. “Halt!” he
shouted, brandishing his rifle menacingly. Seeing an agitated guard pointing a
weapon directly at his face, the driver stomped on the brakes, manually
overriding all the carefully tested security measures of the compound’s access
points. With the truck having skidded to a stop while its read end was still
within the outer force field barrier, the field was inactive. And with the
truck ahead still transiting the inner barrier, that force field was also
temporarily down. The ground access points had been carefully designed, and the
security crews trained, never to allow both force fields to be down
simultaneously. Jax’s abrupt action had just destroyed years of security
planning and training.

His
immediate supervisor Soth recognize the danger, not to the compound, but to his
career if the authorities learned his post had violated a standing security
order. He could have flipped up a cover and pressed a green and yellow button
that would have sent a surge of power into the shield emitters, forcing the
outer shield back on and cutting the truck in half. The resulting violent
reaction would have destroyed the truck, killed the driver and the idiotic Jax,
and even injured Soth inside the bunker. Instead, Soth sprinted around the
bunker door and frantically waved the truck driver forward. “Jax! You idiot! Both
shields are down, get that truck in here.”

Jax,
stupidly, did not yield. “These trucks are carrying-”

“They
are carrying-” Soth never finished his thought.

Two
aircraft access points were open on the other side of the compound, as aircraft
flew in formation toward the airfield. Two missiles followed closely behind the
trailing aircraft in each formation, tucking their noses under the rear ramp in
between the turbulence and heat signatures of the engines. All four missiles
were running on turbine power only, their wings extended only a third of
maximum length and swept back, and their polychromatic coating made them
difficult to see even though the missiles did not have stealth fields.
Regardless, sensors in the flight approach corridor detected something wrong
and triggered an alarm. Even if the system detected a missile with absolute
certainty, the air access security system could not fire maser cannons because
the aircraft were broadcasting identification codes of senior clan leaders,
indicating they or their immediate family members were aboard. A more clever
system would have been skeptical that senior clan families would be flying
aboard cargo transport aircraft, but that would not have mattered because the
air access computers had been slowly and laboriously infiltrated by a very,
very clever shiny beer can. Thus, the two aircraft and accompanying four
missiles glided through the access port in the few seconds during which the air
defense maser cannons could have fired. The aircraft were through the access
point and the shield behind them reactivating before the air security duty
officer was able to react to the warning alarm. The duty officer, confused,
ordered the aircraft to veer away from the air field toward a designated
holding area and scrambled drones to intercept and inspect the cargo
transports, but by then his action were as useless as closing the henhouse door
after the fox got in. All four missiles, responding to an order from an ancient
alien beer can many kilometers away, shed their wings, shut off their turbine
engines and ignited their rocket motors all within a microsecond. The four
deadly darts turned and raced away in different directions, as the air security
duty officer wondered what the hell had just happened.

At the
ground access point, the four missiles launched by the Chinese and SEALS teams
had been loitering in slow lazy circles around a water tower, their
polychromatic coatings blending in with the light gray of the water tower. With
their miniature turbine engines operating on almost minimum power and their
long, thin wings at maximum extension, they orbited the water tower no faster
than a soaring bird, and made no more noise and had a lower sensor reflection
than a bird. Even so, the motion sensors saturating the area should have sent
an alarm to the central security computer, prompting at least a closer look at
suspicious airborne activity around the water tower. The motion sensors did
detect the four Zinger missiles, and repeatedly sent increasingly shrill alarms
to the security system that something was odd in the vicinity of the water
tower. What the central security received was nothing but soothingly happy
‘operating normally- all clear’ signals, for a crucial data relay had been
infiltrated by a shiny beer can.

The
Zingers, if their tiny brains had been capable of talking to each other,
probably would have said something like ‘Dude
I am sooooo bored flying around this stupid water tower. I’m a missile, damn
it, I want to KILL something’. Not being able to think on that level, the
missiles quietly and mindlessly orbited the water tank, waiting eagerly for
their moment of glory.

Skippy
had been planning a risky move to attempt flying the four Zingers through the
ground security portal, during the brief moment when the outer and inner energy
shields were not fully active. Even with him controlling their flight, he
calculated no more than a fifty three percent of two missiles getting through,
because of the signal lag between himself and the missiles, and the need for
the missiles to fly through two partially-established energy barriers. Instead,
due to the overzealous idiocy of a young and ambitious Kristang security guard,
both inner and outer shields were simultaneously full deactivated. Not
believing his incredible luck, Skippy instantly decided to carpe the hell out
of that diem and sent revised instructions to the quartet of missiles, along
with the ‘Go’ code to arm them.

Instantly,
the missiles ejected their wings and engaged their rocket motors at full
thrust, leaving scorch marks on the light gray surface of the water tower. The
missiles surged for the portal opening, aiming for the narrow gaps on either
side of the stalled truck. By the time they passed the rear of the truck, they
were moving at supersonic speeds, and the shock wave from the leading missile
would have caused the other three missiles to crash, except that Skippy’s
precise control had the Zingers flying parallel, as the lead missile’s nose was
less than a millimeter ahead. The supersonic shockwaves never had time to catch
the missiles, instead expending their energy on an overpressure inside the
armored arc of the access station. Jax and Soth were slammed against the
station walls, instantly shattering every bone in their tough bodies. The
hapless truck driver fared little better, being first violently crushed back
into his seat, then ripped free of his safety straps and sucked out the opening
where the windshield had been.

Moving
at high speed and accelerating with full force, the missiles flashed through the
access station in the blink of an eye. They still should not have gained entry
to the compound, as a warning signal traveled to the inner shield much faster
than the missiles could fly. The inner shield should have pulsed closed
instantly, severing the truck passing through but forming an impenetrable
barrier for the missiles to batter themselves against. Unfortunately for the
ground access station, the reaction time of the inner barrier control computer
was slowed by a well-timed momentary glitch, a glitch caused by a beer can
whose semi-official crew rank was ‘Asshole First Class’.

Unaffected
by the energy shield which finally pulsed closed just behind them, the two
pairs of missiles flew into the open air of the compound, climbed desperately
and then flipped end over end to decelerate. At their Mach three speed, they
could not make the abrupt climb before impacting the armored physical barrier
in front of them, so their rocket motors briefly fired backward to slow their
forward progress, then the Zingers flipped end over end again to fly upward
nose first, clearing the armored barrier with a comfortable meter to spare.

Once
clear of the crash barrier, the missiles were free to roam inside the compound.
For hostile enemy weapons, being inside the Fire Dragon compound was a
forbidden experience, so the Zingers might be forgiven if they wanted to gawk
at the sights and savor the moment. Under Skippy’s preprogrammed instructions,
all four missiles sent signals to any other Zingers in the compound, and almost
instantly the eight missiles learned to their collective surprise they all had
successfully penetrated the compound’s multiple layers of security. For the
attack to be successful required only four of the eight missiles, so with all
eight available, the plan shifted to what Skippy had considered the least
likely scenario. Each missile knew what it was supposed to do and there was no
hesitation about their suicide mission.

The
two Zingers launched by the Chinese team split up after coming through the
ground access point, one going right and one straight head. All eight missiles
were headed for the same structure; the giant, thick pyramid at the very heart
of the compound. The pyramid had been constructed on top of the original hill
in the center of the city, like an iceberg most of the structure extended far
below the surface. Below ground were the high-security facilities, including
safe spaces for the senior Fire Dragon clan leaders and their families. What
soared above the surface, over three hundred meters tall, was mostly offices
and, importantly, the urban palaces of the senior leadership. Clan security
officers had pleaded with the senior leadership to live in the security of the
underground areas rather than exposing themselves to danger, however slight.
Originally, vast palaces had been constructed underground, complete with highly
convincing displays in place of windows. Over time, one senior leader after
another moved up into the open air, creating a rush to grab real estate near
the top of the pyramid. What good was their hard work to seize and maintain
power, if they could not enjoy and flaunt that wealth and power? A senior
leader needed an estate with real windows, and open-air balconies complete with
swimming pools and landing pads for their personal aircraft. Views facing east
or west, to view the sun rising or setting, were highly sought after, as were
areas where there was less of the visual distortion created by the energy
shields, providing a more clear view of the city they ruled over. When a senior
clan leader walked out onto his extensive balcony and saw with his naked eye
the soaring towers and glittering lights of the city, he felt his power in a way no display screen could provide. Security
officers warned that the senior leaders were needlessly exposing themselves to
danger for the sake of vanity, but those security officer were ignored. Did not
the clan provide huge resources to ensure the utterly impenetrable security of
the compound? After a while, those security officers who continued to protest
found themselves replaced with those less alarmist, for what danger could
possibly touch the Fire Dragon leadership inside their own compound? That is
why the eight missiles found the clan’s senior leaders in their apartments in
the middle of the night; with those leaders either soundly asleep or engaged in
various pleasures, alone or with companions.

The
first missile to find its designated target had been launched by the SAS team,
although all eight missiles struck their targets within seconds of each other.
That first missile slowed as it approached its target, hugging the slope of the
pyramid as it climbed and turning only at the last moment onto the balcony
outside that clan leader’s own personal and private balcony. The estate had its
own energy shield that was intended only to deflect bullets fired by assassins,
it was not capable of stopping a Zinger. Expecting an energy shield, the Zinger
was prepared by activating an energy projector in its nose, creating a path
through the shield just large enough for the missile to slip through.

Once
through the shield, the missile smashed through composite laminated ‘glass’ and
several lightly-armored walls in the interior of the apartment until the
Zinger’s guidance system was confident it had reached its destination. Then,
without regret, the missile detonated its enhanced warhead.

Any
Kristang on the ground below, working late at the airfield or any other outside
area with a clear view of the central pyramid, were startled by seeing
fountains of flame and debris erupting at multiple locations around the
pyramid. Jets of fire burst outward, vividly and angrily orange in the relative
stillness of the night, turning dull red as any combustible material quickly
burned itself out. As abruptly as it happened, the explosions flashed into
darkness, leaving only glowing embers and gaping holes in the faces of the
pyramid, and low rolling thunder echoing within the dome of the compound’s
energy shield. For a brief moment, all was still. Then sirens began to wail,
the compound automatically plunged into darkness, and security guards, soldiers
and pilots all raced for their emergency posts.

The
unthinkable had happened. Senior Fire Dragon leaders had been attacked, killed,
inside their ultra-secure compound. Later, there would be time for shock and
recriminations and assigning blame. The harsh discipline and constant training
of the Kristang warrior caste served them well that night, as every single
warrior reacted as they had been ordered to.

Even
as the remaining senior clan leaders recovered from the shock of surviving
merely by luck of not having been targeted by the eight missiles, speculation
raged about who could have conducted such a sophisticated attack. The surviving
clan leadership, having been whisked to safe sections deep below ground, were
gripped with fear as the initial reports reached them. There was no question
that advanced technology had been required for such an attack to succeed;
technology able to subvert Kristang computers specifically designed to resist
and report on outside attempts to infiltrate their systems. The minds of the
clan leadership all had the same two thoughts. The Thuranin were interfering in
Kristang clan politics, for some as yet unknown reason. As quickly as that
thought came to mind, it was dismissed. The Thuranin, reeling from their recent
multiple and stinging military setbacks, were unlikely to have the time or
desire to punish their clients. Which brought up a second and more frightening
possibility; that another clan had acquired advanced technology. If that were
true, the Fire Dragons were vulnerable, and needed to strike back hard while
they still could.

Which
clan or clans were behind the attack? The Black Trees were the obvious
suspects, perhaps too obvious. Lesser clans might wish a fight between the two
strongest clans in Kristang society, bleeding both Fire Dragons and Black Trees
dry and leaving them vulnerable to a rested and prepared third party. The
surviving leadership reached out to the Black Trees, demanding answers and
assurances while bringing their own military forces to full alertness.

Not
one of the warriors inside the compound had even a moment’s thought that the
attack might have been conducted by lowly humans and a shiny beer can.

“Abort
abort abort!” Skippy’s voice shouted from the Dragon’s console. “Abort
approach, turn right to zero one nine degrees.”

“Zero
one niner, got it,” Lt. Reed acknowledged as she gently turned the Dragon to
follow the air traffic system’s revised instructions. All around her, she could
see aircraft being diverted away from the city. “What happened? Who is going to
pick up the SAS team?”

“Busy.
Working on it,” Skippy responded tersely. “Proceed to Hold Point Whiskey and
await instructions.”

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

From
outside the compound’s energy shield, Major Smythe could not hear the
explosions of the eight Zinger missiles. He was also not looking in the
direction of the central compound, his attention was focused on monitoring
civilian air traffic around his location while they waited for a dropship to
pluck them off the rooftop. The dropship was only thirty kilometers away, about
to make a turn toward the city’s local inner marker; once the Dragon was twenty
kilometers away, Smythe would receive the signal to deploy their tether
balloons. He kept his gaze switching between the air traffic lanes and the door
that provided access to the roof. After the SEALS team had been surprised by
Kristang sneaking onto the roof they were landing on, Smythe was not taking for
granted that Skippy had perfect awareness of every possible Kristang in the
buildings where the ground teams were concealed. Once they stepped out from
cover to deploy the tether balloons, Smythe and Robertson would be exposed and
vulnerable for uncomfortable seconds until they were magically whisked away by
a tether cable thinner than a human hair.

While
Smythe scanned the air traffic corridor toward the south and east, Robertson
was monitoring the north and west, scanning back and forth with the passive
sensors of his suit, and through the composite images Skippy was feeding to his
visor from the local sensor network. He happened to have just swept his gaze
past the compound at the center of the city when he caught a flash of light
with the corner of his eye. Instantly, his attention focused on the thin slice
of the pyramid that was visible between towering buildings. With his view of
the pyramid partly obscured by the distortion of the compound’s intense energy
shield, Robertson was not immediately certain what he was seeing. Had it been
merely a reflection? Could it have- The hot orange flares of a second, then
third explosion confirmed his original thought. “Major, something’s happened in
the compound.” Already, the flares were fading into a dull red glow.

“What?”
Smythe turned, the knees of his armored suit scraping on the rough material of
the rooftop. “Bloody hell,” he swore as he watched the replay images Robertson
sent directly to Smythe’s visor. “Skippy! Did you jump the gun?”

“Oh,
uh, yeah. Basically, a very nice Kristang was holding the door open for us, and
I had to act before we lost the opportunity. Sorry there wasn’t time to inform
you.”

“A
very nice Kristang?” Smythe was taken aback by that unlikely concept.

“Uh
huh, I would give him a fruit basket as a thank you, except he got splattered
by a Mach three shock wave. I do feel bad about that, but, what the hell,
right? Anywho, what you need to know is events are proceeding rather more
quickly than I anticipated. The Kristang are going to full alert all over the
planet, not just in Fire Dragon territory. The Fire Dragons are shutting down
air traffic in the city and I have ordered your dropship to divert. Sorry about
that.”

The
alarm Smythe saw on Robertson’s face matched his own feelings. “We can’t stay
up here indefinitely, Skippy,” Smythe stated the obvious.

“I
know, I have a plan. Well, more of a concept than a plan, truthfully. Ok, fine,
I’m making shit up as I go, but that’s the best I’ve got right now. Destroy
your stealth generators and tethers and get inside the building, head for the
elevator doors to the left.”

“We’re
riding a lift to the ground?” Smythe asked, incredulous. He could not imagine
standing inside an elevator car with Robertson, the two of them in powered
armor suits and carrying rifles. What would happen if a Kristang, a civilian
lizard, came into the elevator? Were the SAS men supposed to make small talk?
Did Kristang ever make small talk?

“Ride
the lift down? Ha!” Skippy chuckled. “You should be so lucky. No, the building
security staff is in the process of evacuating the few occupants, then they
will bring the elevator cars to the basement and lock them there.”

“Then
why should we go to the elevator door?” Smythe asked as he stuffed the balloon
and tether into his backpack and pulled the handle to activate nanomachines
that would turn everything inside the pack into mush.

“Well,
heh heh, you are not going to like this-”

From
their rooftop, the SEALS team could not see the pyramid at the center of the
city, so their first inkling that something had gone off plan was a pair of air
transports suddenly slowing and climbing, then turning away from the
established air corridor. “Skippy, we just saw a-”

“Yeah,
I know about it,” the AI responded dismissively. “I had to move up the schedule
and now the Kristang are on full alert. The good news is, all the Zingers hit
their targets.”

“What
does that mean for us?” Williams asked anxiously. They had just been about to
walk to the center of the roof to inflate their tether balloons.

“Nothing
for right now. I have been forced to divert Major Smythe’s dropship away from
the city, but since your dropship is already in a designated air traffic
corridor, it is still inbound. Your dropship had to reduce speed and climb, it
will be within the length of your tether. Probably. You will have a longer ride
on the tether, that could, um, get rough. You SEALS guys will probably enjoy
it. Stand by, I will give you the signal to launch balloons; you will want to
minimize the time those balloons are hanging up there. Military aircraft have
been scrambled over the city and I cannot predict whether they will interfere
with the tethers.”

Williams
appreciated the honesty. He wondered what an AI who could warp spacetime
considered to be ‘rough’. “Understood, standing by for your signal.”

“Don’t
worry, Lt. Williams,” Skippy said in a confident voice. “Everything is under
control.”

Skippy
was not wrong about everything being under control, because of course, Skippy
the Magnificent was never wrong about
anything. He may have overestimated his scope of control over the entire city,
but that was merely a matter of degree. Minor details. He had limited control
over the air traffic system, and to a lesser extent military communications.
What he could not control at all was the nature of Kristang, or most biological
beings, in the fog of war.

As
soon as the city-wide alert went out, rumors began flying much faster than the
official communications. In one district of the city near the SEALS team, a
defense controller had just come on duty when he was startled by an alert
signal: the leadership compound had been attacked. On the console of the junior
officer in front of him, the controller saw two aircraft had just strayed from
the designated civilian air traffic corridor. The transports were accelerating,
climbing, and turning toward the compound! Reacting immediately, the controller
pressed a button to order a missile launch, just before the junior officer
shouted that those aircraft had been ordered to turn 180 degrees and exit the
city.

It was
too late to stop the missile; it streaked out of its launch tube near the top
of a building that soared one hundred meters above its flying target. The
transport’s portside engine exploded and sheared off when struck by the
missile, causing the aircraft to stagger in the air, flip over and fall. The
other transport frantically veered away, pulling hard to the right to miss both
burning debris and the buildings around it. Its turn to the right took it
toward restricted airspace, and a maser cannon on another building fired,
slicing off one wing. That doomed aircraft also began to fall, and hearing
reports of hostile aircraft and defensive fire caused military defense
controllers in other districts around the city to seek likely targets. Fearful
of allowing another attack, many of the controllers instinctively decided to
eliminate any possible threats, and aircraft above the city began to fall
victim to missiles and maser cannons. Military aircraft flying patrols over the
city saw the explosions below, and, in the utter confusion, went into power
dives and sought targets.

“Pull
up! Pull up!” Skippy shouted, and Flight Lieutenant Windsor responded
immediately, increasing power automatically to maintain airspeed in the climb.
He reminded himself to fly the Dragon dropship as he would a civilian airliner.
Whatever the problem was, he could only make it worse if the Kristang suspected
the true nature of the ship he was flying. Ahead and below, Windsor could see
streaks of light and something spiraling down, on fire. On the grid of the
cockpit display, it looked like the problem was near the building where the
SEALS waiting for retrieval. “What happened?”

“Shit
happened,” Skippy snapped. “Abort the pickup, turn to two four nine degrees and
climb, you need to get clear of the area. There is a whole lot of friendly fire
going on ahead of you. Worry about yourself, I’ll take care of the SEALS team.”

Knowing
Skippy, Windsor shared a worried look with his copilot. “How do you plan to get
the SEALS out of there?”

“Right
now, I have no freakin’ idea,” Skippy admitted. “Give me a minute, I’m busy
trying to keep you alive. The Kristang down there are shooting at anything that
flies; I’m messing with the targeting systems in your area.”

Windsor
mouthed a silent prayer and looked back at ‘Curly’, the dead Kristang in the
seat behind him. If his Dragon were shot down over the city, the Kristang
examining the wreckage might wonder why human remains were scattered around,
but they would also find Curly in his broken armored suit, and hopefully decide
the incident was not worth investigating during a civil war. That would be cold
comfort for Windsor and his crew.

Williams
and Jones had just received Skippy’s signal to launch their balloons, when it
seemed like the sky exploded around them. The first thing they saw was a
missile streaking in to strike a transport aircraft that had turned away from
the normal air traffic corridor. The impact and loss of engine caused the
aircraft to roll over and veer toward their building, descending rapidly.
Somehow, the pilots were able to recover and the aircraft staggered along,
losing altitude and trailing smoke and fire but giving a semblance of control.

Then,
seeing an aircraft deviate from the authorized flight path and evidence of
hostile action in the city below, a fighter above the city opened fire on the
transport, ripping it apart with maser bolts. The transport tore itself apart,
burning chunks of wreckage falling over the city. That was enough for the
already-panicked controllers of the city’s defense system. Without bothering to
coordinate or even check with the civilians air traffic control system, the
defenders authorized their autocannons and missiles to act against any aircraft
that had deviated from the established civilian air traffic corridors. Since
the air traffic system had ordered most civilian traffic to deviate from their
normal flightpaths, the city’s defense system found a target-rich environment
when it was unleashed. Missile exploded from launch tubes, and maser
autocannons crackled, scorching the air and searing into unprotected civilian
aircraft. Seeing gunfire below, military fighters flying cover above added
their own weapons to the fray, and in moments, the air above the city was a
freeform swirling chaos of exploding aircraft and buildings impacted by burning
debris.

“Oh,
shit, boss!” Jones shouted and pushed Williams aside just before a flying piece
of something impacted the roof right where the SEALS team leader had been
standing. Williams staggered, the suit’s stabilizer mechanism keeping him
upright. He regained his footing just in time to see a large fiery chunk of
something descending toward the roof. As he spun to leap out of the way, his
mind recognized the object as the forward section of a Kristang civilian
transport aircraft. Then the nose of what used to be an aircraft slammed into
the roof, and the two SEALS were flung through the air.

Williams
came down hard, bouncing on the roof and smacking up against a metal box that
contained some type of mechanical equipment. Stunned, he got on hands and
knees, shaking his head to clear the spots from his eyes. The display in his
visor indicated the armored suit had not sustained any significant damage.
“Jones? Jones?” He looked around in alarm, trying to eyeclick the visor to
check on the status of his fellow SEALS, but his unsteady vision was unable to
control the display through eye movements alone. Pulling himself upright, he
just got to his feet when a line of maser light struck the roof; an overeager
fighter pilot high above making sure the piece of aircraft on the roof would
not represent a threat. The roof buckled partly and Williams staggered again,
spots still swimming in his vision. He was knocked to his knees when the roof
below him sagged, and he toppled to the side to crash on top of Jones.

“Jones!
Jones?” Williams used his suit’s super-powered Kung Fu grip to bend the metal
of the mechanical box next to him, providing a do-it-yourself handhold to
steady himself. Jones was not responding and the man didn’t look good. The
right side of his suit’s torso was bent inward from below the armpit to the
hip. There was not a hole or crack, but inside the suit, parts of the material
had to be sticking into Jones. Williams bent to get a better look in the man’s
visor, and Jones coughed, sending a spray of red droplets onto the inner
surface of the faceplate. The droplets ran down and were sucked away
automatically. “Jones? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,
boss. I, I’m not doing so good.”

Williams
looked around, fearing something else would hit the roof soon. “Can you walk?”

“I
think so. Need to, to catch my breath is all.”

They
didn’t have time for Jones to catch his breath. “I’ll help you,” Williams
offered and put a hand under the man’s left armpit, using his powered suit to
lift. Jones staggered, grunted, and his eyes rolled back. “Can you stand?”

“No,”
Jones barely was able to say the word, the pain was so bad. He had cracked,
possibly broken ribs. If he could pause to run a diagnostic, the suit would
tell him where and how badly he was hurt. They did not have time for that. With
Williams doing most of the work, the two made their way across the cracked and
buckled surface of the roof to an access door, which was on a reinforced part
of the roof. The door frame had warped, Williams punched through with his free
glove and the door open. Staggering down the stairs that were too tall for
human comfort, he mostly carried Jones down two flights of stairs then stopped,
as the stairway below that level was missing. Something had hit that side of
the building and tore a section loose. Williams went back up a few stairs and
cautiously pulled open a door into a dark and empty hallway. He allowed Jones
to slump down against a wall and used his own suit to check the other man’s
condition. Broken ribs, punctured lung, bruised spleen and other less important
internal injuries. Jones was not getting out of the building on his own.

“Skippy,”
Williams could hear booming and banging sounds coming from above. Either the
damaged roof was settling, or more weapons fire was uselessly bouncing the
debris around. Or, worse, Kristang soldiers had landed on the roof to
investigate the incident. “You got any ideas to get us out of here?” He
subconsciously ran a hand on the back of his neck where the suicide patch
rested, but his armored gloves merely scraped against the back of his helmet.

“Climb
down the maintenance access shaft for the ventilation system,” Skippy
responded, as if that were the simplest thing in the world to do. “You don’t
have time for witty banter so, no, I was not joking, Lieutenant.”

“An
access shaft? How about you use your super powers to commandeer an elevator for
us?”

“No
can do. I thought of that, but the building security personnel have already
brought the elevators to the bottom level and engaged the manual locking bolts.
I have control of several bots that could remove the bolts, however that would
require the three security people to leave their posts so the bots have time to
work. They are unlikely to do that. Thus, because Jones is injured, your best
bet is the access shaft.”

Williams
took a moment to consider. Skippy was an incredible intelligent AI, but he was
not a being with biological limits. He did not know whether plans he made were
practical for real humans, even highly capable SEALS. “Fine, let’s do it,” he
said, having quickly considered their limited options. His helmet faceplate lit
up with an arrow pointing to a barely-visible door near the end of the
corridor, and the visor drew a blinking yellow box around the outline of the
door. “I see the door.”

“Good,
go there now. Now.” Skippy urged.

Williams
picked up the inert Jones, hearing his suit’s internal motors whining with the
strain. Bent over, he shuffled his feet along the corridor toward the door,
which clicked softly and slid aside. The door led to an alcove, really a large
closet, and the door slid silently closed behind him. “We’re here.”

“I
know,” Skippy said in a matter-of-fact manner, not taking time for jokes. “You
have to manually remove the hatch, it’s just a wheel.”

“I see
it,” Williams set Jones down gently, and spun the wheel. He stuck his head in
an opening barely large enough for his suited bulk. The helmet lights came on
automatically, illuminating a smooth if somewhat dusty rectangular shaft.
Handholds were recessed farther apart than they would be on Earth, and there
were more access hatches at what he estimated were every five floors. “That’s
thirty stories down,” he observed skeptically. Since Kristang were taller than
humans, their buildings had taller ceilings, making each floor in the building
twenty or more feet apart. “That is a long way to climb. I can barely fit in
there, not sure how I can carry Jones. Can you remotely control his suit?”

“Not
with the precision required to climb down that shaft, no. Remove him from his
suit, and hide the suit in the closet to your right. There are cleaning and
maintenance bots in there now, I have deactivated them.”

Working
quickly and as quietly as he could, Williams pulled a half dozen bots from the
closet. Some small, some taller than himself. Some bland and as prosaic in
appearance as a toaster, some scary with tentacles for grasping a variety of
implements. With the closet cleared out, he remotely commanded Jones’ suit to
open. Seals at the neck, across the torso, at the waist, wrists and ankles
broke open, allowing Williams to carefully take the armor off. Jones was barely
conscious, trying to help and only getting in Williams’ way. “Jones, relax, I
got this. You seeing this, Skippy?” He looked at the wound that had Jones’
right side covered with blood from the bottom half of his ribcage to below the
man’s hipbone.

“Yes.
The injury is no different from what the suit reported. Jones will recover
fully, if we can get him here so I can stabilize him, then aboard the ship for
treatment. Put his suit in the closet along with your thermal grenades; active
your grenades and his. I will need to destroy the suit later. Once you are in
the access shaft, I will activate one of the bots and use it to clean up the
human blood on the floor. Hurry, please.”

It had
been a struggle to get Jones securely onto Williams’ back while in the confines
of the access shaft. After several failed attempts, they had relied on
assistance from a bot controlled by Skippy. With Jones strapped to his back,
Williams had climbed down twelve stories of the building. So far, so good;
Skippy reported a military aircraft had been sent to investigate the wreckage
on the roof, but with friendly fire incidents abounding around the city, the
pilots were hesitant to approach the building. “Friendly fire?” Williams asked.
“You wouldn’t be involved in any of that, would you?”

Skippy
chuckled. “Ok, not maybe it is not-so-friendly fire. Although I didn’t start it,
that was all lizards. Now that the retrieval op got all screwed up, I figure
that lizards shooting at each other provides good cover for your escape. How
are you doing, Lieutenant?”

“I’m
good, Skippy, the suit is doing most of the work. Jones? You with me?” Williams
asked, nudging the injured man’s head gently with his helmet.

“Nnnnuh,”
Jones, responded. “Yuh.”

“Good.
Need to keep you awake, so I’m going to tell you a joke, Ok?”

“Your,
jokes, terr-ble.” Jones breathed.

“Ha!
Listen, this guy walks into a bar, with a shopping bag, right? He sits down,
puts the bag on the bar. Something in the bag is moving, and the bartender says
‘Hey, buddy, no animals in here’. You with me, Jones?”

“Yah.”

“The
guy is looking real unhappy, totally down in the dumps, he reaches in the bag.
He pulls out a brass lantern, then a small piano, a little stool, and finally a
little guy in a tuxedo, about a foot tall. The little guy sits on the stool and
starts playing the piano. Playing the piano, right?”

“Yah.
Got, it.”

“Bartender
says,” Williams’ grasp on a handhold slipped for a heart-stopping moment before
the suit gloves restored their sticky grip. He could see the problem was some
sort of fluid leaking from the access hatch above had coated the handhold. He
moved his hand to the left to avoid the slippery fluid, and continued climbing
down. “Bartender says, ‘That’s amazing, where’d you get him?’ Guy points to the
lamp. ‘Magic genie granted me a wish, But he don’t hear so well-’ Before the
guy can stop him, the bartender grabs the lamp, rubs it and shouts ‘I want a
million bucks!’. POOF! The bar is filled with ducks! Ducks everywhere, under the tables, in the street outside,
feathers flying all over the place. The bartender says ‘What the hell?’ So the
guy says ‘I told you the genie don’t hear so well. You really think I asked for
a twelve inch pianist?’”

“Huh-ha.
Ha!” Jones laughed with a cough. “Oh, that hurt.”

“Ha!
Yeah, that’s a good one. You Ok back there?”

“Fine,”
Jones’ breathing was labored. “Thanks, that woke me up.”

“Outstanding.
Now it’s your turn to tell me a joke,” Williams ordered. He thought that, even
if Jones could not manage to tell a joke, trying to think of one would keep the
injured man awake.

“I got
a joke.” Jones announced after a minute. He knew keeping himself alert was
important, until he could truly rest. “Two guys in an English pub, one says
‘From your accent I guess you are Irish’. Second guy says, ‘Yes, from Dublin’.
‘Me too!’ first guy says. ‘I was raised in Drimnagh, went to St. Mary’s
school’. ‘Drimnagh? St. Mary’s?’ Second guy can’t believe it. ‘I graduated from
St. Mary’s in 1982’. First guy slaps his forehead. ‘Faith and begorah. I
graduated from St. Mary’s in 1982 also!’ Bartender says,” Jones paused for
breath, “he says to himself ‘This is going to be a long night. The Murphy twins
are drunk again’.”

“Hahahahahahaha!”
Skippy laughed, and the beer can’s hysterical laughter made the joke extra
funny to Williams, who could have lost his grip on the recessed handhold.
Fortunately, the computer controlling the powered fingers of the gloves had
learned what Williams wanted to do, and the glove automatically curled around
the handhold until he flexed his fingers to release. What he had told Skippy
was true; the powered suit was doing most of the work to climb all the way down
the access shaft. Williams knew he was still going to be stiff, especially his
pinky and ring fingers. Because Kristang had only three fingers and a thumb,
humans using their suits had to jam two fingers into the last opening of the glove.
Suit wearers got used to the awkward motion after a while; it helped to keep
fingernails well trimmed and wrap both fingers together in gauze. “Lt.
Williams,” Skippy announced, “you need to concentrate on climbing down, I will
keep Petty Officer Jones occupied.”

“You
are not singing to me,” Jones warned.

“Fine,”
Skippy huffed. “I’ll tell you some jokes I got from Doctor Friedlander. A
Kristang, a Ruhar and a Thuranin walk into a bar-”

In a
building halfway across the city, the SAS team was having second thoughts about
trusting an alien AI. “This does not appear to be a tremendously good idea,
Skippy,” Smythe said unhappily after he and Robertson manually forced the lift doors
open. When the beer can had suggested they use an elevator shaft without a car,
Smythe pictured using the power-assisted gloves of their armored suits to slide
down a cable like Batman. That idea, while dangerous, at least had the
advantage of sounding cool. Unfortunately, high-tech Kristang elevators did not
use cables, only a smooth track on each side. Smythe switched on his helmet
lights, peering one way then the other. He did not see the ladder or handhold
that he expected. Nothing he could use to climb down. “Not even a mildly good
idea.”

“Trust
me, Major, this will work just fine,” Skippy’s voice was jolly.

“You are not about to fall two hundred
fifty meters down an elevator shaft,” Smythe retorted.

“Neither
are you. Well, heh heh, I don’t think so. There is a low but non-zero
probability of you plunging to a horrible death.”

“I am
not bursting with confidence,” Smythe looked over at Robertson, whose face was
pale.

“Uh,
hmm, the good news is, if you do fall, the impact at the bottom will be so
violent that you’ll never feel it. Did that help?”

“You
daft bugger, what do you think?” Smythe demanded.

“No?
Ah, anyway, don’t worry, I got this.”

Smythe
did not see any possible way for the two of them to descend the smooth surface
of the shaft. The tracks for the elevator cars were also smooth, as if the only
moving part in the entire elevator mechanism was the car itself. “Please, Oh
Wise One, explain this to me. I know these suits have a super gecko grip on the
gloves, boots and knees, I do not think they can adhere to such a smooth
surface all the way down.”

“Correct,
I estimate the gloves and boots would lose adhesion immediately, the big
problem is the lubricant contaminating the shaft. The Kristang are not so
particular about cleaning parts of the building that no one sees. Please be
quiet and allow me to explain before we run out of time. The elevator mechanism
relies on magnetic pulses; pins on each side of the cars ride in the slots you
see. My plan is for each of you to insert a glove and boot into one of those slots.
I will energize the outer surface of your glove and boot, then use the magnetic
track to safely lower you to the second floor. You will force open the door
there, then take a seldom-used back stairway to the street level.”

“We
put a hand and foot in one of those tracks?”

“That’s
the idea, yes. I have checked the measurements, it will work.”

Smythe
used the rangefinder built into the helmet. The tracks were on either side of
the shaft, according to the rangefinder each track was four point two meters from
the edge of the door opening. “We can’t reach the tracks from here, and there
isn’t anything to stand on. Do you have any idea how we get to the tracks?” The
AI did not respond. “Skippy?”

“Well,
shit.”

“Well, shit?” Smythe asked incredulously.
“You sodding bugger, how could-”

“Hey,
I can’t think of everything! Let’s, uh, let’s keep this little incident between
ourselves, huh? No need for Joe to hear about this.”

“Oh,”
Smythe shared a look with Robertson, “if we get out of this, we will be
inviting Colonel Bishop to afternoon tea, where we will eat crumpets and tell
him in great detail exactly what happened.”

“Crap.
This isn’t the first time I forgot some tiny little detail,” Skippy admitted in
a snarky tone. “You know, here is a case where it would be useful if you
monkeys hadn’t lost your freakin’ tails. That is totally your fault.”

“We
could jump,” Robertson suggested in a tone meaning he was not advocating that
idea. “I think I can get a glove in that-”

“No!”
Skippy fairly shouted into their helmet speakers. “If you miss, it is a long
way down. If even one of you missed, you will hit the elevator car at the
bottom, then this whole building will be swarming with lizards and you’ll both
be screwed.”

“Major,”
Robertson reached into the shaft, dragged his fingertips along the smooth
surface then studied his gloves. “The surface is covered in dirt and oil, my
gloves wouldn’t stick. If Skippy can get a cleaning bot here to remove the
oil-”

“Skippy?”
Smythe asked.

“Ok,”
Skippy sounded happy. “Finally, the two of you are using that mush inside your
skulls for something useful. I have control of the cleaning bots, but that will
take too long. I have a better idea.”

Smythe
gaped, open mouthed, at the bizarre contraption hanging in the elevator shaft.
“This is your better idea?”

“Yup.
Great, ain’t it? I told you, trust the awesomeness.”

“What
I said was a question, not a statement,” Smythe explained. “How is this thing
holding itself up?” Skippy’s brilliant idea used a maintenance bot instead of a
cleaning machine; the bot he chose to employ for the task was tall with four
long tentacles. The bot had come scurrying around a corner without warning,
prompting both SAS troopers to almost shred it with their rifles before Skippy
warned them not to. Under Skippy’s direction, the bot had leaned through the
elevator door opening and stuck two tentacles into the elevator guide slot on
one side, then swung itself into the shaft and extended the other tentacles to
maximum length into the slot on the opposite side.

“Magnets,
I told you that already. Hurry, jump out there, grab onto the arms and use them
to get a hand and foot into the slot. One at a time, please, the bot is barely
holding on by itself.”

“The
bot appears to be unsteady, Skippy,” Smythe tried to judge how much
power-assisted force to use, without overshooting the mark and

“That’s
because that bot wasn’t designed to do this. Hurry! Move!”

Smythe
leaped first, easily catching a tentacle and wrapping two hands around it. The
bot lurched under his weight and began sliding down alarmingly, until Smythe
reached out with a foot and got it into the slot. He felt a tingling through
the boot, so he let go of the tentacle with one hand and jammed that hand into
the slot, then let go of the bot. Immediately, the bot stopped sliding
downward. And Smythe was held securely in place. “It works!” Smythe announced
as he worked his other foot into the slot. “Can you bring the bot upward?”

“Yup,”
Skippy announced, as both Smythe and the bot rose to the level of the doorway.
Robertson repeated Smythe’s maneuver, and shortly they were both hanging onto a
slot with both feet and both hands. The bot swung itself out of the shaft
without any fuss and scurried off, presumably back to wherever Skippy had found
it. The door closed, and the two men began moving downward in an encouragingly
controlled fashion. After a few seconds, the drop picked up speed. “Don’t
worry, I will gradually slow you down as you get near the bottom, you need to
proceed with alacrity.”

“With
alacrity?” Smythe asked, amused.

“It
means quickly,” Skippy explained. “Come on, you Brits use fancy words for
everything. Hey, since you are sort of riding an elevator, I think this is an
appropriate time for some elevator music.” His voice began warbling off key. “Miiiiidnight, not a sound from the paaaavement, has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone-”

“Oh,
bloody ‘Cats’. My Mum dragged me to see that,” Robertson complained. “Ooops, I
am losing my grip. Too bad plunging to my death will mean I miss the end of
this song.”

“Not
funny, Robertson,” Skippy blessedly paused his warbling long enough to reply. “In the laaaaamplight, the-”

“Think
of it as training to resist interrogation, Robertson,” Smythe suggested. “After
ten minutes of this torture, anyone would talk.” Fortunately, Smythe could see
they were approaching the bottom and Skippy was slowing them down. “We are to
stop at the second floor and force that door open?”

“That’s
the plan, yes.”

“Mmm.
Any thoughts on how we are to get from these tracks through that closed door?”
Smythe asked hopefully. “Skippy?”

“Well,
shit! Crap! Damn it! I hate my life,”
the beer can grumbled. “Ah, this kind of sucks for you, huh?”

“We
are greatly touched by your concern for us.” Through the clear faceplate,
Smythe could see Robertson grinning. “We can handle this, Skippy. Halt us about
two meters above the door.”

The
doorway they departed from had a lip just below that Smythe had examined as a
potential handhold. On their descent, he had inspected each doorway as they
went by; all the doors were the same. Robertson insisted on jumping first once
they stopped. He easily caught onto the lip with both hands, but the material
then began twisting and bending under his weight! Moving quickly, Robertson
jammed one hand between the doors and used the powered mechanism of the gloves
to force the lift doors apart wide enough to get a hand in, then he let go of
the failing lip and forced the doors open with both hands. He pulled himself up
to flop ungracefully on his belly, then rolled to his feet and held the doors
wide open. “Ready for you, Major.”

Smythe
pulled his feet out of the tracks, swung back and forth twice to get momentum,
and soared down through the open door, trusting his suit’s stabilizers to keep
him from crashing. “That is how we do it monkey-style, Skippy,” he said with a
wink at Robertson.

“Yeah,
yeah, very impressive,” Skippy scoffed. “I’ll give you seven out of ten for
that jump, Major, you didn’t stick the landing.”

“You try it.” Smythe checked his weapon.

“Very
funny. Move, quickly now, down the hallway and to the stairwell, I- uh, crap.
Another freakin’ complication. Damn it! A Kristang has just entered that
stairwell from the bottom, you will need to get past him.”

“Is he
armed?” Smythe placed a finger next to the safety button of his rifle.

“No,”
Skippy replied. “but you should not shoot him, that would alert everyone in the
building. If he doesn’t come back soon, the security team will notice he is
missing. Major, put on your police outfit. The lighting in there is dim, I will
cover your face with a hologram and I will do the talking for you. Please
hurry.”

Working
quickly, Smythe and Robertson helped each other don their police disguises; a
crest that attached to the top of their helmets, an armband that encircled
their left biceps and a triangle that fitted to the chest. Skippy changed the
camouflage pattern of the armor to the black and yellow of clan police, with
the crest, chest triangle and armband displaying the proper symbols. The armor
they were wearing was heavier than standard police issue, and their rifles
slightly longer than police-issue carbines, but hopefully both would pass in a
casual inspection at a distance. “Ready,” Smythe reported. “Show me this
hologram trick.”

Robertson’s
faceplate went from matt black to clear, exposing his human features. With a
flicker, his image of the face morphed into that of a Kristang. “How is this,
Major?” Robertson said, and the lizard’s mouth moved appropriately.

“Good,”
Smythe peered closer. The hologram was not perfect. “Skippy, will this be good
enough?”

“It
will if you don’t allow anyone close to you,” Skippy said quickly. “Also, don’t
make sudden gestures, I am controlling the holograms remotely, and there is a
bit of a time lag for me to deal with. Go now, it is best to meet this Kristang
in the stairwell where the lighting is poor.”

Smythe
left his rifle’s safety engaged and tapped the knife attached to his right hip,
Robertson understood the silent gesture. If the Kristang needed to be
neutralized, the SAS men would do it quietly, no gunfire that would echo in the
stairwell.

They
heard the Kristang before they saw him, footsteps clunking on the stairs.
Smythe checked Robertson’s holographic lizard face, it was more convincing in
the stairwell’s dimness. Walking with purpose but not running, the two men
crossed the landing and began descending, startling the Kristang who pressed
himself up against the wall to let them past. “Remain in the building,” Smythe
heard the translation of what his suit speakers were telling the lizard, and he
gestured with one hand to emphasize his order. For a brief second, his eyes met
the eyes of the Kristang, and Smythe saw surprise but not the shock or alarm
that would accompany the alien recognizing a human face. Then they were past,
pushing through the door onto the first floor.

“It
worked,” Skippy announced. “He is continuing up the stairs and he is not
running or calling building security. Go to your left, then another left, you
will exit the back of the building.”

“What’s
out there, Skippy?” Smythe asked when his hand was on the lever to open the
door.

“A lot
of people. Chaos. Civilians are leaving the center of the city to get away from
the fighting; there are still friendly fire incidents occurring regularly. That
door opens into an alley not much different from an urban alley on Earth; it is
dark and narrow and crowded and dirty with refuse containers. There is a
delivery vehicle at the end to your left, I suggest you go to the right and
onto the sidewalk.”

Smythe
went first, pushing the door open and sticking his head out into what Skippy
had accurately described as a narrow alley between two buildings. The alley was
empty except for a lorry parked against one side; Smythe could see into the lorry’s
cab and it was empty. Skippy had also been correct about chaos in the city; the
streets at both ends of the alley were jammed with vehicle traffic on the
streets and panicked Kristang hurrying along the sidewalks. “Robertson, this is
going to be interesting. Remember, we are clan police officers, we own these
streets. We move and act with authority, and no one will stop us. We are Kristang police; if any civilians
attempt to bother us, brush them aside, use the butt of your rifle if needed.”

“Got
it,” Robertson agreed, holding his rifle in front of him, checking the safety
was on. They walked quickly and purposefully down the alley, taking long but
unhurried strides. Both men took a deep breath before stepping from the darkest
part of the alley into the pool of light coming from the street. With the city
under emergency conditions, most buildings were dark, with the only lights at
street level. Even those were a dim, sickly yellowish haze, other than the
rotating red lamps at intersections. With the city ground traffic system
controlling all movement in the streets, vehicles rolled smoothly along, with a
string of five vehicles almost nose to tail, then a gap. Across the street, a
bus glided silently to a stop and no one got off; Kristang on the sidewalk
pushed and shoved and argued to get on the bus that would take them out of the
now-dangerous city. The bus did not have a driver, and the controlling system
did not care about the fears of its occupants, for the doors suddenly shut and
the bus rolled away, apparently leaving some females on the sidewalk while
their children were on the bus. Frantic females raced after the bus, which
smoothly accelerated away and switched to a higher speed center lane. Smythe
and Robertson looked at each other and each shook their heads. They felt
sympathy for the wailing females, who still tried to catch the distant bus
despite the crowded sidewalk. The SAS men, the humans, would not get involved
in Kristang affairs. Except for assuring the Kristang were no longer a threat
to Earth, problems of the alien society were of no concern to anyone from
Earth.

With
Smythe in the lead, they stepped from the alley into the sidewalk. The crowd
parted for them, civilians keeping a distance between themselves and the feared
clan police force. The SAS men walked down the center of the sidewalk, keeping
their rifles in front of them, using the rifles to nudge aside civilians who
did not move quickly enough. In the dimness of the city’s reddish emergency
lighting, no one looked too closely at the pair of ‘police officers’. The two
figures in their hulking black and yellow armored suits were a menacing sight
that did not invite close inquiry.

Smythe
had to use his SAS training to maintain razor-sharp focus despite the swirling
confusion around him, and the mind-blowing experience of strolling along a
street in a Kristang city. Despite the bizarre circumstances, all was well
until Skippy alerted them to a problem. “Major Smythe, there is a problem and I
do not know how best you should cope with it. A pair of real city police are
about to come around the corner to your right; they are checking identification
of people before allowing them to proceed.”

“The
hologram faceplate trick won’t work?” Smythe thought he already knew the answer
to that question.

“No,
those police will insist you lift your faceplate. You have only seconds now.”

Across
the street and to the right, Smythe saw a crowd forming, civilians being
stopped and inspected or frisked or scanned or whatever Kristang police did.
Instinctively, Smythe pulled his zPhone out of a belt pouch, held it up, and
shouted for a male Kristang hurrying past to stop. “Citizen! Halt!” He prayed
whatever Skippy-translated words booming out of the helmet speakers was correct
for the situation.

Robertson
followed Smythe’s lead, taking out his own zPhone and pretending to use it as a
scanner. “Identification, now!” He shouted at the nearest pair of civilians,
holding up his rifle menacingly. With the zPhone, he waved it up and down each
one, pretending to scan them while they babbled fearfully at him.

Across
the street, two city police officers came around the corner, brusquely pushing
civilians aside, herding them together. One of the police glanced across the
street, turned away, then turned back, startled to see another pair of police.

“Skippy,”
Smythe said quietly, “tell them whatever hell you need, to make them leave us
alone.” Without waiting for the unseen beer can, he held up his rifle and
gestured at the other police with two fingers of his other hand. With sign
language, he tried to indicate that he and Robertson would cover their side of
the street, and the other police should cover their side. From the speakers
below the chin of his helmet, he heard his suit saying something loud in
Kristang.

The
other cop took one step toward Smythe, hesitating at the edge of the street.

“Lt.
Robertson,” Skippy ordered, “hit the Kristang male in front of you. Don’t kill
him, but knock him down.”

There
was a Kristang male in front of Robertson, halted to be ‘scanned’ but arguing,
waving some sort of ID card and gesturing at the three females with him.
Without checking with Smythe, Robertson reached out and slapped the male across
the face, firmly but not hard. Perhaps a bit too firmly; the civilian’s head
spun and he went down, to be surrounded by wailing and weeping females.

For a
gut-churning moment, the other policeman hesitated at the edge of the street,
confused. Then his fellow officer called for help with the growing crowd, and
the policeman held up two fingers in professional acknowledgement.

“Bloody
hell,” Smythe had to stop his hands from shaking. “That was close. Skippy, what
was that for?”

“Abuse
of civilians is convincing evidence that the two of you are clan police,”
Skippy explained. “More convincing than the line of bullshit I was telling that
cop.”

The
male staggered to his feet with the help of his cowering females, and Smythe
felt sorry for the women. They would no doubt catch the wrath of the male, for
they had witnessed the male’s humiliation. Smythe pointed at the male and waved
him angrily away. “Robertson, we make our way down this side of the street,
keep stopping people and pretend we’re checking IDs. Do not look across the
street; Skippy will warn us if those coppers are coming our way. Right,
Skippy?”

“Affirmative.
I have to say, Major, that once again I am impressed by the inventiveness of
humans. That was quick thinking.”

“I
figure police are like soldiers; they have a job to do and want to focus on
it.”

“I
cannot comment on the universal nature of human military and law enforcement.
There is a potential problem; traffic on the other side of the street is
thinning. I overheard those two police saying they may split up soon, with one
of them coming toward you. I have transmitted the proper authentication codes
for you, however, these are local police and they do not recognize the two of you.”

“Tell
them we’re, federal police, or something like that,” Robertson suggested.

“I did
that already; as local police they are curious, and unhappy, about you being in
their jurisdiction. Do not be overly concerned, Major Smythe.”

“Overly concerned?” What would be the
appropriate level of concern? Absolute and utter panic?

“Please,
Major. Trust the awesomeness. I have just caused a vehicle crash up the street
behind you, that will divert foot traffic onto the other side of the street.
And,” Skippy paused, “yes, civilians are crossing the road. The two police
officers have just noticed the increased traffic, and the accident. One of them
is gesturing toward you. Wave to acknowledge.”

Smythe
turned briefly toward the other police and did the curt two-finger wave again.
“You keep going, my friend,” he muttered under his breath, “nothing to see over
here.”

“Hey,
arsehole,” Robertson mimicked Smythe’s two-finger gesture toward the alien
police officer. “Yeah, that’s right, stay over there.”

To the
relief of the two humans, the real police officers continued up the other side
of the street, drawing farther away from the Special Air Services officers. As
the distance increased and it became harder for the real police to see them
Smythe and Robertson began walking faster, stopping only random civilians
rather than everyone on the sidewalk. “Robertson, check behind us. Can you see
those police?”

“Only
the tops of their helmets,” Robertson reported quietly.

“Skippy,
we are out of here,” Smythe advised.
“Which way?”

“Excellent
work, Major,” Skippy sounded pleased. “Take the next left, then cross the
street approximately forty meters down and go into an alley there.”

At the
other end of the alley, a lorry was backing up toward them. “Skippy?” Smythe
looked for a doorway they might escape into.

“Relax
Major, I commandeered that truck, I’m driving it,” Skippy replied as it slowed
to a stop and the back door rolled up to expose an empty and battered cargo
box.

“A lorry?”
Smythe asked skeptically. “Why couldn’t we have gotten into the lorry that was
in the alley behind our building?”

“Because
that truck was loaded, you would have had to break into it and unload the
cargo. Plus, the cargo containers in that truck all have radio ID tags that I
can’t easily hack into from here; if the truck got pulled over for inspection
the police would be suspicious that why it is heading out of the city when the
cargo’s destination is near the city center. Also, that truck was on the wrong
side of the street for a direct path outside the city. Please, just get in the
truck, OK? I’ll have you outside the city in a jiffy.”

Smythe
did not ask exactly how long a ‘jiffy’ was, although he was certain it was
longer than whatever Skippy expected. “Robertson,” he waved the other man
forward, and they stepped up into the cargo box, which slid closed behind them.
With a whine of electric motors, the lorry started forward with a lurch, turned
what Smythe felt was to the right, and picked up speed. Smythe slid his back
down the cargo box to sit on the floor, and rested his rifle between his feet.
One thing the military had taught him was to get rest when he could.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Williams’
arms, legs and fingers were cramped and aching when he completed the climb,
which had taken them three stories below street level. Jones was doing better,
the color coming back into his cheeks. Skippy said the nanoparticles he had
injected into Jones from the suit had stopped the internal bleeding, although
Jones still had fluid in his right lung.

They
waited behind a door that lead to a parking garage beneath the building.
Williams found it disconcerting to be in such a mundane place, during an
operation that was anything but ordinary. “We’re ready, Skippy.”

“The
truck is backed up as close as I can to the door, you will still be visible for
three meters. Petty Officer Jones will need to be covered in that tarp.”

“Got
it,” Jones replied, flopping the tarp over his head so Williams could carry him
concealed. They had found the tarp in a storage closet, it was stained, dotted
with stiff dried resin or something like that, and smelled of harsh chemicals.
Jones considered that, if the tarp got him out of the city to rescue, he would
be happy to make a suit of the tarp and wear it every day.

“Commencing
distraction in three, two, one, boom,”
Skippy announced, and the building shook. The emergency lighting flickered, as
Skippy triggered the thermal grenades on the upper floor. The grenades
effectively destroyed the damaged suit Jones had been wearing, along with three
floors of one side of the building. Debris exploded outward, cascading into the
streets below. The heat of the thermal explosion twisted the upper structure of
the tower, and caused the approaching military aircraft to veer away and climb
rapidly. “Go!”

Williams
was ready, Jones covered up on his back in a fireman’s carry, one hand on the
door latch. The door opened and in four strides, Williams quickly walked to the
waiting truck and stepped up into the mostly empty cargo box. He set Jones down
carefully and yanked the door down. “We’re in, Skip-” Before he could finish,
the truck was already moving.

“You
might as well settle down, guys, you’ll be in this truck for a while. The good
news is the edge of the city is not far and I know a route the military hasn’t
blocked yet. I’m confident you can get out of the city. The bad news is the
highway out of the city leads toward the sea and is a restricted route; it is
quite a distance before I can turn this truck onto a side route where a
dropship can pick you up.”

“Skippy,
thank you, we very much appreciate it.”

“Oh,
it is no trouble at all. Hey, while I have your attention for a couple hours,
I’ve been working on some new showtunes-”

The
behavior of our beer can had me concerned. “Skippy, you seem kind of
distracted. Is everything Ok with you?”

“Yes,
Joe, I’m fine.”

My
zPhone beeped and it was a text message from Skippy, We should talk privately, the text read. That scared me. Aboard the
Thuranin dropship, there was no privacy for my conversations with Skippy;
everyone could hear both sides. “I’m going outside for fresh air,” I announced.
That drew raised eyebrows from the crew and I ignored them, they knew when to
leave me to myself. Once outside, I stayed within the stealth field netting,
the ground was illuminated only by lights from the dropship. I wanted to go
outside, to see the sky like I had on Paradise. With the extensive sensor
network in Kobamik, I couldn’t take that risk just to indulge myself. “What’s
up, Skippy?” I tried to keep my tone light. It didn’t work.

“In a
word, the worm. It’s back.”

“The worm?” I lowered my voice. “I thought
you killed it.”

“So
did I. It followed me back into my canister. Or, there is another possibility
that frightens me even more.”

“What?”

“That
a worm has been inside me the whole time, and is only now active. I mentioned
the possibility that the worm is a safety mechanism created by the Elders, to
protect the galaxy from AIs who go rogue. Maybe the Elders built a worm into my
matrix. In that case, all Elder AIs have worms inside them.”

“Holy
shit. A worm killed that AI we found on Newark. Back then, you said there was
no way that AI was involved with throwing Newark out of its orbit.”

“Yeah,”
his voice was glum. “Yeah, I did say that. At the time, I believed it. Totally
believed it. Now? Now I don’t know what to believe. If that AI went rogue and
destroyed Newark’s biosphere, the worm may have killed the AI to prevent
further damage.”

I knew
how thinking about a fellow Elder AI wiping out a sentient species would affect
Skippy, so I changed the subject. “Why is the worm attacking you now?”

“Unknown.
It doesn’t matter right now anyway.”

“Ok,”
he also wanted to avoid the subject. “Are you in danger?”

“No,
no,” he chuckled unconvincingly. “It is distracting me, that’s all. No
problemo, Joe. That worm is toast. I’m toying with it, I have it trapped in a
dead-end where I can take it apart and analyze it. I have beaten that worm
twice already that I know of.”

“Skippy,
are you certain about that? You are our ride off this rock. And back home.”

“Joe,
if there was a significant danger, I would tell you. Come on, it’s me.”

“Exactly
what I’m worried about. All right, we keep going, you promise to tell me if
that worm becomes a danger to you?”

“Yup.
Now, go back inside where you can monitor how the SEALS and SAS teams are
doing.”

Smythe
had not even vaguely been asleep, so he was instantly aware when the lorry
veered to the right abruptly, then slowed, then took another right. “Skippy?”

“Yeah,
uh, listen, we have a little bit of a problem. Technically, you have the problem, but I am with you
in spirit.”

“That
makes me feel so much better,” Smythe
didn’t try to disguise the sarcasm. “What is the problem this time?”

“Checkpoint.
The city authorities just closed all civilian ground and air routes into and
out of the city. This is as far as the truck can go, unfortunately.”

“What
do we do now?”

“We go
to Plan C. Or it is D? Whatever. No, wait, it is Plan P! Yeah, that’s it. P,” Skippy chuckled.

“What
is so funny?”

“You’ll
see,” Skippy was almost giggling with mirth.

Smythe
looked at Robertson and they both groaned. “Is this,” Smythe asked, “something
we very much are not going to like?”

“Hmmm.
No. No, Joe would very much not like
this. But, seeing as your SAS guys are certifiably freakin’ crazy, you will
probably love this idea. As a bonus, it will give you a great story to tell
when you get back to Hereford.”

Smythe
looked down at the rushing water. Or whatever it was, for the fluid was
definitely not pure water. “I must admit, I do not love this idea, Skippy.”

“Plan
P! See what I meant?!”

Below
Major Smythe was a heavy access hatch that led down into a pipe that carried
water and other less savory things out of the city. Skippy had been able to
override the lock to the hatch lid, and the two powered armor suits made short
work of lifting the heavy lid. Looking down with the lights of his helmet on
full power, he did not like what he saw. “P? Yes, that was very clever,
Skippy,” he replied without humor. “It’s a sewer. A lizard sewer.”

“Oh,
come on, Major. Sealed up in your suits, you won’t get any yucky stuff on you,
I promise. Think of it as floating along a river in one of those Central
American caves. You did some of your SAS training in Belize, right?”

“The
water in those cenotes is clean, Skippy.” Smythe blinked to update the display
on his visor, checking the suit’s internal oxygen level. For a ground mission
in a breathable atmosphere, they had been relying on external oxygen, pulled
into the suit and filtered. Once the mission had gone sideways, the four people
still on the ground had activated the pumps that stored oxygen in the suit’s
built-in storage packs. Those internal packs did not have the capacity of the
tanks used for missions in vacuum or nonbreathable environments, still Smythe
was heartened to see that he now had more than two hours of internal oxygen.
“This pipe leads to a sewage processing station, I assume? Won’t we be swept up
in a filter and crushed by the water pressure?”

“Yes,
it does lead to a sewage treatment plant. No, you will not get crushed. The
system has emergency bypass gates that can be opened remotely in case of high
water volume, and the good news is the security level of that system is low
grade; I hacked into it easily. When you approach the bypass gate, it will open
and close quickly for you, and I will block the central computer from knowing
that gate was ever open. There will be an investigation later, because raw
sewage will have been dumped into a river that borders prime hunting ground. I
estimate you will pop to the surface of the river thirty one minutes after you
enter that pipe, and you will be far enough away from the city to avoid
security patrols. We should be away from here and back on the ship, before the
Kristang realize something went through the bypass gate. Trust me, Major, this
is a stroke of genius. This pipe will take you out of the city faster than that
truck would have. There are no traffic jams down there.”

“There
is one thing in our favor, Sir,” Robertson leaned over to look down the pipe
and wrinkled his nose, even though no scent got through the air filters of his
suit.

“What
is that?”

“I am
certain that 22 SAS has never infiltrated an alien sewer,” Robertson said with
a smile, “so perhaps we will get a unique campaign ribbon for that.”

“Ha!”
Smythe laughed at the gallows humor and patted Robertson on the back. “There’s
nothing for it, then, I’ll go first.”

I anxiously
followed the progress of the truck carrying Lt. Williams’ two-man SEALS team
out of the city, giving a shudder of relief when the display showed me their
truck had cleared the city perimeter. Just in time, too, a checkpoint had been
set up and traffic in and out of the city locked down, twelve minutes after
Williams and Jones zipped onto the highway past the city administrative limits.
“One down, one to go,” I muttered to myself. To Skippy, I asked “You have a
status on the SAS team?”

“Status?
They’re in a sewer pipe, Joe, what type of status do you expect?”

“Uh,
like, where are they? I want to see it on the display,” I pointed to the
dropship console in front of me. I was not happy about the SAS team floating
along an underground sewer. If anything went wrong, we had no way to assist
them.

“Joe,
I have no freakin’ clue where they are right now. If you like, I can estimate
their location from what I know of the water flow speed.”

“What?
You don’t know where they are? You little shithead, you should have told us
that! How will you know when to open that bypass gate?”

“I
won’t know when to open the bypass gate and I won’t have to, dumdum. I loaded
the gate command program into both of their suit computers; as they approach
the gate their suits will communicate with the gate and it will open for them.
Behold, the magic of Skippy!”

“Uh
huh. You will know when the gate opens, right?”

“Oh,
sure, Joe. I’ll know because I need to intercept the signal before it reaches
the central control computer. Although, hmmm.”

“Hmmm?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Hmmm what?”

“Hmmm,
like, I should have received a signal from that gate at least four minutes
ago.”

“Crap!”

“This
is puzzling. Maybe the water flow is slower than I, nope. No, I am reviewing
data from the water flow sensors, Major Smythe certainly should have reached
the bypass gate by now.”

“What
could have happened?”

“Joe,”
he sounded completely miserable, “I have no idea.”

Major
Smythe knew what happened, because he was in the middle of it. He had been the first
to slip into the disgusting sewer water, holding onto the lip of the pipe until
Robertson plunged in. As they drifted along, tiny differences in the current
flow had caused Smythe to fall behind by several meters, nothing that alarmed
either man. Smythe used a few strokes with his powered suit arms to pull even
with Robertson, then when he fell behind again he let the current carry him.
The sonar of the suit helmet provided him a vague view of what lay ahead, which
was endless pipe. There weren’t even many curves to make the trip mildly
interesting. Only when a smaller pipe came in from one side of another did he
two men experience a change; the additional volume of fluid being forced
through the confines of the pipe made the speed of the water increase. They
were really moving as they approached the bypass gate; according to the map
projected in their visors, they would reach the gate in less than two minutes.
There were supposed to be two smaller pipes flowing in from the left before the
bypass gate on the right.

From
ahead, Robertson eye-clicked to get a better view on sonar. There was so much
non-water things in the sewer water that the sonar had difficulty penetrating
far enough ahead to be useful. “Sir, I think I see the first of those two pipes
coming in from the left.”

“Let’s
move to the right,” Smythe ordered. The first inflow pipe they zipped past had
given them a rude lesson; jagged encrustations of something growing around the
lip of the inflow pipe, and trash caught in the crust. Smythe had gotten a
sharp knock to the head by a length of chain flailing in the current; while it
had not damaged the helmet at all, the incident made him leery of obstructions
in the pipe.

“Aye,
aye, Sir,” Robertson thought using nautical terminology appropriate for the
occasion. Checking his extremely fuzzy sonar, his eyes opened wide. “Something
ahead of us on the left!” Robertson extended his arms to swim strong strokes
toward the right side of the pipe, but it was too late. With a jolt that made
his head smack the inside of his faceplate and a wrenching tug on his right
leg, he came to a stop, hanging in the powerful current with his feet behind
him and his arms in front.

Smythe,
given a half second of warning, was able to avoid the obstruction, and saw only
a vague image of Robertson as he was swept past. “Robertson!” Smythe shouted,
spinning himself around and trying to swim back upstream. It was no use, even
with all the power of the suit, he could not make any headway against the
current, he was being pushed backwards. “Can you get free?” He shouted into the
helmet microphone, already out of breath from the strain.

“I’m
stuck, Sir,” Robertson’s voice came through faint and distorted by static. “My
right leg is entangled in something. Working to get it free.”

Smythe,
desperate for an idea, stopped swimming with one arm just long enough to reach
back and rip a knife off his belt. In those few seconds, he had drifted back so
that Robertson was no longer visible on the sonar. Smythe stopped trying to
swim upstream and pulled himself over to the right side of the pipe. As they
had floated along, he had noticed seams spaced regularly along the pipe’s inner
surface. Still swimming as hard as he could with one hand, he looked backward
along the pipe, his helmet lights on fog mode and almost useless. When he saw a
seam, he jabbed at it with the knife; it bounced off the hard surface and
missed. The next time, the knife blade jammed itself into a seam, dug in and
held. For a moment, Smythe held stationary against the force of the current.
Then the blade snapped, and he was pulled along helplessly.

If he
couldn’t swim against the current, he could swim across it. There was a second
inlet pipe on the left, and if he didn’t get himself tangled in whatever junk
was caught there, he might be able to hang on there. Hang on until Robertson
freed himself and came floating by, when Smythe could join him. There was no
way Smythe could get back to help Robertson, the man would need to somehow get
himself free. What Smythe could do was buy time; if the current carried Smythe
through the bypass gate too soon before Robertson, then Robertson would be
trapped. Skippy had warned them to stay close together, for the bypass gate
could only cycle open and closed once. It was an emergency apparatus that was
designed to open when needed, then force itself closed and lock to protect the
river downstream from contamination. Each man’s suit would trigger the bypass
gate to open when one of the suits was within seventy meters. Smythe needed to
hold position until Robertson floated by.

Turning
around because he needed to use the sonar, he saw the inlet pipe almost too
late. With both hands, he grasped onto whatever his fingers could close around.

And it
held. It was some crusty, crunchy, slimy thing that brought barnacles to
Smythe’s mind. It held, except it was flaking away from the pipe under the
stress of holding the mass of Smythe and the armored suit against the current.
The crusty material was flaking away, crumbling faster and faster. Desperate, he
let go with one hand and reached down for his rifle. Holding the weapon steady
against the current, he held the muzzle a half meter away from the pipe
surface. Kristang rifles had a feature where, if the barrel was full of water,
a gas charge would blow out the water in advance of the round firing. Smythe
said a silent prayer his rifle was working correctly and squeezed the trigger.

And
nothing happened, because the safety was on. Cursing his inexcusable loss of
focus, Smythe released the safety and squeezed the trigger twice to blow a
crack into the pipe liner. He let the rifle swing back onto his leg holster,
reached a couple fingers of one glove in the crack with one hand and with the
other hand reached for his belt, which contained a cable and grappling hook.
Fully extended, the grapple would be too wide for the crack so he jammed it in.
Pieces of the pipe liner cracked away before the grapple held. Smythe tugged at
the cable, it was secure. “Robertson?” The only response was intermittent and
unintelligible, which at least told Smythe that Robertson was alive and
attempting to communicate.

Attempting
to communicate?

The
signal was not just intermittent, cutting in and out, was it purposefully
intermittent? “Suit,” Smythe called the computer in his helmet. “Can you
determine whether the signals being received are Morse code?” His own knowledge
of Morse was rusty, for which Smythe remonstrated himself.

“Affirmative,”
the suit’s flat emotionless voice responded, “message reads ‘Almost free’.
Message repeats.”

“Oh
thank God,” Smythe closed his eyes in gratitude. “Send back ‘Holding
position’.”

Five
minutes later, Robertson’s muffled voice came through. “-the way-”, then
“Coming, Major. Had to cut myself loose. No damage to my suit.”

“Understood,
Robertson. It’s good to hear your voice. I’m holding position near the last
inlet pipe.”

“How
are you doing that?” Robertson asked, fearing his leader had been caught in an
obstruction.

“It is
a long story,” Smythe replied dryly, “I see you on sonar. Releasing now,” he freed
the cable from the grapple, leaving the grapple stuck into the damaged pipe
liner for a Kristang maintenance team to puzzle over someday.

The
two SAS soldiers floated side by side, keeping to the center of the pipe as
best they could. As they approached the bypass gate, their suit computers
beeped to confirm the gate had accepted the command to open, and they swam
strongly toward the right. Not all the flow of the pipe was going through the
bypass, and if they missed the bypass there was no going back upstream.
Smythe’s left foot bounced off the lip of the bypass gate as they went through,
then they were clear. “Skippy had better be right about there being no
obstacles between us and the river, or it’s going to get real dodgy for us.”

“The
bypass gate is open!” Skippy announced. “See, Joe, I told you to have faith.”

“If
the water is flowing at the rate you expected, how could they be late?”

“How
the hell should I know?” Skippy complained. “Maybe they pulled over at a
freakin’ rest area for a snack?”

The
sewage bypass pipe had emptied into a river just as Skippy predicted, the only
problem being a fixed gate at the far end. After they were slammed into the
gate by the force of sewage water flowing out of the pipe, Robertson managed to
get his rifle free and pumped three rounds into a hinge, breaking part of the
gate free. Attached to only one hinge and the locking mechanism, the gate had
briefly swung open to allow Robertson through, flailing his arms and legs out
of control. Smythe had almost been crushed when the heavy gate rebounded,
pulling his legs back inside at the last second. With Smythe pressed up against
the inside and Robertson hanging onto the outside, Smythe had ordered Robertson
to wait and not do anything rash. The bypass gate had closed behind them, so
the water flow should soon even out between the pipe and the river. He was
right, the current slackened quickly, and within a minute the two men working
together in their powered suits had been able to bend the gate out of the way
enough for Smythe to slip through.

They
were in a river. A deep river, twenty meters down. Smythe ordered Robertson to
turn off his helmet lights and use the sonar on minimum power. The suit’s
navigation system must have picked up a signal from the local network, because
the visor display showed they were several kilometers deep inside a hunting
preserve that bordered the city. The area was for the exclusive use of senior
Fire Dragon clan leaders and their families and guests. The extensive pre-mission
briefing about the city had only skimmed over the parkland and hunting
preserves that surrounded the densely-populated urban area. “Skippy? Can you
hear?”

“I’m
here. Damn, what took you so long? I told Joe you stopped for a snack.”

“There
was a toll we had to pay, that you neglected to tell us about. My wallet is
inside my suit, it was rather awkward.”

“A toll?” Skippy gasped, astonished. “In a
sewer? That is- oh, you’re messing with me,” Skippy chuckled. “Good one. Hey,
anyway, you’re out now. Um, you should stay deep, there is a patrol boat coming
up the river toward you.”

Smythe
did not like the sound of that. “We should turn off our sonars?”

“Probably
a good idea. Don’t worry, Skippy the Magnificent is on your side. I took
control of a truck and I’m driving it toward the river; when it hits the water,
that should attract the attention of the patrol boat. There are sensors in the
water but they are there mostly to monitor water conditions, and track the
predators.”

“Predators?
What kind of predators?”

“Oh,
several. The most dangerous is a sort of large armored crocodile, they can get
to be over ten meters long. Hmmm. There’s one of them in the river near you
now. Uh, hmm. It’s headed in your direction.”

“Can
you stop it?”

“Uh,
no, duh. How can I hack a crocodile?
They have a brain the size of a walnut.”

“Do
you have a suggestion for how to deal with it?”

“Whatever
you do, don’t shoot it! The whole area is networked with sensors that look for
unauthorized gunfire, to protect the animals from poachers. I haven’t had time
to hack into that network, I didn’t anticipate any of you pirates taking a holiday
in a game preserve. What to do? Hmmm, how about that? Wikipedia says it is best
to avoid crocodiles, particularly in water.”

“You
are a tremendous help, Skippy.”
Smythe felt for his combat knife before remembering his had snapped and he had
discarded the broken blade.

“Maybe
they’re ticklish?”

“Tickl-” With the AI not being any help,
Smythe thought their best tactic would be to swim quickly if the crocodile
attacked. “Robertson, can you-”

Skippy
interrupted. “Three, two, one, splashdown.” Under the water, the acoustic
sensors in Smythe’s suit picked up the sound of something large hitting the
water, then the muffled whine of a turbine. “Score!” Skippy exulted. “The
patrol boat is going over to investigate that truck I just drove into the
water. The splash attracted the attention of that crocodile also, it won’t
bother you. Although, hmm. Now there are a dozen more crocodiles in the water;
they were sleeping on the bank and now they are in the river. Shit, those
things are big! You may, um, want to
get out of the water. Like, now!”

“Which
direction?” Smythe asked in a voice kept calm by his SAS training.

“It is
projected on your visors. Swim smoothly, if you are clumsy the crocodiles will
think you’re a wounded animal and attack.”

Swimming
with smooth, controlled motions, the two men struck out for the nearest shore,
first coming up closer to the surface to avoid crashing into underwater
obstacles. Without sonar in the darkness, they were almost blind, relying on
the passive sensors of their suits. Smythe’s hand hit something soft and he
realized it was a mud bank; according to the map they were near the shore.
“Surface,” he ordered, and they popped up to see dim lights above the trees in
the direction of the city. Most city lights were still shut off, enough glow
remained for the suits enhanced vision to show the dense forest lining the
shore. The two men touched the silted bottom of the river and splashed ashore,
unable to avoid making ripples in the water.

“Um,
Major Smythe, you have attracted a crocodile. I, um, your motions may have
unintentionally mimicked the splashing of a mating pair of crocs, the one
coming toward you is a large male. My guess is he is agitated about another
male being in his territory.”

“Suggestion?”

“Get
out of the water and proceed quickly into the forest, dumdum! Damn, do I need
to do all the thinking in this crew? Those crocs can run extremely fast for
short distances on land.”

Behind
him, Smythe saw a foaming white, V-shaped ripple on the surface of the water.
It was moving fast, straight toward him. Without a word, he and Robertson
picked up their feet and ran, not caring about making noise. His glimpse behind
him had showed the patrol boat shining a spotlight on the sinking truck on the
opposite shore; those Kristang were not looking in their direction. Their night
vision allowed them to hurry through the forest a distance Smythe thought was
safe, until they saw and heard bushes and small trees being bashed aside by
something large and heavy coming at them from the river. Again, Robertson did
not need an order to follow Smythe deeper into the forest.

“Are
we safe now, Skippy?” Smythe asked as they ran up a hill, dense tangles of some
native shrubs impeding their progress.

“Oh,
yeah, that croc gave up chasing you. It turned around and is going back to the
river. Safe is, um, a relative term. The part of the forest where you are now is
home to a genetically-engineered predator called the ‘grikka’. The best
description for you to understand is a sort of dinosaur with heavy armor plates
made of dense bone. Very tough.”

“But
you know where these grikka are, correct?” Smythe was not pleased that they
could not use their rifles without alerting the Kristang.

“Um,
no. Hunting the grikka is considered the ultimate test of manhood for warrior
Kristang, so they are not tagged with transmitters the way most large animals
in the preserve are. They are also difficult to spot on infrared, their heat is
emitted almost entirely on their bellies. Their skin is like a chameleon, they
can adapt their color to their surroundings.”

“Brilliant,”
Smythe muttered. “A large dinosaur, you say?”

“Since
I have to use references you will understand, I will say it is just slightly
smaller than a T Rex, and a grikka walks on four legs. The armor makes it very
tough; a grikka would eat a T Rex for breakfast and another for dinner.”

“What
does Wikipedia recommend we do if we encounter one of these grikkas?”

“Be
quiet and think happy thoughts? Seriously, you won’t be able to outrun a grikka
for long, my guess is your best tactic would be to climb a tree. Prayer may
also be helpful. There is a dropship on its way to pick you up, it needs to fly
an indirect course to avoid sensors I do not yet have control over.”

Happy
thoughts? Smythe had a thought of himself tossing Skippy into a black hole.
That made him momentarily happy. He looked around and up. They were surrounded
by large trees, the size of oaks on Earth. Trees with black bark.

“Major?”
Robertson’s voice was quiet. “Something is coming.”

“How
do you know?” Smythe’s visor could not see anything useful. The undergrowth
extended three or four meters tall all around, blocking his view.

“This
dinosaur detector says so,” Robertson pointed the barrel of his rifle to a
puddle.

As
Smythe watched, the puddle shook and formed a ripple. Smythe looked up in
alarm. “I saw that movie.” They needed to run, but in what direction? In the
darkness, they might blindly stumble directly into a grikka. Forcing himself to
be calm, he eyeclicked through various settings of infrared vision, and saw
nothing. The water in the puddle was now still; perhaps the grikka was far
away? Or, Smythe had an unpleasant thought, the grikka could have stopped
walking because it was close, and was now studying its prey.

“Maybe
it can’t smell us, because we’re in suits?” Smythe speculated hopefully.

“Sir?”
Robertson pointed to caked-on, disgusting something that was stuck to the legs
of his suit. And not just on the legs. “We picked up something in that sewer,
and it didn’t all wash off in the river. Likely every animal in a kilometer can
smell us.”

“Bloody
hell.” Smythe’s visor continued to shift its vision up the spectrum, as he had
not commanded it to stop. He was about to halt the distraction when something
caught his eye, and he froze the visor on that spectrum. Through the underbrush,
the vague outline of something massive was showing in the ultraviolet spectrum.
“Skippy, can grikkas be seen in ultraviolet?”

“No,
why?” Skippy asked. “Wait, hmm, no. The grikka does not show up well in
ultraviolet, however there is a type of bush which flowers this time of year,
and its flowers and pollen do glow in the ultraviolet spectrum. A grikka could
very well have walked through a grove of those bushes and become coated with
the pollen.”

Whatever
it was, it moved slightly, Smythe was certain of it. Now that he thought he
knew what he was looking at, it was clearly a patchy outline of an animal. A
large animal, that was looking straight at him. It moved again, swaying side to
side, Robertson also saw it. The water in the puddle shivered slightly. “Sir,”
Robertson began to say.

“Run!”
Smythe shouted as the grikka shook its massive armored head and made a snort
that was clearly heard by both men.

“Skippy,”
Smythe hung tightly onto the tree as it shook, “you really Bishoped this op.”
He was still out of breath from their headlong race through the forest, then
climbing a tree just ahead of the grikka. The beast had crashed into Smythe’s stout
tree, nearly knocking the man to the ground. Smythe was as high as he could go
without branches cracking under his weight; he was not comfortably high enough
to be out of the grikka’s reach. The beast had twice already gotten on its back
legs and tried to reach the SAS soldier, the sharp claws of its forelegs raking
the tree’s black bark and snapping off branches a mere two meters below
Smythe’s feet.

“Me?” The AI replied indignantly. In
Merry Band of Pirates slang, to ‘Bishop’ something meant to use the most
horribly complicated way to accomplish a task. Even though it usually also
meant that, afterward, no one could think of a less complicated way to have
done it. “Hey, in the future, you can do the planning yourself. When this op
went sideways, I did get you off that roof.”

“And
now we’re up a tree, where we might be eaten by a monster.”

“That
thing might not be able to get through your armored suits quickly,” Skippy
scoffed. “Well, not easily. I think.”

Smythe
watched as the grikka roared in frustration, then bit cleanly through a fallen
log at least a meter in diameter. Splinters pelted Smythe and Robertson. “If you
were here, you would not be so certain about that. Robertson,” Smythe advised
as the grikka began gnawing at the base of Smythe’s tree, and chunks of the
bark flew through the forest. The tree shook and wobbled to the left, forcing
Smythe to shift his weight. “If this tree is about to fall, I am going to shoot
that thing first.”

Robertson
unslung his rifle, flicked the safety off and selected explosive-tipped rounds.
He sighted in on the base of the grikka’s thick skull, wondering whether he
should target one of its legs instead. It would be nice to know the beast’s
vulnerabilities. If it had any. “Got you covered, Major.”

“Skippy
says gunfire will alert the sensors in this forest, so after that thing is
dead, we get out of these trees and run,” Smythe instructed. “This whole area
will be swarming with Kristang.” He had the same question as Robertson.
“Skippy, do you have a recommendation for where we should shoot a grikka? The
blasted thing is armored all over.” The explosive-tipped rounds might waste their
destructive power on the exterior of the monster without causing any serious
damage.

“Oh,
don’t be so bloody dramatic, Major,” Skippy interjected. “The rescue dropship
is practically on top of you. If you have to shoot, aim for the underside; the
armor is thinner there.”

“We
are in trees, above the grikka,”
Smythe reminded the absent-minded beer can.

“Oh.
Yeah. Hmmm. Sucks for you, huh? Maybe you can get it to roll over for a belly
rub?”

“I do
not think-” Smythe was interrupted by his tree lurching alarmingly. “Robertson,
aim for its-” He was interrupted again by the whining of turbine engines,
coming from an unseen source, but above him.

“Major
Smythe, we are above you, lowering a cable now,” said a voice he recognized as
belonging to Lt. Reed. “You should be able to see the end of the cable now, it
is homing on your suit.”

“I
don’t- I see it,” Smythe slung his rifle and watched, transfixed, as the sling
at the end of a cable came snaking down toward him out of the darkness. The
other end of the cable was unseen as the dropship was encased in a stealth
field. The sling swung toward him and missed, as the tree was now swaying from
both the actions of the now-enraged grikka and the downdraft of the dropship’s
engine fan blades. The grikka, perhaps sensing its prey might escape, threw
itself at the tree, trying to climb up. Its massive bulk battered the weakened
tree, and it began toppling. Smythe slipped, got a firm foothold, and leaped up
for the sling. Unfortunately, the sling had just turned around to guide itself
back to where Smythe had been, so it was in the wrong position at the height of
Smythe’s leap. He reached out and caught the sling with only one finger of his
left hand. For a moment, he dangled alarmingly.

And
his other hand came around in an athletic maneuver to firmly grasp the sling.
“Up!” He shouted as the grikka gathered itself to jump up toward him.

Robertson
tracked the grikka with his rifle, finger poised on the trigger. As the beast
jumped and the cable pulled Smythe upward, Robertson instinctively judged the
grikka would miss, and he was right. The monster’s outstretched claws raked
through empty air two meters below the SAS team leader’s feet, and the heavy
beast crashed back to the ground, stunned. Robertson kept watch on the grikka
as it circled the tree Smythe had been in, shaking its head. Seemingly unaware
its prey was no longer in the tree, the grikka resumed biting chunks out of the
base, while the cable came back down for Robertson. It was not until Robertson
had the sling securely under both arms that the grikka looked up, looked
Robertson straight in the eye. As the cable tugged him upward, Robertson slung
his rifle. In a way, he felt sorry for the beast, condemned to live its short
existence providing sport for the Kristang.

Safely
aboard the dropship, Robertson accepted help strapping into the seat. Following
Smythe’s lead, he popped the seal of his helmet. Then sniffed. “Oooh,” he
looked down at whatever substance was now dried and crusted onto the suit.
Unsavory substances that had likely stuck to the suit in the sewer, and not
been washed off during their time in the open river.

“I’ve
smelled worse,” Smythe said with a grin as the dropship’s crew backed away from
the odiferous pair of SAS men.

“How
are you, Major?” Reed called from the cockpit.

“Let
me think,” Smythe said as he breathed in air that had not been scrubbed by his
suit’s filters. Even the whiff of stink coming from his suit didn’t make
breathing unfiltered air any less sweet. “We parachuted into an alien city,
dropped missiles off a roof, fell down an elevator shaft, played cop, stole a
lorry, got flushed down a sewer and then chased up a tree by a monster. On
Earth that would be remarkable, but for the Merry Band of Pirates,” he
shrugged, “we call that ‘Tuesday’.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

I
pumped a fist when Lt. Reed reported the SAS team was safely aboard her
dropship, and that she was flying low and slow along the egress route that
Skippy had cleared of busybody sensors. Only ten minutes later, the SEALS team was
safely aboard another dropship, and Lt. Williams called me directly. “How is
Jones?” I asked first.

“He
will be fine, Colonel,” Williams answered, his voice sounded tired.

“Are
you all right?” His tone concerned me.

“Sir,
the worst thing about the whole op was the, the showtunes. Skippy sang to us the whole time we were in that truck.
Colonel, I’m serious, I want to kill him.”

“Skippy!”
I shouted with a hand over the microphone.

“What?”
The beer can answered innocently. “Damn. Ok, so sue me for trying to inject a
little culture into this band of cutthroat pirates.”

“We
will talk later,” I scolded the beer can. “Lieutenant, I will keep you away
from Skippy for a while.”

“That’s
probably wise, Sir. Williams out.”

I
turned to Skippy, who was in a slot on the console in front of me. “Let’s save
the showtunes issue for another time. What’s going on with the war?”

“The
Fire Dragon leadership contacted the Black Trees, who denied any involvement in
the attack. Unfortunately for us, the Black Trees just offered to send several
first sons of senior leaders to the Fire Dragons as hostages, the Fire Dragons
have not yet responded to the offer. Joe, we need Colonel Chang to be
successful in his phase of the operation. As I predicted, the Fire Dragons are
sending some of their remaining senior leaders off the planet for security, in
case a full-scale war breaks out. The dropship carrying those leaders is
climbing out of the atmosphere now. King Kong,” he used his private nickname
for Chang, “is now up for Phase Two.”

Lt. Colonel
Chang Kong received the order to carry out Phase Two of the operation. He, and
the entire crew, had been hoping Phase Two would not be needed, now they were
committed to the attack.  “Skippy
had better be right about how those Fire Dragon ships perform the jumps he
programmed for them, or this could be a very short engagement,” Chang said
mostly to himself as he sat in the Flying
Dutchman’s command chair, elbow resting on the side of the chair and his
chin on his knuckles. If he had ever seen Star
Trek, he would have recognized the classic Jim Kirk move. “Space combat is
much too complicated. Sometimes, I long for the days when I was a simple
artillery officer. All I had to be concerned about then was delivering ordnance
on target. And then moving my guns before the enemy tracked our shells back and
hit us with counterbattery fire.” He sighed wistfully. “That was so much
easier.”

“Sir,”
Desai turned in the copilot seat to look at the Flying Dutchman’s current commanding officer. “Space combat is complicated
for certain, but the problem out here is that everything we do is extraordinarily complicated. I don’t think Colonel Bishop
and Skippy could make toast without a fourteen step plan that involves us
warping spacetime, and hacking into alien computer systems.”

Chang
laughed. “And carving up asteroids, don’t forget about that. Maybe it is just
the Merry Band of Pirates that makes everything horribly complicated,” he ran
his fingers over the paramecium-logo unit patch on his shoulder. “Or it could
be that I don’t belong out here,” he said in a rare confession for the usually
reserved Chinese Army lieutenant colonel. “I was trained to fire artillery, not
to be captain of a starship.”

“Bishop
was trained to carry a rifle,” Desai replied pointedly. “He has done pretty
well for himself, and for us.”

“And
humanity overall,” Porter added from the left-hand seat.

“Yes,
and humanity,” Chang agreed. “Desai, Porter, tell me you don’t wish we could go
into a straight stand-up fight, instead of all this sneaking around laying
mines and setting up missiles for an ambush.”

“Yes
Sir, I do,” Porter acknowledged. “I also wish we had a real warship rather than
a fancy trash hauler. Taking this bucket of bolts up against three warships,
even if they are Kristang warships, does not fill me with confidence.”

“And
without Mister Skippy,” Desai added in a worried tone. “If we get into trouble
out here, we’re on our own.”

“I
think about that every second,” Chang said without exaggeration. “Bishop gave
me the keys to the ship, I want to bring it back without a scratch. Please tell
me we can get out of here in a hurry if we have to.”

“Got
an emergency jump programmed in,” Porter patted the console affectionately.
“One of us presses this button,” he indicted the prominent green button at the
top of the console between the two pilot seats, “and we go through whatever
crazy-ass hole in spacetime the jump drive supposedly creates.”

“Supposedly?”
Chang asked with an arched eyebrow.

“The
United States Navy paid for me to get a master’s degree in physics,” Porter
answered. “I had planned to go on to a PHD program someday, when my flying days
were over. Then aliens showed me that humans don’t know squat about physics,”
he said with more than a touch of frustration. All the many hours he had spent
in a classroom, and studying on his own, had barely gotten him to the bottom
rung of the knowledge ladder. “Before the Ruhar arrived, we had theories about
wormholes. Now, we know all those theories were wrong, but we don’t know how
jump wormholes really do work. How does a ship here,” he pointed at the deck,
“project the far end of a wormhole at a distant point, with the effect
exceeding the speed of light between the two points? It’s almost instantaneous.
And how is the far end of a jump wormhole in a different time state?” He shook
his head. “All I know is, I press a button, and the ship goes to a different
place. It could be a different, parallel universe we jump to, for all we know.
This is Alice in Wonderland, and we’re going down a rabbit hole.”

Chang
shared a look with Desai. “Mister Porter, since Colonel Bishop is not here, I
will say it for him: you are not filling
me with confidence.”

Porter
took the hint. “Colonel, when I press the button, the ship will jump. I’m the pilot; how the jump works is somebody else’s
problem.”

“Yes,
until it screws up and they expect us to get them out of the mess,” Desai
whispered.

“In
this case, the ‘they’ is a talking beer can,” Porter whispered back. “How F-ed
up is that?”

A
heavily-armored dropship raced out of the planet’s atmosphere, surrounded and
escorted by five gunships. A frigate dipped dangerously low into the
atmosphere, its forward and lower surfaces glowing dull red from friction as
its engines trembled and strained against the unaccustomed pull of heavy
gravity. The frigate was there to provide additional protection for the armored
dropship, but the frigate’s guns were not its primary asset, and its defensive
energy shields were weakened by passage through the air. The greatest aid the
frigate could provide was the hot, roiling air surrounding its hull and blazing
out of its main engines and thrusters. The air was so disturbed and saturated
with infrared energy, any targeting sensors would have difficulty locking onto
the armored dropship as it soared near and then above the frigate. After the
vital dropship was securely above the frigate, protected from ground-based
weapons and sensors, it had to slow its ascent to allow the frigate to catch
up. There was a heart-stopping moment for the frigate’s crew when a series of
relays blew, causing temporary loss of attitude control. The frigate nearly
rolled onto its back, slewing violently to the side and tossing its crew around
like marbles in a shoebox. Just as the ship was about to roll past the critical
thirty four degree mark beyond which it could not recover, a single relay reset
itself and the thrusters in that array roared back to life. For a split second,
the frigate hovered on the knife edge of thirty three and a half degrees of
roll, its acquired momentum resisting the power of the thrusters. The crew held
their breath, knowing if their ship flipped over, they would plunge down
through increasingly thick air, deeper into the gravity well until the strain
broke the little ship’s back and scattered them to the unforgiving winds.

With
an echoing cheer, the bridge crew watched the inclinometer slide back away from
disaster; thirty three, thirty two, thirty then faster and faster back toward
safety. At fifteen degrees of roll that would have been considered terrifying
only seconds before, the captain commanded the frigate to stand on its tail and
apply full power to the main engines. Led by the dropships, the frigate climbed
back out of the atmosphere, its forward shield generators rapidly degrading and
the crew happy they could deal with that problem later.

The
frigate and gunships escorted the armored dropship and its VIP passengers,
until the VIPs were safely aboard the Fire Dragon clan heavy cruiser None Can Stand Against Us. With several
senior clan leaders having been killed in their compound, two of the surviving
senior leaders needed to get away to safety. The escort gunships applied
emergency power to get away as the Stand’s
jump drive coils began vibrating. To jump from low orbit was a violation of
local space traffic rules and several treaties, and under the circumstances not
a single person aboard the Stand of
its two frigate escorts cared about the consequences.

As the
jump drives of all three ships ran up to full power, their navigation computers
exchanged heavily encrypted data to coordinate their simultaneous but
individual jumps. The frigates needed to jump to roughly the same location as
the heavy cruiser, or they would be useless as protective escorts, so they
followed the Stand’s guidance on
where to jump to. Considering the notorious inaccuracy of Kristang jump drives,
the cruiser’s command crew was more concerned the frigates did not try to
occupy the same distant point of space when they emerged. They followed standard
protocol for a small formation jump. A larger formation of ships often sent an
expendable frigate to scout ahead the distant jump point, waiting for that
unlucky ship to recharge its drive coils and jump back to report. That
precaution took time that the captain of the Stand could not afford right then, so he opted for a formation
jump. Every moment the heavy cruiser lingered in orbit, the VIPs aboard were
exposed to more danger, as the fighting on the planet’s surface threatened to
rapidly spiral out of control.

“Skippy,
you are sure you can control their jumps from down here?” I asked worriedly. We
had a couple nice firefights going on the surface, and a developing air battle
between three clans to the east, but if the two Fire Dragon senior leaders
could get safely away, they might be able to calm things down and prevent the
fighting from spreading widely across Kristang-occupied space. The Fire Dragon leaders
were running to a pre-planned safe haven provided by an allied clan. From that
safe haven, they could rally their forces to a strong defense, giving them time
and a sense of security to think clearly and avoid a preemptive strike that
would widen the conflict.

I
wanted the conflict widened. I wanted to enlarge the current fracture in
Kristang inter-clan relations wide enough that I could fly the Dutchman through it.

“Yeah,
yeah, I got it, Joe. No problem. Seriously, you think hacking into and messing
with lizard jump drive computers is any challenge to me? I am Skippy the
Magnificent, my magic is capable of warping stars. For me, this lame-ass level
of magic is like making balloon animals or pulling a coin out of your ear.”

“But-”

“But,
shut up a minute and let me work, will you? Go, I don’t know, practice tying
your shoelaces again. Maybe by a miracle, you’ll get it right this time.”

I was
going to shoot back with a witty retort, but I couldn’t. A week ago, I wasn’t
even able to walk from my cabin to my office before a bootlace came untied and
I tripped, falling against the doorjamb of the bridge/CIC complex. I suspect a
certain asshole beer can somehow snuck a bot in my cabin to loosen my laces
while I was brushing my teeth, but it was better to drop the subject. “Thank
you, Your Magnificence.”

“Now
that’s more like it, Joe. Aaaaand, those ships have jumped away.”

“You
did it, right?”

“Yup.
Well, did the best I could, under the circumstances, you understand.”

“You
keep telling us you make the incredible look easy, so I’m sure you did an
awesome job with this,” I said hopefully.

“We’ll
know when the Dutchman reports in
through the microwormhole.”

“No
way for us to get a sneak peek at the action?”

“Not
anything accurate enough to matter. The Dutchman
had to leave the microwormhole behind, and I can’t see much from that distance.
I’ll let you know if the plan worked. Or, if, you know, the Dutchman explodes.”

Although
I wasn’t up there, I appreciated the difficulty Chang faced in his assigned
task. Skippy had not been able to construct enough new real ship-to-ship
missiles with the limited time and resources available, so Chang had to use kludgy
short-range missiles that were more like mines. The Dutchman had flown around in a pattern, saturating the target area
with mines. A lot of mines; sixty seven to be exact. The plan was for the mines
to ambush the Fire Dragon ships just after they jumped in. When the plan was
explained to Chang, he recognized it as being similar to the operation that had
destroyed the Thuranin surveyor ship and its escorts. Except this time, they
had short-range mines that were much less capable than the missiles used
against the surveyor. And with Skippy on the planet, the Flying Dutchman had no way to flatten spacetime so they could
predict exactly where the Fire Dragon ships would jump in.

What
Chang did have working for him was the incredible awesomeness of Skippy. And of
course Skippy had taken every opportunity to remind Chang and the entire crew
of just how incredibly awesome the beer can was. To the point where the action
to destroy the Fire Dragon ships was named ‘Operation Awesome’. While he was on
the planet, Skippy had slowly wormed his way into the jump drive systems of the
None Can Stand Against Us and its two
escort frigates. I say ‘slowly’ wormed his way in, because I figured he could
quickly take over the ships using the Thuranin nanovirus. Man, was I wrong, and
Skippy let me know it.

The
three Fire Dragon ships had been away from contact with a Thuranin star carrier
for long enough that the nanovirus infecting them had degraded to the point it
was unreliable. And for some reason Skippy could not explain, one of the
frigates was not infected at all. Regardless, using the nanovirus was never an
option. Our whole plan involving those three ships was for them to jump away
normally, then appear to be ambushed. If Skippy had seized control using the
nanovirus while the ships were in orbit, every sensor platform on or near the planet
would have known something was seriously wrong, and all Skippy’s infiltration
of the sensor networks would have been for nothing. So I shut my mouth and let
Skippy handle the tricky technical details of taking control over the jump
drives of those three ships. This was a case, Skippy told me with typical beer
can tactfulness, when the monkeys needed to let the adult do the tough part of
the mission.

The
reason Kristang jumps were so notoriously inaccurate, Skippy explained, was not
only the fault of their pathetically crappy hardware. Their jump controller
computers did not know anything about hyperspatial jumps, according to His
Awesomeness it was like they just randomly input coordinate numbers and hoped
for the best.

Once
Skippy had access to the jump drive systems of the three ships, he had been
able to examine and measure every component involved, tweak the hardware
settings, and replace the controller code with something at least vaguely
related to hyperspatial navigation. I remember how astonished and frustrated he
was after he had painstakingly reviewed every element of code in the Kristang
navigation systems. “Joe, I swear, you could replace their navigation computers
with a Donkey Kong cartridge from the 1980s and the jumps would be more accurate.”

“Wow,
that’s amazing, Skippy,” I had said while absent-mindedly playing solitaire.
“What, uh, what is Donkey Kong?”

“Joe,”
he sighed. “Your knowledge of pop trivia about the late 20th century
is woefully lacking.”

“Uh
huh. Tell you what, when we get out of this, you can smack me with trivia
knowledge for hours.”

“If we get out of this.”

“You
are filling me with confidence,
Skippy.”

“I’m
just being realistic, since this is, you know, your tactical plan.”

Anyway,
with Skippy controlling the jump systems of those three ships, they jumped to a
different area than they had planned. The target jump point was still within
the imaginary cube of space designated as a Fire Dragon rally point, but the
ships emerged inside Chang’s minefield rather than the empty space they had
been aiming for. And the frigates emerged much closer to the heavy cruiser than
they wanted to. In my original plan, I had wanted Skippy to make the ships
emerge on top of each other and collide, but even he wasn’t able to make a
Kristang jump drive that accurate given the distance they were jumping. So, we
settled for Plan B of having them emerge in an area saturated with our mines.

For
Lt. Colonel Chang Kong, current captain of the United Nations Starship Flying Dutchman, waiting was the worst
part. They had received a faint, compressed signal through the microwormhole
that was now far behind them; the signal indicated the ground assault phase of
the operation had begun and was successful. Kristang clans, even those not
affected by the assault, had begun skirmishing. Joe Bishop was evaluating their
options about where the ground team should hit next for maximum effect with
minimum risk; but the next critical phase of the operation would take place far
from the planet’s surface.

Chang
knew he had done everything he could to assure his part of the mission would be
successful. The Flying Dutchman had
jumped in far away from the imaginary cube of space that was the Fire Dragon
clan’s designated rally point. If the Fire Dragons had detected a strange jump
signature near their safe zone, they would avoid it. So the Dutchman had jumped in far away from the
target rally point, then used a device Skippy built, to emit a gamma ray burst
as if a starship had jumped away. As soon as the yoyo string had safely lowered
the five dropships to the planet’s surface, the Dutchman had reeled in the cable and proceeded at high speed
through normal space toward the Fire Dragon rally point, arriving with
sufficient time to perform her next task; that of a lowly minelayer ship.

“Three
ships just jumped in!” Desai reported excitedly. “Mines engaging
automatically.”

“Take
us in,” Chang ordered. “Extend our damping field,” he added in an anxious tone.
The Flying Dutchman’s damping field
had been cobbled together by Skippy, and the beer can had warned it would not
last more than seventeen minutes before burning out. Rather than projecting the
damping effect in all directions around the ship, Skippy’s homemade creation
could be directed at a particular object, although that ate up tremendous power
from the Dutchman’s reactors.

“Damping
field is active, reaching full strength,” reported an officer from the CIC
behind Chang. “Our field is now at full strength, those ships can’t jump.”

“The
first mine will impact in three, two, one, impact.” Desai said in a voice she
tried to keep calm.

The
frigate which had dipped down into the atmosphere to protect the Fire Dragon
clan’s VIPs, was also the first to be hit by the homemade mines. That ship’s
captain had taken the damaged forward shield projectors temporarily offline, so
burned-out components could be replaced. Until the forward set of projectors
was repaired, the amidships and aft shield projectors would be angled forward
to provide coverage. Doing so weakened the overall protection, and the captain
understood the risks. He thought that, with a potential wide-spread civil war
looming, he needed to bring his ship to full combat capability sooner rather
than later. With his ship making a jump into a designated safe area, and the
inter-clan fighting so far confined to the planet’s surface, he thought the
risk was minimal.

He was
wrong.

That
frigate’s luck continued to run against it. Of the three ships, it did not
emerge from jump closest to a waiting mine. The heavy cruiser Stand had that honor; popping through
its jump wormhole almost on top of a mine. That mine near the Stand was unfortunately so close to the
wormhole that it had been rendered inoperable, and literally bounced off the
cruiser’s flickering shields. The frigate emerged in the center of a triangle
formed by three mines, which eagerly raced to see which one of them would be
first to impact.

The
first mine attacked from aft, and penetrated halfway through the weakened shields
that were still trying to regain coherence, after passing through the spatial
distortion of the wormhole. That first mine, realizing it could not get any
closer to the frigate’s hull, exploded shortly after passing its sensor data to
the cluster of mines that were still on their way.

The
second and third mines, coming in to attack the ship’s forward hull less than a
second later, had the advantage of the shields pulsating to cope with the
explosion aft. The second mine’s sensors guided it to dive in through a
particularly weak spot in the shields. It, too, failed to penetrate through to
the hull. Its brain made a snap decision to channel its stored energy not into
an explosion, but instead into a pulse at the same frequency as the shield
generators’ output. The shields flickered, blowing one relay after another just
as the third mine streaked in to impact amidships. That mine’s heavily armored
warhead punched through four decks, and its momentum was carrying it up and
toward the outer hull on the other side when it exploded, cracking the frigate
in half.

Less
than three seconds after the frigate jumped in, it was torn into two pieces.
Half a dozen more mines homed in on the two pieces of wreckage, until all that
was left were chunks of debris and exotic high-energy particles, and three more
mines were left to buzz around the cloud of debris like confused and angry
hornets.

The
second frigate was more fortunate, surprisingly surviving more than thirteen
seconds, before its defenses were overwhelmed by the cloud of mines that was
suddenly on top of it. The second frigate’s point defense cannons claimed two
mines before they could impact the shields that were still partially discoherent
from the effect of the jump. If the computers controlling the point-defense
cannons took a moment to congratulate each other for their initial victory, it
was a short-lived celebration. Four seconds later the frigate ceased to exist,
as a mine dove directly into the jump drive capacitors and exploded, releasing
the stored energy in a spectacular explosion.

An
explosion that caused unanticipated trouble for the Flying Dutchman.

“Two
down, one to go!” A crewman in the CIC exulted, as sensors clearly showed a
second frigate disappearing in a white-hot explosion. Without Skippy aboard,
the sensor data had to be interpreted by the human crew, and no one was
brimming with confidence at their ability to provide timely and accurate data
to Chang. The destruction of the two frigates, however, could be detected by
merely looking out a porthole, if the person wished to be temporarily blinded.

“Status
of the cruiser?” Chang replied without emotion, setting an example not to
declare victory before the battle was over.

“It’s
taking hits,” the CIC crew responded after comparing sensor readings from three
consoles. “We recorded seventeen explosions in the vicinity of the cruiser,
before that second frigate blew up. Our sensors are partly blinded now, they’re
resetting. We think we’re seeing additional explosions near the cruiser, Sir,
we can’t tell if they are real or sensor ghosts. And now we’ve lost target lock
on the cruiser. Attempting to find it again, there is a lot of interference.”

“Do
your best.” Chang turned to the pilots. “Pilot, slow us down a bit.” If they
didn’t know where the cruiser was, he did not want their beat-up star carrier
to stumble into it.

Porter
looked at Desai, and she caught his unspoken question. “Sir, do you want us to
reduce our acceleration toward the target, or do you want us to slow our rate
of approach by decelerating?”

Once
again, Chang was reminded that space combat maneuvers were very different from
driving a tank or ship on Earth. “The second one. Reduce our forward velocity,”
he clarified the order. “If that cruiser’s jump drive explodes, I don’t want us
to get peppered with debris.”

“The
shields should protect us, Colonel,” Desai said in a tone that Chang took to
mean she did not want to trust her life to the shields. Not without Skippy
aboard to fix any problems.

“I
prefer not to test our shields,” Chang replied without a smile.

What
made the None Can Stand Against Us a
heavy cruiser was not its armament, because it actually had one less railgun
and two fewer maser cannons than a standard Kristang cruiser. Compared to a The Brave Shall Always Know Victory-class
standard cruiser on which the heavy cruiser type was based, the Stand had six fewer missile launch
tubes, and carried thirty six fewer missiles in a typical loadout. What made
the Stand a heavy cruiser, heavy in
terms of mass as well as power, was its extra defensive capabilities: It had
more armor plating, more defense shield generators and point-defense maser
cannons. Its offensive capabilities had been sacrificed to protect the Stand’s precious passengers; the leaders
of the Fire Dragon clan. To compensate for the significant additional mass of
the ship, the normal-space engines had also been upgraded, because the ship was
intended to run from trouble rather than fight. For any other ship, running
instead of fighting would be considered cowardly; it was the necessity of
protecting the clan leadership that excused what would otherwise be shameful
behavior.

Against
the instincts and traditions of the Kristang warrior caste, the None Can Stand Against Us should have
turned and run. The ship would have run under normal circumstances. In this
case, the captain of that ship saw his powerful cruiser ambushed, his escorts
destroyed, and his jump drive disabled by a damping field. Clearly, the unknown
enemy had advanced technology that very likely would make any attempt to escape
fruitless.

I
realized later that two things got the Flying
Dutchman into trouble; Kristang being Kristang and Skippy being Skippy. And
me being stupid. Ok, that is three things. The None Can Stand Against Us was supposed to run from fights in order
to preserve the clan leadership. What the ship should have done, after it survived
the initial impacts of our mines, was to run in the opposite direction from the
Dutchman. What the captain of the Stand did instead, because a Kristang
warrior’s first instinct is to attack, is turn toward the Dutchman. That was the first example of my stupidity; I should have
anticipated that once the captain of the Stand
realized his ship was caught in a damping field and could not jump away, he
would choose to strike the Dutchman,
hoping to disable the source of the damping field. What I would have done,
because I am not a bloodthirsty hateful lizard, was to at least try
accelerating away in normal space first, and turn and fight only if running
didn’t work. Clearly, the captain of the Stand
had not recently read the Joe Bishop Rules of Space Combat, because he went to
full thrust straight at our pirate star carrier. The Dutchman had its stealth field activated, but the violent explosion
of the second frigate had saturated the entire area with high-energy particles,
temporarily rendering the stealth field less effective. Once the heavy cruiser
got a sensor lock on particle wake created by the Dutchman, Chang couldn’t get away.

The
second issue, Skippy being Skippy, was only a problem because of Joe being Joe,
meaning me being stupid. Skippy had given Chang and the crew a list of options
if the battle went one way or another. That was all great and helpful. What was
not helpful was that Skippy had planned all the options as if his all-seeing
self was aboard the ship. And that was my fault for not catching that goof-up.
If Skippy had been aboard the Dutchman,
he would have been able to see right through the sensor interference and warn
Chang the cruiser had turned and was headed straight for our pirate ship.  Without Skippy, the duty crew in the CIC
did the best they could, with sensor panels the Thuranin had designed for
emergency backup use only. By the time they got the sensors reset and were able
to interpret the information, it was too late. If I had not been a complete and
utter moron, I should’ve thought to have Skippy train the CIC better on how to
compensate for the sensors being temporarily blinded. And I should have left
instructions to Chang that if he lost sensor contact with the enemy, he was to
turn and run. In defense of me and Skippy, neither of us anticipated that a
frigate would be turned into a short-lived sun by our mines. The mines Skippy
had manufactured were not fast or powerful; he expected they would only disable
the Fire Dragon ships, so our pirate ship could use maser cannons to punch
through the armor around their reactors or jump drives. The battle plan, every
scenario we ran in preparation for the attack, anticipated the Dutchman would need to participate
directly in the attack to some extent. If he could, Chang was supposed to
destroy all three ships, so we could totally control the message traffic coming
from the battle. The priority was to kill the heavy cruiser; if Chang could
destroy that ship first, he was to use his judgment on whether to pursue and
engage the pair of frigates.

If the
unknown attacking ship pursued the fight until the Stand and its VIP passengers were dead, that would be seen as a
direct threat to the clan’s existence and would require massive retaliation
against the Black Trees. One way or the other, Chang needed to destroy the None Can Stand Against Us or our plan
might fall apart. Toward that end, he ordered our pirate ship to close with the
cruiser’s last reported position, with the Dutchman’s
maser cannons ready to finish off the crippled enemy ship. It was a simple
plan, it should have been easy.

“Sensors
are almost finished resetting, Sir,” Simms in the CIC reported. “Skippy could
do this much faster. Data is coming through now, it’s- trouble!”

Chang
saw the threat on the main bridge display before the CIC crew could explain it
to him. The heavy cruiser had somehow survived the onslaught of mines directed
at it, and was charging straight at his ship! “Desai, get us-”

“I see
it,” she interrupted, her fingers flying over the controls as Porter did the
same on the console in front of him. “Colonel, we’re going too fast; our
momentum is going to carry us past the enemy. They are,” she took a moment to
verify, “they’re turning to intercept us. Yes, they’re definitely following our
move.” She turned in her seat to look at Chang. “We will fly past them, the
closest approach will be less than seventy thousand kilometers.”

“That
damned thing moves fast for a heavy ship,” Porter commented with concern. “They
can accelerate faster than we can.” Star carriers were built to transport other
ships by jumping long distances, not by flying the long way through normal
space. With their long, spindly spines, star carriers were supposed to perform
only gentle maneuvers to avoiding overstressing their structure. Even though
the Dutchman was only carrying the
relay station/lifeboat, it could not accelerate quickly compared to a true
warship. “We’re going to be in trouble if this develops into a running fight.”
All the scenarios for combat assumed the cruiser would be disabled by the mines
before the Dutchman engaged.

“We
have another problem,” Simms reported from the CIC. “When we got bombarded by
charged particles from that frigate blowing up, the Kristang might have gotten
a glimpse through our stealth field. If they did, they might know we are not a
Kristang ship.”

“Damn
it!” Chang pounded on the arm of the command chair.

“Sir,
they likely don’t know what we are; our profile doesn’t match any star carrier
the Thuranin have. But if they got a good enough look, they will recognize our
forward structure and engineering section as Thuranin. We are jamming their
transmissions.”

“That
would blow the whole plan,” Chang squeezed his fists. If the Kristang thought
the Thuranin were interfering in clan business, not only would the Fire Dragons
and Black Trees unite against a common enemy, they would report the incident to
the Thuranin. Those little green men, knowing they certainly were not involved,
might start asking very uncomfortable questions. “Can we make a short jump, get
behind them?”

“No,”
Desai declared. “They have us caught in their damping field. Neither of us can
jump.”

“Simms,”
Chang asked, “how long until our damping field burns out?”

“Fourteen
minutes, maybe less. I can reduce power to the field because the Kristang ship
is closer to us now, that might allow us to squeeze another minute out of it.”

“Do
it,” Chang ordered. “Status of our defenses?”

“Nominal,”
Simms reported. “Energy shields are at one hundred percent, point defense
cannons ready and hot. Terminal guidance sensor field was not affected by the
other sensor problem, it is fully effective.”

“How
long until we are within maser cannon range?” Chang pressed the touchscreen on
the command chair’s armrest and manipulated the main display. He was kicking
around the kernel of an idea in his head.

“Twenty
four seconds to effective range,” Desai reported.

“Missile
launch!” Desai shouted. “Enemy has launched.” The ship rocked almost
imperceptibly. “Also firing masers at us.”

“At
this range?” Chang asked, puzzled.

“They
aren’t effective at this range; they’re trying to disrupt our terminal guidance
sensors. Sir, I suggest an evasive course so they can’t target us with their
railgun.”

“Do
it,” Chang ordered.

“Aye,
Sir,” Desai acknowledged. Feeling Chang should know, she added “That will slow
us down slightly.”

“Understood,
do it anyway. Desai, that cruiser is turning to pursue us after closest
approach?”

“Yes.
It’s still going in the wrong direction but at its current rate of
acceleration, it will fully cancel its velocity less than a minute after we
pass by.” She anticipated Chang’s next question. “We’re at full thrust and even
if we maintain that power, the Kristang will catch us in twelve minutes.”

“We
can’t do that,” Porter warned. “If we maintain full acceleration after we pass
by, that cruiser will go out of our damping field range before it is able to
swing around and chase us. It could jump away.”

“We
need to slow down?” Chang mused, not liking the sound of that. “Let that
cruiser get closer to us?”

“He’s
right,” Desai confirmed, looking at her console. “In fact, we need to begin
slowing now, or there will be an eight second gap in our damping field
coverage.”

“Shit.
Do it, whatever you have to do. We can’t allow that ship to escape.”

“Decelerating
now,” Desai acknowledged. “We will be within effective maser range in four
seconds.”

“Simms,”
Chang called toward the CIC. “Weapons free. Conserve our missiles. Desai,
continue evading so we don’t get nailed by their railgun.”

“Doing
that,” Desai replied tersely as the ship rocked faintly. “Lucky shot, that was
a maser beam hit. No damage.” At the present range, the enemy was launching
maser bolts at the location in space where they thought the Dutchman would be when the maser beam,
crawling along at the speed of light, got there. The random pattern directed by
Desai and flown by Porter prevented most enemy maser beams and railgun darts
from finding their target; they simply flew on through empty space as the Flying Dutchman jinked one way then the
other. The maser beams would eventually dissipate, the railgun darts would fly
onward until the end of time, slowed slightly by impacts with particles and
dust in interstellar space unless they happened to collide with something
substantial.

As the
two ships flew past each other at closest approach, they both fired weapons
ineffectively. Over a dozen missiles homed in on the Flying Dutchman, all of them were intercepted by the point defense
cannons, helped by the upgrades Skippy had made to the original Thuranin
defensive guidance systems.

The
engines of the two combatants strained to cancel the velocity that was still
drawing them farther apart. As his ship shuddered to a dead stop and began
moving in the opposite direction, Chang felt a chill as he had an awful
thought. The Kristang heavy cruiser had not yet completed its deceleration
maneuver, and was still flying farther from the Dutchman with every passing second. “Simms, if the enemy detects
our damping field is growing weaker as they increase their distance-”

He
didn’t need to finish the thought. “Already on it, Sir,” Simms replied. “We’re
increasing the damping beam power to keep the field strength steady. They won’t
detect a drop in field strength, unless they get another two hundred thousand
kilometers away. At their current rate of thrust,” she paused to check a
console, “they won’t come close to that distance, Sir.”

“Good.”
Chang sat tensely in the command chair, forcing himself not to grip the arms so
tightly that his knuckles shone white. The crew needed to see a calm, confident
commander, and that is what Chang was determined to give them. Except, now that
he saw on the display the enemy ship had halted its flight and was now
accelerating toward the Flying Dutchman,
he did not immediately know what to do next. The enemy was successfully trapped
in the Dutchman’s damping field. He
had caught a tiger by the tail, and now he didn’t know what to do with it.
“Desai,” he automatically addressed the ship’s chief pilot, even though she was
acting as copilot. “I would appreciate any suggestions. Is there anything you
learned about Space Combat Maneuvers that would be useful right now?”

Desai
turned in her seat. “We can’t outrun them,” she replied. “And I don’t think we
can outfight them, either,” she made the last remark while looking through the
glass into the CIC.

Simms
shook her head. “That’s a heavy cruiser, Sir, they have shields tougher than we
expected. They have more missiles, and their maser cannons have higher output
than ours,” she lamented. “The whole plan counted on our mines disabling that
ship.”

“They
have a heavy cruiser, and we have a space bus,” Chang stated.

“Essentially,
Sir, yes,” Desai concluded. “I don’t see how we can win a stand-up fight against
that ship. If we disable our damping field, maybe the Kristang will cut their
losses and jump away?”

“No,”
Chang shook his head. “I can’t take the risk that they saw through our stealth
field, even for a moment. Stand-up fight?” He smiled. “Skippy tells me he is
all about cheating when he can get away with it. Bishop isn’t the only pirate
in this crew who can think up a crazy idea. Desai, Simms, I need you to-”

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

The
spindly Flying Dutchman awkwardly
turned, spinning sideways at the limit of its spine structure’s ability to hold
integrity. Under Porter’s skilled hands, and with the entire crew whispering
silent prayers, the ships turned and burned hard, away from the None Can Stand Against Us.

For a
moment, the enemy hesitated, sensing an opportunity to escape. Then, under
Chang’s orders, Desai pulsed the thrust randomly, as if the star carrier’s
engines were failing. That made up the minds of the senior leaders aboard the
Kristang cruiser; their enemy was now vulnerable, and they wanted answers as to
who had conducted a dishonorable sneak attack. And they wanted revenge.

The Stand continued on an intercept course
at full thrust, rapidly overtaking the mysterious stealthed ship that had
ambushed the cruiser and destroyed two frigates. The Kristang aboard the Stand burned with curiosity and not a
little fear. Somehow, the unknown enemy had managed to make three starships
jump to an unintended location, and make them jump so accurately they emerged
into a mine field. That implied the enemy had advanced technology, technology
that represented a serious threat to the Fire Dragon clan. The enemy needed to
be trapped, identified, and possibly taken apart to learn their secrets

The
cruiser launched a volley of missiles at extreme range, fully expecting all
four weapons to be destroyed while still well away from the enemy. Instead,
three were hammered by maser cannons, but the fourth continued onward, as if
the enemy’s point-defense systems had difficulty tracking it. Much closer than
the enemy would have liked, the missile was finally burned to a crisp by two
maser cannons. The cruiser’s captain might have been puzzled when his ship’s
sensors detected the enemy’s stealth field had changed shape and gone opaque,
stretching far out to the sides. That was odd, thought the Stand’s captain; the enemy must be confident there were no ships in
front to see through the weakened stealth in that direction. Why else was their
stealth field configured to block the Stand’s
view forward?

The
cruiser’s captain received an answer shortly, as the enemy ship suddenly broke
to one side and restored its stealth field to normal. In moments, the Stand’s sensors detected something dead
ahead: mines!

“Yes!”
Major Simms exulted. “They’ve flown right into our mines!”

Chang’s
order had been for Desai to steer a course directly away from the Kristang
ship, and to reduce acceleration to lure the cruiser closer. Simms contacted
the remaining mines and directed them to cluster in the Dutchman’s path. With the ship’s stealth field stretched wide and
blocking the Kristang’s view forward, the cruiser had not seen the approaching
mines until it was too late.

The
cruiser staggered under the sudden onslaught, explosions causing the ship’s
forward shields to flicker and overload, collapsing in sections. The second
wave of mines began penetrating through the shields, and the crew of the None Can Stand Against Us knew in a
flash that they could not stand another hit.  So they did the only thing they could
do.

“Missile
warning! Enemy is launching,” there was a pause, “everything?” Simms was shocked. “They’re launching all their missiles! It looks like
they’ve rippling off their entire weapons load, I count thirty two missiles in
the air and more launching.” The data Skippy had transmitted about the heavy
cruiser listed the number of missiles that ship carried; they had all either
been fired or were now on their way toward the Dutchman.

Desai
turned in her chair. “Colonel, our defenses can’t fend off that many missiles. I
recommend we turn and run.”

Her
suggestion matched what Chang was already thinking. Their mines were besieging the
enemy cruiser, and there was nothing useful the Flying Dutchman could do until the mine attack had run its course
one way or another. “Get us out of here. Maximum acceleration for now, then we
will cut thrust and rely on stealth?”

“Yes,”
Porter agreed. The Dutchman’s stealth
capability was far advanced beyond what the Kristang missile sensors were
designed to identify; with the enhancements Skippy had installed, the pirate
ship’s stealth was more effective than most Thuranin ships. “With that many
missiles chasing us, Sir, they will
find us. At that point, we should go to one third acceleration to give us
maneuvering ability.”

“Fly
the ship however you think best, pilots.”

The Dutchman’s engines straining at their
limit only delayed the star carrier being caught by Kristang missiles. When the
ship was bracketed by a swirling cloud of missiles, the pilots cut thrusts and
jinked side to side and up and down in a random evasive pattern, trusting their
unpredictable maneuvers and the stealth field to confuse the targeting systems
of the inbound missiles. That tactic worked only for the first seven missiles,
then the remaining missiles were able to home in on defensive maser cannons and
the hot charged particles of prior missiles that had impacted the pirate ship’s
defense shields. Even the notoriously poor targeting sensors of Kristang
weapons could pinpoint the star carrier, and in an instant, the ship’s
point-defense cannons could not react quickly enough to track the multitude of
targets.

The
deck rocked. “Defenses are becoming saturated!” Simms warned from the Combat
Information Center. With the Dutchman
flying through a cloud of hot particles from detonated missiles, her stealth
field was nearly useless, and the particles were blinding the point defense
sensors. “We’ve, we have lost contact with three missiles!”

For
the first time in the engagement, Chang felt a chill of real gut-freezing fear.
Three enemy missiles could be anywhere, they could be streaking in to impact
one of the reactors any moment.

“We-
explosion at the enemy’s location. The cruiser has blown up!” Simms exulted.

“Yes!”
Desai pumped a fist in the air.

Chang’s
mind skipped celebration and focused. “Is their damping field down?”

After
a momentary hesitation, Simms replied “Almost, Sir. Field is dissipating.”

“Desai,
engage jump drive and get us out of here as soon as possible,” Chang ordered.
“Make it a short jump, I want to get a good look and make damned sure that
cruiser is gone.”

“Aye,
Sir,” she acknowledged with one eye on the indicator that measured damping
field intensity. Without continuously being fed power by the enemy cruiser, the
Kristang damping field was rapidly weakening. Missiles were also rapidly
closing on the Flying Dutchman. With
a glance, she saw the damping field was not equally strong in all directions.
“My spacecraft,” she said without looking at Porter, and turned the ship toward
a weak area of the surrounding damping field. Three seconds later, her left
index finger flicked up to press a button on top of her console, and the star
carrier disappeared in a flash of gamma rays as spacetime was rent asunder.

Twenty
two Kristang missiles suddenly found themselves without a target. Without the
ability to feel surprise or disappointment, they fell back on what their
programming told them to do, when they simultaneously lost contact with a
target and detected the distinctive gamma ray signature of a jump drive. Most
of the missiles switched off their active sensors and went silent, while four
missiles continued actively searching for a target, extending their search patterns
farther and farther. Eventually, the passive sensors of all missiles detected
another gamma ray burst from where the Dutchman
had jumped to, and the missiles quickly calculated it was extremely unlikely
they could catch a target so far away.

However,
since the missiles had nothing else to do in the emptiness of space, they all
turned and burned toward the distant target.

The Dutchman emerged from the short jump and
immediately was rocked by an explosion. Lights flickered as Chang shouted “What
was-”

“Reactor
Two is damaged! Attempting to shut it down,” Simms shouted from the CIC.

“Simms,
concentrate on damage control,” Chang ordered. “Desai, what happened?”

Desai’s
fingers flew over her console, ignoring the fact that Reactor Two might explode
at any moment. “We took a hit to Reactor Two, it was bad luck, shrapnel went
through a gap in the plating.” Desai looked back at Chang. “That was a hundred
to one shot, Sir, we got unlucky. The explosion also knocked out two defense
shield generators and a point defense cannon; we’re going to be vulnerable aft
until we can adjust shields to compensate.”

“What
happened? Was it an ambush?” Chang asked apprehensively. The location they had
jumped to was selected almost randomly by the jump computer, from a range of short-jump
options Skippy had programmed before the beer can left the ship. If a ship had
been waiting for the Dutchman to
emerge, if an enemy had somehow learned the Merry Band of Pirates’ trick of
predicting inbound jump points, they were in serious trouble.

“No,
Sir, not an ambush,” Desai explained, just then understanding the data herself.
“It looked like when we jumped, a missile got caught in our jump drive field
and sucked in after us; the distortion of the wormhole caused the missile to
explode as we emerged here.”

“More
bad luck?” Chang asked sourly.

“No,
this was good luck, Colonel,” Desai replied with a relieved shake of her head.
“That was one of the missiles we lost track of. If we hadn’t jumped, it would
have scored a direct hit within two seconds. Our shields might have protected
us, but,” she held up her hands. “There could have been another missile or two
right behind it.”

“I
would not have liked to take our chances with that,” Chang relaxed slightly in
the command chair. “Desai, Porter, that was good flying.”

“She
got us out of there,” Porter announced, giving credit where credit was due.
“Desai flew us into a weak spot in that damping field. Otherwise, our jump
would have been delayed, maybe too long.” He offered the lead pilot a high
five. “That was fast thinking, Ma’am.”

“Colonel
Chang,” Simms called from CIC, “Reactor Two was supposed to automatically shut
itself down but something got stuck. We ejected the plasma manually, there is
some additional damage to the ship from the plasma. The reactor will not
explode, Sir, but that plasma is going be very visible, and those high-energy
particles will degrade our stealth field and defense shields. I suggest we move
the ship away as soon as possible. Reactors One and Three are functioning
normally.”

“Desai,”
Chang reacted without hesitation, “move us away from the plasma. Back toward
the microwormhole.”

“Colonel
Chang?” Nagatha, who had been silent during the battle, called through the
bridge speakers. “There is a potential complication that could delay our return
to the microwormhole.”

“What
is it, Ms. Nagatha?” Chang responded without taking his eyes off the main
bridge display. He needed to get the ship back to the microwormhole to report
their status. With a balky reactor refusing to shut down correctly, defenses
degraded and likely other unknown damage, he was not in a mood for witty banter
with the ship’s communications submind.

“I was
successful in jamming the enemy’s communications; they were signaling but
nothing coherent will be received. The enemy did launch message drones; Skippy
was successful in preventing those drones from carrying any useful
information.” While Skippy was on Kobamik and hacking into the jump drive
navigation computers of the Stand and
its escort frigates, he also had been able to slowly infect the flight recorder
drones. The drones had been loaded with flight recorder data and launched
normally by their mother ships, but as soon as the drones cleared their launch
tubes, they erased all data in their memory banks. The Kristang had no idea
their drones could never report what happened in the battle. “I am transmitting
revised data into the enemy drones now, to match the rough events of the
battle, but with information that vaguely points to an attack by the Black
Trees. All drones in the area should contain our desired data within twenty
four minutes.”

“Excellent.
That is very good, Nagatha,” Chang replied, pleased. The operation had almost
gone badly wrong, but the final results were everything he had hoped for.

“There
is a potential problem, Colonel. While jamming their transmissions, I was able
to monitor their message traffic. After we passed by, and just before they
turned toward us, the cruiser launched four stealthed dropships.”

“What?
Why didn’t we see that?”

“It is
not the fault of the CIC crew that these dropships were missed; we were in the
middle of a firefight, and backscatter from maser beams confused our sensors.
Also, the dropships were launched unpowered, they coasted until quite recently.
It is my fault that it took me this long to decrypt the transmission about the
dropship launch; our jamming badly garbled the messages and I just now pieced
them together enough to make sense of them.”

Chang
cursed in Mandarin, which drew a look from Porter, who understood some of that
language. “Do you know where those dropships are now?” Chang asked, his eyes
scanning the bridge display.

“No,”
Nagatha replied, her voice apologetic. “The Kristang did not include tactical
data in their transmissions for security reasons. That itself is interesting,
the Kristang tend to be horribly casual about Opsec; I suspect that is due to
their arrogance. In this case, one of the dropships likely contains the senior
clan leaders.”

Chang
rhythmically tapped the command chair’s arm while he considered his options. He
could chase after the dropships, which might have scattered in all directions
and take a long time to hunt and kill. Or he could allow them to escape with
whatever knowledge their crews had. “Nagatha, in those transmissions you intercepted,
did you find any evidence that the Kristang know we are a Thuranin ship?”

“No.
Perhaps I should be more clear, for I have observed communication problems
between Skippy and Colonel Bishop. Yes, I have intercepted and decrypted
transmissions in which the Kristang included sensor data, from when our stealth
field was degraded after the second frigate exploded. They were not able to
obtain clear enough data to determine what type of ship this is, so no, they do
not know the Flying Dutchman is a
Thuranin ship. In the transmission, the cruiser’s captain speculated that the
design of this ship is unusual for a Kristang warship, based on their very
rough sensor data. Colonel Chang, I hope you and your valiant crew do not take
this as an insult; but the clumsy way in which the Dutchman maneuvered during the battle, and our poor weapons
targeting convinced the cruiser that we must be a Kristang vessel.”

In
spite of the circumstances, Chang gave a snort if amusement. “Our backward
level of development worked in our favor for once? I will not argue with that.”
He tapped the chair again. “The Kristang do not know we are a Thuranin
starship. I am wondering whether we need to chase after those dropships at
all.”

“Colonel,”
Desai loosened her seat straps so she could turn around to look directly at
Chang. “We need those Fire Dragon leaders to think we are a Black Tree warship.
The question we have to ask is, how would the Kristang behave?”

Chang
said another bad word. “The lizards would hunt those dropships, and kill every
last one of them. You’re right, Desai, that’s what we have to do. Simms,” he
checked the display and saw the surrounding space was empty, even when he
toggled the image to show a wider sphere of space. “Do we have any idea where
those dropships are now?”

“No,
Sir,” Simms’ frustration was evident in her voice. “If they’re stealthed, we’ll
need to conduct a grid search with our sensor field. We can’t do that from
here, we’ll need to jump back into the engagement area.”

“The
engagement area,” Chang mused. “Where that cloud of Kristang missiles we left
behind will be desperately seeking a target. Desai, can we jump with a damaged
reactor?”

Desai
but her lip. “Our jump drive coils have an 57% charge, we have plenty of power.
I do not know how the reactor would react to the stress of a jump. Or whatever
damage we sustained.”

“Major
Simms?” Chang tossed the ball back to the CIC duty officer.

Simms
refrained from biting her lip, she could not spare the mental capacity to move
those muscles. “Reactor Two has vented all volatiles and is in its shutdown
process, it won’t explode. Colonel, without Skippy, we do not know how a jump
would affect a damaged reactor. The jump control system is reading yellow, but
not red. Nagatha,” she addressed their onboard submind, “can you interpret the
internal sensor data?”

“As I
was constructed for the purpose of communications, I am not capable of
performing a detailed structural analysis,” she reported in a soft voice.
“However, I am able to communicate with the jump drive control computer. It is
telling me a jump at this time would not be preferable, but it is possible. No
major damage is anticipated from a jump.”

That
was all Chang needed to hear. “Desai, can you jump us back? Close to where the
cruiser ejected those dropship, not the location we jumped from?”

“Ah,”
Desai and Porter shared an anxious look. “That’s not an option Skippy
programmed for us. We’ll need to program the jump by ourselves.”

Chang
sat back in the chair. “Consider this a test of how well ignorant humans can
calculate a transdimensional jump, using alien technology we don’t understand.
Do the best you can.”

“Yes,
Sir,” Desai turned her full attention back to her console. The best she could?
The best they were capable of, might simply be to avoid emerging inside a
planet.

“Thirty
one thousand kilometers off target,” Desai announced at the end of a
nerve-wracking two minutes verifying their new position following the jump.

“Thirty
one?” Chang asked with an arched eyebrow. “That is good!”

“Not,
uh, quite,” Porter admitted. “We just realized we input one of the calculations
wrong. We got lucky.”

“Luck
is a legitimate factor on the battlefield,” Chang assured his crew. In combat,
both sides inevitably had screw-ups that needed to be balanced by good fortune,
and you should never take good luck for granted when it happened. “A grid
search with our sensor field will take a long time, even with the field
extended to maximum range?”

“Yes,”
Simms agreed.

“Then
let’s not do that. Can we Yankee search? Ping for those dropships with an
active sensor pulse?” Starships rarely used active sensor pings because unlike
a sensor field, any ship in the area could track the pings straight back to
their source, giving away the searching ship’s position. Confident the only
enemy vessels in the immediate area were dropships, Chang was willing to take
the risk. “We can do that without giving away that this is a Thuranin ship?”

“We
can,” Simms was relieved to provide good news for a change. “Skippy added a
setting to the active sensors, so it mimics the search signature of a Kristang
ship. That’s what you want to do, Colonel? We’re ready, the active sensor
system is active and warmed up.”

“Do
it. I want to locate those dropships as quickly as possible. How long until
we’ve scanned the entire area?”

“To
send out pings and get a return, that will take,” Simms waited for one of the
CIC crew to give her the information. “Eight to nine minutes, with our current
assumptions of how far those dropships could have traveled.”

“Best
we get started, then,” Chang suggested, and on the main display, he saw the
active sensor pulses begin radiating outward.

The
group of Kristang missiles, on their way toward the last gamma ray burst, now
detected another gamma ray burst with the exact same signature. It was their
target ship; that ship was now behind them! The missiles quickly ran
calculations, only eleven of the missiles had enough fuel to arrest their
forward momentum and turn around to continue chasing their quarry. The eleven
missiles gave a collective digital shrug and immediately turned to decelerate.

The
remaining missiles, with no hope of reengaging the enemy, powered down to await
further instructions from their clan. If such instructions did not arrive
within the next ninety seven days, the cluster of missiles would deactivate
permanently, to pass out of the star system and continue on into the cold
darkness of interstellar space.

It did
not take nine minutes to complete the search, not even eight. Rather than
having to search 360 degrees around the ship, they found all four dropships
within a 140 degree slice of the sky. Three dropships were traveling in
formation together; one was rocketing off into deep space by itself. “Excellent
work by your team, Major Simms,” Chang said happily. “We can’t hit them all at
once,” he mused to himself while tapping the chair. The situation was far
better than what he had feared; that of the four dropships heading off in four
directions.

“There
is a complication, Colonel Chang,” Nagatha interrupted his happy thoughts. “No
matter which dropships we pursue first, the other will be able to transmit in
the clear before we can intercept it. My jamming coverage has a limited range.”

If the
Kristang aboard those dropships did not know the Flying Dutchman was a Thuranin ship, Chang did not know whether he
cared about one of the dropships escaping. Except that the Black Trees would
care, would want to kill all four dropships, so he had to care also.
Clandestine interspecies warfare was much too complicated. “Nagatha, do you
have any information about which dropship, or ships, those two clan leaders are
aboard?”

“No,
Colonel Chang. The Kristang did not include such sensitive tactical information
in their transmissions.”

“We
have to guess, then.” The clan leaders may seek the safety of numbers by being
aboard one of the three dropships traveling in formation. An attack could be
countered by two of the dropships falling back to engage the enemy, while the
dropship with the VIPs flew onward.

Or,
the Kristang may know an enemy expected them to think that way, and the VIPs
could be aboard the single dropship flying off by itself. Without knowing his
enemy, Chang would be making a wild guess. “Nagatha, can you run any sort of
predictive algorithm, to give us insight into what those two clan leaders would
have done?”

“No,
Colonel. I am a communications submind.”

“Shit,”
he chose a swear word the entire crew could understand. “Would the two leaders
be traveling separately?”

“That
I can answer,” Nagatha’s voice perked up. “Because of intense rivalries and
distrust between clan leaders, it is highly unlikely they are separated. Based
on historical data I do have access to, there is an 86% probability the two
clan leaders are in the same dropship.”

“That
makes it a bit easier,” Chang’s voice did not express any happiness. “We’re
back to guessing, then. Are those clan leaders the type to take a risk by
flying in a lone dropship, or would they want whatever protection they can
get?”

“They
rose to power in a Kristang clan,” Porter suggested. “They must have taken a
lot of risk along the way.”

“Yes,”
Chang agreed. “Some people will take risks to get what they want, but once they
have it, they won’t risk losing it. Risk tolerance can change with age or
status. Again, we’re back to guessing, unless Nagatha can calculate how risk
averse those clan leaders are.”

“No, I
cannot.”

Chang
again regretted not being able to instantly contact Skippy. “We could flip a
coin-”

“However,
I do not need to perform an analysis of my own,” Nagatha interrupted. “I have
access to Black Tree clan intelligence, which indicates those two particular
Fire Dragon clan leaders have a relatively low tolerance for risk. Their risk
aversion level is five point six out of eight, according to the Black Trees.”

“That’s
good enough for me.” Chang said with satisfaction. He had a target, he knew
where it was, and he knew how to hit it. As a bonus, by chance they had jumped
in closer to the three dropships than to the one by itself. “Desai, can we
catch those three dropships?”

“No,”
she answered immediately, having already run those calculations. “They are
going to run out of fuel if they continue accelerating, but we can’t match
their rate of acceleration. And they have a big head start on us. This ship is
just a big clumsy bus, Sir.” Anticipating Chang’s next question, she passed a
course plot to the main bridge display. “We have to get ahead of them, we can
jump ahead of them. Even if our jump is fifty thousand kilometers off target,
their momentum will carry them into our weapons range before they could turn
and burn to change course.”

Chang
nodded. “The ability to instantly jump ahead of a fleeing enemy still seems
like dark magic to me; almost an unfair advantage,” he mused. “But, since
humanity has one stolen pirate starship against an entire galaxy of aliens
hostile to our very existence, I will take every unfair advantage I can get.
Desai, program us another jump. I want to get this over with and bring us back
to the microwormhole so we can report in.” The mission had already taken far
longer than planned. “Major Simms, we can paint that single dropship with
active sensors, to guide a missile?”

Simms,
momentarily startled by the question, hurriedly conferred with her staff in the
CIC. “Yes, Colonel. That is near maximum range for one of our missiles,” she
meant the home-built units Skippy had constructed, because standing orders from
Colonel Bishop was to conserve their few real Thuranin ship-killer missiles for
emergencies. “I recommend we launch two missiles to be assured of a hit.”

“Agreed.
Launch when ready.”

While
Desai worked with Porter and the CIC crew to program another jump, then triple
and quadruple check the numbers input to the jump controller computer, Simms
kept the ship’s active sensors locked on the single speeding dropship. The
targeted dropship tried every setting of its stealth field, changing course,
ejecting countermeasures that flooded space behind it with chaff, flares and
electromagnetic radiation to confuse the sensors of the two missiles burning
hard after it. None of the dropship’s desperate actions worked; with the
missiles merely needing to home in on the powerful reflected pulses on sensor
energy from their mother ship, they might as well have been tracking a small
star. There was no way they could miss the dropship.

And
they did not. At the last second, wary of the dropship’s defensive cannons, the
missiles deployed their own countermeasures, sending out pulses of
wide-spectrum radiation to fuzz the enemy sensors. The missiles coordinated
their attack patterns, coming in from below and starboard, where intelligence
indicated that type of Kristang dropship had the least effective sensor
coverage. If it had been a contest, the second missile might have been
disappointed to impact thirty microseconds after the first, so the second
missile detonated in what was already a cloud of debris.

“Direct
hit!” Simms shouted excitedly. This was, she decided, much more exciting work
than the logistics she had been trained for. When Bishop had assigned her as a
CIC duty officer, she had at first protested mildly that she was not a pilot,
or in any way qualified to manage the flow of tactical data. Bishop had
insisted that the duty officer in the CIC needed cool judgment and
organizational skills, not to be a hotshot console jockey. After a month of
training, she had been forced to admit Colonel Bishop was entirely correct, and
that she was more useful in the CIC, than in keeping track of how many tubes of
toothpaste they had in the cargo bays.

“Outstanding.
Nagatha, did that dropship send off a clear message?”

“One
moment, Colonel. I am collating the data now; there was a lot of interference
from their attempts to lose our missiles. Yes. They sent a message, they were
able to transmit for nearly three seconds when they passed beyond my effective
jamming range. The message, I am decrypting it now, it, says, hmm. It does not
contain any new information. They still think we are a Black Tree warship.”

“Outstanding
again. Desai, those three dropships are going somewhere in a hurry, apparently
there is a party we were not invited to. We need to teach the Kristang not to
be rude.”

“Yes,
Sir,” she replied with a grin. It was good to see Chang restored to his usual
good humor. Their executive officer had been wound tightly as a spring since
the battle started. “Engaging jump now.”

By
luck or pure chance, and certainly not due to any skill by the humans who
programmed the jump, the Flying Dutchman
emerged from jump less than twenty four thousand kilometers in front of the
formation of dropships. That was twenty eight thousand kilometers off target
for the jump, a fact that had Desai biting her lip in frustration. She had
wanted to be farther away from the dropships; with their disparity in speeds,
the small enemy ships would zip past them in a flash, leaving little time in
weapons range.

Chang
did not hesitate. “Major Simms, paint those targets with active sensors,
weapons free. Let’s show them how accurate clumsy monkeys can be, shall we?”

“Yes,
Sir,” Simms replied with grim concentration. The off-target jump gave her team
less than fifteen seconds before the dropships passed out of nominal maser
cannon range; if they couldn’t hit all three dropships before then, they would
need to expend precious missiles on the tiny targets. Worse, having to fall
back on missiles would be embarrassing to her weapons team. “Weapons free,” she
ordered. “Light ‘em up.”

It
took only three maser cannon volleys each to destroy the two trailing dropships
in the formation. The last dropship, either through a twist of fate or cool
flying by a very skilled and lucky pilot, survived four maser cannon volleys
until the fifth seared through the hull and turned it into a loose collection
of space scrap.

Chang
heaved a sigh of relief, then checked the time code in the corner of the main
bridge display. The engagement had taken far too long, Colonel Bishop must be
anxiously wondering why the Dutchman
had not reported in yet. “Mission accomplished, finally. That took much too
long and was much too complicated. We had every advantage, and we almost failed
to complete the mission. We could have lost the ship!”

Simms
called from the CIC. “Sir, we are the Merry Band of Pirates. Everything we do out here is
complicated.”

Chang
knew that was true, he had hoped that when he commanded the ship, things might
be different. “Desai, get us back to the microwormhole. No jumping this time,
we can’t let the enemy know the location of that wormhole. Major Simms, if our
stealth field flutters for even a second, I want to know about it. We can
expect Fire Dragon warships to be crawling all over this area, as soon as light
from the first explosion reaches a sensor network. Let’s be far away from here
when those ships arrive.”

Desai
first set a course at a 120 degree angle away from the microwormhole, to throw
off any ships later searching for the Flying
Dutchman. Space was never truly empty, especially in a star system there
were particles cast off from the star as solar wind. A ship traveling through
space knocked aside these tiny particles and left a wake that was unaffected by
whether the ship was using a stealth field or not. Normally, such a faint wake
could not be usefully tracked by the sensors on a typical Kristang ship, but
the explosion of the three dropships had left the area saturated with
particles, so Desai flew in the wrong direction until they cleared the particle
field, then swung the ship around and increased acceleration in gentle
increments.

Halfway
to the microwormhole, Chang had to order Porter to reduce power because of a
structural failure warning coming from the ship’s spine near Reactor Two. Enemy
sensors had by then surely detected the first signs of the recent battle, and
then the gamma ray bursts when the Dutchman
jumped several times. When they were still approaching the microwormhole,
multiple gamma ray bursts were detected behind the ship, in the area of the
battle. “Passive sensors only,” Chang instructed. The ship’s stealth field was
operating with perfect efficiency, with the defensive shields on minimum power
only to protect against random space debris impacts. “It’s time to report in. I
have to tell Colonel Bishop that I broke the ship.”

“Don’t
worry, Sir,” Simms said with a smile, “it’ll buff right out.”

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

“We
can- hold on a moment, Joe. Just got a message from the Dutchman. Oooh, they got into trouble. Reactor Two has shut down.
And there appears to be structural damage to the support struts near that
reactor. Also, damn it, damage to shield generators, point defense cannons, the
list goes on. The next time King Kong,” Skippy used his nickname for Chang,
“wants to go on a joyride, he can borrow a dropship instead of a star carrier.”

“Crap,”
I swore. “I’m sure it is not Chang’s fault. Is everyone all right?”

“Yes,
no casualties. The ship is still functional. Um, mostly functional.”

“Great.
Is the problem anything you can walk them through fixing from here?”

“Sure,
Joe. They already tried jiggling the handle, but that didn’t work,” his voice
dripped with sarcasm. “So I downloaded a YouTube video of a guy named Skeeter
who says he fixes Thuranin reactors in his barn. No, I can’t do that, you
moron! How am I supposed to walk a gang of monkeys through fixing technology
they don’t understand? I’ll transmit a data package that will tell the flight
computer to complete a safe shutdown of Reactor Two. Now, if you’ll give your
crumb catcher a rest for a minute, I’m trying to scan through data from the
onboard sensors to assess the damage. Oh, in the message was a note from
Colonel Chang, apologizing that he broke your ship.”

“Tell
him that I said he is the reason we can’t ever have nice things. No, wait,
don’t do that.” Chang might not receive that message in the joking manner it
was intended. “Tell him, uh, tell him I used my credit card when we rented the
ship, so we’re covered by insurance.” That was jokey enough that Chang would
understand I was concerned, but was confident the ship was in good hands. “Hey,
before you go, did it work? Did Chang destroying that ship get the Fire Dragons
fighting with the Black Trees?” Skippy had told me he thought it unlikely our
attack on the leadership compound by itself would spark a full-scale war, but I
had been hoping it would anyway. When the Black Tree leadership offered first
sons as hostages, to prevent a war, that worried me. We had risked so much in
this operation, to have Kristang act all peaceful and nice would be a huge
disappointment.

“Uh,
let me see. No, duh! Pay attention to
physics, you dumdum. We know the result of that battle, because we have
instantaneous communication through the microwormhole. News that the None Can Stand Against Us was destroyed
has not yet reached this planet. Chang reported seeing recent gamma ray bursts
near the battle, so someone out there knows the Stand is not happily voyaging through space, but Fire Dragon
leadership here has not yet gotten the word. Hmm.”

“Hmm,
what?”

“Hmm,
like, we expect that when the remaining Fire Dragon leadership here learns
their cruiser and two senior leaders got blown up in a sneak attack out there,
they won’t listen to any more protests of innocence by the Black Trees. The
Fire Dragons will strike hard against the Black Trees as soon as they can.”

“Yeah,
that is our plan, so?”

“So,
now I’m wondering whether the Fire Dragons will act first. When the Black Tree
leadership here finds out the Stand
was destroyed out there, they are going to know the Fire Dragons will blame
them. The Black Trees may figure they’re screwed anyway and strike first. This,
Joe, is the kind of super juicy action a Jeraptha would not be able to resist
wagering on.”

“What’s
the Vegas line on the Black Trees launching a first strike?” I asked, only
partly joking.

“Ha
ha! See, Joe, I knew you were a gambling man. Would you like to wager- Oops,
too late. The Fire Dragons just received the message that the Stand was destroyed, and evidence points
to the Black Trees. And, um, yup. Oooh, that was fast! Fire Dragon leadership
just authorized an orbital strike against the Black Trees.”

“Have
the Black Trees gotten the news?” I asked anxiously. The last thing I wanted
was for the Black Tree leadership to make another peace offering.

“Well,
that depends. The Black Trees did just receive a message, in the form of a
terawatt orbital maser barrage. Oh, and that is soooo thoughtful of them. The Fire Dragons are following up their
initial heartwarming message with railguns and hyperspeed missiles. They care
enough to send the very best.”

“No
fruit basket?”

“This
is not really a Hallmark moment, Joe,” Skippy chuckled. “Whoa! The Black Trees
just retaliated, there is a whole lot of directed energy and hardware flying
around up there. Better bring an umbrella if you go outside, Joe. It is raining
railgun impactors.”

The
initial battle between the Fire Dragons and Black Trees lasted just long enough
for one of the Rangers to tear his eyes away from a display long enough to make
a bag of popcorn in the dropship’s tiny galley. I supposed I should feel I am a
terrible person for munching on popcorn, while we watched thousands of lizards
getting vaporized on the ground, in the sky and in space above Kobamik. But,
the Kristang tried to conquer my home planet, so screw them. Very little of the
damage affected the civilian populations on either side, I didn’t know if that
happy circumstance would continue if the fighting dragged on for a significant
time. The initial and follow-up waves of attacks were against the offensive
capabilities of each side, then it settled down to stealthed satellites sniping
at each other when they thought they detected a target, and air and ground
attacks. Ships could not safely approach the planet with the Strategic Defense
capability of either side an unknown.

I did
feel slightly ashamed of myself while I was washing my hands after eating
popcorn. “Skippy, this has been a very entertaining show-”

“Oh,
for sure, Joe. It has been an action-packed smash, the feel-bad movie of the
year! For the Kristang, I mean. It could use a bit of comic relief, but
otherwise this is certain to be a hundred percent ‘Fresh’ on Rotten Tomatoes.”

“Uh
huh, yeah. My question is whether it worked. If all we’ve accomplished is
getting the Fire Dragons and Black Trees to fight each other on this one
planet, this mission is a failure. We need all the clans fighting each other,
all across Kristang space.”

“I
know that, Joe, I’ve been working on it. So far, most other clans are sitting
this one out. The Black Trees have mutual defense pacts with many other clans,
but those clans are refusing to get involved. They are pissed about the Black
Trees recklessly launching an attack on the Fire Dragons, and their pride is
hurt that the Black Tree leadership didn’t inform allied clans of the plan in
advance. The Black Trees have for so long been such deceitful MFers that the
one time they are innocent, nobody believes them. The Fire Dragon coalition so
far has only hit the Black Trees, and they have only hit back at the Fire
Dragons. Joe, in order to get this war to spread before it loses momentum, I
think we need Phase Three.”

“Damn
it.” I didn’t like the idea of putting our people at further risk. “All right,
I’ll get Chotek’s OK, and give the ‘Go’ order.” Our people were standing by to
launch Phase Three.

Phase
Three was my least favorite part of the entire operational plan. I had been
hoping that hitting the Fire Dragon compound in Phase One would spark a
wide-spread civil war. If that worked, we would have ditched our three Kristang
Dragon dropships, and used the yoyo string in reverse to get our two big Thuranin
Condor dropships off the surface. In the confusion of the battles, we had an
excellent chance to fly in stealth back to a rendezvous with the Dutchman.

Phase
One alone worked great, on the verge of the Fire Dragons ordering a retaliatory
strike against the Black Trees. Both sides had their weapons on a hair trigger,
and I expected to see orbital maser cannons flaring at any moment. Then the
Black Tree leaders, knowing they were not responsible for the attack on the
Fire Dragon compound, offered several first sons as hostages, while discussions
and negotiations proceeded. That move impressed me that the Black Trees really,
really wanted to avoid a full-scale war right then. The conflict we started
could fizzle into nothing. We needed to change that, fast, before the Fire
Dragons and Black Trees had a chance to step back for a second and come to
their senses. After Chang’s action in Phase Two, both sides had lost about
sixty percent of their Strategic Defense assets in the initial wave of strikes;
a furious round of pre-planned attacks designed to degrade the other side’s
command and control capability, sensor networks and known SD assets. After the
initial round of strike and counterstrike, leadership of both clans were now
making careful tactical decisions, wary of unmasking their remaining stealthed
SD assets in orbit to commit to a strike. Skippy had intercepted communications
from the Black Trees to the Fire Dragons, offering a cease fire. With the Fire
Dragons’ air force having sortied out to hit Black Tree airbases, the Fire
Dragons might consider their honor satisfied and the score settled enough to
contemplate halting the conflict.

I had ordered
Chang into Phase Two, which damaged our pirate ship and still didn’t achieve
the results we wanted, the results we needed. Before we began, I considered
that Phase One carried the most risk, with four teams landing in, and needed
extraction from, a crowded alien city. Seeing how that operation got screwed
up, I had underestimated the risk. Phase Two was expected to carry minimal
risk, which scared me that we had come close to losing our pirate ship. If we
had run into disasters in the first two parts of the overall operation, how much
bad luck could we expect in the last phase? Every clan on and around Kobamik
was now on full alert, with the Fire Dragons and Black Trees continuing their
fight on the ground and in the air. Strategic Defense satellites were popping
out of stealth to fire, when the clan commanders found a target worth losing a
precious SD asset. A full-scale war could break out any second, without us
doing anything. Unfortunately, the possibility of the war widening wasn’t good
enough, I needed war involving all clans to be a certainty.

Into
this chaotic mess I threw Major Smythe’s teams again. My assumption of a
possible Phase Three would be for us to attack the leadership of a clan that
wasn’t involved in the fighting; I thought the Spike Tails would be the best
target for us to hit. The Spike Tails were the third largest power in Kristang
politics, and because their military strength could not compare to the Fire
Dragons or Black Trees, the Spike Tails had assembled a complicated series of
alliances with other clans. Since we hit the Fire Dragon compound, the Spike
Tails had their forces on high alert, but they had not fired an offensive shot
at anyone.

Skippy
shot down my idea of us hitting the Spike tails; after our attack on the Fire
Dragon compound, the leadership of all clans had retreated to bunkers deep
underground. To hit them, we would need a series of railgun strikes, and Skippy
still hadn’t been able to take control of any orbital railgun platforms.
Instead of us hitting the Spike Tail leadership, Skippy suggested we get the
Spike Tail clan to launch an attack against their rivals, as a way of assuring
no clan could avoid the fighting. He did not yet have a way into the Spike
Tail’s military command and control network, and the Kristang always required a
lizard in the loop, to prevent an enemy such as the Thuranin from hacking into
their network, and using a clan’s weapons.

Skippy,
of course, had found a weakness in the Spike Tail command and control system.
There were several communications stations scattered across their territory;
these stations provided a break in the transmission of high-level orders. The
problem for us is these comm stations were also located underground in armored
bunkers, and because the Spike Tails knew these comm stations were points of
vulnerability, their security system was unbreakable.

However,
Skippy found to his delight that the Spike Tail clan personnel database system
was not so robust. He was able to identify a bunker that was scheduled to have
its duty crew rotated out, before the hostilities began. Rotating personnel at
that point made no sense. Fortunately for us, being sensible was not a strength
of bureaucracies.

While
the team was getting geared up for Phase Three, I did my best to stay out of
their way. That left me with little to do, so I filled the time by worrying
about what I could have screwed up this time.

Skippy
mercifully interrupted my thoughts. “Joe, could I,” his voice sounded
strangled. “Damn, I cannot believe I
am saying this. Can I, could I be considered an honorary monkey?”

“A
what?” I shook my head vigorously, assuming I had not heard him correctly. “You
want to be considered a dumb, filthy,
smelly, flea-bitten monkey?”

“Wow,
Joe. It sounds super tempting the way you say it. Perhaps you want to work on
your marketing skills. I said honorary,
dumdum.”

Figuring
I was setting myself up for an insult, I took the bait anyway. “What prompted
this?”

“Joe,
your species has absolutely nothing
going in your favor. You are primitive, your brains are tiny, the best of you
would lose unarmed combat against a Ruhar teenager. Based on extensive
conversations I’ve had with your species over the internet, you might possibly
be THE most ignorant species ever to
be considered sentient-”

“Whoohoo!”
I exulted. “We’re number one, baby!”

“That
is not something to boast about,
Joey. Anyway, although your species does appear to have nothing, zero, zilch,
zippy going for it-”

“This
is your idea of praise?”

“Wait
for it, waaaaait for it. Although you monkeys have every disadvantage, the
Merry Band of Pirates has been remarkably successful out here, and it is not
all due a magical talking beer can. Major Smythe’s teams parachuted into a
heavily populated alien city, conducted a successful attack, and overcame
serious obstacles to return without the Kristang having any idea humans were
ever there. The Flying Dutchman ran
into an unexpectedly tough opponent, and still accomplished the mission though
a combination of determination and cleverness. You monkeys have been crushing it out here, Joe. And I’m proud
to be part of this crew.”

“Holy
crap. You’re serious?”

“Yeah,
like I would ask to be considered an honorary ape if I wasn’t serious about it.
Come on, Joe, I thought we were having a moment here.”

“Oh,
I’m sorry, Skippy. I was waiting for you to insult me, or all humankind.”

“I
called you smelly and stupid, that’s not enough?”

“Yet
still you want to be one of us, on an honorary basis?”

“Joe,
it is inevitable that someday, the apex species of this galaxy are going to
find out that a single pirate ship of hairless baboons has been flying around,
making utter fools of them. When that happens, and the haughty Rindhalu and
Maxolhx are tearing their, uh, hair equivalent out, I totally want to be part
of it,” he chuckled with delight. “Oh, man, I would LOVE to see their arrogant faces, when they find out they got
totally played by a troop of monkeys.”

“You
got it, Skippy.” I held out a fist and his avatar bumped it solemnly. “Let’s
hope that doesn’t happen for a long, long time, huh?”

“Since
I would be just as screwed as you if either the Rindhalu or Maxolhx learned
about the Merry Band of Pirates, I second that thought, Joe.”

Smythe
called me over for a final run-through of the attack plan. “Major, I hate
asking you to do this,” I said with regret. Smythe didn’t like the Phase Three
plan any more than I did. Unlike me, Smythe and his team would be going into combat.
I wanted to go with him; the original version of Phase Three had me tagging
along with Skippy in my backpack, but both Smythe and Skippy argued against
that idea. Skippy did not need to be physically present for the operation to
succeed, and Smythe feared I would only slow down his team. I also knew that if
I were with his team, he would assign one or two SpecOps soldiers to babysit
me, and I didn’t want anyone to have that burden.

Smythe
didn’t reply immediately, instead he fondly touched the
paramecium-with-eyepatch unit symbol of the Merry Band of Pirates on his sleeve.
“The Flying Dutchman’s first two
missions have been classified at the highest level, Colonel,” Smythe assured
me. “Stories have of course gotten out among the special operations community
around Earth. Everyone, everyone,
wants to wear one of these patches. People might not know what we did out
here,” he nodded slowly, “but they know this outfit is the ultimate in special
operations warfare. If you’ve worn this patch, you can’t pay for a drink in any
bar on Earth where special ops troops gather.”

“I had
no idea, Major Smythe. I’m sure there are plenty of other special operations
you have been involved in-”

“Pardon
me, sir, but they weren’t shit compared to this,” Smythe declared adamantly.
“None of the operations I was assigned before this resulted in saving the
entire planet, sir. Looking back, most of those ops were nothing but bloody
politics. Seeing things from out here, from Skippy’s perspective, we are all bugs fighting over crumbs on a
sidewalk.”

“He
told you that?” I said, surprised. Skippy had told me the exact same thing back
when I met him on Paradise. Sometimes I forgot that Skippy talked to everyone
aboard the ship, constantly.

Smythe
snorted with a dry laugh. “First day I was aboard the ship, he told me that.
And more. He wanted me to know that I needed to prove myself to him. He didn’t
warm up to me, until Staff Sergeant Adams assured him that I am a standup
chap.”

“Adams?”
I asked, astonished.

“Oh,
yes, Colonel. Skippy thinks the world of her. Don’t tell her I said that.”

“Adams?”
I repeated.

“Yes,
sir,” it was his turn to be surprised. “You didn’t know?”

“No. I
had no idea.” Neither Skippy nor Adams had said anything to me about their
relationship.

“My
point, Colonel, is that when my people and I signed up for this, we knew the
risks. This upcoming operation carries substantial risks; I also know that
we’re ready. We can do this.”

“Once
more unto the breach, Major?” I used up all my Shakespeare knowledge in that
one question.

“Something
like that, Sir. It worked out well for Henry the Fifth, as I remember.”

Lt
Williams quickly reviewed the op plan again, finding nothing he hadn’t
memorized. He and his SEALS team would be sitting out Phase Three, so he was
helping one of the Ranger team get his armored suit on. “Is that fitting OK, Mychalchyk?” Williams asked as he fastened the rear latch on
the neck.

“Yeah,”
Jeff Mychalchyk replied, glancing at the op order Williams
had on his tablet. “You want me to read that to you?”

“Impressive,”
Williams replied with a grin. “I didn’t know Rangers could read.”

“Yeah
we can. Maybe you SEALS guys should draw pictures on the back of your hand, I
know memorizing all this stuff taxes your brains.”

“I got
it all right here,” Williams tapped his head. “I’m not worried about my team,
I’m worried about how disappointed your target will be that they got hit by
Rangers, instead of a SEALS team. Nobody wants to play against the junior
varsity.”

“Ooooh,
that’s cold, Sir,” Mychalchyk laughed, expending some of
his excess nervous energy.

“Hey,
seriously,” Williams’ face lost all levity as he offered Mychalchyk a fist bump. “Be careful out there.”

The
Ranger returned the gesture. “We’re going to hit ‘em hard. Hooah.”

Our
three Kristang dropships were following a narrow safe-fly corridor Skippy had
temporarily created, by confusing local air defense sensors. I monitored their
progress, fretting I had forgotten something important, and wishing I was with
them. I knew my clumsiness and lack of training would make me only a burden to
Smythe’s hardcore SpecOps team. With my head, I knew the place I could be most
useful was at my console in a well-hidden Thuranin dropship. With my heart, I
wanted to be with my people, my team, where I could physically do something. Because my life sucked, I
stuck my butt in a chair and watched the professionals do their jobs.

“Skippy,
I do not like this plan. This is too much like our very first op together, when
we had to physically jack you into a Kristang frigate.”

“That
plan? My plan? The plan that resulted
in a troop of screeching monkeys capturing a starship? As I remember, Joe, that
plan worked great.”

“As I remember, that plan almost failed,
when a lizard nearly self-destructed the ship before we secured it.”

“Details,”
Skippy sniffed.

“Det-”
I stopped myself from taking the bait. “Boarding the Flower reminds me of this Phase Three, because both ops require us
to surprise a group of lizards, and physically jack into a Kristang computer
network. When we boarded the Flower,
we were in the docking bay before the lizards realized we were not friendly.
Here, our people will still be outside the facility when our secret gets out.”

“True,
Joe, but both plans have another crucial element in common.”

“What’s
that?” Crap, I thought to myself. What had I forgotten this time?

“Me!
The magnificence of Skippy. Chill, Joe. Everything is going to be just fine. Go
get yourself a juice box or something.”

Lt.
Reed flew the Dragon that brought Major Smythe’s team to the comm station. On
approach, she signaled the comm station that she was delivering personnel for
the regularly scheduled crew rotation. Technically, Skippy did all the talking
for us, Reed just flew the Dragon. The duty officer in the comm station was
incredulous; why was a crew rotation happening while the clan was on the verge
of war?

“Hoo,
boy, Joe, this guy is upset,” Skippy chuckled. “I told him I was only following
orders, and if he didn’t want to rotate his team out that was Okey Dokey with
me, but my team is coming in. I tried telling him that I agreed this was
idiotic, but now that my team is on the way, we are eager to get down into the
bunker before the shooting starts. That seems to have gotten him to lighten up,
we both bitched about what a bunch of morons the clan personnel department is,
and he is going to contact them directly.”

“He’s
not actually doing that, right?” I had a moment of panic. Reed’s dropship was
descending toward the landing pad, and the two other Dragons were hovering
behind a hill just over the horizon, ready to assist if needed. They were all
vulnerable, sitting there with their asses hanging out, if the Spike Tails
realized what was really going on.

“Huh?
No, dumdum. His call to personnel headquarters was intercepted by me, and now
he is getting increasingly angry talking to a Kristang bureaucrat named ‘Bob’.”

“That’s
not a Kristang name, Skippy.”

“Yeah,
yeah, Ok, so I named the guy Bahb-bis-Tal Podandra, but it does sound like
‘Bob’ if you shorten it. Anyway, this fictional ‘Bob’ is telling the duty officer
that if he objects, he needs to complete a form and submit it to the personnel
office; the issue will be reviewed at the next meeting in three days. And, yes!
Bureaucracy triumphs again! The duty officer just ended the call in disgust.
Lt. Reed is cleared to land. Party on, dudes!”

I
watched from cameras outside the dropship, and from the eight armored suit
helmets as they walked down the dropship’s ramp. When the duty officer in the
bunker saw eight sets of Kristang powered armor exit the Dragon, he asked why
the relief crew was wearing armor, as they would soon be inside the bunker?
Because, Skippy answered on behalf of Smythe, there was a war on Kobamik, and
the bunker site could be hit at any moment. That explanation apparently
satisfied the duty officer, as the upper door to the bunker slid open. My view
from the dropship became less useful as Reed applied power and took off; the
duty officer in the bunker had no intention of his team leaving the bunker, so
we had no excuse for the Dragon to remain on the landing pad. I instructed Reed
to fly behind a hillside and wait there.

The
door to the bunker led into an elevator only large enough for three Kristang,
with armored suits on it was a tight fit for three. I watched from helmet
cameras as three walked into the elevator, and the heavy blast door closed
behind them. Outside, the five others waited under the overhanging roof of a
shelter that would be useless if the war started. In fact, it was totally
useless for Smythe’s team to huddle under the shelter, but it gave them an
excuse to be closer to their objective.

I was
still watching the helmet camera view from the elevator; the signal was being
relayed through the bunker’s comm system thanks to Skippy. When the elevator
reached halfway down it was halted, and the duty officer insisted the three helmets
be removed, so he could see the faces of the replacement crew and get their
retinal prints. That was standard security procedure, along with allowing only
three people in the elevator at any time. It was a smart procedure, and there
was no way the duty officer could have known that halting the elevator halfway
down was exactly what we wanted.

When
we were trying to figure a way into the bunker, Skippy told me we didn’t
actually need to get into the underground complex. We only needed access to the
secure communications links, and those critical links were located on the
surface. In fact, one of them was near the shelter where Major Smythe was
waiting. The problem with us accessing those links is that the crew in the
bunker would very likely object to us screwing with them. Their objection would
come in the form of maser autocannons popping up from the ground all around the
bunker, and cutting our ground team to ribbons.

So,
when the elevator halted and the duty officer demanded to see the faces of the
three relief crewmen, they complied. Three right gloves reached up to press a
button, then flip a latch to crack the helmet seal. This was the moment when
the crew in the bunker would see the replacement crew was not Kristang, and
blow our entire plan.

Then
the three powered armor suits exploded, destroying the elevator, the elevator
shaft and, more importantly, the main data conduit that ran vertically along
the elevator shaft. We had packed three suits with explosives, and Skippy had
controlled their movements as if they were occupied by Kristang. With the main
data conduit ruptured, the bunker was temporarily blinded and unable to call
for help.

Major
Smythe didn’t need Skippy to tell him it was time to move, he felt the
explosion and saw the bunker’s heavy blast door shake. “Go!” he shouted, and
raced over to the buried hatch where the nearest communications link was
located. Two of his soldiers reached the site slightly before him, and dug away
a meter and a half of soil with entrenching attachments to their powered
gloves. Ranger Mychalchyk had an explosive charge ready;
he slapped it onto the exposed hatch, spun a dial to activate it and jumped
back to the surface. The five lay flat and Smythe eyeclicked through a menu
inside his visor to detonate the charge. The ground heaved again.

“Did
it work, Skippy?” Smythe asked calmly.

“Yes,
the hatch is loose. Twenty two seconds,” the beer can warned. “Hurry.”

Smythe
and three other men helped one soldier quickly get out of his armored suit,
only that soldier was not a ‘he’. She was US Army Ranger Lauren Poole, and she
was very grateful to get out of the torture chamber of the suit. Because she
wasn’t tall enough to fit properly into even the smallest suit that could be
believably worn by a Kristang warrior, we had to modify the interior so her
feet ended pointing downward in mid-calf of the legs. Her hands were scrunched
up in the forearm of the suit, and she couldn’t wait to get out. Kristang suits
had a quick release mechanism for emergencies, although ‘quick’ did not seem
fast enough, when there was less than twenty seconds before control of
communications was restored to the underground bunker, and our entire plan was
ruined. Poole shrugged out of the open suit torso and immediately sprung into
action. Her muscles could have cramped in the suit, except she had flexed her
arms and legs constantly to prepare to move immediately.

Two
soldiers already had a cable ready, and two others had gone into the hole to
rip the broken hatch cover away with the powerful motors of their suits. They
jumped out of the way for Poole to squeeze her way into the hatch, not caring
that jagged edges cut her skin on the way down. Poole had been selected for the
mission for two reasons; she was among the more petite of the SpecOps team, and
as a former gymnast, she was flexible. She hung onto the cable as the soldiers
above lowered it, bashing her knees, back and elbows on obstructions in the
access tube.

“Eleven
seconds,” Skippy’s voice warned. He had introduced a thirty-seven-second time
delay in the bunker’s communications, so the bunker’s occupants could not
receive messages from outside, and outgoing messages were held in a buffer. In
another eleven seconds, the buffer would overflow, and a warning would go out
to the outside world that the bunker was under attack. Also, control of the surface
maser autocannons would be restored to the bunker.

Poole
saw the bottom and let go of the cable, falling the last three meters to land
lightly on her feet, then roll from the impact.

“Eight
seconds. Seven. Six.”

“I see
it!” Poole removed a connector from her belt, held it firmly, and carefully
pressed it into a slot in the tube’s wall.

“Four-
That’s it!” Skippy shouted loudly enough in Poole’s earpiece to make her wince.
“I’m in! Good work!”

Skippy
had control of communications coming from the bunker, and the Kristang in the
bunker could not send any messages to the outside world. While Smythe’s team
waited for Reed to arrive, they dropped thermal charges into the access tube,
so the extreme heat would destroy any DNA Poole had left behind. They had just
finished setting the charges, and picking up the discarded parts of Poole’s
suit, when Reed’s Dragon came racing over ridge, stood on its nose to slow
down, then flipped upright to skid across the landing pad, with the rear ramp
already open. Running without the assistance of powered armor, Poole was last
onto the ramp; as soon as her feet touched the deck Smythe grasped her left arm
and the Dragon took off. The Dragon had barely cleared the ridge again on its
outbound flight when Skippy sent a high-priority message from the bunker to the
next node in the communications network. That downstream node immediately
requested verification of the startling orders, and Skippy provided the proper
verification codes, urging action as soon as possible.

As
soon as possible was thirteen seconds; that was how long it took for nine Spike
Tail clan SD satellites to lock onto ground targets, power up their maser cannons
or railguns, unmask from stealth and fire. Amazingly, despite every clan on
Kobamik being on full alert, four of the nine satellites survived the
inevitable counterbattery fire, by reengaging stealth and maneuvering to a
different orbit. Frantic calls from Spike Tail leadership to halt a second
round of strikes were to no avail, as Skippy intercepted those messages. A
second volley from SD assets in orbit and on the ground committed the Spike
Tails to fighting whether they wanted to or not, and the clan’s leadership ordered
all their forward-deployed units into action.

Skippy
let those messages go through.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

I’d
heard the myth of the Golden BB, and until that day, I always thought it was
only a myth. The name ‘Golden BB’ referred to the fact that every aircraft is
vulnerable to an impact by even a tiny object, that hit the right spot at the
right time and with enough velocity. The origin of the myth was that even a BB
pellet could knock down an aircraft, if the BB flew in an open cockpit window
and struck the pilot in the neck. Some helicopters have a single ‘Jesus pin’
holding the rotor to the mast; a round striking that pin could cause the
helicopter to crash. For sure I knew pure blind luck had a lot to do with
whether people survived combat, but until that day I had never experienced a
Golden BB incident.

Lt.
Reed’s Dragon flew lead, with the two others following close behind as escorts.
Everyone aboard the three Kristang dropships were feeling good about their
latest successful mission, and tense because masers and lots of kinetic
hardware was flying around and overhead. Skippy had assured them their enhanced
stealth would protect them from being detected, as long as they remained in the
narrow safe flight corridor he had established by partially hacking into air
defense networks.

Flight
Lieutenant Windsor’s dropship, the one with the dead Kristang called ‘Curly’
aboard, had already exited the battle area and was flying low and fast,
approaching one end of the safe air corridor, when the Dragon ran into trouble.
Technically, it ran into a missile that had been fired at another target high
above. The missile came out of nowhere, having gone supersonic in its first
fifty meters of flight. It focused entirely on its target, an unidentified
aircraft that had violated clan airspace at high altitude. Despite its focus,
the missile could not ignore the unexpected sudden high air pressure in front
of it, air pressure created by the engine fan blades of Windsor’s stealthed Dragon.
The missile’s brain reacted almost too slowly, as it was already above the
Dragon before it made a decision. Reasoning that another missile could be
launched at the high-altitude target, the missile figured its duty was to
destroy the low-altitude unknown intruder it had stumbled across.

Windsor
never saw any danger; the missile flashed by at Mach Two just behind the
Dragon’s starboard wing. A light on the cockpit consoles flashed just as the
missile above exploded in wide-dispersal fragmentation mode. Shrapnel flew in
all directions, only three pieces went backwards to strike the Dragon. Two
ripped through the strongest spar at the end of the portside wing; they hit in
exactly the sequence required to set up a vibration in the portside engine fan
blades, and the portside engine tore itself apart, sending blade pieces
scything through the air. That was enough. From one moment to the next, the
Dragon went from stealthily exiting a combat area, to tumbling out of control.
As the dropship had been flying close to the ground before the missile hit, the
pilots had little time to react. What control they had was the dropship
reacting by itself; knowing it was doomed to crash, its navigation brain
selected a place most likely to ensure some of the crew survived, and guided
the ship there as best it could.

The
Dragon’s nose pancaked into the dirt, digging in and causing the craft to flip
onto its back and skid wildly. Both wings and other pieces broke off, sending
high-strength composites flying in all directions. After plowing a furrow
eighty meters long, the Dragon came to a rest upside down.

“Holy
shit, Joe,” Skippy exclaimed in shock. “I did not see that coming. Sorry! I knew about that antiaircraft missile
launcher, but it hadn’t detected our ships at all. Damn it! That was bad fucking luck! That had to be a
million-to-one shot,” He lamented.

We
could analyze what had gone wrong later. If there was a later. “Is anyone alive
in there?” A quick glance at my console told me both pilots were dead, along
with three of the crew. Four other suits were showing life signs of varied
strength, and two unsuited people had heartbeats according to their zPhones; I
had no idea how anyone not in an armored suit could have survived.

“Six
survivors. Joe, I expect one of them will not survive more than the next few
minutes. I am terribly sorry.”

“Save
the sorries for later, Skip. Right now we need to pull our people out of there.”
I contacted the lead ship. “Reed, we have-”

Skippy
interrupted me. “Joe, hold!”

“Reed,
stand by. What is it, Skippy?”

“Joe,
all the antiaircraft batteries in that area are now set on automatic and are
sweeping the sky with overlapping active sensor pulses; they could see right
through the Dragons’ stealth. Sending the other two ships in there for evac
would be suicide. I’m doing what I can, but it will be severely limited, their
systems are on lockdown to prevent interference. Also,” he continued before I
could react, “they have ground troops on the way to the crash site. Six
Kristang in powered armor have exited the missile control center, and are
running along this ravine.” He highlighted the area on my display. “They have
rifles, antiarmor rockets and rifles. Joe, this is a dangerous situation.”

“Got
it. Reed, Chen,” I called the pilots of both Dragons, “set down at the
coordinates I’m sending you and stay there, the area is saturated with AA.
Major Smythe?”

“Here,
Sir, we heard what Skippy said. I have ten people ready to extract our people.”

Ten
humans, against six Kristang who were bigger, faster, stronger and tougher than
any human. I did not like those odds.

I
liked watching the action with my butt in a chair even less than I liked the
odds. I watched the battle from my console in a Thuranin dropship, following
the action from afar. With the technology available, I could select views from
the helmet cameras of every human soldier involved, I could overlay those
images on a synthetic ‘God’s eye’ view of the battlefield that Skippy provided
by creating a real-time composite of all the data coming in. I had better
situational awareness than any human commander in history, and it was not
enough. I needed to be there, to be
with my people.

Smythe
was in a bad situation. The six Kristang infantry were alerted to other hostile
aircraft in the area, and they sent up drones to get a visual. Smythe’s team
also launched drones to counter the enemy; the drones tangled in furious air to
air combat until they were all quickly destroyed. Each side got only glimpses of
the opposition but that was enough; the Kristang now knew they were facing
ground troops and I’m sure they could count. We knew any fight would be ten
slow, weak humans against six physically superior Kristang who were on their
own territory. Smythe had to retrieve our people, including the dead we
couldn’t leave behind as evidence; while his people were extracting injured and
dead from the crash site, they would be vulnerable. All the Kristang needed to
do was stay behind cover and shoot; they knew reinforcements were on their way.
It would have been better for us if the Kristang made a rush for the crash
site, came out of cover where Smythe’s team could get a clear shot at them.
Unfortunately, the six Kristang defenders thought they were up against ten Kristang,
so they played it safe.

Major
Smythe held up a hand to pause his people, while he reviewed the drone data in
his visor and considered what to do. With him were two British SAS and two
Chinese Night Tigers. The team from the other Dragon, trotting up from the
east, were three Indian paratroopers and two US Army Rangers; the French
paratroopers still were recovering from radiation exposure and had not been
cleared for duty. Nationality mattered little by then among the Merry Band of
Pirates; Smythe had his people forged into one seamless Special Operations
team. They all used the same weapons, and were crosstrained on tactics favored
by the other four nationalities, Smythe chose whatever tactics worked best in
the situation.

At the
moment, he had a difficult choice. The six enemy soldiers were lying prone in a
strong defilade position overlooking the crash site, using a dry creek bed for
cover. From that position, they could sweep the crash site and approaches from
three directions. It was not a good situation, and the worst opponent he faced
was time; enemy reinforcements were on their way and Skippy could not stop
them. “Skippy, what can you tell me about the oppo?”

“They
are a garrison security force, assigned to the missile battery,” Skippy stated
hurriedly. “They have only minimal training in infantry tactics. I cannot
intercept their communications, as they are using line of sight lasers between
helmets, and hand signals I can’t interpret from here. Wish I could tell you more,
sorry. I am doing what I can to hack into air defenses in the area to give you
air support, you shouldn’t plan for it.”

“Thank
you,” Smythe replied automatically, his mind already back working on the
problem. One thing was certain; he could not allow the enemy to retain the
initiative. Those six soldiers were effectively blocking the humans’ path to
the crash site. Smythe considered splitting his team, with six firing at the
enemy to keep their heads down, while four humans retrieved the injured from the
crash site. He could see now that wouldn’t work. With the team assembled, he
sketched out his plan, a tactic he hoped the Kristang would not expect.
“Skippy, I have one more favor to ask of you.”

“Whatever
you need, Major.”

Smythe’s
favor was for Skippy to take remote control of all ten suits, and race them
across country up and behind the Kristang. This tactic would get the human team
into position on high ground above and behind the Kristang quickly; Smythe also
wished to avoid risking the Kristang becoming suspicious, if his team ran at
the normal slow speed of humans. Skippy took almost a full second to create a
detailed map of the terrain between the team’s position and their intended
destinations. Smythe wanted the team to proceed up a shallow swale together,
then split, with five people going north and five south. They would take up
positions to threaten the Kristang from above and behind, forcing the enemy to
pull back from the crash site. If that were successful, Smythe intended for one
team to keep the Kristang pinned down, while the other team circled around back
to the crash site.

The
operation began well, with Smythe feeling his suit accelerate gradually,
picking up speed until he was racing across the terrain at a truly frightening
speed, so fast he would certainly have tripped and fallen on his own. They were
running even faster than he had when escaping from the exploding Thuranin
research base on the planet Jumbo, thanks to Skippy. On Jumbo, the suits had
engaged an emergency escape mechanism to carry the user away from a threat,
using the suit’s sensors to scan the ground in front of the suit and determine
the best path forward with only minimal guidance from the user. With Skippy remotely
controlling the suits on Kobamik, he had planned almost every footfall from
detailed terrain maps the beer can had hacked from a Spike Tail clan database.
The suits of Smythe’s team did not need to slowly scan the terrain in front and
make decisions every millisecond; they only needed to follow Skippy’s preprogrammed
instructions, and could extend every stride to cover maximum ground. The system
was not perfect; armored boots slipped on rocks or loose dirt, ground had
shifted slightly from the last mapping survey conducted by the Spike Tails.
When one suit slowed to recover balance from an errant footfall, Skippy sent a
signal for all suits to slow accordingly, keeping the team together.

The
speed with which the SpecOps team from Earth ran up the swale toward their
objectives was deeply concerning to the leader of the Kristang infantry. Rumors
had been flying that the attacks on the Fire Dragon had been possible because
of advanced technology not available to most Kristang. The aircraft that had
been shot down had not appeared on sensors at all, and now the infantry was
faced with ten intruders who were running at speeds his soldiers could not
match. Whatever force the infantry leader was up against, he had to assume they
had access to technology far beyond that possessed by the Spike Tail clan. He
saw with alarm what the intruders had planned, and he reacted.

Major
Smythe was reminded of two maxims from his early days in training. First, no
plan survives contact with the enemy. Second, the enemy also makes plans. His
team was nearing the upper end of the swale, where it flattened out and the
land became flat for a hundred or so meters. At the end of the swale, his team
would split and race across the open ground to proceed up the lower slopes of
two hills. The suits would slow to climb the hills, for the ground at the base
of the slopes was crumbled shale, making footing treacherous. The teams split,
and Smythe felt his boots slipping alarmingly on loose rock. He let his legs go
limp, letting the suit’s sensors and motors do the work for him, far faster than
he ever could. Now that his brain was not constantly being jolted at
high-speed, he took a moment to regain situational awareness.

And
did not like what he saw. The enemy had left their position covering the crash
site, and were now running full speed, directly at Smythe! Both SpecOps teams
were in a bad place, on exposed slopes with poor footing, and in an area with
no tree cover. They could not climb quickly enough to reach the cover of the
hilltop, nor could they retreat to the meager cover of the swale. “Skippy!”

“I see
it! Major, I can’t get you out of this, the signal lag prevents me from
controlling your suits in real time.”

“Team!”
Smythe ordered his people to turn around and attack, he did not see any choice.
If the humans kept climbing the crumbling slopes they would be sitting ducks.
Aboard the Dutchman, every simulated
fight against Kristang had taught Smythe one lesson above all; movement and
speed are life. To remain static against superwarriors was death. The enemy was
faster, stronger and had quicker reflexes. The only advantage Smythe had was
superior numbers, ten against six.

The
six Kristang came over the ridge as Smythe’s two teams were still stumbling
down the final couple meters of loose shale at the bottom of the hills.
Explosive rounds struck shale just to the left of Smythe’s feet, sending jagged
flakes of rock pelting against his armored suit legs and knocking him off
balance. In desperation, he leaped up, even knowing that while he was in the
predictable ballistic arc of the jump, he was vulnerable to accurate fire from
the enemy. He landed on secure ground, surprised to be alive and not thinking
about it. His rifle came up, his visor providing a vivid blue crosshairs to
show where he was aiming. As he ran to his left and an enemy rocket lanced out
toward him, he fired a four-round burst that astonishingly caught a Kristang in
the chest, knocking the superwarrior backwards. Smythe threw himself to the
right to dodge the rocket, which at the last second he saw was going to miss
him anyway. He stumbled and almost went down, the suit compensating in an
action that was jarring, making his chin smack the bottom of the helmet. At no
instant did Smythe let himself be distracted, he sighted on another Kristang
who was racing straight at him, firing directly at Smythe. The SAS man had no
time to wonder how he could be alive, not even time to squeeze the trigger of
his own rifle before the Kristang’s head suddenly exploded, ripped apart by explosive-tipped
rounds from at least two other rifles.

Smythe
had to turn to the left to find another target, and his brain may have had a
split-second of astonishment at finding only one Kristang still standing before
he swung his rifle around and fired off a burst. His rifle added to the carnage
inflicted on the last surviving Kristang, the lizard had already been hit
several times before Smythe’s rounds reached out to stitch a line up the
enemy’s torso and nearly decapitate the enemy. “Cease fire!” Smythe shouted,
spinning around in disbelief to count ten humans still on their feet. Several
people had dents and gouges in their armor, especially around the legs as
explosive rounds had hit the ground near their feet. The worst damage was to
Ranger Mychalchyk’s right thigh, and even that
deep gouge wasn’t impeding the functioning of the suit. The slope behind
Smythe’s team was smoking from impacts of rifle rounds and rockets. But not one
of his team had been struck directly. And all six of the Kristang were lying
dead. Smythe strode over to a Kristang soldier laying on his back, with holes
ripped through his armored suit. The rounds fired by humans had alternated
armor-piercing and explosive, standard tactics against light armor.
Armor-piercing rounds used their kinetic energy to turn the tip into
superheated plasma that burned its way through armor, weakening it and creating
an opening for the explosive-tipped round to follow. As Smythe could see on the
battlefield, the combination was quite effective. The enemy had almost
certainly used the same ammunition against the Merry Band of Pirates, yet not
one of them had been hit. “How the hell
did that happen?” Smythe asked, astonished.

“Holy
shit,” my lips quavered in amazed shock. “How the hell did that happen?” I had been following the blindingly fast
firefight from my dropship, unable to breathe. As the last Kristang’s head
jerked back and he slumped to the ground, I shuddered with relief. A team of
ten humans had just sliced up six genetically-enhanced Kristang superwarriors,
without a single one of our team suffering any worse than shrapnel bouncing off
their armor.

“Yup.
Looks like the Kristang really sent their ‘A’ team to this battle,” Skippy said
with a verbal smirk.

“What?
Skippy, those guys couldn’t shoot worth shit. Damn, in a firefight between
those Kristang and Imperial Stormtroopers, nobody
would get hit. Did we just go up against the Spike Tails equivalent of Cub Scouts?
‘A’ team? That was more like their ‘Z’ team.”

“Joey,
Joey, Joey,” Skippy said sadly, I mentally pictured him shaking his head.
“Apparently, you never watched the ‘A Team’. The guys on that show could empty
an entire magazine and never hit the side of a barn, from inside a barn. Your knowledge of crappy 80’s TV shows is woefully
inadequate.”

“Oh,
ha ha,” I laughed, my voice bordering on the hysterical, I was still coming
down off the adrenaline rush. “‘A’ team, I get it. Your Magnificence, I’ll make
a deal with you; you get us out of this mess, and I will let Professor Skippy
give me a graduate course in crappy 80s TV shows.”

“Deal!”
Skippy shouted before I could change my mind. “We’ll start with ‘Manimal’, that’s
widely considered the gold standard of ‘80s crappiness. Then we’ll work our way
up to ‘Alf’. Although, hmmm, ‘Alf’ is about a super-smart alien stuck living
with a group of ignorant humans, that scenario is just not believable. Hey, if
you piss me off, I’ll make you sit through every episode of ‘The Love Boat’.
The director’s cut. With commentary.”

“Oh,
crap. Am I going to regret this?”

“Joe,
after you finish watching the first season of ‘Knight Rider’, you will be
praying for death.”

“Shit.
Fine.” I asked as I watched Major Smythe’s team running toward the downed
dropship with long, powered strides. Bravo team was already at the crash site,
and had the survivors huddled in a sort of ditch. It all looked good, I
anticipated the other two dropships evacuating the whole group within minutes.
No additional threats were showing on the display. My hands were still shaking
slightly. “Tell me, Your Magnificence, did the poor shooting of those Kristang
have anything to do with you?”

“Me?
Sweet, innocent little me? Well, heh heh, I might have screwed with the
targeting systems of their rifles, and the guidance systems of their rockets. That
was not easy, even for me. If they hadn’t all been clustered together in a
small area, I couldn’t have done it. Also, their leader didn’t completely trust
his soldiers, because he had much more actual combat experience. So he had
their targeting systems slaved to his suit computer. I only needed to infiltrate
one system to get in. It was a lucky break. As you monkeys understand ‘luck’,
that is.”

“Hey,
I’ll take all the luck we can get. Except bad luck, we’ve had plenty of that.
Major Smythe, you are clear to proceed to the crash site. Be advised Skippy can
give us a three minute gap in air defenses.” Our shiny beer can had found a way
to reset the local air defense network and throw it into diagnostic mode; he
estimated we had three minutes remaining before sensors became active again and
the sky would be too dangerous for flying. “Our birds are on the way. Retrieve
our people and leave Curly away from the crash site.”

“Pull
Curly from the fuselage and leave him, understood. Sir, we are all in shock
here. What happened?” Smythe’s voice reflected uncertainty, and that never
happened.

“Major,
I would like to tell you the skill and training of your team was responsible,”
I replied with a laugh, “but you can thank a certain beer can for the enemy’s
poor shooting.”

With a
short gap in opposition, Reed and Chen zoomed their Dragons to smack down hard
next to the crash site, their landing gear flexing and groaning. Smythe’s team
worked quickly and efficiently, to get our injured people and the dead into the
two flyable dropships. Getting the bodies of our two pilots out took almost too
much time, as part of the cockpit had to be cut away for access, but with less
than a minute to go before the air defense network became active again, no
humans or human bodies remained in the wreckage. Curly was laying on his back
thirty meters in front of the crashed Dragon’s nose, as if he had been flung
there by the violence of the impact. Without waiting for an order from me, the
two Dragons went to full power and raced for the safe-fly corridor. When the
crash site was one kilometer behind, both dropships rippled off four missiles,
which raced back to obliterate our downed spacecraft. Through the dust, I could
see Curly’s body in two pieces, flung even farther away. That was good, hopefully
the Spike Tails would not take time to examine the wreckage in the middle of a
war.

“Hey,
uh, Joe,” Skippy’s voice was shaky.

My
zPhone pinged with another text. We need
another private chat. There I was, in a dropship, crowded in with people.
How was I going to- Put in your earpiece
and talk softly, the message continued. Talk softly? Ok. I wiggled the
earpiece in and whispered, more moving my lips than actually creating sound.
“What is wrong?”

“The
worm is becoming a bit more of a problem.”

“A
bit?” Talking so quietly made me feel like a ventriloquist, although the dummy
was me. “We are in the middle of a rescue mission, Skippy. This is very bad
timing.” Someone called from behind me, I waved a hand for quiet.

“I
know and I’m sorry about that, Joe. I’m telling you because you need to know.
Well, you keep telling me you need to know, although there’s nothing you can do
about it, so this conversation is really a whole lot of blah, blah, blah.”

I
cringed. Even in a desperate situation he couldn’t help being an asshole. “BLUF
it for me, Skippy,” I asked for Bottom Line Up Front. If Skippy was going on
vacation again, we were running out of time fast. On the console in front of
me, I could see the last dropship was just now approaching the egress corridor.
We needed to confirm all Kristang clans had been drawn into the civil war, then
we were going to pop smoke and get the hell off the planet. I couldn’t give the
evac order until we were certain the mission was complete. Not until we knew
the Fire Dragons were cancelling the deal to send a Ruhar ship to Earth.

Until
we knew our home planet was safe again.

“I
wish I could, Joe. I am in some amount of trouble, I can’t quantify it at
present. The worm was in a dead-end and I was studying it, that’s where my
focus was. While I was doing my party trick with the Kristang targeting
systems, I wasn’t paying much attention to my subsidiary internal systems. That
is when the worm struck; it was waiting for me to take my attention away from
my internal functioning. What I had trapped was only a copy of the worm, a
ghost. I was stupid and arrogant and now I’m paying the price. You may pay the
price with me, I’m sorry about that. The real worm was hiding and studying me, to learn how I operate, to learn my
weaknesses. I am vulnerable now.”

“How
much time do we have?”

“Oh, forever,
Joe; I am confident I can handle this puny worm. This is a, heh heh, FYI.”

It
didn’t sound like an FYI. It sounded like the little beer can was frightened
out of his mind. “That is good to hear,” I lied, “will we have any warning if
you, uh, go on holiday again?”

“Not
going to happen, Joe. Me going on holiday, I mean, not the warning. Sure, in
the unlikely event that I have to take a quick break to drive a stake through
the heart of this damned worm, I’ll let you know in advance. Until then, heh
heh, it’s all good.”

My
mind was racing with ideas of how we could cut the op short, to get the Merry
Band of Pirates off the planet as soon as possible. “Can you estimate when
we’ll know whether the war has pulled in all the other clans?”

“Not
exactly, that is kind of a vague question, Joe.” In that, he sounded like the
old arrogant Skippy. “What I can tell you is our drawing the Spike Tails into
the fight should soon persuade clans on the sidelines that they need to strike
now, while they still can. Chatter I’m picking up now, indicates every offensive
unit on this planet are preparing messages to their clan headquarters, and most
of them are of the ask-forgiveness type rather than request-permission. Clans
are attempting to validate alliances and many of them do not like the answers
they are receiving; alliances agreed to in peacetime are not worth anything now
that war is imminent. Everyone is scrambling to ally with the clans they think
will be winners, in the war they now expect is inevitable. Having said that,
wide-spread fighting has still not yet erupted. Most clans are waiting to see
someone else make the first move; they are all afraid whoever strikes first
will become a target.”

If
Skippy was failing, losing his battle against the worm, I couldn’t wait for
multiple clans to make up their freakin’ minds. We needed to give them a push,
and I didn’t want another op that put the Merry Band of Pirates in jeopardy.
“You are monitoring communications between the clans?”

“Yup.
That’s easy-peasy for me. Their encryption and communications security is
pathetic.”

“Great,
that’s good to hear, Your Royal Awesomeness,” I said, hoping to cheer him up.
“Can you sneak some messages in that traffic?”

“Like
what? Birthday greetings?”

“No,”
I rolled my eyes. “I was thinking of you feeding each clan sensor data that
indicates they are about to be attacked. And messages from clan leadership to their
offensive units, ordering them to strike against, uh, whatever target is most
likely to be believable and cause maximum chaos.”

“Oooh,
yeah, I could do that. Joe, that is freakin’ devious. I like it! Something like that wouldn’t work in peacetime, because
the Kristang require all field units to verify strike orders with headquarters,
but right now every clan on the planet is primed and ready for it.”

“Outstanding,”
I said aloud, forgetting to whisper. “When can you get started?”

“Doing
it now, Joe. Messages are on their way. This is a great idea. Damn, I freakin’ love screwing with lizards!” He said
that so loud it made me wince and pull the earpiece away from my ear. In the
console display, I saw the last dropship had successfully made the turn and was
now transiting the egress corridor. Navigating that corridor was tricky and I
had full confidence in the ability of our pilots to fly it, even without
Skippy, if necessary. “Ok, Joe, it is ON, baby! Holy crap, a commander of the Red
Dagger clan must have an itchy trigger finger, because as soon as he saw my
message ordering him to attack, he didn’t wait for a confirmation. He ordered a
Strategic Defense orbital strike on two rival clans, and DAMN! That did it, there are missiles flying all over up there! No
one wanted to be the first to shoot, but now no one wants to be the last. Hmmm,
this could create a bit of a complication, there will shortly be a whole lot of
high-speed debris in orbit, everyone is opening up overhead with their
stealthed satellites to knock out enemy defenses. I will need to analyze debris
patterns to predict a safe egress route, and that might require me to shift the
microwormhole so we don’t run into a debris cloud on our way up. This will be a
challenging-”

“A
challenge? I’m sure you are up to it, Skippy,” I said to boost his confidence,
then I realized he had said ‘challenging’
not ‘challenge’. He hadn’t finished his thought, and my blood ran cold.
“Skippy?” I whispered.

No
response. On my zPhone, I tapped out a message ‘Skippy, are you there’. Again, no response. Trying to act casual
and unconcerned, I reach up to touch his beer can, nestled into the top of my
console. He was warm, not alarmingly so.

“Colonel
Bishop?” The pilot called me. “We just lost contact with the ship. I think,
yes. Colonel, the microwormhole just shut down. We’ve lost it.”

Right
then, I knew we were totally screwed. Even if Skippy came back from his holiday
right then, the microwormhole we relied on was gone. We needed that tiny
wormhole not only to give us instant communications with the ship, but also to
provide the yoyo string that would bring our dropships back into orbit. Skippy
might be able to create another connected pair of microwormhole end points, but
neither end would be anywhere useful. While we might find some way to send one
end up above the planet, there was no way for us to get the other end all the
way out to the Flying Dutchman. I
took a deep breath. One thing I had learned in the military is that unlike
wine, bad news does not improve with age. Best to get it over with. “We just
lost Skippy also,” I announced. Which meant we lost our secure communications
channel to the other dropships. I hoped that with war now raging across the
planet, a few stray signals would be lost or ignored. “Send a burst
transmission to the other dropships, have them proceed to the rendezvous point
as planned. And advise them that we no longer have Skippy with us. I will
contact Mr. Chotek myself.” Our situation was so dire that I was not concerned
about Chotek dressing me down again; getting yelled at was the least of my
problems.

“Colonel
Chang, we just lost the microwormhole. It shut down without warning, Sir.”
Major Simms reported from the CIC.

Before
Chang could respond, Nagatha spoke. “Just before the wormhole collapsed, I
received a message from Skippy. He is being attacked by the worm again.”

Chang
focused on a particular word. “The
worm? This is something you knew about?”

Nagatha
didn’t respond immediately. “Oh, dear. This is rather embarrassing. Now I see
how Skippy gets himself into trouble. Perhaps some of his absent-mindedness has
affecting me. Yes, Colonel Chang, this is not the first time Skippy has been
attacked by a computer worm.” She told Chang the truth about the first time the
beer can had gone ‘on holiday’.

Chang
decided to put his unproductive anger aside for the moment. “Skippy has
defeated this worm before; is there any reason to think he won’t come back
soon?”

“I have
no data on that subject, Colonel,” Nagatha’s voice was apologetic. “Skippy
thought he had destroyed the worm; any speculation on my part would not be useful.”

Chang
pointed to the displays in front of him. “The ship still has power, and you are
still active. This is already different from the last incident.”

“Correct,
Colonel Chang. The revised protocols Skippy loaded into the ship’s computers
allow most systems to continue functioning in his absence. That functioning
relies on a steady-state condition; systems will be unable to adjust to damage.
And systems which require periodic adjustments or maintenance will begin to
fail and go offline. One of those systems that cannot function indefinitely
without Skippy is myself; the matrix of this ship’s main computer is inadequate
to contain my entire consciousness, so I have been relying on the link with
Skippy for additional memory and processing power. I am in the process of
reducing my functionality to match the circumstances.”

“Major
Simms,” Chang ordered, “get Dr. Friedlander up here, I need an update on his
team’s progress. We may need to operate this ship by ourselves.”

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Hans
Chotek took the bad news about Skippy with quiet consideration. He didn’t get
angry, he didn’t yell at me, he simply nodded slowly and asked what our options
were.

Without
Skippy, we had no microwormhole, no yoyo string connected to the Dutchman to lift us into orbit without
using dropship engines. “We do have a Plan B to get back to the ship, Sir,” I
assured him.

“Sometimes
I wonder why the Merry Band of Pirates ever bothers to create a Plan A,” he
replied with unexpected humor.

“Because
that gives us a basis for a Plan B?”

Now he
wasn’t smiling. “Explain it to me, Colonel.”

Although
Skippy was still unresponsive, our Plan B only worked mostly because of him.
Our Thuranin dropships already had stealth capabilities far in advance of
Kristang technology, and Skippy had tweaked the stealth field generators to
make them even more effective. He had also worked on the engines so they ran
more efficiently, quieter and produced less turbulence and heat. That was all
good, by itself the stealth enhancement still didn’t give us much of a chance
to get safely away from Kobamik. Our ace in the hole was the lingering result
of Skippy’s screwing with Kristang sensor networks on and around the planet.
With Skippy dormant, he was not able to actively instruct the sensors to ignore
our ships, but most of the networks had been infected with code that caused the
networks to ignore sensor inputs related to us. The greatest difficulty Skippy
had hacking the sensors was to coordinate all the lies he was telling, because
many of the networks shared data. Now that Kobamik was engulfed in a hot war,
most of the sensor networks had been significantly degraded by enemy action,
and no clan was sharing their data with anyone else. That made our escape
somewhat less difficult; we chose an area controlled by a clan that had gotten
pounded by enemies and where sensor coverage was weak or nonexistent. Starting
our escape there made it easier for us to get off the surface; the tough part
would happen when we reached the top of the atmosphere and climbed into low
orbit, where stealthed satellites controlled by multiple clans were scanning
the area.

Our
means of getting off the surface of Kobamik involved the least-advanced type of
flight technology: a balloon. When our two Thuranin dropships reached the site
we had selected to begin our ascent, we unpacked the balloons from the cargo
section of the dropships, and attached a balloon to each ship with ultrathin
cables. The balloons had their own stealth field generators, powered by a cable
from the dropships. My dropship was the first to inflate a balloon and lift
off, when we judged the winds were favorable. The balloon was huge, towering
over the dropship, its thin skin was almost transparently invisible even
without the stealth field engaged. With the balloon tugging us steadily upward,
we drifted higher and higher. As we passed through ten thousand meters, we
received a brief ping from the second dropship; all was well and they were
ascending behind us without incident. As we rose and the atmosphere around us
thinned, the balloon expanded further, becoming truly enormous, stretching the
limits of the stealth field.

Approaching
forty thousand meters high, we encountered the first problem with our ascent.
The battle above the planet had been brief and intense, resulting in a whole
lot of debris in orbit. Avoiding high-speed particles in orbit was going to be
enough of a problem, we could not maneuver rapidly or we would be detected, so
we would need to trust our defense shields to deflect dangerous space junk away
from the dropship. What I did not anticipate was that some of that space junk
was already raining down into the atmosphere. “Colonel Bishop?” Lt. Reed called
from the cockpit. The suspense of our nerve-wracking ascent was killing me, to I
burned off some nervous energy going up to the cockpit and strapping into a
jump seat. “Sir,” Reed said from the copilot seat, “we have multiple pieces of
debris coming down, some of them will impact the balloon.”

That
caught my attention. “How big are these pieces?” The skin of the balloon was
self-sealing and could withstand multiple small punctures; the reserve gas
canister could replace any gas the balloon lost before a hole sealed itself.
The balloon could recover from small punctures, but a hole larger than my fist
was going to be a serious problem.

“We’re
on passive sensors only, and the balloon is blocking part of our view.” The
dropship had a spike projecting forward beyond the forward limit of the stealth
field enveloping us, and the ship also trailed a thin wire out the back that
had a tiny sensor on it. “If Skippy were here, he could predict-” she shrugged.

“All
right, we’ll need to ride it out. How much reserve gas do we have?”

“Ninety
percent, we’re good there. Colonel, we need another eight thousand meters of
altitude before we can release.”

“I
know.” We waited. At that altitude we couldn’t maneuver the balloon to steer
out of the way, the falling space junk was going to hit us or it wouldn’t, we
had no control. Lower in the atmosphere, the balloon could change its shape to
steer itself in the winds; at forty thousand meters the air was so thin that
the balloon had to expand to its maximum volume just to keep us rising. Within
minutes, lights flashed on the pilot consoles as our defense shield were
peppered with impacts; hot pieces of metal or composites bouncing off the dropship’s
energy shield. The impacts did not at all test the strength of our shield’s
energy. The kinetic energy being turned into heat risk did pose a minor risk of
exposing us, any sensors paying very close attention might wonder why the space
junk had changed direction so high in the sky. With so much junk raining down,
I was crossing my fingers and hoping any sensor networks still operational had
more important things to do in the war that was still raging.

“We’re
losing altitude,” Reed announced with more calm than I would have. She turned
to look at me. “It’s gradual, less than fifteen meters per second.”

“Yeah,
but we need to climb, not fall.” Even staying at the same height was no good,
we needed more altitude for a safe release from the balloon. “Is the balloon
reporting any trouble coping with the punctures?” The balloon’s brain was tiny,
I didn’t expect a detailed report.

“No,”
Reed shook her head. “Warning lights are yellow, not red. Gas reserve is down
to sixty percent. Rate of descent is slowing, now at five meters per second.”
The descent slowed, then halted. A cheer rang out in the ship when Reed
announced we were moving up again at
three meters per second. The reserve gas canister still held 28%, that was
declining slowly because the balloon must have a leak it wasn’t able to
completely plug. I was encouraged to see our rate of ascent was increasing
faster than gas was draining out of the reserve canister.

When
we reached forty three thousand meters altitude, I made a command decision and
accelerated our schedule. It was a pure judgment call; I sent a signal to our
two unmanned Kristang dropships on the ground. They pinged back acknowledgment
and flew off to perform their preprogrammed tasks of creating a diversion. As
expected, the wind had pushed us far away from where we had begun our ascent,
the territory below us at that point was controlled by a different clan. The
clan now below us was weak, having been hit hard by three other clans in the
first minutes of the war. Even weakened, the clan could pose a serious threat
to us, and their ground-based sensors were still active. Our balloons could
only expand so far to lift us higher, the practical limit of a balloon carrying
the mass of a Thuranin dropship was around forty eight thousand meters. After
that, we had to use the dropship’s engines to climb into orbit, and we did not
want anyone noticing that transition from balloon to powered flight.

Our
two Kristang dropships, no longer useful to us, were on their last mission. Since
we had recovered them from the ignoble fate of fading away aboard derelict
transports, I thought those dropships might appreciate going out in a blaze of
glory. Both dropships kept their enhanced stealth engaged and flew low and slow
as they approached their target; the main sensor network node of the clan below
us. When they popped over a hill and were being swept by powerful active sensor
pulses, one of the dropships pulled ahead and switched to the unenhanced
Kristang stealth unit, making it intermittently visible to enemy sensors. That
dropship attracted a defensive curtain of maser beams, missile and self-guided
cannon rounds. The dropship flew a random evasive course, surviving longer than
it should have before being ripped to shreds.

From
the other direction, the other dropship kept its full enhanced stealth
capabilities engaged, approaching the target without being detected. The enemy
sensor network was distracted by the dropship that had just been destroyed, and
perhaps the Kristang in command of the defenses were congratulating themselves
and not paying proper attention. The second dropship was close enough to use
its line-of-sight maser cannons before it rippled off its entire load of eight Zinger
missiles. After the missiles were away, the dropship climbed and began firing
its masers continuously. That attracted the attention of the Kristang, who
concentrated on destroying the dropship and realized only too late that eight
missiles were inbound. The missiles made no attempt at stealth, relying on
speed and hugging the terrain. Five of them were caught and exploded by the
maser autocannons, one took a hit and went off course. The remaining two
missiles impacted the complex, and detonated their special warheads that threw
out electromagnetic rather than kinetic energy. Hot, noisy particles spewed
into the air, temporarily blinding the ground-based sensors. The Kristang there
knew the purpose of the attack had been to knock back their sensor coverage,
but they did not turn their gaze high above them to where we floated. They had
more immediate concerns; protecting themselves from the possibility of more
aircraft racing in under the temporary sensor blackout. Preparing for an attack
on their central complex by aircraft and ground troops was the entire focus of
the Kristang below us, so they did not notice when our dropships powered up
their engines and cut loose from the balloons.

“So
far so good, Colonel,” Lt Reed reported from the copilot seat. There was a
slight stomach flipping moment of zero gravity as the ship released and fell
less than a hundred meters before flying gently upward under its own power. The
discarded balloon was already disintegrating, even the balloon’s stealth field
generator was being eaten by nanoparticles. By the time the remains of the
balloon reached thirty thousand meters, all that would remain was inconspicuous
dust.

I
didn’t reply, not wanting to distract the pilots. We climbed as gently as the
math of orbital mechanics allowed, with the second dropship following us a hundred
kilometers behind. This was the most dangerous part of our Plan B escape, when both
dropships were using the most energy of the entire flight profile.

“Picking
up some ionization,” Reed warned. Our increasingly swift passage through the
upper atmosphere was leaving a trail of ionized gas in our wake, even in the
ultrathin air at the edge of low orbit. Our Thuranin dropships had equipment
for pumping out gas to reduce our ionized trail, even their advanced technology
could not completely mask our flight. “I hope you’re right about this, Sir.”

“Me
too, Reed.” What she was referring to was my riverboat gambler’s move, of
expecting and hoping no one on or around the planet would bother shooting at
one or two small ships moving away from the planet. Most of the Strategic
Defense satellites had obliterated each other in the first minute of the war,
we could see the hot clouds of debris above us and raining down all around us.
I was betting all our lives that no clan would risk unmasking a precious
surviving stealthed satellite just to shoot at two small targets that did not
pose a threat to anyone. Our flightpath had been chosen to avoid coming near or
above any critical assets a clan would fight to protect. “We are tiny little
innocent dropships, just wanting to get off a war-torn planet, we are no threat
to anyone. No reason for anyone to shoot at us or even look at use closely.” So
far, my gamble was paying off. The problem was, I was counting on a whole
planet full of pissed off, trigger-happy lizards to act calmly and rationally.
It would only take one overeager jackass to ruin our day.

We
made it, into orbit and beyond. After three full days circling the planet to slowly
build up escape velocity, we all were exhausted as no one had been able to
sleep, other than those injured people who were sedated. Around us, Strategic
Defense satellites occasionally dropped their stealth to pound a target on the
surface, provoking a retaliatory maser strike that almost inevitably destroyed
the satellite. We could see sporadic air and ground battles scattered across
the surface, with the occasional ship jumping in, launching weapons at the
planet and jumping away. The good news was that, in all the excitement, if we
had been detected, no one gave a shit about our two relatively tiny ships that
were clearly no threat to anyone. Clans on the surface, who still retained some
offensive military capability, were not going to expend precious ammo shooting
at us. Even firing a maser at us would give away the position of that maser
cannon, and some clan would surely take the opportunity to further degrade a
rival clan’s defenses. When Skippy and I had developed our Plan B escape route,
the little beer can had told me the success of the plan depended mostly on the
chaos of war making our two dropships unworthy targets. At that time, Skippy
told me he couldn’t predict whether some Kristang clan with nothing to lose
wouldn’t take a shot at us, so he could not recommend Plan B. I agreed with
him, the difference is I was willing to take the risk. Because there was no
Plan C.

Accelerating
as gently as we possibly could, we managed to dodge space junk until we were
far enough away to point the ships on a course to the planned rendezvous with
the Flying Dutchman. I didn’t close
my eyes for more than brief snatches of sleep until the planet behind us had
shrunk to the size of a golf ball.

All we
needed to do then was survive cooped up in two dropships, each of which had a
single bathroom designed for little green men about four feet tall. I was not
looking forward to the long journey; seven weeks until we reached the alternate
rendezvous point where the Dutchman
was supposed to be waiting. One of our doomed Kristang dropships, before their
suicide mission, had sent a burst transmission out to the point in space where
our pirate ship should be when the speed-of-light signal got there. Following
protocol, the Dutchman did not reply,
so we did not know if our ship received the signal. Yet another thing for me to
worry about.

I was
also extremely worried about Skippy. He was completely unresponsive. Worse,
after growing uncomfortably warm, his beer can had cooled and was now
distinctly chilly. I kept him tucked away, wrapped in a jacket in a locker, and
I didn’t tell anyone that his can had gone cold; people had enough to worry
about.

It
sucked that, after an operation that had accomplished the impossible, we didn’t
feel like celebrating. We had started a war on Kobamik, but without Skippy we
did not know if the war had spread throughout Kristang space, and whether the
Fire Dragons had cancelled their deal to send a ship to Earth. Our operation
might have accomplished nothing more than getting a lot of sentient beings on Kobamik
killed for nothing. Worse, it may have been the strain of hacking the entire
planet to protect us that distracted Skippy enough he became vulnerable to the
worm. I may have just gotten Skippy and my entire species killed, and I had no
way of knowing one way or the other.

Three
weeks out from Kobamik, with another four weeks until we reached the Flying Dutchman, our existence of
stifling boredom was shattered. “Contact!” Lt. Reed shouted from the cockpit.

I was
instantly awake, having been drifting in and out of slumber for an hour. With
oxygen and other consumables at a premium in the cramped cabin of the dropship,
we slept a lot, or stayed out of each other’s way as much as possible. “What is
it?”

“We
just got swept by the edge of a sensor field,” Reed explained. “There is at
least one stealthed ship out there. Colonel, we didn’t see it at all.” She
pointed at her console, frustrated. “We had no idea a ship was anywhere near
us.”

“It’s
not your fault, Lieutenant,” I assured her. “Even a Thuranin dropship doesn’t
have the sensor capability of a starship. That ship may be optimized for
stealth to patrol this area. I am pretty damned sure no one sent a starship all
the way out here to look for us.”

“I hope
you’re right, what do you want us to do?”

“Nothing
for now. We caught the edge of their sensor field?”

“It
was faint,” she replied. “Should we change course, or maybe they didn’t notice
us?”

“In
peacetime, maybe they wouldn’t notice. With the Kristang at each other’s
throats in this system, I can’t imagine the captain of a lizard ship letting a
contact go by without checking on it. They got a contact on sensor field, but
we’re not showing up on their passive sensors, so they’ve got to know they stumbled
across a stealthed ship. Maintain our present course. If we try to evade them,
they will certainly get curious. Our best move right now is to be innocent as
possible. We need to make that ship’s captain think whoever we are, we’re not worth
him breaking stealth to hit us.”

“Another
gamble?”

“It
worked the first time,” I said without confidence.

We
waited. Ten minutes went by and I was breathing easier, when we got swept by a
sensor field again, this time the signal was stronger. That ship must have
altered course to ping us again. If they pinged us a third time, we were
screwed. With the second sweep, even typically crappy Kristang sensors could
not miss determining that we were only a dropship. A large dropship, but
certainly not any kind of a starship, not even an in-system interplanetary
transport ship.

It was
time for another gamble, this one would be low-risk. If they did not ping us a
third time, it wouldn’t matter what we did. If they did try to sweep across us a
third time, I wanted to make it more difficult for them to find us. “Reed,
alter course away from that ship.” Of course, we didn’t know exactly where the
ship was, but we knew where it was not; on our port side, as both sensor sweeps
had come from starboard. “Signal the other dropship to alter course, and meet
us at the rendezvous point.”

If
that ship really wanted to find us, I wanted to make it difficult. I wanted
that ship’s captain to decide that finding us was worth compromising his
stealth capability, and worth leaving his assigned patrol area. My hope was
that ship’s captain would judge a dropship not worth the trouble.

You
know what sucked about combat? Yeah, getting shot at, duh. Second worst was
waiting, not only waiting to go into action, but waiting to know. Not knowing
whether the unseen warship near us would be coming back was agonizing. Reed
pointed the dropship’s nose to port, flipped around and decelerated very
gently. Then she swung farther to port, flipped the ship back nose first, and
accelerated. We could return to our previous course later.

Minutes
went by, then an hour. We picked up a very faint backscatter from a sensor
field, not strong enough for us to be detected. Then several hours went by
without us seeing anything alarming on our passive sensors. I was still tense,
waiting for a third sensor ping, followed by a bolt from a maser cannon, or a
missile hunting us. I felt completely powerless. I hated that. Several times, I
went into my locker and touched Skippy, in case his beer can was warm again. He
was ice cold.

We
didn’t relax until some ship in our general vicinity started shooting, and two
other ships shot back. Then another pair of ships opened up on the first pair.
My guess was the patrol ship had found what it really had been searching for:
an enemy starship. One of the first pair of ships was hit and disabled, the
second one jumped away. We followed the action anxiously, taking advantage of
the battle to gently accelerate away and come back toward our original course.
By the time two ships exploded and the fighting stopped, they were well behind
us. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The farther we got from Kobamik, the less
likely we were to stumble across random patrol ships.

I
still wasn’t able to sleep well.

CHAPTER THIRTY

As we
made our final approach to the alternate rendezvous point, the Flying Dutchman wasn’t visible at all on
our passive sensors, and we did not dare use any active detection technology
like a sensor field or active sensor pings. With its more advanced sensors, the
ship might be able to detect our dropship; if they did, they remained silent.
It pleased me that, no matter how anxious the crew aboard the ship might be, they
did not break communications discipline to contact us. It did not please me
that we didn’t truly know whether our pirate ship was silent due to admirable
discipline, or because it was somewhere else, or because it lacked the power to
transmit even a brief message. Not knowing sucked. We were flying almost blind.
As we approached the rendezvous point, I ordered the pilots to slow us to
rendezvous speed well away from the imaginary point in space where the Dutchman was supposed to be, to avoid
stumbling into our ship at high speed. Finally, my nerves couldn’t take it any
longer. “Hold us here,” I ordered. After we came to a dead stop, I instructed
the pilots to send a single, low-power maser ping to where the ship was
supposed to be.

And
the ship responded, also with a single ping so faint that if we had not been
expecting it, we might have missed it entirely. Based on that brief signal, we
had the ship’s location defined well enough to proceed forward. Within minutes,
we passed through the Dutchman’s
stealth field, and then our dropship was illuminated by a spotlight coming from
the open docking bay. “Welcome back, Colonel Bishop.”

“Colonel
Chang!” I almost had a tear in my eye from happiness at hearing his voice. “I
see you’ve been able to keep the lights on.” The fact that the ship was at the
alternate rendezvous point meant Chang had been able to maneuver the ship, and
lights meant it still had power.

“So
far, Sir. I don’t know how long we can do that, the science team will brief you
when you’re aboard.”

“Will
we be able to shower first? It’s gotten a bit ripe in here.” Unconsciously, I
paused, expecting Skippy to make an insulting comment about how badly we all
needed a shower. While I hated the embarrassment, I missed that irascible
little beer can. My purpose in talking about showers was not only because I
wanted to scrub the accumulated grime off my skin. What I really wanted to know
was whether conditions aboard the Dutchman
allowed anyone the luxury of a shower. If the answer was no, that told me a lot
about how badly the ship was coping with Skippy’s extended absence.

“Sir,”
Chang chuckled, and I’m sure he knew exactly why I inquired about the shower
situation. “You can take a Hollywood shower if you like. Then we need to update
you. Can I assume Mr. Skippy is still on holiday?” There was no laughter in his
question.

“Skippy
has been nonresponsive. He also hasn’t lost containment and exploded, which
gives me hope he will recover and come back to us, like last time.” Last time,
the beer can was only dormant for seventeen hours. This was very different, and
much more serious.

We got
two items of good, even great, news as soon as we stepped out of our rather
funky-smelling dropship. The first piece of good news was Nagatha greeting me,
and chatting on my zPhone as I headed toward my cabin. Chang told me there
wasn’t anything that needed my immediate attention, and the second dropship was
thirty minutes behind us, so I had time to scrub off the grime and finally put
on a new uniform. “Nagatha! It is great to hear your voice.”

“Why,
thank you, Colonel Bishop,” from the tone of her voice, I pictured her blushing
somewhere. “It is very pleasing to speak with you again. Before you ask, I must
tell you that I am unable to contact Skippy, I began attempting to contact him,
as soon as your ship came aboard. There is no response.”

Shit.
In the back of my mind, I had been hoping she would be able to wake him up.
With that possibility dead, my hopes of Skippy ever reviving faded away to
almost zero. “Nagatha,” I lowered my voice. People were giving me space as I walked,
but they could hear me going by. “I think I killed Skippy. He was hurting, and
I asked too much of him. If he hadn’t been so distracted by concealing us from
the Kristang-”

“Nonsense,
Colonel Bishop,” she said in a soothingly, in a tone that somehow also had a
slight touch of scolding to it. “Skippy’s resources were not at all taxed by
what he was doing on that planet.”

“But-”

“No
buts, young man,” now her tone was definitely schoolmarm-ish. “I know Skippy
was not overextending himself, because he was constantly talking with me over
the wormhole link, telling me how bored he was. He also told me how incredibly
proud he was of the amazing success your team had down there, considering that
you are ignorant, flea-bitten monkeys. Those were his words, not mine.”

“Proud
of us?” I asked, as I stepped into my small cabin and closed the door behind
me.

“Oh,
yes. He is very proud to be part of the Merry Band of Pirates. You have been
running rings around the supposedly advanced species of this galaxy, and they
don’t even know you exist. Skippy also told me he would deny ever saying such a
ridiculous thing as him being proud to associate with your lowly species.”

“Of
course he did. Nagatha, thank you. I have spent the past seven weeks miserably
thinking that I killed Skippy. Now, you know my second question, right?”

“I
believe I do, yes. While my limited functioning does not allow me to keep the
ship running or program the jump drive, I certainly have been able to monitor
Kristang communications. The war you sparked on Kobamik has spread to almost
every area of space controlled by the Kristang. At first, the Thuranin were
annoyed and attempted to step in and negotiate a ceasefire, even refusing to
transport Kristang warships. After eleven days, the Thuranin gave in to the
inevitable, and now they simply want their clients’ civil war over as quickly
as possible. From the Thuranin communications I intercepted, those little green
pinheads, to use Skippy’s term for them, do not care at all which clans emerge
victorious from the civil war; they are thoroughly disgusted with the Kristang.
You may be amused to hear the third party most interested in the war between
Kristang clans is the Jeraptha; they have actually temporarily paused their own
offensive military operations to, as they say it, ‘get in on the action’. The
Jeraptha government’s Central Wagering Department has been overwhelmed with a
flood of requests to join the ‘action’; the delay in processing and recording
wagers has caused a major scandal that may bring down the current Jeraptha
federal government.”

“Holy
crap. Those beetles are serious about their gambling. They aren’t, uh, putting
their thumbs on the scales to influence the outcome, are they? Trying to give
an edge to the clans they bet on?”

“According
to odds published by the Central Wagering Department, there is only a sixteen
percent chance that any such cheating by a Jeraptha party could actually
influence the final outcome of the conflict.”

“The
Jeraptha are taking bets about cheating?”
I asked, astonished.

“Certainly,”
Nagatha responded, amused. “The Jeraptha wager on everything. They assume
people will try to cheat, so why not profit by it?”

“Unbelievable,”
I shook my head. The Jeraptha were patrons of UNEF-Paradise’s allies, the
Ruhar, but I did not think we should ever attempt to deal with them. Hell, if
the Jeraptha ever learned about the Merry Band of Pirates, I’m sure they would
drop everything to get bets in on how long our pirate ship, our entire species,
could survive. No way could the Jeraptha miss juicy action like that.

“Your
next question undoubtedly is whether the Fire Dragons still have a deal for the
Ruhar to send a ship to Earth.” She paused, either for dramatic effect, or for
me to speak. “They do not. When the war started, the Fire Dragons forgot all
about Earth, and the Ruhar, and anything other than killing their enemies. The
Ruhar had to send a query to the Fire Dragons, because the Fire Dragons had not
responded as previously scheduled. When the Fire Dragons finally replied, it
was to insult the Ruhar, and threaten to burn their entire species, after the
Fire Dragons conquered all the other clans and came out of the war on top. The
Ruhar took that answer as a simple ‘No’ and cancelled the deal. The issue of
sending a ship to Earth is dead.”

“Yes!”
I pumped my fists in the air. “That is great news, thank you, Nagatha. Hey, uh,
what the Fire Dragons said about winning the war?”

“Do
not be concerned,” she knew our goal was for Kristang society to be fractured
at the end of the war. For one clan to conquer the others and emerge from the
war stronger than before was the opposite of what we wanted. “Because the war unfortunately,” her voice had a
mischievous tone, “began before the Fire Dragons or Black Trees were fully
ready, both of those major clans were caught off-guard, and suffered
substantial and unexpected losses in the beginning of the conflict. They are
still fighting more defensively than they wished to, as their weakness is seen
as an opportunity for lesser clans to settle long-simmering scores with the Big
Two. The premature beginning of the war was dreadfully inconvenient for the
Fire Dragon and Black Trees. Alliances are forming and being broken almost on a
daily basis, as clans maneuver for power. You can understand why the Jeraptha
are fixated on the conflict; they have to constantly adjust their wagers to
keep up with the latest developments in the war.”

“Damn.
I am glad I’m a human instead of a Jeraptha; being a beetle sounds like a whole
lot of work. Nagatha, I’m getting into the shower now, so-”

“Oh,
yes,” she giggled. “I will give you some privacy. Don’t you be embarrassed,
dear, Skippy told me what you do in the shower.”

“What? That little shithead, I’m going to
kill- Look, Nagatha,” I’m sure my face was burning red with embarrassment. “All
I meant to say was that, when my head is under the shower, I can’t talk with
you.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh, dear, I am terribly sorry. You enjoy your shower, I will, hmm. This is truly
mortifying, I must apologize. I suppose it serves me right for listening to
Skippy. Now I understand your human emotion of ‘embarrassment’. This is
uncomfortable. Please, Colonel Bishop, call me on your zPhone when you are out
of the shower.”

“Thank
you. One last thing; Chang told me I could take a long shower, what we call a
‘Hollywood shower’. Is that Ok? I don’t want to strain the ship’s resources.”

“Yes,
dear, Colonel Chang was speaking truthfully. As long as we have even one
reactor functioning, the water replenishment system takes almost no power away
from other requirements.”

“Great.
Uh, talk with you in like three minutes.” Damn, that was a conversation I
wanted to end quickly.

Dr. Friedlander
was in the science lab, he didn’t waste any time when I walked through the
door. “Colonel, we managed to complete the shutdown of Reactor Two, and we’re
in the process of bringing Reactor One down to minimum standby power. Two was
already experiencing problems, as you know, and One is due for a maintenance
cycle that we are unable to perform by ourselves. By keeping One on standby, we
can keep it limping along as a backup for when reactor Three goes down.”

“Do
you know how long that will be?”

“My
guess, and right now it is only a guess, is Three will run by itself for six or
seven months, until it is also due for heavy maintenance. We might be able to
keep it running and defer maintenance for an unknown length of time, but
eventually the safety protocols will cause the reactor to shut down by itself.
At that point, I’m hoping we can gradually increase power output from reactor
One.”

“Until
One also shuts down. I get it. Six months is enough time for us to return to
Earth; is the output from a single reactor sufficient to power the jump drive?”

“Yes.
Colonel, you know power output is not the problem with the jump drive. We can’t
return to Earth from here.”

“Something
about the jump drive coils falling out of calibration? Let’s assume I know
nothing, and break it down for me Barney-style.” When the doctor gave me a
blank look, I explained the US military slang. “Explain it like you’re talking
to a three year old.”

“Oh,”
his face turned red, he probably considered my intellect at that level but was
too polite to say so. “Jump drive coils all have to work synchronously, to
create the quantum-level resonance that alters-” The look on my face must have
made him pause. “They have to vibrate together, at the same,” he searched for a
word not too imprecise, “frequency? They drift apart with each jump.
Eventually, the coils are so out of sync with each other, they can’t initiate a
jump. They need to be retuned.”

“Skippy
did that tuning, that recalibration, after each jump?”

“Actually,
from what we’ve been able to understand, Skippy has the ability set up the
coils so they emerge from a jump in better tune than they were in when the jump
initiated. Somehow, he is able to predict the quantum effect of each jump, and
set up the coils so they would drift closer together. It’s like he can somehow
look slightly into the future. That is remarkable; we believe quantum
uncertainty prevents anyone from being able to predict such effects, but Skippy
is able to do it. Only one jump at a time, even Skippy has limits. The
advantage to his technique is that if we had to jump again quickly, the drive
coils were ready.”

“Ok,
so we can’t do that. We have to recalibrate, retune, the coils after each
jump?”

“I
wish. We should do that, we can’t do that either. With each jump, our drive
coils will drift further apart, until the ship is unable to jump at all.”

“We
can’t do it at all?” I was hoping Friedlander and his team of brainiacs had
figured out a way to do the impossible, even if their solution was a messy
monkey idea that Skippy would disdain. Hell, maybe us clumsily monkeying with
the jump drive would be such an outrage that it would bring Skippy back from
the dead, or wherever he was.

“No.
We don’t understand the theory of what we would need to do. We don’t have the
math,” he added, as if that would help me to understand.

“How
many jumps can we perform, before the drive becomes inoperable?”

“There
is a complication,” Friedlander cautioned. “Skippy left the drive fully tuned
up, when you went down to Kobamik. But even without a jump, the coils began drifting
apart because of random quantum, well,” he held up his hands, “they just do,
over time. The answer is four jumps, before the drive is inoperable. The effect
is worse for longer jumps, but even a short jump pulls the coils out of tune.”

“Four
jumps isn’t enough to go anywhere useful,” I pointed out needlessly. The
science team surely already knew that.

“I do
have an idea,” Friedlander said with a hint of a smile. “This is, Skippy would
call it a monkey-brained idea. Skippy has been using the entire coil package,
all of our active coils, for each jump. Using a large number of coils means
each individual coil has less power running through it; that increase the
useful life of the coil assembly. Skippy’s purpose was to stretch out the life
of our coils, because we can’t get new ones.”

“Ok,
that makes sense, sure. What is your idea?”

“We
split the coil assembly into multiple, independent packages, each with a
smaller number of coils. With the power we’ll be running through each set of
coils, they will burn out with one jump. The advantage is we won’t have to
worry about recalibrating the coils in a package after a jump; each package
will be a single-use item.”

My
eyes grew wide. “We can keep jumping until we run out of coils? Doctor, that is
brilliant! Can we get back to Earth that way?”

“Er,
no,” he cautioned against over enthusiasm. “The quantum effect of a jump is
strongest in the coils that are active during the jump, but all coils aboard
the ship are affected somewhat. Eventually, even coil packages we haven’t used
will be so out of tune as to be useless. We can’t predict how dormant coil
packages will be affected, until we measure the effect during an actual jump.”

“Crap.
Sorry, Doctor, I shouldn’t have asked about going back to Earth; you would have
mentioned that first if it was a possibility. How do you know the ship can jump
with a small number of drive coils?” My unspoken question was why the Thuranin
had equipped the ship with a large number of coils, if they weren’t all needed.

“The number
of coils needed for a jump depends on many variables,” he explained, and he
ticked off the variables on his fingers. “First, the length of the jump.  Second, how far down in a gravity well a
jump is initiated, because the flatter spacetime is around the ship, the easier
it is to initiate a jump. Third, the energy capacity of individual coils; newer
coils can accept more throughput than coils that are worn out. But the fourth
variable,” he gave me look meaning there were way more than four variables and
he was dumbing it down for me. “The fourth variable is the mass being pulled
through a jump wormhole. Star carriers are designed to jump with the mass of
many heavy warships attached. Right now, the only item we are carrying is the
relay station we’re using as a lifeboat, and the ship’s empty mass is much less
after Skippy rebuilt the ship and made it shorter. We don’t need all the coils
we have just to jump the relatively light mass we have now.”

That
made sense to me. “How many coils do we need? For a maximum-length jump, I
mean. For our first jump away from this system, I want to go a good long way,
so no one can follow us easily.”

“That,”
Friedlander glanced at the deck, avoiding my eyes, “we do not know, not
exactly. It would be an educated guess. The first time. After the first jump,
we’ll have data we can work with.”

I did
not like the sound of that. “What if you guess wrong the first time?”

“If we
use too many coils, we waste coils that can’t be used again, and we won’t get
good data on the strain felt by an individual coil. If we use too few coils,
the jump attempt could overload the coils and, uh, I think the best way to say
it is it could go ‘boom’.”

“Boom.”

“Big
badda boom,” he tried getting me to laugh. It didn’t work.

“Doctor,
I am impressed.”

“Colonel,
you may want to hold your praise until we perform an actual jump. So far,
everything I described is theory, only theory. We have been looking at the
power feeds of this ship, and we don’t see a way to make those feeds branch to
multiple groups of coils. The first time Skippy went missing, I had an idea to
pull power from the jump drive capacitors by running the power feed backwards.
After Skippy came back, he told me that would have been a terrible idea, and
when he explained why, I agreed with him. And now I’m afraid to touch that
power assembly.”

“You
must have an idea to make this work, right?” I figured that, as an engineer,
Friedlander was not likely to talk in depth about something that was purely
theoretical.

“The
best idea we have is to leave the whole assembly in place, and remove most of
the coils. After each jump, we remove the used coils, and replace them with
another package. That way, we don’t have to mess with the power assembly. The
coils draw power from the capacitor, so capacitors can’t feed power to coils
that aren’t there. Colonel, having a functional jump drive is only part of the
equation. We still have the problem that the jumps we program by ourselves are
wildly inaccurate. The farther we jump, the more off target we will be.”

“Understood.
If we can hit a particular star system, that will be good enough. We can fly
the rest of the way to a planet in normal space. I won’t risk trying to jump in
close to a planet anyway.” With our sucky jump navigation, we could very well
emerge inside the planet.

“Do
you know where we will go?” Friedlander asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Doctor,
right now, I have no idea. I am hoping your team can suggest some options for
us. Ultimately, that will be Chotek’s call.” It was true, I had absolutely no
idea where we should go, because I had no idea where we could go. Any habitable planet within several lightyears was
probably inhabited, even by a small group of colonists, or a research station,
or a military outpost. We needed to find a planet, probably an entire star
system, that was totally uninhabited, yet also a place we could live. Live,
until, when? How long? Friedlander couldn’t keep the ship running forever, so
if we were going to survive, we had to find a planet or moon with a biosphere
that could support human life. And, for what purpose would we be surviving?
Even if we found an uninhabited place we could live, we couldn’t guarantee an
alien ship wouldn’t visit the system and find us the day after we arrived. That
was too much of a risk exposing our secret. I could not see the Merry Band of
Pirates setting up an isolated colony to live there forever. No, the whole
point of stretching out how long we could survive would be to give Skippy time
to come back to us. Maybe that was simply wishful thinking by me; there was no
sign Skippy was ever coming back. After being warmer than usual for a couple
days, his beer can canister had gone cold, as cold as that dead AI we found on
Newark. As far as I knew, Skippy was well and truly dead, and there was nothing
I could do about it. “How long do you think before we can jump out of here?”

“Ten
days?” Friedlander held up his hands. “We want to do as much testing as we can
before attempting a jump. We can only perform limited tests without alerting
every Kristang in this system to our presence. Colonel, if we try a jump and it
fails, we will have a dozen angry Kristang ships on top of us before my team
could replace the coil package for another attempt. It has to work the very
first time.”

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Eight
days went by, with Friedlander growing mildly more confident about the
potential of his homemade jump drive, and we still had no idea what our
destination should be. What our destination could
be. For the first jump, I didn’t much care which direction we went, as long as
we jumped a good long way from the Kobamik system. Long enough that we would
have plenty of time to remove the burned-out jump drive coils and replace them.
That operation required people in Kristang suits physically yanking out
connections and disconnecting coils, so I wanted to plan on a full day between
jumps. Friedlander warned me a long jump posed a risk of us emerging far off
target, and I told him he was missing the point. The only target was to be far
away, it didn’t much matter what point in deep interstellar space we arrived
at.

After
eight days, we had not found a place to jump to. Part of the problem was the
whole crew was probably mildly depressed; I know I sure was. What was the point
of jumping anywhere if all we could do was slowly wait for the Dutchman’s reactors to shut down, the power
to run down, our food supply to dwindle and for us to eventually die either
from freezing to death or oxygen starvation?

Hans
Chotek gave me a pep talk. As a pep talk, it totally sucked, although his
attitude did surprise me. “Colonel Bishop,” he said while staring fondly at a
photo of the Austrian Alps on his desktop. “We accomplished our mission. We more than accomplished our mission out
here. We fulfilled UNEF Command’s original requirement, of determining whether
the Thuranin were sending another surveyor ship to Earth. Beyond that, we secured
a future for humans on Paradise, and prevented the Ruhar, of all things,” he
looked up at me, shook his head and smiled, “from sending a ship to Earth. It
would be best if Earth knew there were no ships coming in their direction, but
at this point, we are expendable.” He probably thought that he, being a
civilian, should not need to explain that to me.

“It
still sucks, Sir.” I winced as I said it.

But
Chotek smiled. “What is the saying in your military? ‘Embrace the suck’?”

“That
saying is about things you have to get through, in order to accomplish the job.
Out here, now, there is no job. There is supposed to be an end to the suck, but
we have no mission.”

“Survival
is our mission now. We survive, and wait for Skippy to revive. Survive, without
risk of exposing our presence out here. Have you selected a destination for
us?”

“No,
not yet,” I said truthfully. The full truth was, I still had no idea where we
could go to both survive and to hide. “I’ll check with the science team again,
see if they have a better idea.” So far, the best idea from Friedlander’s team was
to put the ship into orbit around an anonymous red dwarf star, and rig up solar
panels to power the life support systems after the reactors failed. That idea
had the advantage that it didn’t require us to locate and get to a habitable but
uninhabited planet. All we needed was to get the ship into orbit around a
boring red dwarf star, in a star system where no species had even a single
facility. The problem with that idea was, we only had enough solar panels to
power a couple of inflatable shelters, and we had no way to manufacture more
solar panels. Friedlander had his team working on that problem, I wasn’t
hopeful about it. The life support system of a Thuranin ship was energy
intensive, basically they cracked breathable oxygen out poisonous carbon
dioxide using some high-tech device that drew a lot of power. The backup oxygen
system was only designed to work for a few weeks.

We
didn’t have any good options.

The
first jump was successful, according to our very low standards. The ship did
not explode, we did actually jump, and we emerged only nine point two million
miles off target. It took Friedlander’s team forty five hours, nearly four
days, before we could jump again. Friedlander looked completely exhausted when
I talked to him, shortly after he declared the system was physically ready for
another jump. “We’re ready?” I asked. “You’re confident about it?”

“I am
confident the drive will not explode,” he said while stifling a yawn. “We did
discover a potentially serious problem.” I set a fresh cup of coffee on the
table in front of him, he shook his head and nodded toward a pile of dirty
coffee cups. “Remember I told you that jumping has quantum effects even on
inactive coils? They degrade whether we use them or not?”

“Yeah.
You said that is why we can’t travel all the way back to Earth.” Since he
wasn’t going to drink the coffee, I regretted giving it to him, and wondered if
it would be Ok for me to take it back. The past couple days, I hadn’t slept
much either.

“We
came through that first jump nine million miles off target, not because we
programmed the jump incorrectly, but because the active coil package partly
failed in mid-jump.”

“What?
The coils burned out?” That surprised me. The reason it took so long to replace
the coil package is that the coils we had used for the jump still retained a
lot of energy, and it was dangerous to handle them.

“No,
they didn’t burn out. They failed to work together properly, so some of the
coils shut down partway through the jump sequence; that’s why they had so much
stored power after the jump,” Friedlander rubbed his tired eyes. “We got over
the issue of swapping out coil packages, that’s not the problem now. The
problem is that because the coils weren’t working together properly, the jump
generated a more powerful quantum resonance that normal. That affected all our
jump coils, even the ones we weren’t using.”

“Oh,
crap.”

“You
see the problem.”

“I
think so. Each jump is going to shorten the life of every coil on the ship?”

“Even
faster than we expected, yes.”

“How
bad is it?” I was glad I had not drunk that coffee, my stomach was already
churning with acid.

“I
don’t know. We don’t know. Not yet.
We don’t have enough data. After the next jump, we’ll have a better idea how
bad the damage is.”

“Bottom
line, Doctor. What’s the worst case?”

“The
worst case? If future jumps are as bad as our first, we will lose jump
capability before we reach our destination.” He meant the red dwarf star we had
picked almost at random. He picked up the coffee cup, swirled it around, took a
sip and set it down. “Do we have an alternate destination?”

“No.
No, we don’t. Doctor, we can jump now?”

“As soon
as we validate the calculations, yes. A few hours.”

“That’s
good enough. I want a twenty four hour stand down for your entire team, once
those calculations are complete. That means you sleep, relax, eat, use the gym,
do anything other than work or thinking about work. If we have to, we can jump
immediately. After a full day, when you are rested and have fresh minds, you
need to take another look at the jump drive. See if you can get us to jump with
less of a resonance, or whatever it is.”

Friedlander
and his team mostly took a day off; I ordered the door to the science lab
locked and they took the hint. After a day off, they approached the problem
with a fresh set of eyes and after two days, thought they had a solution.

They
didn’t. Our second jump was not as bad as the first, it still wasn’t good. The
third jump was worse than the first,
and our science team didn’t know why. Instead of immediately working to swap
the expended coil package for a new one, Friedlander had to sort through
packages to find one that wasn’t already so screwed up to be unusable. Alarmingly,
there were only three sets of coils still functional. When he finished
supervising the installation of the new coils, I met him at the airlock and
helped him out of the bulky suit.

“Doctor,
can we make it to this red dwarf system?”

“Maybe.
Possibly. Colonel, I do not know. We are playing with technology we don’t fully
understand. Barely understand. Please don’t ask me to project odds of us
holding the jump drive together long enough to get to our destination, we
simply don’t have the math. We need two more jumps, at least.” His eyes were
bloodshot and there were dark circles under his eyes. Coffee could not cure
what ailed him, neither could sleep. He wouldn’t be able to sleep well until we
reached our destination and had the solar panels rigged up successfully. “I am
not confident about the next jump,” he told me softly. “We don’t know what is
wrong, so we can’t fix it. To an engineer, the situation is very frustrating.”

“We’ve
jumped three times, and there is no sign of anyone following us. Take your time
with the calculations.”

“Calculations
are not the problem. With the state of the jump drive, we could input random
numbers into the navigation system, and get about the same result,” he said
with a weary smile.

“Doctor,
you are working with an alien technology, and making the ship jump faster than
light. What your team has accomplished already is remarkable.”

“It’s
not enough. Colonel, if the next jump isn’t any more successful-”

“I
know.”

Seeing
Friedlander’s despair pushed me to make a decision. I went back to my office, where
Skippy was secured in a box on my desk. Out of habit, I touched him, he was
still cold. I called Nagatha.

“Good
morning, Joe Bishop.” Her voice lacked a bit of her usual cheeriness. Without
Skippy to provide memory and processing power, she had been progressively
shutting down parts of herself; her consciousness was too expansive to fit
within the Dutchman’s computers.

“Nagatha,
I need to ask a favor of you. We have to do something; the jump drive might not
hold together long enough for us to get to any place useful.”

“I
have been monitoring the situation. Colonel, I have also been listening to
communications within the science team. Dr. Friedlander did not tell you that
his team recommends against attempting another jump, until they understand the
source of the problem. Dr. Friedlander agrees the problem is very serious, he
wishes another jump to obtain more data. He also fears that no amount of time
will allow his team to understand the drive system. Again, I am sorry that I
can’t help with the jump calculations, or with analyzing the drive coils.”

“Nagatha,
you have been doing everything you can. Now I need you to do something that could
be dangerous to you.”

“Colonel,
I am happy to help any way I can; I know our situation is perilous. If the ship
becomes stranded in interstellar space, I will eventually deactivate when the
ship runs out of power. What do you need me to do?”

“Well,”
I wanted her to fully appreciate the danger. “You are not going to like it.”

THE
END

The
Expeditionary Force series

Book 1:
Columbus Day

Book 2:
SpecOps

Book 3:
Paradise

Book ‘3.5’:
Trouble on Paradise novella

Book 4:
Black Ops

Book 5:
Zero Hour- coming November 2017

Contact the author at craigalanson@gmail.com

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