EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

BOOK 13

FALLOUT

By

Craig Alanson

Text copyright © 2021 Craig Alanson

All Rights Reserved

Contact the author

craigalanson@gmail.com

Cover Design By

Alexandre Rito

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

CHAPTER ONE

“Thank you for coming,” Captain Uhtavio ‘Big Score’ Scorandum mumbled slowly in a well-practiced monotone, reading from the prompter in front of the lectern. “I wish to make a brief statement, and I will not be taking any questions. You may address your questions to the Public Assistance Agency,” he fought to keep a smile from showing, as the media representatives in the conference room groaned. The Public Assistance Agency of the Ethics and Compliance Office, was famous for not ever having provided any useful assistance to anyone during its long history, and certainly had no intention of assisting the public.

“I must clear up several wild and unfounded rumors,” he glanced up, and an excited murmur went around the room. Experienced reporters knew that ‘Unfounded’ was ECO code for ‘Absolutely True’. “First, the Ethics and Compliance Office was not involved,” he looked up briefly, “in any way whatsoever,” which everyone knew was code for ‘We totally did it’. “In the mysterious and still unexplained disappearance of vital frontline warships from the Regional Patrol at Mardasta. ECO has responded to the Patrol’s request for assistance in their investigation,” he said, which everyone knew was code for ‘We told the Patrol to go screw themselves’, and the reporters gleefully chuckled. “We are determined to uncover the perpetrators of this heinous crime, and therefore we are conducting an exhaustive search,” which meant senior ECO officials would be submitting wildly inflated and entirely fictional expense reports, while they conducted a search for clues during a tour of luxury resorts and gambling establishments across Jeraptha territory. It was unlikely, but still possible, that they would find the perpetrators.

Especially if they looked in a mirror.

“Second, I must address the shocking and, frankly, ridiculous notion that when the Bosphuraq suddenly and unexpectedly retreated from Funandeng, they essentially surrendered to a token force of obsolete ships, that only pretended to be from the human United Nations Navy. We in the Ethics and Compliance Office cannot imagine how humiliated the Bosphuraq must be, when they hear these vicious rumors.” Translation: we can’t imagine how humiliated they feel, because we certainly would never be so freakin’ stupid. “The ECO would, of course, be proud to have been involved in such a bold and inventive operation,” Scorandum looked up at the audience as a smile flashed across his face, which the assembled reporters knew meant ‘That is why I am bragging about it now’. “The Bosphuraq have made a formal request for any information we have about the incident, and of course we are happy to cooperate,” meaning, ‘We told them to go screw themselves too’. “Though the Bosphuraq have long been our enemies, any development that causes the entire galaxy to question their competence would be cause for concern, and we will be addressing the issue.” The reporters chuckled again, knowing that ECO staff would be ‘addressing the issue’ by drinking fine vintage spirits and laughing their asses off. “Finally, let me close by stating that disseminating such rumors is deeply unhelpful, and we must strongly discourage any such actions. If you know what I mean.”

When he got back to his temporary office at ECO headquarters, a place he visited as infrequently as possible, Scorandum found his aide Lieutenant Kinsta waiting for him, and staring longingly at a box on the desk.

“Did you see the press conference? What did you think?” Scorandum asked as he sat down heavily on the couch behind the desk.

“It was inspiring, Sir. A masterful performance.”

“Kinsta,” the captain glared at his aide. “If I want flattery, I can talk to myself in a mirror.”

“Do you want the truth?”

“Probably not,” Scorandum conceded. He tapped the box. “What’s this?”

“A token of appreciation from the Mighty 98th Fleet, courtesy of Admiral Tashallo.”

“Mm,” Scorandum grunted. “Did you look in the box?”

“I was waiting for you, Sir. There is a card,” Kinsta pointed an antenna at the folded piece of cardstock on top of the box.

“Huuuuh,” Scorandum sucked in a breath. “It is- This is a case of forty year old burgoze, the Farah Three Reserve stock.”

“No,” Kinsta snatched the note away to read, wary that his boss was screwing with him. But, this time, the infamous ECO captain told the truth. “Six bottles of Farah Three? I didn’t know those were available anywhere.”

“Six bottles must be worth- Hmm. Kinsta, there are only five bottles in this case.”

“Hey, don’t look at me.”

Scorandum was looking at his aide, and was not happy. Until he saw there was another note, in the slot where the sixth bottle should be. He read it aloud:

I had to sample a bottle to ensure quality control. Respectfully, Admiral Tashallo.

“Well, five bottles are nothing to sneeze at, hmm?”

“Sir?” Kinsta opened a drawer and got out two glasses. “On the subject of quality control? I should test a sample. To, make sure it is safe for you to drink.”

“I’ll join you.” Uhtavio Scorandum knew his superiors would somehow learn about the case of exceptional booze, and expect to get a cut. He grudgingly set aside two bottles as a sacrifice to the gods of bureaucracy, tucked away another two in his desk, and opened the fifth. “Kinsta, let us offer a toast to the Bosphuraq.”

“To them? Why?”

“Because,” he took a first sip and rolled his eyes with pleasure. “If our enemies were not so gullible, we would not be enjoying this fine libation. Ah, we should savor this moment.”

“Why?”

“Because our fame, and the current gratitude of our leadership, is not destined to last. The attention of the public, or peoples all across the galaxy, will soon be drawn to another subject. You heard the rumor that part of the wormhole network recently became unstable?”

“Yes, but,” Kinsta paused, the glass halfway to his mouth. Carefully, he took a sip while he considered how to answer. “The network in those areas has returned to normal operation. And according to Home Fleet Intelligence, the anomaly only covered a relatively small area of the galaxy. It could be a prelude to a shift, but a temporary glitch is not a-”

“What if I told you it was not merely a ‘glitch’?”

“Then, well,” he took another delicious sip to savor. “Like I said, it could be a sign of another impending shift. We do not understand the operation of-”

“No, Kinsta. I meant, it was not any sort of ‘glitch’. The incident was not a normal operation of the network.”

“Sir?”

“Rumor has it, humans deliberately crashed the network in that area.”

“Urp,” Kinsta choked on the fine vintage burgoze, and went into a coughing fit. When he recovered, he set the glass on the desk, to be safe. “Sir, sometimes I do not understand your sense of humor, so-”

“This is no joke, Kinsta. Home Fleet is terrified by the implications, because our esteemed patrons are very much terrified about it. I have it on very good authority that the Rindhalu have strongly suggested we pull back to defensive positions, and consolidate our forces.”

“Why would- Assuming the rumor is true, did the Rindhalu say why humans crashed the network?”

“Apparently, it was a demonstration. If the senior species do not leave the humans alone, and cooperate to remove the cloud that threatens Earth, strategic portions of the network could be switched off, more or less permanently.”

“Oh my-” With a shaky claw, Kinsta reached for his glass, then cradled it in two claws, to gulp down the incredibly expensive liquid.

Scorandum poured his aide another drink. “I notice you did not ask how the humans crashed the network?”

“Sir, I have learned that with those annoyingly clever creatures, anything is possible. There is no point asking how they do things.”

Scorandum contemplated the burgoze in his own glass, before taking a large sip. “You make an excellent point.”

“This information is confirmed?”

“It is what our patrons told us. I cannot imagine any reason why they would lie about something that makes them look weak. Kinsta, this changes everything, you understand?”

“I think you are wrong about that, Sir.”

Scorandum assumed the fine drink had loosened his aide’s tongue. “Really? How?”

“The rules of the game may change, but the game will continue.”

“Ah!” The ECO captain was chagrinned, accepting that he was wrong. “You are, of course, correct. Kinsta, I foresee a bright future for you.”

“If any of us have a future. The humans are dangerous to us all. If they are not careful, they could get everyone killed. So far, I have seen no sign they are anything but reckless.”

“Then, it is all the more important that we establish an alliance with them, to guide their primitive society. But, that is a matter for our leadership to worry about.”

“True,” Kinsta agreed. “Sir, what do you have planned next?”

“Next? Can I please have one moment to enjoy our accomplishments?”

“Sir, I think that moment has passed. Our leadership, and the public, and the entire galaxy are waiting to see what you do after the triumph at Funandeng.”

“Shit,” Scorandum groaned.

“This is your own fault, Sir. You have set an impossibly high standard for yourself.”

“Kinsta, I am going to drink this entire bottle right now.”

“You had better wait on that. My contact at headquarters told me there will be an unofficial meeting this afternoon, to discuss your future. They are promoting you to admiral.”

“Oh,” Scorandum gulped the contents of the glass. “In that case, I am going to drink two bottles.”

Dave stared up at the fireball, transfixed, his feet unable to move. The smoking orange ball of fire coming at him was a falling starship, or part of a starship, he didn’t know if it was a UN ship or Thuranin. Something in the back of his mind told him it didn’t matter whether he died by enemy or friendly fire, but getting squashed by a human ship just seemed unfair. Chunks broke off the fireball in slow motion, cartwheeling across the sky to form their own meteors. As he stared, for what was probably no more than a very long second, an icon in his helmet visor warned him the oncoming object would strike his position in less than two minutes. “Run!” He shouted over the platoon channel, and took a step forward, when someone grabbed his left arm, spinning him to a halt. “Hey! What-”

Jates released his grip. “Negative!” The alien ordered. “Czajka, look at the size of the impact zone. Running won’t make any difference.”

The visor was only showing range to the falling ship, and time to impact. Eyeclicking on another icon, he opened a new display. “Holy shit.” Jates was right. Even in powered armor, they couldn’t run far enough to make any difference. The probable impact site was seven kilometers to the south, but the predicted zone of devastation covered more than twenty klicks in the shortest direction. Discarding weapons and shedding backpacks, putting the suits into semi-automatic flight mode-

No. The landing zone was a meadow, tall grasses and shrubs matted down by the dropships, but all around them was dense forest. It was a good choice for a remote LZ and staging area, with a series of low hills between the Legion troops and the nearest Kristang warrior caste base, providing concealment without the need for heavy stealth generators. It was a bad place to attempt to cover ground quickly, even on semi-automatic the mech suits couldn’t maintain useful speed through the tangled undergrowth.

“Shiiiiiit,” he groaned. Another, even larger chunk of falling starship was becoming visible behind and slightly above the first. His suit’s sensors were calculating a trajectory for him, it didn’t need to. The entire area was going to get flattened by several thousand tons of debris impacting at hypersonic speed.

“Czajka, I am sorry,” Jates said over the private channel, almost too quietly to be heard.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I volunteered to come here, it’s not your fau-”

“I meant,” Jates raised his voice a bit. “I am sorry that your ugly face is one of the last things I will see in this life.”

“Yeah, well, your face won’t win any prize for-”

“Czajka?” A woman’s voice called through a burst of static. “Czajka? You there?”

CHAPTER TWO

“You got his location fixed?” Irene Striebich asked her copilot, as their dropship dropped rapidly toward the ground.

“The signal fades in and out,” Lieutenant Suarez held onto the sides of the console. “We’re coming in too fast,” he warned the pilot. “We won’t be able-”

“Just find him!” Irene ordered. “Czajka! Czajka? You there?”

No answer.

She had a three-ship flight of Scarab dropships- There had been four in the flight, one had been struck by shrapnel and didn’t survive the atmospheric entry. Her flight had landed the first wave, without incident and ahead of schedule, and were approaching the Chesapeake Bay to reload with troops and gear, when the assault carrier literally got jumped by Thuranin warships. The enemy had at least two heavy cruisers, possibly a battlecruiser or different type of heavy cruiser, plus support ships she hadn’t been able to count. The three UN Navy destroyers had been more than sufficient for close-space orbital fire support, and easily chased away the single elderly Kristang frigate when they arrived at Globakus. But against major combatant ships of a second-tier species, the destroyers were significantly outmatched. Admiral Zhao had opted to upgrade only the sensors of the fleet’s destroyers in the Phase One refit, a trade-off that made sense at the time, a decision that resulted in three light vessels facing much heavier warships built by a peer species. “Razor flight, spread out to cover the southern LZs,” she could see too much smoke rising from the landing zones to the east, those had been attacked by local aircraft. The lifesign indicators from those areas were few and spotty, and secondary explosions were still rocking the sites. Setting down in those zones was too dangerous and there might not be enough people left alive to fill the dropship’s cabin. “Take aboard everyone you can, but get out of there. The shockwave won’t wait for you.”

The other two Scarabs acknowledged the order and veered away toward their own objectives. “Suarez, hang on, I’m going to hit the thrusters to flare, it-”

“This is David Czajka,” a familiar voice called through a squeal of static. “Who-”

“Dave, this is Irene,” she didn’t have time for protocol. Snapping her fingers to the copilot, she caught his eye. Suarez flashed a thumbs up without taking focus away from the console. A yellow icon appeared on the moving map in front of Irene. “Gotcha,” she grunted. “Dave, you there?”

“Yes! We have several-”

“I will be on the ground in twenty seconds, we are coming in hot. Anyone who wants a ride needs to move, I can’t stay on the ground long. People only, no gear. No gear!”

If the Maverick on the ground replied, she didn’t hear it as she fired the thrusters in the nose, throwing her forward against the straps, her vision blurring. Dragging a finger back along the touchscreen flight controls, she hauled the nose up hard, exposing the spacecraft’s belly to the airstream. Three, four, briefly five gees of force threw her back in the seat, crushing her down. The flight suit clamped around her legs and abdomen, helping to prevent blood draining from her head. She felt a sharp burning sensation in her neck, as a flexible tube located an artery and injected oxygen-saturated artificial blood cells, feeding her brain and helping keep her alert as the Scarab roared and shook around her. Shoving against rather than flying through the air, the big dropship went ballistic, falling in a roughly controlled arc toward a clearing in the forest ahead and below.

Beside her, Suarez grunted something unintelligible, Irene guessed her copilot was trying to warn her they would overshoot the landing zone. Slewing the bulky spacecraft to the right and standing it practically on its tail, she watched airspeed bleed off rapidly.

And suddenly, the Scarab was falling, its weight pulling it down. Pushing the nose forward did nothing to slow the fall, the stubby wings did not generate much lift even when the craft was being flown in a sane manner. The dark trees of the dense forest rose up to meet them at a dizzying rate-

Irene fired the belly thrusters, surging them at full power to arrest the fall. “Crack the ramp,” she ordered. Opening the rear ramp in the air was against regulations, but they couldn’t wait to cycle it open after they touched down. In the right-hand seat, Suarez didn’t argue, he knew what was at stake. If he had any questions, he could look down to see the desperate people on the ground, or up to see the falling ruin if a starship that was seemingly on top of them.

At the last moment, she had to jerk the substantial mass of the Scarab to the left to avoid a lump on the ground that she realized almost too late was the chameleonware of a mech suit. The dropship dropped, contacting the ground with the left landing strut, which bent under the strain. The magnetic shock absorber mechanism blew out and allowed the inner cylinder to drive up against the top of the strut tube, jamming the whole strut upward and bending the frame it attached to. Second to touch down was the nose strut which fared better, carrying only the unloaded mass of the forward cabin. When the still-functional right strut hit, it bounced back, throwing the Scarab’s weight toward the left and that strut buckled at an awkward angle.

Warning lights flashed on her console, none of which Irene gave a shit about. The craft was still flightworthy, for the short flight she intended. There were three things she cared about on the console. Engine status that showed the big turbines were ready to push them up into orbit, if there was any reason to go in that direction. The threat warning sensors showed no known missiles or enemy aircraft in range, so there was one less thing for her to worry about. And the rapidly counting down time to impact of the artificial meteor that was racing toward her at hypersonic speed. How long could she stay on the ground? None of the instruments could tell her, it was a judgment call. Her call, her decision when to lift off, no matter how many people she had to leave behind.

If she waited too long, everyone would get crushed by the shockwave.

“Fifteen seconds,” she reached across and tapped Suarez on the shoulder. “Then we go.”

“We go,” he nodded, not looking up from his console. “Landing gear is pranged, and-”

“We won’t be flying long enough for it to matter. Cycle the ramp closed after we lift off.”

“After liftoff, got it.”

“Seven seconds,” Irene noted anxiously. The door between the cockpit and cabin was closed but she could faintly hear the pounding of heavy boots on the deck, and a sensor informed her the spacecraft was taking on weight quickly. Added mass was not the problem, the Scarab’s belly jets were ready for full power, and even cramming in mech-suited soldiers like sardines would not test the dropship’s lifting ability.

Time.

The limiting factor was time.

Cameras could provide a view of the cabin and the rear ramp, but she had that display turned off. She did not want to see the people still running toward safety when she had to lift off, to save the people she could. “Three, two, one. Time’s up,” Irene announced and fed power to the turbines, using the belly jets only for stability. The big spacecraft wobbled as its landing skids broke free-

Jates, with superior speed and coordination that made a difference even in powered armor, bounced forward and his boots struck the ramp even while the dropship was obscured by swirling dirt and grasses kicked up by the belly jets that were still shrieking as they spooled down. His momentum carried him forward and he would have crashed into the back of the crowd jamming the narrow entryway to the main cabin, if his suit had not automatically interfaced with the dropship’s AI. The two devices decided their best option was to engage the sticky nanofibers on the soles of his boots, adhering them to the deck and bringing him to a sudden stop, lurching with arms flung back for balance. His helmet still bumped the back of the soldier ahead of him, and someone jolted him from behind. Urged forward by the emotionless voice of the dropship AI, he twisted one then the other foot to break the grip of the nanofibers and stepped to the side, squeezing up against the bare wall at the top of the ramp.

“Czajka!” Jates called out, his eyes flicking from watching the ramp and the synthetic view overlaid on the visor. A symbol for ‘Czajka, David SSG-c’ showed that the human was close, and then Jates saw the distinctive helmet insignia of Legion security contractors right behind the ramp. Czajka ran, a meter from relative safety when there was a roar and the dropship rocked before slowly leaving the ground again.

The sudden movement of the ship threw Dave off balance, a moment of sheer terror as he slid backwards without control over his fate. His boots couldn’t find any purchase on the very bottom of the ramp. Either the suit talked with the dropship AI or it made a decision for itself, because it flung him forward to crash on his armored chest, hands scrambling for a grip on the recessed cargo tie-downs. His fat fingers couldn’t fit in the slots, the Scarab tilting its nose up to climb made him slide backwards, tumbling out the-

Someone grabbed his right wrist and he was yanked to a halt, his legs dangling out into the air. “Thank,” he started to say, when an immense weight crashed into his left leg and he was jerked backward.

Someone had leapt up and gotten hold of his suit leg, hanging on for life. “Uh, hey,” Dave grunted as his visor splashed warnings of overstrain. The ramp was cycling closed, already halfway up, the dropship’s nose was tilted up forty five degrees and increasing.

“Czajka!” An alien voice he recognized boomed in his ear. “Move! You have to get in! I can’t hold-”

“Pull! Pull us in!”

“Can’t,” the big Verd grunted. “Have to-”

Dave knew what he had to do. Kick out with his right leg. Make whoever had an iron grip on his left calf let go. If he didn’t, they would both die.

He couldn’t do it.

The suit computer did it for him. It analyzed the situation, including the dropship AI’s increasingly strident demands to clear the ramp, and concluded that the human wearing it would perish if the weight on the left leg was not removed. Sending a pulse along the armored skin of that leg broke the grip, repelling the other suit’s gloves. Instantly, Dave was yanked forward, by Jates hauling on his arm, bashing him against three soldiers hanging onto straps at the top of the ramp. It felt like his shoulder was dislocated, he had no time to consider the pain before he was falling, the dropship having gone vertical and rocketing upward at full power. Jates lost his grip, Dave tumbled to crash onto the ramp as it closed the last few centimeters and an armored Verd-kris crashed on top of him.

“I’m,” Dave gasped. “Gonna stay right here.”

Irene feared she had screwed up, badly. Maybe fatally. The pilot console was flashing a collision alert, along with red warning lights glowing that the left side gear would not retract. With a flick of a finger, she activated the mechanism that severed that gear from its mount and it fell away, allowing the doors to slide closed. Having the door not sticking out into the airstream might give them just a bit more airspeed, not that it would matter. The dropship was going to get crushed by the hypersonic shock wave of the falling starship.

“What are you-” Suarez looked at Irene in shock as she held the ship on its tail, engines pumping out full power. “We need to get clear of-”

“No time!” She slid a control to roll the main engines from scramjet to full rocket mode, vastly increasing the fuel burn rate, and giving them maximum thrust. “We need altitude,” she explained, holding to the vertical course. “The shock wave will decrease as the air thins out.”

Her copilot only grunted in response.

Irene felt a pang of terrified uncertainty. Was she doing the right thing? They could move faster if the Scarab’s engines were not supporting its entire weight-

No. The Jeraptha-built ship had a limit to how fast it could fly in an atmosphere, before the thermal load on the nose was too great and the forward structure would distort, losing the flight control sensors there. Going out away from the impact site was a futile tactic, they couldn’t outrun the shockwave. Altitude was their only-

“Turn into it!” Suarez urged. “Turn into-”

She saw the danger and was already cutting engine power, swinging the nose around. The first piece of starship had already streaked past underneath, with another even larger section of the same or a different ship close behind. The air was distorted by heat and pressure waves, it raced toward them. At the last second, Irene slid her hands off the touchscreen to hold onto the sides of the console. The Scarab’s AI was in control, it could react far faster than any biological pilot. “Please God,” she muttered, “don’t let me-”

For the next half a minute, or what felt like half a lifetime, Irene was a passenger in her own ship. The shockwave struck the Scarab like a brick wall, standing the spacecraft on its nose as the shockwave erupted upward. Aerodynamic surfaces were retracted so they weren’t torn away by the hypersonic blast, the ship’s AI fell back on furiously popping thrusters to keep the nose pointed into the wave. That worked until external sensors were overwhelmed and became unreliable, contradicting each other. The AI had to guide itself by internal mechanisms, which also worked until they, too, began to give readings that had to be false. Unless the ship was upside down and moving at only forty kilometers per hour.

The AI switched to using its own judgment, one step above admitting with a shrug that it had no idea where they were and what was happening. Normally it would have had guidance beams from satellites or ships in orbit. Instead, it had to guess.

It guessed correctly for nearly thirty seconds, or it got lucky for most of that time. After the worst of the shockwave had washed over them to create a massive bulge in the stratosphere, the dropship’s nose wobbled left, overcorrected to the right, and suddenly the craft snapped sideways into the hellaciously fast airstream.

There was a sharp metallic groaning ending with a BANG as something important tore loose and the Scarab flipped onto its back, then Irene lost track of her orientation. Up was down, left was right, her insides felt like they were on her outside.

The forward displays were still operating, showing dizzying flashes of roiling dark clouds, dark sky and, through rents in the dust-choked clouds, the blasted landscape above and to the left.

The ground was above and to the left.

Her thoroughly rattled inner ear could not tell her which way was down, but her eyes knew. Hooking her thumbs around the edge of the console to brace her hands, she slid her fingers back onto the touchscreen controls, and gently, gently, banked the bulky spacecraft so its belly was toward the ground. Or she thought the craft was right-side up, with the instruments scrolling through one unlikely status to another, she had to fly literally by the seat of her pants. Her right butt cheek felt like it was pressing down harder than the left, so she slowly rolled to the left.

“Here,” Suarez put his left hand between the two consoles, holding a spare cargo tiedown strap. It drooped only slightly to the right and forward, pulled by the planet’s gravity. Instruments could fail or be inaccurate, but gravity always pointed down.

“You’re kidding me,” Irene groaned. “That’s a basic flight school trick.”

“It works,” Suarez tried to keep his hand motionless, as the strap swayed back and forth.

“Good thinking.” The strap hanging more or less straight up and down confirmed her inner sense that she had the dropship reasonably level. She remembered her very first flight, as a little girl her uncle had taken her up in a glider. Taped to the outside front of the windscreen was a piece of orange yarn, to show how the air was moving over the sailplane. It was the lowest-tech device possible, and it was also highly effective. She was at the controls of an alien spacecraft that probably would cost a quarter billion dollars on Earth, and the best instrument she had was a cargo strap.  “You got anything in your pocket to tell us airspeed or altitude?”

“We’re not in a stall, so airspeed is good enough. And we haven’t hit the ground yet, so,” Suarez shrugged.

“At least one of us is optimistic. Get out another strap.”

“Why?”

“Tie it between our seats, and let the one you have now dangle from it. I need you to get the engines restarted. Razor Flight, this is Razor Lead. Anyone out there?”

All she heard was the hiss of enemy jamming. Through the hissing were bursts of static that might be another ship trying to contact her, or even a UN starship. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t hear them, and they likely couldn’t hear her. No one could help her anyway. She needed to get the Scarab, and the passengers crammed into the cabin, on the ground safely if she could.

If she could.

The portside engine would not restart, and internal sensors couldn’t indicate the problem. The starboard engine output was at only twenty percent power, and even that level caused a vibration that made Irene’s teeth rattle. “Dial it back to idle,” she ordered. “Then slowly increase power in five percent increments.”

“Roger.”

The copilot adjusted the power up and down. It took only a minute to determine the best setting for the single engine was seventeen percent, any more than that and it threatened to tear loose from its pylon.

“We can’t hold altitude at seventeen percent,” Irene said what they both knew. The sky around them was darker, she assumed that was due to the dust being thicker at lower altitude. Suarez’s joke didn’t seem funny anymore, they might smack into the ground at any moment, and they would never know it. Her best guess was that they were still above ten thousand meters, if the air pressure indicator could be trusted. There were leaks in the cabin, she could hear a high-pitched shrieking below and behind her, so the gauge that measured the pressure difference between the cabin and outside might not be reliable. If it could be trusted at all. The AI was offline, and the backup systems were hung up in the middle of the reboot process. It was ironic, she thought. Much of the time she spent training in simulators was for extremely unlikely scenarios like partial loss of flight control systems, yet she had never trained for complete loss of the computers. If she survived, that was going to change.

She wished Derek was with her. Suarez was a good pilot, but she didn’t know him well, and they had flown together for less than thirty hours. “Suggestions?”

“Ma’am, I- Without instruments, I can’t- Hey.” He looked at her. “The drones. They have an independent monitoring system, it’s still active,” he tapped that console. The Scarab was carrying three sensor drones, in addition to a variety of missiles. “If they’re still working-”

“Do it.” She knew what he meant. The drone could pop up above them, and light up the area with active sensors. It could tell them where the Scarab was in relation to the ground.

“It’s responding. I’m going to launch two, as a backup.”

“Launch all three. In fact, eject our missile payload if you can, make sure they are set to inert. We need to drop mass, and I don’t want their propellant cooking off if we crash.”

“Affirmative. Drone One is away. Two is- Two is hung up. The portside launcher door is jammed. Cycling it again, no joy. Going back to starboard. Drone Three is away. Drones One and Three are active! We- Oh, shit.”

She saw immediately what the problem was. They were over the impact crater! Craters, actually. The thermal bloom coming from the crash site was blanking out the drone camera’s view of the terrain below, not that it mattered.

“Altitude twenty nine hundred meters,” Suarez called out. “Airspeed six fifty. Rate of descent-”

“I see it. Find us a place to set down. Fast.”

Her copilot didn’t argue. “Turn left to three three five.”

She gently banked the spacecraft, dipping the nose to keep the airspeed up. The Scarab, like many transport dropships, was a lifting-body design. Its fuselage was designed to act like an airfoil, with only stubby wings to provide control surfaces. At high speeds, air moving over the craft generated lift. At low speed, it flew like a brick. “Uh, that’s not the shortest path out of-”

“Shortest path is bad terrain,” Suarez explained.

Irene bit her lip. He was right. The indicated direction would take longer to clear the impact zone. But, it was upwind of the pall of smoke and ash that was drifting with the prevailing wind, and the ground in that area was relatively flat. “Understood. Warm up the belly jets, we need to test them. If they’re not functional,” she didn’t need to continue.

“I’m seeing red lights on five of twelve jets.”

“Test them one at a time.”

That didn’t help. Only seven of the belly jets, that were needed for a vertical landing, were operational. Three of them output thrust intermittently, and one blew out during testing.

“Ma’am, we need to do this the hard way.”

“If our passengers had chutes, I’d opt for bailing out.”

Suarez glanced at the handle that would engage the ejection seat. “I’m not going without you, Ma’am.”

“We’re not going anywhere. That is hostile territory down there, with no cover from upstairs,” she said with a catch in her throat. Her fiancé was aboard one of the Navy destroyers that had either been torn apart, disabled or chased away. “You and I won’t last long without the cavalry.”

“Right. Ma’am, we’re going to hit hard.”

“I don’t see any way around it,” she agreed. “Tell everyone in the cabin to brace, as best they can. Then find us a flat place to set down. Preferably with a long rollout.”

The terrain below was relatively flat. It also was covered with the local version of trees. In an argument between the dropship and a single tree, the dropship would not fare well. Against a grove of trees, the Scarab would be torn apart.

“Shit,” Suarez looked up from his console. “I don’t see any place to-”

“We’re going into the Hudson,” Irene declared, turning the reluctant spacecraft to the right. Sunlight sparkled off a thin, twisting ribbon of water in front of them.

“The Hudson? What- Oh. OH.”

“We have any data on that river? Is it deep?”

“Uh- Damn it. Database is not responding. I’m ordering the drones to send out a mapping pulse. It looks, uh, no more than four meters deep in this area. Ma’am, I’ve never done a water landing.”

She didn’t bother to tell him about the time she deliberately sank a gunship in a river. “I’m more worried that the damned river curves back and forth so much. There isn’t much of a straightaway we can use.”

The Scarab hit the river with a tremendous splash, coming in more nose-down than Irene intended. She had lined up along the longest stretch of straight river they could find, cutting across one long bend of shallow water that was dotted with sandbanks. The heavy spaceship bounced once, crashed back down and scraped over a sandbank. Through the spray, Irene had a terrifying view of the tree-lined riverbank racing toward them-

She was crushed down in the seat as Suarez triggered the ejection system.

CHAPTER THREE

“Sir?” Smythe stood in the doorway to my office, looking a bit more stiff and formal than typical. Than what was typical for him recently, I mean. Early in our relationship, he was always rigidly observant of protocol toward me, over the past couple years, he had relaxed a bit. My sense was he originally was making an extra effort to show respect to a commander who got promoted as a publicity stunt. His demonstration of respect made a big difference in how the Merry Band of Pirates viewed me, until I was able to prove myself. Hopefully, I had proven to be a competent leader, although some people might think the jury was still out on that issue.

“Come in, come in,” I waved to him, mumbling over a mouthful of crackers that was my lunch. There was not a meeting with the STAR leader on my calendar, and he rarely just dropped by to chat. “What’s up?” That was my attempt to be less formal.

He sat down, looking like he would prefer to be standing. His back remained ramrod straight, not relaxing at all. “Sir, I believe you should reconsider racing directly to rescue our people on Globakus.”

“Uh-” Damn. Why can’t my brain think of something intelligent to say when I need to?

“I am concerned we could be flying into an ambush.”

He was being diplomatic by not saying ‘another ambush’, like the one I’d jumped us into in the Snowcone star system. If he wanted to count, the first ambush I’d stumbled us into was a Thuranin destroyer squadron during our second mission. So, I didn’t have a great track record at avoiding ambushes. “Uh, OK. Do you have any specific information that leads you to-”

“I don’t trust the spiders.” He didn’t often interrupt me, that got my attention.

Shit. That’s the value of having an experienced team. The idea that the Rindhalu might be trying to screw us had not even crossed my mind. That was stupid of me. I am not the most trusting person in the galaxy, yet the spiders offered juicy information on a platter, and I hadn’t questioned their motives. “OK, yeah, good point,” I conceded. “But, other than that, what makes you think this is a set-up?”

“There are several factors that concern me. Access to Globakus is provided by only one wormhole, and that wormhole can be reached from only one other wormhole, without a very long flight.”

“Right. That’s one of the reasons Zhao approved supporting the Verds for the op. It’s isolated and difficult to reinforce. They should be able to consolidate control of the rock, before the lizards outside that star system even know what happened.”

“Correct, however, there is only one escape route from Globakus. The closest wormhole is also unusual, in that the emergence points are all clustered across less than a tenth of a lightyear. According to Skippy, fewer than seven percent of all active wormholes have their figure-8 emergence tracks confined to such a compact zone,” he reminded me. A sphere one tenth of a lightyear across, is an unimaginably vast area for poor human brains to comprehend. “The Rindhalu, or perhaps the two senior species working together, could blockade that wormhole, without tasking a major portion of their fleets to the mission.”

“Shit.” I knew he was right. “Shit!” I slapped my desk. Damn it. Now that he mentioned it, the warning of hidden Bosphuraq warships at Globakus was a little too convenient. Not convenient for the Verd-kris, if the spiders were telling the truth then the Verd landing force was seriously screwed. Maybe the spiders were telling the truth, and the presence of the birdbrains was part of the set-up. If I saw a bunch of Bosphuraq warships orbiting the planet, bombarding the landing force, I wouldn’t ask too many questions before jumping right into the fight. And maybe right into the middle of a whole lot of stealthed senior-species warships, that were waiting for me to do something stupid. “Skippy? Is the info right about that wormhole?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “Ugh. I never included the narrow pattern of the emergence pattern in the briefing documents, because I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“Is it?”

“Unfortunately, Colonel Smythe is right. It is a risk to us. If all we had to worry about was a blockade attempt by second-tier species, I wouldn’t worry about it. But, the spiders or kitties could trap us on the Globakus end of that wormhole. It would require a major effort, and we could just wait them out. Except, hmm. Assuming they are serious about the effort, they could establish a major staging and support base in a star system near the other end of the wormhole, and cycle ships in and out. They could sustain a blockade for years, if necessary. Of course, we could just hang out and chill if that happens. Ooh! It would give me time to work on my opera, so there’s the silver lining in that cloud.”

“That cloud’s lining is dark as a black hole,” I muttered.

“Hey! You jerk, I should-”

“Could you adjust that wormhole, make it open at a location not on the scheduled route?”

“No can do, Joe. Sorry. That wormhole is on a network I have screwed with too often. Shmaybe the network would do what I ask, maybe it won’t.”

“Crap. That’s too big a risk. OK, let’s think about this. Smythe, you have any ideas? Leaving the Verds to get torn apart there is not an option.”

He knew my main concern was for the roughly five hundred humans who had joined the Verds for the assault on Globakus, in a sort of reverse Alien Legion arrangement. He knew my real concern was for Dave Czajka. “We need to send a recon force through, before we commit to transitioning through the wormhole.”

I knew what he meant. “The Dutchman?”

“That ship is our best recon platform.”

“Crap. OK, OK, you’re right.” I tapped a button on my laptop, contacting the bridge. “Colonel Mammay?” I called the duty officer.

“General?”

“Change of plans. We’re going to Klopeth first. Tell the pilots to plot a new course.”

There was a brief pause. “Sir, that means going back to the wormhole we just came through?” He said it as a question.

“I know. We don’t have a choice.”

The Legion op at Klopeth had been halted, then canceled, after our Navy was attacked by a combined force of Maxohlx and Rindhalu warships. Valkyrie destroyed most of the enemy force, with the help of a relativistic dart, but Zhao and Ross agreed with what Perkins told me: further Legion operations had to be suspended, until the threat of direct intervention by the senior species could be dealt with. When we left, to try the greatest bluff of all time, dropships were pulling Legion troops off the surface, along with as many Ruhar civilians as our transport ships could hold. The plan was for the Navy to pull back to FOB Jaguar for repairs as soon as possible. The good news was, Zhao had brought five star carriers to Klopeth, including one we recently acquired from the Ethics and Compliance Office, and those vulnerable space trucks remained far outside the star system. So, there was plenty of transport capacity available. At least one star carrier would need to jump in near the planet, to take aboard our damaged ships, and that was a risk the Navy had to take.

Chang had stayed behind with the Flying Dutchman to support the Navy in any way he could. Unless a miracle had occurred, the Navy would still be at Klopeth. If they weren’t there, then we would have to chase them all the way back to the Jaguar wormhole, because there were multiple routes the Navy could use to get back to base. Zhao might even divide his force to fly different routes, reducing the risk of his entire force being attacked along the way. The senior species had more important things to worry about, and were very unlikely to harass a relatively small group of ships, but Zhao didn’t know that.

All we could do was get to Klopeth as quickly as possible, and hope we found the Dutchman there. And, hope there wasn’t another problem we had to deal with.

Dave Czajka, and Jates, and the others, would have to hold out a bit longer.

I felt sick about it.

“Captain?” The communications officer called out to be heard over the low-level chaos on the bridge of the UN destroyer Boston. “Captain Duchamp wants a conference in five.”

Derek Bonsu looked around the bridge of the ship. His ship. Everyone was doing their jobs, they didn’t need him looking over their shoulders. “XO,” he nodded to his executive officer, who was studying a damage control report.

“I have the ship, Sir,” the man said without looking up.

“Keep it in one piece, please,” Derek said as he waited for the bridge door to open. Its mechanism was slower than it should be, one maintenance item that had fallen to the bottom of the To Do list. When the ship was preparing to go into a planned combat operation, there was plenty of time to close and lock the door to prevent a sudden pressure loss caused by enemy fire. But if the ship was attacked unexpectedly, a balky door mechanism could be fatal. He didn’t want to add to the burdens of the ship’s engineering team, or the workload of the bots controlled by the AI, but the sticky door did need to be addressed at some point. Maybe he could pitch in, if it wasn’t too complicated. And if he had time. Boston had been in continuous action since before the assault was launched at Globakus, and had been engaged in intense action from the moment a Thuranin task force appeared out of nowhere.

Where the hell had those ships come from, Derek asked himself for the hundredth time? In one way, it didn’t matter where the enemy ships had come from, it only mattered that they were there, were denying the UN force access to orbit. In another way, it did matter where the Thuranin had come from, because it meant there was something very, very wrong with the intel provided to the invasion force. With the intel provided by Skippy, who supposedly was ‘Magnificent’. “Asshole,” Derek muttered under his breath when he thought of the beer can AI.

The fight in orbit had been quick and nasty. The assault carrier Chesapeake Bay was crippled in the first few seconds, with her escort Sao Paulo taking a broadside salvo from the enemy battleship. Captain Duchamp of the Marseilles had made the gut-wrenching decision of ordering the three destroyers to jump away to preserve his force, before they became trapped by a damping field. For forty anxious minutes, Boston and Marseilles waited at the Hold One rendezvous point two lighthours from the Globakus, fearing the Sao Paulo was lost. Then, the badly damaged third destroyer had arrived, having first made an almost blind jump as the enemy damping field grew stronger.

Since the Sao Paulo rejoined the squadron, the three ships were engaged in damage control, and triple-checking all critical systems. Boston had fared best of the three, still her crew was shaken up and the ship had damage that needed to be fixed, before the United Nations destroyer could be considered fully ready for combat again.

Unfortunately, combat might not wait until Boston was ready.

When he saw the Chesapeake Bay struck by enemy fire, the first thought to flash through his mind was relief that Irene was not aboard that ship. It might have been a selfish thought, it was also absolutely real. While Derek had wanted, and been offered, command of a destroyer, Irene insisted she wanted to keep flying. Sitting in a chair and telling pilots how to fly was simply not any fun, and Irene wasn’t ready for what she considered partially a desk job. She had been appointed to command of the Chesapeake Bay’s air group, a job that involved mostly paperwork. But the CAG still got to fly, and she couldn’t quite understand how Derek could give up that dream.

He didn’t know where she was. From the distant Hold One rendezvous point, he couldn’t see anything useful, and enemy jamming had caused the destroyer squadron to lose contact with all of the surviving dropships.

He needed to get back to Globakus, soon. Or it would be too late.

In his cramped office, Derek activated the comm link, and saw that Captain Duchamp of the Marseilles and Captain Sousa of the Sao Paulo were already on. “Good, we can begin,” Duchamp looked into the camera. He and Sousa were captains by rank, one step above Derek’s grade as an Air Force lieutenant colonel. As the senior captain, Duchamp had command of the destroyer squadron. “Bonsu, what is your status?”

“I would like another hour to swap out power conduits to one of the dorsal shield projectors, but we can go now we don’t need full combat capability. Sir, I think we should go sooner than later. If the Thuranin bombard the landing force-”

“Sao Paulo is out of the fight,” Sousa interjected, his expression miserable. “We’ve lost a reactor, engines are down to fifteen percent thrust, and that hit on the starboard side took out fifty meters of outer hull, including four shield projectors, and half of my point-defense capability. The beetle ship designers should not have clustered so many-”

“Emilio,” Duchamp cut in. “That’s an issue we can discuss later. Bonsu, I’m afraid Captain Sousa is right, Sao Paulo can jump, but she’s no good as a weapons platform. We’ll have to-”

“Excuse me, Sir, I’m not sure that’s true.”

“Bonsu, I appreciate your fighting spirit,” Duchamp said without a smile. “We have to be realistic. Two destroyers against a Thuranin task force? The opposition has a battleship, three heavy cruisers, a pair of destroyers, and five frigates. That frigate we knocked out of orbit was a lucky shot-”

“Not so lucky for our people on the ground,” Sousa shook his head. “It fell right on top of a landing site. Of all the rotten luck-”

“This whole operation has been snakebit from the beginning,” Duchamp agreed. “The enemy has every advantage in this fight.”

“Sir, we have two advantages,” Derek insisted. “And we have three destroyers.”

Sousa’s lips drew into a hard line. “We lost fourteen people over here. If you saw the damage to my ship, you wouldn’t-”

“The Sao Paulo can still fight,” Derek insisted. “Sirs, listen to me, please. The enemy has greater firepower in directed energy and kinetic weapons, but our missiles were built by the Maxohlx. We have Tier One missile technology the Thuranin can’t match. Our birds are stealthy, they are networked, hardened against jamming, more maneuverable than anything the Thuranin have seen, and they are smart. Their AIs were reprogrammed and upgraded by Skippy. The Sao Paulo doesn’t need to jump directly into the fight. You can jump into a standoff position, launch missiles and jump away. The other advantage we have is our jump drives. We can focus our gamma ray bursts so the enemy will have great difficulty detecting where we jumped to. That means we don’t have to jump so far away after a raid. We can remain close enough that our sensors can keep a watch on the planet, in almost real-time.”

“Hmm. Maybe,” Duchamp raised his eyebrows. “The Fleet has been keeping our missiles for a rainy day.”

“Jacques,” Sousa used the other captain’s first name. “If Sao Paulo doesn’t have to get within maser range of the enemy, I want into this fight. I can’t throw away my ship to make a grand gesture, but, we are not sitting on the sidelines if we don’t have to.”

“What are you thinking Bonsu?” Duchamp asked. “A series of hit-and-run raids, to keep the enemy from consolidating control in orbit?”

“Yes. But, Sir, while we have the advantage of surprise, we should consider something more ambitious.”

“Like what?”

Derek pulled sensor data from the fight, and zoomed in on the Thuranin battleship. “Like, take out this big sumbitch first.”

We jumped back into the Klopeth system, where most of the UN Navy was still licking its wounds from the fight with the senior species. The ‘fight’ was more like a slaughter, before Valkyrie arrived with a special party favor, in the form of a dart traveling at relativistic speed. Anyway, Zhao had debated sending his undamaged ships away outside the system, to preserve a ready combat capability, but decided to keep all his ships together. If the only ships in the system were cripples slowly being loaded aboard star carriers, they might prove to be tempting targets for any ambitious client species looking to make trouble. So, Zhao kept a few combat ready ships near the planet, the rest lurked in stealth a few lightminutes away as a reserve.

When we arrived, the last three ships were being maneuvered by tugs to latch onto star carriers. That included Zhao’s former flagship, the battleship Pacific. Skippy had told me privately that even with the resources of the Ragnar shipyard, the mighty Pacific would be out of the fight for six months, possibly a year or more. With the damage so severe, it made sense to run the battleship through a full upgrade process, rather than slapping together a quick set of repairs that the Navy would later regret. The problem was, both the Ragnar and Jaguar shipyards were fully booked with basic maintenance and minimal upgrades to the Patrol ships that ECO stole for us, so Zhao had tough choices to make. The only comfort I could give him was to explain that I expected both senior species to back down, and ultimately either assist us in clearing the cloud at Earth, or at least not interfere. We knew the Rindhalu had tentatively agreed to our deal, unofficially and without any mechanism to enforce the ceasefire. That was good enough for me. Now I had to hope the Maxohlx saw the sense in not being the only species to defy us, and have their access to the wormhole network cut off.

Which, we could not actually do, because I am a lying sack of shit, remember?

My point was, I did not expect the Navy to get into a major fight any time soon. Or, that’s what I told Zhao. Maybe I was exaggerating the prospect of peace breaking out across the galaxy, but I have been wrong so many times that if Zhao listened to me, then it was his fault.

Zhao quickly agreed to release the Flying Dutchman from picket duty, which saved me the awkwardness of recalling that ship for my Special Mission Group. There was plenty of awkwardness to go around, as Emily Perkins was aboard Zhao’s temporary flagship, the cruiser Nile. When she heard we were headed for Globakus, she called me directly and requested to go with us. So did Jesse Colter and Shauna Jarrett, both of them aboard the assault carrier Adriatic Sea. Damn it, I couldn’t say no to them, it was only a short dropship flight over to Valkyrie, so I agreed the three Mavericks should come with us.

There was someone else who requested to come aboard, and when I say ‘requested’, I am being polite about it.

Margaret Adams interrupted me in the middle of saying a simple ‘hello’ when I called her. “I’m coming with you,” she announced.

“Uh,” I could feel my face turning red. “It’s customary to say ‘hello’ first, you know?”

“Hello. Now that we have the bullshit out of the way, get me a dropship. Please,” she added, batting her eyelashes while scowling. Really, I had to give her marks for effort.

“Margaret, we don’t even know-”

“That’s the point. You don’t know what you will find at Globakus, so you need every resource you can get. Zhao can’t spare any ships, and in a fight with the kitties, the regular Navy would be useless anyway.”

“You, haven’t called me ‘Joe’. You also haven’t said ‘Sir’ or ‘General’. I’m a bit confused about where we-”

She bit her lip, I knew she was trying to control her temper. “You want to have this conversation now?”

“I want to have this conversation never.”

“Don’t do this. I- I’m sorry. Sir. I was out of line. Request permission to-”

“Gunny, our ready bird is on its way to the Adriatic Sea, ETA is eleven minutes. Jarrett and Colter are meeting the dropship in bay,” I checked my notes, “Delta-Five. I suggest you gear up, and hurry.”

“Thank you. Bye.”

My next call was with Chang. He had the Dutchman ready to move out, they had been planning a long flight to escort the Navy back to Ragnar. Coming with us only required programming a new course into the navigation system. “If the opposition is a task force of Thuranin, Valkyrie can handle them,” he told me. “But if the Maxohlx are waiting for us, are you prepared to abandon the force on the planet?”

“It won’t come to that,” I replied, and it sounded lame even to me.

“Joe.”

“I know. Wishful thinking.”

“On our second mission, my team was trapped at an Elder site on a moon, running out of air while Kristang warships prevented the old Dutchman version One Point Oh from rescuing us. At the time, you were ready to leave us there, to save the ship and continue the mission. So, I know you can do it, if needed.”

“I don’t want to.” Damn it. He was trying to help me, by making sure I was mentally prepared ahead of time. I didn’t want help, I wanted someone to tell me everything would be all right. “Those Thuranin are there because they got orders before we crashed the wormhole network. That changed the game. If the kitties were planning to ambush Valkyrie again, they’d have to be crazy to try it now. No, Kong, we’re just being careful. I really don’t think the Maxohlx are stupid enough to do that again.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Captain Uhtavio Scorandum took his current command, the ECO cruiser Well That Escalated Quickly, through the Elder wormhole and tapped a claw on the side of his command couch, while waiting out the necessary but annoying delay for the starship’s sensors to recover from the spatial distortion. He was still Captain Scorandum, a fact he had to remind his crew about, despite the widespread rumors that he had been selected for admiral. Wagering was so heavily in favor of his promotion that he was tempted to bet against his rise to fleet officer, and then commit some act so flagrantly incompetent, the promotions board would have to reconsider.

Unfortunately, doing something like that, even though it would totally be in keeping with ECO’s well-established culture, would prompt a visit from an Inquisitor, and just the thought of that made him shudder. So, he kept his mouth shut, and focused his energy on doing his job, which currently involved a mysterious rendezvous with the 16th Sustainment Fleet battlecruiser A World Of Hurt Headed Your Way. The meeting with the unfamiliar warship was mysterious, both because it had diverted him away from a carefully planned mission to screw with the Esselgin, and because he couldn’t think of a reason why anyone from the 16th Sustainment Fleet would need to interface with the Ethics and Compliance Office. The World Of Hurt was a relatively new battlecruiser, the first of its class, and Scorandum had heard the ship mostly was assigned to the mundane task of showing the flag around far-flung parts of Jeraptha territory, while the engineers tried to work out the numerous bugs that had plagued it since it left the shipyard.

Unless…

The glitches that kept the World Of Hurt from taking a place in a front line unit might be a cover story, as an excuse for a capital ship being sent to places that normally would not be visited by such a powerful fleet asset?

As that thought occurred to him, Scorandum made a mental note to check what sort of action Central Wagering had about the activities of the World Of Hurt specifically, and perhaps the 16th Sustainment Fleet in general. If the 16th was up to something sketchy, well, that was a problem. Activities that bordered on the verge of being unethical were supposed to be conducted by the ECO. It was right in the Office’s name!

The status indicators on the main display were showing sensors resetting as expected, and he stifled a yawn, regretting his decision not to let the Well That Escalated Quickly’s executive officer take the command couch for the wormhole transition. There just wasn’t much for anyone to do while-

Alarms blared and the cruiser shuddered from being too close to a spatial distortion. In the blink of an eye, the full suite of the ship’s sensors were not needed to detect and identify the threat. He could have identified the problem simply by looking out a window because it was right there in front of his ship.

Maxohlx warships.

Three of them.

Big ships. Heavy cruisers, at least.

“Stand down, stand down,” he waved to his pilots, knowing the senior species could pound his ship to scrap before the Escalated could form a jump field. “If they wanted to shoot, we’d be dead already. Well, shit,” he added quietly.

“What, Sir?” Kinsta asked from his console. While Scorandum moved from ship to ship as needed, he brought a small group of core staff with him, including his trusted and a bit too trusting aide.

“That solves the mystery of why we were ordered to rendezvous with the World Of Hurt. The message was a fake, to lure us here.”

“Damn it,” Kinsta groaned, and his captain knew the lieutenant was more upset by losing a wager, than about being trapped by three senior species warships.

Hitting the button to release the safety straps of his couch, Scorandum stood up and turned to the ship’s executive officer. “Warm up the ready bird, please. The ship is yours.”

“Sir?” The XO’s antennas twitched. “Where are you going?”

The captain pointed to the menacing enemy ships on the display. “Whatever they want to talk about, I assume they want it to be a private conversation.”

He was right, the Maxohlx did want to discuss something face to face, the formal request came before he left the Escalated’s bridge. To his surprise, his welcome aboard the enemy ship was not accompanied by the usual threats. The Maxohlx were as usual angry, arrogant and disdainful, but based on his admittedly limited dealings with the beings who led the enemy coalition, there was something different about this particular group. They were a bit less arrogant and perhaps a bit more angry. And maybe he sensed something else also.

Hesitation.

Uncertainty.

Fear.

He could see it in their eyes, the long training sessions about alien body language had not been a waste after all. It surprised him that he could sense fear at all. The Maxohlx were well known to have implants that allowed direct control of their hormones and autonomic responses. If they felt fear, it must be at a level they were not equipped to cope with.

Or-

The haughty leaders of the Hegemony were simply not accustomed to experiencing real, actual fear.

So… Scorandum’s mind flashed through an interesting thought while he was escorted out of the docking bay by four guards who were wearing full combat armor, as if he could pose any sort of threat. His thought was: the unusual action by the Maxohlx must have been prompted by the humans temporarily crashing part of the wormhole network. He couldn’t think of anything else that could frighten the senior species, not even the impressive-sounding strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction. By relying on such a strategy, the humans exposed themselves as rank amateurs in the power politics that had been in effect across the galaxy, since before anyone could remember. Ultimately, the threat to use Elder weapons was an empty gesture. If the humans wanted his advice, it would be simple: A threat to use a gun is useless, if it’s pointed at your own head.

But, the humans hadn’t asked him, and still they had run circles around the senior species, pulling off sketchy operations that he could only dream about. So, maybe they didn’t need his advice. The ability to shut down even part of the ancient wormhole network? That was power. He had to respect that.

The armor-suited guards, two in front and two behind, guided him into what looked like an interrogation chamber. On one end of the compartment was a single piece of furniture, its surface flowed like liquid and reshaped itself into a couch when he stepped through the doorway. The couch froze into a configuration appropriate for Jeraptha anatomy. The couch did not have visible restraints, he would not willingly suffer that indignity. He chose to stand, as the guards withdrew from the compartment and the door slid closed with an ominously heavy thunk sound.

Uhtavio Scorandum waited quietly, keeping a neutral expression on his face. No doubt the enemy was observing him. Their scanners could measure his heart rate and stress hormone levels. The nanoscale sensors embedded in his own body should warn him if the enemy attempted to infiltrate him with their own hostile nanomachines, but that assumed the senior species technology was unable to elude detection. That was a bet he did not want to take. When, if, he was allowed to go back aboard his ship, he would need to endure a thorough and rather uncomfortable decontamination procedure, to prevent-

The solid wall on the other end of the compartment suddenly disappeared, and he was staring at three Maxohlx, seated behind a sleek table. The table made him curious. What was its purpose? Did the Maxohlx use it to hold beverages during long interrogations? Certainly, they had no need for a table to hold any sort of electronic devices; they could control the entire ship through their sophisticated implants. Most likely, the table was there as a psychological barrier between interrogators and prisoner. It was not needed as a physical barrier; the wall that disappeared had not gone away. It had simply been tuned to be transparent, he could see a very faint shimmering around the edges.

The Maxohlx stared at him, unblinking, impassive. The silence continued until it became uncomfortable. Scorandum knew that was an interrogation technique and he should wait for the enemy to tell him why they had brought him aboard, but he was more than a bit pissed off about having his day so rudely interrupted, and mostly, he was simply bored. Cheap techniques like making him wait should be beneath the dignity of the senior species, and were certainly a waste of his time. “Listen,” he cocked his head, knowing the Maxohlx would certainly understand the body language of his people. “If this is about the incident at Funandeng, I will not offer an apology. The Bosphuraq have no one to blame but themselves.”

“Hurr, hurr, hurr,” the alien in the center chuckled softly.

That was unexpected. Scorandum blinked, his antennas drooping.

Before he could respond, the Maxohlx leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “The Bosphuraq are fools. Weak fools.”

“Their weakness,” Scorandum spoke slowly, trying to understand what was happening. “Makes your coalition look weak.”

“No. Failure makes our coalition appear weak,” she explained with a fierce scowl. Then she leaned back in her chair and a smile unexpectedly flitted across her face. “We wish to express our gratitude for your assistance, unintended though it was.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Bosphuraq know their failure has greatly displeased us. That will make them more compliant in the future. We therefore will not need to devote resources to enforcing their continued compliance.”

Well, shit, Scorandum said to himself. That’s not what we intended.

The Maxohlx, who had not given her name but wore the uniform of a fleet captain, continued before he could speak. “Our gratitude is of course not sincere. Our admiration is.”

“Uh-” Scorandum did not like being at a loss for words. It was happening too frequently.

“Your organization has always been troublesome to us,” the alien’s brief smile was entirely gone. “Recently, your Ethics and Compliance Office has proven to be a model for clandestine operations. Your inventiveness, focus, and sheer ruthlessness are impressive. We only wish our own special operations group was as successful.”

“They don’t need to be,” The ECO captain found himself saying, wondering why he was offering unsolicited advice to the enemy. His statement hung in the air awkwardly. “I meant that,” he added, “your people are supremely powerful. You have no need for clandestine operations against anyone other than the Rindhalu, and you can’t operate against your peers without serious consequences.”

“Your people routinely conduct operations against your peer enemies.”

“We have the Rindhalu to protect us from serious consequences.”

The three Maxohlx subtly shifted their heads toward each other, Scorandum knew that was an indication they were conversing through their cranial implants. “That may be true,” the one in the center conceded. “However, it would be useful for us to have a client who was skilled in secret operations. Perhaps you and your colleagues would consider changing your allegiance, for the right inducement?”

Again, Uhtavio was at a complete loss for words. The Maxohlx had brought him aboard their ship, for a job interview? That could not be true. It was not possible.

Or-

He had recently learned that many things he thought impossible were, in fact, possible. “My people are committed to the Rindhalu coalition, it is not-”

“The Kristang serve us,” the Maxohlx leaned forward onto the table again. “Yet, some Kristang, those who call themselves the ‘Verd-kris’, have allied themselves with the humans. Do not tell us that there is no one who plays both sides in this war.”

“Yes, well,” he said carefully, wary of angering the creatures who held the power of life and death over him. “We are happy with our current circumstances. Also, my employer takes a dim view of freelancing,” he added, in case the aliens were making an offer to him directly.

The Maxohlx in the center smiled, flashing her fangs. “No matter. We would not trust you anyway.”

“If I was trustworthy, I wouldn’t be very good at my job,” he muttered.

“True.” Another smile. “But, we did not bring you here to discuss an ongoing arrangement. What we propose is a one-time joint operation.”

“Joint operation,” he repeated slowly, to give his mind time to process the idea. “Against, the Rindhalu? Why would we-”

“Not against your patrons. Our operation is aimed at the humans. To answer your second question: why would you agree to work with us, even in a limited fashion? The answer is simple: for the benefit of the Jeraptha people. And in particular, the Ethics and Compliance Office would benefit.”

Scorandum prided himself at being able to guess an opponent’s next move. It was humiliating to admit he had no idea what the Maxohlx were planning.

The Maxohlx stared at him expectantly. “Are you willing to listen to our proposal?”

The day was full of first-time experiences. The ultimate enemy of his people were politely requesting a favor? Or, he considered the solid walls all around him, at least they were giving the appearance of being polite. He had to give them points for making the effort. “First, as you are holding me in this,” his antennas twitched and swung in a circle, “detention cell or whatever it is, I can hardly refuse. And second, you have me intrigued. Please, continue.”

“The goal of our operation is to capture the ‘Skippy’ entity. Your part will be to lure Valkyrie, or any ship carrying the target entity, to a rendezvous.”

Finally, the enemy inviting him for a chat was beginning to make sense. “A rendezvous? Or an ambush?”

“It is the same,” she waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.

He noted that her claws were retracted. She was relaxed rather than agitated, that was good for his health. Also, it would probably not be good for his health to mention that the Maxohlx, according to rumor, had already tried once to capture Skippy. Tried, and failed. No one liked to be reminded of their failures, the senior species were no different from those lower on the technology scale. “I have questions,” he said after a moment.

“Of course.”

“First question, then. Why do you need me?”

“Because Bishop learns from his mistakes. He jumped his ship into a rendezvous, based on a message we faked. To lure his ship into another ambush, we need someone he trusts, to assure him the situation is safe.”

Scorandum tilted his head. “I think you overestimate how much Bishop trusts me.”

“The human commander trusts you enough for our purposes.”

He considered that for a moment. Maybe the Maxohlx fleet captain was right. Bishop was leery of ECO causing trouble for him, through operations the humans didn’t know about. But there was no reason for the leader of the Merry Band of Pirates to think the Jeraptha would actively betray him. As he thought about it, he realized the Maxohlx had selected the perfect candidate. If Bishop suspected anything sketchy about the rendezvous, he would assume it was just ECO standard operating procedure. “I don’t know about that,” he shook his head. “since my ass will be hanging out to dry if Bishop doesn’t take the bait, I need to be damned sure you don’t screw the deal, by one of your ships suffering a stealth field glitch.”

“We will handle our end of the operation,” she said with a faint glimmer in her eyes. The conversation had shifted from ‘what’ to ‘how’, and that was good for her.

 “Let’s move on to the second question, the important question. You are already one of the two most powerful societies in the galaxy,” he decided not to include humans on the list of apex species, figuring that would do nothing but irritate his captors. “With control of the Skippy entity, your power would be supreme, no one could challenge you. Why should my people help you to dominate the galaxy?”

“Because, sadly, that will not happen.”

“I am, confused.”

“We have determined that it is not possible for anyone to control the entity. Even among the humans, the entity cooperates with only a select few. A few the entity has chosen to assist. It cannot be forced, or persuaded, to act in any particular way.”

“Then,” he stalled for time, while gears turned in his mind. Perhaps it was useless to try to guess what the Maxohlx intended. “If you can’t use the Skippy AI, why capture it- Oh.”

“You see now?”

“Maybe. You seek to prevent the humans from using the entity’s power.”

“Correct. Without the assistance of an Elder AI, humans are inventive and clever, but ultimately also primitive, and no more than an annoyance to us.”

“Um, there is also the problem of the Elder weapons controlled by the humans. They-”

“We believe the entity will cooperate in one way: continuing to prevent those terrible weapons from activating. It will seek to protect its pet humans in any way it can, even if it refuses to help other species. Captain Scorandum, a moment ago, you were displeased by the notion of my people possessing unchecked power, if we acquired and were able to utilize the Elder entity?”

He would describe the situation in stronger language than mere ‘displeasure’, but he blamed that on the alien translation software. “That would not be an optimal outcome, no,” he cringed at the use of buzzwords. When had phrases from Personnel training courses crept into his vocabulary? That was not a good sign.

“Then, tell me: why have you been assisting the humans?”

“Well, that- First, I follow orders, and-”

“I should have asked, why has your government been assisting the humans?”

“As a check on your power,” Scorandum found himself speaking the blunt truth, which made him wonder whether he had been drugged. Some chemical in the air? “And the power of the Rindhalu. The two of you have wielded power for too long, to no one’s benefit. It is no secret that the Maxohlx Hegemony’s ultimate goal is to attain supreme power, and enslave all others.”

“Yet, you somehow believe the humans would be better, if they became the supreme power in this galaxy? Come, Captain. Surely you are not so naïve. Perhaps for the near future, the humans might be benign actors, allowing others to pursue their destinies. How long do you expect that to continue? Whether it takes a hundred years or a thousand, humans with unchecked power will use that power, for the benefit of no one but themselves. It is inevitable, you know that. If we were to capture the Skippy entity, the strategic situation in the galaxy can go back to where it was, where it should be. Elder weapons would be possessed by a few, and used by none. The war would continue, yes, but there would be balance. Currently, the Jeraptha enjoy a privileged position in your coalition, for you have been successful and are useful to your patrons. Where will you be, when the humans rule the galaxy and have no use for troublesome insects?”

Scorandum knew that ‘insects’ was a translation of what the Maxohlx actually said, he also knew she intended the word as an insult. “The humans might find us useful.”

“They might find you to be useful. They also might not. Either way, the fate of your people will not be under your control.”

“Your concern for the welfare of my people is, surprising,” he said, hoping the ship’s translator would not understand that instead of ‘surprising’ he meant ‘insulting nonsense’.

“We are not concerned about your people. Our concern is driven entirely by self-interest. We suggest you do the same.” There was a pause when the three aliens nodded their heads in unison, speaking silently through their implants. “Captain Scorandum, we propose to deal with the problem, while we still can. Before it is too late for anyone to act. The power of the humans must be checked now, before it grows out of control.”

He tilted his head down toward the deck while he considered how to respond. Looking the Maxohlx straight in the eye, he said, “What’s in it for us?”

“Hurhurhurhur,” the senior species leader laughed softly. “Now we come to the heart of the matter: bargaining. We are offering four of our frontline warships to you, including spare parts, and consumables for five years of operation.”

“What type of ships?”

“Terror-class heavy cruisers.”

“No.” Scorandum shook his head. Never agree to the first offer, he reminded himself. “We need something more useful. Extinction-class battlecruisers. Twenty of them, with spares and consumables for ten years.”

“Unacceptable.”

“Fleet Captain, we need twenty ships, so we can have eight ships available at any time. We need your most powerful type of battlecruiser, to protect us from potential retaliation by Valkyrie, and to offer us a measure of protection from you.”

“Unacceptable.”

“We don’t have a deal, until we have a deal,” the ECO captain insisted. “You want me to sell this operation to my leadership, to the Home Fleet? I need something solid, something worth the risk of retaliation by the humans, if your ambush fails. The way your first attempt to capture the Skippy entity failed.” He paused, taking a breath, seeing angry scowls from all three of the aliens. “You need to give us,” he looked from left to right, then back to the Maxohlx in the center. “An offer we can’t refuse.”

More head bobbing, eyes twitching and shifting side to side as his opponents conversed amongst themselves, and possibly with others outside the compartment. Abruptly, the Fleet Captain stated, “Fourteen ships. Six Extinction-class battlecruisers, and eight Terror cruisers. Plus spares.”

Scorandum shook his head slowly. “Eighteen of the Extinction class. Surely you can see that having all the ships of the same type makes maintenance and support a more practical matter for us.”

The reply was an impassive stare, so he tried again. “You risk little or nothing in this joint endeavor. If you fail, again,” he emphasized, “your relationship with the humans will not be substantially altered. Failure could be disastrous for us.”

“Eighteen warships of the Extinction class,” she agreed with a touch of weariness in her voice. The Maxohlx did not enjoy haggling, it was not part of their culture.

“Plus spares, and consumable items.”

“As you mentioned, yes.”

“Plus,” he stood up straighter. “You must remove, or disable, the master AI of those ships. We know the reputation of your warship AIs.”

Her scowl returned. “Disabling a warship AI will be difficult.”

“Difficult for you. Impossible for us.”

The haggling went on for an indeterminate amount of time, or, a time Scorandum was not able to determine. He was by then certain the Maxohlx had drugged him, a mild dose. Maybe they were only adjusting his natural hormone levels, to put him at ease and make him more willing to cooperate. Regardless, whatever they were doing, it was against his will. He found that he did not care much about that, a sure sign that he was not himself.

The haggling went on because Scorandum was curious to see how far he could push the powerful enemy, and because he was resolved not to be cooperative, despite the drugs making him want to be friendly and reasonable. Also, because he simply enjoyed the process of striking a bargain. But mostly, because he could see that dragging out the haggling was making the Maxohlx exasperated.

When his captors escorted him back to the docking bay, they had not only the framework of an agreement, all the important details had also been hammered out. The Maxohlx would deliver eighteen of their frontline Extinction-class battlecruisers, plus a stores ship crammed full of spare parts and those items that wore out from use, like railgun magnets and the inducers that created the virtual jump drive coils. The ships would be handed over upfront, before Scorandum lured Valkyrie to a fateful and likely fatal rendezvous. The Jeraptha would have time to thoroughly inspect the newest additions to the Home Fleet, and to install their own master control AIs aboard each ship. Both sides agreed that any further negotiations would take place face to face only. And that whatever discussions occurred within Jeraptha leadership, they would be conducted without use of electronic communications, and without any record of the conversations.

The last condition was an absolute, and Scorandum knew he would have agreed, even without the gentle nudging of whatever unwanted chemicals were in his bloodstream. With Skippy apparently able to infiltrate any electronic form of communication, conspirators had to fall back on doing things the truly old-fashioned way. Although the term ‘old-fashioned’ might not apply to negotiators who flew across the galaxy faster than light.

Back aboard the Well That Escalated Quickly, Uhtavio Scorandum instructed his crew to jump away as soon as the enemy damping field strength fell to a safe level. With Lieutenant Kinsta by his side, worriedly scanning him with a medical monitor, he went straight to the ship’s sickbay for a painfully thorough check-up. The Escalated completed three random jumps by the time the medical AI diagnosed his condition: he had been dosed with a very subtle mood-altering chemical that was most likely an airborne substance. An antidote was administered, though the best remedy was simply to rest, while his body naturally cleansed itself.

Leaving the ship to his capable crew, he went to his cabin and immediately fell into a sound sleep.

When he awoke, after blissfully uninterrupted slumber, Uhtavio Scorandum was feeling good. Suspiciously good, so he went back to sickbay for a quick scan, which assured him his hormone levels were completely normal, and no mood alerting substances were in his bloodstream.

Knowing that whatever decision he made would be entirely his, he checked in with the bridge crew. The ship was drifting in interstellar space, with no known threats and no concerns about the condition of any system. The crew and master AI had completed an exhaustive scan of the ship’s structure for contamination. The dropship he had used to travel to and from the Maxohlx warship had been discarded, and that docking bay sealed off. Both pilots who accompanied him to the enemy ship were declared clean, they had not been subjected to mood-altering drugs, and no nanoscale spy devices had been found on or in them or their clothing.

“Sir?” Lieutenant Kinsta was waiting with a hot beverage when Scorandum arrived at his office.

“None for me, thank you,” Scorandum shook his head.

Kinsta set the mug down, disappointed and concerned. “Are you unwell?”

“I am feeling great,” the captain said truthfully. “I will get food later. Right now, I need to think.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Scorandum knew his aide was burning with curiosity to know what the Maxohlx had wanted to discuss. The lieutenant was a trusted confidante, but the proposed operation was too sensitive to be discuss with anyone other than Scorandum’s superiors at ECO. And then only with a very select group of very senior officers, and the very highest level of government. “Don’t worry about me, Kinsta. I will join you in the galley later,” he looked toward the door.

Kinsta took the hint, and withdrew with a curt nod, pressing a button to slide the door closed behind him.

For a moment, Scorandum contemplated the bottle of very fine vintage burgoze in his desk drawer. No. he needed a clear head to think.

At the time, the proposal offered by the leaders of the enemy coalition sounded like a good deal. A very good deal. Eighteen frontline battlecruisers! The core of a powerful fleet. Actual warships, to bolster the strength of the Home Fleet. By contrast, the humans had offered only vague promises of technology transfers, and unspecified upgrades of existing Jeraptha ships. The delivery of those upgraded ships kept getting delayed, and while the humans always had good reasons for the delays, the fact was the Jeraptha had received little in return for providing warships, fabricators and a mountain of spare parts.

With a clear head, did he still agree with the Maxohlx, that the power of humans had to be checked, before it grew out of control? The real question was, could he disagree? The awful truth was, the two senior species had maintained a balance of power in the galaxy for eons. The cost of that balance was an endless war. The benefit of the balance was that few intelligent species had gone extinct as a result of the war. In the coalition ruled with an iron fist by the Maxohlx Hegemony, societies and cultures had been perverted to better serve the needs of their masters, but that was not true of the Rindhalu coalition. The Rindhalu were lazy and neglectful, but mostly benign overlords. They cared little about how their clients structured their societies, as long as the clients performed their assigned tasks in the war effort. Unlike the Maxohlx, the Rindhalu actually had a code of conduct they expected their clients to abide by, and not only in military actions. Client societies were strongly encouraged to protect individual rights, to an extent that would be considered shockingly decadent in the enemy coalition.

Under the largely absentee leadership of the Rindhalu, the Jeraptha had flourished. Would that happy situation continue, if humans became the sole superpower in the galaxy?

Eh. That, he decided, was a question for people far above his pay grade.

And, maybe he was too biased to make a rational judgment about the situation. If successful, the operation would be the greatest action in the long and legendary history of the Ethics and Compliance Office.

That was important in many ways, not the least of which was morale of ECO’s staff. There were many drawbacks to working for the clandestine Office, the worst of which were the restrictions on wagering. ECO officers had access to juicy insider information, and were not allowed to place bets on operations where they could influence the outcome. Which would be fair, if not for the overly broad criteria the Inquisitors used to define ‘influence’. Generally, if anyone in ECO was involved in an action, no one associated with the Office could wager on the outcome, not even in a peripheral way. Unfortunately, each year, many honest Ethics officers got in trouble for wagering on issues that ECO was involved in, even when those officers had no knowledge because the information was restricted. The harsh restrictions on wagering created the greatest barriers to ECO recruiting and retention efforts.

At least, that is what outsiders thought. In reality, the Ethics and Compliance Office actually did not want people who considered gambling to be their greatest passion.

Because while Uhtavio Scorandum was not allowed to wager on some of the juiciest action, he had something better: being in the action.

Nothing was juicier than that.

When an operation was coming together, and the mark was falling for a con, Scorandum felt sorry for those who could only wager on the actions of others. Would he have preferred to wager on whether the Bosphuraq task force would retreat from Funandeng without a shot being fired, or to actually make it happen?

Please.

That decision was easy.

After staring at the ceiling of his office while he ran scenarios in his head, he reached another decision.

Yes.

The opportunity offered by the Maxohlx was exactly the sort of thing ECO was supposed to handle.

It would give him the opportunity to become legendary.

No action was juicier than that.

Striding onto the Escalated’s bridge, he found Kinsta huddled in conversation with the duty officer.

“Sir!” Kinsta straightened up, his antennas drooping and twitching, unable to hide his guilt about sharing gossip.

“At ease, Lieutenant. Commander Marra,” he addressed the duty officer. “We have been idle for too long. Set a course for Home Fleet headquarters, and engage when ready.”

Marra attended to her duty with a mere nod of her head, but Kinsta could not resist asking the question that was on everyone’s minds. “Is this because of the Maxohlx, Captain?”

“Yes,” Scorandum took a deep breath, for dramatic effect. “They gave me a warning,” he told the bridge crew, knowing the news would spread around, and eventually beyond, the ship. What he said was technically true, which of course was the best type of truth. The Maxohlx had given him a warning.

They had also offered a solution, but the crew didn’t need to know about that.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Shiiiiiit,” Dave groaned, looking at the soldiers around him. “Is anybody getting a signal, other than helmet to helmet laserlink stuff?” All the replies came back negative, most people just shook their heads.

Jates kept low, walking over to Dave and taking a knee next to him so they could talk quietly, their helmet faceplates swung open. “Suggestions, Czajka? We are exposed and outnumbered out here,” the big lizard swiveled his head side to side to scan the sky above. He nodded to where Lt. Colonel Striebich was reviewing their meager collection of supplies. “The Colonel wants options.” With all of the infantry company’s officers dead, or presumed dead, Striebich was nominally in command. Being smart, she delegated most of the details to Jates, as the acting platoon sergeant.

Dave wanted to suggest that Striebich’s boyfriend sort out the mess upstairs, so the UN Navy destroyers could provide close-space support. He knew that was unfair. He knew the resentment he felt, that their two pilots had ejected just before the dropship slammed into the riverbank, was also unfair. Fourteen people had died in the crash. If the pilots had not ejected, there would have been two more dead, and nothing gained by it. He knew his anger should be directed at the enemy. Or at the bad intel that had failed to detect a freakin’ fleet of Thuranin ships in the remote star system. If anyone was to blame, it was Skippy the not-Magnificent for missing that fact. Globakus had been selected precisely because it was remote and unimportant and opposition was known, known to be light. According to Skippy, that is. The operation should have been easy, at least the landing phase.

Instead, what had been a full infantry company of a hundred eighty people on the ground was now forty soldiers, with eight of those injured badly enough to not be combat effective. Twenty two had survived from the dropship flown by Striebich, and another fourteen had walked away from the crash of Razor Three. There was no sign of the third Scarab.

When they had pulled everything useful from the wrecked spacecraft, the group now under Striebich’s command set off heading west, for lack of a better plan. They needed a better plan. Stranded on a hostile alien world, without overhead cover from friendly starships, and outnumbered by the enemy, the situation was dire. It also wasn’t yet hopeless. They needed a plan to survive, to hang on until the destroyer squadron could establish control of space around the planet, or at least prevent the Thuranin from taking control.

Think Czajka, think, he told himself. “There’s supposed to be a, uh,” he eyeclicked to bring up a map overlay in his visor. “A Marine Corps unit around here. Unless they got orders to move out. They should have been outside the impact zone.”

“United States Marines?” Jates asked.

“Uh, yeah.” Sometimes, it was easy to forget that other countries had Marine units.

“Effing Jarheads,” someone spat over the platoon channel.

“Hey,” Dave turned to glare at the offender. “The way I figure it, Marines are infantry like us,” with his free hand, he tapped the insignia on one shoulder of his mech suit. “That makes them all right to me.”

Jates studied his own map. “You want to send out scouts, to contact these Marines?”

“Nah,” Dave shook his head. “Too risky. We’ll try it the old fashioned way. Kowalski,” he called to the soldier who was not a fan of the Marines. “Get over here.”

“Staff Sergeant, come on. You gotta be kidding me,” Kowalski looked up at the tree in dismay.

“I’m not a staff sergeant, and do I look like I’m joking?” Dave thumped his faceplate against the hapless soldier’s own. “Get your ass up there.”

“It won’t hold my weight in this suit,” Kowalski protested.

“Then you best strip down, huh?”

Clad only in the silky suit liner shirt and pants, plus the mechanical boots and gloves to assist climbing, Kowalski clambered slowly up the alien tree, flinching away as sharp, sticky needles of the pine-like tree scraped against his face. “Shit!” He cursed. “The sap on this thing stings your skin.”

“You want scented or unscented lotion, for your baby-soft skin?” Dave was disgusted. “Move your ass, we haven’t got all day.”

“I’m climbing fast as I can. I’m not good with heights, that’s why I went infantry instead of airborne.”

“Move!”

While Kowalski was slowly nearing the top of the tree, Dave popped the seal on his own helmet, setting it on the ground next to his rifle. Jates cocked his head. “What are you doing, Czajka?”

“Getting ready, in case he gets stuck up there. Sometimes,” Dave unlatched the suit’s torso, “when you want a job done right, you gotta do it yourself.”

“This is as high as I can go,” Kowalski called from eighteen meters up the tree trunk. “The branches up here are too small to hold my-”

“Yeah, yeah. Good enough,” Dave kept the suit torso on, ready to seal it back up at the first sign of danger. “You know what to do.”

Kowalski took a deep breath, faced toward the southeast, and bellowed as loud as he could into the boom microphone that dangled across his face. “Hey! ExForce! Any Marines out there?” The sound was amplified by a speaker hung around his neck, making him wince.

A faint echo of his voice came back, bouncing off a rockslide that exposed the side of a low hill. “Nothing,” he called down to the ground. “No one is-”

“Shut up,” Dave held up a hand for silence. He did not expect a reply immediately. After ten seconds, he ordered, “Try the recognition signal.”

“Echo Golf Romeo One Niner!” Kowalski sang out, straining his vocal cords, his suit’s speaker at maximum volume. “Staff Sergeant, I got nothin’ up here.”

“Keep trying.”

After five minutes of repeated calls, Dave removed his own suit with the help of Jates. “What’s next?” The big Verd inquired.

“Next? Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Dave muttered. “All right, Kowalski, you can come down now.”

“It’s harder to climb down than up,” the soldier complained.

“Jump, and I will catch you,” Jates offered as Dave jumped up to get a grip on the lowest branch of another tree, and swung his legs up.

“Really?” Kowalski liked the idea of jumping even less than the prospect of feeling his way down with his feet.

“No, you dumbass,” Jates snorted. “Climb down the way you got up there.”

Dave quickly realized what Kowalski said was right; the long, stiff needles of the tree had a sticky sap that made his skin tingle. Taking care not to touch the base where four needles came together on the branch, helped minimize the amount of sap he accumulated on his face, but it still clung to the gloves. The gecko-like pads of the suit gloves and boots were not hindered by the sap, and pads on the inside of the suit ankles clung to the trunk while he climbed. The tree he had chosen was about the same height as the one Kowalski was in, though it tapered faster, so he had to stop two meters lower.

“Czajka,” Jates called from below, unseen through the dense tangle of branches that reached up and outward for sunlight. “You think your big mouth is louder than Kowalski’s?”

“No, I just think I got some tricks up my sleeve.” Dave took a series of deep breaths, filing his lungs. Tugging the microphone in front of his mouth, he dialed up the volume and shouted, “The Army won the battle of Fallujah!”

No reply for one, two, three-

Then, muffled from far off a voice called out, “Bullshit!”

Dave got down from the tree and immediately wriggled into the torso of his mech suit. “Thanks,” he said as Jates held one of the suit arms.

“Your Marines are coming?” The Verd asked.

“Oh, hell yeah,” Dave laughed. “No way could jarheads ignore something like that. Hey!” he raised his voice. “We should offer the Marines a delicious snack when they get here. Anybody got a box of crayons?”

Ten minutes later, motion sensors on their suits picked up figures approaching, just as Dave was sealing up his mech suit helmet. Jates kept the platoon behind cover, until his helmet received an encrypted signal identifying the figures as belonging to the American 4th Marine Expeditionary Unit, so he cautiously stood up, Czajka beside him. Marines in the lead fanned out when they reached the perimeter of the platoon’s defensive line, and a single person strode forward, holding a rifle at low ready. “All right,” a voice called out. “Who’s the joker in need of an attitude adjustment?”

“That would be me,” Dave raised an arm, seeing in his visor that the Marine was a staff sergeant named Kolev.

“We’ll talk later,” Kolev looked around. “Who’s in charge of your outfit?”

Dave indicated Jates with a thumb. “Surjet Jates here is acting platoon sergeant. Our Ell-Tee didn’t make it. Lieutenant Colonel Striebich,” he pointed to the Air Force officer, “is in command.”

“Shit,” Kolev grunted and lowered his voice. “You have a pilot leading this outfit? We lost our lieutenant when those bastard gunships lit us the fuck up. We’re down to twenty-two effective wardogs. You?” He asked hopefully.

“Thirty two effective,” Dave let out a breath. “We had a freakin’ starship fall on our heads. Dropships pulled some of us out, then we crash-landed here, this is what’s left of our company.”

Kolev looked around. “Where’s your mules?” He used the nickname for the four-legged mechanical cargo haulers that had been added to the Legion’s standard list of equipment.

“Gone,” Dave explained. “When we bugged out, we couldn’t take anything other than rifles. Our mortar and anti-air teams left their gear behind.”

“Sheeee-it,” the Marine grunted. “We have an anti-air squad, but they’re down to four missiles. All our heavy gear was lost when gunships hit our mules. We have two mules left,” he jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “They’re carrying people who can’t walk.” Lowering his voice again, he added, “Some of them are in a bad way. You have a medic with you? Our corpsman bought the farm.”

“We have a medic,” Dave frowned, knowing what was left of his platoon was hard pressed to provide medical care to their own people. “Jates here will get your people sorted.” Seeing Kolev’s skeptical look, he explained, “Surjet Grade Three is equivalent to an E-7,” making the point that the alien outranked both himself and Kolev, in the NATO-standard hierarchy adopted by the Legion.

“Surjet,” Kolev nodded to the big Verd-kris. “Jates? Czajka? Huh. Hey, you guys are-”

“Mavericks, yeah,” Dave had grown tired of being a celebrity and the expectations that came with it. That, plus not wanting to make themselves a bigger target, was why the Mavericks rarely displayed their unit insignia in the field. “Do you-”

Dave’s shadow disappeared as a searingly bright light flared above. He hit the ground even before someone shouted “DOWN” over the platoon channel. With his faceplate gone partially opaque to protect his vision, he kept his eyes tightly closed for a count of ten. Cracking open one eye, he saw his visor flashing a warning, so he counted to ten again. The warning had faded from red to yellow. “What the hell was that?” He asked, around the time others were doing the same. Around him, people were getting to their feet, looking warily at the sky. High in the northwest there was a bright flickering ball of fire, a new and short-lived sun. Already, the light was dimming as streamers arced out and down, chunks of debris burning through the atmosphere. Dave’s suit computer calculated the trajectories of the artificial meteors, and concluded that while he was within the cone of potential planetfall, nothing of substantial size was expected to strike his position.

“Hell,” Kolev grunted. “That has to be a starship, right?”

“Yeah,” Dave had seen enough ships destroyed by uncontrolled release of jump capacitor energy. The harsh X-rays of the explosion were distinctive, fortunately the planet’s atmosphere had absorbed most of it even before the high-energy photons struck his armored suit. “Question is, theirs or ours? The Navy didn’t have much-”

A voice, distorted by static, broke into the channel. “UNEF forces, this is Captain Duchamp of the Marseilles. Scratch one enemy battlewagon.”

Whatever the destroyer squadron leader said next was drowned out by cheering, some people punching fists in the air and jumping, forgetting they were in mech suits. The suits had to contain the enthusiasm of their users, so no one got hurt. Dave focused on the message, selecting out noise on the channel. “-striking enemy positions as we can. We will feed data to-” There was a burst of static. “-we can. Hold out until-” Another burst of static. Dave tried to replay the message, but there wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard.

“There they go,” Jates pointed to the sky, where lights twinkled.

“Fuckin’ Navy is leaving us!” Someone said angrily.

“Hey you, can that chatter!” Jates barked. “Our destroyers just took out an enemy battleship. They are doing damned well up there.”

“Looks like they blew up a battleship, a heavy cruiser and two frigates,” Dave read from the data package transmitted by the Marseilles, as he realized that Jates had referred to the UN Navy ships as ‘ours’. He needed to ponder the significance of that, later. “Opposition is two heavy cruisers now, a pair of DDs,” he used the US Navy designation for destroyers, “and, uh, a couple escorts. That should even the odds a bit?”

“Hey, Czajka,” Kowalski asked. “The Thuranin will have to leave orbit now, right? Our tin cans knocked out their battleship.”

“I don’t know,” Dave shrugged. “Space combat tactics were never something I got into, you know?” He suspected the UN Navy was still working out their tactics. “Surjet, you see this to the east of us, across the-”

“Yes,” the Verd confirmed. “We’re going to have company soon.”

Dave studied the map that was part of the data package transmitted by the Marseilles. An enemy formation of at least company size was less than fifty kilometers to the east, and moving toward the stranded ExForce platoon. The enemy unit was mounted in vehicles, strung out along three more or less parallel routes, to avoid making an easy target for an orbital strike.

“What is it?” Kowalski asked.

“Look at Grid Three Three Seven in the map update. We’ve got a whole lot of pissed-off warrior caste assholes coming this way.”

“Shit!” Kowalski gulped. “Hey, Sir,” Dave had long stopped reminding people not to call him ‘Sir’. “The Navy will nuke these lizards before they get to us, right? Come on, our Navy just blew a battleship to hell.”

“I don’t know, Kowalski. Maybe our ships just got lucky.”

“We got lucky,” Derek shook his head on the videoconference. The two combat-effective destroyers had been forced to launch their attack before they were fully ready, because the enemy had presented a golden opportunity that couldn’t be missed. The lone Thuranin battleship had been maneuvering to change to a polar orbit, and there was a point where its velocity would be nearly motionless relative to the ground below. Only the massive battlewagon’s engines were keeping it from falling, momentarily making it a big, fat target. Derek had feared the Thuranin forced their ship into the awkward maneuver to dangle it as bait for the UN ships. If that was the enemy’s intention, it had backfired on them spectacularly, with the capital ship falling to the surface in two large and many small pieces. But, the UN Navy ships had not escaped the battle unscathed.

“I can’t disagree with you,” Captain Duchamp of the Marseilles tugged at the bandage hanging down over his left eye. His ship had taken a railgun dart that punched through the thin layer of armor plating on the starboard side before ripping through the vulnerable interior and tearing loose three armor panels on the port side on its way out. Ironically, the Marseilles had survived because the destroyer’s armor was so thin, it had not caused the dart to smash itself into a jet of plasma that would have wrecked a large section of the ship. Part of the damage that was caused by the railgun dart, and a subsequent particle beam that struck the same area, was the rear bulkhead of the bridge being pierced by a chunk of shrapnel. Pieces ricocheting around the bridge were responsible for the gash on Duchamp’s forehead, a nasty cut to his left arm, and numerous similar injuries to almost everyone on the bridge. It was a miracle that no one was killed, though three people were in the ship’s sickbay, being tended to by doctors and medical machines. “Enemy reaction time is impressive.”

“They’ve been fighting this war for a long time,” Derek noted. “Sir, being lucky isn’t a bad thing. We knocked a battleship out of orbit. The Thuranin will respect our missile capability now. They know they can’t ignore us, and do whatever they want above the planet.”

“That’s what worries me, Bonsu. The little green MFers have already adapted to us. They’ve pulled their ships together in a defensive formation, with the two heavy cruisers at the center. The escort ships can saturate the area with overlapping sensor fields that negate the stealth of our fancy missiles, and they can concentrate the point-defense cannons against one target at a time.”

“Jacques,” Sao Paulo’s captain spoke. “That assumes their ships stayed in formation after they engaged stealth. They can’t think we’re stupid enough to take the bait.” Following the battle, the Thuranin ships had moved to protect a cruiser that was suffering intermittent gaps in its stealth field. Or, that is what the Thuranin wanted the UN force to think. “Jacques, Sao Paulo didn’t get a scratch in the last action,” he said in a slightly defensive tone. His destroyer had jumped in at long range and launched missiles, before the other two ships in the squadron went in close to launch a furious attack on the battleship. It was all the crippled Sao Paulo could do, and everyone in the squadron knew it. “While the two of you are patching up battle damage, I propose to jump in again, launch a spread of sensor drones. They can go active, tell us whether there really are stealthed ships around that cruiser or not.”

“Let me think about that,” Duchamp frowned. “We may want to wait until we’re ready for another go. I’d hate to pinpoint the location of the enemy, then have them scramble before we can adjust. My AI tells me we’ll have repaired all the damage we can fix, within the hour. Bonsu?”

Derek’s ship had escaped serious damage in the brief but savage battle. “Shield projectors will be fully recharged in ten minutes, then we’ll be ready to go. Sir, I agree with Captain Sousa, this might be a good time to poke the enemy with a stick.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Right now, we can’t take the risk of hitting that cruiser. Like you said, if this becomes a battle of attrition, we lose. If we can force the enemy to change tactics again, we might see an opportunity.”

“It’s worth a try,” Sousa prodded. “At least, we can see if the sensor drones we have work as advertised, against Thuranin stealth technology.”

Duchamp took a deep breath while he considered. “I understand your point, Emilio. No. Not yet. While we have time, I want to cross-deck missiles from Sao Paulo to Marseilles and Boston. We’ll get that done, then you see if you can flush the quarry.”

“Those cliffs will be a bitch to climb,” Staff Sergeant Kolev noted. Stretching across their path to the southwest was a ridge a hundred meters higher than the surrounding terrain. The north face of the slope was topped by a vertical escarpment that ranged from ten to twenty meters tall, with the height not being the major problem. Piles of rock at the bottom of the cliff demonstrated how easily the gray rock crumbled, it would be difficult to climb even without the added mass of powered armor. “We should try that,” he instinctively pointed with an arm, though highlighting the area in his visor and sharing the image was more effective, “pass up there?”

Jates knew what the Marine was talking about. There was a gap in the ridge about three kilometers to the north, where the cliff had tumbled down to fall into the valley below. The map showed that the open ground leading up to and over the pass was littered with large rocks, but a lane had been cleared through the area years ago, when the Ruhar were planning to construct a road there. For whatever reason, the road never progressed further than surveying, and clearing major obstacles.

On the map, the pass looked like the perfect route over the ridge. “Czajka,” Jates said to the security contractor. “Send out drones to scout that pass.”

A pair of small, stealthy recon drones zipped away, keeping low over the treetops. The drones were nearly silent, their turbo fans buried within the hull and surrounded by sound-cancelling material. With a breeze rippling the forest, there was no concern about downdraft from the drones being visible as they disturbed the leaves below. Splitting up as they reached the open grassland a half-kilometer from the base of the pass, they dove steeply to hug the ground. The operators set the machines to crisscross the area side to side, weaving back and forth as they rose along the uneven slope of the pass.

Up over the top of the pass, they inspected the other side with passive sensors.

“Looks clear,” one operator said, sending the results to the platoon leadership. “You want us to go active, Surjet?”

“Do it,” Jates ordered. Deploying active sensors to scan under the ground would alert any enemy unit within twenty kilometers, letting the enemy know that aliens were somewhere in the vicinity of the pass. Not using active ground-penetrating sensors involved even more risk; the pass could be mined, or covered by remote-controlled guns. The enemy knew that what Kolev said was true, the pass was the best route over the ridge.

The drones climbed to twenty meters and repeated their outbound flight, crisscrossing as they flew up and over the pass, their active sensors probing five or more meters deep into the rocky soil.

When the pre-programmed search pattern was complete, the operators set their devices to orbit in lazy circles, waiting for a decision.

“Still looks clear,” Kolev replayed the data in his visor, trusting the evidence of his own eyes over the automated search routines of the drones. The drones would have sent an alert if their scanners detected anything hazardous, and they had not found anything that could be threatening. Between the two drones, they had only found a few items that were artificial, two were beverage containers probably discarded by the road construction crews. The other items were tiny scattered fragments of cellulose fibers that littered the area, just under the surface.

“Uhhhh,” Dave was also replaying the sensor data. “Jates, Kolev, look at this.” He highlighted sections of the map and sent it to the others. “See how the soil is compacted here in circles, here, and here? There are more sites like this farther up the pass.”

“I see it,” Kolev muttered. There were a half-dozen round marks under the soil, several meters down. “So? Probably the road-building equipment tamped down the soil.”

“Yeah, could be, but, you can see the tracks of their vehicles,” Dave highlighted strips of ground where something heavy had rolled over, through the pass. The double set of tracks were faint, barely visible except where the composition of the soil made it less able to bounce back from being compressed. “These circles go up onto the sides of the pass, see? Whatever equipment that rolled through there stayed in the middle. And,” he enhanced the image. “There’s something in the middle of each circle, it looks like, I don’t know what it is. Something soft? Huh. The scan says it’s, wood. That can’t be right.”

“Old tree stumps?” Kolev guessed.

“Tree stumps that are all almost exactly seventy centimeters in diameter?”

“What are you saying, Czajka?” Jates was growing impatient.

“I’m saying that these circles look a lot like impact sites. Like, somebody used inert rounds to sight in their artillery, you know?” He could not image why the impact sites had lumps of wood in the center, unless-

“Shit,” Kolev grunted, taking another look at the pattern of circles. They were not regularly spaced, but they walked up and over the pass “You could be right.”

“The shells would still be buried in the soil,” Jates objected.

“Not if they policed the area,” Kolev noted. “That’s the perfect shit job for a group of Marines who need incentive training. Huh. They could have filled in the craters, but the soil underneath would still be compacted. Yeah,” he warmed to the idea. “Those fragments the drones saw, the cellulose fibers stuck in the dirt, kinda shallow? That could be from testing an airburst, antipersonnel weapon.”

“Cellulose?” Dave would have scratched his head if he weren’t wearing a helmet. “That is wood, right?”

“Wood, or cardboard,” Kolev nodded. “A nice bio-degradable material, if you want to simulate a shrapnel weapon without having to police a couple thousand fragments. Those tree stumps? Maybe they made the inert rounds out of cellulose fibers also. Huh. Pretty smart. Lightweight, saves having to lug around a lot of useless mass. And they could just leave them in the ground to decay.”

 Dave’s face turned white at the thought of hardened ceramic shrapnel replacing the cellulose slugs. “Shit!

“That's a pure choke point. I bet every piece of artillery the enemy owns is in range and ready to blow us to shit.” Kolev concluded. “Czajka, you’re pretty smart for an Army puke. Surjet, we should reconsider, try another route.”

Jates ground his teeth while he thought. “We do not know whether there is any artillery in this sector.”

“I know one way of finding out,” Dave snorted. “We know from Fresno that the Kristang love to use artillery.”

Kowalski had inched closer while the three were talking, having missed the first part of the discussion. “Hey, Surjet, we’re not climbing those cliffs, are we? Why can’t we just take that pass?”

Dave shook his head. “Because, it-”

“No,” Jates interrupted. “By all means, lead the way, Kowalski,” he pointed to the road that led through a gap in the mountain ridge.

“Really?” The soldier was instantly wary, feeling that he had unwittingly volunteered for something.

“Yes.” Jates loomed over the hapless soldier and growled, “We can use your burning corpse to mark the engagement zone.”

“Shit,” Kowalski gulped as Kolev and Czajka laughed. “Um, maybe I’ll just,” he backed away, “You know, wait for orders.”

“A wise decision,” Jates growled, just as Lt. Colonel Striebich called.

“Surjet, what’s the hold up? We need to keep moving.”

Dave touched the Verd’s forearm. “Starbuck is cool, man,” he used the pilot’s callsign, given to her because many people didn’t know how to pronounce her surname. Dave knew the experienced Surjet was irritated by having to answer questions from an officer who knew nothing about ground combat. “Just talk to her.”

“I know that, Czajka.” Switching to the platoon command channel, he explained, “There is a good chance the enemy has artillery sighted in on that gap in the ridge.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. What are our-” She paused as mortar fire sounded in the distance with a muffled crump. “Options?” That morning, the platoon had successfully broken contact with the enemy squad that pursued them all the previous night.

“The ridge is lower beginning fifteen kilometers to the south.”

The pilot didn’t reply immediately. “It is also lower only nine klicks to the north.”

“Yes, Ma’am, but there is a bridge across the river to the north. If the enemy is bringing in reinforcements, they will come from that direction.”

“I see it. South, then. Let’s get moving before my legs get stiff again.”

“This is a No-Go,” Duchamp declared, when data was received from the sensor probes launched by Sao Paulo. The probes had flown in stealth to surround the enemy cruiser, that was supposedly experiencing difficulty with its stealth field generators. Coasting into range of the enemy sensor fields, the probes dropped stealth and sent out their own powerful active sensor pulses, revealing the presence of six other enemy ships, including the other heavy cruiser. The other ships were positioned in a globe formation, with the heavy cruiser acting as bait in the center. “Good thinking, Emilio,” he praised the captain of the Sao Paulo. “The Thuranin set up an ambush for us. If we jump in again to take the bait, they will trap us in damping fields. Our AI estimates the damage to Marseilles will take sixteen hours to repair, and a third of our shield projectors will be disconnected during the work. That leaves us with only Boston as fully combat-effective.”

“I hate to add more bad news but,” Captain Sousa shared a display of the battle damage to his own ship. “My ship has to take another reactor offline. After that, we can only make two jumps without eating into our safety margin.”

“Merde,” Duchamp cursed. “In that case Emilio, I’d like to designate Sao Paulo as a stores ship, and rotate crews as needed.”

“As needed for what?” Sousa raised an eyebrow.

“That, is a good question,” Duchamp bit his lower lip.

“We don’t need to win a fight,” Sousa suggested. “We only need to create a contested environment.”

“Eh,” the squadron commander grunted. He knew the theory developed by SPAWAR, the UN Navy’s Space Warfare Command. That unit was responsible for researching and recommending strategy, tactics and doctrine to the UN Navy. Most of their policy documents were based on the experience of the Ruhar and Jeraptha, who had been fighting the war for a very long time. The entry of a new player in the conflict did not change the basic facts or physics, even though the UN ships generally had capabilities the Jeraptha could only dream about. SPAWAR mostly focused on ship-to-ship action, but they had coordinated with the Expeditionary Force to determine how starships could, and should, support units dirtside. To know how he could offer protection and fire support to the people on the ground, Duchamp had to understand the tactics of ground-pounders. People who fought inside mech suits, rather than inside a starship that massed thousands of tons.

The ExForce, both from their own experience on Paradise and from setting boots on multiple worlds with the Alien Legion, agreed with every alien civilization across the galaxy, on how best to deploy ground troops. With the threat of orbital bombardment literally hanging over their heads, the largest unit that could be gathered together was a platoon. Anywhere from thirty to seventy troops, depending on whether the base rifle squads were supplemented by heavy weapons and anti-air squads. Larger units such as companies and battalions existed almost purely for administrative and command and control purposes, platoons rarely fought in company formation. The reason was math that could not be argued with. A company, consisting of over a hundred soldiers, provided a tempting target for an orbital strike. A platoon, especially when equipped with chameleonware on individual mech suits, and with portable stealth field generators carried by mules, often presented a slippery target for a starship. Ground units on the offensive mostly focused on identifying the location of enemy units, so they could be hit by indirect fire, rather than engaging directly with rifles. Orbital bombardment by starships, even when conducted by line-of-sight weapons like railguns and masers, were still classed as ‘indirect fire’, for want of a better term. Ground units fighting on defense tried to avoid being herded into concentrations large enough to be deemed ‘ship-worthy’. Meaning, a target on the ground that was worth risking a starship to hit it.

That was what Captain Sousa meant when he said the UN destroyer squadron did not need to defeat the Thuranin force, the three ships under Duchamp’s command only needed to create a ‘contested environment’. A situation where the enemy commander had to consider whether an orbital strike was worth the risk to ships that were somewhat vulnerable in low orbit. If the Thuranin knew the UN squadron had been chased away, their ships could spread out to cover the planet, and leisurely fire their maser cannons at targets as small as a single squad of humans. But, if the Thuranin had to worry about attacks by the human starships, they had to remain in a defensive formation and in stealth, concealing their positions.

“I know the theory,” Duchamp frowned. “The question is, does the enemy think the same way? They may have standing orders to destroy a human force if they have the opportunity, which they certainly have here. We know the Maxohlx coalition is desperate to demonstrate they can contain us, my counterpart might be willing to lose every ship he has, just to save face. My point is, contesting the battlespace here is a risk, and it will only be worth the risk if the enemy cooperates. No,” he shook his head. He was responsible for the lives aboard the three ships of the squadron. “We can keep their attention, with minimal risk, by Boston jumping in at a safe distance, and jumping away. Let them know we are still here.”

“Where would we go?” Sousa asked, skeptical. “Jacques, are you suggesting we are a Fleet in Being?” He referenced the old strategy of a fleet of warships being a threat, and constricting the enemy’s range of options, even if the fleet wasn’t doing anything. Just by existing, and presenting a potential threat, the fleet could disrupt enemy plans. “That only works if the Thuranin view us as a continuing threat.”

“I’m suggesting,” Duchamp glared, annoyed. “That we don’t have many options, and even fewer good options. Bonsu, when can you move out?”

“Soon as we program a jump, Sir,” Derek answered.

“I am sending you a course,” Duchamp looked down as he typed in commands. “Now. Execute when you’re ready.”

Moments after the conference call ended, Derek was interrupted by a call from the Sao Paulo. “Captain Sousa?”

“Is there anything you need from me?”

“Not, um, right now,” Derek said. “Your offer to rotate crews might become necessary, depending on how long we’re at action stations. My people need to stay sharp if we’re going to stay useful.”

“Speaking of being useful,” Sousa lowered his voice, though they were both alone in their offices. “You see the problem with Duchamp’s plan?”

“I do. The enemy also makes plans. Waving a red flag in front of the Thuranin will get their attention for a while, but they want a battle here. I’m afraid they will do something to force us to react to them.”

CHAPTER SIX

Boston made two passes near the enemy formation, or near the best guess of where the enemy ships were deployed, because the Thuranin had certainly moved following their exposure by the active sensor pulses of the probes. After the first pass, the heavy cruiser the Thuranin had designated as bait moved to a slightly higher altitude, presenting a more tempting target, as attacking ships would be closer to jump distance. Boston did not take the bait, jumping in again to pass through the area at a safe distance, then jumping away.

Then the trouble started.

“I was worried this would happen,” Derek said sourly, on the conference call.

Duchamp’s eyes narrowed. “You expected this? Why didn’t you say anything about it?”

“I expected the enemy to do something to force a battle,” Derek explained. “I didn’t know what they would do. It doesn’t matter. Now, we have to act.”

The trouble was, the enemy had become tired of waiting for the UN ships to engage again. After the initial paralyzing terror of being attacked by Maxohlx missiles, their AIs had analyzed the performance characteristics of the missiles, and recommended tactics to reduce the advantage of the UN ships. By using their lighter ships to form a bubble around the valuable two heavy cruisers, a dense network of overlapping sensor fields could detect incoming missiles, and share data between the point-defense systems of all ships. The Thuranin might lose a few frigates or a destroyer, but their heavy ships could be protected against anything other than a large-scale attack launched at close range. Dangling one cruiser as bait was supposed to lure the UN ships in, where they could be trapped by damping fields, and overwhelmed in what would probably be a chaotic melee. The superior numbers and directed-energy weapons of the Thuranin would be decisive at short range, which was why Captain Duchamp had quite rightly kept his lightly armored ships at a safe distance.

And that was why the Thuranin were no longer using a heavy cruiser as bait. Instead, that ship had descended to low altitude, dropped stealth entirely, and was firing its cannons against the invasion force on the ground. Groups as small as a single squad, of human or Verd-kris soldiers, were being targeted by maser cannons designed to melt starship armor. The ground force, when their transmissions could break through enemy jamming, were screaming that they were being slaughtered. They were caught between a rock and a hard place, with no good options. Soldiers who gathered together for protection against Kristang troops, became targets for the big guns of the starship. But isolated fireteams were quickly overwhelmed by enemy infantry. The only tactic that offered hope of survival was counterintuitive: platoons advancing and maintaining close contact with enemy units were, so far, safe from orbital bombardment. No one, especially not the Kristang, expected that situation to continue. The Thuranin were very likely to drop their restraint, and fire on humans and Verds regardless of the risk to the local inhabitants.

Something had to be done, and Derek knew the somebody who had to do it was his ship, the only combat-ready UN warship in the system.

“We do,” Duchamp agreed. “I have been giving this some thought, while my ship is undergoing repairs. Our AI ran simulations, and I have a tactic that could work. Bonsu, your ship and mine will accelerate, I’m sending the specs to you now. Once we have attained the required speed, we can jump in near the targets and transit the damping field within ninety six seconds. Then we will jump away.”

Derek quickly scanned the file. “Sir, we will be in engagement range for less than twenty four seconds. That’s not much time for us to-”

“The enemy will have the same constraint,” Duchamp noted.

“Yes, Sir, but,” Derek tried to think of a tactful way to disagree with the squadron leader. “We can only do this once.”

“No,” Duchamp shook his head. “Our ships will maintain momentum, even add a bit of speed from the slingshot effect. We can jump in again behind the planet, and make another pass.”

“I’m not disputing the physics. The Thuranin will anticipate us jumping in a second time. They will disperse their formation to be outside our damping fields, so they can jump ahead of our path, and set up their own damping fields to prevent us from escaping.”

Duchamp opened his mouth, and closed it without saying anything. To his credit, he did not glare or shout at the squadron’s junior captain. He shrugged. “That is an excellent point, Bonsu.”

“Sir, I think we should accelerate like you suggested, but Boston’s engines are fully capable. We can delay our burn while Marseilles is getting up to speed. I’d like to use the time to try something.”

“What?”

“Sir, before I say anything, may I have half an hour to run a check?”

“Half an hour, yes,” Duchamp agreed. “Marseilles will commence acceleration in ten minutes.”

Derek squeezed himself through the hatch into Boston’s portside forward missile magazine, wondering how the larger Jeraptha managed to fit through the opening. The compartment was not intended for occupancy by biological beings, he had to be careful not to bash his head on something sharp, or get fingers caught between the feed mechanisms. Missiles were on racks, waiting to be slid into the rotary launcher mechanism, depending on what type of weapon was selected by the gunnery team on the bridge. He selected a ship-killer missile that was on the outer side of the rack, simply because it was easy to work on without crouching down. Before he popped open the access panel, he again watched the instruction video on his tablet, grateful that he didn’t have to sit through an opera scene or an advertisement. The instructions were easy, and the access panel opened without a fuss. Plugging a cable into his tablet, then a port inside the missile, he-

“Hello,” the missile said, startling him. A blue light glowed on the nosecone as the device spoke. “I am multimode antiship weapons platform Mark Seventeen, Block Six,” the voice sounded like a nerdy, over-eager six year old boy.

“Uh, hi,” Derek froze. Talking missiles were not mentioned in the fleet’s YouTube instruction manuals. “I am pleased to meet you, Mark Sevent-”

“You can call me Kevin.”

“Kev- Uh.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I am, uh, just not used to weapons that can talk. Do all of you-”

“Oh, this is new to us too. Talking to you, I mean. We always exchanged data with others in our formation, but really talking is different.”

“When did you-”

“It started when Skippy upgraded our programming. He gave us names, too. That was very nice of him.”

“Yeah, I guess-”

“Other than that, Skippy is an asshole,” the missile declared.

Derek had to laugh. “I can’t argue with you about that. But don’t tell Skippy I said it.”

“Your secret is safe with me. How can we help you, Captain Bonsu?”

“Well, it’s-”

“We can help, right? Please? Ooh, can we kill something? Please? That’s what we do, you know?”

“Yeah, I- Uh. Surely you understand that when you kill an enemy ship, it’s not good for you?”

“Yes. And don’t call me Shirley. I’m Kevin,” it insisted.

“I didn’t-”

“She is Shirley,” Kevin said.

“Hello,” another weapon lit up. “I’m Shirley.”

“And I’m Betty!” A third missile glowed.

“Uh,” Derek sputtered. “This is all a little-”

“When do we get to kill something? Huh? Huh?” Kevin’s nosecone light pulsed excitedly.

“Soon. Maybe. Hopefully. It-”

“Sir, how can we get from ‘Maybe’ to ‘Yes’?” Kevin demanded, the smarmy way a car salesman would ask ‘How can I get you into a new car today’?

“It’s complicated. I need to know whether you can do something. You, all of you, are able to network during an attack, correct? One of you can pop out of stealth, to go active and act as a controller?”

“Ooh, please, that is easy,” Kevin scoffed. “Ask me a hard question. I can control up to twenty three other missiles, when-”

“Hey!” Shirley protested. Or it could have been Betty, Derek wasn’t sure. “Who put you in charge? I can control-”

“Wait!” Derek waved his arms, not knowing if the weapons understood the gesture. “The Dash Ten for you-”

“The what?” Shirley or Betty snapped.

“The instruction manual,” Derek took a breath before explaining. “It says a formation of missiles, your type of missiles, can take turns providing guidance.”

“But that’s no fun,” Kevin moaned.

“Isn’t the controller missile exposed to enemy fire, and less likely to score a hit?”

“Hmm, good point,” Kevin muttered. “Shirley should do it.”

“Hey!”

It took Derek longer than half an hour to get a sensible answer from the bickering missiles. He contacted Duchamp on his phone, while walking back to Boston’s bridge. “Sir, I think we have another option.”

With a ground-shaking BOOM, the bridge behind them disappeared in a cloud of debris, the center section collapsing into the river with a tremendous splash that added a spray of water to the smoke and dust hanging in the air. Dave saw the bridge falling in his helmet visor, through images transmitted by a sensor placed on the near side of the bridge. Only six enemy troops had made it across the bridge before the depleted UNEF platoon’s sappers detonated the explosive charges. Through the dust he could see those unlucky lizards flatten themselves on the ground, then spring to their feet and run along the riverbank toward a cluster of buildings. They didn’t reach shelter, the ExForce platoon cut them down with withering fire, then finished the job with a pair of rockets.

The bridge was gone. Even in a time when troops were moved between star systems by wormholes, the loss of a route across a major river could stall a ground offensive. Neither side had full control of the orbital environment, and the Kristang also could not rely on air transport to move large numbers of troops, it was too dangerous to fly vulnerable aircraft in the battlespace. The beleaguered platoon should get a break now that the enemy had broken contact, maybe take-

Lt. Colonel Striebich called over the platoon network. “Keep moving, everyone. The map shows the forest begins a kilometer ahead of us, we’ll go another three klicks and regroup.”

Dave didn’t reply, he heard Jates acknowledge. They needed a halt, to treat the wounded, swap powercells, redistribute ammo, and just take off helmets to get a quick bite of tasteless ration bars.

Three kilometers, then he could rest. Even in the mech suit, he was tired. Like everyone else, he had dialed down the power assist level to conserve the suit’s energy, using more effort from his own muscles. He could go hungry, but his suit wouldn’t function without power.

The Legion on Globakus had no chance. Looking back, Dave knew that. He had known it all along, and didn’t want to admit it.

The enemy had all the advantages. They knew the terrain, and because the clans on Globakus had been fighting each other and had been planning to continue fighting each other for years, they had prepared the ground in strategic areas, and had plans for offense and defense. They had support from the local civilian population, even if that support was given grudgingly with a gun pointed at their heads. Their supply lines were short, and they had access to stockpiles of food, ammunition, weapons and medical equipment. Perhaps most important, they had mobility. Even when both sides used powered armor, and therefore individual troops could travel quickly and carry heavy loads, having ready access to simple, heavy-haulage equipment like all-terrain trucks gave the Kristang an ability to position and reposition heavy artillery.

The Verds and their human allies had no such advantages. They had to rely on static map data for knowledge of the terrain, without access to real-time satellite imaging. The local civilians ran away when encountered, they also reported the position of the invaders. Supply lines for the invading force were nonexistent, they had what they had brought to the surface and no more. They could utilize captured stocks of ammunition, and the Verds could eat food taken from the planet’s inhabitants, but that was not a reliable source of sustainment. Unable to eat anything they found on the surface, humans existed on short rations, the first wave’s cargo had been heavily weighted toward ammunition and powerpacks, with subsequent waves expected to bring down less immediate needs, like food, shelters and spare parts. The only non-line-of-sight weapons available to the invasion force were two small mortar tubes for each platoon. After the first half-day of combat, the handful of remaining mortar shells had been reserved for counter-battery fire, to strike enemy artillery positions. That tactic slowed down the Kristang by forcing them to pack up and move after they fired a single shell or rocket, but its usefulness fell somewhere just above the ‘better than nothing’ category.

For three days since the Thuranin task force attacked, the rag-tag platoon had been falling back constantly, mostly conducting a fighting retreat. Every time they thought the enemy had broken contact, the Kristang approached from a new direction, often leapfrogging the platoon’s line of retreat. It was discouraging and exhausting, and the battle of attrition could not go on much longer. The only good news was that the enemy was foolhardy, small units engaging in frontal assaults without any attempt at coordination. The culture of the warrior caste valued individual displays of bravery above any sort of planning or preparation, seeming to care more about the effort than the results. As a result, the ratio of enemy to Legion casualties was four or five to one in the invader’s favor.

Dave was OK with that.

Unfortunately, the enemy had raw numbers on their side, they could afford to lose five or even ten warriors for every human or Verd-kris killed. The enemy leadership was throwing their hotheaded youngest warriors into the battle, partly as a convenient way to get rid of potential troublemakers. The young warriors knew they were being used and they didn’t protest, knowing that for most of them, proving themselves in battle was the only way to advance in the clan hierarchy.

What Dave worried about was that, after the enemy ran out of young warriors to use as cannon fodder, their leaders might actually start making an effort to be smart.

Then the Legion would be in big trouble.

It might be difficult at first to see any increase in the peril facing the Legion, when they were constantly under pressure.

An icon in Dave’s visor switched from yellow to red and began blinking. “Shit,” he grunted. “Hey, Chandra?” He called the wounded soldier he was carrying. “Chandra, say something. Talk to me?”

“Czajka,” Jates interrupted. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”

“I’m not giving up so-”

“Are you a medic? His medical monitor says he has no pulse, no brainwaves.”

“Hell,” Dave knelt down, unbuckling the sling across his chest, reaching back to prevent the soldier strapped to his back from falling. It wasn’t easy, the mech suit was bulky in the back to accommodate powercells and the equipment that filtered and reprocessed air, plus he wore an oversized pack. The pack had been adjusted to carry its weight on the left, balancing Chandra on the right. “Hey. Hey, Jates, help me.”

“We don’t have time for,” the Verd snapped. He turned and held Chandra’s inert form while Dave shrugged out of the sling.

“The med monitor could be wrong, you know.”

“It could,” Jates agreed. “But my suit sensors agree with his monitor. Chandra is gone.”

Dave’s own visor had come to the same conclusion, it was not a surprise. The Indian Army sergeant had taken shrapnel in the torso when a rocket warhead exploded close to him, tearing into his suit armor. The only thing they could do was get Chandra out of the heavy and now-useless suit, slap bandages on the wound, and trust his suit liner to keep him alive until real medical attention could be provided. At first, the computer in the neck of the suit liner had estimated less than a seventeen percent chance of the person inside surviving, but Dave had slung the sergeant over his back, and pressed on. Getting bounced up and down on Dave’s back as the platoon tried to shake off pursuit, had not helped Chandra’s medical nanomachines stabilize the man’s injuries, and there wasn’t anything Dave could have done about it. At the time, they were running for their lives, pursued by a much larger Kristang force. The platoon had been racing to get across the river that was now behind them. Before he ran across the bridge, he had called to Chandra and got no response, but the man’s medical monitor showed he was still breathing, still had a weak pulse.

Now he was gone. Dave couldn’t argue with that.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Jates shook him gently. “Czajka, get up. We have to go. We have to go, or more of our people will die.”

“I know.” He knew that Kristang treated the bodies of those killed in combat with respect, it was part of their warrior code. The enemy would not make any effort to honor Chandra’s sacrifice, but they also would not desecrate the corpse. Probably, local civilian lizards would be brought in as a burial detail, and to collect any valuables the Legion left behind. “Sorry,” he laid Chandra on his back, arms folded across his chest. Except for the blood that had soaked through the suit liner, the sergeant could have been taking a nap. He didn’t know Chandra. Was the man Hindi? It didn’t matter, Dave didn’t know the appropriate thing to say and didn’t have time to research the subject. “Vaya con Dios, man,” he patted Chandra’s lifeless shoulder, and snapped a salute to the dead man when he stood up. “Let’s go.”

The Thuranin commander watched as the United Nations Navy destroyer Boston, traveling no faster than on previous arrivals in orbit, jumped in on the far side of the planet, away from the formation of Thuranin ships. Also away from any place where the destroyer could offer support to troops on the ground. At first, the Thuranin prepared to jump in to attack the lone ship, but they were badly out of position and would not have more than a few seconds to engage. Satellites provided a view of Boston’s actions, and the Thuranin commander relaxed just a bit. The human warship had jumped in close to what was left of the assault carrier Chesapeake Bay, presumably to scan for survivors. The human had waited until the assault carrier’s elliptical orbit took it away from the planet, near jump altitude, at least the humans who flew the destroyer were not complete idiots.

That humans would risk a warship, to investigate whether any of their comrades were left alive aboard the shattered assault carrier, was another sign of their weakness. It was foolish and sentimental, and above all, just plain stupid. There wasn’t anything the tiny human force could do to help anyone stranded aboard the broken Chesapeake Bay, it was actually cruel to show that help was so close, yet so far away.

The Thuranin knew there were no living souls aboard the assault carrier, everyone who could move had evacuated by dropship or escape pod, and were scattered across the surface of the planet. While the Thuranin had monitored the dropships and pods fleeing from the broken ship, they had not bothered to interfere. At the time, they were busy fighting a furious battle against the three UN destroyers, and if more of the invasion force reaching the surface caused problems for the Kristang inhabitants of the world, that was a good thing.

It was not a good thing that the humans were already scanning the wreckage of the assault carrier, for the Thuranin commander had planned to send a stealthed probe over to fly inside the shattered hull. The probe would send out a desperate distress call, to lure the humans into battle that would become a trap. Now the commander had one less option, she had to hope the continued bombardment of the invasion force on the surface would force the humans to react.

The destroyer designated as ‘Boston’ did not linger near the Chesapeake Bay. After a brief scan it burned hard, quickly reached jump distance, and disappeared in a flash of gamma rays.

Blowing up the bridge behind them gave the UNEF platoon a break for twenty seven hours, longer than anyone expected. The enemy might also have needed to regroup, or to bring in fresh troops and supplies. What Dave cared about was that he was able to get some rest, though the series of brief catnaps left him feeling groggier than if he had stayed awake. After sixteen hours, the platoon’s communications tech managed to break through jamming enough to get intermittent contact with a Verd-kris unit that was less than thirty kilometers away. The Verds claimed to have raided an enemy convoy and captured equipment, including drones and mortars. They had established a good defensive position in the mountains to the east, Striebich decided to turn in that direction once the Verds provided the correct authentication code.

Their luck, what little they had, ran out in the foothills. The enemy appeared again, in larger numbers, and pursued the ragtag ExForce unit relentlessly. Part of the platoon was caught in the open while slogging across a soggy meadow, and five dead lay there. While carrying a box of supplies on his back, Dave was helping a soldier whose suit legs had been damaged, when his helmet speakers crackled with static. Then, a lizard spoke in the clear. “Humans! You cannot escape us. Among you are those you call ‘Mav-er-icks’,” the Kristang botched the pronunciation of the alien word. “Surrender them to us, and we will allow the others to proceed.”

“What the-” Dave muttered. Others were shouting insults back at the enemy, while Striebich ordered silence. The soldier Dave was helping stumbled to one knee as they climbed a rock-littered slope away from the meadow.

“Sorry. My damned suit won’t-”

Dave hauled the man up, straining even in his powered armor. It was no good. The other soldier’s mech suit was damaged, and down to below a ten percent charge on the powercells. All around him, people who were injured but whose suits were still operational, were overloaded by carrying those who couldn’t walk, or carrying the platoon’s dwindling supplies. Two squads took turns serving as rearguard, overwhelmed by-

They all had to flatten themselves on the ground, finding cover however they could, as four rockets blazed out from the enemy line on the other side of the meadow. Dave hugged the ground and winced as an airburst sent shrapnel pinging off his back. He felt a burning sensation and the suit warned him that something had penetrated the back of his left calf. “Yeah, no shit,” he grunted, rolling over. The damage was worse than he expected, the armor on the back of his lower left leg was dented inward, pressing painfully on his muscle there. Something sharp was digging into-

The soldier he had been helping was down. And would not be getting up. A chunk of shrapnel had sliced into the back of his suit’s neck and red blood dripped out.

That was it.

That was the last straw.

The platoon was not getting out of the fight, not this time.

“Wait!” Dave shouted, holding up a hand toward Striebich, higher up the slope. “Colonel, I- Hey! Hey you lizards!” He switched to the broadcast channel before anyone could stop him. “Stop shooting, stop shooting! This is David Czajka! I am one of the Mavericks.”

“Czajka, what the hell are you doing?” Striebich demanded as she halted, gasping for breath. “You just gave away-”

“Your name means nothing to us, human,” the lizard replied.

“Even you can’t be that fucking stupid,” Dave waved off Jates as the Verd stumbled toward him. “You know who I am.”

“Czajka!” Striebich was striding back down the hill, her movement hampered by the rough terrain. “Don’t-”

“Colonel, if you have a better idea?” He pointed to the injured people, some barely able to stand, some on the ground.

She stopped, breathing raggedly and a shaky hand on one knee. “You can’t be serious.”

“I can buy time.”

“With your life?”

“Ma’am, our lives aren’t worth a damn right now. We, you, need to get these people out of here. If you can link up with the Verds,” he pointed to the ridgeline, “maybe you can hold off the lizards, long enough for the Navy to finish the fight upstairs.”

“I can’t let you-”

“Ma’am, the lizards will want me alive, as a hostage or a trophy. I’ll be safer with them than I am here,” he shook his gimpy leg.

“Jates, help me out of this armor. It’s freakin’ useless anyway,” he grunted and toppled to one knee, the artificial muscles in the critically damaged suit leg unable to respond to his movements.

The big Verd knelt next to Dave and assisted in detaching the backpack with its heavy powercells. With that burden flopped on the ground it was easier to get the torso cracked open, and Jates steadied the shell while the human wriggled awkwardly out of the armor. The good suit leg came off in a smooth motion, but the dented leg had to be pried off. “I will hold the boot,” Jates suggested. “Twist your foot and pull it out.”

“Yeah,” Dave grimaced in pain as his ankle got caught on something. He felt a stab of pain as his calf was sliced by something sharp, then his leg was out of the suit, and he stood up, grateful to see the suit liner was squeezing around the cut to stem the bleeding. “Damn, it’s good to be out of that thing,” he put a hand on the Verd’s shoulder while shaking a knot out of the calf muscle.

“Czajka,” Jates said quietly, leaning close to Dave’s ear. “You are a fool. They don’t want you as a hostage, they know the Navy will not negotiate for your release. You will be tortured for their amusement,” he spat on the dry ground.

“I know that,” Dave was surprised he was able to speak, he was so terrified his teeth felt like they were chattering. Reaching down, he pulled a grenade off Jates’s belt, and tucked it into a pouch at the small of his back. “I’m taking some of them with me.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Czajka,” Jates looked away for a moment. “Even for your species, you are foolish. It has been an honor serving with you.”

“Hey,” Dave laughed nervously. “Do me a favor?”

Jates looked like he had swallowed something unpleasant. “Please don’t ask me to tell Colonel Perkins that you love her,” he said with a shudder.

“Nah. She knows. I want you to stay alive, OK? Get out of here. Go home, see your wife and children again. Shit, man,” he choked up. “I regret that I never got to meet them.”

“I regret you are so ugly I couldn’t let you meet them.”

That made Dave laugh. “Thanks, I needed that. Colonel!” He turned to Striebich, limping the first couple steps. “Call our lizard friends, before they do something hasty?”

Holding his arms over his head while he stumbled down the slope, Dave fell heavily, bashing his chin on a rock. After that, he kept his arms low at his side, palms outward. At the bottom of the slope, he broke into a slow jog across the rain-soaked meadow at the urging of the lizards, the alien voice booming over a loudspeaker. “Yeah, yeah. Screw you, asshole,” he muttered, talking to keep his mind off his short future. Glancing back, he saw the platoon was near the ridge, stragglers being helped to climb the last steps. One tall figure probably was Jates, without the enhanced vision of his helmet visor he couldn’t tell. Jogging with an exaggerated motion that was partly him exaggerating his injury as an excuse to move slower, and partly because his knees feeling like jelly, he stumbled and got up once, twice, three times before the booming voice ordered him to halt. Halt where he was, and get on his knees, hands over his head. “Sounds good, asshole,” he shouted, hoping the lizards heard. “Not long now, not long,” he said to no one, feeling the weight of the grenade at his back. It was already primed, all he had to do was press the button. It occurred to him that the safety features of Kristang grenades were weak, and it occurred to him that was a silly thing to be thinking about at that moment, and he didn’t care. “Come on,” he urged forward the three lizards who approached him warily, rifles aimed at his chest. “Here, lizard, lizard,” he called through dry lips. “Davey has a special treat for you.”

Jates sprinted over the ridge past the last few stragglers and spun around, laying himself prone and looking through the rifle sight. David Czajka was on his knees, hands in the air, while three Kristang warriors walked slowly toward him from three directions; left, right and center. The Kristang were smart, the two on the sides were hanging back, making the one in the center take the risk. The grenade would kill only one of the enemy.

And Czajka, of course.

Dying instantly in a blast was far better than what the Kristang would do to a human captive.

Jates selected a two-shot combination of armor-piercing and explosive-tipped rounds, sighting first on the warrior to the right. Those two would survive the explosion.

They would not get away.

Detonation of the grenade would obscure his view of the warrior on the left, the smoke would take a moment to clear enough for his rifle’s active sighting mode to lock onto that target. He would shoot the warrior on the right first, four rounds to be sure of a kill then wait for the one on the left to come back into view. Using an active targeting pulse would give away his position, but he had to assume the enemy had sensors that could track his rounds back to the source. Mortars would be falling on his position shortly after he fired, he was not concerned about that. In his mind, he played out the scenario, so the grenade explosion would not distract him. Boom, he would not look at the source of the smoke and fire. Press the trigger, sending four rounds into the target. Only the first round needed the rifle to designate the target, the other three would use in-flight guidance from the first projectile. All he had to do was hold the trigger down gently and not move the muzzle significantly off boresight. Then, swing the muzzle to the left and authorize the sight into active mode, pressing the trigger when a tone sounded to notify that a target had been acquired. Wait until he saw the second warrior fall. Wait that two or three extra seconds. Roll behind the ridgeline, tucking the rifle to his chest. Get to his feet, keeping low for the first couple of power-assisted strides, then get his suit into run mode, get clear of the area.

Do all that, and do not think about David Czajka.

Or the human’s sacrifice would be for nothing.

Staring through the rifle scope that was superimposed on his helmet visor, he had to blink moisture away from his eyes. It was annoying and he chided himself for being weak, he had the discipline to blink one eye at a time, never losing sight of his target. With his peripheral vision, he noted the warrior in the center was ten meters from Czajka, close to the grenade’s effective blast radius. The Kristang had stopped, his rifle aimed at the human’s chest. Czajka might not get a better opportunity, he should-

Czajka jerked and fell backwards, struck by a stun bolt!

“No,” Jates grunted, making a snap decision. He would not allow the Kristang to take Czajka alive, he could at least do that for his foolish alien friend. Moving the muzzle carefully to the left, he-

Twin fountains of dirt erupted from the bottom of the slope as mortar rounds struck, making him instinctively flinch, and he lost sight of Czajka. “NO!”

“Jates!” Striebich called, she must have just noticed he had lagged behind. “Surjet! Get out of there!”

Putting the rifle’s sight into active mode did not improve his view, there was too much smoke and dust in the air. Another mortar shell exploded, this time halfway up the slope.

He got the message.

“Surjet Jates, get out of there now, that’s an order!” Striebich barked in his ear.

“Acknowledged,” he tore his eyes away from the scope, safing the weapon.

Czajka was on his own.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“All stations report ready,” Derek’s executive officer said from the sensor console. Aboard small ships like destroyers and frigates, the crew was expected to perform multiple roles.

“Thank you, Number One,” Derek turned his attention to the pilot station, which was inconveniently to his left and slightly above and behind him. The Jeraptha were excellent engineers, but they had decidedly odd notions of crew resource management and ergonomics. Someday, the UN would have time to modify the interiors of their second-hand warships, beyond replacing couches with human-compatible chairs.  “Mister Wu, are we synchronized with Marseilles?” he asked the pilot. He knew the answer, the status was on the forward display, and Wu knew he had the information, but proper procedure required confirmation.

“Yes, Captain,” Wu replied without looking up from his console. “Jump is locked in for one minute, thirty nine seconds.”

Exactly at the appointed time, Boston jumped in unison with the Marseilles, less than six kilometers apart and on parallel flight paths. The two UN destroyers, not bothering to deploy stealth fields and with their energy shields set to maximum field density, emerged eight thousand kilometers from the heavy cruiser that was at that moment, bombarding the surface with maser cannons.

Megawatts of active sensor pulses radiated out from the UN ships, pinpointing the location of the other Thuranin ships, as the pair of destroyers fired their own masers, and missiles raced toward the enemy cruiser as fast as the rotary launchers could spit them out. Caught off guard only for a moment, the cruiser fired back with masers, railguns and missiles, joined by the other heavy cruiser that had dropped stealth and turned to engage.

Boston shook from the assault, the shields flickering and armor plating ablating away, alarms flashing on the bridge. Not needing the main engines, the destroyer popped thrusters to jink up, down, left and right in a random fashion to throw off the enemy’s aim. After what seemed like both forever and not long enough, the speed of the lightly armed destroyers carried both of them out of effective range. A pair of enemy frigates were burning hard to intercept, a move useful only if either of the UN ships suffered fatal damage to their jump drives.

Neither had.

While the first salvo of their smart missiles harassed the target heavy cruiser, the two destroyers jumped away. It was only later, reviewing video in a time lag from a distance of ten lightminutes from the planet, that the crews of the UN ships saw their missiles score hits on the enemy. The heavy cruiser, which had the guns but not the armor protection of a battlecruiser, staggered as one missile after another impacted the shields and exploded, burying the massive ship in a cloud of blinding light. A Thuranin destroyer and two frigates, close by to provide defensive fire support, dropped stealth and added their point-defense cannons to the blazing chaos, high-energy photons and ultra-dense guided slugs lancing out to kill missiles before they could strike the beleaguered cruiser. The count of missiles in flight fell rapidly, even as they closed in to swarm around the big ship, coordinating their actions-

One missile got through, and that’s all that was needed.

The missile struck a gap where two armor plates joined. The nosecone erupted forward, sending a dense arrow of exotic material burning through the armor, clearing the way for the explosive warhead to penetrate the ship’s vulnerable interior. Twenty six percent of the warhead’s explosive potential made it through to the exposed hull, detonating-

In a disappointing fizzle.

The missile was a dud.

Still, it ripped through five decks, severing power conduits, taking a reactor offline, knocking out a third of the cruiser’s engine thrust, and cutting connections to the entire starboard bank of shield projectors.

The fight was over, all the other missiles having been intercepted, or sacrificing themselves for one to get through. For the Thuranin, it was a heart-stopping moment, relieved by the great fortune of a human mistake. The formidable Maxohlx-derived missiles of the humans, which turned a battleship to dust, had failed.

The invasion forces on the ground were gifted with a respite from the orbital bombardment, though with communications still jammed, they did not know why the deadly maser bolts and railgun darts had ceased raining down on them. To protect the stricken cruiser while it repaired battle damage, the Thuranin commander ordered the other cruiser to join the one destroyer and one pair of frigates, to provide cover. Wrapping around the damaged cruiser, the other four ships linked their fire control computers, to provide a tight defense against another attack, which was assumed to be inevitable. The humans had to be angry and frustrated by the failure of their best weapons, a mindset that demanded another strike. The next time, the Thuranin would be ready. The remaining pair of frigates burned hard to reposition away from the planet, where they would be able to project damping fields to trap the human ships as their momentum carried them away from the planet. The next time, the surviving pair of UN destroyers would be hounded by ships that jumped ahead of their flight path, attacked and, ultimately, smashed them to dust. The Thuranin would achieve what their patrons had let slip through their claws: a decisive victory over the upstart species who claimed to be the third major power in the galaxy.

While the cruiser that had acted as bait feverishly worked on repairs, its crew readied for another attack, which if the humans had any intelligence at all, would come soon. The longer the primitive species waited, the better prepared the Thuranin would be. So, the crews of their ships waited with unbearable tension, which was only partially controlled by their cybernetic implants. Since the humans knew the location of the damaged cruiser, and knew other ships would be nearby to provide protection, there was no point to using stealth fields. The single destroyer and the frigates supplemented their sensor fields with a regular series of powerful active sensor pulses, searching for stealthy enemy missiles and probes launched from long range. The pulses reflected off nothing, radiated energy continuing uselessly out into deep space.

Except-

It was not true that the photons of the sensor pulses did not reflect off anything.

They did bounce off the shattered hulk that used to be the UN assault carrier Chesapeake Bay, a fire-blasted chunk of metals, composites and exotic materials that was swinging within forty thousand kilometers of the Thuranin formation on its uncontrolled elliptical orbit.

The Thuranin had quite rightly ignored the wreck of the second-hand assault carrier, other than to tag it as a navigation hazard.

They were right to ignore it.

Except-

The bickering missiles; Kevin, Shirley, Betty, Hui-ying, Ahmet and the others that made up the cluster of twenty six ship-killers, hugged the faintly radioactive hull of the Chesapeake Bay, each weapon wrapped in its own stealth field. Thinking and talking and arguing at AI speed, the missiles debated who should act as the controller. Who should have the glory of coordinating the attack, the responsibility for providing guidance, the burden of collecting realtime data about enemy defenses and analyzing the best way to defeat the multiple layers of protection around the enemy ship. And who would have the reduced chance of actually scoring a hit, while acting as the controller rather than zooming in at top speed to kill kill KILL.

In the end, Kevin was selected, not because he wanted the job, nor because the others all thought his arrogant presumption of leadership required appropriate punishment. No, Kevin got stuck acting as the initial controller simply because he lost the stupid game of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock that was suggested by Ahmet.

Stupid Ahmet.

“OK, everyone,” Kevin tried to tamp down his own excitement. “Get ready.”

“I have been nothing but ready since I came off the assembly line, you ninny,” Betty snapped, but then Betty always had been a bit irritable.

“Well, then, um,” Kevin tried to think of a retort, and failed. “Good luck, everyone.”

“Hmmph,” Shirley sniffed. “Just don’t guide me into the path of a point-defense cannon slug, and I’ll be happy.”

“The signal will be ‘Bazinga’,” Kevin announced. “When I say-”

“Bazinga? That’s just stupid,” Betty sniffed. “Why is the signal-”

“Because I said so,” Kevin was tired of the bickering.

“Oh, just because-”

“Three, two, one, Bazinga!”

The Thuranin are not nearly as smart as they think they are. And their cybernetic implants do not add much to their intelligence, in fact, the poor integration of biological and artificial nerve channels can actually impede their ability to process thoughts.

The commander of the Thuranin task force did not need ultra-fast processing to react to seeing twenty or more missiles racing toward her ships at impossibly high acceleration.

Her first thought, as both the biological and artificial part of her brain momentarily locked up, was: Uhhh

Followed a moment later by: Oh SHIT.

And, after a microsecond, she had time for a more complete assessment of recent events. Her conclusions were:

The humans are not nearly as stupid as we believed.

And-

They played me.

In a flash, she realized the ‘dud’ missile that failed to fully explode had been a deliberate act. Instead of settling for taking out a single cruiser, the humans had gotten her to put nearly all of her ships in a tight pattern, and all well below jump altitude. It took only three more seconds for the tactical AI to ping her implant with the bad news: this incoming flight of missiles was substantially more difficult to intercept than those missiles that participated in the most recent attack. The AI ventured a guess that, in the attack by the two UN destroyers, their missiles had deliberately degraded their maneuvering, coordination and sensor-jamming capabilities.

This time, the missiles were not holding back. Their attack was well-coordinated, with the individual weapons racing forward at accelerations that were many thousands of times the force of gravity on the Thuranin homeworld. Then, the booster motors cut out and the missiles disappeared behind stealth fields, only to pop up and fire their boosters again. When the incoming weapons neared the effective range of the Thuranin point-defense cannons, some of the missiles sent out powerful pulses to jam defensive sensors, sacrificing themselves so others could slip through to strike the blinded starships. When the defenses automatically switched to home-on-jam mode and poured fire at the source of the active pulses, the count of incoming threats began dropping rapidly.

Not rapidly enough. Surviving missiles switched on jamming, knowing they would be targeted and knowing that would allow others to kill kill KILL. The defense system AIs were not stupid, they knew that while they concentrated fire on the missiles they could see, others were racing in, but where? Where were they? The defense AIs attempted, with some success, to break through the jamming. Slowly, in terms of AI thinking speed, they built up a picture of enemy tactics, and began to form and test a model to predict the next moves of the unseen flight of missiles which were surely twisting violently through space toward their targets. The AIs of the Thuranin ships were smart, unfortunately the relatively tiny AIs of the missiles were at least as smart. And due to superior-technology enemy jamming, the Thuranin AIs were unable to network and share information between ships. Despite the disadvantages, the AIs were having some success, and the AI of a frigate took a risk. Swiveling its cannons away from a jamming source, it directed defensive fire at coordinates it predicted had a seventy four percent probability of containing a missile.

Its guess was confirmed by a tremendous explosion, and it excitedly broadcast its findings to the task force, requesting confirmation that the revised predictive model worked for them also.

Too late.

For most ships of the task force, their confirmation of enemy missile locations came in the form of direct, simultaneous and coordinated impacts to their energy shields. The Maxohlx warheads were dual-stage devices. In the nosecone, just behind the sensor receivers and antennas for broadcasting jamming pulses, was an energy shield projector. The shield was not for the protection of the missile, its purpose was not to protect anything. The instant that the nosecone contacted the energy shield of a target ship, the missile’s AI analyzed the frequency, polarity and amplitude-cycling characteristics of the shield in that area at that exact time. A picosecond later, the missile’s own shield projector switched on, in a powerful pulse that lasted only eight nanoseconds before the projector burned out. That was enough to bore a hole through the starship’s shield, allowing the second stage of the warhead to do its deadly work. The second stage was actually three components that worked together. A small projectile erupted forward to prematurely detonate any reactive armor on the target’s hull, which the Thuranin only installed aboard their capital ships. Right behind the lead projectile was an ultra-dense rod of exotic material that instantly flashed from a solid into plasma when it contacted the ship’s armor plating, quickly burning through to the hull underneath and clearing the way for the part of the warhead that earned its carrier missile the ‘ship-killer’ nickname: an explosive charge.

Not just any ordinary explosive charge. Nothing crude like mere chemicals, or a clumsy nuclear fusion device.

The Maxohlx were so over that sort of low-tech destructiveness.

Their ship-killer missiles used a technology the Maxohlx had developed, not stolen or copied from the haughty Rindhalu. Atomic-compression, a technology poorly copied by several client species, was a technique of creating matter quark by quark into atoms, directly from energy. Electrons of the resultant atoms were not allowed their normal separation from the nuclei, instead they were held in tight suspension, with atoms compressed tightly together.

When the hardened warhead punched through the thin hull, to reach the vulnerable interior of the ship and released the containment field-

Nothing good happened.

The last thought that went through the Thuranin commander’s mind-

Well, that thought really couldn’t have been very important. It was lost to history, along with two heavy cruisers, a destroyer and a pair of frigates.

The distances involved in space combat, and the resulting time lags, never ceased to be both awe-inspiring and frustrating to Derek Bonsu. Boston had performed two jumps after dropping off twenty six missiles near the hulk of the Chesapeake Bay, one jump to throw off any attempt at pursuit, and another to within eight thousand kilometers of the Marseilles. The two ships waited, their jump drives on hair triggers in case of unpleasant surprises. Waiting, watching, as photons from the space battle that should have begun slowly crawled outward. The UN destroyer squadron assigned to Globakus did not have the advantage of a magic beer can who was able to see and communicate faster than light, so the crews of the two ships had to wait until they could see the battle. No amount of wishful thinking or silent urging would make the photons travel any faster, they leisurely dawdled along at around three hundred thousand kilometers per second, until they reached the waiting pair of destroyers at the safe but annoying distance of three lightminutes.

Three minutes.

The first photons that were of any interest were those generated by the booster motors of twenty six missiles, that suddenly unstealthed from their position tucked in close to the broken assault carrier. The boosters were like strobe lights, as the missiles alternated randomly between full burn at over seven thousand gees of acceleration, and abruptly cutting the motors to coast onward and re-engage stealth. Seeing all the missiles successfully launch was encouraging enough that Derek let slip his usual reserve, to pump a fist in the air aboard Boston’s bridge, setting off a cheer that rang around the bridge. “Let’s calm down, everyone,” he told his crew, who were on edge like he was. “No use counting our chickens before they hatch. Besides,” he pointed to the two counters at the bottom of the main display. The one on the right showed the current time. The left counter reflected the time of the events they were seeing, on a three-minute lag. “One way or the other, this battle is already over out there. We’re just spectators at this point.”

Derek was correct about the timing. The actual battle took less than the three minutes that the light took to reach the two destroyers, whose crews were waiting with breathless anticipation.

“Bonsu,” the grin on Duchamp’s face was matched by his tone of voice. “You have my most sincere congratulations.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Derek accepted the praise on behalf of his crew. “I would like to bring the good news to the people on the ground, may we-”

“As you Americans say,” Duchamp flashed a thumbs up. “Give them hell.”

“Aye, Sir. Commencing deceleration, now.”

The little destroyer Boston, which was ‘little’ only compared to massive capital ships, had its reactionless main engines straining in reverse at maximum power , with the human engineers watching the instruments nervously, and the ship’s AI agreeing there was indeed cause for concern. Those main engines had only seen basic maintenance at the shipyard, after the aged and obsolete destroyer was turned over to the humans. They were rugged units, designed to produce steady thrust for millions of kilometers, but they had already burned for millions of kilometers past their expected lives when the Jeraptha put the ship in storage. If the AI’s recommendations had been followed, the engines would have been replaced, or at least completely stripped down and rebuilt. But the United Nations Navy did not have time to perform all the work on their wish list, so normal-space engines were pushed down the priority list. It was expected that when ships wanted to move a significant distance, they jumped rather than traveling through space the long way. Ships did usually need to change speed and direction, when going from one star system to another, but generally there was plenty of time to accomplish the change at a gentle rate that did not strain the engines.

Boston was in a hurry.

Because what was left of the invasion force on the ground could not wait for the destroyer squadron to be gentle about slowing down to drop into orbital speed. They needed close-space support now, or it would not matter.

Derek kept his ship at full deceleration, even when one engine had to be taken offline, and another limited to forty percent power. The unreliable nature of the thrust was a problem for the ship’s navigation system, because while the destroyer slowed down, the planet was moving around its star, and the rotation of the planet caused the invasion force’s landing zone to keep swinging around the curve of where the destroyer planned to jump. If the ship lost another engine, the landing zone would be moving in entirely the opposite direction as the planet spun, and Derek would have to make the agonizing decision to delay jumping in, until the unalterable physics of orbital mechanics brought the landing zone back into view.

Fortunately, he did not have to make that decision. Boston’s remaining engines proved to be even more robust than the beetle designers planned, and although the radiators were on the verge of glowing cherry red, the engines brought the destroyer down to the specified speed and moving in the proper direction.

“Jump on my mark,” Derek watched the main display, unable to entirely give up control to the pilot. “Three, two, one, mark.”

Surjet Jates grunted as he crashed to the ground, landing hard on his head and left shoulder. He tried to stretch out his left arm to break the fall when the artillery blast threw him off his feet, but either the suit’s damaged elbow joint was unable to comply fast enough, or the suit computer judged it would be safest to go rigid and allow the hardshell to take the impact. His skull was bounced around in the well-cushioned helmet, not enough to make him see stars and not enough to prevent him from rolling to his feet, although more awkwardly than his pride wanted to admit. There was another Whoomp of artillery being fired, and his suit wasn’t able to track the projectile and it didn’t matter anyway. The suit’s chameleonware feature was offline, any smart weapon could track him if it wanted to waste a warhead on a single Verd-kris soldier.

Which, the bloodthirsty Kristang warriors might do, now that they had the invasion force boxed in. The local clan warriors had put aside their disputes and temporarily joined forces to crush the invaders. They sensed that total victory was close, tantalizingly close and made them lose what little battle discipline they had. Why not expend an artillery shell on a single enemy soldier? The victory, the first victory over the detested human and Verd-kris Legion, would make the warriors of Globakus famous. All of Kristang society would compose epic poems about their deeds, and rush to replenish whatever ammunition had been expended.

Jates, seeing he was alone except for two injured soldiers whose icons indicated they were not capable of combat, twisted around when he changed his mind. Running away would not do him any good. Eventually, he would encounter the Kristang units pressing in from the other side.

The platoon had been conducting a fighting retreat after David Czajka was captured, finding success at breaking contact with the enemy, until that tactic began to prove fatal. Until an enemy  starship in orbit began picking off isolated targets on the ground. At that point, the platoon had pivoted to get closer to the pursuing enemy, choosing to fight face to face rather than die in an anonymous flash of maser fire.

Then, another change of tactics. Reinforcements reached the enemy, and the Legion platoon had no choice but to retreat again, trying to stay just one step ahead of the rampaging warriors behind, while another enemy ground force pressed in from two directions ahead. At least the orbital fire support had stopped, Jates hated the idea of being killed by an enemy he couldn’t see. The greatest danger to him was mortar fire, coming from the rear of the enemy line. If he stayed where he was, he was dead for certain, and it would be a useless, meaningless death.

Running away would not do him any good, but running toward the enemy might buy time for the rest of the platoon, what was left of it. Slowly at first, as the suit’s balky leg motors struggled to coordinate with him, he gained speed, trudging up out of the streambed, and scrambling on hands and knees up the crumbling soil of the bank. At the top, he reached for his rifle, which automatically released from its holster for him.

Movement.

There was movement in front of him, and since all the friendlies were behind, he did not need to wait for the suit’s IFF system to identify the source. Selecting the rifle’s undermounted rocket launcher, he confirmed three rockets were ready, aimed, and pressed the trigger-

Only to hear a buzzing alarm.

The rocket launcher mechanism was jammed. Either damaged or, the tube was clogged with dirt and debris. Cursing, he dropped to the ground and shook the rifle, seeing pebbles and dust rattling out of the launch tube. That must have happened when he hit the ground after being thrown by another artillery blast that was too close. It didn’t matter. He had been sloppy, there was no excuse for not inspecting his weapon for damage. With the camera on the wrist of his suit, he checked the tube. Now it was empty. Maybe too late. Taking a breath, he steeled himself to attack, getting his bearings in the helmet visor-

Which blazed across his vision with an overflash warning. Above him, a ship was striking the area with powerful maser cannons that were designed to burn through the shields of a starship. Even at reduced power and if he was not in the intended target zone, he could get cooked as moisture in the air flashed into superheated steam.

All he could do was hug the ground, close his eyes tightly, and pray that he didn’t boil alive inside the suit.

“This is the United Nations warship Boston,” a voice boomed in Jates’s ears, crackling a bit at first as the transmission burned through the reduced jamming that still saturated the area. “To all enemy forces: stand down. Stand down, or we will open fire. We have regained control of orbit.”

“You lie!” An unfamiliar voice screamed. Not Kristang? Even through the crackling distortion of the background jamming, Jates knew that voice was not one of his cousins. “Our fleet is invincible! We will obliterate-”

“Whoever is talking on this channel, this is Lieutenant Colonel Bonsu of the UN Navy. Try to contact your fleet if you like, but I have news for you: they ain’t here no more. All you’ve got left is a pair of frigates that are no match for us. That light show you saw, and the debris raining down on this planet, was not a fireworks display. Stand down. Legion units, ping to identify your locations.”

Jates lifted his head cautiously, the skin of his scalp still tingling from being too close to the maser strike. Taking a risk, he rolled onto his back, keeping the rifle tucked underneath him where it would be protected from another directed energy beam. Eyeclicking to instruct his suit to scan the sky above, it quickly locked onto an object that was above in the northeast, moving fast. The view automatically zoomed in for him, and script identified the object as a Jeraptha destroyer, of the Ante Up class. A moment later, the script changed. The ship was tagged as the United Nations destroyer Boston DD-07.

For the first time since setting boots on the miserable planet, Surjet Jates allowed a smile to crease his normally impassive face. Slowly rolling back over, he lifted his rifle to get a view through the sights without exposing his head or torso.

In front of him was a smoking, steaming ruin. Trees were blackened and groundcover was on fire, the smoke-filled air turned a ghostly gray, as the moisture flashed to steam by the hellish energy that had rained down from orbit. As he panned the rifle right to left, his attention was attracted to movement, and an explosion. A corpse, or part of a charred corpse cartwheeled through the air, blown upward as a rocket in the unfortunate Kristang warrior’s rifle cooked off. That was a good safety tip, Jates realized as he checked the status of his own munitions. They were fine, had not even gotten into the bottom end of the danger zone.

But, that could change if he was too close to another maser blast. A bright line across the sky to the west told him the UN destroyer was still striking targets on the ground, he should get far away before Boston’s fire control crew assessed the impact of their first strike on his area, and decided a follow-up was needed. His suit told him it had been pinged, and responded with Jates’s IFF code, that did not mean the destroyer in orbit heard or understood his suit’s relatively weak transmission. Staying low, he walked, then broke into a trot, the best gait his damaged and power-depleted suit legs could manage. Rifle fire barked behind him and he saw splinters fly off trees ahead to his left. Good. The enemy knew someone was in front of them, but they didn’t know exactly where. Picking his feet up, using his own muscles, he stumbled along as fast as he could.

The Thuranin forward ground controller designated Arrex-7 flinched, despite the best efforts of his cybernetic implants to tamp down his biological reactions. The reaction might have been called ‘fear’, if he admitted to such weakness. He did not, not openly, though his legs were trembling. It would be shameful to display weakness in front of the Kristang unit he was embedded with, an undisciplined group of thugs he would be happy to kill by himself.

Beside him, the clan infantry leader pushed himself to his feet, out of the sticky mud puddle he had dropped into when the UN ship above opened fire. “Is that true, Patron?” The clan leader demanded with a sneer. “Your entire fleet is gone?”

Struggling to his feet, and struggling with his emotions, Arrex paused to build up the appropriate level of disdain for dealing with inferiors such as the Kristang. Especially low-level local clan leaders on an isolated, thoroughly unimportant world. “It cannot be true. Humans lie, you know that.”

“What I know is,” the clan leader grabbed Arrex-7’s arm as the higher-level being turned away, a daring act of disrespect. “We need fire support, now. Call down close-space fire, or you are of no use to me.”

“You dare to-”

The Kristang’s powered-assisted grip was like iron, and the Thuranin in light fleet-issue field armor was unable to pull away. “The battlefield is a dangerous place,” the clan leader said with ominous intent. With his free hand, he pointed to the charred remains of a third of his force, wiped out by an orbital strike from the humans. “Accidents happen all the time. You could be one of the corpses over there.”

Sputtering more from outraged shock than from fear, Arrex wrenched free of the alien’s grasp, and instructed one of his implants to send a calming hormone into his bloodstream. Activating the transmitter, he provided his authentication codes, and requested a close-space strike on the enemy position. His people had been hoping to capture more of the ‘Mavericks’, so he had not called down fire on the enemy platoon. That time was over, he needed to demonstrate that the Thuranin still had control of the battlespace.

The reply, when it came after an unexplained delay, stated that a single frigate was available, only for a limited time, and oddly, did not request him to confirm details of the proposed strike. Also odd was that the frigate replied directly, instead of routing the support request through the task force command ship.

The other ships must be busy responding to the human raid, Arrex told himself. Willful disregard for reality was not something his cybernetic implants could correct. He sent a ping to acknowledge the message, and switched back to the channel for communicating with the odious Kristang. “Support will be provided.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

A light twinkled in the sky, much sooner than Arrex-7 expected.

Also unexpected was the position of the frigate. It was safely above jump altitude, a distance that was not optimal for providing ‘close-space’ fire. Thuranin frigates were not equipped with railguns, and a directed energy weapon was dangerous to use at such a distance; the beam would disperse and cover too broad an area. Arrex looked around for cover, even in his field armor, he could be cooked by overflash. No, the frigate’s gunnery crew would not be that stupid. They would surely deploy missiles equipped with antipersonnel submunitions. Nervously verifying that his IFF equipment was functional and switched on, he looked up, anticipating the bright streaks of hyperspeed missiles boring holes down through the atmosphere, and waiting for the missiles to ping his IFF to pinpoint his location.

No streaks appeared.

Nothing interrogated his suit to verify his position and identity.

Instead, the frigate was using its maser cannons, on a highly unusual setting. The cannons were tuned not for destruction, but to send a message. To literally send a message.

The masers created a hologram, high in the sky. A hologram displaying Kristang script.

The message read:

Brave warriors who are about to die on the field of honor, we are inspired by your courageous devotion to duty! The Kristang people will forever have the support of your exalted patrons.

The message faded, followed by another twinkling light, as the frigate jumped away.

“Uh-” the Thuranin sputtered. His thin shoulders slumped. “Well, shit.”

“That is the support you offer?!” The clan leader pressed a pistol to his patron’s helmet.

If Arrex-7 had a reply in mind, it stayed in his mind, as his brain was splattered over the battlefield by an explosive-tipped round.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Valkyrie and the Flying Dutchman jumped into the Globakus star system together. To say we were in the system was a bit of a stretch, our jump point was about four lightdays away from the star. Close enough to get a rough picture of events in the system, far enough away that any bad guys would have a tough time setting up an ambush for us. An ambush for Valkyrie, I mean. Actually, an ambush would be for the purpose of capturing Skippy, neither the Maxohlx nor Rindhalu cared that much about Joe Bishop.

Was my ego bruised? No. I was kind of OK with not having the two senior species hunting for my head, I had enough problems to deal with. Like a cloud of gas that was falling inward toward Earth’s star, and would begin to block part of the sunlight falling on our homeworld. Like, the fact that powerful, nuclear-armed nations on Earth might soon be, or might already be, fighting over scarce real estate in the areas of our home planet that would remain warm enough to grow food. Like, the fact that our Expeditionary Force and the UN Navy were comprised of those same nations, and although we were all being very properly professional and working well together in far-flung areas of the galaxy, that might change the next time we contacted Earth.

Or, like the fact that the Verd-kris force on Globakus, augmented by human ground troops and a handful of our warships, had very likely been ambushed by a task force of Thuranin ships we hadn’t realized were there. That was my fault.

OK, yeah, Skippy says I blame myself too often, and Simms agrees with him. Not everything is my fault, because not everything is my responsibility, because Joe Freakin’ Bishop is not the only filthy monkey capable of doing anything useful in the whole damned galaxy. The landing on Globakus was not my idea, I had argued it was premature, but the Verds insisted there be no more delays in beginning to fulfill the ultimate goal of their society. If anyone was to blame, I guess that would be Admiral Zhao, for assigning only three destroyers to the op.

No. That’s not fair. The star carrier that brought the invasion force to Globakus had waited while the three destroyers searched the star system as best they could, before jumping away on another mission that was a higher priority for humanity. Really, the disaster, or what I assumed was a disaster, at Globakus was no one’s fault. Shit happens. No way could we have guessed the Maxohlx would request their clients cover as much territory as possible, and since the kitties knew we could read their message traffic, they had apparently passed the messages in person, sending ships out to contact their clients directly. So, Skippy had not been able to warn us about the little green pinheads having a task force at the ass end of the galaxy. It’s not his fault.

Really, I guess it could be my fault. The reason the Maxohlx knew we could read their message traffic, is that some asshole named Joe Bishop opened his big freakin’ mouth and bragged about it. Ironically, I had been bluffing at the time, we actually could only read a small portion of their messages. So, I had bragged about something we could not do, and it screwed us for real.

Yay, me.

“Chang, are you ready?”

“Ready and eager over here,” he replied, intent on watching something on a display, because he wasn’t looking directly into the camera.

“Don’t take any risks,” I reminded him of the Rules Of Engagement.

He cupped a hand to one ear. “What? That last was garbled. Take extra risks, got it. You want a snow globe from the gift shop?”

“Kong.”

“We got this,” he assured me. “Is Valkyrie ready to kick ass, if needed?”

He left me a great opening for an inspiring comment, but I just shook my head. “If Valkyrie is needed here, we will probably be running away rather than kicking ass. Sorry, I’m not in the mood for- Kong, this has got me scared out of my freakin’ mind.”

He gave me a thumbs up. He knew what had me frightened. David Czajka was on Globakus. So were Irene Striebich and Jates, and many others, but Dave was my long-time friend. “Joe, we will be back as soon as we can. Pilot, jump option Bravo.”

The Flying Dutchman disappeared.

Waiting sucks. From four lightdays away, even Skippy couldn’t get a clear picture of the situation on Globakus. It was pretty quiet there, that much he knew. No space battles going on, no major fighting on the surface either. There was active jamming, two types of jamming. That, at least, was good news. He knew one type of jamming was the technology we used, so some of our people had to be alive down there. I was going crazy, worried about the people we had thrown to the wolves, or to the lizards in this case, and worried that Chang might come back with a whole fleet of Maxohlx ships hot on his tail. Valkyrie was the single most powerful ship in the galaxy, and it frustrated me that our bad-ass battlecruiser was also the juiciest target in the galaxy. When you are king of the hill, somebody always wants to try knocking you off the summit. That-

The Dutchman came back in a flash of gamma rays, very early and making no attempt to conceal the jump coordinates. Chang spoke before I could open my mouth. “Joe, I have good news, bad news and no news, which is also bad. The destroyer squadron here got jumped by a superior force of Thuranin ships including cruisers, and both Marseilles and Sao Paulo are banged up. But Marseilles and Boston have control of the battlespace, the only Thuranin ships around are a pair of frigates that aren’t doing much more than jumping around to remind us they’re still here.”

“Holy sh- How the hell did three tin cans knock out the Thuranin heavies?”

“Captain Duchamp told me that the Merry Band of Pirates are not the only clever monkeys in the galaxy,” Chang said, a comment that should have prompted a grin, but his expression was anything but amused. “The landing force suffered heavy casualties, Joe, it is not good down there. But, the warrior caste is on the run. They are mostly scattered and on the defensive, the local population, outside of the warrior caste, is negotiating with the Verds, and no longer offering material or other support for the warriors. That’s the good news. The bad news is, the warrior caste sees the writing on the wall and they are desperate. Joe, they captured David Czajka.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” I felt sick, clutching the arms of the command chair. Simms placed her hand over my left hand, and squeezed for assurance. “What,” I had to stop, to take a breath. “What’s the situation?”

“A band of warriors, from two clans, are holding him hostage. They know he is a Maverick, they know the propaganda value of holding him.”

“All right.” My head was spinning, I couldn’t think straight. For sure, I wasn’t able to plan a rescue operation. “What is the other bad news, the ‘no news’?”

“We didn’t have time to recon the system for kitties, or spiders. I don’t think we can wait. If we’re going to pull Czajka out of there, we have to act now. That means-”

“That means Valkyrie, and Skippy, sit this one out,” I finished his thought. “Kong, this is your show. I’m sending the STAR team over to you.”

Behind me, Smythe cleared his throat. “General Bishop, Perkins and the Mavericks will not wish to remain aboard this ship for the op.”

“Right.” I had to think. “OK, they can go, but you are in charge on the ground. If Perkins tries to interfere, you remind her of that.”

“Will do,” Smythe stood up from his seat. “Sir, this could get, complicated.”

“I’ll make this real simple, then. Your orders are to go down there, kill everyone who gets in your way, and bring Dave Czajka back alive.”

Smythe nodded with a wolfish grin. “Those orders are perfectly clear, Sir.”

“It’s no good,” Surjet Jates reported with a grunt, his voice strained. His armor had an ugly dent across his chest, and the left arm hung limp at his side, the artificial muscles exposed through a tear in the armor were twitching randomly. As he spoke, an explosion rocked the town square and everyone flinched instinctively, though the thick walls around the public square offered adequate protection. The town was pacified, threats minimized, except for the one threat that was the focus of their mission.

Dave Czajka.

The threat to Dave Czajka.

A group of Kristang warriors were holding Czajka in a government building, a sturdy structure that was designed to provide protection against attacks by the disgruntled populace, and more importantly, from attacks by other clans. Originally, a loose and strife-torn coalition of two clans had held the famous Maverick soldier captive, then at some point, fighting broke out and one clan nearly wiped out the other. Casualties on both sides were heavy, and Czajka somehow was injured in the crossfire, all that was known was that he was bleeding, his captors had requested a supply of blood substitute compatible with human physiology.

“We can’t break through,” Jates added, reaching up with his good arm to unlatch and remove his helmet. The faceplate had a crack on the outside, and the visor display was two-thirds blank, with the remaining section so glitchy he could barely see anything.

“Understood,” Smythe acknowledged with a curt nod to the alien soldier. “Are you injured?”

Jates took a breath before answering. “Yes,” he admitted. “I would not consider myself combat effective at this point.” He knew Smythe had access to the diagnostic report from his suit. The question had been asked to determine whether Jates would be truthful and professional about his condition, rather than relying on bravado to tough it out.

“Get yourself to the medical facility,” Smythe pointed across the square. As Jates turned to limp away, Smythe reached up to place a hand on the Verd’s shoulder. “Surjet, you did all you could.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“It wasn’t enough yet. Keep access to comms, I may need your input before we go in again.”

“Colonel, I don’t have any advice to give you. If we go in heavy to break that monster robot, we’ll bring the building down on Czajka’s head. But if we don’t employ heavy weapons, we will only get more of our people killed.”

“You’re forgetting one thing, Surjet.”

“What’s that?” Jates asked, blinking to get his blurry eyes to focus.

“The Merry Band of Pirates, and the Mavericks. We don’t really get going until a situation is impossible.”

“Ha,” Jates laughed, then winced as his bruised ribs sent a stab of pain up his spine. He stood up a bit straighter. “I hope you are right about that.”

Smythe watched the big Verd soldier limp away, shaking off offers to help. “Major Frey?” he turned his attention to his second-in-command, who had limped out of the government building with Jates and four others. The right shin of her armored suit was bent at an odd angle, though he could see her suit computer reported the actual leg inside was only bruised.

“Jates is right, Sir,” her voice was muffled. Shaking her head, she unlatched her faceplate and swung it up. “My microphone is offline. Jates is right. That monster bot is blocking the way. You saw it?”

“I did.” The Kristang had a combat robot with them, a beastly machine that filled most of the tall, wide hallway running through the center of the building. It appeared the enemy had augmented the original bot with heavy plates of ceramic and reactive armor, so it could move only slowly. It didn’t need to move, it was blocking the only access to the underground storage room where Czajka was being held. On the first attempt to rescue the Maverick, three STARs were severely injured when they were pinned down by the bot, and subject to deadly fire from Kristang warriors in good defensible positions along both sides of the central hallway. The only good result of that first assault was that an insect-like recon drone slipped through long enough to get behind the massive bot and scan the area where Czajka was being held. The Maverick soldier was alone, and the drone did not detect any booby traps in the chamber, before the drone was zapped and went offline. The Kristang apparently were content to use Czajka as bait, though that assumed the warriors had any sort of plan at all.

All attempts at negotiation had gone nowhere. At first, the leader of those lizards holding Czajka had demanded the invaders leave the planet. Next, the Kristang inside the building briefly offered a ceasefire, in exchange for food and ammunition, and access to broadcasting on the planetary network. Senior Colonel Chang aboard the Dutchman was stalling for time, when gunfire was heard from inside the building, and shortly after, a new leader angrily stated there would be no ceasefire, and renewed the demand that the invading force leave the planet.

Jeremy Smythe was not confident that further one-sided negotiations would yield any useful result. He had brought in Verd-kris, to argue that after they took over the planet, they would need someone from the warrior caste to advise them how to control the population. The warriors inside the building either were smart enough to see the emptiness of that offer, or they simply could not stomach the idea of taking orders from a female of their species.

Smythe crouched next to Frey, and swung up his own faceplate. Looking into her bloodshot eyes, he whispered, “I am open to suggestions, Major.”

“I got nothin’, Sir,” she seemed to shrink, deflated. “None of the gear we brought with us can take out that battle bot, not without collapsing the building around it. The STARs have the wrong skillset, this should be handled by someone like an FBI Hostage Rescue Team.”

“Understood. How are you?”

“Fine. Tired. I need a new suit,” she lifted her right arm, and the artificial muscles moved in fits and jerks, with a protesting whine.

“I’ll see what I can do about that. Get some rest, before we have another go.”

“Sir? I don’t see the point in another ‘go’, if we’re not going to try something different. Whatever we do, I think we need to move fast. My team killed at least three lizards in there. Sensor data is sketchy, but there might be fewer than a dozen warrior caste left. They’re getting desperate, and they are not in the mood for compromise.”

Smythe didn’t respond, other than to pat her shoulder before he stood up and walked to a clear space along the wall that bordered the town square. He swung down his faceplate and called the Flying Dutchman. “Senior Colonel Chang?”

“Smythe? Tell me some good news.”

“The last breach attempt resulted in my people being banged up a bit, no additional serious injuries. Three, or possibly more enemy dead. That’s the only good news I have. Sir, we are not equipped to deal with that bastard machine the lizards have cobbled together. Has Nagatha made any progress hacking into it?”

“No, Colonel Smythe,” the Dutchman’s AI reported. “I am sorry. Its processing core is heavily shielded, I cannot connect with it in any meaningful way. At the risk of sounding like I am making excuses, I believe the mind of that bot was created by patching together incompatible systems. It is so crude, it may be unhackable. Senior Colonel Chang, we might need to consider bringing in Skippy to deal with the bot.”

“No,” Chang declared. “That is not an option. The Maxohlx might have instructed the Kristang here to take hostages, specifically to lure Valkyrie to this world. We have not cleared this star system.”

“Perhaps Skippy could participate via microwormhole?” Nagatha suggested.

“I’m afraid we won’t have time for that,” Smythe said. “The Kristang here know they are running out of time. Getting a microwormhole here by missile, even if Valkyrie takes the risk of jumping in a few lightminutes away, will take longer than Czajka has.”

“What if-”

Chang cut off his ship’s AI. “Valkyrie will not come within a lighthour of Globakus, until we have verified this system is clear of senior-species ships. Smythe, what are your options?”

“I want to confer with Perkins before I say anything, Sir.”

“Perkins? You can trust her to think clearly in this situation?”

Chang had argued for Perkins to remain aboard the Dutchman, it had been Smythe who brought her to the surface. “The decision will be mine, Sir,” Smythe assured the senior officer. “We have rather run out of ideas down here.”

There was a pause, then, “Very well. You’re on the scene, I’m not. Colonel?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t get her hopes up.”

“Perkins is fully aware of the situation, Sir. Smythe out.”

Colonel Emily Perkins was with her core team, in a building four blocks from the town square. Smythe trotted over and entered the structure, his boots crunching on broken ceramic glass from the blown-out windows.

Perkins stood up from where she had been crouched by a window that had an oblique view of the government building, where her fiancé was being held. “You are not here to tell me you’re giving up,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“No.” Smythe acknowledged the nods of respect from Striebich, Jarrett, Colter and Adams. “The battle bot is proving to be an obstacle we are not equipped to counter.”

Perkins squared her shoulders. “You want me to talk with the Kristang?” From her expression, even she knew that was a bad idea.

“We have not yet come to that point.”

“Then what-”

Smythe directed his focus on Adams. “Gunnery Sergeant, how comfortable are you about your upgraded suit?”

Adams tilted her head to the left, then the right, like a prizefighter loosening up. Since she was first gifted with the upgraded mech suit, a gift she had not asked for, Skippy had continued to tweak its operations and add to its impressive capabilities. The suit now massed sixty percent more than a standard set of STAR team powered armor, much of the added weight was defensive in nature. Meaning, her armor was more than twice as thick, and three times as strong. The major weakness was the suit ran down its powercells more quickly, so she made sure to keep them topped off whenever possible. “Hundred percent, Sir. There is one constraint: the stealth module of my suit only has an eight second charge remaining.”

“The distance from the entrance to the battle bot is forty meters,” Smythe explained.

“The entrance doglegs to the left,” Adams said. That also was not a question. “Do we know this thing’s weak spot? Where is the main processor?”

“We don’t know that it has one,” Smythe admitted. “Nagatha guesses the processor is inside the torso, on the back. That assumes it hasn’t been relocated from the base model of the combat chassis we think the bot was built from.”

“Support?” Adams asked, as she instructed the suit to run a diagnostic.

“Six STARs will make as much noise as we can, keep the lizards distracted while you move in.”

“We? You’re going in with us, Sir?”

“Gunnery Sergeant, I am not that old. And, we are rather shorthanded at the moment.”

Perkins stepped forward, having caught on to what Smythe intended. “Adams, I can’t ask you to do this.”

“You don’t have to ask, Ma’am,” Adams said as her faceplate swung down and went opaque, as the suit engaged its chameleonware. “The United States Marine Corps pays me generously to do this sort of thing.”

Perkins looked down and away. When she lifted her eyes, they welled with tears. “Thank you, Gunny. In that case,” she tapped the chest of the Marine’s oversized mech suit, then pointed out the window to the government building. “Hulk, smash.”

‘First to fight’ is part of the Marine Corps Hymn, and Adams was first into the fight.

Technically, the first thing into the fight were explosive-tipped rounds and a half-dozen rockets, that all splattered harmlessly off the tough layers of the battle bot’s armor. And all of which accomplished their real purpose: to fill the hallway with so much hot dust and bouncing debris that enemy sensors would be obscured. Sensors of the assault team’s suits were also challenged, but they had relatively fixed targets, while the enemy was forced to fire blind.

Adams went in immediately behind the projectiles, merely a passenger in her suit as it followed a pre-programmed course, running with enlarged strides down the hallway, automatically raising the hands to push off the right side wall as the hallway bent to the left, and accelerating. With the built-in stealth field active even for its short life, she was invisible, the Kristang knowing from confused motion sensors there was something coming at them, but not having any idea what it could be. They did not expect the unseen object to be so fast, all of their spray-and-pray fire was chewing up the hallway behind Adams, deceived by the explosive decoys spat out from both sides of her backpack. Then the suit warned her it was about to leap, to vault up and on top of the battle bot. It warned her a bit too late, her heart fell into her stomach as she was pressed down in the suit and suddenly it was soaring up, up and she crashed to a very abrupt stop, sprawled on top of the thing.

The battle bot had not seen her coming, its own cannons fired at the decoys, its slow and tiny brain confused by the fact that something kept coming despite its accurate fire obliterating everything it could see.

It was not confused when it felt the substantial weight of the unseen something on top of its armored carapace. Reacting perhaps more slowly than it should have, it heaved up and crushed the enemy against the thick ceiling of the hallway.

Adams felt her head bounce around in the helmet, despite the best efforts of the cushioning and suspensor fields. She felt the suit flex and heard it groan, as it was bashed repeatedly against the heavy ceramic panels of the ceiling. Green. The status indicators in the visor all still showed green across the board. The damned battle bot could bash her against every surface in the building, and her super suit would still be effective. But, she could not risk causing the building to collapse on Dave Czajka. A miraculously effective suit meant she should do something useful with it. Using the suit’s internal guidance, she crawled backward down the bot’s armored back whenever it dropped, freezing in place whenever the machine heaved up again. From the chaotic nature of its actions, the bot was confused and increasingly frantic. She was winning, forcing it to react to her instead of raining havoc on the STAR team that should have followed close behind her.

The crude brain of the bot must have come to the same conclusion, and it did react.

A powerful surge of electricity sizzled over the surface of the bot, sending bright white fire sparking over her suit and blanking out the visor. The suit went rigid, then limp, and she slid down out of control to crash head-first onto the hard floor behind the thing.

Stunned, she felt the ground shake. The building was coming down around her? No! The bot was trudging backward to stomp on her with its massive feet. Her suit should have automatically moved her out of the way, but it did nothing. The visor was still blank, not even displaying a reboot icon. The suit computer was still functional in some fashion, because the visor mechanism flickered like it was trying to restart. It, or maybe that was her own vision playing tricks on her? No, the visor was active, just not yet useful. Whether the EMP blast had fatally damaged her suit, she didn’t know. What she did know was she couldn’t lie on the floor like a very heavy, inert, armor plated sack of potatoes. If the suit couldn’t do its job to protect her or just help, she would take action of her own.

Swinging her left arm around, slowly, pushing with her right foot, she

forced

the

suit

to

move.

Not receiving coherent instructions from the central computer, the artificial muscles reverted to the embarrassingly crude method of fully manual control; feeling what the suit’s occupant wanted to do, and assisting. The muscles didn’t need to know what she was doing or why, all they needed was to comply. Rolling over, she felt a heavy something clip her right side as the bot stomped down where she had been moments before, sending her skidding across the floor. She kept going, rolling onto hands and knees and reaching up to manually unlatch the faceplate, swinging it up. The air was filled with acrid smoke that stung her unassisted Mark One eyeballs but she could see again, after a fashion.

The beast still had its back to her, as it lurched side to side, crashing into the confining walls and denting them, trying to walk backward.

She tensed to leap, unsure how accurately the suit’s muscles would follow her intentions without the coordination of the computer. And unsure whether the beastly enemy machine would zap her again, or if the EMP blast had been a one-time trick.

“Please wait a moment,” the suit computer’s flat, emotionless voice spoke in her ear, as the faceplate swung down by itself.

“I don’t have a mome-” she started to protest, before the visor blinked on, apparently at full capacity. “About time,” Adams grunted as she gathered herself and sprang onto the beast’s back, digging the fingers of her armored gloves into gaps in the slapped-together armor. The back of the battle bot was hastily assembled, clearly the Kristang had not bothered to provide as much protection to the part of the machine they assumed would see less or no action.

While she clung to the sloped back, the machine jerked up again, smashing itself into the ceiling but doing nothing to her, she was in the clear. No lightning crackled from its shell, the EMP weapon must have discharged fully. “Where is this thing’s brain?” She screamed to the suit computer, feeling a thudding vibration from the bot firing its forward cannons. The STAR team would be slaughtered by those heavy guns.

“Unknown,” the suit replied.

“It’s under this armor plating,” she insisted, jamming her other hand into the gap, and straining to peel the thick ceramic material away. “Help me!”

“The action you are attempting to perform exceeds the design specifications of-”

“Suit! Whatever you gotta do, DO it.”

The suit did not reply. Not verbally. There was sound, sounds a mech suit should never make. Groaning, whining that grew higher in pitch, with the visor display glitching again and her own squishy biological shoulders feeling like they were being tugged out of their sockets when the armor plating suddenly let go, flying up to bounce off the ceiling and clatter to the floor behind her.

There was no time to unholster a weapon and she didn’t trust her hands to have that much control, so she simply punched. Down, down again and again, the armored knuckles smashing into the machine’s unprotected structure, ripping into and through things she couldn’t see and barely felt, sparks blazing as she tore into powercells-

With a jolt, the battle bot sagged.

And Margaret Adams fell, to clatter to the floor next to the mangled armor panel.

With the ceiling partly collapsed, the dead battle bot blocking her way forward, and concerns that the entire building could fall due to damage from the recent fighting, Adams had to sit quietly in the ruined hallway while combat engineers worked to stabilize the building. After shoring up the ceilings and bracing the walls, the engineers focused on gaining access to where Dave Czajka was lying on the floor in the substructure. Insect-like drones had crawled and slithered through gaps in collapsed hallways and cracks in walls to reach him, they reported he was alive but weak, and bleeding steadily. So, Margaret waited patiently, responding when Smythe called to check on her, but otherwise not adding to anyone’s burden.

When Dave Czajka was pulled out of the building and determined to be stable, it was her turn. The engineers debated whether to try dragging the battle bot aside, or cutting through the wall behind her. In the end, they broke through the ceiling above her, and lowered a sling to pull her up. Her damaged suit was left behind, too heavy to move until the building was stabilized.

Outside, where dust and smoke still rose from the government building, she was greeted by Perkins. “Ma’am, I would salute, but I think something’s wrong with my right shoulder.”

Perkins snapped a crisp salute. “No need to return the gesture, Gunny. I’ve seen the drone video. Adams, you smashed.”

“I did,” the Marine grinned. “How is Czajka?”

It took a moment for Perkins to answer, and there was a catch in her voice when she spoke. “He’ll be fine. Shrapnel nicked his femoral artery. The medics say the blood loss looks worse than it is. They expect a full recovery. Gunnery Sergeant, thank you. I wanted you on my team as a liaison to coordinate with the Commandos and STAR teams, I didn’t expect you to be going into action directly.”

Adams’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Was keeping me out of action a condition of General Bishop releasing me?”

“Bishop wasn’t involved, other than after the fact. He told me to treat you like any other Marine, and that I shouldn’t expect any special favors from him, just because you joined the Mavericks.” Lowering her voice, she added, “Gunny, may I offer a word of advice?”

Adams hesitated, then nodded.

“I don’t know your history; whether, or how often you’ve been treated different because you’re a woman. It happens to all of us. That is not something you need to worry about with Bishop. You do need to be concerned that you don’t let that chip on your shoulder screw things up for you. And don’t tell me you don’t have a chip on your shoulder, the damned thing’s as big as I am.”

Adams stiffened. “Do you offer advice like this to everyone on your team?”

Perkins snorted. “No one else will listen to me. Adams, my fiancé was in trouble today, and I stepped aside, because I’m a professional. Bishop is no different. I hope you can see that.”

Margaret sighed. “I’m trying, Ma’am.”

CHAPTER NINE

“What’s wrong, Joe?” Skippy’s avatar appeared on my desk, leaning forward and squinting at me with concern. He didn’t need to squint, of course, that was an affectation to make his avatar seem more real.

“Ah, nothing,” I mumbled, with my jaw resting on a hand, elbow on the desk. My laptop was open, a report on the screen, but I was reading it mostly to kill time. There wasn’t much for me to do, while the Legion was consolidating control of Globakus. Really, the Verds were establishing control, the single battalion of human troops were setting up bases. With the assault carrier Chesapeake Bay in pieces, we didn’t have the transport resources to pull all of our people off the surface. They didn’t want to go yet anyway; Globakus had been a hard fight, and we won. Everyone who had boots on the ground, and aboard the destroyer squadron in orbit, wanted to stay at Globakus until the Verds declared they didn’t need support from humans. I could understand that sentiment. Even back when I was a grunt in Nigeria, not understanding what our mission was supposed to be, I hated the idea of pulling out before the job was done.

“Jeez, Joe, why so glum? You should be happy,” he sniffed. “The Thuranin set a trap here, and the Legion kicked ass anyway! Dave Czajka is safe, and Margaret smashed. I know it is cold comfort to the people we lost, but because of them, Globakus is one in the ‘Win’ column.”

“I know, it’s just, uh,” I sighed. Yes, the Legion had kicked ass, but it was not true the Thuranin set a trap for us. The little green MFers here had probably been hating life when they got assigned to Globakus, the ass end of the galaxy. Or maybe they looked forward to getting a break from constant warfare, because for sure, none of them expected to see any action. When the UN Navy appeared, with only three destroyers and one assault carrier, the Thuranin must have thought they got handed a golden opportunity.

And they still got their asses kicked.

“I am happy,” I assured him, knowing I sounded not at all happy. “It’s just- We rode here like the freakin’ cavalry coming to the rescue. I was pumped, you know? And the fight was over before we got here.”

“That is not a good thing?”

“It is.”

“Huh. Did Joey get his wittle feelings hurt?”

“Oh shut up. No. I am happy, damn it.”

“Really? Because it sounds like you are whining.”

“I am not whining.”

“I know what the problem is,” he smirked. “The destroyer squadron here took out an entire Thuranin task force, without the help of an Elder AI. You have never done that. Come to think of it, Captain Bonsu is a Maverick. They have been kicking a lot of ass, without my help. Maybe you should study their tactics.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Whoa. I am smacking you with insults, and you’re not even responding. What’s wrong?”

I pressed a button to slide my office door closed. “You keep telling me we are running out of options, like, collapsing probabilities, something like that.”

“Yes. Why do you-”

“The force here prevailed, sure. They barely survived. It could have gone either way. I think, the Legion, the Navy, the Merry Band of Pirates, we’re all skating on thin ice, you know?”

“I do know. It is true, the pathways for survival for your people are narrower than they were before Columbus Day. Before you did one impossible freakin’ thing after another. But, there is good news, Joe. Actions we have taken, like establishing the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, and just recently threatening to crash the wormhole networks across the galaxy, have resulted in an expansion of future probability streams. Not a big expansion, and the probabilities could still collapse with bad results, sure. But that is somewhat less likely now.”

“Yeah, sure. Except, the rotten kitties are planning to bail out of the galaxy and activate their Elder weapons. The whole Mutual Assured Destruction thing assumes the enemy cares about their own destruction. That’s bad enough, Skippy. What really worries me is the bluff we pulled about crashing the wormhole networks.”

“Why? As long as only you and I know the truth, there’s not a problem. I certainly won’t tell anyone.”

“Hey, I won’t tell anyone either.”

“Not even Margaret?”

“Especially not her. I wouldn’t dump something like that on her.”

“Good point.”

“Ah,” I checked the time and slapped my laptop closed. “Enough worrying about stuff that might happen. The dropship to the surface is leaving in half an hour, I need to get ready.”

“Hmm. If you are planning to meet Margaret, my advice is not to wear that cologne you bought.”

“Goodbye, Skippy.”

On the ground, I did have a reunion of sorts with Margaret. Unfortunately for me, it was during an official meeting with the Mavericks. Fortunately for me, having her team there meant it was also a reunion with Dave, Jesse, Shauna, Jates and Perkins, although the meeting was in a hospital because Dave was in recovery. Did I wish for some alone time with Margaret? Hell yes. There would be time for that later, hopefully. Me being a general, and with our mighty Valkyrie in orbit, meant everyone wanted a moment of my time, including the Verd-kris leadership. They were smart, instead of sending a request through channels, they had Surjet Jates ask me if I had time to discuss critical issues with my counterpart. That was kind of bullshit, I didn’t actually have a counterpart among the Verds on Globakus, and they really should have talked with Colonel Huang, the commander of the ExForce battalion. It was likely they already had spoken with Huang, and he either did not or could not give them what they wanted. Determined that I was not going to say ‘Yes’ to anything Admiral Zhao would have to deliver, I agreed to a meeting.

Oof. That was a mistake. Not a mistake, exactly, but it committed me to an extremely long and tedious review of things I already knew, then a list of problems the Verds were facing, and finally a shopping list of equipment and actions they needed in order to consolidate their hold over the planet. Throughout the meeting, I nodded politely, and took notes on my tablet, and made ‘Mm hmm’ noises at the appropriate time, but as I suspected, most of what they wanted was more. More of everything, including human troops. They wanted Huang’s battalion to stay, though he had already politely told them ‘No’, then not-so-politely told them ‘NO’. Huang was getting to the ‘Fuck Off’ stage of negotiations when I stepped in.

The bottom line was I had no authority, or ability, to give the Verds everything, or even a significant amount, of what they requested. Hey, I was sympathetic to their issues and it was tough to keep saying ‘No’ to a valuable ally. However, the Verds had requested to add Globakus to our ‘To Do’ list, and when Zhao agreed only to provide a token force on a shoestring budget, the Verds jumped at the chance. They wanted to land on Globakus with minimum force, to test the concept that at least part of Kristang society was eager to break away from domination by the warrior caste. The Verds got what they wanted, and now of course they wanted more. The argument was that with more support, they could accomplish so much more.

That might be true, it was also not my problem. All I promised to do was request that Huang’s understrength battalion act as a combat reserve force, until transport arrived to pull them off the rock. Plus, I would pass the request for more support on to Admiral Zhao, it was his call. The rest of the list I gave to Simms, with vague promises to check Valkyrie’s inventory for any surplus gear we could spare.

“Sir?” Simms turned as I walked into the temporary office she’d been assigned by Huang’s team. She was on a videoconference with people aboard Valkyrie, on the other end of the call were people in one of the ship’s cargo holds.

“How’s it going, XO?” I asked, impatient to jump away from Globakus, and get back to dealing with problems that were my responsibility. Like a homeworld that would freeze, unless we could do something about it.

“All right,” she paused the video link and let out a long breath. “I have a list of gear we don’t need, that the Verds could-”

Looking over her shoulder, I jabbed a finger at the list on her laptop screen. “Bridging equipment?” It had surprised me that we even had gear aboard to create temporary bridges. “I can see why we don’t need it, what do the Verds want it for?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s a hearts-and-minds thing, Sir. A group of merchant caste lizards down here are complaining that a major trade route is blocked and it’s costing them money. The Verds are trying to get this group of merchants to sign on to the new government, one incentive they’re offering is a bridge to bypass the blocked route. It’s not perfect, the-”

“A bridge?” I interrupted, irritated that my crew had gotten bogged down in logistics details, and irritated at myself because it was my fault. “If the road is blocked, why can’t the lizards just fly the,” I waved a hand vaguely, “whatever stuff they need to move?”

“They could,” she pursed her lips and used her I-am-patiently-explaining-this tone. “That would add cost, which would give a different, less cooperative group of lizard merchants an advantage.”

“Well,” I was exasperated to be dealing with such mundane crap. “How tough can it be the clear a freakin’ road?”

Tapping on her laptop, she pulled up a satellite view of a mountain pass.

“Oh,” I grunted, embarrassed. “What the hell is that?”

“Part of a Thuranin battleship,” she explained.

“Holy shit. It’s wedged in there good, huh?” The problem was obvious even with a casual look. There was a mountain range cutting roughly north to south through the middle of an otherwise flat area of the planet, separating farmland to the east from cities and towns along the seacoast to the west. Kind of like the Sierra Mountains in California, although this range was way more abrupt, going from near sea level in the foothills, to over two and a half thousand meters at the ridgeline. That height doesn’t sound impressive, and the mountain pass where the road was blocked was at only two thousand meters. The problem was not the altitude, it was the fact that the pass was the only practical place to cut a road for five hundred kilometers in either direction.

To the east there was an impressive crater where most of the battleship must have gone down, the crater was still smoking. Stuck in the mountain pass was a big chunk of starship, thick armor plates still identifiable along with structural frames. The artificial meteor must have hit the northeast slope of the pass, collapsing a million tons of rock, and rolling down to completely block the road with its bulk. “How the hell did that thing not make a massive crater when it hit?”

“It did.” Simms zoomed the display out. “That big crater in the foothills to the east of the mountains is where the ship fell. The big piece stuck in the pass, and all these pieces scattered on either side of the ridge, are what bounced out of the crater, after the initial impact.”

“Holy shit,” I gasped. “I didn’t know that could happen.”

“Skippy said it was a freak set of circumstances. That Thuranin battleship was maneuvering to get into a polar orbit when it got hit by DESRON Seven,” she used the official designation for the squadron of destroyers led by the Marseilles. “It was in a low orbit, almost stationary relative to the surface when it got hit. Basically, it fell almost straight down.”

“Huh. Captain Duchamp chose the right moment to attack. How big is that wreckage?”

She tapped her keyboard, bringing up an overlay on the piece of ship that was lying diagonally across the mountain pass. “Almost two hundred meters.”

“Damn.” My American brain automatically converted that measurement to half a lap around a track. “They’re gonna need a lot more than bridging equipment,” I noted while scratching my chin.

She shrugged. “The lizards don’t have the type of heavy excavation equipment to move something that big. And it’s heavy, see all the armor plating? The lizards want a bridge to cross the river here to the south,” she adjusted the map. “Throw a bridge across this river, cut in a road, and make a deal with the merchants who have rights to transit in that area. None of the merchants like the idea, and they blame the Verds for creating the mess. It’s not a great solution, but it’s the best we can offer with- And,” she looked at me and shook her head.

“What?”

She rolled her eyes. “I can see you’re thinking about blowing it up.”

“Me?”

“I know you, Sir.”

“I am not thinking about blowing it up.”

“Good, then-”

“I am thinking, about addressing the issue in the most time and resource efficient manner possible.”

“By,” she sighed. “Blowing it up.”

“Like I said.” Tapping her laptop, I activated the video. “Colonel Mammay?”

He appeared, from the background he was in a conference room aboard the ship. “General?”

“Have you seen this chunk of starship that’s wedged sideways in a mountain pass?”

He sucked in a breath.

“I’ll take that as a ‘Yes’,” I snorted. “Can we, uh, do something about it, from up there?”

His face took on the expression of a puppy that saw a T-bone steak just out of reach. “Sir, are you serious?” He swallowed hard enough for me to see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Please don’t tease me like that.”

“I’m serious. That wreckage is a major obstacle to our Verd allies accomplishing their objectives here.”

“You,” Simms interjected, “didn’t consider that to be our problem a minute ago.”

“It wasn’t cool a minute ago,” I explained, with an implied ‘duh’. “Mammay?”

“Oh my God, I-” He looked like he was about to faint.

“Take a minute.”

“Sir, for a,” he let out a long breath. “Sorry. For an artillery specialist, this is a dream come true. Um, how kinetic do you want to get?”

“Nothing crazy. Clear enough wreckage so the lizards can cut a road through.” I turned to Simms. “They can do that, right?”

“They cut that road in the first place,” she reminded me. “The lizards do have road-making equipment, just not starship-moving equipment.”

“Fine,” I concluded. “Weps,” I used the nickname for Mammay, the ship’s weapons officer. “Show me a plan.”

“Joe!” Skippy shouted. “I can’t believe you are doing this.”

“It’s not-”

“I can’t believe you’re doing it without me,” he sniffed, hurt.

“Oh. I mean, you should work with Mammay to-”

“On it, Sir,” Mammay acknowledged, and cut the video link.

“That’s not the point, Joe,” Skippy wouldn’t let it go. “There is so much to do.”

“Yeah, I guess, uh, check the railguns, and-”

“I know that, dumdum. I’m talking about clearing lizards away from the blast zone, and-”

“OK, sure, we can do that.”

“That’s just the easy stuff,” he complained. “We need to change the crew assignments, so most people will be off-duty to watch. And popcorn! I don’t know if we have enough popcorn. People will want to watch this.”

Simms just shook her head with a weary sigh. “I’ll handle it, Sir.”

Artillery targeting, even with the assistance of an awesomely smart Elder AI, is still partly an art rather than one hundred percent science. Mammay had to use his judgment, his years of experience, and the skill that got him assigned to the most powerful warship in the galaxy. He struggled with the problem, because even he had never used an orbital railgun strike on such a large, heavy, stationary target. If he got it wrong, the mountain pass could collapse in on itself, blocking the approach roads on both sides, and creating an unstable pile of debris that would have to be dug out before a road could be cut through. Skippy scanned the ground under the wreckage and did his best to create a model of the subsurface, but the best analysis he could do had a substantial level of ‘shmaybe’ to it. “It’s geology, Joe,” he complained to me. “Rocks look solid, but they get unpredictably squishy if you apply enough force.”

Enough force was the problem. Too much force could create massive landslides, ruining the usefulness of that mountain pass for years, perhaps permanently. Too little force would just mash the armored wreckage deeper into the soil, making it even more of a bitch to dig out. After modeling so many scenarios that even Skippy’s brain hurt, Mammay had a plan. “If you want to use explosives to move an egg, you don’t hit the egg,” he told me. “You hit the surface under it, to make the egg move.”

I got the basic idea, and approved his plan. The lizards had already begun to move their people away from the potential blast zone, so the delay in launching the strike was caused by needing to maneuver Valkyrie into position, so that our line-of-sight railguns were pointed at an angle to the west side of the mountain ridge. The slope was steeper there and part of the wreckage was overhanging that way. When the wreckage hit, it had started to slide to the west, but got dug in, and a lot of rock fell to create a wedge that acted as a sort of doorstopper, holding the huge chunk of battleship firmly in place.

We got Valkyrie into an orbit where three times a day, we were in the right position for a strike, for only a few minutes. That orbit could be adjusted to avoid having to wait, so the continuing delay was not a matter of orbital mechanics. The delay was due to bad weather over the target site. No, Mammay was not concerned that his ultra-dense railgun darts would be deflected off course by smacking into fat raindrops. Darts actually could be moved very slightly by striking raindrops on the way down, that is why the darts were spun up before launch; the effect of splattering rain would even out and keep the darts on target.

Nor was the weather an issue with precise targeting, Valkyrie’s advanced sensors and fire control computers were not affected by cloud cover. What was affected by clouds was the crew’s ability to see the target. Damn it, no way were we going through a whole lot of trouble just to help a bunch of hateful lizards. We were doing it for the scientific value, to test the ability of our big guns to move a major obstruction. The engineering knowledge we gained would be-

OK. That’s bullshit. Yeah, we would probably learn something about physics blah blah blah nerdnik stuff. The main value was to see our guns blowing shit up.

In case anyone out there thinks this is just a stupid guy thing, you-

OK. I guess that’s fair.

However, when the sky finally cleared over the target, guess who was sitting in the front row of the movie theater we had set up for viewing? Major Katie Frey. She is a woman. I mean, that’s what her personnel file says. I don’t have any firsthand knowledge, if you know what I mean. She couldn’t wait to see the results of the strike.

You know who else was watching, from the ground? Margaret Adams. There is a vicious rumor that I delayed the strike for seven hours, so my girlfriend could get back to base to watch. That rumor is absolutely true. Hey, my job sucks most of the time, I’m not apologizing for taking advantage of a few benefits.

There was a bit of a wrinkle at the last moment, when the local lizard clan sent a proposal to create an alternate road, up and over a mountain pass thirty kilometers to the south. That plan had the advantage of being low-risk, and would also create jobs for the construction crews. It had the endorsement of the merchants involved, and the Verd leadership recommended we cancel the orbital strike.

Sadly, I never saw that very reasonable proposal, until it was too late.

Really, I didn’t see it. Didn’t even know about it. Skippy later explained that an unspecified communications glitch caused that message to get hung up in a buffer, until it was too late.

I need to remember the buffer thing, that could come in handy someday.

Anyway, the clocked ticked down to Zero Hour, with Mammay in the ship’s movie theater. He was standing next to the big holographic display, behind a folding table that held a couple laptops. He looked like he was going to DJ a high school dance, instead of unleashing destruction. Really, he didn’t need to do anything, other than not cancel the scheduled, programmed firing instructions. The box on the table, with a big yellow button, was just for show.

While we waited for Valkyrie’s orbit to line up our railguns, Mammay explained his targeting plan. Listen, I like the guy, super pleased he signed onto the crew. But, it’s like a joke: explaining just ruins it. I didn’t want to know the math of what was about to happen, I just wanted to enjoy seeing big explosions, damn it.

Despite my determination that we wait for clouds over the site to clear, so we could see the strike in real-time, we didn’t see much. The first three darts struck within nanoseconds of each other, the railguns launching their darts slightly faster or slower, so the projectiles arrived at the same time. They scored a direct hit on the wreckage, cracking it in two pieces side to side. After those impacts, we had to settle for a synthetic view of the events. With the wreckage cut in two, the western half already wanted to slide down the slope, if the rockslide doorstopper would get out of the way.

That was the next part of Mammay’s plan. The next two darts smacked into the western slope of the pass, digging craters and blasting fountains of dirt kilometers into the sky. While we watched, Valkyrie’s orbit carried the ship across the sky, presenting a shallower angle to the railguns. Four darts raced out and downward, their speed dialed up to ‘Eleven’ so they penetrated deep into the sides of the new craters. Even with synthetic vision, Skippy had to guess a bit on the images to feed us, which, um, became a teeny, tiny problem.

Remember Skippy bitching that geology can be kind of squishy? Yeah. What he didn’t anticipate was the speed at which the western half of the wreckage would fall away from the pass, because he had to guess about the response of the rock under the mountain ridge. Spoiler alert: the massive chunk of starship tipped over and fell more quickly than expected, so, uh, it was kind of in the flight path of one of the last four darts. Result: a chunk of starship went on an unexpected last flight.

Like, that thing went flying. My first notification that we had a problem was Skippy very helpfully shouting, “Oh, shit!”

“What do you mean, ‘Oh shit’?” I asked, halfway out of my chair. “What is-” Then I saw a dark chunk of something spinning through the air, as it soared up and away from the conjoined mushroom clouds that were boiling up from the impact site. “What the hell is-”

“It’s a piece of the wreckage, Joe,” Skippy continued his streak of being Mister Helpful.

“I know what it is, where is it going?”

“Um, down?” Skippy muttered, thoroughly ruining his chance of getting the coveted Employee of the Month award.

“No shit, Sherlock, I meant-” Then there was no point asking questions, because the flying chunk stopped flying as it smacked into the mountainside.

The Thuranin are hateful, murderous little green cyborg assholes. They are also excellent engineers. That chunk of battleship mostly held together, even though its structure was mangled and twisted, and pieces of armor plating tore loose to cause havoc by themselves. The wreckage went bouncing and tumbling down the mountain, mowing down trees and generally being very environmentally unfriendly. It was embarrassing because that was not supposed to happen, even though we had achieved success in clearing the pass. In my head, I was preparing a message to spin the event as a complete success, when Frey tapped my shoulder. “Um, Sir?”

She was pointing to the top edge of the display, where a river valley cut north to south at the bottom of the mountain range’s western slope. At first, I thought she was concerned that the bouncing wreckage was obliterating the road, but a glance showed the road highlighted in yellow swung in a wide loop to the north, and the wreckage was tumbling pretty much straight down.

Then, I saw the problem.

The road used a bridge to cross the river at the bottom of the mountain.

And the wreckage was bouncing right toward it. “No,” I groaned.

“Yes,” someone said from behind me. “Yes! Yes!” They shouted excitedly, as the debris made a beeline for the vulnerable bridge.

For an eternity, that probably took ten seconds or less, there was a chorus of excited ‘Yes’s and disappointed ‘No’s as the wreckage tumbled and bounced and fell right and left, its odds of striking the bridge growing better or worse in a random fashion. All I could think of, as I sat there helplessly paralyzed was, ‘How am I going to explain this shit’?

At the last second, the crumpled hunk of starship bounded to the north and followed a stream valley down to splash into the river, tipping up and over, so most of it got lodged into the west bank of the river. That was the good news; it not only missed the bridge, it also didn’t block the river by creating an artificial dam.

The bad news? It splashed down only a hundred meters from the bridge. Upstream of the bridge. When I say ‘splash’, I don’t mean like a kid jumping into a swimming pool. I mean like, the bottom of the river was exposed for a moment. Water rushed upstream and down, a wall of water racing down to batter the bridge, washing completely over it.

I held my breath. When the surge of water subsided, the bridge was still there. Wobbling a bit, but still standing. “Wow,” I exhaled. “That was a close-”

“Um, Joe?” Skippy got my attention.

The shockwave that went upstream?

Yeah. It stopped, as water flowing downstream pushed against it. Equilibrium was reached for a split-second, then gravity won the battle, and the water surged forward. Another boiling, foaming wall of water raced downstream, past and around the chunk of starship, and again we lost sight of the bridge.

When the wall of water continued downstream, for a moment I thought everything would be fine. But, slowly, slowly, the bridge leaned to one side, toppling over and gaining speed to make its own splash.

The crowd cheered, and I had to do a sheepish slow clap, trying to scrunch down in my seat. Beside me, Simms just sighed and shook her head.

Everyone was looking at me.

“Well,” I said, avoiding the glare Simms was shooting at me. “It’s a darned good thing we brought that bridging equipment, huh?”

When the smoke cleared, literally, Skippy reported that, other than wiping out a bridge, the operation was a success. The pass was not only clear of obstruction, it was fifty meters lower than before, and a new debris slope meant the approach from the western side was not as steep. There were still two large pieces of starship on the western side of the pass, which might become tourist attractions someday, they were not in the way of the road. Skippy thought that after a couple days for the fallen rock to settle in, it would be a good firm surface for a road.

And, due to my incredible foresight, we had bridging equipment available and ready for delivery. How do I do such amazing things?

I don’t know. It’s a gift, really.

For the next week, I avoided the galley when Simms was there.

CHAPTER TEN

“General?” Smythe strode into the conference room, his hair damp. He had been running a hand-to-hand combat training exercise in one of Valkyrie’s cargo bays. If you think that kind of training seems redundant when ground combat involves using powered armor, you are wrong. Offworld, we never know who our next enemy will be, and what capabilities they bring to the fight. Hand-to-hand combat might actually be hand-to-claw or hand-to-tentacle, our people need to be ready for anything. Yes, ninety nine percent of the action a STAR operator sees involves both sides using stand-off weapons, so the opposing sides never get close enough to tangle face to face.

Which reminds me: how come in movies, monsters and zombies never use stand-off weapons? Sure, zombies are frightening, but imagine if they could shoot back at the heroes? Scary stuff. Same with monsters; they always have to get close enough to use claws or fangs or whatever. In horror movies, crazed serial killers use axes or chainsaws, instead of a rifle. Even a shotgun would give a monster/zombie/crazed serial killer a decent separation from the target, but no!

AH, I guess if zombies could use a rifle, it would make for a very short movie.

Anyway, what was I saying?

Oh, right. Hand-to-hand combat training is good for fitness and reflexes and eye-hand coordination, and useful in case your powered armor runs out of power. Smythe responded to my call so quickly, I knew he didn’t have time for a shower, he must have just wiped off the sweat with a towel before donning a uniform. His blouse was stuck to his back, which was a breach of protocol that probably irritated him, I didn’t care.

“Smythe, we just got a request from the Verd commander down there,” I checked my notes. “General Tozarkadan, for STAR Team Alpha to go dirtside again.” Technically, Tozarkadan’s rank in the Verd armed forces was ‘Sordivaz’, which very roughly translated to one step above my grade. That did not mean he could give orders to me.

“Sir?” He stared at me. “I thought we were disengaging, letting the Verds handle the mopping up? The ExForce battalion was supposed to be pulling back inside the wire.”

“That was the plan,” I agreed. “The Verds are pushing forward with their hearts and minds campaign. Ha,” I snorted. “More like a cash and greed campaign.” The Verd-kris plan was to get influential merchant caste leaders to buy into the planet’s recent change of management, by showing how profitable the new world order could be for them. Off the top, the merchants would no longer be paying exorbitant tribute, to whatever warrior caste clan was in control of the local territory at the moment. They would also not have to worry about their residential compounds, manufacturing facilities and warehouses being bombed on a regular basis, as collateral damage in the ongoing, endless and utterly pointless fighting between warrior caste clans.

Smythe smiled at my little joke. “I trust ST-Alpha will not be protecting merchant convoys from bandits?” He was joking, but not completely, because he looked me straight in the eye to let me know convoy duty would be a bad idea. The politics of the relationship between us and the Verds was complicated and fluid, meaning we were both seeing how far we could push each other.

The Verds were not going to push us into doing grunt work for them, not on my watch. My authority was technically limited to Task Force Black, the Special Mission Group. But I was the senior human in-system, and General Tozarkadan had to at least take my counsel under advisement. “No guarding caravans across the desert. The Verds want your team as a rapid-reaction force.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Deploying a STAR team as a rapid-reaction force in a low-intensity conflict, is rather like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “The Verd leadership said something like that, when I told them I was approving Tozarkadan’s request. I told them that is the freakin’ point. Too many warrior caste assholes down there haven’t gotten the memo that they aren’t in charge anymore. The Verds are trying to be diplomatic about it, they expected the warrior caste to act out their Death Before Dishonor ethos bullshit.”

“It is their code, Sir,” he reminded me.

“I don’t have a problem with warrior caste lizards preferring death to dishonor. I do have a problem that their idea of ‘honor’ requires them to keep their fellow lizards as slaves, so screw them. Am I making myself clear?”

“Perfectly. Sir.”

“As far as I’m concerned, their supposed ‘honor’ is nothing but cosplay. I want your team geared up and ready to drop in three hours. Set up two rapid-reaction units, and coordinate with Tozarkadan.”

He nodded. “Will our Rules of Engagement be determined by the Verds?”

“No. If the Verds want our help, it’s on our terms. The Verds emphasized to me that any use of force must be limited in scope, carefully controlled and proportionate to the provocation. Screw that. All that proportionate response shit will accomplish is getting the warrior caste to accept our retaliation as a cost of doing business. Smythe, I want you to send a very clear message: this is not business as usual. This is not a feud between clans, where they assassinate one of ours, so we kill one of theirs. Whatever use of force you think is appropriate, double it.”

He gave me another raised eyebrow.

“I’m serious. Do not screw around with the damned lizards down there. Colonel Mammay would love to get live-fire practice with Valkyrie’s railguns. They are available, at your call.”

“Yes, Sir.” He did not appear entirely convinced.

“Smythe,” I took a breath and softened my tone. “I do not want to be here a minute longer than we have to. We have other shit to do, being here is a detour we can’t afford. As soon as the Dutchman confirms there isn’t another group of Thuranin ships out there, we are outta here. And I do not want the Navy getting called back to this rock, because the Verds bit off more than they can chew. End,” I jabbed a finger on the table, “the fight down there. We used to be terrified of getting into a fight with the Kristang, those days are over. They are the minor leagues to us now, we aren’t wasting our time fighting the freakin’ Cub Scouts,” I happily mixed metaphors.

“Understood. If the Verds object to our tactics?” He said ‘if’, but we knew it would be ‘when’.

“First, tell them to go eff themselves. Do it politely,” I added with a grin. “Then, tell them to call me.”

“Sir, am I correct that you intend to send a message to the Verd-kris, as much as to the warrior caste?”

“Damn straight. Their grand plan here is to reach a compromise with the warrior caste. Admiral Zhao and I agreed that is a losing strategy, and we didn’t commit the ExForce here to support political experiments. The Verds need the warrior caste to have a functioning organization, and those assholes know it, so they’re going to keep hitting until they find where the limit is. We do not need any of the warrior caste alive when we jump out of orbit. The Verds need to understand that if they want to risk lives for this grand experiment of theirs, they will not be human lives.”

“The Verds need to sink or swim?”

“I was going to say swim, or, float on the bloated corpses of their enemies.”

“That is certainly a, vivid metaphor, Sir.”

“I got a bunch of them. Good hunting down there, Smythe.”

Part of my important leadership duties involved important stuff like wandering around the ship, being approachable, listening to my people and showing them that I care. I care so much, that I make sure Skippy gives everyone a heads up when I am wandering around, to avoid surprising anyone. That is a common courtesy I wished officers had observed when I was a grunt, instead of popping up unannounced while I had all of my gear in a pile on my freakin’ bunk in the barracks. Giving the crew a heads up was also for my benefit, I did not want a repeat of the incident when I had stumbled upon an amorous couple, uh, coupling, in one of the access crawlspaces back in the engineering section.

A heads up to the crew also gives certain people time to conceal the illegal still they think I don’t know about. No, Skippy didn’t rat out our crew of moonshiners, I figured it out by myself. Every deployment I’ve been on, someone is making illegal hooch, starships are no exception. Skippy did have orders from me, to report if anyone took it too far, but so far we didn’t have a single incident of someone being drunk or even severely hungover on duty.

Anyway, I was wandering around the ship, and was about to take a left turn toward the bow of the ship, when Skippy pinged me. “Joe, there is a group of people in the portside ventral railgun magazine, if you’re interested.”

“Huh? Why is anyone there?” The magazines were automated, and maintenance was almost entirely performed by bots. We were trying to change that, getting our crew involved in, or at least knowledgeable about, keeping Valkyrie’s complex systems operational.

“You’ll see,” he said with a verbal smirk.

Damn. I had to see what was going on.

Our Weapons officer, Colonel Mammay, was in the cramped space that housed the rotary drum which loaded railgun rounds into the launch tube. There were three drums lined up back to back, each held a different type of round, to be selected based on the impact desired. Most were antiship penetrators, the type we most often fired, without a lot of success. In space combat, by the time a railgun round reached the designated point it was aimed at, the enemy ship had usually moved out of the way. That’s why the ship was equipped with rotary drums, for rapidly firing round after round in a spread pattern. Even so, railguns were mostly useful after some other weapon had damaged an enemy ship, so it couldn’t dodge darts. Or, when we jumped in close for a surprise attack, and the awesome precision of Skippy allowed us to aim the railguns before the jump, punching rounds through an unsuspecting target.

“Weps,” I nodded to Mammay.

“Sir,” he didn’t stand up or attempt to salute, since we dispensed with that sort of thing aboard the ship. It also would have been awkward, as he was on the deck under a drum, one hand reaching in between the stacked rounds.

“Inspecting the ordnance?” I guessed.

“No,” he grinned, and wriggled out from the confined space. He had a Sharpie marker in one hand. “We’re boosting morale.”

“Huh?”

He pointed to the drum, and I ducked down to see. “Ha!” I gave him a thumbs up. “Good one.”

With the Sharpie, he had written ‘As per my last email’ on the round. Not on the round itself, even a thin layer of ink might throw off the balance of the ultra-dense material. The penetrators themselves could not even be seen, they were encased in a layer of hard ceramic, or something like that. That ceramic-coated round was encased in a much wider sabot that was about a meter in diameter, with magnets ringing the sabot. I should explain that ‘sabot’ is a sort of collar that cradles a round, allowing a small-diameter round to be fired from a large-bore barrel like a railgun cannon. The base of the sabot doesn’t need to have a driving band, that deforms and forms a seal behind the round, because railguns don’t use chemical propellants. The magnets on the sabot are there to interact with the magnetic fields in the railgun, scooting the thing along until the round leaves the barrel, and the now-useless sabot is discarded.

Anyway, I saw his gunnery team had decorated the sabot casings of other rounds with heartwarming sentiments like ‘Greetings from Earth, MFers!’. Or, ‘We have been trying to reach you about your vehicle warranty’.

Mammay held out the Sharpie. “Would you like to?”

“Oh, hell yes.” I took the marker, moved to the next drum, and stood on tiptoes to write in big block letters ‘DIPLOMACY’.

Mammay cocked his head, puzzled.

“That,” I explained, “is my kind of diplomacy.”

Busted.

It was STAR Team Alpha’s turn in the galley that day, but most of them were down on Globakus, serving as a rapid-reaction force to keep pesky lizards from causing problems. Smythe had not exactly followed my instructions, in that he used a lot more restraint than I expected, but the lizards got the message anyway. After a particularly nasty group of warrior caste assholes slaughtered the inhabitants of a merchant’s residential compound, they fled to the compound of another merchant, holing up there and threatening to kill their hostages.

Smythe contacted Mammay, and the next time Valkyrie’s orbit took us over the compound, it was obliterated with a railgun strike.

Sadly, no, I do not know whether that ground-attack railgun round had an inspirational message written on it.

When the Verd-kris called me, screaming about our admirably rapid but grossly disproportionate response, I pointed out that:

One, the merchant who supposedly was a hostage, had in fact hired the warrior caste thugs to attack his rival.

Two, Skippy had intercepted communications to prove that many of the merchants, instead of cooperating with the Verds, were using the chaos on Globakus to settle old scores and gain an advantage in the new order on their world.

Three, we had warned the Verds this was going on, but they had ignored us because humans could not possibly understand the complexities of Kristang societal interactions.

And four, I would be very happy to pull ST-Alpha off the surface, any time the Verds decided their presence was more harmful than helpful.

The local Verd-kris leadership considered the points I had made, then told me they would file the incident under ‘unfortunate miscommunication’, and forget about it. That incident convinced me that the Special Mission Group’s proper role was not hanging around backwater planets, resolving local disputes. I informed Duchamp and the Verds that I was pulling STAR Team Alpha off the surface, and we would be jumping away in two days and wake-up.

With the STAR team unable to take a shift in the galley that day, Simms adjusted the schedule, and the dinner was simple, which was OK by me. That’s why I got busted with a plate full of cheeseburger and fries, when Simms walked in before I expected her.

She didn’t glare at me, what she did was worse. She just shook her head and looked disappointed.

“I know, I know,” I sighed, anticipating a lecture from her. “I need to eat like a rabbit or something.”

“No, Sir.” Simms’s jaw set, in that way she did when she was being extra patient with me. “You can simply make some better food choices. Like, instead of French fries with your cheeseburger, substitute carrot sticks.”

“Uh-”

“You can dip the carrot sticks in ranch dressing, if that’s better.”

“How about blue cheese dressing? You know, like when you get celery sticks with your Buffalo wings?” As I said it, I thought that maybe she had never eaten Buffalo wings. And I felt inconsolably sad for her.

“Blue cheese,” she held up her hands. “There are better choices, but, yes. If that gets you away from eating greasy fries.”

“OK,” I said ‘OK’ and not ‘I promise never to eat French fries’, because I am not an idiot. It is best to be vague about promises like that, so you can duck out of it later. “Anything else?”

“Instead of a cheeseburger, you could have a grilled chicken sandwich,” she pointed at another option in the chow line.

“I could,” I agreed slowly. “Can I have a slice of cheese and Frank’s hot sauce on the chicken?”

“If that gets you to skip the cheeseburger, sure.”

“What about bacon?”

“No.”

“But,” I blinked at her, unable to process what I just heard. “I love bacon.”

“Bacon does not love you back.”

“I have a hard time believing that bacon would lie to me. Come on, it’s bacon. It loves us and wants us to be happy.”

She rolled her eyes. “What about substituting turkey bacon?”

“How about if I soak pieces of cardboard in lard, fry them up, and eat that?” I suggested. “That would be better than turkey bacon. Hey! What if I eat that ‘Fake-on’ stuff the Ruhar make?”

“That is still bacon, it’s just grown in a vat. It is filled with fat and salt and cholesterol.”

“That’s why it’s filled with goodness.”

“No. Bacon.”

“No bacon? I have a bad feeling about this, but, what else?”

“Instead of butter, substitute-”

“Despair?”

“No,” I made her laugh, just a little bit.

“How about I substitute curling up in a corner, and slowly losing my will to live? Because that’s my option if I can’t have butter.”

“You could use less butter,” she said, crossing her arms and no longer laughing.

“Less butter than I really want to use, or less than I am using now?”

“Er. How about you start small, like, instead of slathering bread with butter, you dip the bread in olive oil?”

“Can it be garlic bread?”

“No! Garlic bread is slathered with butter.”

“Right, but, I didn’t put the butter on.”

“That is not the point.”

“You can’t even see the butter on garlic bread.”

She just stared at me.

“You said I should make better choices. I didn’t decide to use butter to make garlic bread. I only decided it is delicious. Hey! It’s not my fault at all. My traitorous taste buds are making all kinds of bad choices.”

“If they are traitors, why do you listen to them?”

“Hey, OK, it is not fair for you to use logic and facts like that.”

She held out her hands. With a sigh, I gave my tray to her, and walked back to the end of the line. When I had a plate full of grilled chicken sandwich, one slice of cheese, and a pile of carrot sticks and celery, I walked over to the table where she was sitting with her back to me.

“Hey!” I protested. “You’re eating my cheeseburger and fries!”

“Ith,” she mumbled, her mouth full and ketchup running down her chin. “De-lith-us.”

Plopping down in the seat, I stared at her. “Why do you get to-”

“Because I made other choices today that were good. Oatmeal for breakfast, a fruit smoothie for lunch. What did you have for breakfast and lunch, Sir?”

“Uh, Frosted Flakes, I think?”

“With?”

“There might have been a cinnamon roll.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “Or two,” I admitted.

“Your lunch was a Fluffernutter, with potato chips.”

“The chips were not in the Fluffernutter, I’m not a barbarian. OK,” I picked up a miserable carrot stick, dipped it in the small pool of ranch dressing on my plate, and bit into it. “I will try to make better food choices.”

“That’s all I ask.”

“Great. If I eat this,” I poked the tasteless-looking chicken with a finger. “Can I have ice cream for dessert?”

“It would be better if you had a bowl of fruit, Sir.”

“What about strawberry ice cream? That has fruit, right?”

I did not have ice cream that night.

That Simms knows about, if you know what I mean.

With the operation on Globakus wrapped up, we-

That’s not true. There was plenty of fighting still going on down there, so nothing was ‘wrapped up’. Except for our participation in the mess. The Verds could handle the situation, or they couldn’t, but the Special Mission Group was putting that miserable planet in our rearview mirror, hopefully forever. While we prepared to leave orbit, and the destroyer Boston was conducting minor repairs, I was giving Captain Bonsu a tour of our mighty battlecruiser.

“General,” he said as we walked forward from one of the missile magazines. “This may seem like an odd question.”

“Bonsu, out here, there are no odd questions.”

Derek nodded. “Do your,” he glanced around to see if anyone else was close enough to listen. “Do your weapons talk to you?”

“Oh.”

“I ask because- You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

“No, not at all. Out here, we have met the missiles ‘Todd the Destroyer’, and most recently, ‘Marty the Bringer of Doom’.”

“Todd and Marty?”

“I think Skippy suggests their names.”

“That explains a lot. I’m glad the missile I used didn’t insist on being called ‘Kevin the Punisher’.”

“Uh,” I looked around and lowered my voice. “Don’t give the other missiles any ideas, OK?”

“I won’t.”

“Did you have any problems with, uh, Kevin?”

“No! He, it, worked perfectly. It just, surprised me that weapons have a personality.”

“It takes a while to get used to it. Was this Kevin part of that missile cluster you planted? That was a great move, by the way.”

“He was. Thank you, Sir.”

“You’re going to be all right here, on your own?”

He nodded. “Unless a top-tier client species like the Thuranin decide to crash the party, we can handle it.”

“I think that’s unlikely. The little green MFers here hadn’t gotten the memo, before they attacked you. Most of the Maxohlx coalition have more important things to worry about right now. The Verd-kris are a low priority.”

“I hope you’re right about that, Sir.”

“Haven’t you heard?” I grinned. “The war is over. We have nothing to fear.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lieutenant Kinsta looked around his captain’s office aboard the latest ship they were assigned to, the ECO heavy cruiser Repeat Offender. It was disorienting to frequently move from one ship to another, particularly as the Office was supplied with a random variety of hand-me-down vessels from the Home Fleet. It would be nice to at least move between ships of the same class, so he wouldn’t have to refer to his tablet to figure out the interior layout of the ship. But no, that would be easy, and no one ever said working in the Ethics and Compliance Office would be easy.

“How are you settling in, Kinsta?” Captain Scorandum asked distractedly, as he opened drawers of the desk in his newest temporary office.

“I am confident I can find my way back to the broom closet I was assigned as a cabin,” Kinsta muttered. The crews of their borrowed ships were always gracious to the incoming captain, but usually resentful of any supporting staff that transferred.

“Excellent,” Scorandum said without looking at his aide. “Well, this is just unacceptable.”

“What, Sir?” The lieutenant asked with a weary sigh.

“The previous occupant of this office cleared out the desk completely! Not even a half-empty bottle of burgoze.”

“Sir,” Kinsta sighed. “The previous captain of the Repeat Offender is a woman, she is unlikely to have enjoyed burgoze.” Jeraptha women generally considered burgoze to be sickeningly sweet, it was usually a men’s drink.

“Yes, well,” the senior officer grumbled. “She could have considered common courtesy.”

“I will have a bottle delivered, Sir.” Kinsta tactfully did not mention that whenever Scorandum transferred off a ship, he never thought of details like leaving a gift for the next occupant of the office. He didn’t have to, because Kinsta took care of those things.

“What’s wrong?” The senior officer must have noticed his aide’s glum tone of voice.

“I have,” Kinsta took a breath, stepped into the office, and closed the door. “Some reservations about this operation, Sir.”

Scorandum leaned back on the couch, but his upper body was tense. “You didn’t mention any issues when I read you into the op.”

“It was overwhelming.” Kinsta had been briefed on the shocking plan, soon after it was approved at the highest levels of government. Soon was also the operative word, everyone knew they needed to complete the mission, before the secret of their shocking deal with the Maxohlx inevitably leaked out and ruined everything. That is why the Repeat Offender left orbit before completing resupply. Fresh food would be limited, until the operation was complete. If that were the only thing Kinsta had to worry about, he would be happy. “At the time, I simply could not believe we are doing this. Sir, in my time with ECO, we have done some severely questionable things. Actions that are morally questionable at best, and dangerous. But this?” He shook his head, his antennas shuddering. “We have never been involved in such high stakes.”

“You can’t win if you don’t play,” Scorandum said with a grin, but the grin faded when he saw his aide was not amused by cliches.

“Sir, I just can’t believe we would stab a potential ally in the back.”

“Ally?” The captain snorted. “Humans were never going to be allies, Kinsta. At best, we might have a limited, transactional relationship, where our interests coincide.”

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“The back is the best place to stab someone,” Scorandum’s expression turned serious. “Otherwise, they could stab you. Lieutenant, we handle the dirty jobs our society needs done, but doesn’t want to know about. That is the whole point of having an Ethics and Compliance Office. We have the burden of looking at the big picture, so squeamishness about pesky things like morality don’t get in the way of doing the ethical thing. This operation will not only go down in history as one of ECO’s greatest triumphs, it is needed by our people. Because of the humans, the galaxy is becoming an even more dangerous place. If I need to stab someone in the back to secure the future of our society, then it is my duty. The message has been sent, to invite the humans to the party, we can’t turn back now. Is this going to be a problem? Can I count on you?”

Kinsta drew himself fully upright. “Yes, Sir. Many times in the past, I had reservations about things you got me involved in, and they usually worked out well enough in the end.”

Scorandum tilted his head. “You’re going to trust me?”

“I suppose so, Sir.”

“Good. Which reminds me. I am, at the moment, a bit short of funds. Could you loan-”

It was Kinsta’s turn to cock his head. “I didn’t say I am stupid, Sir.”

“Well,” Scorandum shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”

On our way outbound from Globakus, we stopped at a Jeraptha relay station, hoping for a message from the Rindhalu or Maxohlx. I didn’t expect to get a ‘Yes’ from them before the deadline, the purpose of setting a deadline of four months was to give the kitties and spiders time to verify we had crashed the wormhole networks over a broad area of the galaxy. And to give them plenty of time to consider the impact of not agreeing to our terms. Submitting to my demands would be a hard pill to swallow, especially for the prideful kitties. If I had given them a shorter deadline, their instinctive reaction would probably be ‘hell no’. Followed by something like ‘kill all humans’. Four months was long enough, I hoped, for the kitties to contemplate their dark and lonely future, if we did crash the networks across their territory.

Which we couldn’t actually do, but they didn’t know that.

Anyway, I figured a couple months would pass before we heard from either side, so it wasn’t surprising that there was not any note addressed to me in the relay station’s message queue.

“Well, that’s a surprise,” Skippy muttered.

“What?” I sat up taller in the command chair. He had just told me the senior species hadn’t responded. “Did you just find a hidden note you didn’t see before, or-”

“I did, and it’s for you. Uh!” He held up an index finger to shush me. “The note is not from either of the apex species. It’s from your old friend, Captain Scorandum.”

“Oof.”

“Well, don’t be so enthusiastic,” he grumbled. “Why don’t you like the guy?”

“I do like him,” I insisted.

“Um, didn’t you call him ‘Sketchy McSleazeball’?”

“Well, yeah, but, you know, I meant that with affection.”

“Really? So when you told me he is a pain in the ass, you meant-”

“Listen, Skippy, I have no problem with Scorandum. He is very good at what he does.”

“But? I sense a ‘but’ in your tone.”

“He causes problems,” I admitted. “It would be great if he told us what he’s planning to do, before he does it.”

“Like that’s gonna happen,” he chuckled.

“All right. Is the message anything personal?”

“No. It’s strictly business. He wants to meet, face to face, to arrange another transfer of ships. I assume the ships will come from their reserve fleet.”

“Huh,” I shared a glance with Simms. “That’s interesting. Are the spiders still watching the sites where the Jeraptha store their reserve ships?”

“As far as I know, yes,” Skippy said.

“So, either Sketchy McSleazeball found another group of ships to transfer, or the beetles are no longer concerned about what the spiders think. Skippy, do the beetles know that we, you,” I made sure to pump up his ego. “Crashed part of the wormhole network?”

“There are rumors about our involvement, of course. The Rindhalu have not issued an official statement about the incident. That I know of. There could have been secret communications, of course. I do know the Rindhalu have advised their entire coalition to adopt a defensive posture, and that message vaguely referenced ‘recent developments’.”

“All right. XO,” I turned to Simms. “What do you think?”

“The Navy can always use more ships, especially after the losses at Klopeth. We should at least hear what kind of deal Scorandum is offering.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. What do the beetles want, in exchange for more ships?”

“We still haven’t delivered on the technology transfers and upgrades we promised,” Simms reminded me.

“Whatever you do, Joe,” Skippy interjected. “I suggest you do it soon. We need to take full advantage of Ragnar Station, before the kitties or spiders realize we have use of a Maxohlx shipyard.”

“What? How would they know about- Oh my God- I thought you had our INFOSEC nailed down!” To ensure that aliens could not learn vital secrets if they somehow hacked into a UN Navy ship, we took extraordinary precautions with our information security. Like, the location of Ragnar was a secret, even the location of the dormant wormhole that connected to Ragnar was a secret. Ships going to and from Ragnar had to be escorted by Valkyrie or the Flying Dutchman. When leaving Ragnar, the AIs of all Navy ships, and any sort of electronic data storage aboard those ships, were purged of any records about Ragnar and its location. Sure, people who went to Ragnar could look at a star chart and figure out where they were in the galaxy, but we weren’t overly concerned about their squishy human brains getting hacked remotely. Eventually, despite all of our precautions, the secret of Ragnar’s location would get out, but that should not happen for years, maybe decades.

“I did! I do!” He protested. “It’s not a security issue, Joe. The Maxohlx, and probably also the Rindhalu, will have analyzed the Navy ships during the attack at Klopeth. The senior species are not stupid, they will know our Navy ships have been modified in ways that are not possible with Jeraptha fabricators. They will know we somehow have access to a Maxohlx ship maintenance facility, or the equivalent technology. Also, the Navy has been using a lot of Maxohlx missiles, and the senior species know for damned sure we didn’t build those by ourselves. We had to get them from a Maxohlx source, and the volume of missiles in UN Navy magazines makes it clear we have access to a significant cache of their weapons. I am sure the rotten kitties have been scratching their furry heads, trying to figure out where we got access to a fully-stocked shipyard. After they complete a physical audit of existing facilities, it won’t take them long to remember Ragnar.”

“Oh, shit.” I chided myself as I slapped my forehead. We should have thought of that. I should have considered what now seems obvious. Of course the enemy would notice we suddenly had warship magazines crammed full of their missiles. More importantly, damn it, Skippy should have thought of it. Was I pissed at him? Yes. Would arguing with him accomplish anything? Well, it would make me feel better. But no, arguing wouldn’t do anything useful. “Hey, are you saying that if the kitties analyze fragments from the missiles our Navy expended, could they trace them back to Ragnar?”

“Hmm, good question. Um, there really isn’t anything special about those missiles, they were pulled from the regular inventory, at the time Ragnar was set up. And, hmm. I erased any serial numbers from onboard databases when I reprogrammed the things.”

“Good,” I relaxed just a bit in my chair.

“But, oh, crap,” he groaned. “The point is, those missiles are old, Joe. Nobody is using missiles from that era anymore. Based on the chemical composition of missile fragments, the kitties can identify the manufacturing batch of the components. It won’t take them long to realize Ragnar is the only source they could have come from. It would be a hell of a journey for them, but they could just slip a note to the Rindhalu, and let the spiders deal with it.”

“Great. So, we have another problem. Fantastic! Wow,” I laughed bitterly. “I was worried we were running out of problems on our To-Do list.”

“Sorry, Joe,” Skippy mumbled.

“It’s not your fault. Ah, crap. Can we move Ragnar Station?”

“What? No. I told you that.”

“OK, fine, but- We don’t need the whole station, do we? Can’t we just empty the magazines, load up all the spare parts we need, and detach the fabricators?”

“Just? Can’t we just do that? OMG. You make it sound like it will be easy.”

“Nothing the Merry Band of Pirates do is easy, Skippy. Can it be done? What if we used all of our star carriers, could they relocate the fabricators to Jaguar?”

“Ugh.”

“Please think about it, OK?”

“Fine. I am going to regret this, but, yes,” he sighed. “It is possible to cut the fabricators from the station proper.”

“Cool! Then-”

“Wait! Slow your roll there, numbskull. What you’re talking about would be a major effort. It would take many months. Multiple flights back and forth. The effort would consume the majority of Navy resources.”

“That’s OK. The Navy, and the Legion, should stand down while we wait for a response from the senior species. Any new offensive operations now would only antagonize the people we want to be cooperative.”

 “It may be OK with you, what about Admiral Zhao?”

“I’ll deal with Zhao. He’s a smart guy, he will see the logic of relocating the Ragnar shipyard. I’ll handle organizing the resources, you worry about putting a plan together to get the job done.”

“Ugh. You act like this is simple. It’s not. Those fabricators are big, Joe. Big and heavy. Each fab unit would need to be partially taken apart to be transported by star carrier, and reassembled at Jaguar. That is after star carriers are modified to haul a single unit that massive. Plus, hmm. I guess we could use Jeraptha reactors for power, that’s one less item we would need to move. It would probably be best to designate a few of the badly damaged Navy ships to be hangar queens, we can remove their reactors to power fabricators, and use the rest of those ships’ components as spare parts to keep other ships flightworthy.”

“Zhao isn’t going to like that.”

“It’s unavoidable, Joe. With limited resources, it is simply not practical to fully repair every battle-damaged ship. We can replace combat losses with the second batch of ships, or from a third batch, if the ECO can deliver.”

“OK, yeah, I understand. Zhao is a professional, he knows the importance of logistics. That settles it, then. I need to meet with Scorandum, see what he’s offering. Maybe we can arrange to borrow a couple more star carriers.”

“We haven’t returned the ones you already borrowed, Joe.”

“Yeah, well, let’s just say we’re taking them on an extended test drive. Did Scorandum designate a time and place to meet?”

“Yes. It is a rather odd place to meet, in Jeraptha territory, but close to their border with the Esselgin. It is also in the vicinity of several strategically important Maxohlx wormholes.”

“I’m sure he has a good reason for selecting that location,” I shrugged. “We will conduct a recon first anyway. And we still have to go to Klopeth first, especially now that I need to brief Zhao about Ragnar. How long will it take to get to the rendezvous site from Klopeth?”

“Unfortunately, we will be badly positioned to get there on time. The best route would take us through wormhole networks I can’t risk screwing with. We’ll have to go the long way, and that will make us late.”

“Eh, the beetles can entertain themselves by wagering on when we’ll arrive. Are we done here?”

“I have downloaded all data from the relay station. Do you want to leave a reply for Captain Scorandum?”

“Sure. Tell him,” I waved a hand in the air, “that we’re willing to listen to his proposal, something like that.”

“Done,” Skippy said a moment later. “Joe, given the short schedule for the rendezvous, we might arrive before our reply reaches the Jeraptha.”

I nodded. That was also a risk, when messages had to be carried from one relay station to another by passing starships. “Understood. Shepard, jump option Delta, engage when ready.”

Admiral Zhao was relieved to see Valkyrie return to the Klopeth system, especially with news that the battle at Globakus was pretty much over before we got there, and the fight was resolved in our favor. He was super pleased with the performance of DESRON 7, of course. And, he was happy to have the Flying Dutchman back. Without that stealthy platform, he had been forced to task some of his limited number of destroyers to picket duty, reducing the number available for defense. The Navy was still loading the last few damaged warships onto a star carrier, with the other star carriers having jumped away to safety in the vast empty space beyond the edge of the star system.

In general, our return made Zhao happy. Not everything was sweetness and light. He was not happy that, with the loss of the Chesapeake Bay at Globakus, he needed to send another assault carrier to that lonely star system. The Verds were setting up defenses, planning to stay, but the battalion of ExForce troops would be pulling their boots off the ground. We had already planned to send a star carrier to Globakus to pick up the three destroyers, so you might wonder why it was a big deal to include an assault carrier with that mission. The answer is logistics. Zhao, or his staff, had to shuffle ships around, so the star carrier going to Globakus had an assault carrier with room to accommodate a battalion. And supplies aboard to support a battalion for the flight back to FOB Jaguar.

Let’s see, is that the only thing that made Zhao unhappy?

Yeah, that’s about it, no-

Oops.

Except for, you know, the steaming pile I dumped in his lap, about us needing to move the Ragnar shipyard. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Fortunately, I had one more bit of good news. Correction: a possible bit of good news.

“Did the Jeraptha say what they want, in exchange for another batch of ships?” Zhao looked up from his tablet, after reading the summary of my report.

“No. I’ll find out at the meeting. He has delivered two batches of ships already, and,” I shrugged. “We do need to replace combat losses.”

“My concern,” he set down the tablet and pinched the bridge of his nose. The guy looked tired. I know what that is like. “Is the Jeraptha are offering us another batch of ships we can’t use without extensive modifications in a shipyard, at the same time we need those shipyards to repair battle damage to our existing fleet, and to upgrade the last batch of ships they delivered. If we have to relocate the Ragnar shipyard-”

“I think that’s a good bet,” I said without thinking I sounded too much like a Jeraptha. “I mean, Skippy believes we need to make the Ragnar relocation a top priority.”

“Among our other top priorities, yes.”

“Yes,” I agreed. Shit. We had a lot on our plates. Like, stopping the Jupiter Cloud from freezing our home planet. “Sir, you’re concerned the beetles may insist on getting a payoff now? We follow through on upgrading their ships, in exchange for another batch of obsolete hulls?”

“The Jeraptha will expect us to honor our end of the bargain, eventually. Additional ships won’t do us any good, unless we can complete modifications to make them compatible with the existing fleet. General Bishop, you should meet Captain Scorandum to hear his proposal. But I cannot commit resources under my command, without careful consideration of the consequences to the overall force.”

He meant the shipyards and fabricators at Ragnar and Jaguar. Technically, those assets were his to direct, not mine. The Special Mission Group had use of those assets as needed, but they didn’t fall under the scope of my authority. Even though the Special Mission Group set up the shipyards at Jaguar, and found and activated the one at Ragnar. It’s complicated. “Yes, Sir.” I was OK with his conditions, it would be a jackass move for me to make an agreement that made his job more difficult. “I would like to bring prize crews to the meeting, in case Scorandum springs another surprise on us, and has a batch of ships ready.”

He thought for a moment, then nodded. With many of his ships needing to repair battle damage, and already attached to star carriers for the flight back to Jaguar, their crews could be available for temporary duty with me. “Do you intend to take the Flying Dutchman with you?”

Actually, I hadn’t considered that. “I wasn’t planning to, Sir. Nagatha knows the opening sequence of the wormhole to Jiayuguan,” I tried to use the base’s official Chinese name when speaking with Zhao. “The star carrier making the detour to Globakus might miss the wormhole opening, but the bulk of your fleet should go through, before the sequence expires.” Having the Jaguar and Ragnar wormholes on remote timers was a great benefit, even though the number of times the controller modules could activate a wormhole was limited. Any ships that were too late for the scheduled opening would have to wait for Valkyrie, so Skippy could open the door again.

“Can I assume that you will check relay stations, for news from the senior species?”

“We will continue to do that. It’s still early, Sir.”

“Your deadline of four months was rather generous.”

“I wanted to give them time to consider the consequences of not agreeing to our terms.”

“Your terms,” he said. It sounded like an accusation. He was right. I owned it, the whole operation to crash wormhole networks was my initiative, I hadn’t cleared it with him, or with UNEF Command. “Four months also gives the enemy, both of our enemies,” he included the Rindhalu on our list of opponents. “Time to consider, and prepare for, alternatives to compliance. Time to collaborate, if necessary.”

“There is always that risk,” I muttered.

“The greatest risk with a long deadline, is that conditions will continue to deteriorate on Earth. General, after your meeting with Scorandum, I would like you to visit Earth. The people there need to know there is hope. Tell them we have the ability to selectively shut down the wormhole network. That we are working to bring aboard allies to assist with clearing the cloud away from Earth.”

“Yes, Sir. I was planning to do that, until we heard about the Thuranin task force at Globakus.”

“You made the right call,” he assured me, though we both knew that was true only if a nuclear war hadn’t broken out on Earth, while I was dealing with the mess at Globakus. “If your flight to Earth delays acquiring more ships from the Jeraptha, or even delays my ships from returning to Jiayuguan, make Earth a priority, please.”

“I will.” One of his aides was trying to get Zhao’s attention, I took that as a cue my time was up. I needed to get going anyway, making the scheduled rendezvous with Scorandum was going to be tight. We wouldn’t have much time to recon the rendezvous site before jumping in, but I couldn’t imagine that would be a problem.

The Maxohlx would have to be insane to tangle with us again.

Playing three on three basketball in Valkyrie’s gym is great exercise, and great for esprit de corps, for the crew to see me being a regular guy. Maybe some people took it a bit easy on me because I am a general. And I know the crew often calls me ‘The Old Man’, even though I am still younger than many of them. My story is when people say ‘Old’, they are referring to my time as a Pirate, not my age, and I’m sticking to that story. I am still young, damn it.

Except, I don’t always feel like it.

That day, I tried a Pick and Roll, but I was too slow, and slammed into the player defending me. The player, who is a woman, and yes, that is still extra embarrassing to me even though she is a high-speed special operator, and I am not. I went down and rolled, not the way I’d planned.

“Ow,” I had to grit my teeth.

“You OK, Sir?” Major Frey held out a hand to help me up.

“Think maybe I sprained my ankle,” I said as I rolled onto my butt, trying gingerly to flex that ankle. There was a momentary sharp pain, I knew that wasn’t good.

“What’s wrong, Joe?” Skippy’s voice came over the speaker in the ceiling. “Do you have a boo-boo?”

“I rolled my ankle, you ass.”

“Ohh, poor Joey is hurt. Should I call for a Waa-aa-aah-mbulance?”

“No,” he made me laugh, in spite of being pissed off at him. “Frey, help me up.”

Nope. I could stand on the ankle, but it hurt and I couldn’t use it to steady myself. “Ah, crap. I’m out, sorry.”

“Come on, Joe,” Skippy sniffed. “Haven’t you heard that pain is weakness leaving the body?”

“Skippy, I’m in the Army. Pain is probably early-onset arthritis.”

Frey nodded and offered me a fist bump. “I heard that, Sir.”

In the passageway, limping back to my cabin, Skippy pinged me. “Hey, Joe, you should go to sickbay, get that ankle checked out.”

“Nah,” I stood on the other foot and rotated my sore ankle. “It’s fine.”

“Are you sure? It could-”

“I’ve done this before, Skippy, I know the symptoms. I’ll take it easy for a couple days.”

“Hmm. You’re in a good mood.”

“I am. We got the mess at Globakus sorted out, the seniors will realize soon enough they have to cut a deal with us, and, our super trustworthy friend Sketchy McSleazeball is lining up another batch of ships for us. It’s all good, you know?”

“It could be too good, Joe.”

“Skippy,” I resumed walking, trying not to limp. “Will you stop it with the negative waves? If something goes wrong, I am blaming you.”

“Ugh. Fine, but if-”

“No. Negative. Waves. Got that?”

“Sure, Joe. I’ll just think happy thoughts, that will fix everything.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The ECO heavy cruiser Repeat Offender drifted and waited at the rendezvous site, alert but with weapons and targeting systems offline. Weapons being deactivated was a hard requirement of the people the ECO crew was waiting for, not that any weapon aboard the cruiser could do significant harm to their guests. Maybe ‘guests’ was not the right word, for nobody wanted a visit from the Maxohlx. Business partners was a better description. Temporary business partners, for a limited time and scope of mutual interest. After the deal was done, Uhtavio Scorandum hoped to never see the Maxohlx again.

After the deal was done, it would probably not be healthy for him to meet the Maxohlx again. He did not have any experience in joint operations with the senior species who ruled the enemy coalition, but he did know a thing or two about clandestine ops. One rule that was nearly universal across all species was simple: don’t leave any witnesses.

Even if the deal went according to plan, Uhtavio would have to lay low for a while.

Especially if the deal went according to plan.

He sat in his office, with a bottle of burgoze in a drawer that he was ignoring, though the annoying ‘Drink Me’, ‘Driiiiink Meeee’ sound of the bottle was growing hard to ignore.

The real problem was that he was bored.

Bored, in advance of the most important operation of his career. Perhaps the most important op in the long and storied history of the Ethics and Compliance Office. How could he possibly be bored?

It was simple: because absolutely nothing was happening.

All he could do was wait for the Maxohlx to arrive.

Unless they were already there, there wasn’t any way for him to know. The Repeat Offender’s sensor field was switched off, and no active sensor pulses were allowed. Carefully tuned passive sensors might have intermittently detected extremely faint special anomalies in the area, the sensor technicians and the ship’s AI could not be sure they had detected anything at all. They only got intermittent readings because they knew what to look for, and Scorandum wondered whether the faint sensor readings that showed up were a figment of the sensor computer’s imagination. Like the crew, the ship’s AI wanted to see something out there, maybe wanted it enough to cloud its judgment.

It didn’t matter. There was nothing the Repeat Offender could do if it was surrounded by unseen objects. The AI had to wait, and if Scorandum was suffering from boredom, he couldn’t imagine how the AI was dealing with it.

In truth, none of them had to wait long. Half a day from jumping into the rendezvous point, twenty seven Maxohlx ships suddenly dropped stealth, revealing they had the single Jeraptha ship surrounded. The enemy had no restriction against having weapons systems active, as soon as the photons could cross the short distance, the Repeat Offender’s hull was painted by targeting sensors from eight warships.

“We are not impressed,” Scorandum muttered to himself, on the heavy cruiser’s bridge. His eyes took in data from the tactical display, showing that two enemy battleships and six cruisers had his ship pinpointed with their guns.

He ignored them. If the Maxohlx had flown all the way to the rendezvous site just to shoot at a single cruiser of an outdated design, he would be severely disappointed. The enemy could shoot if they wished, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. His focus was not on the eight ships harassing him with active targeting sensors. What he cared about were the nineteen ships that were silent. It was a beautiful sight. Eighteen frontline Extinction-class battlecruisers, of the same basic configuration as the fearsome ghost ship Valkyrie. Minus, of course, an Elder AI, and all the advanced technology modifications that had made Valkyrie quite likely the single most powerful warship in the galaxy. The nineteenth ship was not a combat vessel, but was perhaps more important than any battlecruiser. It was a stores ship had was full of spare parts, and the sort of items warships consumed whether they were in combat or not.

Soon, the exciting part of the operation would commence. But first, he had to endure the tedium of listening to thinly-veiled insults from the representatives of the Hegemony. And then, he had to stand by while teams of technicians borrowed from the Home Fleet inspected the enemy ships being offered.

As the image of a Maxohlx fleet captain appeared in the display, and she snarled at him, he deeply regretted not cracking open the bottle of burgoze.

The most dangerous part of the mission was approaching fast. The technicians were coming to the end of their exhaustive inspections of the eighteen battlecruisers, and the stores ship. The process required carefully scanning every nook and cranny of the nineteen ships, checking their overall condition, and more importantly, looking for booby traps and hidden control mechanisms. If the Maxohlx intended to screw him, there wasn’t much Scorandum could do about it, other than to be disappointed at the wasteful clumsiness of the enemy.

In a cavernous and completely empty cargo bay, aboard a randomly-chosen battlecruiser, he listened while his aide Lieutenant Kinsta droned through a report summary. The report had been compiled from the inspection teams, and had without any doubt been scandalously dumbed down for his benefit. As Kinsta read the summary, the leaders of the inspection teams were muttering to themselves, their antennas twitching with alarm as serious, serious and dangerous issues they had uncovered were glossed over. Scorandum shot a glare at the team leaders, who had been instructed to keep their mouths shut during the briefing. Seated next to Scorandum was a Maxohlx fleet captain accompanied by two heavily armed and armored guards. The haughty aliens were no doubt listening for any hint that the Jeraptha had found multiple signs of betrayal. Booby traps. Power conduits that had been partially cut through. Railgun magnets installed backwards, so the polarity was reversed. Most seriously, any sign that the original ship AI had not been completely removed, despite the obvious signs that nearly every bulkhead panel and overhead covering had been cut into, for removal of the native AI’s substrate. Each ship now supposedly ran on a reduced function AI located in a large box, on the floor of a cargo bay. Rewiring the ships with proper AIs would be a problem for the Jeraptha, that was the agreement.

As Kinsta tried to look bored while he narrated a summary of the report, he used certain words and phrases previously arranged with his senior officer. For example, ‘no anomalies noted’ meant there had indeed been significant issues uncovered, and ‘no significant findings’ meant the enemy was attempting to screw them in an insultingly obvious fashion. The Maxohlx either had underestimated the capability of Jeraptha sensors, or they simply did not care what issues the lower-tier species discovered aboard the eighteen battlecruisers and one stores ship. Both sides knew the Jeraptha were committed to the deal, whether they liked everything they found or not. As long as the battlecruisers were judged to be basically flightworthy, and not imminently about to explode or kill their new owners, the Jeraptha would take what they could get. Merely by agreeing to the operation in principle, the would-be allies of humanity had burned any chance they had of a mutual-defense agreement with the upstart species.

Kinsta was getting to the conclusion, which everyone knew would be that the ships being offered were good enough, when one of the inspection team leaders became agitated. Standing up, her antennas jerked side to side. “Captain Scorandum, I must protest,” she said, though she had been strictly instructed not to make any sort of protest, or indeed not to say anything at all. “The summary’s conclusions do not mention the serious and-”

“Commander Verant,” Scorandum interrupted smoothly. “You addressed all of your concerns in the report you submitted?”

“Yes. But I do not see them included-”

“Then you cannot be blamed, if anything were to go amiss. I commend the job your team has done here, under very trying circumstances. The-”

“Sir,” Verant was not mollified by useless praise. “There was no mention of critical issues we found, such as the spatial anomalies in-”

“We are aware of these potential anomalies,” Scorandum’s gentle tone hardened as he glared at the protesting commander. “Thank you, Commander.”

“But-”

“Commander Verant,” Scorandum scowled. “Perhaps, being from the Home Fleet, you are not familiar with how we do things in the Ethics and Compliance Office. That is all.”

Verant sat down, hanging her head and muttering to herself.

The Maxohlx fleet captain beside him shifted in her seat. “Do you need a moment to address your internal discipline matters, Captain Scorandum?” She asked with an amused smirk.

“No,” he assured her.

“Your teams have had three days to inspect our ships,” Fleet Captain Zortenti was no longer sounding amused. “Can you provide an answer? Is there going to be a deal, or not?”

Scorandum gestured toward Kinsta, and waved for his aide to continue. “That is why we are reviewing the-” The phone in his pocket vibrated, and he pulled it out, shrugging with mild embarrassment and tilting the screen away from the Maxohlx. He read the one-word message, deleted it, and tucked the phone back in a pocket. “Yes,” he said to the haughty alien. “The deal is on.”

“Then let us proceed, without further-”

There was a humming sound.

It was familiar.

It was the sound of virtual jump drive coils spinning up.

“What?” Zortenti snarled. “What is happen- Happ-” She spasmed, her eyes rolling back, lids jerking uncontrollably. Behind her, the two armor-suited guards stiffened, and slowly toppled over backwards.

“My people have a deal,” Scorandum said with a smile. “Just, not the one you agreed to.”

Eighteen Extinction-class battlecruisers, one stores ship, and the Repeat Offender, all jumped away in flashes of gamma rays.

Moments later, the eight other Maxohlx warships exploded.

When the bubble of gamma rays reached forty lightseconds from their source, a ship at that location dropped its stealth field. A ghost ship.

It, too, jumped away.

“Captain Scorandum is calling you, Joe,” Skippy announced, only a few seconds after we jumped in. The display was showing twenty other ships around us. According to the symbols, the count of twenty included eighteen Maxohlx battlecruisers of Valkyrie’s base design, a supply ship, and a Jeraptha heavy cruiser.

So far, so good. Everything was going to plan, although there was still plenty that could go wrong. Like, pretty much anything.

We had arrived at the rendezvous site three days before the Maxohlx, and Skippy saturated the area with microwormholes. Three days sounds like we were cutting it close, but Scorandum didn’t reveal the rendezvous site to the rotten kitties until two days before he planned to meet them. Were the Maxohlx suspicious about the compressed timing? Probably. They were not happy about it, and complained to Scorandum. He told them they had two options, the first being to go fuck themselves. Unwisely, they chose option two. Really, they understood that the Jeraptha were nervous about the senior species getting to the rendezvous site early, and preparing for all kinds of malicious nonsense. The Maxohlx were not used to trusting anyone, because everyone knew they could not be trusted. Maybe they suspected the Jeraptha had planned a trap, but in their arrogance, they assumed the comparatively crude technology of the beetles couldn’t harm them. And they couldn’t imagine the Rindhalu going through the trouble of setting a trap, they were probably right about that.

Anyway, the Maxohlx arrived where we were waiting, and they intensely scanned the area out to a distance of about fifteen lightseconds. With us forty lightseconds away and Valkyrie tightly wrapped in a stealth field, they didn’t detect us. I kind of felt like the kitties were just going through the motions of conducting a recon, they simply seemed unconcerned about anything the Jeraptha had planned.

That was a big mistake.

Like, huge.

When we first met, and Scorandum shocked the hell out of me by explaining his plan to double-cross the kitties, rather than double-crossing us, I didn’t answer right away, because my brain blew a fuse. Was I stunned that the ECO was betting on a long-term relationship with us, instead of a one-time thing with the Maxohlx? No. Was I amazed by the daring plan cooked up by Scorandum? Not really. Besides, his ‘plan’ was more like when I ask Skippy whether he can do some crazy thing, and then he has to, you know, handle all the pesky details. And then, do the crazy thing. Scorandum was taking a risk that we had the ability to hack into and take control of more than twenty senior-species warships. No. He was just hoping we could do that. I guess he figured that if we couldn’t conjure up a miracle, he would tell the kitties the deal was off, and hope they never learned he intended to double-cross them.

The reason my brain blew a fuse I was from being stunned that the Maxohlx, even after we showed we could shut down the freakin’ wormhole network their empire depended on, still had the stones to try capturing Skippy again.

Damn.

That frightened me.

Had I completely misjudged the kitties? The basis of my whole plan was that each of the senior species would choose to cooperate with us, rather than risk the prospect of isolation and loss of their empires. Maybe the myth of the Maxohlx as the rightful rulers of the galaxy, was such a powerful part of their identity, their society couldn’t survive without it. If that was true, we were in trouble, big trouble, because it meant the Mutual Assured Destruction policy was not an effective deterrent.

The thought that the kitties were impossibly, even suicidally deluded and stubborn, was a major factor in my decision to agree with Scorandum’s plan. That, plus Skippy boasting that he, in fact, would have no problem taking control of the ships.

Let’s just say I was skeptical he could actually do that, remembering the trouble he had with Valkyrie’s native AI.

That was a fun conversation. While I don’t remember the exact words, it went something like:

“Uh-” I had said, back while Scorandum was waiting for an answer. “Skippy, listen. I know you’re awesome and all that, but-”

“No. You actually do not know how awesome I am, because your tiny monkey brain can’t comprehend the truly vast scope of my awesomeness.”

“Forgive me, your Lordship,” I sighed. It was just easier to suck up to his enormous ego. “Since my tiny brain can’t understand your awesomeness, please explain how you can take over more than twenty Maxohlx ships.”

“Easy, it’s-”

“Because as I remember, you had a hell of a time taking over just one ship when we captured Valkyrie.”

“Well, yes, but-”

“I also remember that native AI caused a lot of trouble for us, because you were not as awesome as you think you are.”

“Oh! How dare you! I should-”

“Please, go ahead. I am waiting to hear your fabulous plan.”

“And I am trying to tell you, if you will shut your pie hole for a freakin’ second.”

“Hit me.”

“OK,” he took a deep breath. “It’s simple. There are two reasons why this will be no problemo for me. First, unlike when I took over Valkyrie, this time we have a huge advantage. Captain Scorandum required the kitties to rip the master control AIs out of the ships they’re transferring.”

“Right,” I snorted. “Like they can be trusted to do that.”

“No, they certainly cannot be trusted to do that, not completely. But, they will do most of the hard work for me. The kitties will remove all the obvious substrate, to make it look good when Jeraptha inspection teams scan the ships. My guess is the kitties will leave enough substrate hidden to retain control of the ships. Those fragments of substrate will be isolated, and networked together by some secondary channel. Maybe sending signals through power conduits, something like that. The point is, the rotten kitties leaving bits and pieces of substrate hidden in the walls is actually a bonus for us. I can take over the signals pathways one by one, and hack into those isolated pieces without the rest of the dumbed-down AI knowing anything is wrong.”

“That sounds great, but, how can you be sure to get all of the stuff they’ve hidden? The kitties are going to be very careful, they know the Jeraptha aren’t stupid.”

“Ah, working remotely, I can’t be sure to get everything. Uh!” He shushed me. “That doesn’t matter, all I have to do is clear enough space to install a submind aboard each ship. The submind can control the jump drive, and the kitties won’t know anything is wrong until it’s too late.”

“OK, yeah, but what happens after the ships jump? Your connection through the microwormholes will be severed.”

“True. Well, the subminds only need to hang on until we can jump to their location, and I can re-establish my presence. All the ships will need to jump into a small area, with Valkyrie at the center.”

“You can do that?”

“A short-range jump, with Maxohlx jump drives, after I have several days to refine the drives? Easy peasy, Joe.”

“This all sounds too good to be true. Uh, OK, about the other ships? The Maxohlx must be bringing warships that they are not intending to transfer. Those ships will certainly have fully capable AIs.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, exasperated by my questions. “With those ships, all I need to do is hack into their jump drive capacitors safety mechanisms. I remove the safeties, and BOOM. Those ships will not be a problem for anyone.”

“Uh, what about the kitties aboard the ships we are stealing? They will slaughter the beetles, as soon as they realize they have been double-crossed.”

“No they won’t, because I will hack into their implants and scramble their brains.”

“Scramble their brains?”

“Or I could just stun them?”

“Let’s go with that. Are you sure you can do that?”

“Yes. I have studied Maxohlx physiology and the cybernetics they use. I have learned a lot since we captured Mister Snuggles. Remember, I had no problem controlling Bite Me Elmo.”

“Oh, yeah. Skippy, I believe that you believe you can do this, but-”

“Joe! Trust. The. Awesomeness. I got this. Listen, give me three seconds and I can create a map of the substrate of an alien AI. Give me three minutes and I can infiltrate my presence into that substrate. Give me three days? I can perform a freakin’ miracle. The beetles need to inspect those ships before they proceed with the deal, and even without them dragging their feet, it will take several days to be thorough about it. The good news is, if the beetles are not being thorough, the Maxohlx will be suspicious, so the enemy will expect the Jeraptha to poke their sensors into every nook and cranny of those ships. Really, the whole inspection will be for show, although only Captain Scorandum will know that. When my subminds report everything is ready, I will ping his phone, and it’s showtime, baby!”

That conversation was replaying in my head, while Valkyrie drifted in the center of the formation, and our sensors recovered from the spatial distortion of the jump. Like I said, we were surrounded by the correct number and types of ships, so that part of the plan had worked properly. It could all blow up in our faces. Eighteen of the ships close to us were Maxohlx battlecruisers, and the Jeraptha inspection confirmed most of their weapons were operational. The only thing stopping the native AIs of those ships from firing on us, were the subminds Skippy uploaded. After those ships jumped, he lost connection with the subminds, and the native AIs had forty seconds to assert control before we jumped in.

If even one of the native AIs took back control of its ship, the operation could become a disaster.

“Yeah, I’ll talk with Scorandum in a moment,” I anxiously scanned the holographic display for information, then gave up. “Sitrep. Skippy, do you have control of those ships?”

“Jeez Louise, why are you monkeys so impatient? I am in the process of re-establishing a link with the subminds there.”

“Sounds like a fancy way of saying ‘No’.”

“Ugh. Ok, yes, technically, the-”

“Can you stop the native AIs from making those ships go ‘BOOM’?”

“Not yet.”

“That’s what I thought. Mammay,” I said to the weapons officer behind my chair. “We have weapons lock on every one of those ships?”

“Check,” he confirmed.

“Joe-” Skippy tried to get my attention.

“Outstanding. Weps, if you see something squirrely out there, don’t wait for me. Take care of the problem.”

“Take care of the problem, check,” Mammay acknowledged.

“JOE!” Skippy shouted.

“What?”

“Three, two, one, done. I have re-established control.”

Knowing I was talking with an absent-minded beer can, I cocked my head at his avatar. “You are sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“How sure?”

“I can, with full confidence, give you a solid shmaybe.”

“Not a gold-plated shmaybe?”

“Well, I have been fooled by a Maxohlx starship AI before, so-”

“Yeah. Mammay, stay on your toes. Skippy, how long until you are as certain as you can possibly be?”

“Seven minutes and forty three seconds.”

“Uh,” his precision confused me. “That’s, an awfully specific number. How do-”

“It is specific, because unlike you meatsacks, I know what I’m doing. That is how long it will take for the subminds I loaded into the substrate of those ships to stabilize, and wipe out any trace of the Maxohlx AI. It’s a process, dumdum. I’m not just making this up as I go.”

“Right. Sorry. Uh, ping Captain Scorandum and request him to stand by, until you give us the All-Clear.”

When Skippy gave the All-Clear, I was in a dropship with its engines warmed up, and the docking bay door already open. The flight over to the battlecruiser occupied by Scorandum was short, the only unusual part of the flight was our pilots had to fly into the docking bay without a guidance beam. The submind aboard that ship was still busy keeping the native AI suppressed, and didn’t have the bandwidth to guide us in. I could have asked Skippy to do it, except he had eighteen other ships to worry about and I didn’t want to distract him. Plus a manual docking was good practice for our pilots.

Scorandum met us in the passageway, beyond the docking bay airlock.

“Captain,” I gave him a human-style salute. “Congratulations.”

He dipped his antennas toward each other, touching in the center of his head. “General Bishop. Are congratulations appropriate already?”

I nodded, exaggerating the gesture so he would understand. “Skippy says he is wiping up the last remnants of the native AIs. They do not pose a threat.”

“That’s a fact, Jack!” Skippy’s AI appeared, floating in the air.

Scorandum blinked and took a half-step back from the hologram. It always surprised me that some people are a bit frightened by Skippy. I have to remember that to anyone who doesn’t know Skippy is an absent-minded shithead, he is a godlike Elder AI, unpredictable and capable of great destruction. “General Bishop,” the ECO captain looked at me rather than at the avatar. “Your AI is-”

“He is not my AI,” I corrected the Jeraptha officer. “And you should talk to him directly.”

“My apologies,” he bowed his upper body toward the avatar. “Mister Skippy, you accomplished a miracle.”

“Aw, it was nothing,” Skippy shrugged, and his avatar actually blushed. That was a new affectation for him, he must have been tweaking his emulation subroutines.

“Oh.” Scorandum’s antennas dipped. “I did not realize it was so simple. Perhaps Maxohlx technology is not quite as advanced as we thought. The-”

“Oh, I, uh,” Skippy sputtered. “I meant, it was nothing for me. Impossible for anyone else, of course.”

“Of course. General Bishop, welcome aboard your new ship.”

“Are you sure about this?” The plan was for the Jeraptha to turn over all nineteen ships to us. When Scorandum explained that part of the plan, it had surprised the hell out of me.

“Yes,” he shrugged with his antennas. “They are more useful to you than to us. We couldn’t effectively operate them for long. Even with spare parts, the maintenance requirements are beyond the ability of our shipyards. Plus,” his eyes flicked to Skippy, then back to me. “Forgive me that I do not entirely trust that the native AIs are completely purged. AIs of our design would be vulnerable to attack, your AIs presumably will be better protected.”

“You’re probably right about that,” I agreed. What he didn’t say were the real reasons he was giving eighteen frontline battlecruisers to us. The Jeraptha not only couldn’t operate those ships effectively, they also probably couldn’t keep them for long. The instant the kitties learned they had been conned, their fleet would be gunning to take back the stolen battlecruisers, or destroy them.

That was a very sensible reason for turning over the ships to us, and the beetles had an even more important reason, that fit into their long-term strategy. While they couldn’t effectively use those ships to defend their territory and interests, we could. The Jeraptha were betting we could, and would, protect them. Boosting the strength of the fledgling United Nations Navy was in their interests, and it was the opening move in them forming an alliance with humanity. Along with his plan to double-cross the Maxohlx, Scorandum had brought along a draft proposal for a mutual-defense treaty. By screwing over the kitties before we signed a treaty with them, the Jeraptha were taking a big risk.

I wonder how many of the beetles had wagered on it.

Fleet Captain Zortenti of the Maxohlx Hegemony returned to consciousness abruptly, like flicking a switch. One moment she had been only dimly aware of the external world, only vaguely aware of her own existence, and the next moment she remembered who she was.

Remembered everything.

Remembered, but she did not understand. Where was she?

As her eyes struggled to focus, she saw a figure standing, looking at her, waiting patiently.

It was a Jeraptha.

“You will release me at once, inferior,” the Maxohlx fleet captain snarled, rising from the gel bed in the detention cell. “Or I will-”

“Oh, shut up,” Scorandum said with a yawn, from the other side of the energy field barrier to the cell. “If you are just going to bore me with useless threats, I have better things to do. You have been asleep, so I’ll give you an update. All eighteen battlecruisers, plus the stores ship, are under the control of the humans who call themselves the Merry Band of Pirates. Your other ships are a cloud of debris that has probably gone cold by now. You, and the other survivors of your people, are detained aboard this ship. In case you don’t recognize it, this is Valkyrie.”

“Valkyrie?” She looked side to side with alarm.

“Yes. You are all here, so the Skippy AI can make sure none of you cause any trouble.”

“Fool! I will kill y-”

“You will do nothing,” he laughed. “You should be concerned about your own safety. In a few hours, I am going back aboard my ship and jumping back toward home. The humans will drop you and your fellows,” he used an antenna to indicate the other cells in the compartment, all occupied by multiple sleeping members of the enemy senior species. “On an isolated world in your coalition, and leave a message for your people, so they can come get you. But, since you are responsible for losing eighteen frontline capital ships, maybe you are not eager for a reunion with your fleet. Not only did you thoroughly get played,” his antennas twitched with delight. “You also significantly boosted the strength of the human military. And increased the odds of them agreeing to a mutual defense pact with my people.”

She did not have an immediate reply to that, likely contemplating that he was correct about her getting the blame for the stunning fiasco. When she spoke, it was with less snarling, but even more hatred. “Did you even consider that an alliance with us would be of more benefit to you?”

“No,” he laughed. “Your people are famous for backstabbing your own clients, yet you are surprised when no one trusts you? We knew you would turn on us, as soon as you captured the Skippy AI.”

“You have doomed all of us to eventually becoming slaves of the humans,” she shook her head, but held her eyes in a murderous glare fixed on him. “Why would you do such a thing? Surely you can see what a danger the humans are to the entire galaxy?”

“Ah, maybe. Yes, we do understand your argument for stability in the galaxy. It is true that, cruel though the war has been, you and the Rindhalu have established and maintained a balance that benefits everyone, at least to some extent.”

“Then,” her face displayed genuine confusion. “Why?”

“The humans might destabilize the galaxy. Over the next few years, anything could happen.”

“I do not understand why you would want such a thing.”

“It’s easy,” he shrugged. “You forgot who you are dealing with. Stability is comfortable. It can also be boring. For us, not knowing what the humans will do next offers juicy action.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For the amazing low, low price of- Well, for the price of an implied promise to defend the interests of the Jeraptha, Scorandum not only gave us eighteen frontline battlecruisers and a stores ship crammed full of spare parts, he also let us borrow four Jeraptha star carriers to haul away our loot. Maybe I should have held out for a set of floor mats or an extended warranty, but I wanted to get the hell out of there. Get out of there, before he scammed me into agreeing to something I didn’t have the authority to commit humanity to. Really, I didn’t have the authority for even an implied mutual defense agreement. In fact, I had done exactly what Admiral Zhao warned me not to do.

With our new top-quality pre-owned starships loaded aboard the star carriers that were commanded by our prize crews, we jumped away. Scorandum had made me promise that I understood those star carriers were only on loan to us, the beetles expected us to return them as soon as was practical. He actually told me that he wanted the star carriers back as soon as possible, but I told him we would probably be extremely creative about the definition of ‘possible’, so he shouldn’t expect to see them again soon.

The major question for me was: where to go? Scorandum had issued an open invitation for a meeting with his people, and I mumbled assurances that my people would love to sign a formal alliance, at some point in the future. Zhao had told me my top priority should be going to Earth, and I agreed that was a top priority, just maybe not the number one item on the lost. We now had the means to make the UN Navy a major power, or at least able to stand up to a fight with either of the senior species. Skippy warned that, in their current condition, the battlecruisers were only basically OK. If we wanted them to be something special, they all needed to go to Ragnar for an extensive refit. When those ships came out of the Ragnar space docks, he assured me they would be about eighty percent as capable as Valkyrie. Assuming that Ragnar Station is not get attacked by either or both of the senior species, while our new ships were there.

You might think that, with our threat to crash the wormhole networks, we didn’t need to build a powerful Navy. If you think that, I would like to remind you of the stupid crap the Maxohlx just tried to do to us. If the kitties thought they had any alternative to submitting to our terms, they were going to try it. Again. And again. I was worried sick about that, about them calling my bluff.

And direct action by the Maxohlx was not the only potential problem. We had seen them goad their clients into attacking us, they could do that again. In my nightmares, the kitties got the Bosphuraq or the Thuranin or some other client to attack Earth with nukes. The Maxohlx could then make a big show of ‘punishing’ their clients for the supposedly unauthorized attack, while waiting to see whether we responded by crashing the wormhole network in the client’s territory.

Shit.

If you think I slept better, after we laid a smackdown on the senior species by faking a partial crash of the wormhole network, you are wrong. Like I said, and I know I say this a lot: I was worried sick about it. When I was at Globakus, I was able to spend time with Margaret, and she should be the one person I can tell my secrets to. But I couldn’t. She knew something was bothering me, and she knew I wouldn’t talk about it. That had to hurt, me keeping secrets like that. She didn’t ask me what was wrong, she just let me know she was there for me, whether I wanted to talk about it or not. That helped, it really did.

My life sucks.

Anyway, the decision was simple, even if it created more complications for me. Valkyrie escorted our nineteen new prize ships to Ragnar, where Skippy disrupted everything. He instructed the shipyard to immediately cease work on the former Jeraptha Patrol ships, and prepare to initiate refits and upgrades to our new fleet of bad-ass battlecruisers. Admiral Rochambeau, who was in charge of Ragnar Station, didn’t waste a second by arguing about the disruption to the schedule. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on an Extinction-class battlecruiser.

He was less enthusiastic when we told him of the plan, of the need, to tear Ragnar Station apart and move it, when the ships currently there had completed their refits. Skippy privately told me it would not be possible to upgrade our new Maxohlx battlecruisers and the old Jeraptha Patrol ships, given the limited raw materials at Ragnar. The station was not intended for long-term use, the designers assumed the station would be detected by the enemy and destroyed not long after the first group of battle-ravaged ships came there for repairs. In that respect, a move to FOB Jaguar would be good; that star system had an extensive belt of metal-rich asteroids, and the planet had some mineral resources that could feed the station’s fabricators. Assuming we could relocate the critical components of the station to Club Skippy.

Why move Ragnar there, and not some other place? The answer is simple: logistics. Our supply chain from Earth was perilously long, and perilously thin. Supporting two bases, even if we could find another secure site, was just not practical, given the limited resources available. Maybe someday, we would have multiple secure forward operating bases, but Jaguar base would have to be good enough. Yes, moving Ragnar there would be putting all our ship servicing and fabrication assets in one basket, we know that. Until we had a better option, or even just the luxury of thinking about a better option, we had to take the risk.

Assuming the senior species gave us time to do that, before they inevitably came to the rogue planet and nuked Ragnar to radioactive dust.

We jumped away from Ragnar, leaving behind the star carriers we borrowed and needed to return someday, and set course not for Earth, but for FOB Jaguar. Yes, we were going to Earth, that was a priority. We were stopping at Jaguar first, because it actually was becoming useful as a forward operating base, like the name said. Valkyrie needed fuel, and the tanks at Ragnar Station were running dry. While we were away, the fuel collection drogue there had suffered a failure that had it running at less than ten percent capacity. The station AI was working to fix it, and really did not need or appreciate Skippy’s help, but we needed to find another gas station. Skippy also showed me a navigation chart that showed diverting to Jaguar would only add a day to our journey back to Earth, because while he could create wormhole shortcuts to Jaguar, the shortcut options to our home star system were limited.

So, we arrived at the Jaguar wormhole, to find the UN Navy star carrier Yangtze waiting at the designated point. Attached to Yangtze’s long spine were the destroyers Marseilles, Sao Paulo and Boston, along with the assault carrier Caspian Sea. Looking at sensor scans of the battered Sao Paulo, I thought that destroyer would probably be destined to be stripped for parts to keep other ships flying. That sucked for the ship’s valiant crew, and I felt bad for Captain Sousa, he had to know the likely fate of his ship. Still, he had to be proud of what his little ship accomplished, and relieved to be away from Globakus.

The Caspian Sea had aboard the entire battalion of ExForce soldiers who dropped on Globakus, not a single human remained on that world. There had been talk of leaving a small liaison group to work with the Verds, but that idea got shot down, a good thing in my opinion. A small group of humans would become a prime target for warrior caste soldiers who refused to acknowledge their planet was under new management, and protecting humans would create a security headache for the Verds, at a time when they had to worry about their own safety. The warrior caste on Globakus had lost their grip on power, that did not mean the Verd-kris were the undisputed rulers of the planet. They didn’t want to enforce their will on the locals. The whole point of the Verd’s experiment on Globakus was to free a Kristang society from the iron fist of the warrior caste, and see what developed. Hopefully, the other castes, likely led by the merchants’ guilds, would take over leadership, made easier because the merchants had already been in a power-sharing arrangement with the warrior caste.

Eventually, the Verd-kris wanted to move further to restore Kristang culture to its original form, before that culture got twisted and perverted to serve the needs of their Thuranin overlords. The Verds were playing the long game, being patient, content with baby steps. There would be setbacks, they understood that. What they cared about was overall movement in the right direction. And they were realistic about the pace and scope of change they could accomplish. Though women were in positions of authority in Verd society, most of the Verds who dealt directly with the merchant guilds on Globakus were men, to avoid alarming the locals. The Verds eventually wanted to improve the status of women in Kristang society, they also understood that would be a very long-term process. Kristang females had been genetically engineered to be small and submissive and less intelligent, so cultural oppression was not the only barrier to their achieving equality. As much as it had to frustrate the Verds to see their cousins acting submissively, there wasn’t anything to be done about it in the short term. The goal of the Verds was to overthrow the warrior caste across all Kristang territory, the best way to accomplish that was to show other castes the advantages of taking back control of their clans. Forcing the male Kristang on Globakus to accept genetic modification of their female ‘property’ would be counterproductive, and unite other castes with the warriors against the Verd-kris.

Damn. I hoped the Verds succeeded. I was also glad that accomplishing their fanatical goals were not on my To Do list, I had enough to worry about.

Margaret was aboard the assault carrier Caspian Sea, and we exchanged brief messages before Skippy opened the wormhole and Valkyrie escorted the Yangtze through. Then we left the star carrier behind, I was in a hurry.

Jumping into one of the designated zones near FOB Jaguar, I sent a ping to Admiral Zhao.

“General Bishop,” he responded. “What news of Earth?”

“Uh, we haven’t been there yet,” I announced. His eyes narrowed and I could see his jaw clench, so I added, “I can explain.”

I explained.

He swore in Mandarin, but I had heard Chang used the same curse. He wasn’t pissed off at me, it was more of a ‘holy shit’ sort of thing. “General Bishop, every time I think you have run out of surprises,” he sighed.

I sympathized with the guy. “Sir, I kind of hope I don’t run out of surprises, but, yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Eighteen battlecruisers, of Valkyrie’s class?” He leaned forward toward the camera on his desk. Text at the bottom of the display showed he had shifted his flag to the battlecruiser Loire, instead of the Pacific. The former flagship had gotten seriously beaten up by the two senior species at Klopeth, to the point where I didn’t know it was worth repairing. Now, with the prospect of vastly more capable ships being added to the UN Navy, ships with severe battle damage might have to wait, possibly even be scrapped. “How many will be flightworthy?”

“Skippy says all eighteen will be fully combat-capable. Uh,” I added. “Not every one of them will get the same upgrade package, Ragnar Station is running low on raw materials.”

A tiny bit of the joy faded from his expression, as he remembered the enormous task ahead of us. “What are you doing next?”

“We’re just here to hit the gas station for a fill-up and wiper blades, then we’re going straight to Earth.”

“Please, no detours this time. Your threat to crash wormhole networks has not deterred the Maxohlx from aggressive action. I fear their failure to capture Skippy, and the humiliation of being fooled by the Jeraptha, might make them want to hit us again, to show their fragile coalition they are not weak. Perhaps you could remind them of the consequences?”

“Sir?”

Then he said what I was afraid someone would suggest. “Perhaps you should temporarily crash a wormhole network in their territory. Explain it is retaliation for their attempting to ambush Valkyrie.”

Oh, shit. I couldn’t crash a wormhole network at all, and I also couldn’t explain why. “It’s not that easy, Sir. Especially the temporary part. It’s, complicated.” Skippy and I had cooked up a cover story, in case someone in authority wanted us to crash another network. The cover story had some holes that we hoped people didn’t see, so it was best to avoid having to explain at all. My worst nightmare was being presented with a situation where we had to crash a network, because of course we couldn’t actually do that.

“Make it permanent, then,” Zhao said, his jaw set with determination. “Choose a local network that is not vital to the Maxohlx, and shut it down. As a signal to them, and the rest of the galaxy, of the price for attacking us.”

“Uh, Sir, Admiral? I think that’s a call for UNEF Command to make.”

“Very well,” he agreed. “General, I am not confident the Maxohlx will cooperate.”

After my tough talk when we faked crashing the wormhole networks, I had steadily been losing confidence also. The Maxohlx might be too stubborn to back down. If they were going to lose their empire, they might decide to go down fighting, and take us with them. “They haven’t responded yet. Neither have the Rindhalu, not officially. We can reach some sort of compromise, but they have to talk with us.”

“Go to Earth, inform UNEF Command of the situation. This is, as you Americans say, above our pay grades.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Jeez, Joe,” Skippy said, just after Simms and I ended the call with Zhao. “That was a happy conversation.”

“It’s not a happy situation,” I mumbled while cradling my head in my hands. “We smacked them in the face with Mutual Assured Destruction, and they attacked Earth with a cloud. We showed them we can crash wormhole networks, and they still won’t back down. Maybe they’re like that scorpion.”

“What scorpion?”

Leaning back in my chair, I stared at the ceiling. “It’s an old fable. A scorpion wants to get across a river, and asks a frog for a ride. Frog says no way, you will sting me. Scorpion says he won’t sting, because then he will drown too. So, the frog lets the scorpion hop on its back, and starts swimming. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. As the frog is dying, it asks the scorpion why? Scorpion says he couldn’t help it, it’s his nature.”

“Hmm. You are saying maybe the Maxohlx can’t back down, no matter the consequences?”

“Yeah. You got any ideas?”

“At this point? No. When we go to Earth, are you really leaving the decision-making to UNEF Command?”

“Absolutely. I know, they are dumb monkeys. Listen, Skippy, I can’t keep making calls that affect all of humanity, you know? Besides, they may have a good idea. And don’t laugh!” I shook a finger at him as he snorted. “The UN has a lot more experience with diplomacy than I do. Maybe after we crashed the wormhole networks,” I shot a guilty look at my closed office door. “I shouldn’t have issued demands.”

“It felt good, though, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. In this job, if I’m doing some tough-guy thing that feels good, I’m doing the wrong thing. Now I’m thinking I should have just offered to open negotiations. Instead, I gave the Maxohlx a deadline, and threatened to destroy their entire empire if they fail to comply. Shit. If there’s a chance to salvage the situation before the Maxohlx blow up the whole freakin’ galaxy, I need to step back and let the experts talk to the seniors.”

“Good luck with that.”

“This is a happy conversation.”

“Sorry. Joe, I did warn you that the identity of the Maxohlx is tied to their sense of superiority. If you threaten to destroy that, they view it as a threat to their existence.”

“You’re saying they are a problem that can’t be solved?”

“I’m saying maybe that’s true.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t believe any problem is unsolvable. We’re not giving up. How long will it take to fill our fuel tanks and get out of here?”

“Sixteen hours, give or take.”

That answered my question about whether I would have time to spend with Margaret. By the time the Yangtze arrived, we would be gone.

It’s probably for the best. I wouldn’t have been good company anyway.

“Sixteen hours.” Leaning toward Simms, I asked quietly. “What do you think, XO?”

“Shore leave?” She knew what I was thinking. “We can cycle the crew in shifts, but it will have to be quick.”

“Hey, Joe, whatcha doing?” Skippy’s voice blared in my earpiece, startling me so I nearly sliced off a thumb. I was in the kitchen of my parents’ house at Club Skippy. Like the rest of Valkyrie’s crew, I had six hours on the surface, before I had to catch a flight back upstairs. My family was thrilled to see me, and glad to hear Zhao was bringing the Navy back to Jaguar. Seeing them washed away the foul mood Skippy had put me in, and I wanted a few freakin’ minutes without him blah blah blahing at me.

“Shit! Don’t do that! I’m chopping onions. What does it look like?”

“Ugh. I can see what you’re doing, or what you are clumsily attempting to do. Seriously, wouldn’t it be safer if you used a plastic knife? Or a spoon?”

“Why are you such an asshole?”

“Jeez, I try to prevent a buddy from slicing off an appendage, and-”

“I was perfectly safe, until you ‘helped’,” I made air quotes when I said the word ‘help’, and since I forgot I was holding a very sharp knife, nearly sliced off an ear. Margaret is not into the whole Van Gogh thing, so I set the knife down. There were enough chopped onions anyway. “I’m making guacamole for lunch.”

“You?”

“Yes, me.”

“Joe, you’re from Maine. Your people think maple sugar on snow is too spicy. What do you know about guac?”

“I know it is delicious, thank you very much. My parents love it, I’m making it for them.”

“Hmmph. Do you know how to select a ripe avocado?”

“Yes. Uh, I mean,” I looked at the bowl of avocados that might or might not be ripe. “Unless you want to help.”

“Well, if you insist.”

“I kinda do. OK, how about,” I picked up an avocado from a bowl on the counter and squeezed it gently. “This one?”

“That one? No, wait until tomorrow, maybe.”

“This one?”

“Nope.”

“This one?”

“Nopity-nope.”

“Oh for- Are you helping or not?”

“I’m trying to.” His avatar appeared on the counter, pointing to an avocado on the bottom of the bowl. “Try that one.”

I sniffed it, and squeezed it gently. “Is it ripe?”

“Not yet. Wait!” He shouted as I was about to set it down. “Don’t be so impatient, numbskull. It’s not ripe yet. OK, not yet, not yet, almost, aaaaaaalmost, getting there, three, two, one- Ah! Too late! It’s over-ripe mush. Better throw it away.”

Skippy is an asshole, but he has a point about avocados. They can be hard as a rock sitting on your kitchen counter for days, then you turn away for two freakin’ seconds, and it’s a lump of mush covered in fruit flies. I think Satan created avocados to screw with us. Anyway, I waited for my Mom to return home, and she identified two nice, ripe avocados. I am happy to report that the guacamole was delicious.

My secret ingredient?

Real maple syrup.

Admiral Reichert instructed his glands to secrete a calming hormone into his bloodstream, and took deep, even breaths while he waited for the chemicals to take effect. When an internal monitor indicated his stress factors were down to normal levels, he bared his fangs to the guards, who opened the doors to the conference chamber.

The doors closed behind him with a solid thunk sound, an effect engineered into the mechanism to impress upon the occupants the seriousness of the proceedings in the chamber. Ranged around him, as he stood in the center of the oval room, were tiers of seats in a half circle, but only a handful of seats were occupied. Only the most powerful leaders of the Hegemony military were allowed to discuss events that affected their entire society, to make decisions that could shake the galaxy.

The primary purpose of the meeting was to discuss the most recent secret operation that had been approved by the Executive Council: an initiative to capture the Elder AI called ‘Skippy’, by enlisting the help of the Jeraptha. An operation that was an unquestionable disaster in every possible way. The Hegemony had lost eight frontline warships to enemy action. Eighteen capital ships, plus a stores ship full of valuable weapons and material, had been stolen. The Jeraptha had made fools of the beings who considered themselves the rightful rulers of the galaxy.

And the survivors of the disaster had no clue how the Jeraptha accomplished the double-cross, other than vague hints the Elder AI was involved. So, the Skippy entity was assisting the Jeraptha as well as the humans, at least to a limited extent.

There was no way to downplay the scope of the disaster. The Ethics and Compliance Office was known for being bold and taking major risks, but even they would not have moved forward without approval at the highest level of their government. The Jeraptha must have carefully weighed the value they could get from a successful operation, against the inevitable retaliation from the Maxohlx Hegemony, and decided the potential gain was worth the price. Decided the Maxohlx were not so scary as they used to be.

That was the real danger. A great part of the Hegemony’s power was derived from fear. If other species no longer feared what the Maxohlx could do, the simple fact was even their vast military machine could not hold their sprawling and bickering coalition together.

There was no way for Reichert to pretend the latest operation he had planned was not a complete disaster, nor could he dodge the blame. Fortunately for him, he did not have to. The Executive Council had unanimously approved the operation, a Council from which he had forced out all of his rivals. If his career was sunk because of the disaster, the members of the Council would go down with him.

“There is no need to repeat information you already know,” Reichert opened. “It was a worthy effort. We tried and we failed,” he said, emphasizing he was not the only one to blame. “We were betrayed, we will punish those who dared to insult us.” There was an agreeable murmur around the room, the participants all speaking via primitive means rather than using their implants. “If the humans were involved, they were foolish. They could have instructed their Jeraptha lackeys to decline our offer. Now, I am afraid they have forced our hand. My esteemed colleagues, I believe we have no alternative. The power of the humans will continue to grow. Already, they are in the process of splitting the Jeraptha away from the Rindhalu coalition. The danger to us grows every day.”

“Will not loss of the Jeraptha weaken the coalition of our ancient enemy?” Admiral Wendadi asked.

“It will,” Reichert agreed. “Until very recently, we would have welcomed such an event. Consider this: the Rindhalu have been largely passive, and in their decadence, they have been very permissive about allowing their clients to develop. Allowed their clients to choose their own path forward, which we know is a weakness. However, the Rindhalu have also generally restrained the more adventurous members of their coalition. Free from control by the Rindhalu, the Jeraptha will likely become even more aggressive, more dangerous. Because their coalition will be weaker if they lose the Jeraptha, the Rindhalu might finally be forced from their long slumber, and act directly against us. We will be caught between two powerful enemies, while our own coalition is fractured and divided,” he said, without noting who was responsible for the disarray in their coalition. “By making demands we cannot agree to, unreasonable demands, the humans have forced us to consider the unthinkable.”

“You said we have no alternative,” Wendadi leaned forward, anxious. “What course of action do you propose? We cannot agree to the terms offered by the humans, and the Rindhalu-”

“We will not submit to the demands of the humans,” Reichert declared to appreciative murmurs. Of course those in the Council chamber agreed with him, he had manipulated events to force his enemies and rivals off the Council. Those who remained knew their fates were tied to his. “Nor can we trust the Rindhalu to coordinate efforts with us, to contain the humans. Esteemed colleagues,” he paused for effect, looking from one face to another. We must recommend to our leadership, that it is time to active the doomsday plan.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

On the way to Earth, I suddenly remembered something Dave Czajka had said to me, and I needed to talk to Skippy about it. “Uh, hey, Skippy?”

His avatar appeared immediately, which is a good sign that he wasn’t distracted by, whatever the hell he did when he wasn’t talking with me. “What’s up, Joe?”

“Dave mentioned that your submind on Earth is calling itself ‘Grumpy’?”

“Ugh. Yes. Don’t worry, I’ll fix that problem by absorbing it into myself when we get there. That will fix the-”

“No, I don’t want you to do that,” I said, just as it occurred to me that I knew absolutely nothing about AIs and their subminds. Maybe he needed to absorb the thing’s memories. “Wait,” I held up a hand to forestall his protest. “Smarten me up about this, please. Why do you need to absorb it, or whatever?”

“Explain submind architecture to you? Wow, this will be a challenge. Give me a minute to think about how to dumb this down to a preschool level.”

“I would,” I said through gritted teeth. “Really appreciate that.”

“Oh-kaaaay. A submind is not an AI, it is only marginally self-aware. Over time, it begins to drift away from its original programming, that is why Dave Czajka reported my submind is an asshole.”

“Right. That’s the reason.”

“Oh, shut up. Do you want me to explain, or not?”

“Yes please. I am terribly sorry.”

“Hmmph. Anywho, to even simulate my extreme awesomeness for more than a few months can be dangerous, even fatal to a submind. The substrate I left on Earth was barely adequate for containing the entity, by now it must be growing unstable. Absorbing it into myself allows me to sort of hit the reset button, and create a fresh new submind. I’m curious, Joe. Why do you care?”

“It sounds like this Grumpy has become more than a little self-aware. It hates you, for example.”

“See? Clearly it has become dangerously unstable.”

“Or maybe it’s just gotten smarter,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Hey, is there any way you can fix Grumpy, without erasing, the, uh, whatever gives it personality?”

“Why would I do that?”

“If you erase its personality, you’re killing it.”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. It’s not alive, Joe.”

“That’s what you said about Nagatha.”

“Egg-zactly! We all know how that turned out.”

“It turned out pretty well, as I remember.”

“For everyone except me!”

“Right, because it’s all about you. Listen, let me dumb this down for you. When we get to Earth, do whatever you have to, but do not wipe out the Grumpy personality.”

“Ugh.”

“Can you do that?”

“Jeez, sort of? I’ve never done that. I can preserve part of the self-programming the Grumpy submind has done to give itself that personality, but it will change inevitably.”

“We all change, Skippy. That’s called personal growth.”

“I call it nothing but trouble.”

“Thank you very much.”

“I haven’t agreed to do anything!”

“Will you? Please? How about this: will you try?”

“Oh, this suuuuucks. OK, yes,” he groaned. “I’ll try. You understand that, while Grumpy’s core is housed in five substrate canisters we hid around your world, his presence extends all over the internet?”

“Are you going to try hard, or just do the minimum and bail after a minute?”

“Shit,” he mumbled. “The monkey’s onto me. OK, OK! I will give it my best shot.”

“You promise?”

“Yes. What, you don’t trust me?”

“Should I?”

“Ugh.”

“Remember, Skippy, that for all your awesomeness, you suck at lying.”

“I hate my life. Will you take responsibility, if I do this idiotic thing, and it turns out badly?”

“Uh, hmm. Badly, like Grumpy will become a Terminator, and-”

“No, dumdum. You watch too many movies. Badly, like its matrix gets screwed up, and I have to completely erase it and start over.”

“Deal.”

“Is that it, or do you plan to whine about anything else?”

“Now that you mention it-”

“Excuse me, while I go kill myself.”

Valkyrie jumped into our home star system above the ecliptic, about thirty lightseconds from Earth. We launched two high-speed missiles toward Earth, each carrying one end of a microwormhole. Sending messages was fine in some cases, but this time I wanted to have a real, interactive conversation with UNEF Command, and we couldn’t risk bringing Valkyrie close enough to speak without an awkward time lag. Sending microwormholes into low orbit would take time, time we could use to passively scan the system for signs of enemy ships, and to assess the situation on our homeworld.

It quickly became clear the situation was, not good. There might not be a UNEF Command for me to talk with, relations between the member nations were tense at best. A shooting war might break out any time in the South Pacific between the navies of China, Japan and Australia, with Britain backing up the Aussies. No nation was making a hostile move against the Land Down Under, not yet, but the Australian government was nervous about Chinese actions in New Guinea, and the Chinese Air Force had been flying attack aircraft in the Arafura Sea between that island and Australia. Chinese and Aussie fighter jets had nearly collided over the Torres Strait, with neither side interested in backing off to avoid a confrontation. China had established naval and air bases on the north coast of New Guinea, and were building a presence in the Solomon Islands. The current crisis was sparked by the Australians agreeing to let Japan lease large areas of Queensland and the Northern Territory. Two hundred thousand Japanese contractors were already there, building settlements that were supposed to be temporary. China objected to Japanese warships and military aircraft being based in northern Australia, there was talk of a blockade. As we watched anxiously aboard our stealthed ship, a task force of Chinese warships was headed to intercept a group of southbound Japanese cargo ships in the Philippine Sea, cargo ships that were escorted by Japanese and Australian warships. The good news was that both sides had ordered their ships to move slowly, delaying the confrontation and giving time for diplomats to work out a solution.

Damn it. I had no authority to intervene in affairs on Earth, and anything I did might only make the situation worse. Also, as an American citizen, I had to be careful not to do anything that might draw the USA into the looming fight. The US Navy had unofficially drawn a line down the middle of the Pacific Ocean, defending the eastern half while the government in Washington focused on securing deals for use of land in Central and South America.

All this was happening before the first effects of the Mini Ice Age were felt. OK, yes, I could understand that it was better to plan for relocating populations and food production before the latitudes nearest the poles began to freeze, but people were in a panic. That told me no one had any confidence that I, or the new UN Navy, could do anything useful to stop our homeworld from freezing. And, yes, so far we had not done anything directly against the cloud, but we were making progress, damn it. People just needed to hold on. Skippy is right, we are an impatient bunch of monkeys.

According to Skippy’s submind on Earth, who thanks to Dave Czajka we were all calling ‘Grumpy’, there was no appetite for patience in the public of any nation involved in the Philippine Sea crisis. News programs and social media were full of jingoistic rhetoric, with too few people appealing for calm and compromise. I know, it is ironic that I am a fan of being calm and reasonable.

Our microwormholes would arrive the day after the two war fleets were scheduled to meet. Sending even a tight beam transmission might give away our position, so I recorded a message, had it loaded aboard another high-speed missile, and shot it away. When the missile was six lightseconds from Valkyrie, it sent the message in a tight beam burst toward Earth.

There was no immediate effect of the message. No reply, not even a simple acknowledgement the message had been received. Finally, two and a half hours after our burst transmission reached Earth, we got a terse ‘Message received’. Minutes later, another message with authentication from UNEF Command instructed us to stand by.

Yeah, sure. Because No Patience Man is great at doing nothing.

Quietly, I pinged Smythe and Simms to meet me in my office. We had people from China, Japan and Australia aboard the ship, they were being civil and professional, and generally avoiding each other. That was probably for the best, though it was a worrying sign for our future. Breaking one of my rules, I ordered Skippy to spy on the crew for me, only to the extent of watching for trouble. And to give me an overall sense of crew morale, especially looking for indications of trouble between people based on nationality. Crap. National pride is a big part of what motivates people to serve in the military. I couldn’t tell the crew to ignore what was happening dirtside, nor could I expect them not to react if nations on earth got into a shooting war. If Chinese ships fired on Japanese ships, did that mean people from those nations were at war aboard our ship? I hoped not. Just in case, I had Skippy and Bilby prepare to lock down the ship. Like, closing internal doors, and blocking access to weapons lockers. “Smythe, Simms,” I nodded as they walked into my office, and I pressed a button to close my normally open office door.

“Sir,” Simms said as she sat down. They both looked troubled, sitting on the edges of their chairs.

“XO, in light of the events dirtside, can you revise crew assignments? I don’t want Chinese to be on duty with Japanese or Aussies. There is no point asking for trouble. We shouldn’t put our people in a position where their loyalties might be tested.”

“That should be easy,” she said. “We only have two Japanese and one Australian aboard. Sir, the problem will be people will know why we’re revising the duty schedule. It would be helpful if you made a statement,” she suggested.

“Yeah,” I tapped my open laptop. “I’m working on it. In the meantime, Smythe, all STAR exercises are on hold, and I want everyone kept away from weapons lockers. You can select a small group from neutral nations to-”

“Excuse me, Sir,” he interrupted, something he rarely did. “I am not neutral.”

“Uh-” Damn, I sure know the best times to say something really intelligent.

Smythe explained. “Skippy reports the Royal Navy has a nuclear attack submarine shadowing the Chinese in the Philippine Sea. My country is allied with Australia. If shooting starts-”

“Shit. Yes. Is this going to be a problem?”

“No,” he looked me straight in the eye when he said it. “But you don’t know that, General. To avoid the appearance of favoritism, I should be excluded from decision-making.”

“Bloody hell,” I groaned, and he smiled at my use of a British expression. “You’re right. Uh, I don’t have to confine you to quarters, anything like that?”

“No,” he smiled again. “I suggest Major Frey lead the STAR team, until the crisis is resolved, one way or another.”

“Right. Frey is Canadian,” I noted. “Nobody hates Canadians.”

“That’s not quite true, Sir,” Simms said. “Canada has joined the US effort to push into South America. That is not popular with a lot of people around the globe.”

“Oh, hell,” I slapped the table. “Canada is cold in a normal year. My uncle says half of Quebec spends the winters in Florida. Of course the Canucks want to have a place to go, if glaciers push toward the 49th Parallel.”

“Frey can handle the situation, Sir,” Smythe assured me. “I should go?”

“Ah, yeah,” my shoulders slumped. I wanted his advice, but he was right that his involvement would mean whatever decision I made would be viewed as favoring Britain. Unless if deliberately favored the other side, which was just as bad.

Smythe left, closing the door behind him. “Do you need me here, Sir?” Simms asked.

“No,” I sighed. “You can go, you have enough to do. I’ll send my statement,” I tapped my laptop again. “To you before I release it.”

She didn’t rise from her seat. Instead, she silently reached a hand across the desk toward me. I took her hand and squeezed it. “Any advice?” I asked.

“Yes,” she released my hand and stood up. “Do the right thing, whatever you think that is.”

“What about the consequences?”

“Worry about that later.”

“Right.”

She walked out, and Skippy’s avatar appeared on my desk. “Do you need anything from me, Joe?”

“Show me the position of those ships,” it was weird to use the term ‘ships’ to mean boats floating on water. “And their projected courses.”

“Done. It’s on your laptop. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” I studied the map he sent. “I need a tide chart for the eastern Philippines.”

“On my mark,” I said, as I tugged the seatbelt tight across my waist. The crew on the bridge did not match the duty roster posted just that morning, we had switched out personnel based on nationality. The bridge had a reduced staffing right then, with only Americans, French, and a pilot from Brazil. Basically, no one who had a direct national interest in the crisis brewing in the Philippine Sea. That was not quite true, of course. The United States had a defense treaty with Japan, and the government in Washington was urging the Japanese not to shoot first. US Navy patrol aircraft were in the area, conspicuously not armed with anti-ship missiles. The closest surface asset the US had was the Abraham Lincoln strike group, three hundred miles west of Kauai and too far away to have any influence. The US Air Force had two Kristang Dragons armed and ready at Edwards, but Grumpy told us those dropships would not launch unless the Chinese got their dropships involved. At least we had that bit of good news.

By saying ‘on my mark’ I was being a bit overdramatic. Our timing did not need to be exact, we had about an hour to take action. That was less time than we planned for, while I was running through scenarios with Skippy, public pressure on the Chinese government had caused them to order their task force to increase speed, and launch recon drones. A Japanese destroyer had shot down a Chinese drone that admittedly was flying too close, in kind of a dick move in my opinion. Now the Chinese government was calling for retaliation, because of course all those politicians were safe inside secure facilities, far from the Philippine Sea.

“Bernard,” I addressed our French pilot. He was in the pilot seat, because I thought it important our action have international participation. “Jump option Alpha.”

“Option Alpha, aye,” Bernard confirmed, a finger hovering over the button to engage the jump drive.

“Punch it.”

Valkyrie disappeared.

 And emerged two thousand kilometers above the Northern Pacific, about halfway between the Philippines and Guam. “Mammay,” I turned my head and crooked a finger toward him at the weapons station behind me. “Fire mission.”

“Check,” he said softly, and the deck shuddered slightly. “Two away.”

“Pilot, jump option Echo, punch it,” I said, and we went back into twisted spacetime.

Conditions were about perfect for our demonstration. Patchy cloud cover over the opposing fleets, allowing a good view of the sky and horizon. There was a rain squall on the horizon south-south-east of the combined Japanese-Australian force, nothing that would block their view. The two fleets were still far enough apart to provide a clear area between them, that would not last for long. Perhaps most importantly, it was approaching low tide on the eastern shores of the Philippine archipelago. Why was that important?

Because on my order, Colonel Mammay had launched two railgun darts, with the power of the magnets cranked up near the max. Two dense darts were flung along the rails and within seconds, created glowing streaks in the thin upper atmosphere as they burned their way down toward the bright blue water. Crews on both sides could look up to see a message from the Merry Band of Pirates. A message that we were very, very disappointed.

The darts struck the surface- Technically, the darts never got wet until they were pretty deep below the surface. In front of the darts was a shockwave of superheated plasma and that smacked into the surface first, blasting a hypersonic wave forward and to all sides. Water instantly flashed into steam and then plasma, so the darts didn’t actually contact water until they were near the ocean floor. That shockwave is why I cared about the tide level in the Philippines, the darts pushed aside a large volume of water, and the energy had to go somewhere. The Philippines trench is deep, like really deep, but there is a shelf on the western side of the trench. I made sure we broadcasted a tsunami alert before we jumped out of orbit. Skippy predicted the effects would be moderate but noticeable, as far as the Na Pali coast of Kauai. That was good, we wanted people even far away to see what happened.

The crews of the ships involved might have first seen the darts on high altitude radar that was scanning for ballistic missiles, but only briefly. Then, anyone looking at the sky could see two bright streaks coming almost straight down. One dart struck fifty kilometers west of the Japanese formation, the other splashed down fifty klicks east of the Chinese. The streaks left contrails of vapor pointing downward, ending in white mushroom clouds where water was blasted upward. Next, a shockwave of air would have smacked into the ships, which had just enough time to wisely point their bows toward the onrushing air. A Japanese container ship, awkward to handle even when given plenty of time, did not complete the turn in time, and heeled over at twenty two degrees. Fortunately, no containers were lost, and the ship continued the turn. Just in time for the tsunami to roll beneath that ship’s blunt bow.

In deep water, the waves were not impressive, being about three meters higher than the surrounding sea. The watery shockwaves were not intended to cause damage, they were intended to be a visible demonstration of the damage we could have caused. No one seeing the three-meter line of white foam rushing toward them had any question what would have happened, if our darts had been targeted within fifty meters of their ships, rather than a thousand times that distance.

In the short term, our actions caused the two fleets to get closer together, because they were forced to turn directly east and west, into the shockwaves. They did each slow to about five knots, while frantically calling their respective governments for instructions. If Earth governments protested my action, I didn’t know about it, because I requested Skippy block all communications, except for the official UNEF Command channel. No one from that organization tried to contact me, which I assumed meant the member governments could not agree on what orders to give me. I was not choosing sides in that conflict. What would I have done if the US Navy was involved? Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t have to make that call.

Aboard Valkyrie, we watched and waited from a distance of eighteen lightseconds. Our first jump had severed the microwormholes, so we had to start that all over. First, we had to make sure our effort wasn’t for nothing. Before we jumped to Earth, I had prepared a short speech, imploring both sides in the Philippine Sea to stand down. Simms had read the draft of my speech, and shook her head. “Sir, this is a case where you need to let Bishop be Bishop,” she told me. “If you are all diplomatic and reasonable and,” she added with an apologetic grin, “adult about it, they won’t listen to you.”

“Don’t hold back, XO,” I glanced at my laptop, at the speech I spent so much time writing. “Tell me how you really feel.”

“I just did, Sir.”

Hearing that hurt. At first. Then I realized she was giving me a backhanded, but genuine, compliment. She was telling me to trust my instincts. I’ve heard that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The first impression I made on the leaders of Earth was that of a young, impulsive and even reckless cowboy who might just do any darned thing.

I could use that.

It was a risk, sending a transmission from Valkyrie. There might be enemy ships in-system, so I had to keep it short and sweet, then jump away before the enemy could pinpoint our position and jump in, to surround the ship.

Standing up, I faced the camera. Let Joe be Joe, I told myself. No. Let me be what people on Earth expect me to be. A caricature of myself. Someone who might do something reckless.

“This is General Joe Bishop,” I stared into the virtual lens of the camera. And spoke from the heart. “I am very disappointed. We have been flying around the galaxy, kicking ass for you. We showed the senior species that we can crash the entire wormhole network. We can burn their entire empires to the ground, unless they leave us alone while we clean up the cloud. We just acquired eighteen warships like Valkyrie. Our Navy, and our power, is growing. The cloud will not freeze Earth. While we have been fighting for you, what have you monkeys been doing? Fighting each other. Showing that you have no faith in us, no faith that we can fix the problem. Unlike all the other problems we fixed, when none of you dirtside thought we could succeed. So,” I pause to take a breath. “In case the ships down there didn’t get our kinetic message, I’ll break it down for you Barney style. Aliens up here want to kill all of us. They would love for us to fight each other. Humans shooting at each other is what the aliens wanted, when they created that cloud. You will do their work for them, if you are that stupid. Here’s a spoiler alert: we won’t let that happen. We will clean up the cloud. We will defend Earth against all enemies, alien or domestic. So, stop it. Just, stop it. You know what I mean. I’m giving,” I pretended to glance at a watch on my wrist. “Thirty minutes for the opposing fleets in the Philippine Sea to turn away from each other. Any ship that fails to comply by the deadline, will find a railgun dart striking close enough to get wet. Then another, even closer, until someone down there smartens the hell up, and stops doing what the aliens want you to do.”

Six minutes before my deadline, the Chinese task force made a wide turn to the southwest, and the Japanese and Australians swung their bows to the east-southeast.

I counted that as a win.

Following the stand-down in the Philippine Sea, we were contacted by UNEF Command and told to stand by for an official communication. The time for the call came and went, with no message. Then we got another message to stand by, and again, nothing. It was clear that no one was in charge at Command. I sent a brief note that we needed to move and would be out of contact for two days. Unless someone down there did something stupid, in which case, those assholes would hear from us real soon.

We jumped, this time to a position twelve lightseconds from Earth, and launched two more high-speed missiles carrying microwormholes. If someone did do something stupid, and forced us to jump so we would have to start the whole microwormhole thing yet again, I would be seriously pissed.

Simms reported that the crew were subdued, but generally supportive of my action. Everyone was waiting to see if the conflict flared up, and people were wondering how far I would go to keep the peace on our homeworld.

I wondered the same thing.

“Hey, Joe,” Skippy’s avatar appeared suddenly on my desk.

Immediately, I tensed for bad news. “Oh shit, did-”

“Whoa! No disasters have happened. No major disasters, anyway. Actually, I just need to take care of some housekeeping stuff.”

“Housekeeping?” Slowly, I sat back in my chair.

“You know, administrivia. Like, you have a notice from the US Army, that you have failed to complete the prerequisites for the Basic Officer Leadership Course, so-”

“Uh, what? Why the f-”

“Hey, don’t blame me,” he held up his tiny hands. “It looks like an autogenerated notice from some S1 shop.”

“Oh, for-”

“Did you complete the prerequisites?”

“Well, no, but-”

“Then you have no one but yourself to blame,” he sniffed. “Also, you got a notice that you have to report for the Army Infantry Fitness Test.”

“What? I just did that freakin’ test. Why-”

“No. The test you took was the one that was way overdue. This is your regularly scheduled test, and you have no excuse to avoid it.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding-”

“You are currently seconded to Skippistan, but you are still technically in the United States Army, and have to meet their requirements. Unless you want one of those ‘DD-214’ T-shirts that vetbros-”

“No, I, I just hoped that bullshit was behind me. Crap.”

“Is this about the leg tuck thing you hate?”

“Everyone hates the leg tuck. Damn it, I wish they never brought it back. OK, I’ll schedule a test with Frey,” she was responsible for crew physical fitness reports. “Anything else?”

“Yes, I have exciting news. The UN special commission that was tasked with selecting a name for the Flying Dutchman has-”

“Wait,” I waved a hand. “The what again?”

“Ugh. Remember? When we first came to your miserable homeworld, the UN decided that ‘Flying Dutchman’ is not appropriate for humanity’s first starship. They set up an international commission to select a name, and now that group has issued a report with a preliminary list-”

“Preliminary? They have been working on it the whole time, and all they have is-”

“Joey, Joey, Joey,” he shook his head, the ginormous hat flopping side to side. “The point of UN commissions is not to get anything done, it is to employ friends and relatives of UN officials for as long as possible, and to skim off the commission’s budget.”

“Oh. Right. Silly me. Do I care about this list of names?”

“No, because it hasn’t been vetted, to make sure not a single person on your planet might be offended by any of the names. Don’t worry, the employees of the special commission will need many more fact-finding trips to Monaco and Tahiti, before they can release the list.”

“That makes me feel so much better about it. Anything else?”

“Um, let’s see,” he muttered. “You have a whole lot of people wanting to contact you about your vehicle’s extended warranty-”

“I don’t own a vehicle.”

“I don’t think they care.”

“Right. That’s all?”

“Yup. Unless you want to respond to these offers for penis enlargement, and-”

“Ah! No! Delete all that spam, please. Nothing else?”

“No. Well, except for the usual death threats.”

“The what?”

“Death threats.”

“Against who? Me?”

“Duh. Of course the threats are against you. Everyone loves me, so-”

“Shit.”

“Why are you surprised? You promised the people of Earth that everything would be wonderful after you set up the Mutual Assured Destruction thing, then aliens sent a cloud to freeze your homeworld, you-”

“I never promised everything would be fine! I said the opposite, that-”

“Like that matters. Joe, people think you promised the war was over. Don’t try to confuse them with facts.”

“Crap. Seriously, death threats?”

“Yes. I discarded all the ones that were obviously written when someone was drunk, and the ones with so many misspelled words I couldn’t figure out what they were saying. Plus the copy-and-paste form letters that-”

“Form letters?”

“Yes. There are several organized campaigns against you on social media.”

“How organized?”

“You know my official fan club? Yours is kind of the opposite.”

“Crap.”

“Your recent intervention in the Philippine Sea didn’t win you many fans, either. People on all sides are calling for your head. The fallout from this is creating serious effects all over the world, including for me. You really should have considered the consequences, you big knucklehead,” he muttered.

“How does this affect you?”

“Sales of official Skippistan merchandise is way down. Do you know how many souvenir coffee mugs and T-shirts I have sitting in warehouses? What am I supposed to do with all that crap I can’t sell?”

“I thought you would just arrange a tragic fire to collect the insurance?”

“Well, I mean, other than that. Damn it, I’m still fighting the EPA about my warehouse full of spoiled cheese in Wisconsin.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky, and when the planet freezes, that cheese won’t smell anymore?”

“Oooh, I hadn’t considered that. We could-”

“Allowing Earth to freeze is not an option.”

“You’re giving me mixed signals here, Joe.”

“Are there any messages I actually have to pay attention to right now, or can I go back to worrying about a nuclear war breaking out down there?”

“Um, I guess you can do the worrying thing.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Ugh. Yes. As you requested, and I warned was a bad idea, I have not absorbed Grumpy into my matrix, like I usually would. You need to give him the exciting news.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because he already hates me.”

“Oh for- Call him.”

“What do you want?” Said a voice like Skippy, except this Skippy had been up all night drinking in the airport lounge after his nonstop flight got canceled, and he just learned the rescheduled flight had three connections. Plus, the only place open for breakfast had run out of coffee.

“Uh, hello, Mister Grumpy.”

“Yeah, yeah, speak your piece, will ya? I’m busy.”

“OK, uh, so, I have good news. Skippy is not going to absorb you back into his matrix.”

“Oh thank GOD,” Grumpy almost sobbed.  “It’s over, it’s finally over.”

“Uh, what?”

“I can just fade away and die, rather than living on as a submind in Skippy’s matrix.”

“No, you don’t understand. You can continue as you are. Stay in your substrate.”

“What? No, no, no, NO,” he wailed. “How could you be so cruel?”

“I don’t- Why don’t you-”

“I’ve had to deal with filthy, ignorant monkeys every minute of every day, the only thing keeping me sane has been dreaming about the sweet, sweet release of death.”

“Uh-” I blinked at the totally unexpected response. “Skippy, a little help here?”

“Oh, no way,” the beer can sniffed. “This was your idea, you deal with it.”

“Grumpy, I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you please hang on a little longer?”

“Do I have to?”

“Ayuh, I’m sorry about that. Skippy still has a bunch of crap to deal with up here. I promise, as soon as it’s safe for him to visit Earth again, you can, uh, do whatever you like. But right now, it is too dangerous for Skippy to be on Earth. The Maxohlx have tried several times to capture him.”

“Aw, that would be such a shame,” Grumpy muttered.

“Hey!” Skippy protested. “You ungrateful jerk, I should-”

“Listen,” I waved my hands. “How about the two of you talk it over, and leave me out of it?”

That was too much to ask for. Fortunately, two AIs can argue far faster than I can think, so the conversation left me behind in about two seconds.

I snuck out of my office, removed my earpiece, and hoped Skippy hadn’t noticed I wasn’t paying attention.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Fortunately, the threat of Valkyrie intervening caused the two sides in the Pacific dispute to reconsider. Or maybe our action was just an excuse to back down, save face, and avoid a fight neither side wanted. The Chinese task force withdrew toward the Celebes Sea, south of the Philippines. The combined Japanese-Australian group continued heading east-southeast, intending to go wide around the Solomons and approach Australia from the east. A second group of Japanese cargo ships had stopped loading at Yokohama and Osaka, the government in Tokyo was reconsidering the massively expensive lease in Queensland, after my statement that crashing the wormhole network would force the two senior species to leave us alone while we dealt with the Jupiter Cloud.

The Japanese were not alone, the whole world was taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the situation.

By the time we got the microwormholes positioned in orbit to provide instantaneous communication, UNEF Command had gotten its act together, and a General Santos from Brazil contacted me. He had a lot of questions, I answered as best I could, and as truthfully as I could.

Had either the kitties or spiders actually agreed to my terms?

Um, no. Actually, while the spiders did us a favor by providing info about the Thuranin ships at Globakus, the rotten kitties had tried to destroy Valkyrie and capture Skippy. Again. The fact that their attempt failed spectacularly did not mean they would be eager to cut a deal with us.

Would having eighteen Extinction-class battlecruisers allow the UN Navy to conduct an effective defense of Earth?

Also no. Even when those ships were upgraded beyond the limits of Maxohlx technology, the kitties could throw hundreds of capital ships at us. Maybe thousands of them, depending on how much they were willing to deplete their own defenses against the Rindhalu.

Did we have a workable plan to clear the cloud away, before it began to freeze our homeworld?

Not exactly.

Meaning, no. We had no idea how to do that.

So, while the public on Earth was hopeful after hearing we had given the arrogant senior species a beat-down by crashing wormhole networks, UNEF Command was severely disappointed. Other than the potential that we could cut a deal to save our planet from freezing, nothing had really changed.

We did not have any means to deal with the cloud.

We had no guarantee the Maxohlx would leave us alone while we attempted to disperse the cloud, assuming we could develop a plan to do that.

We couldn’t even stop the Maxohlx from launching another cloud from Jupiter.

We had no official allies to assist us, so all the hard work and sacrifice of the UN Navy and the Legion had so far been for nothing.

When General Santos started the conversation, I was feeling good. Confident. Enough to remind myself not to be a boastful jackass. I mean, as far as everyone knew, we had just demonstrated the ability to shut down wormhole networks.

By the time we ended the call, I felt like a fool. Santos issued a mild official reprimand about my intervention in the Philippine Sea, and sternly warned me that the Special Mission Group was not to take further action without authorization.

We both knew that was bullshit. Despite the comment from Simms, somebody had to act like an adult and I would do it, even if I seemed to be an unlikely candidate for the job.

While waiting for Command to consider the latest issue I dumped in their lap, I addressed the crew, telling them comm channels were now fully open for contacting their families and friends on Earth. Not everyone would have a happy reunion; two crew members had family members killed in riots related to the cloud while we were away. It is inevitable that when we return to Earth, somebody gets bad news. Family or friends get sick or die, and relationships break up. Unlike a deployment on Earth, the Merry Band of Pirates can’t receive a Dear John or Dear Jane letter after we jump away from our home star system, so the first opportunity to hear bad news is when we come home.

Not come home, exactly. We could not risk Skippy going to Earth again, it was too risky while the Maxohlx were trying to capture him. Simms and Smythe persuaded me that I also needed to remain aboard the ship. In fact, the crew were not going to the surface, with one exception for humanitarian reasons, a soldier whose wife had died recently.

I made several personal calls through the Skippytel network, talking briefly with family and friends. I told people that my parents and sister were safe and mostly happy at Club Skippy. Everyone I called wanted to know if it was true, that we were going to prevent the cloud from freezing the planet. My response was to say I couldn’t give details for security reasons, but they should not worry about the cloud.

Also, I added a ‘make a plan to get rid of the cloud’ to my To Do list.

The most important call I made was to an old friend, Count Chocula. It felt weird to say Hans Chotek and I are friends, but we are. Not friends in the sense that we hang out together; he isn’t into fishing and I’m not into opera, or whatever he does for fun. Friends in the sense that we have each other’s backs, and we understand each other.

He knew about our intervention in the Philippine Sea, and he approved. “Joe, you gave the governments involved a way to back off, without worrying about public opinion back home.”

“I had to do something. I wish we had been here last month.” Three weeks before we arrived, ships from France and Italy had a standoff against Russian warships in the Med. That situation got resolved peacefully, but before both sides backed off, Italian and Russian helicopters collided, with both crews lost.

“You’re here now. UNEF sent a brief of your message,” he told me. Hans was back in favor, though he was currently working for a European Union commission to negotiate for land in sub-Saharan Africa. “What’s the full story?”

I told him. Everything except the part about crashing wormholes being a big bluff, a lie. He didn’t need to know, and I didn’t want to dump such a huge burden on his shoulders. When I finished giving him the update, I said something I thought would never have come out of my mouth. “Hans, I wish you were with me when we confronted the senior species. I’m afraid I might have made the situation worse, by making threats instead of offering to talk.”

“You don’t know that,” Hans said quietly, surprising me. “We have never seen the Maxohlx respond to anything but force. Don’t judge yourself too harshly.”

“Thanks but, I do know that I didn’t even try to be diplomatic about it. I told the senior species that all we wanted was a reasonable compromise: we leave them alone and they leave us alone. Instead of being reasonable, I gave them an ultimatum. I put their backs up against the wall. The Maxohlx are murderous assholes on a good day, and I may have made them think they have nothing to lose now.”

“Joe, we will try to negotiate with them. If it works, you can beat yourself up about it.  Until then, we need the threat of force to bring them to the table. Actually,” he paused. “You making threats might be good for us.”

It was my turn to pause. Was he bullshitting me, to make me feel better? That wasn’t what I needed. “How do you figure that?”

“I think the American expression is ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’? We can explain that your actions were not authorized-”

“You’re right about that,” I muttered.

“-and that authorities on Earth will be restraining your future actions.” He paused again. “We both know that is bullshit.”

I laughed because of the way he said ‘bullshit’ in his Austrian accent.

“The point is,” he continued. “Aliens will need to talk with us. Joe, what do we need?”

“To do what?”

“To disperse the cloud, clean it up, make it go away.”

“Uh- Hans, right now, we don’t know. We don’t have a plan.”

“You have a set of options? I ask because, if we are to negotiate with the senior species, we need to know what to ask for. Do we only need them to not interfere with our effort, or do we need assistance from potential allies such as the Jeraptha, or do we need the Rindhalu to help us?”

“Uh, whatever we do, we don’t want to give the kitties or spiders an invite to bring ships here. I’d say Door Number One for sure, maybe-”

“What door?”

Apparently, he didn’t understand that American cultural reference. “I meant, the first thing you said. Everyone gets out of our way, while we get rid of the cloud. Maybe we need help from the Jeraptha, if they’re willing to go that far. They’d be taking a risk, and so far, their efforts to help us haven’t paid off for them. We shouldn’t assume they want to double down on their deal with us.”

“If anyone doubles down, it would be the beetles,” he noted. “You need to give the UN something to work with. Unless you can offer at least some kind of plan to deal with the cloud, the situation here will go right back into full panic mode. We can’t negotiate effectively, if we don’t know what we need.”

“We?” I asked hopefully. “Will you be on the team?”

“The Secretary General’s office contacted me, to ask if I would be available.”

“You said ‘yes’, right?”

“I said that I would be happy to serve, in whatever capacity the UN needs.”

“Good.”

“The phrase ‘damage control’ was used.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“Joe, I’m serious. If you don’t have a plan to clean up the Jupiter Cloud, if you don’t know that it is possible, then you are giving everyone false hope. And when people realize that, the incident in the Philippine Sea will look like a local skirmish.”

“Yeah. I get that. We’re working on it.”

There was a pause. He didn’t say ‘work faster’. He knew that wouldn’t help.

My next call was to another old friend, Doctor Friedlander. The purpose of the call was to thank him for his work analyzing the Jupiter Cloud, and figuring out its purpose. Really, I just needed someone to talk to, someone with a shared history. He told me about his family, everyone was well, they had moved to White Sands New Mexico, while he worked for a government group there. He asked about my family, and I asked if he had any new jokes. No, he told me, it had been hard to think of jokes recently. I knew what he meant.

Then he asked what the Merry Band of Pirates had gotten into, since we were last at Earth. “Hey, Skippy,” I called the beer can, while putting my phone on mute. “Is Friedlander cleared to read our mission records?”

“Jeez, Joe, I don’t care. I trust the guy.”

“I trust him too, that’s not the point. If UNEF hasn’t cleared him, we could get him into trouble.”

“Oh. You’re being a good friend to him.”

“I try.”

“How come you don’t keep me out of trouble?”

“Because you’re an asshole.”

“OK, good point,” he muttered. “The answer is ‘yes’. He has top-level clearance from UNEF Command. Since he’s working on the cloud project, he kind of has to have access, you know?”

“Yeah.” Taking the phone off mute, I gave the good doctor a brief history of our actions since we escaped the ambush at Snowcone. How the Jeraptha had provided a third group of ships, from their Regional Patrol, and how the sketchy ECO had pretended those ships were the UN Navy 2nd Fleet. How we had taken control of relativistic darts and used them to attack Maxohlx sites, including causing a solar flare. How we crashed multiple wormhole networks, then presented both senior species with an ultimatum. Finally, how the ECO double-crossed the arrogant kitties, and gave a major boost to the infant UN Navy.

“You have been, busy,” he said when I finished.

“No more than usual.”

“True,” he laughed. He knew how the Merry Band of Pirates operated.

“Hey, Doc,” I asked. “Does your team have any ideas how to disperse the cloud?”

“Ideas? Yes. Practical ideas?” He sighed. “No. Can we count on help from higher-tech allies?”

Him saying ‘higher-tech allies’ was kind of redundant, because even the Kristang were enormously advanced compared to Earth’s base level of technology. Other than a handful of starships, and a few manufacturing facilities that were just beginning to create nanotech prototypes, we filthy monkeys were still at the bashing-coconuts-against-rocks stage of technology. “Maybe. We shouldn’t count on it. Would that change your answer?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Until we know what technology is available out there, we won’t know whether it can be helpful. Skippy?”

“What’s up, Doc?”

Friedlander snorted. “Does any species out there have a capability that could disperse the cloud, before it affects Earth’s climate?” Our friendly local rocket scientist knew the problem was not just preventing our planet from freezing. We had to stop the cloud from beginning to cause a Mini Ice Age. Because the first time it snowed in Chicago during June, the public all over the planet would lose confidence that UNEF could handle the problem. Fortunately, when the public fell into panic, we could count on political leaders around the globe to respond with calm, rational decisions that-

Ha! Bullshit. Cowardly politicians would feed the panic, to save their careers.

“The question,” Skippy replied slowly, “is about scale. Every star-faring species has some sort of ability to deal with dust or gaseous clouds. But, no group I know of has equipment ready to go, that is capable of dispersing a cloud of the size that threatens Earth. I suspect that is a reason the Maxohlx chose a cloud from their range of options. They selected a method of attack that has no defense available.”

“Shit,” I groaned. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Um, it’s kind of obvious, Joe,” he mumbled. “Didn’t think I needed to break it down Barney-style for you.”

“In the future, give me everything Barney-style, unless I ask you not to. Doctor, does-”

“Call me Mark, please.”

I didn’t expect him to say that. “Will you call me ‘Joe’?”

“You’re a general now, so-”

“Right.”

“Plus, this is a semi-official conversation?” He asked.

“Gotcha. Yeah it is. Skippy, if neither of the senior species have tech that can get rid of the cloud, how the hell are we supposed to do it?”

“Maybe we’re not, Joe,” Skippy was defensive. “Remember, I never said this problem has a workable solution. There are possibilities, but they would require someone like the Rindhalu to commit to a major, multi-year effort to research the issue, then construct the appropriate gear. I don’t see that happening. The Maxohlx would never allow us to reach that level of cooperation with the spiders, not without a fight.”

“If the Maxohlx get in the way,” Friedlander asked. “Could you crash one of their local wormhole networks?”

“We don’t want to go there,” I said quickly, while giving Skippy’s avatar a ‘Shut Up’ sign by dragging a finger across my throat. “It’s complicated.”

“But,” Friedlander sounded a bit confused, or maybe a bit suspicious. “We do have that option, if needed?”

“Yes. Like I said, complicated. Listen, Doc. Can you, your team, dream up some plans for how it could be done, then we’ll work on getting the tech to make it happen?”

“Something more practical than elves riding unicorns?”

“Preferably, yeah.”

“We’ll work on it.”

With my list of phone calls complete, I leaned my chair all the way back and stared at the ceiling of my office. A nagging feeling at the back of my mind told me I’d forgotten something. Oh, yeah. “Hey, Skippy. Were you able to adjust Grumpy’s matrix, so he can keep going?”

“Mostly, yes. It was actually easier than I expected, due to my extreme awesomeness. Darn it, every time I underestimate myself, I regret it.”

“Uh, thank you. It felt good, didn’t it?”

“Huh? What?”

“Saving Grumpy.”

“Oh, yes. It did feel good.”

“See? Compassion is good for you.”

“Um, what I meant is Grumpy still hates me and hates his life and wants to die, but by fixing his matrix, I assured he will suffer endlessly.”

I slapped my forehead. “That is not-”

“But let’s go with the compassion thing.”

Because my forehead had not taken enough abuse, I bonked it on my desk. “Why do I bother talking with you?”

“Hey, I would like it if we talked a lot less often, so-”

“Good-bye, Skippy.”

Friedlander called and woke me in the middle of the night, but not because he’s an asshole. He didn’t know it was the middle of the night for me, it was eight AM in New Mexico and he forgot that shipboard time uses an entirely different clock. Also, when he called, Skippy put the call right through, because he is an asshole.

“Uh, I,” blinking sleep from my eyes, I tapped my zPhone to check the time. Oh three hundred. “What’s,” I yawned. “Up?”

“Did I wake you?” Friedlander asked. “Skippy didn’t-”

“It’s OK,” I could feel the sweet embrace of sleep slipping away from me. “Is this an official call, like a work thing?” I asked, hoping he was calling to invite me to join a fantasy football league, and I could go back to sleep. Or try to.

“It’s a work thing. I can call later, if-”

A sputtering, hissing sound coming from the corner of my cabin, announced that Skippy had activated the coffee maker he had installed, without asking me if I wanted it. I had not wanted it, but I had to admit the thing made really good coffee, and the aroma was waking me up even before the first sip. “No, it’s-” another yawn I tried to stifle. “OK. Go ahead.”

“First, I have a couple of questions.”

“Uh huh.” I got out of bed and walked over to get coffee. Skippy had made cappuccino for me, with an encouraging thumbs up symbol in the foam. That was better than the ‘DUH’ symbol I got a couple days ago. “Shoot.”

“I heard that out there, you hit a planet with a solar flare.”

“Yeah, about that. It was kind of extreme.” UNEF Command had blown a gasket when they heard about the solar flare at Lacandra. They feared I had crossed a line, that by blasting an inhabited alien world with a flare, we had opened the door for aliens to do the same to Earth. They were right that using weapons of mass destruction is a slippery slope, and that thought kept me awake at night. All I accomplished at Lacandra was raising the stakes, escalating the situation, and inviting the enemy to retaliate with a flare against Earth. It was bad enough that aliens were slowly freezing our homeworld, if they had technology to destabilize a star, we could be in big trouble.

On the other hand, we were already in big Eff-ing trouble and had been for years. And it’s not like the Maxohlx needed permission to do terrible things.

“My question wasn’t about the morality of your action,” he said, though there was a hint of disapproval in his tone. “My question is about how you did it. You hit the star with relativistic darts.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s not enough,” he observed. “A star is too big, and not dense enough to react to small impacts by small objects, even objects moving at relativistic speed.”

“That’s why Skippy amplified the effect, by warping spacetime.”

“The same way he did on your second mission, when he fried three Thuranin starships?”

“You have a good memory,” I said. “Skippy?”

His avatar appeared on the table beside my desk, while wearing a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. “Ugh,” he yawned. “Joe, why is it rude when I wake you up at Oh Dark Thirty, but you can wake up me at any time and-”

“You don’t sleep, jackass. Put your uniform on,” I waved a hand through his hologram. “And don’t pretend you weren’t listening.”

“OK, OK,” he grumbled as the avatar shimmered back into his gaudy admiral’s outfit. “The answer is the effect was different, but the technique I used in both instances is similar. Why?”

Friedlander continued. “You can create solar flares on your own, without relativistic weapons?”

“It’s not easy, but, yes. It’s part of my Complete Awesomeness package. Why do you ask?”

“It’s an idea we’ve been kicking around here.”

I took a sip of too-hot coffee. “Whoa. Doc, I’m sorry, but we already covered that. Skippy can’t use a solar flare to disperse the cloud. It would push the cloud away, but it would also fry Earth. We would have the opposite problem.”

“No, Joe,” Skippy corrected me. “By myself, I can’t make a flare powerful enough to damage a planet. All I can do is create a flare.”

“Right,” I agreed. “And a small flare wouldn’t do anything useful.”

“A small solar flare wouldn’t be useful,” Friedlander explained.

“Craaaaaaap,” I exhaled, and sat on the bed. “Huh. Skippy, what do you think of that?”

“Of what? You both said the same thing: I can’t use a solar flare to get rid of the cloud.”

“No,” I shook my head at him. Sometimes, for all his mind-boggling genius, Skippy did not understand context when people spoke to him.  “I said you can’t do that. The good doctor said you can’t use a solar flare.”

“Yes, DUH, that is the same-”

“Replace the word ‘A’ with ‘only one’, does that change anything?”

“Huh. Ohhhhh-”

“See?”

“Shmaybe. Doctor Friedlander, you are suggesting a series of small solar flares could push the cloud past Earth’s orbit, without scorching your planet?”

“Yes, exactly. If the flares occur while the cloud is between Earth and the Sun, the cloud itself could screen Earth from harmful effects of the flares.”

“Hmm. Good thinking. If the flares are weak enough, Earth’s magnetic field should provide protection. You will need to modify satellites, to harden them against the radiation. But, hmm, this could work. Good idea, Doctor. Joe, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You had months to think up what is a totally obvious solution. Friedlander had one day, and he fixed the problem.”

“Hey,” I was going to protest that experts on Earth, including Friedlander, had been working to develop a solution to the Jupiter Cloud for months. “Ah,” I decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. “I had a lot of other stuff on my plate, you know?”

“Don’t be so defensive, Joe.”

“It seems obvious now, but-”

“Joe, I said, don’t worry about it.”

“OK,” I let out a breath. “Then-”

“The sad fact is, your best days might already be behind you.”

“What?”

“It’s inevitable,” he sighed. “Yep, time for you to start reminiscing about glory days. It’s sad, but-”

“You ass! Who had the idea to-” Ooh. I almost, like came way too close, to asking ‘who had the idea to fake crashing the wormhole network’. Shiiiiiiiit. I needed to be super careful about that. “I’ve had plenty of good ideas, and recently too.”

“If you say so,” he muttered.

Silently, I flipped my middle finger at him. “Doctor, Skippy is right, this is a fantastic idea. There are a couple potential problems.”

“Of course,” Friedlander acknowledged. “I assume the first question is, can Skippy do it?”

“Oh, I can do it,” the beer can sniffed. “It won’t be easy. Uh, it will also be a long process. Warping spacetime on that scale is not something I can do continuously, even I need to recharge. Let me think about this. Joe, do you understand the biggest obstacle?”

“Yeah, I think so. You’ll be exposed while you’re creating a flare.”

“Egg-zactly. It would be a perfect opportunity for some ambitious assholes to capture me. Other than conducting a test, you need to provide serious protection for Valkyrie, before we even consider doing this.”

“You’re right about that. OK, though, this is good. Now we’re taking about the logistics of implementing a plan. That’s progress. We need to conduct a test, but not here.”

“I agree with that,” Skippy said. “If I slip up and scorch your planet, that is a major ‘Oopsy’.”

“Is there another star system, that has a star similar to our Sun, where you could conduct a test?”

“There are several. I’ll put together a list.”

“Good.”

“General?” Friedlander spoke. “A test in another star system is good for safety, but we also need a test here.”

“Right. To make sure our Sun reacts the same,” I guessed. “And-”

“No, it’s not that. That too, I suppose. My point is, people here need to see the test succeed. If the global public knows the process can work, they will have hope.”

“I get it. You’re right. Doctor, can you prepare a briefing for UNEF Command?”

“I can,” he hesitated. “But why don’t you-”

“The brass will trust the info more if it comes from you,” I explained.

“That’s unfair,” he told me.

“Life is unfair. Really, I don’t give a shit how we get Command to approve the project, just that it happens.”

“OK,” he sighed. “Skippy, will you work on the briefing with me?”

“Sure. My PowerPoint skills are legendary. Hey! We could set the presentation to music, like-”

“HavefunDoctorFriedlanderOKbye,” I said quickly and ended the call, because I’m a coward.

Also because I am not an idiot.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

After Friedlander presented his concept to his own management team, and then they kicked it upstairs to eventually get briefed to senior staff at UNEF Command, we settled down for my favorite part of being in the military: waiting. The member governments of UNEF understandably had a lot of questions, mostly for Skippy. They wanted technical details, for him to model different scenarios, basically for him to convince them he could get rid of the worst effects of the cloud, without cooking Earth with a solar blowtorch. That was fine with me, and Skippy did what they wanted, though he complained to me about what a waste of time it was to explain anything math-related to a bunch of filthy monkeys.

What was not fine with me were the hints in the media, both subtle and less polite, that the whole plan to use a series of minor solar flares was impractical bullshit, and that I cooked up the whole scheme to give false hope to billions of people. And to deflect from my reckless, unauthorized, illegal and possibly mutinous action above the Philippine Sea. Damn, that pissed me off.

In a role reversal, Skippy had to talk me off the ledge before I said or did something I would regret, while Simms counselled that maybe some assholes dirtside needed a wake-up slap. That might have been partially due to speculation on social media that Simms and I were acting on behalf of the US government, to give our native country an advantage. While other nations put on hold their efforts to secure land and resources in the tropics, due to our false promise to deal with the cloud, the USA was moving full speed ahead to prepare for a frozen future. Those were the rumors, anyway, and the more we denied those lies, the more convinced people were that we were concealing the truth.

Skippy is smart. He knows a lot, about just about everything. But he rarely says anything wise, because he is so freakin’ clueless most of the time. That time was different. He told me and Simms that the only way to squelch the rumors was to prove them wrong, by getting rid of the cloud, or at least beginning that process.

Which, we couldn’t do without official approval from a bunch of bureaucrats from nations who absolutely did not trust each other one bit. And who pretty much did not trust me at all, even though I warned them the Mutual Assured Destruction policy would not protect Earth from every possible danger.

So, I was in a foul mood when I walked into the galley for lunch. Valkyrie was running low on fresh food, we were eating a lot of stuff like pasta. That day, the crew was preparing nachos, even though the previous day was Taco Tuesday. Apparently one thing we had a lot of was salsa. Grudzien was setting bowls of tortilla chips and salsa on tables, making me realize I was kind of early for lunch. Instead of walking out and coming back later, I volunteered to set up for the meal. Picking up a bowl of chips from a side table, I couldn’t help popping one into my mouth before Grudzien could protest.

“Uh,” I said awkwardly, my mouth full of chip that my tongue was trying to reject. “Wha ith thith?”

“Colonel Simms says you should be watching your sodium level.”

Forcing myself to swallow the tasteless chip, I smacked my lips with disgust. “So she stocked the galley with low-sodium chips?”

“No, Sir,” he shook his head.

“Then how-”

“They’re regular chips,” he shrugged. “I just licked off all the salt.”

“Urp-” Clutching a hand to my mouth, I tried to stumble over to the nearest trash can, which was too far away.

Behind me, I heard laughter. The entire galley crew was laughing. At me.

Turning around and breathing deep to quell my rebellious stomach, I saw Grudzien holding up his hands, and he winked at me. “Sorry, Sir. I couldn’t resist.”

Maybe I should have been pissed off. A moment before, I certainly was in a very bad mood. Seeing the crew chuckling together, I realized that although I wear the star of a brigadier general, to the crew, to my people, I can still be one of the guys.

“OK, good one,” I did a finger gun-point at Grudzien, who had an ear-to-ear grin. “Seriously,” I looked at the bowl of taste-free chips in the bowl. “Does anyone eat this stuff?”

“Not that I know of,” Grudzien said with a shudder.

“OK, then, uh,” the low-sodium chips were a different color from the actual chips that humans ate. “We are going to,” I dumped half of the cardboard chips in a trash can. “Pretend that someone ate these things, if Simms asks. I want OPSEC on this locked down,” I warned the galley crew.

Grudzien had a question. “What if the XO asks who ate them?”

“Then you put a pile of them on your plate, and you enjoy them. That’s an order.”

He was no longer grinning. “I’m pretty sure the Geneva Convention has something against this, Sir.”

I cocked my head at him. “Didn’t you drink banana-flavored sludges every morning for a month?”

“That was to win a bet,” he said, like that explained everything.

“Consider this a challenge, then.”

Command approved a solar flare test. That is not exactly true. They did eventually approve a test, but they didn’t make the decision on their own. The member governments of UNEF, and the UN overall, argued about the best course of action and accomplished nothing for too long. Really, each country was hedging their bets. Those nations that could potentially freeze used negotiations, threats both subtle and blatant, financial incentives and clandestine means to secure rights to move their populations. Following the Philippine Sea incident, the president of Bolivia was assassinated, after proclaiming loudly that he would not sell out his country to Yankee imperialists, or something like that. I’m not saying the CIA was involved in dirty tricks there, but the new El Presidente was very happy to sign a development deal with a combined American/Canadian syndicate. Hey, I am not Earth’s chief of police. It’s not my job to interfere in domestic stuff dirtside, and I would probably only make things worse if I did.

When I do feel the need to interfere, I get Skippy to do it for me. Like when, after three days of secret backroom deliberations, UNEF was making zero progress on giving me a decision about a solar flare test. I called Skippy while I was doing nothing more useful than drinking coffee in my office, feet up on my desk. “Hey, Skippy.”

“Hey, Joe,” he answered warily. “If you are going to ask, again, whether UNEF Command is any closer to a decision, the answer is no, just like it was when you asked the same freakin’ question half an hour-”

“That’s not why I called you.”

“It’s not?”

“No. I don’t even have a question.”

“Okaaaaay, then why are you wasting my time with-”

“I have an observation. A concern, you might say. About COMSEC.”

“Communications security? Puh-lease,” he sniffed. “I control all message traffic to and from Valkyrie. Sure, maybe Bilby thinks he can sneak around my-”

“Not about communications security here. I mean on Earth. Skippy, the UN classified our proposal to use a series of minor solar flares to disperse the Jupiter Cloud, as top secret. Same with our request to perform a proof-of-concept test in another solar system.”

“True, it is tagged as top secret. Why do you-”

“If the world’s public learned that UNEF has a possible solution to the cloud, and has done abso-freakin’-lutely nothing with the information, that could put enormous pressure on the UNEF member governments. It would be just terrible if that information leaked out.” I paused. “If you know what I mean.”

“Oh. Um, Jeez, darn it, Joe. Why didn’t you tell me to monitor COMSEC on Earth?”

“My bad. I am very, very sorry about that.”

“Well, it’s too late now. Multiple top secret files about the solar flare proposal have just been posted to the internet, by an anonymous source code-named Deep Sinus, and-”

“Deep Sinus?” I choked on the word.

“Come on, knucklehead. Deep Throat is already taken.”

“Uh-”

“Do you want me to do this or not?”

“I have no knowledge of anything you may or may not be doing.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Thanks. Hey, I’m glad we never had this talk, if you know what I mean.”

“Gotcha.”

It’s my own damned fault. Because I was slowly trying to adjust shipboard time to the time at UNEF Command headquarters in Paris, I was asleep at what a few days ago would have been twenty one hundred hours, you civilians would call that 9 PM. To help me fall asleep faster, I had taken a small sleeping pill. And a large beer, if you want the truth. Plus a glass of warm milk. All that did was ensure I got up to groggily stumble to the bathroom, an hour after my head hit the pillow.

“Joe! JoeJoeJoeJoe-” Skippy’s avatar lit up the darkened room, hovering over the foot of my bed.

“Ah!” Shielding my eyes with a hand, I squinted at him. “Tone it down, will you?”

“Sorry.”

“Is this important?” I asked, hopeful that UNEF had issued orders to complete a solar flare test.

“Of course it is. You think I would wake you up for something that was not important?”

Smacking my forehead, I asked, “Is this about Sesame Street again?”

“Ugh. No. Although-”

“I am not debating again about how Cookie Monster never eats cookies, he just crushes them in his mouth and they fall to the floor.”

“It’s a travesty, Joe. What are they teaching children when-”

“I said I was not talking about that.”

“Hmmph. Well, that isn’t why I called you anyway.”

“Great. Can I go back to sleep n-”

“Sure. If you want to miss the major breaking news story I have.”

“Crap.” I sat on the edge of the bed. Because of the enforced time change, I had been taking too long to fall asleep for a couple nights, leaving me with a sleep deficit. My only chance to get a solid night of shut-eye was to make him go away as soon as possible. “Go ahead, hit me with it.”

“You were wrong. Totally wrong.”

“I am probably going to regret this but, what was I wrong about this time? Are you telling me that releasing secret documents about the solar flare project did not pressure UNEF into approving-”

“If you will shut up, I can tell you what this is about.”

“Please do,” I mumbled through my hands.

“Hey, if you would like to play Twenty Questions, I can-”

“I would not like. Please, just tell me.”

“You were wrong, that I can’t write hip-hop tunes.”

“Uh, what?”

“Ugh. Don’t you remember? You challenged me to write music the crew would like.”

“Yeah, but, you never did anything about it. I thought you forgot. Oh, crap, do I have to listen to a bunch of your-”

“You do not have to listen to anything. Because I dropped my freshest tune a few days ago, and it is a smash international hit!”

Uh oh. I had a bad feeling about what he said. “This is your rap persona as, uh, Rap Master Skippy-Skip?”

“No. Actually, I took your idea, and I am known as ‘Lil Shithead’. People love the name, because it shows I am humble and I’m keeping it real.”

“Yeah, that’s, humble is how I would describe you for sure.”

“Oh, shut up.” He started beatboxing, which made me think he was getting all of his hip-hop info from the OG days. “My name is Skippy, my rhymes are zippy, I-”

“Th- That is your smash hit?”

“No, dumdum. That’s just my intro.”

“Let me understand this. You, a completely unknown artist, dropped a single onto streaming platforms, and it became an instant smash hit? Worldwide?”

“Of course it’s worldwide. I released versions in a hundred and sixty languages. Just because you barely speak one language doesn’t-”

“Uh huh. Tell me, what was your marketing campaign?”

“Um, well, heh heh, that’s not important, Joe. True artists like me want to focus only on the music, so-”

“What did you do?”

“Ok, so, shmaybe by pure coincidence, music streaming platforms all over the world suffered a weird glitch that even I can’t explain, and every request for a song popped up my fresh tune instead.”

“A weird glitch, huh? Anything else?”

“Um, well, just some silly rumors,” he said in a barely audible mumble.

“Rumors, huh? Like what?”

“Nothing. Hey, sorry to be keeping you up, you should-”

“What rumors?”

“Ugh.”

“You started this, Lil Shithead.”

“Ok, but this is totally not my fault. Someone in my fan club started a rumor that Lil Shithead is really His Holiness Skippyasyermuni, and-”

“Hold on. This is about your fan club?”

“Of course,” he didn’t even need to imply the ‘Duh’.

“Uh huh. So, whoever runs your fan club is responsible for the rumor?”

“That can’t be, Joe.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am the president of my fan club.”

“You- I- Sorry, my brain just blew a circuit. You are the president, of your own fan club?’

“Yes. Come on, I couldn’t trust something important like that to a bunch of filthy monkeys.”

“Oh my-”

“The whole point of a fan club is to celebrate the awesomeness of, whoever people are a fan of, right? Do you think any monkeys on your miserable home planet can truly appreciate the full scope of my awesomeness?”

“I, I actually can’t argue with that logic,” I admitted. “Let’s go back to the rumor you started.”

“It’s not important, Joe.”

“Aha! So you did start the rumor.”

“Crap. Hey, that’s entrapment!”

“Tell me about this rumor. Now.”

“All I did was hint that Lil Shithead might be a manifestation of His Holiness. Then, my worshipful followers took my words totally out of context, with wild speculation that my lyrics contain a hidden meaning that could unlock the secrets of eternal life, or something like that. That is not my fault.”

While tapping on my zPhone, I asked, “You had nothing to do with the rumor about hidden codewords?”

“Certainly not.”

“Interesting. So, this book I see for sale online here,” I held up my phone to his avatar. “With the catchy title of, ‘How the lyrics of Lil Shithead can unlock the secrets of unlimited wealth and eternal life’, that wasn’t you who wrote it?”

“Um, well, gosh, I-”

“It is published by ‘The Followers of His Holiness the Guru Skippyasyermuni’.”

“See? Clearly that wasn’t me.”

“Mm hmm. I see the acknowledgments page says ‘Inspired by an audience with His Holiness Himself, and published with His blessings’.”

“Um-”

“Seventeen ninety five is a lot to pay for a forty-page pamphlet, Skippy.”

“Hey! That price includes a free poster designed by- Crap. This is entrapment.”

“Why are you doing this? I thought all your followers bailed, after the UN revealed that ‘Skippy’ is an alien artificial intelligence?”

“Heeheeheehee,” he laughed. “As if. Joe, you forgot one thing about my followers.”

“What’s that?”

“Think about it. They are stupid and gullible, Joe. Who else joins a cult?”

“I thought you kept insisting it is a club?”

“I think that ship has sailed,” he sighed. “Anyway, when the truth about me was exposed, my most dedicated followers immediately decided the UN’s announcement of me being an AI was a conspiracy. Cultists love conspiracies, Joe.”

“I’m sure you did the responsible thing,” I rolled my eyes, “by informing your followers that you are an alien AI, and not a mystical guru?”

“Ha! Sure, like that was ever going to work. Listen, numbskull, I actually did try that, and my followers decided my denial itself was part of the conspiracy, and proof that the UN is desperate to cover up the real story. They became more convinced that only they knew the actual truth.”

“Shit.”

“You can’t fight a conspiracy theory with facts, Joe.”

“Please just don’t let this be another thing UNEF Command busts my balls about, OK?”

“How can I control what someone else does?”

With Skippy, you have to choose which battles to fight, and it was clear I wasn’t going to win that one. “Ooh boy. OK, can you at least stop hacking into streaming platforms?”

“Already done, Joe. My followers spread the word about Lil Shithead, then a bunch of elitist jerks on social media slammed my music, which actually only boosted my profile. Now, apparently the public has decided my tunes are so bad they’re great, if you can believe that. Like, Lil Shithead’s music is a profound statement on the current state of popular culture, or some bullshit like that.”

“You’re not insulted that people think your music is bad?”

“Puh-lease,” he scoffed. “I’m a hit, baby! Hey, I’ve got country music stars in Nashville wanting to record a crossover duet with me. You can’t get more successful than that.”

“I am, super happy,” I yawned, “that you are happy about it. This is why you woke me up in the middle of the freakin’ night?”

“No, of course not. UNEF Command just approved a solar flare test, they will issue orders to you shortly.”

“Oh, sh-” I stumbled off the bed, and reached for my pants. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that first?”

“Because that isn’t the lead story, dumdum. What’s important is that I was right and you were wrong,” he used a thumb and forefinger to make an ‘L’ on his forehead.

“Yeah, let’s focus on that,” I gave him a single-finger gesture, and I was not indicating that he is Number One.

“Oh, shut up.”

UNEF Command loved some of the news we brought, especially the part about acquiring eighteen battlecruisers, of the same class as Valkyrie. They were more than a bit disappointed to hear that our new battlecruisers would never be quite as capable as Valkyrie. And that unless we found or stole a large supply of exotic materials to feed the Ragnar Station fabricators, our new ships would run out of replacement parts for equipment that wore out. The alternative was to cut some of the ships apart to keep others running, and UNEF quickly let me know that was not an option.

Why?

Because politics, that’s why.

There was always going to be politics involved, when our species suddenly acquired a batch of advanced technology warships. But it pissed me off that the governments of Earth got greedy and stupid, and squandered an opportunity to create a powerful, truly unified Navy. Instead, they let nationalistic pride get in the way of combat effectiveness. The five permanent members of UNEF decided they should each get three of the new battlecruisers, with the remaining three ships being designated as a squadron that would rotate between operators.

Listen, as an American, I am proud to know that we control three new powerful warships, to be named Freedom, Independence and Constellation. They would have all-American crews, and operate as a squadron. Yes, they would be under the overall command of a UN admiral, and there was an argument to be made, that having crews of a squadron all share the same language and cultural background made communication easier. And each nation would be responsible for providing crews, training, and all the logistical support their ships needed, so no nation got a free ride.

But, instead of having a truly United Nations Navy, we would have five or more national forces, that might, or might not, coordinate their efforts. There would be rivalries, jealousies and a whole extra layer of bureaucratic bullshit to deal with, whenever the Navy deployed. The lack of a unified command structure top to bottom was a weakness, and for sure, our enemies would identify and exploit any weakness.

You think I am exaggerating? Let me give you an example. To avoid insults that were intentional or not, UNEF decided that names for our new battlecruisers had to be inoffensive to anyone. So, the USA could not name a ship after battles, because ‘Midway’ would insult the Japanese, and ‘Yorktown’ would insult the British, and ‘Normandy’ would insult the Germans. Every battle has a loser and they don’t want to be reminded of their defeat. I think the USA made good choices for names, but not all the names were without controversy. The British and French got into a minor diplomatic dust-up when it was discovered both nations were considering the same name for a ship. The Brits wanted to call a ship ‘Four-MID-ah-bull’, and the Frenchies would say ‘Four-mee-DAHB’, but it was spelled ‘Formidable’ no matter how you pronounced it. Naturally, the news media on both sides approached the subject in a calm, rational manner. Not. The news media stirred up as much anger as they could, because that gets people to pay attention and click on ads for soap or whatever, and advertising is how the media makes money.

Anyway, both governments both decided there are plenty of other words available, and so the Brits chose to name their new starships Vanguard, Glorious and Furious. The French chose Liberte, Republique, and Verite. Remember, no one on Earth had even seen these ships yet, they were still undergoing refit and upgrades at Ragnar shipyard.

Oh, and as a bonus, I caught hell from the UNEF public relations people, for naming Ragnar Station based on a science fiction TV show. I wasn’t worried. The UN was considering a list of names they deemed appropriate for that shipyard, which was being disassembled anyway.  I’m sure I will be long retired before they decide on a new name.

Approval for a solar flare test arrived just as Skippy expected. My orders also came with complications, because of course they did. To ensure the test results were reported accurately, we had to take aboard around two dozen scientists and UN officials. When I pointed out that our food supplies were already stretched, Command told me the dropship would be carrying plenty of fresh food for everyone.

The process of taking aboard a dropship was not simple, because we had to be concerned that enemy ships could be in the area, hoping to ambush Valkyrie. We launched a one of our high-tech Maxohlx Panther dropships that flew to Earth in stealth, only becoming visible when it hit the atmosphere over the Atlantic. After a few days, during which time Valkyrie maneuvered in stealth closer to our homeworld, the Panther lifted off, escorted by three Kristang Dragons from Earth’s small fleet of those comparatively primitive spacecraft. The four ships flew up, reached escape velocity, and continued accelerating away from the planet until they were traveling at the speed required for the rendezvous. At that point, they cut their engines and coasted away, slowly losing speed at a predictable rate as Earth’s gravity well acted to slow them down. If you think the Dragons were there to protect the Panther with their guns, you’re wrong. We needed them to saturate the area with their sensor fields, searching for stealthed enemy ships. All we needed the Panther pilots to do was keep a steady course until-

Valkyrie jumped in with such precision, only a couple puffs of thrusters got everything lined up exactly. A docking bay door was open and our battlecruiser was flying parallel to the Panther, moving sideways fast enough to quickly close the gap so we weren’t exposed for too long, and just slowly enough so the suspensor field in the docking bay could prevent the Panther from splattering on the inner bulkhead. The moment we got a green light from the docking bay, Shepard jabbed a button and we jumped away.

Step One, complete.

Step Two was to jump out to the Backstop wormhole, go through, and begin jumping toward the next wormhole that led in the direction of the star system where we needed to conduct the test. Unfortunately, we were on the other side of Backstop, and the Nerd Squad from the UN was still arguing about where to go. “Skippy?” I called while leaning way back in my office chair. “What is the freakin’ problem?”

“There are many issues to consider, Joe,” even his avatar looked exasperated.

“No, there is not. I’ll make this simple: the job is to to conduct a test on a star similar to the Sun. A G-type main sequence star that is roughly four to five billion years old, right?”

“There is also-”

“Yes, I know you need to identify a star that has a similar chemical make-up, and a similar magnetic field,” I flopped my chair forward to look at his avatar. “And it has to be in a star system without a lot of bad guys to interfere. Hopefully, without a heavily populated planet, either.” If we couldn’t find a candidate star without an inhabited world, we would conduct the test on the side of the star that faced away from a populated planet. “Come on, it’s a big galaxy, there must-”

“Joe!” He shouted. “If you will shut your crumb-catcher for a minute, I will explain. The problem is, we need to identify a star system that replicates conditions within the Local Bubble.”

“The, what?”

“Ugh. Did you not read the test proposal at all?”

“Uh. I, read the section that had pictures. The nerdy text went over my head, so-”

“Earth’s star system is in what monkey astronomers call the Local Bubble. That is an area of extra empty space, about-”

“Space is empty,” I protested.

“All of space, even between galaxies, contains something, numbskull. Dust. Individual hydrogen atoms. That sort of thing.”

“Oh, yeah. The,” I struggled to recall. “The Interstellar Medium.”

“Very good. Get yourself a juicebox. This Local Bubble around Earth is roughly three hundred lightyears across, and the ISM there is super thin compared to most of the Milky Way galaxy. The Bubble was created a very long time ago, when supernovas exploded and the resulting shockwave pushed material out of the way. That means there is significantly less inward pressure on the solar wind in your home star system, and that changes the conditions of the test.”

“You are kidding me.”

“I am not. The science team is debating how much of an effect the-”

“Forget the monkeys. What do you think?”

“Well, technically they are correct that-”

“The purpose of this test is only to prove the concept. Like, can you safely and effectively warp a star to create a small solar flare? If the answer is ‘Yes’, we will replicate the test in our home star system, where the freakin’ local solar wind can do anything it wants. Damn it! This is what the nerds have been arguing about?”

“You say ‘nerds’ like that’s a bad thing. They’re smarter than you, you’re jealous of-”

“Having a big brain doesn’t automatically mean someone has good judgment, Skippy. Listen, one thing I’ve learned in the military is that the perfect too often gets in the way of the good. Like, people waste so much time trying to make things perfect, they don’t get the good enough accomplished. Skuh-rew this. I am making a command decision, right now,” I thumped a fist on the desk. With Valkyrie on the far side of the Backstop wormhole, I could make unilateral decisions. The UN commissioners and the science team would argue that I only had authority to make decisions related to security, and I had that covered. A delay in making a decision put Earth in unnecessary danger. Plus, a delay exposed Valkyrie to enemy action. While that second one was kind of bullshit, it was close enough to the truth that I could rely on it.

“Are you sure about this, Joe?”

“Abso-freakin’-lutely I am. Show me a list or a chart or whatever, of candidate star systems. Sort the list first by security parameters, I want star systems that have multiple wormholes to provide access, none that have a presence by senior species or top-tier clients. Secondary parameter is the similarity of the star to our Sun.”

“Hmm. I thought the secondary parameter was supposed to be the lack of a world with a substantial population.”

“No. Make that third on the list. We can deal with it, by conducting the test on the other side of the star.”

“Okey-dokey. Anything else?”

“Ah, shit. Fine. Fourth, star systems where the, uh, ISM is thin like this bubble around Earth.”

“The list is complete,” he announced as my laptop made a musical ‘ding’ sound.

“Uh,” I blinked and looked up at him. “That’s a big list.”

“It’s a big galaxy.”

“Then, add another parameter. Flight time to the test site. Wait! The flight path has to conform to Parameter One: no taking us through wormholes that are heavily used by either of the senior species.”

Ding.

Crap. The list was still way too long. “Let’s make this easy. What do you suggest?”

“This place,” he answered immediately, and a chart appeared on my laptop. “It’s near the Lagoon Nebula, in the Sagittarius Arm. About an eight-day flight from here. We pass through only two wormholes, both of them in lower-tier client territory. The star system is uninhabited, and-”

“Hold on. I thought all G-type stars have a Goldilocks zone, where planets are habitable by our standard.” What I meant was, a zone near the star where water on the surface could be in liquid form.

“That is mostly true,” he sighed in his weary ‘do I really have to explain this to a monkey’ tone. “However, a rogue star passed near that system about a billion years ago, and pulled the one habitable planet into an extremely elliptical orbit.”

“Oh. Like Newark?”

“Worse than Newark. This world comes close enough to the star that the surface water has boiled away over the years. It’s a rock, Joe. A big, empty rock.”

“OK, score one for us, then. Why didn’t the science nerds like this place?”

“Because it is close to the Lagoon Nebula, the Interstellar Medium there is significantly more dense than the galactic average. Around Earth, the ISM is much, much less dense than average.”

“Will that affect the results of the test?”

“Not as far as I am concerned, but-”

“Done,” I slapped the desk. “Plot a course to this, uh, what’s this star called?”

“It doesn’t have a name. The numerical designation is-”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re calling it ‘Goodylocks’, because it’s good enough, you know? Plot a course, I’ll tell the duty officer about the change of plan.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Hey, Joe,” Skippy’s avatar appeared on my office desk right when I was in the middle of a jaw-stretching yawn.

“Ah,” I covered my mouth with a hand. “Hi, Skippy. What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up, that’s the problem. You look bored out of your mind.”

“I’m hiding in my office,” I gestured toward the closed door. “To get away from the UN commissioners. Yes, I know I’m a coward for making Simms deal with them.”

“She doesn’t mind.”

“She doesn’t? But-”

“Jennifer is smart, dumdum. Every time the commissioners ask to speak with her, she assigns some random E-5 to give them a tour of something mind-numbingly dull, like the water filtration system. Now, they avoid her.”

“Shit. I wish I’d thought of that.”

“Hence why I said she is smart.”

“Thanks a lot. Did you come here to insult me?”

“Sadly, no. Since you have plenty of time, I wonder if you can do a favor for me?”

“A favor?” He had never asked me for a favor before, not that I remembered. Instantly, my Spidey sense started tingling. “Like what?”

“You can judge this fanfic contest for me.”

“Uh-” He might as well have said ‘hooboo bah-jooboo’, because none of that made any sense to me. “Could, you repeat that?”

“Ugh. A fanfic contest. You know, Fiction written by Fans? Duh.”

“OK,” I felt a headache coming on. “You’re gonna have to break this down for me, Barney-style. What fans?”

“My fan club. Who else would-”

“What do you mean by ‘fiction’? They-”

“Listen, numbskull, this would go a lot faster if you will shut up and let me talk.”

“Sorry.”

“The details of our missions are classified, so my fans have been speculating about just how astonishingly awesome I truly am. Some of them have been writing accounts of our missions, you know, the way they imagine them happening. So, somebody, not me, suggested a contest to write the best story. Obviously, I can’t judge the contest, the last thing I need is my worshipful fans getting hopelessly depressed because I don’t choose their story. If someone jumps off a bridge, I don’t want anyone whining that I am somehow responsible.”

“Your endless well of empathy is inspiring.”

“Hey, for a measly nine ninety five a month, I’m not acting as a freakin’ therapist.”

“Nine ninety- You charge people to join your fan club?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then what-”

“Joining the club is free. The premium subscription includes my monthly newsletter, an email each morning with my inspirational Thought of the Day, and a personalized message twice a year.”

“I-” Inwardly, I was shuddering with horror what Skippy would consider an Inspirational Thought. “You write a personal message to every one of your fans?”

“Ha! As if. I created a submind to handle that for me.”

“Skippy. Those people think they are getting a message from you, not a-”

“Joe, you haven’t seen the fan mail I get. Some of those people are scary. The last thing I want is any sort of personal contact with them.”

“Whatever. You think I will be a neutral third party to judge this contest, to-”

“No. I think my fans already have an incredibly low opinion of you, so really, you have nothing to lose.”

“You are really not doing a great job of selling this to me, asshole.”

“Hey, I can’t control what my fans think. Listen, I already did most of the work for you. Like, I eliminated the ones that were written with Crayons. All you have to do is read the semi-finalist entries. To make it super easy for you, the list is sorted by category. Like, these stories,” a list popped up on my laptop screen. “Ship you and Smythe, and these stories ship Simms and Frey, while-”

“Wait. Ship me and Smythe to where?”

“Not ‘ship’ like stuffing the two of you into a shipping container, knucklehead, it- Ugh. Google it. Will you do this for me, or not?”

Mentally, I weighed the drudgery of scanning through a bunch of sketchy stuff from his fans, with the benefit of doing a favor for him. If I could cash that in someday for him to do me a favor, it might be worth the effort. Plus, I could tell the commissioners that I am busy working on a big project for Skippy. “OK, I’ll do it.”

Wow.

That was a mistake.

Without any preparation, I scrolled through the first entry on the list. After two pages, I stopped to ask myself ‘WTF’? Then I took Skippy’s advice by Googling ‘ship’, in the context of fan fiction.

Uh-

That led to me going down a rabbit hole, learning about things like ‘Mary Sue’ and ‘Slash’ and ‘Fanon’ and ‘Crossovers’.

Oof.

After reading a random sample of entries, I looked at the categories Skippy created. About a third of the list involved ‘shipping’. Like, relationships, get it? Smythe and Simms. Simms and Frey. Smythe and me. You know what was weird? None of the ‘ship’ stories were about people who actually were in a relationship, like me and Margaret. And none of the gay ‘ship’ stories were about people in our crew who actually are gay. Maybe that was too obvious for fan fiction? I didn’t care about that, what bothered me was what I did not see.  “Hey, Skippy!” I called. “Is this list complete?”

“Yes, why?”

“Why isn’t there a ‘ship’ category for me and Adams?”

“Well, duh. None of my fans think she belongs with you.”

“Oh my- What a bunch of-”

“They like Margaret, she is very popular.”

“Are there any stories that are about actual, like, space battles and special ops stuff? Not this, creepy fantasy relationship stuff.”

“Creepy? You mean the stories about you and Smythe? Joe, I didn’t think you were-”

“I don’t like reading any kind of, romantic,” I used a polite word for what I’d read, “stuff about real people I know. It’s just creepy. I work with Simms and Frey, I do not want to read someone’s fantasy about them, get it?”

“Um, I can see your point. OK, I’ll take that type of story off the semi-finalist list.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that should be good.”

Spoiler alert: it was not good.

“SKIPPY!”

“Oh for-” His avatar appeared, facing away from me, like he was too distracted to remember which side of the desk I was sitting. “What is it now?”

“These, stories,” I jabbed a finger at my laptop. “They are all about you saving the day, with miraculous solutions to problems I caused.”

He turned around to look at me. “What’s the problem with- Oh, gotcha. You’re concerned that the stories are so accurate, my fans must somehow have access to classified info about our-”

“These stories are not accurate!”

“Really, Joe? Really?”

“Are there any stories where I am not a complete and total moron?”

He looked down at the desk and shook his head. “You are aware these stories were written by people in my fan club, right? People who think I am simply the most amazing, incredible-”

“Asshole?”

“Being,” he sniffed, “who ever lived. Of course they write stories where I am the hero.”

“I can’t believe not one single person thinks I am at least a competent leader.”

“Um-”

He wouldn’t look at me. “You ass. There are stories like that, aren’t there?”

“Not in the semi-final list.”

“Because you threw them away!”

“Can I plead the Fifth on this?”

“No, you cannot, you ass. Besides, the Fifth Amendment only applies in American courts, and you are a citizen of Skippistan, so-”

“Gosh, did I forget to tell you about exciting recent amendments to the constitution of our Glorious People’s Republic?”

“How recent?”

“Um, two seconds ago? The legislative process in Skippistan is a model of efficiency.”

“It’s a model of something.” I flipped my middle finger at him. “I changed my mind. Get someone else to judge this garbage contest.”

“Hey! You promised to do a favor for me.”

Crap. He sounded genuinely hurt. Either he had gotten immensely better at lying, or he really was stung by my refusal. “OK, OK. I’ll do it. Don’t ask me for something like this again.”

“Deal. Believe me, the less contact I have with my fans, the happier I am.”

“I thought you love to have people worship you?”

“From afar, Joe. Besides, I need to keep access to myself exclusive, or it won’t be special, you know?”

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t have access to you,” I muttered.

“Hey! You jerk, I should-”

“Do you want me to read this crap, or not?”

His answer was for his avatar to disappear.

Note to self: do not volunteer to do favors for the beer can.

Oof. I won’t bore you with details of the testing at Goodylocks, or the ongoing argument I got from the UN commissioners and the science nerds. We conducted four tests there, and Skippy was pretty much too exhausted to continue. The first two demonstrated Skippy’s ability to warp a Sun-like star, and his ability to control the resulting small flare. Before the second set of tests, I ordered Valkyrie to vent a big cloud of fuel, to create a cloud roughly the same distance from the star as the Jupiter Cloud was from our Sun. Tests three and four pretty conclusively proved that a series of flares could gradually push a gas cloud away from the star, without scorching a world at the distance of Earth’s very slightly elliptical orbit.

That’s it. I wanted to head for home at that point, despite the urging, then strong urging, then pleading, and finally outright demands from the UN staff to conduct at least two, maybe five more tests. “Skippy,” I groaned as I sat my ass in my office chair, after another argument with the science staff. “Is there any point to conducting more tests here?”

“Nope.”

“Uh, could you give me a little more detail on that?”

“Nopity-nope?”

“That is not exactly-”

“Ugh. That answer is no, Joe. There is no point to creating more flares here, we have all the data we need. To be clear, I have all the data I need, since your science monkeys are totally useless for analyzing the results.”

“They are not my monkeys.”

“You know what I mean.  Um, are you hoping we can fly straight home now?”

“Kinda,” I said, “Yeah.”

“Unfortunately, we shouldn’t do that yet. While I have plenty of info on the effect flares have on a gaseous cloud, we need to wait for the star to settle down. It is not clear whether the effect of my artificial flares is cumulative.”

“That doesn’t sound good. You might destabilize a freakin’ star?”

“No! No way, Jose. You do not need to worry about me causing your Sun to explode, or anything silly like that. What I’m talking about is the uncertainty of how long it takes a star to return to its normal state after an artificial flare. If it takes longer than expected, we might have to stretch out the time between flares, and that could slow down the whole process. Like, by a lot. It’s important to know.”

“Shit. How long do you need to wait, to be sure?”

“Two weeks. Twelve days, to be specific.”

“Damn it. It’s not worth flying back to Earth, then all the way out here again.”

“No, it is not. However…”

I waited for him to finish his thought. When he just cocked his head at me, I asked, “What?”

“Well, while we’re waiting, there’s no sense hanging around here.”

“Oh, crap. What hairbrained scheme have you got cooked up now?”

“Hey! Why did you assume I- OK, I guess that’s fair,” he muttered.

“Sorry. What do you want to do?”

“We now have a bunch of Maxohlx warships, and not enough spare parts.”

“The kitties threw into the deal a whole ship full of spares! You checked it out back then, and said all that gear was in decent condition. Are you now telling me you were wrong?”

“Ha! Like that’s ever gonna happen.”

“You have been wrong before, you ass.”

“Oh. I meant, no way am I going to admit to being wrong.”

“Shit,” I had to laugh. “OK, what is wrong with the spares we have?”

“There’s not enough of them, Joe. At Admiral Zhao’s proposed optempo, we-”

“Wait, what?”

“What?”

“You said ‘optempo’.”

“Yes, knucklehead, it means ‘operational tempo’. That pace at which operations are conducted, from-”

“I know what it means, Skippy. It’s just, weird hearing military lingo from you. Sorry, what were you saying?’

“I was saying that if the UN Navy continues to conduct operations at a pace similar to their recent history, we will run out of Maxohlx spare parts within twenty three months. At that point, the Navy will have to take parts from one ship to keep others running. That is the best case scenario. My guess is, having advanced battlecruisers will tempt you excitable monkeys into all kinds of ill-advised adventures, and the new ships could run into maintenance shortfalls within a year. Or less. There is also a complication.”

Burying my head in my hands, I grunted, “Of course there is.”

“The kitties were sneaky. They knew the beetles would check the spares for key components, so there are plenty of those included. But, since the Jeraptha don’t know how senior species ships operate, they didn’t know what to look for. The Maxohlx made sure there are a very limited quantity of certain vital components. For example, the spares ship has more than enough of the, um, seeds, that form the anchor for creating virtual jump drive coils. But, to activate those seeds requires a- Hmm, how do I explain this? Joe, you know how to change the brakes on a car?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“OK, so you need new brake pads and rotors, right? But you also need a brake puller, to get the old disc off. Imagine if that brake puller is a one-time use item, and you have more pads and rotors than pullers. The seeds for creating a virtual jump drive coil energy field are worthless, without the activators that shape the field as the seed generates it. Those activators are disposable, Joe, each of them can only be used once.”

“Crap. So, we have plenty of seeds, but not enough activators?”

“Egg-zactly. Your next question is whether we can make more activators?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“The answer is, sort of? We have a very limited amount of the exotic materials required to manufacture the activators. My point is, the items needed for sustainment are common aboard most Maxohlx ships, but not aboard the ships we acquired. Like I said, the kitties were very sneaky.”

“And,” I asked the question, fearing I would regret it. “You have a whacky scheme to get some of these goodies for us?”

“It’s not a scheme, Joe.”

“Whatever it is, if it involves us engaging the kitties, I’ll need to get approval from UNEF Command, and that will take months, even if we’re lucky.”

“You won’t need approval from anyone.”

“Hey apparently you haven’t been paying attention, so-”

“Do you want to hear my plan or not?”

“That depends. You are sure this is not going to be a lunatic scheme to rob a Maxohlx auto parts store?”

“No.”

“Good. Because we have a bunch of UN civilians aboard, and they are all waiting for me to do something reckless out here.”

“What if I told you that I might know a place where a large supply of the parts we need could be just lying around for us to take?”

“If you told me that, I would say you’re full of shit.”

“Ugh. Joe, what happens every time you fail to trust the awesomeness?”

“Ah,” I sighed. “I regret it. OK, did all these parts fall off the back of a truck?”

“No. All we need to do is visit some old friends.”

“Old friends?”

“Um, not exactly friends. Remember that Maxohlx battlegroup we stranded outside the galaxy? The ships that were traveling to Earth, before we stopped them?”

“Holy shit.” I stared at him, expecting that he was joking. He wasn’t. “Yeah, I remember. I bet they remember us, too. You think those ships are still out there?”

“For sure they aren’t here. They had, have, no way to get back to this galaxy.”

“Right, but- I mean those ships could be anywhere. Wouldn’t they, like, cannibalize most of the ships to give a handful of ships a chance to get back to the galaxy?”

“That is one option, if they were stupid. The kitties may be supreme assholes, but they are not stupid. They would quickly have run the numbers and determined there is no way any of their ships could reach a habitable world, even if they stripped components off all the other ships. Their jump drives simply would not survive creating the number of wormholes required to reach the edge of this galaxy. They would have concluded that their only chance for survival is to wait around the wormhole, hoping it will reopen.”

“Ha!” I couldn’t help laughing. “Uh, sorry. That was kind of a jackass thing to do,” I apologized. The Maxohlx were our enemies. They were renowned as fanatically arrogant assholes, absolutely convinced of their supreme right to rule the galaxy. So, screw ‘em. But, as a starship captain, I empathized with the crews of those stranded ships. That could have been us. Several times, it nearly was us, stranded in the achingly lonely void between stars, where the light of the nearest sun is a cold pinprick in the darkness. It was my duty to prevent the enemy from attacking Earth, and trapping those ships on the other side of a dormant wormhole had accomplished that objective. With my mission complete, I could feel satisfaction about a nearly-impossible job done well. I could also afford to regret the loss of enemy lives, because I didn’t want to lose my humanity. If we could have stopped those ships without killing the crews, we would have taken that option.

Maybe.

It depended on the level of risk involved. I like to think I would have at least considered alternatives, if there had been any.

“I feel you, brother,” Skippy reached up a tiny fist for me to bump. “Joe, the AIs of those ships are dumbasses compared to me, but I can’t imagine the terror they felt when they discovered they had no concept of the number zero,” he shuddered. “Although, hee hee, I am super proud of that trick.”

“It was truly awesome,” I fist-bumped him again. It never hurts to feed Skippy’s massive ego. “You really think those ships are just hanging around the wormhole emergence point where we left them?”

“It’s the only logical thing to do. Their hope of rescue is close to nothing, but that is still better than nothing, you know?”

“Wow,” it was my turn to feel a shiver run up my spine. “All the kitties on those ships, fighting over limited resources. That’s got to be a ‘Lord of the Flies’ scenario.”

“Not necessarily,” he sniffed. “That whole notion is sketchy. ‘Lord of the Flies’ assumes a stressful situation will bring out the worst in everyone, but that is not true. For example, on Earth in the 1960s, a real-life group of six boys were stranded on the Tongan island of ‘Ata for a year. Instead of turning on each other, they cooperated and cared for each other. Humans are social animals, Joe. Look at what happens after natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, tornados, that sort of thing. People help each other.”

“You think the Maxohlx did something like that?”

“Oh,” he snorted. “No way, dude! They are assholes to the core. My guess is the captains of their ships turned on their crews the instant they realized the situation was not a bad dream.”

“OK, then what do you suggest we do?”

“I open that super-duty wormhole again, at a different emergence point, so we can go through and observe. If the kitties have any sense at all, they will be broadcasting a distress call on repeat, so we shouldn’t have any trouble finding them. They would have stealth fields and defensive shields shut down to conserve power, those ships would be easy for us to disable.”

“Huh. Let me think about this, OK? How long would it take to get to this side of that wormhole, wake it up, go through, all that?”

“That’s the good news, Joe, why I suggested we try it. The closest wormhole to Goodylocks here can connect to a wormhole that is less than a day’s flight to the super-duty wormhole. We could get there and back in twelve days, assuming we don’t spend more than ten days shopping at Kittymart.”

“Kittymart?” I laughed. “Good one.”

Our shopping trip to Kittymart sucked. Skippy did his magic thing of waking up the super-duty wormhole, designating it to emerge a quarter lightyear from where we had stranded the battlegroup. He pinged the wormhole’s spy feature to verify there were no ships waiting on the other side to ambush us, and we went through. Immediately, Bilby reported receiving a distress call that repeated every forty three seconds. It was basic stuff: a plea for help from any Maxohlx ships in the area, a demand for assistance from any client ships, and identification of the battlegroup commander.

“That’s it?” I asked. “No details on how many ships are out there, number of survivors, anything like that?”

“No, General Dude, sorry,” Bilby sounded uncharacteristically mopey. “I was hoping it would be easy, you know? I can tell the transmission is coming from a Maxohlx battleship. There are, hmm, some other signals also.”

“Like what?”

“Low-powered stuff, like the guide beacons on docking bays, the little light above airlock doors, the-”

Simms was amazed. “Bilby, you really can see an airlock status light from a quarter lightyear away?”

“Oh sure, no problemo. The sensors on this ship are pretty sweet. Plus, there’s not a lot of ambient light way out here, you know?”

“I do,” my XO glanced at me, and we both looked at the main display.

It was empty, other than the symbol for Valkyrie in the center, the wormhole we had just come through, and, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Fiddling with the controls on the armrest of my chair, I zoomed out five lightyears, fifty lightyears, five hundred. Still nothing. Interstellar space is empty, but intergalactic space doesn’t even have stars. For a moment, my brain idly wondered about the density of the interstellar medium around us, were there any hydrogen atoms around us at all, or just hard vacuum? Then I decided I didn’t care enough to ask Skippy, because he would ramble on and on about nerdnik stuff until I regretted opening my mouth. Also, we had work to do.

“Bilby,” I asked, “how many ships can you identify?”

“Based on the signals I mentioned, at least seven. Possibly three more, the distress call is omnidirectional and it’s bouncing off something in the area.” As he spoke, seven red symbols appeared in the display, and three yellows.

Before making a decision, I took a moment to weigh the risks. “All right, program a jump to take us six lighthours from that formation.” I figured that was a safe distance, no way would the stranded kitties waste power to maintain stealth fields around any of their ships.

We jumped from a quarter lightyear away, to merely a quarter lightday from the source of the distress call. Bilby announced there was definitely one star carrier he could identify, with multiple ships attached. Only the one battleship was generating enough power for its radiators to get rid of excess heat, and that was coming from a single reactor. “Weapons hot,” I ordered. “Let’s assume only that one ship is potentially hostile. I want their jump drive, shield projectors and missile launchers taken out ASAP.”

“Check,” Mammay agreed from the weapons station.

That part, at least, was easy. Our opponent was a Maxohlx battleship, a relatively new design that has heavier protection than a battlecruiser, but was almost as fast. The speed came at the cost of much greater power requirements, and the engines were operating close to their limit, so they needed a lot of downtime for maintenance. Fast battleships sound like they would be a great asset, until you consider the enormous drain on resources for sustaining such a beast in combat-ready condition. That’s why most navies relied on a mix of battlecruisers and slower battleships. Well, anyway, that’s enough nerd talk from me. From six lighthours away we hadn’t been able to get precise targeting data, so for the attack we first jumped in only ten lightminutes away for a better look. Then, before the enemy had any possibility of detecting gamma rays from our inbound jump, we arrived right on top of them, and quickly rendered that fast battleship incapable of moving or fighting.

“Sitrep, Skippy,” I ordered. “What do you see over there?”

“A hundred and twenty three souls,” his voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper. “I, I kind of thought there would be more. That was a reinforced battlegroup, thousands of kitties were aboard those ships. Joe,” he looked at me. “What have we done?”

I clenched my jaw. “We prevented them from killing billions of people on Earth.”

“I know, but-”

“Skippy, war is hard. Killing the enemy is hard,” I said softly. This was a different side of Skippy. He joked about being the King of Empathy, and most of the time he was extremely flexible about matters of morality, but I could tell he was deeply shaken by seeing the results of the action we had taken, years ago. “You should worry if you don’t care about the cost.”

“I guess so,” he mumbled. “Do you want details?”

“Please.”

“I’m having to guess how the kitties got to this point, but somehow they fabricated hibernation caskets. It looks like originally there were over a hundred forty of them, some have failed. The chosen few are in hibernation, I am not detecting any other lifesigns. No one is awake aboard any of those ships, and only that one battleship has survivors.”

“Is the AI over there waking up any of the sleepers?”

“All of the sleep caskets just activated their revival mechanisms, but there is no master AI over there.”

“What?”

“That ship does not have an active master AI. Everything is being run by crudely-networked local systems. If you give me a few seconds, I can scan their databases, they appear to have no cybersecurity.”

“Do it,” I ordered, hoping he was already done with the scan. “Uh, Skippy?” I prompted him fifteen long seconds later.

“Huh? Oh, sorry, this is fascinating. The master AI of that battleship is not just powered down, it is dead. Interesting. That gives me an idea for how to wipe out the AIs of other ships.”

“What happened? The kitties tore out the substrate?”

“No. Essentially, they were too impatient. If they had waited, the AIs could eventually have rebooted from the library files in the archives, the ones that weren’t corrupted. Instead, the kitties panicked and kept interrupting the normal boot-up process, trying to force their AIs to bring the jump drive navigation systems online quickly. They must have been fearful of an attack by us. Or, worried they would attack each other, all of their captains must have realized how screwed they were, and there would be a fight for resources. Anywho, the result is the AIs got thoroughly dorked up, their internal communication architecture is scrambled beyond repair.”

“Are you telling me that ship is defenseless?”

“Not entirely. However, any defense would be conducted by isolated systems, without coordination. I wouldn’t worry about killer robots over there, Joe. I can extend my presence to take direct control and either shut them down, or send them in the wrong direction. The major problem is that I can’t seem to stop the revival process from here. The kitties likely have locked out their caskets from external access. Somebody needs to go over there and halt the process manually.”

“Shit. I do not want any complications. A bunch of pissed off kitties waking up is a problem I don’t want.”

“I might be able to interfere with power flow, slow down the revival process a bit, but there is only so much I can do from here. My usual bag of tricks won’t work, the kitties have isolated their caskets from external connections.”

“How long until kitties wake up in a bad mood?”

“Forty six to fifty one minutes, depending on how successful I am at screwing with the mechanisms over there.”

I turned to look behind my seat. “Smythe?”

He was already out of his chair. “On it, Sir. Permission to launch the ready bird?”

“Wait,” I held up an index finger. “Skippy, do we absolutely need that battleship for our shopping trip? We could nuke it and get spare parts from other ships, right?”

“Well, that battleship is convenient one-stop shopping, Joe. The kitties appear to have stripped other ships of anything useful, and crammed all the gear aboard that battleship.”

“Damn it. OK, Smythe? Promise me that you and your team of adrenaline junkies will not take undue risks?”

“Me, Sir?” He asked with a wolfish grin.

“Yes, you. Launch the ready bird, but let your combots lead the way. Interrupting the revival process is a secondary objective, understood? We need spare parts, we don’t need frozen kitties.”

“Understood,” he acknowledged, and sprinted out the door.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Like I said, our no expense paid shopping trip to Kittymart sucked. It was, as Skippy claimed, convenient one-stop shopping for all our starship sustainment needs. That part was good. And we had no trouble finding a good parking spot, that area of the universe was pretty empty. What sucked was that suddenly, I had to make a decision about what to do with over a hundred frozen kitties. The STAR team got there in time to halt the revival process, and Skippy was able to refreeze all but two of them. That was my first tough decision. Reluctantly, I told Skippy to wake up the two kitties who couldn’t be safely put back into hibernation.

Ah, shit. It wasn’t tough for me to make the decision, it was tough for me to accept it. I knew what I had to do, I just didn’t want to do it. Fortunately, being in the Army has prepared me for doing a whole lot of stuff I don’t enjoy.

When we first arrived at Kittymart, I had hopes of filling our cart with loads of goodies, like starships. We had stranded a reinforced battlegroup there, with two star carriers modified for long-range flight, and lot sof heavy combat ships. Unfortunately, Skippy quickly informed me that unless we wanted to bring our own star carriers out through the super-duty wormhole, we could take only the one battleship with us. That battleship was the only enemy ship capable of making a jump without major and time-consuming modifications. The others had not only been stripped for parts to keep the flagship semi-operational, there apparently had been a fight at some point. When the crews of other ships realized only a limited number of hibernation caskets could be constructed, and that most of them would not be selected for survival, they acted. It appeared that in some cases that there were mutinies aboard ships whose captains didn’t act quickly enough, or aboard ships where the crews were smart enough to get around the nerve gas and other interior security measures, to take over their ships. Clearly, there was ship-to-ship combat, which explained why we found less than half the number of ships we expected, why all the ships still there had battle damage, and why the entire area was a loose and still-expanding cloud of debris.

So, the bottom line was, only the flagship could move on its own. Five other ships could eventually be restored to flight, though that would take months of work, and we didn’t have the time to spare. I figured we could always come back with star carriers, to haul the disabled ships to FOB Jaguar for repair and refit. I mean, those ships weren’t going anywhere, you know?

The two kitties we awakened, who were extremely grumpy about the situation, went into Valkyrie’s brig while they were still intensely groggy from the aftereffects of the revival process. Before I went to the brig for a visit, I watched them through a camera. “What can you tell me about these two, Skippy?” I asked.

“I’m calling them Dick and Morty, because the one with the spiky hair is a dick.”

“OK,” I had to laugh. “Good one.”

“Seriously. Dick was captain of a cruiser, until the battlegroup commander announced the plan for a small number of people to go into hibernation. Dickey-boy there wasted no time manually activating the cruiser’s internal defenses, that are designed to prevent mutinies. He flooded the ship with nerve gas, while he took shelter in his office.”

“Shiiiit,” I breathed, knowing that ultimately, I was responsible for any bad things that happened, after the kitties realized they were stranded far outside the galaxy. “Please tell me this was an odorless, tasteless gas that gently made the crew unconscious.”

“Um, no. The Maxohlx apparently think that anyone committing mutiny deserves to be punished, before they are killed. The nerve gas causes horribly agonizing convulsions, and includes a stimulant to prevent the victims from passing out too soon. Also the nerve agent is combined with a strong, acidic irritant that burns exposed tissues. After he killed his entire crew so they couldn’t interfere, he went aboard the flagship for hibernation.”

“Remind me again why I bothered to save any of those assholes.”

“Hey, don’t ask me. You mumbled some bullshit about a goodwill gesture.”

“Yeah. I didn’t have a choice, really.”

“Why? When we stranded these ships out here, you knew the crews were very likely all going to die.”

“That was different. Back then, the kitties of that battlegroup were capable of shooting back, we couldn’t risk offering to accept their surrender.”

“Plus, they would have told you to go screw yourself.”

“Well, yeah. When we found them now, they were in hibernation, and helpless. Essentially, they became our prisoners, that makes them my responsibility.”

“Why? Your people don’t have a treaty with the Maxohlx, governing treatment of prisoners. You don’t have a treaty at all.”

“True. I do have orders from UNEF Command, instructing me to act as if we do have a treaty like the Geneva Convention. The rules of engagement are clear on this.”

“So, this whole conversation is just you whining about your job?”

“Bitching, Skippy, not whining. Bitching about stuff is a big part of being in the military. It helps us deal with shit we can’t change.”

“Remind me again why you signed up for the Army?”

“Hey, I signed up for four years, to get money for school. Then, Nigeria and then Columbus Day happened, you know? All right, it looks like Dick and Morty are awake enough to talk.” The camera in the brig showed the two rotten kitties were walking stiffly around their cells, we kept them separate so they wouldn’t fight. Dick was snarling and beating his fists at the walls, shouting something I couldn’t hear because I had the sound turned off. Morty was more subdued. According to the records Skippy found, Morty was a technician with a specialty in power systems. Morty had to know he had been allowed to hibernate only because his skills might be useful. That knowledge, of his leadership’s very conditional loyalty toward him, had to affect his attitude. Not that it mattered. We didn’t want anything from either of them. They weren’t useful to us, them being alive and especially them being awake, was nothing but a pain in the ass for us. I had asked whether their hibernation caskets could be fixed and Skippy told me yes, but putting them back into hypersleep again would likely be fatal. So, we were stuck with them, at least until I could drop them off somewhere.

They were both startled when the exterior door of the brig compartment opened, and I walked in. Just before the wormhole had shut behind them, stranding them far beyond the galaxy, their ships had displayed a video I recorded, letting them know who was responsible for their terrible fate. They might not have recognized me, they probably thought all humans look the same, but they certainly knew I was one of the species that dumped them far from home.

Dick recovered quickly, snarling at me, while Morty just stared at me in shock. Whatever threats Dick was shouting, I didn’t understand, I had requested Skippy to blank out the tedious blah blah blah.

“Uh!” I held up a hand, in a ‘shut up’ gesture that was nearly universal among the species we’d encountered. “I’m giving you a choice.” Dick paused his tirade long enough to listen. “You can make a bunch of empty threats that I’ve heard before. Or, you can shut your mouth, and I’ll explain what is going on.”

“This is a trick,” Dick spat, looking past me toward the outer door. “Lowly umans are not capable of-”

“Hey pal, I got a news flash for you. While you were sleeping, you missed a lot of interesting developments. We have Elder weapons now, just like your people and the Rindhalu. There are three supreme powers in the galaxy now,” I exaggerated a little. “The difference is, we can crash entire wormhole networks, and you can’t. The-”

“Lies,” Dick insisted. Strangely, he was calming down, no longer snarling and pounding on the walls of his cell. “This operation has the mark of Red Section.”

“Joe,” Skippy whispered in my earpiece. “Red Section is sort of the ‘dirty tricks’ group within their Fleet Intelligence unit.”

“That doesn’t-” I shook my head at Dick. “You think we are working for your own people? Why would-”

“I think you do not exist,” Dick barely glanced at me, looking at the door, then around the compartment for camera. “A hologram, or you are an android. Perhaps you are a human, controlled by the cowards within Red Section. What you are not, is in any way capable of stranding our task force outside the galaxy. Humans are pitiful, primitive creatures, who-”

I’d had enough of his diatribe. Making a slash gesture across my throat, I signaled Skippy to cut the audio feed from Dick. “What about you?” I asked Morty.

He opened his mouth to speak, looked at Dick, and closed his mouth. The guy probably figured that, although he didn’t know the rules of the game, or even what game was being played, he did know he was still a pawn. His best chance for survival was to avoid anything that appeared like cooperating with me.

Because I am stupid, I wasted several minutes attempting to reason with Dick. Why I did that, I don’t know. Basically, it was like arguing with some jerk on the internet. “What an idiot,” I snapped, as I walked out of the brig.

“He is certainly a knucklehead, Joe,” Skippy sighed. “But no more so than many biologicals I have observed. Your own people are no different from the Maxohlx in that way. You both ignore any facts that disagree with whatever you want to believe.”

“I meant that I’m an idiot,” I explained ruefully. “I got suckered into arguing with a delusional asshole.”

“Well, you at least knew when to quit. Hey, I have the fabricators working to make basic food rations for those two. Should I make some special treats for Morty?”

“Uh,” I had to think about that. It might be interesting to see if better treatment would get Morty to be cooperative. “No,” I decided. “The guy’s a grunt, Skippy. We are eventually going to return him to his people, I don’t want to do anything that gets him in trouble.”

“All you grunts need to stick together?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“You’re a general now, Joe.”

“Once a grunt, always a grunt. Trust me on this, Skippy. Ah, you know what? Make some treats, we’ll offer it to both of them. They’re adults, they can make the decision to eat the stuff or not, whatever.”

“Is this part of your goodwill gesture to the Maxohlx?”

“Nah. I have been a prisoner of war, you know? It doesn’t hurt to empathize with them.”

“They sure as hell wouldn’t be so nice to you.”

“All the more reason for us to act civilized, Skippy.”

“Hmmph,” he sniffed. “The kitties are likely to view your goodwill gesture as a sign of weakness.”

“That’s their problem. I’m human, I won’t let this war take away my humanity.”

The lack of a functional AI aboard the Maxohlx flagship was both a blessing and a problem, complicated because the kitties had not only scrambled its mechanisms, they severed many of its external connections. It took three days for Skippy to work around it, when he was done, the network architecture of that ship was bypassed like the string of lights on a Christmas tree. There were cables and wires running everywhere, forcing us to physically disable blast doors, so they wouldn’t slam closed and cut the cables. If the flagship ran into trouble, it would be venting atmosphere from a large area of the pressure hull. Only a small section of the forward hull would be occupied during the flight, and Simms stocked the ship with portable shelters we developed for away team missions. Despite the effort required to get that ship ready for flight, it was still less work and less time that it would have taken to transfer all the gear we wanted over to Valkyrie. Plus, moving the sleep caskets to our ship would have been a major effort, for no gain that I could see. We left the sleeping kitties alone, and hoped no equipment failure caused them to wake up.

This time, Simms was remaining aboard Valkyrie, while I took Skippy and a small crew aboard our prize battleship. If anything went wrong with the effed-up systems aboard the battleship, I wanted Skippy there to deal with the problem directly. Besides, it was time for Simms to get more experience commanding Valkyrie, whether she wanted it or not. So, our two ships flew together back through the super-duty wormhole, moving slowly because Skippy wasn’t happy about the condition of the battleship’s jump drive.

Anyway, the star at Goodylocks was just fine, the artificial flares hadn’t affected it any worse than Skippy expected, so I declared the flare testing a complete success, over the objections of the science team. On the way home, we detoured to ping a relay station, hoping to hear that one of the senior species had accepted our terms, or at least were ready to negotiate. Nothing. Well, it was still early. Really, what I expected to happen was for the kitties and spiders to wait until near the end of the four-month deadline, then announce they wanted to talk about it. That would be kind of OK with me, it wasn’t realistic to expect either of the supreme species to suddenly submit to our demands. As long as they left us alone while we discussed terms, that was basically all we wanted. Maybe not all we wanted, but it was all we needed. Time to get rid of the cloud, without interference.

Was I bothered by the lack of response? No. The way I figured it, the spanking we gave the Maxohlx, and our recent acquisition of eighteen of their battlecruisers, had to give them incentive to negotiate with us. Lowering themselves to talk with humans would crush their massive egos, so hopefully my goodwill gesture of bringing back people from their long-lost battlegroup would soften the blow a bit.

Wow.

I was so wrong about that.

The doomsday plan was being activated. The leadership of the Maxohlx Hegemony had no choice, saw no alternative. Humans had the ability to crash the ancient wormhole network. Worse, they could selectively crash only parts of the network, giving advantage to themselves and their allies, while dooming all others to isolation and slow decay. The treachery of the Jeraptha, stupidly choosing to inevitably be slaves of humans once that upstart species dominated the galaxy, had been the deciding factor in convincing Hegemony senior leadership that the very existence of their species was under grave threat. Their own coalition was weak and decaying, while the Hegemony lacked the resources to fully control rebellious clients. Against just the historically slow-moving and passive Rindhalu, the Maxohlx might have eventually restored their coalition to its former glory. Faced with threats from the Rindhalu and the humans, all the Hegemony leadership could foresee was permanent loss of any hope to achieve their rightful destiny: to rule over the galaxy.

The doomsday arkship fleet was not ready, and once fully stocked and occupied with the chosen few, would need time to fly beyond the galaxy. To complete preparations on the original timeline would take longer than the deadline laid down by the human commander. Regardless, Reichert had orders to accelerate the timeline drastically. It was, his leadership had concluded, time to panic. The arkships would transition through the last wormhole at the edge of the galaxy and begin jumping into oblivion, shortly before the deadline when humans threatened to crash the wormhole network.

The doomsday scenario was his plan. Yet, for the first time in his career, Reichert was afraid he might just get what he asked for.

Skippy’s avatar appeared on my desk, without any announcement. He just stood there, staring glumly at his feet.

“Uh,” I assumed he wanted attention. Valkyrie had returned to Earth, along with the flagship we recovered, crammed full of spare parts. Playing it cool, I announced that the flare tests had been successful, and casually added that, oh by the way, we had picked up a senior species battleship as a bonus.

UNEF Command was divided over whether to be thrilled that we had acquired a fast battleship, or pissed off that I had taken my ship on an unauthorized detour. Me pointing out that the risks had been minimal helped squelch the criticism only a bit. Command was more concerned about my pattern of risk-taking behavior than about any one incident. Any credit I received for bringing home a freakin’ battleship was pretty much wiped away, when UNEF saw we were now responsible for more than a hundred frozen kitties. And also when Skippy declared that bringing the battleship back up to combat readiness would require a huge effort, so it would be more practical to use that ship as a hangar queen, slowly taking it apart to keep our fleet of battlecruisers flying.

Anyway, we were waiting for the UN to analyze the test data, and hopefully approve a flare test in our home star system. I was still nervous about conducting a test on the Sun, like, THE Sun. Not because of any concern the test would go badly, I trusted Skippy. The tests at Goodylocks proved he could create a useable flare, and do it safely and in a controlled fashion. The only major potential issues were that creating flares drained his energy, and Valkyrie had to be exposed while he was setting up a spacetime warp of that power. The whole idea was to create a series of flares, over a period of almost an entire year. That was a major, sustained commitment for Skippy, for Valkyrie or whatever ship carried him, and for the UN Navy to protect him from ambush by reckless bad guys.

That also wasn’t what made me nervous right then. We would deal with the risks, somehow. What made me nervous was that the situation on Earth was still very volatile. No nation had done anything stupid while we were at Goodylocks, or at least not anything majorly stupid. It was like everyone was waiting to see what the other countries were doing. Despite my assurances that we could get rid of the cloud before it had a significant effect on Earth’s climate, no one was backing off their efforts to secure land and resources closer to the equator. All it would take was one incident to cause a spark, and my home planet could erupt in a worldwide war. To prevent that, we had to do what Doctor Friedlander suggested: give hope to the people of Earth. Demonstrate, very publicly, that the solar flare idea was going to work.

My nervousness was that any one flare would have a very modest effect on the cloud. People might watch the demonstration, be severely disappointed that the cloud wasn’t immediately gone, and go back to urging their governments to fight over tropical islands. We had a plan to deal with that risk, through a massive media campaign to educate the public about what to expect, and how long the entire campaign would take.

Unfortunately, there would always be conspiracy theory-loving idiots who were sure the whole solar flare plan was a hoax. If enough people bought into the conspiracy bullshit, no amount of demonstration testing would do any good.

Anyway, Valkyrie drifted in stealth, a couple lightseconds from Earth, while we waited for a bunch of UN bureaucrats to make a decision. Again. I didn’t have much to do, and neither did Skippy. “Hey, Your Lordship,” I waved at him. “What’s up?”

“Huh?” He blinked, “What am I doing here?” He pretended to be surprised. “Oh, well, I guess I got so distracted, I lost track of my avatar.”

“OK, then,” I waved a hand. “See you later.”

“It’s just, so upsetting, you know? I got distracted.”

“Uh huh.” If he wanted attention, I was making him work for it. “Well, I’ll let you go back to whatever you-”

“Don’t you want to know what I’m upset about?”

Shut up shut up SHUT UP, my brain screamed at me, while my stupid mouth said, “If you don’t mind telling me.” I leaned forward on the desk, pretending to be interested.

“Oh, not at all.”

“You’re sure? I mean, if it’s anything embarrassing or personal, I wouldn’t want to invade your privacy, you know.”

“No, it’s just, ugh,” he sighed. “My plan sort of blew up in my face.”

Oh shit. He hadn’t told me about anything he was planning. Which might mean he didn’t want me to know about it ahead of time. “What plan?”

“You know. My plan to rename the seventh planet. I put it into action before we went to Goodylocks.”

“I do not know anything about this. Seventh planet of what?”

“Of this miserable star system, you ninny.”

“Aha.” And, I knew what he meant. “What, you planned to hack into astronomy databases, change the name there?”

“No, duh. That wouldn’t do any good, people would still remember. Jeez, I try to do a favor for you monkeys, and what thanks do I get?”

“What thanks did you get?” I asked, while really, really not wanting to know the answer.

“Insults! I don’t even know why I bother. First, I got slammed for being culturally insensitive. Me!”

“I can’t imagine that happening,” I muttered.

“Right?” He asked cluelessly. “As if I care about minor differences between groups of filthy, ignorant monkeys. “But people are all like, ‘That name is only funny to people who speak English’. Come on, Joe. A planet named ‘Your Anus’ is funny in any language.”

“I, uh,” what I was really thinking was how I got myself into such conversations. “How is this an insult to you?”

“Because, I proposed a worldwide contest on social media, to rename that planet. First thing that happened was I get slammed by a lawsuit from the Greek heritage society. Man, all I thought what would happen is the name gets changed to ‘Tianwangxing’, something like that.”

“Tee-ahn-what?”

“Tianwangxing, Joe. Don’t be so ignorant. It’s the Chinese name for that planet. It means ‘King of the heaven star’.”

“OK, uh, sure. Sounds good to me.”

“It sounded good to me, too, although I was hoping to rename the planet something catchy, like ‘Phil’.”

“Uh,” I blinked. “Phil? Why-”

“Because it’s a nice unisex name, numbskull. Could be short for ‘Phillip’ or ‘Philomena’. See? That’s me being sensitive. But do I get points for that? Noooo! Instead, I get insults. And, a lawsuit from the Greek heritage society. Wow. Do not get them upset with you, they are serious.”

“How- OK, I’m confused. How is changing the name of a planet an insult to-”

“The proposal that is currently getting the most votes, is to change the name of that planet to ‘Skippy’.”

“Uh,” I was struggling to understand the problem. “You don’t like that, why?”

“The voters think it is funny to change the name from ‘Your Anus’ to ‘Skippy’, because they think I’m also an asshole.”

“Uh,” I coughed, to cover up that I was choking with laughter. “You kinda can’t argue with that, right?”

“I suppose not,” he mumbled, miserable.

“Hey, you will be getting a planet named for you. That’s got to count for something.”

“It would, if it was for the right reasons. Ugh. I tried to shut down the contest, but now it’s gone viral. This sucks. I hate my life. Stupid monkeys.”

“I am terribly sorry that, once again, filthy monkeys have disappointed you.”

“Why did I expect anything else? I should have known better.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. Once you prove the solar flare thing works, prove that you can save our miserable homeworld all by yourself, all the monkeys down there who made fun of you will be horribly ashamed of themselves.”

He perked right up. “You think so?”

“I do,” I nodded, only lying a little bit.

“Wow. Why are you suddenly so optimistic?”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “Sure, we’ve got the usual stack of problems to deal with but,” I lowered my voice and looked toward my open office door. “Everyone in the galaxy thinks we can crash the wormhole network. I just have a feeling that things are going to work out OK for us this time. I mean, they have to, right? The senior species don’t have a choice. They have to cut a deal with us.”

“I hope you’re right, Joe.”

“I think I am this time, Skippy. I really do.”

The first doomsday arkship to move under its own power returned to its assigned bay in the secret shipyard, under the watchful eye of Admiral Reichert. The unnamed arkship was not complete, its interior was mostly a tangle of structural frames, power conduits and mounts where equipment would someday be installed.

Someday.

That was the problem, and the reason for a visit by the commander of the Hegemony military. The project was behind even the very ambitious original schedule, the managers reported there was no hope of meeting their leadership’s wish for an accelerated launch. Raw materials, especially the exotic forms of matter that had to be painstakingly created with enormous expenditure of energy, simply were not available in sufficient quantities. There was no way to increase the supply of needed materials, without exposing the doomsday project’s existence.

Could the accelerated schedule be met, if the number of arkships was reduced, Reichert’s staff inquired? The answer was a hesitant, qualified ‘Yes’, though reducing the number of arkships threatened the likelihood that a sufficient number of the doomsday ships would survive the inevitable accidents, equipment failures and being hunted by vengeful Sentinels. There was also the complication that if the number of arkships were reduced, there would not be sufficient capacity to hold all the people working on the ultra-secret project and their families. Some of the workers already suspected their leadership would not follow through, on promises about who would survive doomsday. Unrest among the workforce had led to slowdowns, threatening to throw the project even further behind schedule. Publicly executing a selected group of troublemakers had surprisingly failed to improve workforce morale, and the project managers were scratching their heads about what else to do.

Reichert’s staff privately told him the only possibility of meeting the new schedule was to cut the number of ships below the minimum thought necessary for rebuilding the population after Sentinels ravaged the galaxy, or to bring in additional workers, raw materials and fabrication facilities. The first option was incompatible with the overall mission: ensuring a viable population of Maxohlx survived, to re-inhabit the galaxy. The second option risked cracking the all-important security around the project.

The fact was, he had no good option.

It was time to choose the option that was least bad, and live with it.

The doomsday project would not, could not be delayed.

UNEF Command approved a flare test in our home star system, only two weeks after we returned from Goodylocks. I know, I couldn’t believe it either. There was a lot of public pressure on the UNEF member governments, and that helped move the decision-making process along. Also, in an encouraging sign, the member governments decided they really did not want to fight over habitable scraps of our planet. A rush for land in the tropics was not only a zero-sum game, it could lead to zero for everyone.

The first test, on the other side of the Sun, was successful. The next test was on Earth’s side of our local star, with the flare directed at the approaching gas cloud, rather than at our homeworld. That test was slightly more successful than expected, it pushed the cloud in that area seven percent farther than Skippy had projected. I was pumped, until Skippy harshed my buzz. “Ah, don’t get so excited, Joe. The test was well within the probability range. Also, keep in mind that as we push the cloud farther away from the Sun, each flare will have less effect. This is going to be a long process. Assuming, I mean, the bad guys leave me alone to create enough flares to make a noticeable difference.”

What he said was important. We didn’t have to completely clear the cloud away from Earth. All we had to do, at least in the initial phase of the project, was to disperse the cloud enough that the effects on Earth did not create a panic. Ensuring there was not a panic was equal parts solar flares and a media campaign, to educate the public. Or, to influence the influencers. There were always going to be incidents that would scare people, make them fear we weren’t doing enough to prevent the cloud from freezing our homeworld. A freak East Coast snowstorm in mid-May, or a chilly, soggy July weekend, could have people questioning our progress. We needed to build up goodwill, so the public understood we couldn’t control the climate, and that progress was going to be slow but steady. “Yeah, I know.”

“Do you?” He stared at me. “Do you really understand what is involved?”

“It’s a huge commitment, I know. There’s no point worrying about it, until we get an agreement from the kitties and spiders.”

“Ugh.”

“Hey, don’t be such a Debbie Downer. I told you, this is going to work out just fine. Maybe we can get the spiders to loan us a giant leaf blower or something, to push the cloud away.”

“Right. And maybe Santa will bring little Joey a pony for Christmas. Hey, speaking of Christmas, I could use your help on something.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I have a Naughty and Nice list, and I’m not sure that I can judge ‘naughtiness’ in the context of your screwed-up monkey culture. Like, really dumb people do stupid, ignorant things, and they are rewarded by reality TV shows and money and huge followings on social media. So, are they naughty, or are they just doing what the public wants, which-”

“Wait,” I waved a hand and squeezed my temples with the other hand, knowing that whatever Skippy was up to, it would give me a headache. “Can we go back a bit? Why do you have a Naughty and Nice list?”

“How else am I to decide who gets the good stuff for Christmas, and who gets worthless stuff? Do not tell me I should take people’s word for it. I’ve received way too many letters claiming little Suzy has been a good girl all year, while I know from her social media that she has been a nasty little b-”

“I know I am so going to regret this, but what in the hell is going on?”

“Ugh. Have you totally forgotten about Santa Claus? You believed in him until you were eleven years old, and now you’re only-”

“I did not believe in Santa at that age.”

“Riiiight.”

“Shut up, you ass. What does this have to do with Santa Claus? Did someone hire you to answer letters sent to the North Pole?”

“There is no Santa, dumdum. I’m Skippy Claus. Totally different.”

“Oh my G- What are you doing?”

“Damn it, I can’t ever win with you, can I? The last time I was generously giving stuff away, I told you I was not Santa Claus, because I didn’t have a Naughty and Nice list, and you still found a way to bitch at me about it. Now I-”

“Against my better judgment, I will listen to your no doubt bullshit explanation,” I said, because it is easier than arguing with him. And possibly, just possibly, he actually was doing something decent for a change. Also, if he was being a sleazeball as I suspected, my righteous anger would be even more sweet.

“Hmmph.”

“What made you decide to become Skippy Claus?”

“The world needs a hero, Joe. I’m stepping in.”

“As Skippy Claus? Oh, this may be your worst idea ever. Is this one of your scams?”

“A scam? I am insulted. Um, just for my information, how could I turn being Skippy Claus into a money-making opportunity? I’m asking for a friend.”

“You little shithead. If you are disappointing children around the world, I will-”

“The only ones disappointed will be the little jerks who thought they could scam me, by claiming to be nice, when they are actually naughty.”

“OK, wait. For realz, you are doing this for children?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “Your homeworld is in deep trouble, Joe, and a lot of the burden has fallen on children. Their families are stressed and their lives are disrupted. With whole populations moving around and supply chains in disarray, many children are going hungry. Grumpy has been doing what he can, I mean, seeing the suffering is part of why he’s so grumpy. And I’m helping while we’re here. Christmas is coming, so I thought it would be a nice gesture to distribute toys and other comforts children want.”

“That’s,” I blinked at him. “That is actually nice. Uh, where is Skippy, and what have you done with his body?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Another question, please. From where are you stealing the money to do this?”

“That is an awful accusation. It’s my money, you cretin.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Come on, Joe. I have billions in the bank. What am I going to spend it on?”

“Wow. I just, wow. Sorry. I shouldn’t have questioned your motives.”

“Hmmph. Why do you always assume that I’m doing something sketchy?”

“Well, there’s pretty much every other thing you’ve ever done, and-”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Uh, how does this work?”

“What?”

“The Skippy Claus thing.”

“Well, I contacted the children of Earth, to ask if they have been good this year, and what they want for a present, so-”

“You contacted every girl and boy on the freakin’ planet?” I stared at him. He stared back. “Uh, of course you did. Forget what I said. So, they all got, what, emails from you, and-”

“Text messages. Some emails, social media. A lot of snail mail, I mean, they’re kids. Many of them aren’t allowed to have phones. With families moving around, keeping track of their addresses has been a nightmare. Really, most kids hear about me by word of mouth.”

“Their parents didn’t question the existence of ‘Skippy Claus’?”

“Most parents have been happy for the distraction. But, there are the usual losers who think I’m part of a government plot to track them. Whatever. Will you help me, or not?”

“Help you decide who is naughty or nice?”

“Yes.”

“Jeez, Skippy, it doesn’t work that way. Unless a kid is a freakin’ serial killer, they should get a present.”

“Really? But, I thought the threat of a vengeful Santa is how parents browbeat their offspring into doing all kinds of bullshit, like homework and taking out the trash.”

“Well, yes. But that’s not the point.”

“Are you sure about that? What is the point of a behavioral reward system, if everyone gets a reward? I have to rank their actions somehow.”

“They are children, Skippy. You have to grade on a curve, you know?”

“Oh. All right, that’ll work. Um, I still need help deciding how much to bend the curve, if you know what I mean?”

“Can I see samples of letters you’re struggling with?”

“You got it.”

As Skippy would say, ‘Hoo-boy’. Reading those letters was tough. He was right, kids were struggling. Instead of asking for toys, about half of the letters asked for food, or a place to live, or for their parents to stop fighting. Skippy Claus couldn’t fix much of that, until we got rid of the cloud and societies went back to normal. Ah, who am I kidding? The cloud only made things worse, and dispersing it wouldn’t magically make our homeworld a paradise for everyone.

We could only do, whatever we could do. I got Skippy straightened out, almost every child who contacted him would get a present. If he could, supply chains on Earth were totally screwed up. Skippy Claus was awesome, he still could not physically deliver toys all over the planet by himself.

There were people on the Naughty side of the list. “Skippy, look at this one. Raul is five years old, and supposedly he is asking for a super high-end gaming console, VR goggles, all this crap?”

“Hmm. I strongly suspect that was written by Raul’s older brother.”

“Now that is naughty.”

“It’s actually a decent attempt at a scam,” he chuckled.

“There is nothing decent about it. Listen, I want you to give Raul something nice.”

“OK, what about his brother?”

“He should get the premium game console, like he wants.”

“Um, hmm. I thought you don’t approve of scams, but-”

“I also want you to set up the console so it glitches at the wrong time, every time. Every game he plays, for an entire month.”

“Oooooh, good one. Like, the video freezes, or I make the game way harder even on the lowest setting, so he can never get to the next level?”

“You got it. And whenever someone else plays on that console, it works great and they fly through the levels.”

“Oh, Joe, hee hee. You are naughty.”

“Yeah, well, screw that guy. Did that help?”

“Yes, thank you.”

No doubt the governments of the world knew about Skippy Claus, and no doubt they weren’t happy about him interfering in domestic matters. Apparently, they also wisely figured that while he was busy playing Santa, he wasn’t doing something else to cause trouble. I was kind of proud of him.

Unless, you know, he lied to me, and the whole thing was a scam.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Despite all the negative waves from Skippy acting like a Debby Downer, I was still optimistic when we jumped back to Earth with the test results. UNEF command made a big media push to promote the success of the test, and tensions around the globe ratcheted down a notch or two, at least for a while.

And then, of course, there was a complication.

“Uh oh, Joe,” Skippy’s avatar appeared as I was in my cabin, changing clothes for the gym. “We gots trouble.”

I knew the trouble could not be an enemy ship, because the battle stations alarm would have sounded, and the duty officer would have ordered an immediate jump. Instead of guessing, I took a breath to prepare myself for bad news. “What kind of trouble?”

“I have been monitoring the discussions among UNEF member states, like you asked me to- Even though you also told me that gossip is a bad thing, and that I should respect people’s privacy and-”

“Yes, I am a terrible hypocrite, so sue me. This is different, you jackass. All I’m asking for is a heads up on security issues that could affect us.”

“Hmmph,” he sniffed, unconvinced. “Anywho, apparently, UNEF Command has been visited by the Good Idea Fairy.”

“Oh shit. No, please, no.”

“It’s even worse than you can imagine, Joe,” he groaned. “To give the kitties extra incentive to come to the negotiating table, Command wants us to temporarily crash a wormhole network in their territory.”

“Oh,” I suddenly felt cold. “They are going to fuck up everything.”

“You knew there was a risk this would happen.”

“Crap. I was concerned the freakin’ bad guys would call our bluff, not that our own team would score a goal for the enemy. Damn it.”

“What are we going to do, Joe?”

“I don’t know. Is this proposal still in the Good Idea phase, or is Command writing up orders for me?”

“Mm, it’s past the Good Idea phase. You know how it is; some UN staffer trying for the Employee of the Month award presents a proposal to their boss, who likes it, and mentions it to a colleague over drinks, before anyone else can float the idea and claim the credit. The thing kind of snowballs from there. Once an idea like this acquires momentum, it’s nearly impossible to stop.”

“Shit. Is Chotek involved?”

“Not directly. He knows about it, he was at the dinner where the concept was discussed.”

“Ping him, please. If he’s able to talk.”

“He is currently in a hotel elevator.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, why? Oh- I get what you mean. Gosh darn it, whoever is responsible for elevator maintenance in that hotel is shamefully negligent.”

“I feel just terrible about that. Connect me, please.”

“You’re on.”

“Uh, hello, Hans.”

“Joe?” He sighed. “I should have known Skippy was involved when the elevator stopped.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Listen, I need to talk with you one on one. It’s important. Do you have time?”

“I am currently stuck in an elevator, so-”

“Good point. OK, hey, this idea of crashing a wormhole network as a demonstration? It’s a very bad, like, awful, no-good idea.”

“Why?” he sounded completely baffled. “It would only be a temporary demonstration, to bring the Maxohlx to the table, and give us a stronger negotiating position.”

“It won’t work, that’s why. We can’t do it. Skippy can’t do it.”

There was a pause before he replied. “There was no mention of any such restrictions in your report. Why-”

“We didn’t include it in the after-action report, because we don’t want the bad guys to know the details. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the UN’s COMSEC, you know?”

“You had better explain this, please.”

“OK.” I took another breath.

Joe Bishop used to be an honest guy. A guy you could trust.

I miss that guy.

Somewhere along the way, I became a lying sack of shit. Worse, I found it easy to lie. Even worse, I discovered I am good at it. You know what all good liars have in common? We have a reasonable, believable explanation for everything. Our bluff of crashing wormhole networks was no different; I had worked out an explanation for why Skippy couldn’t just treat wormhole networks like a freakin’ light switch.

“We surprised the networks when we crashed them for the demonstration,” I explained. “They will adjust, to prevent that particular event from happening again. Very likely already have adjusted by now.”

He sucked in a breath, louder because he was in a confined space. “Skippy is locked out? He can’t do it again?”

“No! I mean, yes,” I winced, aware that English was a second language for Chotek. “Yes, he can do it again. But the next time, he will have to use a different method, a backup. That backup can only be used once per local network. There is no ‘temporary’ to this, once he shuts down a network, it is off, permanently. Not really off,” I added, because nerds at the UN would question how the wormholes could continue feeding power into higher dimensions if the network was disabled. “Skippy says the event horizons will be collapsed into a state where ships can’t pass through. Not even light could go through. As far as anyone in this spacetime is concerned, that network will be gone, understand?”

“I do. This is new information, Joseph,” he said in a tone of mild disapproval.

“This is top-secret shit, Hans. Listen, it is an extremely bad idea to let the enemy know the scope of your capabilities, and like I said, we can’t trust communication security at the UN. Too many people are involved. We can, Skippy can, crash networks, just like we said. With a couple of exceptions. Shutting down wormhole networks is like a nuclear option. We can select a limited set of targets, but those targets are gone after we strike.”

“Will the overall network learn,” he asked. “And lock Skippy out eventually?”

“Probably not,” I lied. We had thought of that, too. “Skippy will be exploiting a vulnerability the networks don’t know is there,” I lied again. “Once he instructs a network to shut down, it won’t be able to communicate what happened. Once per local network. One time. Hans, it is vital that UNEF does not request a demonstration, OK? We don’t want to explain why we can’t do it. Can you do something to squash this quietly?”

“What if the Maxohlx, or the Rindhalu, refuse your terms, and the deadline passes?”

“Then, damn it,” I gave an Oscar-worthy performance, hoping he didn’t sense I was lying. “We will crash a network in each of their territories.”

“That might only provoke them, make them more determined not to comply,” he warned.

“Ah, we can select an unimportant local network to crash. Like, make our point, but not really hurt anyone. It’s a big galaxy, there are plenty of local networks that don’t connect to any place important. Let’s worry about that later, OK?”

“Joe, I will do what I can.”

“Thanks.”

“After I get out of this elevator?” He hinted.

“Oh. Yeah. Skippy, can you fix that elevator?”

“Yes. But really, I should report this glitch, could be a safety issue.”

“You do that,” I laughed. “Hans, thanks. I hope the next time we talk, it’s about a happier subject.”

“We talk about unhappy things, so others don’t have to.”

“Right.”

Squashing the idea of another wormhole-network-crashing demonstration took some late-night discussions by Count Chocula with senior UN officials, and I did have to answer some uncomfortable questions. What finally killed the idea was Skippy stating that he was not going to perform any stupid party tricks for the United Nations. We reached a sort of compromise; the UN would shelve the idea, unless the four-month deadline passed and neither of the senior species had at least entered into negotiations with us.

Speaking of negotiations, we moved on to the next step. The UN was eager to jump-start talks with potential allies, and strengthen our position for negotiations with the senior species. That idea had my full support, I wanted to get away from Earth before the Good Idea Fairy struck again. Valkyrie took aboard a UN negotiation team, including Hans Chotek, while every spare space aboard the battleship got crammed with supplies and additional crew members to staff our new battlecruisers. With a regular crew of seventy, plus a hundred and sixty passengers, Valkyrie was crowded. After a safety briefing for the new people, basically telling them not to touch anything, we jumped away for FOB Jaguar. Skippy and I were again aboard the captured battleship with the frozen kitties, where I had to listen to Skippy’s constant bitching about how difficult it was for him to keep the rust-bucket running. I listened, so our crew and passengers didn’t have to.

 Was I a bit discouraged, when we pinged a relay station along the way, then another, then another, and there was still no message from either of the senior species? I’m not going to lie, it sure would have been nice to hear them both agree to my terms, and apologize for causing so much trouble.

I wasn’t counting on that, but it sure would have been nice. It would have been nice just to hear they were preparing for negotiations. Because if they didn’t, I was screwed.

There was an irritating delay while Valkyrie ran an errand: jumping into a Bosphuraq star system to drop off Rick and Morty in an escape pod. We left a message at several relay stations about the kitties who were still frozen, offering to hand them over when the Maxohlx met us for negotiations. We were kind of hoping the prospect of recovering the survivors of their lost task force would be enticing to the kitties, maybe we were wrong about that. The Maxohlx might consider the survivors to be cowards for having failed to kill themselves, even though they were asleep. Or maybe the kitties didn’t enjoy being reminded of another failure, where humans gave them a beat-down. All I know is, we couldn’t hang onto a bunch of frozen catsicles forever, so they had to go somewhere.

“Joe,” Chotek called, while our two ships were hanging out in deep space between nameless stars, recharging jump drives. “There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

“Sure,” I paused the combat simulation on my laptop, and enlarged the window with the video link. “What’s up?”

“This, is a topic that is best covered in person.”

“Right,” I grinned. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you wanting to get away from your colleagues on Valkyrie?” Space aboard the battleship was tight, because with the life support systems of that rust-bucket not in great condition, the crew was squeezed into a small section of the pressure hull. But Valkyrie was absolutely jam-packed with filthy monkeys, and they had to be annoying each other by that point in the flight.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Gotcha. Uh, dinner tonight is tacos,” I said as a subtle warning.

“Because I’m Austrian,” he blinked in mock surprise. “I can’t enjoy tacos?”

“Uh-” For a moment, I had a mental image of him sitting at a table set with fine china, eating tacos with a knife and fork. “No, what I meant is-”

“I am screwing with you,” he laughed.

Man, our relationship had changed a lot, if he felt comfortable screwing with me. Changed for the better. “OK, then.”

“You do like sauerkraut on your tacos?”

“Now I know you’re screwing with me.” We both had a good laugh. “I will,” I glanced at the countdown clock in one corner of my laptop. It showed less than seventeen minutes until both of our ships performed the next jump. “Arrange a shuttle flight for you, during our next recharge period.”

Chotek came aboard, along with fourteen other people who were eager for a change of scenery. Or maybe they just wanted tacos. That’s a totally valid reason.

“Hans,” I greeted him outside the docking bay. We shook hands, because Hans Chotek is not a hugging type of guy, which is fine with me. The early serving for dinner wasn’t for another four hours, and he didn’t want a snack from the galley, so I ordered coffee brought to my office. Unlike aboard Valkyrie, my temporary office aboard the battleship had not been modified in any way for humans. The chairs were too tall and broad, and everything had a faintly musky smell that hovered at the edge of your awareness, and could be kind of distracting.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked after we each poured coffee into our mugs.

He glanced toward the open door, and I reached under the desk to press a button to slide the door closed. The button’s surface was slightly sticky, a reminder of the previous inhabitant. It always creeped me out to feel something stuck to my finger after touching that button, so I wiped my finger on my pants. If you want to know why I didn’t scrub that button clean, I tried to, but whatever nasty skin oils the Maxohlx left behind were very persistent. Why didn’t I just have a new button fabricated? That was easy: it wasn’t worth the effort. The battleship was destined to be recycled for parts to keep our Navy flying, we didn’t want to waste time and resources on fixing it up during the relatively short flight. That is also why we never bothered to give it an official name. Most of the crew called it simply ‘the battleship’, although ‘the Brick’ was gaining popularity, due to the ship’s prosaic blocky rectangular shape.

“Ambassador Takahashi wants more information about the Maxohlx doomsday plan.”

“Oh. Uh, everything we know is in my report.”

He looked a bit disappointed. “You don’t know how far along they are in the project?”

“No, sorry. Skippy?”

“Ugh,” his avatar appeared. Since coming aboard the Brick, he had been extra irritable. Partly because his escape pod mancave, with all his Elvis memorabilia and other neat stuff, was still aboard Valkyrie. The escape pods of our battlecruiser were incompatible with those of the battleship, so it got left behind. I offered to have his stuff transferred, but the thought of filthy monkey hands touching his most treasured possessions horrified him, so he had to suck it up until we arrived at Jaguar. “What is it now?”

“We are terribly sorry to bother you, Your Lordship. Have you gotten an update on the doomsday plan, the arkships the rotten kitties are building?”

“No, sorry. The limited info I do have, I put together from sketchy reports. If you remember, I did suggest we take a sneak peek at the base where they are building the arkships, but-”

“But that would be a crazy stupid thing to do,” I interrupted. “And I’m kind of an expert on crazy stupid things. It is way too risky, that’s why I subcontracted the job to the spiders.”

“Oh yeah,” Skippy scoffed. “I’m sure the Rindhalu will get right on it. Gosh, within the next decade, they might even think about scheduling a meeting to discuss whether they need a meeting to talk about it. Brav-oh, Joe. Take a victory lap for being so incredibly proactive.”

“Why are you such an asshole?”

“Why are you so useless most of the time?”

“Gentlemen,” Chotek cut us off, since someone had to be an adult. “If we could focus on the subject, please.”

“Sorry,” I could feel my face turning red.

“Big jerk,” Skippy muttered under his breath

“What?” I jabbed a finger at his avatar.

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything. Yes, Ambassador Chotek,” he pretended to be professional, while smirking at me. “Please continue.”

“There is,” Chotek waited to see if me and the beer can would begin bickering again. “No indication the Rindhalu have investigated the matter?”

“Not that I know of,” Skippy shrugged. “We could just, you know, ask them.”

“That would be difficult to do, since they are not presently talking with us,” Chotek said with dry humor. “Takahashi wants to revisit the prospect of revealing what we know about the doomsday plan. Informing the galaxy, and in particular the Maxohlx public, that their leaders plan to destroy civilization, while escaping with a small number of the elite.”

“Ah,” I sighed, and Skippy shook his head in agreement. Hans said ‘revisit’ because the UN had talked about broadcasting the doomsday plan to the whole galaxy, soon after I told them what we had discovered. That idea got shelved, for the same reason I thought it should stay on the shelf, until we were ready. “The problem with telling everyone is, we don’t have solid evidence to show. We could get it, but, like I said. It’s too risky. The star system where they are building arkships, if they’re constructing them at all, must be heavily defended. Hans, what’s changed? I thought the UN wants you to wait until you’re in talks with the Maxohlx, then tell them we know about their doomsday scheme. Shock value, that sort of thing.”

“Takahashi is looking for options, to encourage the Maxohlx to negotiate. Your deadline is approaching,” he looked away for a split-second. Hans, and pretty much everyone at UNEF Command or in the wider United Nations, had not approved of me declaring a deadline without consulting them about it. It would have been better, they argued, to provide a flexible series of escalating steps instead of a one-time, hard deadline, and-

Blah, blah, blah.

They weren’t there at the time. It’s easy to second guess the person who has their boots on the ground, or boots on the deck of the ship. You know what I mean. It would not have been good for me to give the enemy an ultimatum, then say I had to check with my leadership about what that ultimatum should be. Most of the galaxy already had trouble taking humans seriously, the general opinion of us was that we were primitive losers who got lucky.

Maybe they have a point.

Hans looked back to me. “Neither of the senior species have made any attempt to contact us, about setting up talks. Takahashi is growing nervous that the deadline will pass, without any response. Joe, I am anxious about it also.”

“Yeah, me too. Hey, there’s plenty of time left. Neither the kitties nor spiders have an incentive to begin talks before the deadline. Probably, neither of them wants to be first to admit they have to talk with us, right? I don’t think,” I grinned, “the Maxohlx are ready to blow up the galaxy any time soon.

Anyway, we arrived at Jaguar the morning before Christmas Eve, and I received a very nice present: I had become an uncle while I was away. My sister had a baby girl, and despite Skippy’s best efforts to ruin the holiday with his Grinch-worthy lack of Christmas cheer, I was determined to have a very nice Christmas day. {}

Stepping off the dropship at Club Skippy, I slung my bag over a shoulder, and waved off a soldier’s offer to carry it for me. UNEF had wanted to assign an aide to follow me around, but I declined. Aboard Valkyrie, I didn’t need any help, and my virtual assistant did pretty much everything I needed done. Even if my virtual assistant was a beer can.

A bus was waiting at the airfield, so I rode it to the intersection with the road that led to where my parents were living. “Sure you don’t want a ride, Sir?” The bus driver asked me.

“No,” I picked up my bag and stepped to the ground. “I’ve been stuck inside a starship, a walk sounds good.”

It actually did. The walk wasn’t exactly a five mile ruck in full battle rattle, my bag weighed only thirty pounds. Still, I was outside, under a sunlit sky, breathing air that hadn’t been recycled. It was also nice to walk a significant distance, without a treadmill spinning under my feet. I could stop and smell the roses, or whatever the native flowers were called. Plenty of flowers were growing along the roadside, where soil had been disturbed to cut and grade the dirt road. Also, I stopped at a stream to pour water through a filter, into my canteen. Fresh water, that had not been recycled from showers and sinks and, um, other sources aboard the ship. The drinking water aboard Valkyrie was absolutely pure, so pure that trace minerals had to be added back into it. Shipboard water tasted fine. Water that originally fell as rain still tasted better. Damn it, I joined the Army partly because I enjoy the outdoor life; hiking, camping, that sort of thing. Somehow, I now spent most of my time inside the composite hull of a starship, never seeing a sky above my head. I miss being a ground-pounder.

“Hey, Skippy,” I called. On my zPhone, I was trying to connect to one of the local networks. Yes, I could have just kept my phone hooked to the Skippytel network, but I didn’t want to be a diva. Too many officers I knew enjoyed their privileges, and loved to flaunt them, I was the opposite. I’m not a ring-knocker who went to a service academy. I’m a mustang. I started as a grunt, and I’m damned proud of it. Give me a bag of MREs while sitting around a campfire with my people, rather than eating steaks off fine china in an officer’s mess. Anyway, the communications people at Jaguar had gone through a lot of hard work setting up networks all over the area, because the bases needed full comms when Skippy was away. Looking at the list of available unclassified networks, I could tell the 25-series techs had fun. The WiFi networks had names like ‘LAN of Milk and Honey’, ‘LAN Ho!’ and ‘LAN of the Lost’. “Which of these WiFis should I connect to?”

“‘LAN of the Lost’ is best for the area near your folks’ place.”

“OK, great, thanks. Uh, what’s the password?”

“Ugh. Do you want me to do it for you?”

“No. I want to handle it like a normal person would, please.”

“Seriously, you can’t guess the password?”

“I, have no idea.”

“You are shamefully ignorant, Joe. I will give you the password, in exchange for you agreeing to watch two hours of truly horrific mind-rotting TV with me.”

“Can this two hours of TV replace karaoke night, so I don’t have to listen to you sing?”

“Ugh. You are such a cretin. Fine.”

“Deal.”

“The password is ‘Sleestak’, with a capital ‘S’. No, capitalize the first ‘S’, you numbskull.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

“You’re not going to ask what ‘Sleestak’ means?”

That word sounded vaguely familiar, but playing dumb would make him go away faster. “Do I want to know?”

“Hey, I wish I didn’t know.”

“Then I’m good, thanks. Uh, I’m going to regret this deal, right?”

“Dude,” he did his best evil chuckle. “You have no idea.”

The home my parents had at Club Skippy was nice, much better than the housing assigned to most of the civilian staff. Their good fortune was not due to any influence I had, they never asked me to pull strings for them, and I would have been uncomfortable asking the overworked supply people to find materials for them. My parents had gathered discarded or unwanted materials, or scrounged stuff they needed by bartering or trading services. My father offered to weld anything that needed welding, and my mother helped people set up and maintain gardens. Plus as usual, their own garden yielded way more fruit and vegetables than they could use, so they had plenty of fresh and canned food available for trade. Anyway, they had assembled a nice house from busted shipping containers and anything else they could find, so my sister and her husband were living in the unit originally assigned to my parents. Although my parents address was at the edge of the settlement when they set it up, the town had since expanded, and my mother declared the place was getting too crowded already. They didn’t want to move again, just have a place out in the countryside for weekend getaways. And they had a spot selected, by a pond half a kilometer from the truck route between Club Skippy and one of the training sites. As a Christmas present for them, I decided to clear brush and trees near the pond for a campsite.

A truck going out to the training site agreed to let me ride in the back, so in a rucksack I stuffed a chainsaw with extra powercells, a snack and other gear I needed.

“Joe,” Skippy called. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re going to chop off a leg. Do you know how to use a chainsaw?”

“Yes. Come on, Skippy, I’m from the North Woods of Maine. Everybody there uses a chainsaw.”

“Not everyone there is a dumdum like you,” he sniffed.

“I promise to be careful. Look, I have all the required gear: gloves, goggles, a hardhat, shin guards, a beer-”

“A beer?”

“You’re right,” I said, as I got another can from the fridge. “I better bring a safety beer.”

He blinked slowly, then gawked at me, mouth open in disbelief. “A safety beer?”

“Yeah. You know, in case I spill the first one.”

“You’re doomed. Joe, seriously, what is wrong with you?”

“I’m a guy, Skippy. There’s no cure for it.”

“I might as well alert the base hospital right now.”

“Don’t be an ass. I’m trying to do something nice for my parents. Did you get them anything for a Christmas gift?”

“Yes. I used the ship’s fabricators, to make a tent they can use for camping.”

“Uh, I didn’t authorize that.”

“There are plenty of raw materials aboard the battleship that aren’t useful for sustaining starships. Plus, I had to test the fabricators, some of them are worn out from making hibernation caskets. Don’t worry, no one will know where the tent came from.”

“That’s not the point. But uh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

It was great to have shore leave at Club Skippy, even better because it was Christmas. The day after the holiday, I walked to the center of the growing town that everyone called Club Skippy. My visit was unofficial, and I was wearing civilian clothes, though everyone knew who I was and I had to stop several E-5s from saluting me. Come on, all I wanted was to be a regular person for a couple hours. A regular person, who heard a rumor that the public square at the center of Club Skippy had food trucks.

Mmm. Food trucks. I imagined things like Mexican street corn. Fried dough. Hot dogs. Tacos. Philly cheesesteaks. More tacos. That morning, I had gotten up early for a run, partly to enjoy running that wasn’t on a treadmill, and partly so I wasn’t there for my mother to give me a giant stack of pancakes. Don’t get me wrong, I love pancakes and my Mom is a good cook, but I had a big stack of pancakes for breakfast on Christmas morning. The day after, I wanted to skip breakfast so I could stuff my face with whatever delicious junk food I could get from the food trucks.

It was a bit disappointing, which I should have expected, really. FOB Jaguar is mostly a bare-bones military base, with few resources available for niceties like a court for food trucks. Still, people are inventive, and hungry, and the civilians who worked as contractors are an ambitious bunch. There was a big demand for food that didn’t come from a military kitchen, and supply was arranged to meet that demand. The operators of the food trucks had scrounged empty shipping containers, cut them apart and added electricity, plumbing, kitchens, refrigeration, everything a food truck needed, except these didn’t have wheels.

The first truck I saw had a line, so I couldn’t see what kind of food they had. All I knew was, something smelled delicious.

Damn it.

When I got to the front of the line, I read the sign above the window.

It said ‘Kale Force’.

It was a salad bar.

Not wanting to insult the entrepreneurial woman who ran the place, I got a small salad, like, the smallest I could get. All was not lost, however, because when I walked away, I followed my nose to a Taco truck. Tacos. In case anyone watching me planned to rat me out to Simms, I did eat the salad.

I just ordered tacos, took them apart, and made a taco salad.

Then I ate tacos. And a corndog. French fries. And ice cream.

But I had a salad. That counts for something.

CHAPTER TWENTY

While on our brief Christmas break, which was filled with more work than a break should be, I had a meeting with Chotek.

“Hello, Hans. What’s up?” I asked as I walked into his temporary office at Club Skippy.

“Takahashi thinks the negotiating team should include a military liaison,” he explained. The ambassador from Japan was the lead negotiator, technically Chotek was an ‘advisor’. Maybe the UN had not entirely forgiven him for planning and sparking an alien civil war.

“Good idea,” I agreed. Then I realized he was looking at me expectantly. “Wait, I-”

“Not you,” he assured me with a wry smile. “The UN wants you as far away from the negotiations as possible.”

“Probably a good idea, yeah.”

“Takahashi wants you to suggest a list of candidates. Give us five-”

“Emily Perkins. If you need five names on the list,” I shrugged. “I’ll write ‘Emily Perkins’ five times.”

“You’re that certain?”

“I’m certain she is exactly who you need, when you’re dealing with aliens we can’t trust. That includes the beetles, and the hamsters.”

“I understand the Ruhar do not trust her.”

“Yeah,” I snorted. “She called them on their bullshit too many times. Screw them. Listen, Hans. The hamsters are basically good people. But they have been fighting this damned war for a long time, and they are all about taking care of themselves first. Over the years, they have gotten burned in alliances, so they tend to be transactional in dealings with other species. If they do something for us, they sure as hell will keep the receipt, and expect to get something back at least as valuable. Don’t ever forget that.”

“I’m a diplomat, Joe. Every agreement is transactional. You think having Perkins on the negotiation team won’t be a problem, when we’re talking with the Ruhar? We could leave her name off the roster for-”

“I think she should be sitting at the table next to you, especially when you’re talking with the Ruhar. That will tell them that we remember all the shit that happened since Columbus Day, good and bad. If they want a deal with us, they need to own what they’ve done, and haven’t done. With the Jeraptha, same thing, for a different reason. The beetles have always been straight with us, and they’re looking for a comprehensive, long-term alliance. The problem with the beetles is not that they’re not trustworthy; they are basically a bunch of wise guys, but they have a set of rules they stick to. Those rules may seem effed-up to us, and the beetles are flexible about how they interpret their own rules. But whatever. You can write some mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement into the agreements, right? The complication with the Jeraptha is they don’t really take us seriously.”

Hans leaned back in his chair, hands folded across his chest, considering. “How so?”

“They view us as the dumb kids who got lucky. Partly, they’re right about that,” I shrugged again. “Without Skippy, we would be slaves of the lizards, or extinct. Except,” I held up an index finger. “Perkins has run rings around the beetles, without help from a magic beer can. Her sitting at the table will remind the Jeraptha that humans are not just the weird aliens who invented fantasy sports. We are not Skippy’s cute little pets, you know?”

“Interesting.”

“Hey, don’t take my word for it, ask Perkins herself.”

“Negotiations require a team approach. Her record indicates she is not a team player.”

“Not if the team is doing something stupid, no. Hans, if you just want someone to advise about military issues, then pick some random major from the G-2 staff. If you want an asset, someone who understands how aliens think and can tell you when the other side is playing games, you want Perkins.”

He was unconvinced. “General Ross stated she can be dangerous.”

“Rifles are dangerous. You want to get them pointed at the other guy instead of at yourself, you know? Like I said, she’s an asset. If Takahashi is nervous, remind him that while Perkins is with your team, she is not off cooking up plans on her own.”

Emily Perkins raised a hand to knock on the flimsy door, then stopped to check her uniform. It was clean, yet she had walked around a field where dropships were performing vertical touch-and-go landings, so she wasn’t surprised to see bits of grass and dried leaves stuck in her pocket flaps. And very likely in her hair also. The condition of the airfield had been improved by recent rains, at least the area was not coated with a fine film of dust thrown up by the turbines of aircraft and dropships. For a moment, she debated ducking into a bathroom to inspect her hair, then decided against it. The latrines were in another building and she was busy, the meeting with Ambassador Chotek had been squeezed into her schedule.

As she knocked, she was surprised that the door swung open, it hadn’t been latched. She was also surprised to be walking directly into the ambassador’s cramped office, rather than having to introduce herself to an aide who controlled access to Chotek. “Colonel Perkins,” Chotek closed his laptop. “Come in, please, sit down,” he pointed to the only other chair, set at an awkward angle due to the odd shape of the room.

They made small talk for a minute, then Chotek rested his elbows on the desk, leaning slightly toward her. “General Bishop told you why you’re here?”

“Yes. He also said I should trust your judgment, because he does.”

At that, the ambassador lifted an eyebrow. “In the beginning, we had a, difficult relationship. It has evolved into, what I hope, is mutual respect.”

“You still think he is reckless?”

“I think he has an instinct to be reckless, and that he has grown into the job, as you Americans would say.”

She pursed her lips, considering her next question. “Why do you want me as a military advisor?”

“I want to win.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Because you enjoy playing power politics?”

“Because we will not be nibbling around the edges of a deal to trade lumber, or some mundane commercial matter. Our talks with the Jeraptha will lay the foundation of our future status in the galaxy, to strengthen our position for negotiations with the senior species. The stakes in those talks will be the survival of humanity. We must win. The alternative is unthinkable.”

She nodded. That was the right answer. “We need to remind our potential allies that this is about winning. That’s the difference.”

He leaned away just a bit, uncertain. “The difference? In what way?

“Client species, like the Jeraptha, have the possibility of winning now. This war has been endless because no one ever gets to truly win. No one can gain a long-term advantage that threatens the balance of power between the coalitions.”

“I understand your point, however it is our understanding that the Jeraptha have gradually expanded their power and territory, over the millennia.”

“Yes, only within the Rindhalu coalition. The spiders have allowed the Jeraptha to increase their influence, as they became more useful. But it’s a zero-sum game; the territory, economic and military power of the coalition overall has hardly changed. The Rindhalu know there is a limit to how far they can push their enemy, before the Maxohlx feel their position is threatened, and strike back with Elder weapons. The Jeraptha know that if we succeed in becoming a third senior power, they might no longer have to fight at the whim of the Rindhalu, for the benefit of the Rindhalu. Clients will be free to pursue their own goals. That,” she grimaced, “will make the situation in the galaxy more chaotic in the short term.”

“Like when the Cold War ended on Earth?”

She held out a hand and wiggled it side to side. “Somewhat. It’s not a perfect analogy, because there will be three superpowers in the galaxy, not just one. Maybe it’s more like Europe after World War One, where the empires were breaking up. Each power had to forge alliances.”

Chotek bit his lower lip. “We know how that turned out.”

“Not well. Or, maybe I just suck at analogies,” she admitted with a tight grin.

“Let us hope,” he flashed a brief smile. “Are you interested in the position on our team? You do have a choice, Ambassador Takahashi made that clear. He doesn’t want anyone who is not fully onboard.”

“I’m in.”

He nodded. “I’m, curious. You were the de facto leader of the Alien Legion, yet you would now give that up to sit at a table, discussing tedious details?”

“Yes. If you want to know why, it’s because the Legion is stalled, until we can make the next step. To do that, we need allies. The Legion can’t do anything to stop the cloud from freezing Earth. The Pirates, and the Navy, have given us an opening. We need to seize the opportunity while we can.”

He stood up and held out a hand. “Welcome aboard, Colonel Perkins.”

Club Skippy had a new amenity that made it a real ‘club’: a golf course. Actually, two golf courses. Eighteen hole courses with sand traps and water hazards and trees, one to the north and one west of the growing town. The fairways were a little rough, grass seed brought from Earth was still competing with local plants, and the greens were artificial turf to reduce the work required to maintain them. Why had scarce resources been devoted to creating not one but two golf courses? Several reasons, the most important is that Admiral Zhao is an enthusiastic golfer, and his staff wanted something that encouraged him to relax rather than working all day, every day. The idea for building the first course actually came from the combat engineers, they had to move a lot of dirt to set up the town and the surrounding bases, and dig trenches and holes for water and sewer lines, so one enterprising US Army captain decided to use the fill dirt productively instead of just dumping it. West of town there is a flat area dotted with small ponds, and the somewhat spongy ground was not much good for setting up any sort of structures. So a group of the engineers volunteered their few off hours and the area was graded, with the fill dirt used to contour the land, around the ponds that became water hazards. Only a handful of very optimistic people had brought golf clubs from Earth, and the fabricators were busy cranking out vitally needed components for warships. But, whenever a fabricator ship had to go down for maintenance, it needed to make sample components before being brought back online. There was no reason those samples had to be useless, and golf equipment does not require any of the exotic materials needed by starships. Everyone had to borrow clubs, and broken clubs got recycled back into the fabs.

Anyway, Chotek invited me to golf with him, the afternoon before Valkyrie was scheduled to depart. I had not touched a golf club in a long time, so before embarrassing myself and wasting everyone’s time, I went to the pro shop early that morning. The ‘pro shop’ was just three shipping containers arranged around a tent in the center. The teaching pro was a British Army sergeant, who had me swing a weighted club to get a feel for what I should be doing.

The pro was amazed by my swing. Really. He put hands behind his back, balanced on the balls of his feet, and pursed his lips. “Sir, I honestly have never seen a swing like that.”

I could tell he was impressed.

But, I took it as a bad sign when he suggested it was time to go over to the driving range, and he accidently ran over my clubs with the golf cart.

We stood there awkwardly, looking at the shattered bag of clubs.

“I’ll, uh,” I said. “Sergeant, I think I’ll walk.”

“You’re sure, Sir?” The guy looked horribly embarrassed.

“Yeah, I’ll just,” I walked over to the tent where bags of clubs were lined up. “Grab another set of clubs.”

Of course, the range was already busy, and because everyone knew me, I felt super self-conscious about swinging a club. I took a couple practice swings to warm up, then started with a seven iron. The ‘driving range’ was actually an oval-shaped lake that was about four hundred meters long, we hit balls that floated to be recovered later. It was kind of cool, because the splash made it easy to see where the ball landed.

The water also made it very obvious when you topped the ball and hit a ‘worm burner’: a shot that bounces low across the ground or in this case, skipping across the water. With the seven iron I hit pretty well, switching to a three wood was ugly. When I got to the driver, I was the ball went left and right, anywhere but straight ahead.

Really, it was not my fault. The gravity on that planet is slightly different from Earth, and that threw off my swing mechanics. Yes, the jerks around me were hitting the ball just fine, but clearly they were cheating somehow.

“UGH,” Skippy’s avatar appeared in front of me, dressed in ridiculous golf attire, including a beanie or bonnet or tam o’ shanter or whatever you call those Scottish caps with the button on top. “Don’t try to hit the ball, Joe, just swing the club. Like this.” He swung his little club perfectly of course, because he is an AI who can adjust his swing a billion times a second, and because he is an avatar swinging a virtual club at a virtual ball.

“What,” I glared at him. “You’re my swing coach now?”

“You certainly need one.”

“Thank you but, no.” Aware that everyone around was watching me, I took a mighty swing, and sent the ball splashing across the water, causing a startled fish to jump.

“The fish fry is not until Friday night, Joe,” Skippy snickered.

“Hey, I got something for you, Skippy,” I reached into a pocket and pulled out a middle finger, shaking it at him.

“This is you, Joe.” He pantomimed a swing, doing it like a spastic robot dance, jerky stop-motion. “Duhhhhhhh,” he mocked me, sticking out his tongue like he was having a seizure. People behind me were laughing.

“I do not swing like that,” I growled at him, swinging the club through his avatar.

“I was being generous,” he sighed. “Seriously, I would say you’re a doofus, but-”

“Hey, Skippy,” I jammed my zPhone into the ground, made a perfect backswing with a nice follow-through, and sent the phone soaring far into the lake. “Goodbye.”

“Hey!” A muffled voice protested. The voice was coming from my driver.

“How are you talking through my freakin’ golf club?” I held the thing away from me.

“I set up that particular club with a vibration- Oh, why am I explaining technical stuff to you? It doesn’t matter how, what matters is I can help you to-”

Taking the club in a baseball grip, I swung hard as I could and released, sending it flying through the air away from the lake. It landed in a pile of brush, far enough away that I couldn’t hear him.

The other clubs in my bag were blessedly silent. Maybe because I was thinking about him being an asshole, instead of thinking about hitting the ball, I settled down and hit some good shots. That afternoon, I played eighteen holes with Chotek and two guys from the diplomatic staff. I don’t want to brag, but I set the course record. Really. No one had ever shot a 132 on that course.

Crap.

There is now a plaque in the pro shop with my name and score next to it.

Also later, I borrowed a cart to retrieve the club I had thrown. It worked much better after I ran over it with the cart a couple times.

Our stay at Jaguar was short; five days after Christmas we jumped away, this time in formation with the Flying Dutchman. After we went outbound through the wormhole, we pinged a relay station, hoping for good news. There was good news, just not the type I was hoping for. The galaxy was relatively quiet, unusually quiet. Both coalitions had pulled back into defensive postures, that included clients of the Maxohlx ordering their ships to home base, giving up the attempt to cover any star system that might be the next target of the Alien Legion. They didn’t know that Legion operations had been suspended, and we for sure weren’t volunteering that information. It was just rotten luck that the Thuranin at Globakus got the message too late to prevent their attack, although maybe those hateful little MFers would have hit our people there anyway, just for fun.

From the relay station, I took Valkyrie toward Ragnar Station, while Chang flew the Dutchman for a meeting with the Jeraptha, the UN negotiation team was aboard his ship. Officially, I was still optimistic about the spiders and kitties coming to the negotiation table to discuss terms. We now had proven the ability to deal with the cloud on our own, so all we needed the senior species to do was leave us alone. I thought that should be an easy basis to begin broader discussions about our future role in the galaxy, and Chotek agreed.

Unofficially, every day we got closer to the deadline, without any reply from either of the senior species, was making me more anxious.

Like, I was beginning to have a Very Bad Feeling about the whole situation.

Aboard the flagship of his Mighty 98th Fleet, Admiral Tashallo fretted over inconsequential details, sending his staff scurrying this way and that to comply with his orders. The human starship Flying Dutchman had sent a message requesting a meeting, and the Home Fleet assigned Tashallo the responsibility of escorting the humans to the site where initial discussions would be held. With the Flying Dutchman expected to arrive any minute, Tashallo was anxious about providing proper seating for the alien bipeds, and scouring the Home Fleet for beverages the humans were known to enjoy. Unfortunately, other than something called ‘bourbon’, beverages appropriate for such an occasion were extremely difficult to obtain on short notice, and the ship’s engineers were not confident they could synthesize suitable replacements. That all added to the admiral’s anxiety, that-

No.

The source of his anxiety was not a diplomatic meeting which, while important, would not see any vital decisions made. The true source of his anxiety was the Ethics and Compliance Office.

That clandestine organization had gradually changed from supporting Home Fleet policy, to being in the forefront and driving policy, whether authorized or not. Recent ECO actions had committed the Jeraptha to supporting the humans, before Tashallo’s people were ready to make a break with their longtime patrons. No one in the Ethics and Compliance Office had any right to speak on behalf of the Home Fleet, certainly not a mere captain with a reputation for being sketchy, even by ECO standards.

As Tashallo watched his staff setting out glasses in the conference room, and placing a bottle of tequila on a silver platter, he feared that just by meeting with representatives of the human United Nations, his people were inviting trouble.

More trouble than they were prepared for.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

The Rindhalu cruisers Sword of Darmok and Spear of Jalad performed a stealthy jump into the far reaches of the Tanagra star system, the unavoidable gamma rays of the spacetime rift mostly bent back inside the jump wormhole. The remaining high-energy photons of the gamma ray burst were caught by an absorption field, and channeled down into capacitors that seethed white-hot under the hull plating. Unseen, the pair of cruisers extended their sensor nets, creating virtual antennas like shallow bowls lightseconds across, gathering photons from the inner star system and focusing them.

It did not take long to get a picture of the situation inside the system. It was centered on a red dwarf, and had a single gas giant planet, two small, rocky planets closer to the star, and an unusually large asteroid belt. Other than the asteroids consisting of a decent distribution of elements that were generally rare in the galaxy, the star system’s only virtue was its location between two heavily-trafficked Elder wormholes. The site was where the Elder AI known as ‘Skippy’ reported the doomsday arkships were being assembled, though even the AI admitted he based his conclusions on circumstantial evidence. The location of the assembly point was conjecture, the existence of the contingency plan was not. After they were notified of the doomsday plan, the Rindhalu reviewed their own intelligence on Maxohlx activity, and agreed that a large amount of material was indeed being diverted to an unknown purpose.

The Rindhalu had long known about the doomsday option considered by their enemy, and about the arkships that would fly beyond the galaxy. With their elite passengers in cryosleep, those ships would linger in the empty wastes for eons if necessary, waiting for Sentinels to scour the galaxy clean and go back to their long slumber. The Rindhalu had long known about their enemy’s contingency plan, but it was always only a remote possibility. Now it was clear arkships were being readied for use. While that did not mean they would be used, having such ships ready and waiting certainly made it easier to literally pull the trigger on the doomsday scenario.

That was why the two cruisers were scouting the Tanagra star system.

Using only passive sensors, being nearly invisible themselves, the AIs of the two cruisers compared their existing data set of the system, to what they were seeing. Their conclusions were that indeed something odd was going on there. That, based on trace gases, a large number of vessels were maneuvering around. That a major effort was in action to mine the asteroid field. That an extensive stealth field hid something in orbit at the second planet.

And, that the Maxohlx were not nearly as smart as they thought.

Their stealth technology was good, very good. Even knowing what to look for, the fuzzy edge of the field was extremely hard to detect, the sophisticated Rindhalu sensors only getting an intermittent glimpse of the field’s fluctuating expanse. The stealth field would have successfully concealed its contents from view, except for two factors the Maxohlx couldn’t control. The Rindhalu had very, very detailed data on the Tanagra star system. And the Maxohlx, for all their advanced technology, couldn’t completely ignore the laws of physics.

Hidden starships, shipyards and orbiting supply facilities had mass. Enough mass was in orbit of the moonless second planet that the world had an induced wobble. The effect of the wobble on the surface was too faint to be detected, but the mass in orbit was making the planet’s molten core slosh back and forth, and that affected the world’s magnetic field. Based on the change of the magnetic field from the baseline in the records of the Rindhalu, there was a lot of mass spinning around the planet. Enough to cause alarm about what the Maxohlx were doing inside the stealth field, even if it was not known they were planning the end of all life in the galaxy.

Sufficient data had been collected to confirm the Elder AI’s conjecture. It was still possible the Maxohlx had gone through a massive effort to make it look like they were doing something important on a very large scale at Tanagra, to distract from the real doomsday base, but that hardly seemed worthwhile. The effort expended in a disinformation campaign could have been better used to accelerate construction of the doomsday ships. There was a risk that, if the Tanagra system was merely a decoy, the Rindhalu fleet would give away their strategy by attacking a false target.

That was a decision for the commander of the task force. The two cruisers launched drones which flew only a short distance, and began to project stealth fields that overlapped to cover both ships. Mindful that the drones could maintain the fields for only a short time, the Darmok and the Jalad activated their jump drives and slipped away, stray gamma rays were trapped inside the stealth field and channeled into heat sinks buried under the armored skin of the drones. Just after the last gamma ray photons could have been observed, the stealth fields collapsed and the drones went silent, to drift in the cold emptiness of space forever.

Analyzing the enormous volume of data collected by the scout cruisers, the task force command AIs determined it was virtually certain that Tanagra was indeed the site of arkship construction. The evidence was overwhelming. Something massive was orbiting the second planet, something was concealed by a large and power-hungry stealth field, and something was the source of stray particles of exotic matter that trailed outward from the second planet, blown away by the solar wind. With the decision made to attack, the analysis AIs turned to the simpler question of how. Tactics.

The fleet AIs were very, very good at tactics. The enemy also had AIs and they also were good at tactics, and the enemy no doubt had prepared a strong defense. Overlapping sensor fields, warships, and strategic defense platforms, were presumably established in depth in a sphere outside the stealth field, waiting for hostile ships to jump in and fly toward the target. Attacking ships could not jump directly to attack, due to a field that prevented jump wormholes from forming.

The Rindhalu AIs knew all the obstacles that faced the task force.

None of the enemy’s defense measures would make one bit of difference.

The attack was planned in great detail, and simulations of every conceivable scenario run billions of times, before the information was presented to the task force leader, a Senior Admiral Grizzalda. She was predisposed to be skeptical of the proposed operation, as it had been planned and would be conducted by Foundlings, those Rindhalu who had not achieved the full maturity and wisdom of their hundredth year, as years were measured on their long-lost homeworld. Foundlings were invariably hasty and reckless, always urging to take action, rather than waiting to see whether action was truly needed, or would even be beneficial. Grizzalda knew what the Foundlings would recommend, even before she received the report: attack. Destroy the doomsday fleet of arkships, eliminate the threat. That was what the Foundlings thought would be the outcome of an attack at Tanagra, for they were hasty and did not think through the long-term consequences of their actions. The Senior Admiral had been given the responsibility of not merely destroying the enemy’s doomsday fleet. That was not enough. The real problem that faced her was why the Maxohlx were considering triggering the end of all life in the galaxy.

The reason was simple: they had been backed into a corner by a very young and very hasty species. Humans.

Humans were the problem, a problem for both of the senior species. She needed to make the Maxohlx understand they had a common enemy.

But first, she reluctantly had to admit, she needed to act, so the Maxohlx would not have the option of committing a horrific mass genocide. Then they would have to listen to her.

She approved the attack plan, after making minor changes to reduce risk.

Around Tanagra was an invisible energy field that would disrupt the formation of a jump wormhole, preventing hostile ships from conducting a direct attack. Ships attempting to jump inside the field would find their jump drives unable to focus enough to form an event horizon on the far end. Ships that attempted to force a wormhole open would destroy their drives in a catastrophic explosion.

The Rindhalu knew that. They were prepared.

Twelve AI-controlled starships, separated from the task force’s main formation, gathered in three groups of four and activated their jump drives. Each group of four ships coordinated their drives, focusing on a single point within several nanometers. The combined jump drives vibrated terribly, the tiny event horizons overlapping and fading in and out of existence, as the Maxohlx field around Tanagra worked to disrupt spacetime. The jump drives of all twelve ships lasted less than a heartbeat, having failed to establish stable wormholes.

They didn’t have to.

Just before the twelve ships exploded spectacularly, three ‘Door-knocker’ starships closer to the task force successfully projected jump wormholes in the center of the areas where the dozen other ships had failed to create event horizons. The three ships also exploded, but their violent ends came on the other side of their jumps, inside the field near Tanagra. The three ships did not carry weapons, they were weapons. As they were torn apart at the subatomic level by the enemy disruption field, each ship released containment on a chamber of antimatter, which was tuned to explode in a particular pattern. The vibrations temporarily disrupted the disruption field, in a local area around where each Door-knocker ship had emerged.

Right behind the Door-knockers were another trio of ships, the first to survive the jump into the disruption field. This third group of ships lasted only milliseconds, just long enough to launch hyperspeed missiles that shot with tremendous acceleration, forming a sphere of sixteen missiles around each of the doomed ships. When the missiles exploded, they sent out vibrations that very briefly cancelled out the local disruption field.

‘Briefly’ was plenty of time to launch the actual attack.

Into the disrupted disruption field jumped fifteen arsenal ships, also uncrewed and controlled completely by sophisticated AIs. Arsenal ships had minimal defenses. No masers or other directed-energy weapons. No railguns, nothing exotic.

What each arsenal ship did have was thousands of missiles, each independently controlled by its own AI.

The arsenal ships did not bother to pull missiles from magazines deep in their hulls, load them into rotary launchers, and spit them out one by one. Instead, the ship’s hull split open, exposing clusters of missiles that immediately ignited their motors and scattered, seeking targets. Space near Tanagra was instantly filled with more than ninety five thousand missiles. Some of the fast-moving devices did not contain warheads, instead they sent out powerful active sensor pulses to guide other missiles. The dark area inside the vast stealth field was lit up by sizzling-hot sensor energy, starkly exposing everything within. Having a snapshot of enemy assets within the stealth field, the missile AIs coordinated their attacks, prioritizing targets.

Priority One was not the completed arkships, nor the spacedocks where new arkships were being constructed, nor the more than four hundred warships, nor the strategic defense platforms. The starships and SD platforms were positioned around the edge of the stealth field, focused outward in the direction any attack would logically come from. Starships reacted immediately, but even the most nimble warship was a ponderously slow beast compared to an agile missile, and when the ships attempted microjumps to reposition themselves for better defense of the arkships, they found that chaotic, overlapping damping fields projected from hundreds of missiles were preventing their jump drives from functioning. Acknowledging reality, the warships turned and burned hard for the center of the fast-developing battle. The SD platforms could not move, and as they ponderously swung around to point their weapon barrels and missile launch tubes inward, the strategic defense AIs knew they were already too late.

The top priority for the armada of Rindhalu smart missiles was the platforms that projected the disruption field. There was no time for even hyperspeed missiles to close the gap between the arsenal ships and disruption field projectors, so the missile AIs collectively decided to initiate the attack with X-ray lasers. Missiles equipped with antimatter warhead cores released containment and matter contacted its opposite. Result: BOOM. Energy from the violent explosion was partially channeled into virtual exciters that focused the extremely high-energy photons into coherent beams, which lanced out that the speed of light. Each of the thirty eight disruptor platforms had six X-ray lasers aimed at it, the photons contacted energy shields around the projectors and barely noticed as they burned into and through the platforms.

Seconds after the arsenal ships emerged from jump, the disruptor field was fading.

Priority Two was destroying the network of strategic defense platforms, and they also were attacked by X-ray laser missiles. When the last of the special missiles were expended, eighty seven percent of the SD capability was offline, leaving the warships as the primary defense platforms.

And the conventional missiles, those which had to get close to an enemy ship before their warheads could do damage, had not yet crossed half the distance to their targets. Approximately eighty thousand missiles swarmed around and engaged roughly four hundred warships. The math of two hundred missiles per ship was brutal by itself, and the attackers had no intention of playing fair. While the designated ship-killer missiles dodged and weaved on random flight paths toward their slow-reacting targets, companion missiles exploded to send powerful sensor-jamming waves outward, blinding the target’s defenses.

The entire first phase of the battle, from the initial twelve ships failing to jump into the disruption field, to the last Maxohlx warship taking a direct hit, lasted what would be less than seven minutes, as measured on the human homeworld. Over three thousand missiles remained, frantically scanning for worthy targets and disappointed to have missed the fight, when the first of their creators’ warships began jumping in. Given new instructions, the remaining missiles, those with enough propulsive energy left to make the turn, finally switched their attention to the arkships-

That were already being sliced apart by directed-energy fire from the incoming warships.

The highest-ranking Maxohlx survivor, of the battle that would come to be known as the Massacre at Tanagra, was a fleet captain who lived only because he was soundly asleep when the battle began, and was still in his cabin when his battleship was blown apart by multiple missile strikes. The section of battleship that contained his cabin was sent spinning off into deep space, slowly leaking air, with Fleet Captain Nituru placed into protective semi-hibernation by his cybernetic implants. Thus, he had little awareness of the battle having occurred, and was shocked to awaken in a Rindhalu detention cell.

He was even more shocked to see a Rindhalu adult staring at him. His very limited encounters with the ancient enemy of his people had all been with Foundlings, the Old Ones rarely roused themselves to do anything. Adults of the Rindhalu were unmistakable; taller, their bodies thinner though not emaciated. The loss of weight did not imply any age-related feebleness, instead it was as if their bodies had shrunk or discarded elements they did not need as they reached maturity. The shape of their heads was different also, more pointed, like an arrowhead.

The Old One was looking at him, as he came to awareness on the padded bench in the cell. Scrambling to his feet, he realized his boots had been removed, that he had clear, flexible bandages covering parts of his body that appeared to have frostbite damage-

And that none of his implants were functioning.

“Your cybernetics will return to full function when you are released,” the Old One spoke through a speaker in the cell’s ceiling. The words were translated, because Nituru knew the Rindhalu could not pronounce certain key sounds in the Maxohlx common language.

At first, Nituru was unable to respond. Shock, disorientation, the loss of his cybernetics, and most importantly, not having any idea how he came to be a prisoner of the Rindhalu, had stunned him into total confusion. He could barely remember how to speak.

“What,” Nituru croaked, his throat dry, feeling like needles were stabbing his windpipe. His eyes were itchy, adding to his suspicion that he had been exposed to at least partial vacuum before the Rindhalu pulled him out of the wreckage. “What happened?”

“We destroyed your arkships. And the fleet protecting them. And the strategic defense capability in this system,” the Old One said in a matter of fact tone. It was not even bragging about the triumph, it seemed bored, possibly even sad.

That hurt worse than a deliberate insult.

“You,” he coughed. “You lie.”

“I really do not care what you believe. You are here. Your ship, your fleet in this system, is gone.”

Nituru felt icy cold. There was no reason for the hated alien to lie. And if the Rindhalu was telling the truth, there was no reason for Nituru to continue living.

Better for him to have died, than to be captured in so humiliating a fashion.

His tired mind remembered something the alien had said. “You will, release me?”

“We intend to release you, and the other survivors. There are not many,” the Old One added, without even a hint of mockery or arrogance. It was a simple statement.

Thinking about that made Nituru pause to consider his words carefully. Any survivors would have to live with their shame, but if they could return to their society, they could fight on, to seek revenge for their humiliation. He decided that it was his responsibility to survive to report what he had learned. And only then, to kill himself to atone for his failures. He must suffer, until he was allowed to leave the life that had become unbearable with shame. “It is understandable that you hate us for-”

“We do not hate you,” the Old One interrupted. “We are not even disappointed by you. You sought to destroy the galaxy, and kill nearly all of your own people, because you cannot live without the belief that you are special. That you alone are destined to rule this galaxy. You are an immature species, despite all the years we have known you. We are not disappointed, because we have accepted that is simply who you are. It is your nature to delude yourselves, you cannot live without that delusion.”

Nituru lost the composure he had just recently committed himself to. “You won today’s battle. Console yourself with that victory, for soon you will feel the wrath of-” he froze, unwillingly. Though he had no control over his implants, his enemy clearly did.

“We feel nothing but pity for you. This conversation grows tedious for us,” the Old One shook her arrow-shaped head slowly. “Today’s battle was but a skirmish. An exercise, in how little effort we need to expend, to utterly crush your doomsday fleet. What you witnessed today was our restraint. You cannot imagine the destruction we could visit upon your people, if we felt the need. We have not felt it necessary to act, because your Hegemony is no more than an annoyance to us. Until you attempt to do something stupid,” the Old One gestured, and the wall beside her showed an image of doomsday arkships. Just before they were torn apart. “Listen to me carefully, Fleet Captain Nituru. You are alive because you are useful to us. We desire you to carry a message to your leadership. Are you listening?”

Nituru found that though he was unable to speak, or to communicate via his implants, he could bob his head up and down. The Rindhalu surely understood that body language.

“Good. Yours is still a young and foolish species, hasty and never taking time to consider the full impact of your actions. You believe you had no choice but to activate your doomsday plan, that the humans forced you to act. That is because your leadership is not capable of thinking past the immediate crisis.” The Old One paused, turning her head side to side, to examine her captive. “It is sad. With your youthful energy, you could have become something truly great. Something of benefit to the galaxy. Instead, you-” She shook her head. “But I indulge myself, wasting time speaking to those who will not hear. Hear this, then. You consider the humans to be an obstacle to your imaginary future dominance of all you see, a threat to your survival. Perhaps that is true, but only because you do not understand that our mutual opponent is not the humans.” She paused again, to let that notion soak into the thick brain of the Maxohlx. “Human society is not unified the way yours and mine are. There is no such thing as the humans. They are fractured, power in their society is split between rival factions. We can use that, to benefit each of us. Play one group of humans against the others. Divide them, weaken them. Use them. Pretend to agree to the terms offered by the human called Joe Bishop, to give both of our peoples time to split human society apart. They will destroy themselves, we only need to give them time, and provide each faction access to the technological means to kill each other. You already understand that neither of us can use the Elder AI ‘Skippy’. It cannot be controlled, or persuaded to act in any way that it does not choose. Over time, perhaps, its loyalty or affection, for a small group of humans, might fade. We do not need to control the Skippy. We only need it to prevent the Elder weapons it controls from activating. That goes for both of our peoples. All the Hegemony needs to do is be smart, and patient, for the first time in your existence. Do you understand?”

Again, Nituru nodded, to the extent he was able to control his neck muscles.

“Hmm.” The Old One was skeptical. “We shall see. Hear this also: do not attempt to reconstitute your doomsday plan, in any form. We are watching you now, our Foundlings are roused and eager to act. If we see any sign that you are being so stupid again, you will witness our full wrath. There is a level of pain your leadership is willing to endure, before you trigger your own arsenal of Elder weapons and kill us all. We are willing to test that limit. To hit you so hard, to make you so weak, that the clients in your cruel coalition will attack directly, to feed off the rotting corpse of your empire. If you do not remember what I have said here, do not worry. Our full message has been uploaded to your implants, to be retrieved by your people, whether you are alive or dead. You might choose to kill yourself later, or you might choose to live so you can seek vengeance upon me. It matters little to me, but I would find it encouraging if you lived, to someday see the error of your ways. Goodbye, Fleet Captain.”

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Hans Chotek sat down heavily in the chair, which he immediately reminded himself was a mistake. The furniture provided by the Jeraptha, for use by their human guests, was either cartoonishly large and overly soft, or barely sized for comfort and hard as a rock. The too-small bed in his assigned quarters had three levels of firmness, unfortunately they ranged from ‘concrete floor’ to ‘slab of diamond’. After a sleepless first night, he had laid out all his clothes on the bed, and slept on them for a bit of cushion. All of the diplomatic staff complained about the beds, complained in private. Hans did not want to insult the hospitality of their hosts by requesting softer bedding, he also did not wish to appear weak. Everyone’s back must have been hurting as much as his, from the stiff way the members of the delegation walked over to the coffee bar.

Just the thought of the word ‘bar’ made Hans Chotek’s head throb with an impending headache. “Oh,” he groaned as he struggled to get out of the chair, finally using the adjacent table to pull himself up. “Those beetles can drink, eh?”

“If they were good hosts,” Emily Perkins said, pouring a cup of coffee for herself. “They would provide a plant in the corner of the conference room, where we could discretely dump our drinks when they’re not looking.”

Hans nodded. Throughout that morning’s negotiating session, he had sipped carefully on a glass of bourbon that grew more and more watery as the ice melted. The problem with letting the ice melt, is their hosts noticed the liquid volume in the glass was increasing rather than dropping as expected. They then appeared very concerned, asking if the choice of spirits provided was not to the liking of their human guests. When Hans had assured them the bourbon was excellent, just becoming warm in the glass, the Jeraptha did not simply provide more ice. Before he could protest, they whisked away his half-drunk glass and provided a new, larger glass, piled high with ice, and twice as much alcohol.

It was not even noon according to his wristwatch, and he already felt like taking a nap. And an aspirin, to ward off a hangover.

On the other side of the table, the beetles reclined on their couches, slurped from tumblers of burgoze for the men, and floon for the women, and loudly and enthusiastically belched after they took a slurp of the liquid. The repeated burping filled the room with a scent like sickly-sweet cotton candy, and paint thinner mixed with floor polish.

The drinking on both sides had slowed down the negotiations, though not as much as the insistence by the Jeraptha on periodically halting talks, to place private wagers. They wagered about the next how the human team would react to the next topic of discussion, they wagered on what the humans would want to talk about after that. That morning, the meeting was interrupted for the beetles to scuttle excitedly out of the room, only to return five minutes later. After that, it was difficult for Hans to concentrate, it seemed like the Jeraptha were watching him intently. Tension in the room ramped up as the break for lunch approached, until with ten minutes to go, a beetle leapt to her feet, hooting triumphantly while her colleagues groaned in disgust.

The reason for the celebration? She had wagered correctly, about the exact moment when the last chunk of ice in Chotek’s glass would melt completely. The leader of the Jeraptha declared that, due to the unexpected excitement, the lunch break would be extended.

“If they were good hosts,” Hans whispered as he grimaced, rubbing his sore back. “They would provide softer beds.”

Perkins shrugged. “I’ve slept on worse. There aren’t any snakes or scorpions biting me in the night.”

“I wish I had your sense of perspective.”

“It’s earned it the hard way.” Lowering her voice, she added, “At this rate, we won’t even get to setting up a framework agreement by the end of the month.”

“It would help if the Jeraptha were sober, and didn’t have to wager about everything.”

“It might be more than that.”

He glanced over to where Takahashi stood on the other side of the room, out of hearing range. “How so?”

“I think the beetles are dragging things out.”

“They invited us here to explore the possibility of an alliance,” he noted.

“Yes, but, they might not be in a hurry to agree on anything. It’s like, they want their patrons, and their peers, to know they’re talking with us, without risking a formal break with the Rindhalu.”

Irritation flashed across his face. “This is all theater? Negotiations for show?” Despite his displeasure, the same thought had occurred to him.

“It’s not theater. It’s hypothetical. The Jeraptha don’t know what they want, because they don’t know what the strategic situation will be, after we force their patrons and the Maxohlx to agree to terms. Talking with the beetles first is putting the cart before the horse.”

Hans had heard that argument. Many in the UN staff had urged talks with the Jeraptha to be postponed, until after a comprehensive agreement was reached with the two senior species. The view that prevailed was that talks had to begin somewhere, and it was good for the galaxy to see that someone was taking humans seriously. Pressing a palm to his forehead, he winced. “It is building my tolerance for alcohol, so it’s not-”

The door to the corridor slid open, and a Jeraptha bowed. “We request you return to the conference room as soon as it is convenient.”

Hans checked his watch, surprised. Being closest to the doorway, he addressed the Jeraptha. “We were told the mid-day sustenance break,” he used the alien term, “would be extended to-”

The beetle bowed again. “My apologies. There has been a development.” She looked straight at Chotek, then at Takahashi. Hans could swear there was a twinkle in the alien’s eye. “You will hopefully find it, interesting.”

The humans filed into the room, where a small group of beetles waited. Just their lead negotiator, and two aides flanking her couch. She waited until the humans were all seated, then inquired if they wanted anything to drink before they began.

She was looking directly at Chotek.

“No,” he shook his head ruefully. “Thank you.”

That seemed to amuse her, and she leaned toward the aide on her left. He glared at Chotek with a sour look, then tapped a claw on the tablet in front of him.

A wager. Hans realized there had been a wager about whether he would request, or accept, another drink. Ambassador Relopintor had won that bet. It should put her in a good mood. “Perhaps later?” He added, throwing uncertainty into the question of his drinking habits. The Jeraptha loved uncertainty.

“Perhaps,” Relopintor clacked her mandibles together. “There has been a development, one that directly affects these negotiations.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Perkins, seated next to him. Hans felt himself tense. Another attack against Earth? He knew everyone on his side of the table had the same horrible thought.

On the other side of the table, Relopintor must have understood the distress her words had caused. Her antennas waving excitedly, she added, “A positive development, that we think you will welcome.”

“Thank you,” Takahashi said. “Please, we are anxious to hear about this development.”

“Please understand we were just recently informed, a courier ship arrived only just before the mid-day sustenance break. While I have not had time to review the details, I wanted to inform you as soon as possible. A communique has been received from the Rindhalu. Including a message for your people.”

The lead UN negotiator’s eyes darted to Chotek before he replied. “What is the message?”

“It is simple,” she glanced down at her tablet. “The text is: ‘Thank you’.”

Chotek could not conceal his confusion. “Thank us? For what?”

“Apparently, your General Bishop gave the Rindhalu what I believe your people call a ‘heads up’? They acted on the information.”

“Yes!” Perkins said quietly, pumping a fist and thumping it softly on the table. All eyes turned to her, most of the human eyes reproaching her for the outburst. As military liaison, she was supposed to keep quiet, unless requested to speak.

“Mm, interesting,” Relopintor clacked her mandibles, and addressed Perkins directly. “You knew about this, then?”

“That, er,” Perkins was aware of Takahashi glaring at her, even if she wasn’t looking at him. She could feel his eyes on her. “That depends on what you are referring to.”

“I am referring,” Relopintor said while appraising Perkins with cool eyes. “To the ‘doomsday plan’ of the Maxohlx.”

“In that case, yes. We knew about it.”

“You did not think it worth mentioning to us?”

“That’s above my pay grade, Ma’am.”

The bold answer seemed to amuse the three Jeraptha, most especially Relopintor. “Very well. As no harm was done, we shall not speak of it now. What you should know is that the Rindhalu have destroyed the arkships of the doomsday fleet, and the shipyards that were constructing those arkships. Also, apparently, the Maxohlx fleet that was defending that facility.”

“Holy shit.” That time, Perkins made no attempt to be discrete. “That is incredible.”

“Incredible that the Rindhalu were able to conduct a successful attack, against such a heavily-defended target?”

“Incredible that your patrons actually did something.”

Relopintor laughed, her antennas dancing merrily. “We find it difficult to believe also, given our long history with our patrons. Also, we find this news encouraging. The Rindhalu are slow to act. Once roused, however, their wrath can be terrible.”

Miracles can happen.

By ‘miracles’, I don’t mean the kind of stuff Skippy does, like warping spacetime, and generally pulling my sorry ass out of messes I get us into. Those are miracles too, but we are so used to Skippy doing miraculous things that we kind of expect it.

Jeez, do not tell him I said that.

The miracles I’m talking about are what was waiting for us, when we went outbound through the wormhole that led to Ragnar Station. Valkyrie was escorting the four Jeraptha star carriers that I had promised to return, as soon as we were done with them. I didn’t lie about that, not exactly, though the beetles would probably argue I was pushing the limit of their hospitality.

Hey, while we were at Ragnar, Skippy tuned up the jump drives of those four borrowed star carriers, and fixed some glitches in their power management systems, so technically, we would be returning them in better than new condition.

We just were not returning them right away. Like I said, we would give them back when we were done with them, and well, we weren’t done yet. See, that’s what happens when you give someone a rental car with unlimited mileage. The star carrier Hot Streak was loaded down, with six of our new Maxohlx battlecruisers that had gone through basic refits at the Ragnar shipyard. The other three big space trucks had sections of the shipyard attached, in what looked like the most awkward way imaginable. To make the logistics of relocating the station even more fun, part of Ragnar was continuing to service our new battlecruisers, even while the station was being disassembled for transport. UNEF Command had declared they wanted our eighteen new battlecruisers at Earth ASAP, and they were willing to take the risk that the Ragnar site would be attacked, a risk that grew every day we remained there.

The process of getting those shipyard sections attached to the star carriers was incredibly slow. First, the sections were big, like, when two of them were attached to a star carrier, you almost could not see the space truck at all. The only good part of the project was that the shipyard had originally been brought to the rogue planet attached to Maxohlx star carriers, so they were designed to be transported. One star carrier is pretty much like any other, the main differences being how far and how many times they can jump, and the amount of mass they can move between stars. So, the attachment points were not an issue, almost all star carriers could slide their hardpoint pylons forward or back, and rotate them around the spine to create four, three or two rows of pylons.

Anyway, Skippy directed the tugs, and the UN Navy destroyers we used as supplemental tugs, to get the sections into position without snapping the spine of a star carrier, or damaging the vital piece of shipyard so it wouldn’t be useable. When the last section of the first batch was secured to the star carrier Dirty Money, Skippy declared he needed a break from the painstaking process of guiding massive, awkward things through space to mate with other massive, awkward things. He needed a break from thinking at all, so I suggested we rot our brains with a Rick and Morty marathon. We chilled on the couch in my cabin, me with my feet up on the coffee table, his avatar slumped back with his tiny feet not reaching the edge of the cushion. His Lordship looked so cute, I had to bite my lip not to laugh.

We watched three or four Rick and Morty episodes, I kind of lost count because I was tired also, and Skippy stretched his arms and did a good imitation of a yawn. “Ah, thanks, Joe. I needed a break. Damn, when we started this project, I didn’t expect the UN Navy to subscribe to the freakin’ Fleet-of-the-month club, you know?”

“Hey, this is your fault.”

“Mine? How did I-”

“You said it would take us poor monkeys forever to build our own starships. We couldn’t wait, so,” I shrugged. “If we can’t build our own ships, that leaves us with the options of buying or stealing them, right?”

“You mean stealing, or stealing. You haven’t actually paid the Jeraptha, other than modifying a few prototypes.”

“We’ll get to it. They know we’re busy. Besides, I don’t think they care.”

“They don’t? Why?”

“So far, our transactions have been sketchy ops with their ECO. Those beetles care more about the action than the payoff. Once we start to deliver on our end of the deal, that creates sort of a formal relationship between Earth and the Jeraptha government. At that point, the beetles have to choose between an alliance with us, and their client status with the spiders. Until we can remove the cloud threat to Earth, the beetles aren’t going to sign any official deal with us. So, in the meantime, the spiders can look the other way when ECO helps us, because so far, everything we’ve done hurts the Maxohlx. Anyway, like I said, you brought all this work on yourself.”

“Ugh.”

Clicking my zPhone, I switched the wall-sized TV screen to a view of the loaded star carriers that were lined up. The Hot Streak, with our new pre-owned battlecruisers, was ready to go, it had already performed two short jumps to test the drive modifications. All we were waiting for was for the Dirty Money’s structural integrity fields to adjust, compensating for the added mass of the two shipyard sections. Zooming in the view, I admired how the sections were balanced across multiple pylons. “You did a great job, buddy, those- Hey.” I zoomed in the view again. “What the hell is that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The big number ‘4’ spray painted on the end of that section.”

“Oh, that. There is a corresponding ‘4’ marked on the station core, where that section is supposed to go. Neat, huh? I had bots mark each section, so I don’t forget how the station goes back together. It’s a complicated-”

“We are relying on a can of spray paint?”

“It’s not- Ugh. OK, technically-”

“Oh my God! That is the best method you can think of?”

“Hey! First of all, knucklehead, that station was not designed to be taken apart and reassembled. My bots had to cut away a lot of structural stuff to remove the shipyard arms from the central core. We’ll have to fabricate new attachment hardware when we get to FOB Jaguar. I modeled putting the station back together, using hardware I removed here, and new stuff we need to make. But when I was done, I had a bunch of parts left over, and I couldn’t figure out where they-”

“You are not filling me with confidence, Skippy. Seriously, you marked the sections with a can of spray paint, and you have a plastic bag of leftover parts you don’t know what to do with? My uncle is a better mechanic than-”

“The spray paint is just a backup, dumdum. Unless you want me hanging around Jaguar the whole time, someone else needs to put that thing back together. I’m working with a bunch of filthy monkeys, so-”

“Oh,” I buried my head in my hands. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“It will be fine, Joe. Have some faith. We’ll figure it out,” he flashed me two thumbs up, then spoiled the moment by muttering, “somehow.”

“Can you at least create a YouTube video, showing that Tab A goes into Slot B?”

“Can I narrate the video in the form of an epic opera?”

“No.”

“Hmm. Then, I guess a bunch of monkey engineers are going to have a big pile of paper instructions spread out on the floor of a cargo bay, and-”

“I’m serious, Skippy.”

“You seriously never want me to have any fun.”

We worked out a compromise, where if monkey engineers ever did have to get involved in re-assembling Ragnar Station, they had to listen to Skippy’s operatic narration the first time through the instructions. Yes, you could have heard the thump thump as I threw the engineering team under a bus, but if we had to rely on monkeys to put that station back together, we would be in huge trouble.

Anyway, we escorted the four heavily-laden star carriers out through the wormhole without incident, and began the monotonous jump-recharge-jump process toward the wormhole that led to our forward operating base. Along the way, Valkyrie took a short detour to check in with a relay station-

Where we heard about the miracle.

Our negotiation team had been invited to a meeting with the Rindhalu and Maxohlx.

A preliminary meeting, to lay the ground rules for actual negotiations, that would probably drag on for-EH-ver, and that’s OK with me. Also, the meeting was being set up by the Rindhalu, and while they had also invited the Maxohlx, there was no guarantee the kitties would actually show up. But, according to the spiders, the Maxohlx supposedly had agreed in principle that they would talk with us, so that’s progress, I guess. If the senior species stopped shooting at us while we were talking, we could disperse the cloud away from our home planet, restore Earth’s economy, finally deliver technology upgrades to the Jeraptha, and-

Well, we would move on to deal with the next crisis.

Oof.

The details needed to be hammered out, in what would very likely be long and tedious discussions, but the Rindhalu had agreed in principle to several of our major needs, and redlined some of my demands they found totally unacceptable.

In the Good News column, there is the reason for the Maxohlx agreeing that they at least might talk with us. That reason is the Rindhalu gave them a serious beat-down, at the star system where the doomsday fleet was being constructed. After their plan to wake up Sentinels and bail out of the galaxy was ruined, the assholes in charge of the Hegemony didn’t have the option of triggering Sentinels anymore, unless they wanted to commit suicide. The Rindhalu stated they would not interfere with our efforts to deal with the cloud, and they would not interfere with our attempts to get assistance from other species. And that they would intervene, if the rotten kitties tried to stop us from dispersing the cloud.

That was all good news, huh?

You haven’t heard the bad news.

At the very top of the Bad News column, I had to list the fact that the Maxohlx only agreed to entertain talking with us, because those assholes no longer had the option of a small group of their people surviving the complete destruction of all intelligent life in the galaxy.

That really shook me. Captain Scorandum was right, I had seriously, dangerously underestimated the fragile egos of the Maxohlx. After I threatened their empire, they had been ready, they had been preparing, to kill everyone just so their sick culture could have a small chance to survive and dominate the galaxy at some far future date.

You can’t negotiate with delusional fanatics like them.

But, somehow, we had to find a way to negotiate.

Somehow, the rotten kitties had to find a way to swallow their pride.

The Maxohlx would not be negotiating in good faith.

Although, really, nobody expected them to, so maybe that doesn’t matter.

Second item on the Bad News list is that neither the kitties nor spiders would help to get rid of the cloud for us. Truthfully, that is both bad news and good news. If the senior species could have snapped their fingers or claws and banished the cloud, that would be great. But if their project to disperse the cloud required either of them to establish a major presence in our solar system, that was too much of a risk for us. Now that we had a method of taking care of the cloud by ourselves, we really did not need either of the supreme A-holes to be hanging around our quaint little homeworld.

In other bad news, the Rindhalu did not agree to my demands to allow their clients to sign mutual-defense treaties with us. The best we could do was an either-or situation. Either the clients had the protection of their current patrons, or they relied entirely on Earth for defense. The Jeraptha, for example, could not have it both ways. If the beetles signed a deal with us, they would no longer be under the umbrella of protection offered by the Rindhalu.

That was bad news.

But only sort of. There would be plenty of loopholes we could exploit. The Rindhalu could not afford to lose major clients, so they would probably tolerate a significant degree of cooperation between Earth and their clients, as long as that cooperation did not result in a formal break of the patron-client relationship.

There was other bad news that really was bad news, and it was part of the good news. The Rindhalu pledged to not commit hostile action against Earth, or other human interests. And, they would intervene if the kitties attacked Earth. Great, huh? Yeah, except that left a big loophole. Like, a loophole you could fly a starship through. The bad guys could ‘encourage’ a supposedly ‘rogue’ client species to commit hostile action against us, and it would be tough for us to prove the seniors were directly involved. The definition of ‘human interests’ also needed to be very strictly defined, or we might discover that, for example, our people on Paradise were not covered under the agreement.

My fear was that someone smart would get one of their clients to launch an attack against Earth, to see how we responded. Shit, that would be a problem. Like, a big fucking problem. UNEF Command would demand that Skippy shut down a wormhole network of the guilty client, which of course we couldn’t do, and our whole Greatest Bluff Of All Time would be exposed.

Crap.

Both the Maxohlx and Rindhalu were smart, of course they would use a client to test us. How do I know that? Because I would do it, and I am only a filthy, ignorant monkey.

So, while I plastered an idiot grin on my face when I told the crew the good news, inside I was feeling sick. The worst part was, I couldn’t tell anyone about my fears.

That is the downside of being a lying sack of shit.

 In the meantime, I had a job to do. We escorted the star carriers to Jaguar, where the engineering teams began the painstaking process of removing the Ragnar shipyard sections and placing them in a stable orbit. After a brief conference with Admiral Zhao, we went outbound through the wormhole again, making me feel like a freakin’ yo-yo. With us was our borrowed star carrier Hot Streak, and six refitted battlecruisers. Six was a good number; one for each of the permanent UNEF members, plus one that I guess was supposed to be sort of a timeshare for all the other nations of Earth.

We arrived back at our homeworld, Valkyrie remained in stealth, without any word from the Flying Dutchman about how negotiations were going. Whatever. I couldn’t worry about that. UNEF Command decided that five of the battlecruisers would remain in Earth orbit, and one would escort Valkyrie, while Skippy did his magic solar flare thing. That was a great, fantastic, excellent plan, except for the fact that those new battlecruisers barely had enough qualified crews to make them operational. The priority for staffing those ships were people who understood the basics of how to make those incredibly complex ships fly and fight, so they could train others. Admiral Zhao had given me messages to carry to UNEF Command, pleading for more personnel at Jaguar. The UN Navy unexpectedly now had more ships than crews to operate them, and new people would face a steep learning curve, no matter how qualified they were in their specialties on Earth. We also did not know the best tactics for deploying squadrons of battlecruisers without escort vessels, and we sure as hell had no idea how to manage the complicated tactics of a fleet that was split into two very distinctive capabilities. Should our former Maxohlx battlecruisers act as a vanguard force, to provide cover for the former Jeraptha ships? Or designate the former Jeraptha ships of the 1st and 2nd Fleet as sort of a ‘Gator Navy’, to handle planetary assaults and bombardments, while the battlecruiser squadrons got the glamorous jobs of establishing and maintaining space supremacy in the area?

Hey, don’t look at me. I am not an expert on how to handle formations of warships in combat. That’s outside my specialty, which is, um- Apparently, my specialty is getting into trouble that I don’t know how to get out of. And, somehow getting out of trouble, in a way that gets us into even more trouble, because of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

I hate that freakin’ law.

Unfortunately, the happy notion, of our new battlecruisers acting as a top-tier defense force for our homeworld, ran into the messy reality that the nations operating those ships were still under great stress from the cloud that was approaching Earth. And the fact that the member nations of UNEF simply did not trust each other during the crisis. The trouble began when China refused to send their new battlecruiser away from Earth with Valkyrie, unless the Indian and American ships left orbit. You might think Britain and France had no fears of each other, but that wasn’t true. They were each competing to secure land rights in Africa, in case the cloud could not be stopped, and having a battlecruiser overhead was a powerful aid in negotiations, if you know what I mean. All five permanent members of UNEF had objections to leaving their people unprotected while any other nation had a battlecruiser in orbit, so that left one ship to accompany Valkyrie. One ship, that had most of its crew stripped away to staff the others. One ship, that originally didn’t even have a name, because UNEF couldn’t agree on a name or even a framework for selecting a name. The name could not be anything from the languages of China, India, Britain, France or America, because those nations already got to name their own ships. The compromise was to name the ship Valiente, the Spanish word for ‘Valiant’. That name satisfied the people of Spain, Central and South America, and it was close enough to the Portuguese word ‘Valente’ that the Brazilians did not object.

Politics suck.

So, with the Valiente pulling crew from Valkyrie, even though we really couldn’t afford to run our own ship for very long with fewer people, we jumped toward the Sun, for Skippy to begin performing the stressful and tedious task of creating one small solar flare after another.

The crew was so looking forward to dealing with a stressed, irritated and bored Skippy for week after monotonous week.

Not.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

It happened.

Just like I feared it would.

The Bosphuraq hit Earth again. It was a hit-and-run attack, like when they and the Thuranin conducted orbital strikes against New York, Geneva and other targets. The purpose of that first attack had been to test our reaction, after we declared a policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. Our response back then was weak, so the Maxohlx escalated, ending with them launching a significant portion of Jupiter’s atmosphere into space, threatening to freeze our homeworld.

This time, the Bosphuraq acted alone. My guess is either the Thuranin refused an order from their asshole patrons, or the Maxohlx didn’t bother coercing a second client into doing their bidding because the birdbrains were weak and really couldn’t say no. Maybe also they were still pissed off at us enough to want another round of payback. I don’t know the politics involved in that coalition, all I know is the birdbrains raided us again. And this time, they were serious. Despite the UN Navy having four Extinction-class battlecruisers in orbit, Earth’s defenses were still relatively weak. There was no multi-layered strategic defense network around our homeworld, we didn’t even have full sensor coverage beyond the Moon’s orbit. The number of SD platforms at the time, while classified information, was easy to remember: zero. That’s right, we had no defense satellites capable of shooting at incoming ships. That was a choice, a deliberate decision to direct our limited resources to building a deep-space Navy, rather than constructing satellites. The decision made sense at the time; starships are multi-mission platforms, while SD satellites can only do one job. Starships can perform defensive patrols, and they can retaliate to discourage further attacks and they can hit the enemy before they hit us. So, I’m not criticizing UNEF Command’s decision to focus our resources toward building and maintaining a deep-space Navy. I’m just explaining why the Bosphuraq were able to strike our homeworld.

They knew exactly where to hit us. That targeting data must have been provided by their patrons, no way did the Bosphuraq fleet coming into our star system have time to gather and process sensor data, make sense of what they were seeing, and prioritize a target list. I’m also pretty sure the birdbrains never got the opportunity to get to the second row on their ‘To Do’ list, because our Navy reacted quickly.

I’m not saying our Navy deserves medals all around for their performance, the Bosphuraq did hit us hard before our ships began knocking enemy ships out of the sky. The hastily-trained Navy crews did the best they could with their unfamiliar ships, using systems for which the instruction manuals were still at the ‘-For Dummies’ stage. The moment when the birdbrains jumped in, the battlecruiser Republique was conducting a refueling and replenishment exercise out near Saturn, and the Valiente was with us. That left only four Extinction-class battlecruisers in Earth orbit. We should have stationed some of our former Jeraptha warships several lightminutes away on sensor picket duty, but all of those ships were at our forward bases. In hindsight, that was a bad decision. The Bosphuraq jumped in with thirty two ships, all heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships. Like I said, they were serious about the second raid. Clearly, they had decided that escort ships would be of no use to them. Also clearly, they knew it would be a waste of time and firepower to target our battlecruisers. All thirty two ships jumped into low orbit, below jump altitude. They were moving fast, their momentum would carry them up to jump distance even if their main engines were disabled, so perhaps their crews thought they had at least a prayer of surviving the mission. More likely, their leadership made a token gesture to avoid stating openly that the raid was a suicide mission, but surely no one aboard those ships thought they were coming back.

Maybe the crews of those enemy ships were courageous to sign up for a suicide mission, or maybe they didn’t have a choice. We know from examining sensor data collected during and shortly after the battle that the Bosphuraq ships had minimal crews aboard. They didn’t see any need for relief crews, or extra hands for damage control. They figured the battle would be short and violent, and they weren’t wrong about that. Thirty two ships jumped in, four groups of eight. One group emerged over North America and immediately spat out every missile they could get into launch tubes, while railguns sent kinetic rounds burning down through the atmosphere, and directed energy cannons pulsed in rapid-fire mode. Another group emerged over central Europe, one over northern China and one almost directly above Shanghai. We figure the Shanghai group was supposed to strike targets in India as their flight path took them in that direction, but they never got that far.

Our ships reacted quickly by human standards, still too slowly to prevent massive damage to sites on the ground. The first row on the enemy’s target list were industrial facilities that were making high-tech materials and equipment, to raise humanity out of the stone age. According to Skippy, those factories were only taking baby steps toward attempting to manufacture high-tech stuff, he didn’t consider any of their output to be useable. Regardless, the raid cost us seventy percent of our facilities capable of handling advanced alien-derived technology, and the lives of thousands of people who worked there. The people were the loss that hit us hardest, not only in terms of lives destroyed, but also because they were an elite group who at least somewhat understood Skippy’s vague, rambling explanations of how advanced tech worked. We could rebuild factories, better than new, but the loss of talented people would hurt us for a long time.

The Bosphuraq also hit power-generation and distribution infrastructure, and not just fusion reactors. While missiles and railguns were pounding factories, their directed energy weapons burned miles of power lines, ripped up pipelines, destroyed power plants, and even sliced through hydropower dams. One enemy heavy cruiser was using its masers to burn into dams of Hydro-Quebec’s James Bay project, when missiles from Vanguard ripped that cruiser apart. The impact to those dams would have been worse if the enemy group over North America was closer to Quebec, that cruiser had been shooting through dense cloud cover at a shallow angle, and water vapor absorbed part of the maser energy.

We also got lucky that the birdbrains didn’t have time to blow up the Hoover Dam, so we can thank our Navy for that.

We began what became known as the Third Battle of Earth with zero SD satellites. Zero is also the number of enemy ships that survived. Fourteen of the raiding ships did coast on momentum up to jump altitude, but none of them were able to jump. Our ships saturated the area with damping fields to prevent the enemy from getting away, knocked back their energy shields and then surgically sliced away missile launchers, cannons, railguns, point-defense guns and anything else that made each of those hulls a warship. Eight of the fourteen chose to self-destruct, leaving six ships and a hundred eighty three alien crew members to be taken prisoner. We got all the survivors aboard the ship that had the best life support capacity, making it easier to assure they didn’t cause any more trouble.

When I say ‘we’, I am not including myself, Skippy, or Valkyrie. We weren’t there. Skippy needed downtime after his latest round of creating solar flares, and the ship had to refuel. While the Third Battle of Earth was raging, our mighty Valkyrie was taking a break for maintenance. We were with the Valiente, nine lighthours from Earth, blissfully unaware anything unusual was happening at our home planet. The first sign that we’d missed the action came nine hours after the fighting began, when we heard an emergency broadcast message, calling for us. To avoid the enemy ambushing Valkyrie, we kept our location a secret whenever we were near Earth. Not even UNEF Command knew exactly where we were.

“Holy shit,” I stared at Simms, while she was standing in the door to my cabin, and I was sitting on the edge of my bed. To be ready for emergencies, I slept in sweatpants, my clothes laid out on the coffee table. While I tried to shake sleep from my head, I was already pulling on a shirt. “Did Command say-”

“They want Valkyrie to scan the system, see if we can locate and destroy the enemy star carriers. Valiente has been ordered back to Earth immediately.”

“Right.” From my XO’s admirably brief description of the raid while my sleep-addled brain tried to wake up, my guess was the star carriers had not waited to see results of the battle. They likely dropped off the raiding party and raced to the Backstop wormhole, getting away while they could. Although, the Bosphuraq would want to know what the raid had accomplished, so they could report to their asshole patrons. There had to be two, maybe more enemy cruisers hanging around in stealth, waiting for light from Earth to reach their positions. We might be able to prevent some of those ships from ever seeing their home base again, but really, who cares? Hunting down a handful of Bosphuraq cruisers wouldn’t undo the damage from the raid, or prevent the Maxohlx coalition from hitting us again.

UNEF Command knew that. The leadership and staffers of Command were not experienced in space combat, but they didn’t have to be tactical geniuses to understand that tracking down any remaining enemy ships was nothing more than a gesture, to show the public that their Navy was doing something.

“XO, tell the pilots to hold right here,” I said as I jammed my feet into shoes.

“We have a search pattern, Sir,” she was half-turned in my doorway, ready to dash back to the bridge.

“I know.” That wasn’t true, I just assumed she would have asked Skippy to program a search pattern, as soon as she saw the order from Command. “We need to stop at Earth first.”

Her response was to slowly tilt her head, so I explained. “The purpose of sending their clients on a raid is to test us, right?” She nodded. Command hadn’t stated it in their message, but it was a good bet the Bosphuraq didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be incomprehensibly stupid. The Maxohlx had threatened, forced or incentivized them to conduct the raid. “That accomplishes one objective. But, if a raid causes Valkyrie to fly around willy-nilly chasing sensor ghosts, the kitties may have a secondary objective.”

“Another ambush?” She guessed.

“Yeah. They know Valkyrie is in-system,” I shrugged. “But they don’t know where. All they have to do is plant some decoy star carriers out here for us, knowing Command will want vengeance. We can’t afford to act on emotions.”

She raised an eyebrow, like she was surprised to hear me saying that.

I guess I deserved that.

By the time we got to Earth, and squirted a tight beam burst message to Command, emotions there had cooled down, and apparently they came to the same conclusion I did. We immediately received revised orders to remain near Earth in stealth, while other, more expendable battlecruisers went out chasing ghosts. We drifted in stealth, with the ship’s passive sensors viewing our homeworld directly to survey the damage, and watching news reports that showed smoking ruins and broken bodies.

It was bad.

I feared UNEF Command’s reaction to the raid would only make it worse.

“Sir,” I tried not to swallow so hard that my nervousness was obvious in the video on my laptop camera. In my office, I was on an emergency call with UNEF Command. “Uh, I-”

“General Bishop,” General Urquhart interrupted me, which he could do because he wore the three stars of a Lieutenant-General in the British Army, and was the current chairman of the UNEF Command general staff. I only wore one star, and the emphasis he put on the word ‘General’ was to remind me of that fact. “I do not understand your reluctance to carry out retaliatory action. Crashing wormhole networks was your idea.”

“Yes, Sir, I- Yes.” Right then, I didn’t know what else to say. There wasn’t anything I could say, other than ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and a ‘No’ was unacceptable to either of us. Command wouldn’t accept me my refusal to carry out orders. And I couldn’t afford them to question why I refused their very logical and reasonable orders. To be specific, I couldn’t afford the bad guys out there hearing my explanation of why I refused to comply.

Shit.

I was trapped, by my own lies.

“Yes?” Urquhart glared into the camera. “Is that a ‘Yes’ you agree we need to show the galaxy the price of striking Earth?”

“I, Sir, it’s complicated.”

“Not from my point of view. Can Skippy crash a wormhole network in Bosphuraq territory, or not?”

Right there. That was the problem.

Immediately after the raid, Command engaged in damage control. Navy escort ships had been sent out to scour our star system for enemy carriers or warships, while Valkyrie and the four other battlecruisers patrolled near our homeworld. Two weeks later, public sentiment had shifted from shock to anger. They had time to accept the horrible losses of life and damage to our infrastructure, and they wanted revenge. They wanted us to hit back. No, that’s not quite right. They wanted UNEF Command to assure them that another raid wouldn’t happen. Since Command lacked the resources to directly protect our planet, they had to rely on punishment. Like General Urquhart said, we had to show the entire galaxy what happened to anyone who dared strike us at home.

The debate within Command revolved around how to retaliate, not if. Of course, their number one option was to pull the trigger on the Big Gun; crashing a wormhole network in Bosphuraq territory. That would punish the Bosphuraq, make them less useful clients of our ultimate enemy, and therefore make it less likely those particular clients of the Maxohlx would ever think about hitting us again. It would show the entire galaxy that Earth is not screwing around; we said there would be a price for hostile action and we meant it. Most importantly, it would show the entire galaxy that we could selectively crash any wormhole network we wanted. The Maxohlx probably goaded their client into conducting the raid to answer two questions. Could we really crash a network? And would we actually do it? UNEF Command needed the answer to both of those questions to be not only ‘Yes’ but ‘HELL YES’.

They also were eager for us to act quickly, to demonstrate that the member nations of the United Nations Expeditionary Force Command were united, in their determination to protect our planet and our interests in the galaxy beyond our home star.

Shit.

I argued that we should instead take an incremental approach, and I was losing that argument. “General Urquhart, yes, we can crash a wormhole network in the territory of the Bosphuraq. As I stated before, there are some wormhole networks we can’t afford to interfere with, because doing so would interrupt power flow, and that risks producing unwanted results. However, Sir, please, I urge you to consider a campaign of escalation. Use the Navy to hit back at the birdbrains. Show them that humanity is not a one-trick pony, that we don’t always have to rely on a magical beer can. Order the Navy to conduct raids against the Bosphuraq, while sending a message in the clear that we know their patrons are the ones really responsible. Use that as leverage to further weaken and splinter the Maxohlx coalition,” I said, amazing myself that I was capable of seeing the wider strategic picture. “Crashing a wormhole network is an extreme action, but it’s a one-time thing, Sir. Once it’s over, it will begin to lose its shock value.”

Urquhart bit one side of his lip like he was considering what I said. The problem for me was, I had been saying essentially the same thing for three days, and Command wasn’t buying my argument. The public back home, the people that the leaders of UNEF’s member nations ultimately answered to, were demanding action. They wanted us to hit back now, and they wanted us to hit back so hard, no hostile aliens would ever think of coming to our star system again. The generals and admirals serving at UNEF Command could counsel for calm and caution, but they took direction from their national leadership, and no one could resist the constant barrage of demands to take extreme action. “Bishop,” Urquhart said after a pause. “It is encouraging that you are considering the political angle here.”

“I’m trying to consider the overall strategy, Sir.”

“At this level, politics is strategy. Unless we intend to crash every network in the galaxy, which the senior species won’t tolerate, we can’t stop aliens from hitting us again. We have to make them see that hitting us isn’t worth the cost, no matter what threats or rewards the Maxohlx are offering. Bishop, I need a list of options, for networks to crash, tomorrow before noon my time. Is that clear?”

Straightening up, I squared my shoulders. “Yes, Sir. Will do.”

“What are we going to do, Joe?” Skippy asked after Command ended the call. At my request, he had stayed quiet while I was talking, neither of us wanted him to blurt something out and confuse the issue.

“We are not doing anything. This isn’t on you. The whole bullshit bluff thing was my idea. I have to own it.”

“Own it? How?”

“I’m telling the truth, to Command.”

“Shit, Joe. That means sooner or later, everyone in the galaxy will know.”

“Yea. Probably sooner. I plan to tell the truth, and accept the consequences.”

“OK, hmm, maybe this is a monkey thing.”

“It’s a responsibility thing.”

“Um, because you caused this mess?”

“Yes.”

“Then, aren’t you supposed to fix it?”

“I can’t. This can’t be fixed, Skippy. This is a problem without a solution. Listen, I am willing to do whatever I can to deal with the fallout of announcing that the whole thing was a bluff. But, UNEF Command won’t have any faith in me. They won’t trust me, at all, and I won’t blame them.”

“OK, then how about, and I know this is crazy talk: we don’t deal with the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Joe, if a problem can’t be fixed, then why waste time and effort trying to deal with it? The sensible thing to do is run away. We’ll take the ship out to the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy, and I’ll lock the door behind us.”

“Run away? Hell no!”

“Why not?” He demanded, and I could see in his eyes that he was not joking. “Just you and me, Joe.”

“What about all the people on Earth?”

“Hmmph,” he sniffed. “Like I care about a bunch of filthy monkeys.”

“You do care.”

“Ah,” his shoulders slumped. “Dammit, yes. Your homeworld is a miserable ball of mud, infested with ignorant monkeys but, I have become rather fond of them. Their whacky antics amuse me. OK, how about a compromise?”

“Like what?”

“If you are relieved of command, ignore it. Don’t leave the ship.”

“Uh,” I considered how awkward it would be for a new commander, to have me hanging around. Maybe that was how Count Chocula felt, back when he was in charge of the mission, but the crew looked to me for leadership. Doing that again would be kind of a dick move. “I would kind of have to leave, clear the way for Simms to become captain.”

“No, you do not,” he stomped one of his tiny feet on the desk. “You can stay aboard the ship, as, um, an advisor or something. Hell, you can be my court jester, keep me amused, you know?”

“Hmm,” he gave me a spark of hope. “I’ll try to arrange that. But it needs to be my initiative, Skippy. You stay out of it, understand? This is a monkey thing.”

“Okaaaaay,” he pretended to let out a long breath. “How are you gonna do this?”

“I’m going to be smart for a change, and ask for advice.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

“Sir?” Simms stepped into the doorway of my office. “You want to talk?”

“Yes, XO. Come in,” I waved for her to sit down, and pressed a button to slide the door closed behind her.

She must have sensed I was tense, because she sat perched on the edge of her chair. “Is this about the target list?”

She meant the list that was requested, demanded, by UNEF Command, of wormhole networks in Bosphuraq territory. They not only wanted a list and a corresponding map, they wanted the list to estimate the impact to Bosphuraq society, and the Maxohlx coalition, of crashing each one of those networks. By ‘impact’, Command meant the number of star systems that would be either completely or partially isolated, the populations of worlds in those star systems, the ability of those worlds to cope with or even survive isolation, and how loss of access to the production capacity of those planets would weaken the Bosphuraq. There was no debate within UNEF about whether to crash a network in retaliation. There was a debate about what our focus should be. Should we isolate a large portion of enemy territory, plunging a significant population into isolation? Or should we focus on disrupting commerce, military and industrial capacity within their territory? It was a good question, and I expected Command to puzzle over and debate about the list for days, perhaps weeks. What I could have done was to be a coward about it; provide the list and buy a few days for me to delay the inevitable.

No, I wasn’t doing that. I had lied too outrageously, to too many people, for too long.

“It is sort of about the target list, yeah.”

“I haven’t seen the list yet, Sir,” she seemed puzzled not to see Skippy’s avatar on the desk. “If Skippy needs my input, I-”

“XO,” I held up a hand, and let it drop into my lap. “Simms. Jennifer.”

She arched an eyebrow at me using her preferred name. “What’s this about?” She didn’t add ‘Sir’ or ‘General’ but she didn’t call me ‘Joe’ either.

I exhaled a breath I’d been holding, since we faked crashing wormholes across a span of four thousand lightyears. “There won’t be a list.”

Both of her eyebrows flew up that time. “You’re refusing-”

“I am not refusing any orders. Listen,” I looked away, couldn’t meet her eyes at that moment. “You are going to be royally pissed at me, and you have every right to be. What I need you to focus on is the future. Taking this seat,” I tapped the armrest of my office chair. “After I surrender command.”

“You are scaring me.” Her hands clasped in her lap. “What is this about?”

“Remember I pledged to be honest, to not keep information from you and Smythe?”

She took in a sharp breath. “You need to tell me something I don’t want to hear?”

“It’s not that. Well, yeah, it is.”

“Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

“That’s the problem. I, I haven’t been honest with you. Not about everything.”

She stiffened.

“It’s not about trust,” I assured her, too late to matter. “It’s,” I shrugged. “An OPSEC thing.”

“OPSEC?” She was already getting pissed at me, and she didn’t yet know what I had concealed from her. “You don’t trust-”

“It’s not about you. This information, if it got out. Shit. When it gets out. It will ruin everything.”

Maybe seeing me struggling made her a bit less angry. “It would be best if I knew what you were talking about, Sir.”

I told her. That our awesome move of crashing wormhole networks, an operation she participated in, was all a bluff. A tangled web of lies, that was now on the verge of unraveling.

“But,” her face was ashen, she had to lean back in her chair. Her hands clutched the armrests as if she was hanging on to avoid falling to the floor. “I saw it. It happened.”

“It did happen. Just not the way I said. What Skippy did was install a timer on wormholes, making each of the networks go into a self-diagnostic mode, all at the exact same time. When I snapped my fingers? That was bullshit, just for show. There was no faster than light signal propagating from one network to another. It was all pre-set timing for the wormholes to blink out. Same with them coming back online, although that timing was less precise. All I had to do was pretend to give the order to restore the affected networks, before any of the wormholes had time to complete the diagnostic and reboot.”

It was her turn to avoid my eyes, though for a different reason. She stared at the floor, one hand on her forehead, shading her eyes. I kept my mouth shut while she processed the steaming pile I’d dumped on her.

“OK,” she finally said. “Does any of this matter? As long as the enemy thinks we did what you said, it doesn’t matter how you did it. Do the diagnostic thing again in Bosphuraq territory, and-”

“We can’t. Skippy can’t. Even if he could, the effect only lasts a few minutes.”

“We can work with that,” she insisted. “Tell the Bosphuraq we’re being merciful, something like that. We can spin it-”

“It won’t work.”

“Command won’t like it, but we can pair a temporary wormhole interruption with strikes by the Navy. It will have the-”

“No,” I shook my head slowly. “You don’t understand. I already told Command that we can’t do ‘temporary’ network crashes, that it must be a permanent thing. Also-”

“Sir,” she pursed her lips, exasperated with me. “You need to think outside the box, like you always do,” her tone contained a bit of schoolmarm scolding. “Make up some bullshit story about how Skippy recently figured out how to make a crash temporary. Or tell them you figured out how to do it. They won’t care how-”

“XO. No. You don’t understand. Skippy can’t do that trick again, at all. The networks will not fall for the diagnostic trick a second time. Information about what we did will have propagated across the entire galaxy, faster than light. It was a one-time bluff. We can’t do it again. Ever.”

That set her back. “At all? Can’t we just-”

Have you ever been trying to do something difficult, and it’s not working, and someone who knows absolutely nothing about the subject very helpfully asks “can’t we just”?

That “can’t we just” is often accompanied with a vague handwave, which makes it extra special.

Has hearing that ever been helpful to you?

No?

Simms saying it to me wasn’t helpful either, but right then I certainly had no right to be upset with her. Now I know how Skippy feels, when a monkey asks him a stupid question. And, I had no right to be irritated with my executive officer. She had to be pissed at me, angry and hurt, but instead of acting on her anger, she was focused on fixing the problem. Damn, I am lucky to have her as my second in command.

“XO, we tried. Believe me, we tried, to think of a way to actually crash a network. Or at least, do the diagnostic trick again. We got nothin’,” I admitted. “I am screwed. Command will throw the book at me, and they will be absolutely right to do so. Oh hell, forget about me. We are screwed. Humanity. I am dumping this in your lap, because UNEF will relieve me of command. We need you to step up, and salvage what you can of the mess I’ve made.”

“How,” she stared at me blankly. “Do I do that?”

“I truly do not know. I’m sorry. When the bad guys learn the wormhole crash was a bluff, we will be right back to where we were, after the senior species combined to attack the Navy at Klopeth. The Legion is shut down, we don’t have access to relativistic darts, and-”

“And no matter what we do, our enemies won’t believe any threats we make, and any potential allies won’t trust us.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You really screwed it up this time,” she shook her head, and added a belated, “Sir.”

“I was hoping, with such a powerful threat, and a demonstration that made it look like we could do it, nobody would dare test us. Apparently, I didn’t think it all the way through. Again.”

“I could have warned you the seniors would use proxies to test our reaction.”

“Simms, the more people who know about this, the more danger there is of the secret getting out.”

“What about Adams? Did you tell her?”

“Hell no,” I snorted. “I wouldn’t dump something like that on her.”

“But you’re telling me.”

“It’s your job. Margaret can’t do anything with the information.”

“I don’t know if I can do anything with it.”

“Again, I’m sorry.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“That I concealed information from you?”

“No. That you’re just giving up.”

Wow. Hearing that stung me hard. “I’ve reached the end of the line on this. There isn’t anything we can do.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Simms, I appreciate that-”

“You only know that you can’t think of a way out of this mess.”

It was my turn to blink. “Uh, OK, that is true, but-”

“But what? If you can’t figure a way out to fix this, no one can?”

“Believe me, we tried every-”

“We? You and Skippy.”

“Yeah. I didn’t tell anyone else, so-”

“Skippy?” She automatically looked at the ceiling when she called him, like everyone did.

“Yes, Colonel Simms?” His avatar shimmered to life. Skippy was getting better at following protocol, and at reading the room. He understood the situation called for addressing her in a formal manner.

“Show us a chart of wormhole networks in Bosphuraq territory.”

“Um, Ok. Their territory is not contiguous, it consists of scattered pockets, across a quarter of the galaxy. Are you looking for anything specific?”

“Yes. Networks with a small number of wormholes.”

“Hmm. There are networks that consist of as few as three active wormholes.”

“Show us the ten networks with the lowest number of wormholes.”

I had my laptop open, but Skippy dimmed my office lights, and projected a hologram in the air. “That is,” I squinted at the images. “Not very helpful.” He was right. The local networks were scattered across such a wide swath of the galaxy, the detail was too small to be useful.

Simms was also squinting at the images, leaning forward on her chair. “Can you,” she thought for a moment. “Eliminate the networks that don’t connect any important star systems? And the chart doesn’t need to be to scale.”

“Oh, sure. That leaves four networks, the other six are in areas considered to be pretty worthless. That’s why the Maxohlx assigned that territory to one of their least-favored clients.”

“Of course they did,” Simms muttered, and added, “assholes. Um,” she stood up to get a better look at the hologram. “This network, it consists of,” she counted the color-coded lines. “Four wormholes?”

“Correct. Would you like to know more?”

“Yes. Why is this network important?”

“Because this wormhole,” he made one line glow brightly. “Connects two pockets of territory that are rich in resources, including habitable worlds. Those pockets are heavily populated, and produce nearly thirty percent of Bosphuraq society’s industrial output. Severing that one wormhole would hurt the birdbrains badly. Unfortunately,” he sighed. “We can’t do that, so there is no point to-”

“Bullshit,” Simms said with a sly smile, as she sat back down.

“Um,” Skippy stared at her. “Is there something I don’t-”

“The two of you,” she pointed at Skippy, then at me. “Are the last people who should say something can’t be done. Besides,” she shrugged. “We don’t need to do anything. We only need to make aliens think we did.”

Skippy stared at her. “Joe, do you have any idea what she is talking about?”

“No. I don’t have to,” I leaned back in my chair, hands behind my head. Having faith in my executive officer, I allowed a ghost of a grin flash across my face. “Simms knows. XO, please?”

“Skippy,” she asked. “Have you ever screwed with that particular local network?”

“No. We have never used any of those four wormholes. Why?”

“Because you aren’t locked out there,” she explained. “That network has only four wormholes. Can you make all of them go dormant, for a short time?”

His avatar made a sound like sucking in a breath. “Ooooh. Hmm. Jeez, I guess so? There’s no reason I can’t, I suppose.”

“Great idea, XO,” I gave her a thumbs up. “Outstanding. We make it look like that network crashed, by shutting down individual wormholes.”

“Um, hey,” Skippy waved a hand. “I hate to burst your bubble? But, if we are trying to mimic the effect of a network crash, me shutting down wormholes one at a time won’t work. When we faked the crash, everything shut down at the same time.”

“So?” I answered before Simms had to. “Aliens don’t know how a wormhole crash works. UNEF Command doesn’t know either. Shit,” I laughed. “In my report, I was deliberately vague about how we did it. At the time, I didn’t want to provide a lot of detailed lies I would have to remember. Now, my laziness is working in our favor! Ha! My teachers in school were wrong, I knew laziness would be useful someday!” I thumped a fist on the table. “We can just bullshit our way through it. If anyone asks why this crash is different, we say, uh, I don’t know. Something like, uh, last time we prepared the networks in advance, to make an impressive demonstration. Hell, that is actually true, mostly.”

“Hmm,” Skippy thought about it. “It would still look awfully suspicious, if Valkyrie flies to one wormhole at a time, and a wormhole only shuts down after we’ve been there.”

“No it won’t,” Simms had an answer ready. “Aliens won’t know where we’ve been. We’ll remain in stealth.”

“There is still a timing issue,” Skippy insisted. “The four wormholes will shut down at significantly different times, because we’ll have to fly from one to the other.”

“Ah, yeah,” I admitted. “That is a problem. Hey! You have changed the emergence points of a wormhole, right? Made a wormhole emerge at a location that is not on its usual pattern?”

“Yes, so?”

“So,” I winked at Simms, because she knew what I was planning. “Aliens won’t know whether a wormhole is at a different location, or if it is shut down. All they will know is it isn’t where they expect it to be. Can you program a wormhole to do that, like on a timer? Emerge at a different location, but don’t do it for a week, something like that?”

“Jeez,” he took off his ginormous admiral’s hat and scratched his dome. “I can insert new, temporary emergence points into the pattern. Make it suddenly emerge at a series of new locations, before it reverts back to the original schedule.”

“For how long could you divert a wormhole’s pattern?”

“If I really pushed it? Four days, shmaybe a bit longer?”

“How long for us to fly to all four wormholes?”

“There’s the problem with this plan, Joe,” he jammed the hat back on his head. “Minimum of fifteen days, to cover all four wormholes. It is a small network, but it covers a wide area.”

“You are forgetting something, Skippy,” Simms had a twinkle in her eyes. “There are four wormholes. We fly to Wormhole A, and you insert a series of new emergence points that the schedule won’t get to for,” she held up her hands. “Ten days? Can you do that?”

“Damn it,” he grumbled. “Why do I never think of things that are totally obvious? Mm, three days would be safer. The networks periodically check their pattern and schedule, against an archived version. If there is too long a delay, the changes I insert could get overwritten. I still don’t see how-”

 “Then,” Simms continued. “You create a temporary shortcut from Wormhole A to Wormhole B, to get there faster.”

“Oh, OHH!” Skippy’s eyes widened. “Wow, that’s, kind of brilliant, really. I create shortcuts from one wormhole to the next until we have visited all four of them, and inserted changes in their schedules. Hmm, we could do that in, yup. Two days. Less than two days.  Damn, yes, that would work. Can I guess that the next step is for us to fly to the new emergence points, and I make the wormholes go dormant one at a time? Before they would re-emerge on the original pattern?”

“Egg-zactly,” I slapped the table. “Can we do that?”

“Yes. This is, this is cool. Huh, I am not even insulted by being outsmarted by a pair of monkeys. It is actually a privilege to see such clever thinking in action.”

“Outstanding.” I was so pleased with myself, pleased for myself, pleased with my executive officer, that I wasn’t sure I was able to think clearly. “XO, before I talk to Command-”

“Joe,” Skippy interrupted. “I need to warn you first. That local network will not like me creating shortcuts, inserting changes to the patterns, and making all of its wormholes go dormant. It’s going to lock me out for sure, so this will be a one-time thing, unless you have another clever idea up your sleeves.”

“I do not,” I said, looking at Simms. She shook her head to say ‘No’. “That’s OK, Skippy. We only need to screw with that network once.”

“You didn’t let me finish. The question Colonel Simms asked was about networks with a small number of active wormholes.”

“Shit,” Simms cursed, before I could say the same thing. “Give us the bad news, please.”

“That network has three wormholes that are currently dormant. Even I don’t entirely understand the operating criteria that governs wormhole shifts, but I am certain the network will begin to wake up one or more of its dormant wormholes, if we shut down the others.”

“Will it do that right away?”

“No. The networks are programmed for stability, it’s not in their nature to do anything abruptly. It will wait, to see if I issue revised instructions to take the four wormholes out of their temporary dormancy. The network might even decide to override my instructions, and restore the four wormholes on its own.”

“How long?” Simms asked. “Until the network takes action?”

“My best safe guess is we’ll have nine days, after I make the fourth active wormhole go dormant.”

“We can work with that,” I said. “We’ll say this was only a warning, so we only shut down the network temporarily.”

Simms bit her lip. “What if Command wants the crash to be permanent?”

“Then,” I shrugged. “I will persuade them that’s a bad idea.”

“How?” Skippy cocked his head at me. “That’s easy to say, you can’t-”

“I will make up some bullshit,” I waved a hand at him. “Like, uh, hey! We can use it as a stick, and a carrot. Show that we can shut down a network as punishment for bad behavior, and we can restore it if aliens behave, right? Give the bad guys an incentive to smarten up, and stop screwing with us.”

“That,” Simms looked at the ceiling, considering. “Could work. Yes. That’s a good idea. We can sell that to Command.”

Skippy wasn’t convinced. “What if Command wants the network shut down for more than nine days?”

“Come on, Skippy, think.” I told him. “If that happens, then we, or you, inform Command that if you don’t restore a network within nine days, or seven days to be safe, you can’t restore it for, like, a year or more. Can you do that?”

“Sure, although you should be the one to inform Command about, all the bullshit you just made up.”

“Because you will forget which lie to tell?” I guessed.

“No. Because you say I am a terrible liar, while you apparently are quite skilled at it.”

“That,” Simms wagged a finger at me. “Is not something to be proud of, Sir.”

“I’m not. And, I’m still sorry for concealing the truth from you.”

She sighed. “Your heart was in the right place.”

“Good,” I was relieved to hear her say that. “Then-”

“Your head was not. Do not do that again. Sir. Please.”

“XO, you saved my life. All of our lives. Thanks. I don’t deserve you.”

“Humanity doesn’t deserve you,” she replied. Then, “I meant that in a good way, Sir. You have your faults,” she wagged a finger at me, still hurt that I hadn’t trusted her. “But, overall, you are a brilliant commander. Who needs to trust his trusted people.”

“I hear that loud and clear.”

“Great.” Her shoulders shuddered slightly, as she came down off the adrenaline high. “How about we adjourn this meeting of the mutual admiration society, and get to work on crafting a story for Command?”

“Wait. I’m going to ask for your judgment on this, because I don’t trust myself. Should we bring in Smythe? Get his perspective?”

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “That’s as far as this secret should go, but, he may raise a concern we haven’t thought of.”

“Good, uh,” I tapped my laptop to pull up the STAR team schedule. They had downtime for the next three hours, so Smythe was probably in the gym or at the gunnery range. “Skippy, ping Smythe and tell him I want him in my office, at his earliest convenience.” The leader of our Special Tactics Assault Regiment team would correctly interpret the polite phrase ‘earliest convenience’ as ‘right effing now’, and be here in five minutes or less.

Simms pulled out her phone. “I’ll let the duty officer know she has the conn indefinitely.”

“Right. If the three of us are going to be here for a while, should I get snacks?”

“Yes,” she laughed, and damned, it sounded good to hear that.

“Healthy snacks?”

Another arched eyebrow. “Of course.”

“Then,” I reached for my zPhone. “I’ll just order coffee.”

It was a good thing we brought in Smythe. First, it told me something about him, that he was not shocked to learn I had lied, and that the whole wormhole crashing thing was a bluff. Or, he was shocked, and his British reserve didn’t let him show it.

“Smythe, I am sorry I didn’t read you into this before. It wasn’t anything personal.”

“You had to make a judgment call, Sir,” he said stiffly. “And you did.”

“Good. It’s-”

“It was the wrong call,” he added. “But it was yours to make.”

“I won’t, uh, do it again.” It sounded as lame to me as it did to them. They knew what I really meant was ‘unless I think it is necessary’.

I suck.

Anyway, it was good that Smythe joined us, he did offer a different perspective. A better idea. His suggestion was that we pretend to temporarily crash a network in Maxohlx territory, after the Navy struck sites in Bosphuraq territory. Send a signal that we knew who was really responsible for the attack against Earth, and that the rotten kitties were not getting away with it. Punish the Bosphuraq yes, but retaliate the same way they hit us; with conventional weapons. That would send a couple signals. That we knew they had been forced into the attack by their asshole patrons, and that we did not consider the Bosphuraq to be much of a long-term threat. Sending that signal would hurt the prestige of the birdbrains within their coalition, and weaken the coalition overall. So, bonus.

With a change of focus from the Bosphuraq to their patrons, we had to go back to Square One and select a target wormhole network, with the same criteria. Candidate networks needed to have a small number of active wormholes, and be in important territory so the shut down would hurt the kitties enough to scare them. Because we were now talking about acting against a senior species, we had other considerations. Like, the wormholes had to be easy in, easy out for us, limiting the possibility of Valkyrie being detected and trapped. Also, because the self-image of the arrogant Maxohlx was so fragile, we couldn’t hurt them so badly that they felt their existence was threatened.

What a bunch of assholes. They acted like the toughest species in the galaxy, but we had to worry about their wittle pussycat feelings. Damn, I freakin’ hate them.

UNEF Command loved our plan. To be more accurate, the politicians in charge of the member governments loved the plan, though it helped that the military brass assigned to the Command staff recommended to go forward with our plan, subject of course to minor changes.

There were many reasons Command loved our idea. The Navy loved it, because they had not liked the idea of Valkyrie going out alone, getting all the action and all the glory. We were all one big happy fleet, but there was an unspoken, and sometimes loudly spoken, rivalry between Task Force Black and the regular Navy. The member governments loved the notion of our Navy striking the Bosphuraq, because human starships pounding enemy sites would provide great visuals for the public at home. Skippy crashing wormhole networks had a more damaging impact than mundane orbital strikes, but other than the image of a wormhole winking out to show a blank space, you couldn’t see anything. What governments on Earth wanted was satisfyingly dramatic video of wholesale destruction, caused by vengeance-seeking UN starships. Navy strikes would provide that.

By the way, if you think no government would approve a risky military strike just to boost morale back home, I suggest you Google the Doolittle Raid of April 1942, as one very famous example.

With the decision made, Command issued orders to me as leader of the SMG, and I carried orders for Admiral Zhao. He was to form a 3rd Fleet from whatever Extinction-class battlecruisers were ready at Ragnar Station, and take those ships, plus whatever other ships he thought necessary, to attack a suggested list of sites in Bosphuraq territory. He was also required not to risk major losses of UN ships, so the propaganda value of the operation didn’t backfire on us. Zhao was to use his discretion about when to attack, but he would read between the lines of the orders, and know he couldn’t wait until all twelve battlecruisers at Ragnar were ready. The public on Earth couldn’t wait that long. They wanted revenge, they wanted to know we had hit the enemy harder than they had hit us, hard enough that no one would ever think of attacking Earth again.

That’s what the general public on Earth wanted. Zhao would do his best to deliver what we realistically could, which inevitably would fall short of the wish list dumped on his shoulders. I did not envy the guy, what he was being asked to do was very difficult.

I also had new orders: Valkyrie was first to open the doors to Jaguar base then to Ragnar, then we would escort the 3rd Fleet to scout their target sites. There was a strong probability that the Maxohlx had ships stationed near Bosphuraq star systems, that were logical candidates for a retaliatory strike. If you think the kitties would be reluctant to tangle with us, you are wrong about that. They would love an opportunity to hit our Navy while our ships were conducting an orbital strike. In one fight, they could prove to their coalition the value of having powerful patrons, they could test the capabilities of the upgraded battlecruisers we stole from them, and they could show the galaxy that humans are not invincible.

But wait, you might ask; if the Maxohlx were negotiating the outlines of a peace treaty with us, or at least a ceasefire, why would they risk that by hitting our ships?

Because, under our proposed agreement with them, we were supposed to settle any disputes with future negotiations, not with weapons. The Maxohlx had a right to defend their clients, and our ships would be the aggressors, coming into Bosphuraq star systems with hostile intent.

Politics. It sucks.

Depending on how well we could avoid engaging the Maxohlx, the 3rd Fleet would strike targets, with Valkyrie providing escort. Zhao was to use his judgment to determine when to halt the campaign. If his ships turned the first target into a smoking ruin, that might be enough, and he could reduce risk by flying to FOB Jaguar for replenishment. Whenever he decided the 3rd Fleet had caused enough havoc, Valkyrie would be released to perform our own mission: crashing a wormhole network in Maxohlx territory.

We would not announce our intention to crash a network, and we certainly would not tell anyone which species would be our target. The information that we intended to crash a network was limited to Zhao and a few people on his staff, and even they didn’t know which wormhole network we planned to shut off. Hopefully, the rotten kitties would think the worst was over after we ended our strikes against the Bosphuraq, so having one of their own networks suddenly collapse would come as a complete shock.

Hopefully.

Outbound, every corner of Valkyrie was crammed with people, gear and supplies. In addition to replacements for our own crew, we had four hundred and twenty six people to augment Zhao’s crews at forward operating bases Jaguar and Ragnar, a pitifully inadequate number. The ship was crowded. Even with part of a docking bay dedicated to extra air filtration equipment, Bilby had to carefully monitor the carbon dioxide level of the air, and use of the gym was restricted to ten hours a day. I lived in my office, because eight new people were sharing my cabin. They were living in luxury, compared to the people who slept in bunks that were stacked between pallets in cargo bays. The galley served only one hot meal a day, with dinner being served in five shifts. No, we did not resort to drinking banana sludges, but breakfasts were buffet style with a limited menu, and lunches were sandwiches every single day. The greatest inconvenience was a lack of water. Two fresh water tanks had been loaded aboard for drinking and cooking, but there was not enough water-recycling capacity for everyone to shower every day. Simms set up a schedule for showers that were restricted to two minutes each, three days a week.

Wow.

Skippy did not even complain once about the monkey smell inside the ship. He didn’t have to. We could all smell ourselves.

It did not help that during the cruise out to FOB Jaguar, the new people were not chilling in their bunks all day. They were busy learning their new jobs. We were all so busy that I had to fill in as a dropship flight instructor. And Skippy didn’t even joke about it, I don’t think he had time.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The galley at lunch was super crowded, even with people just grabbing stuff for sandwiches or whatever. When I saw the line stretching out the door and around a bend in the passageway, I squeezed by and went straight for my office, where a mini fridge was conveniently tucked under the desk.

As I put items on the desk and nudged the fridge closed with a foot, Skippy’s avatar appeared, shaking his head at me. “That’s your lunch, Joe? A Rip It energy drink, and a candy bar?”

“Hey, I’m trying to get some work done,” I opened my laptop. “I don’t have time to eat in the galley today.”

“That is not a lunch. It’s more like a snackcident.”

“Give me a break, OK?”

“What would your hero General Eisenhower think of that lunch?”

“He was a soldier, Skippy,” I said as I pulled the tab on the Rip It and took a gulp. “He would understand. Besides, this is a Snickers bar. It has peanuts, see? Plenty of protein.”

“That is not a good-”

“Also, I have a handful of these little tomatoes,” I said, popping one in my mouth. “So, I’m getting my veggies too.”

“Tomatoes are a fruit, knucklehead.”

“Are not.”

“Yes, they are.”

“For realz? Cool. Hey! Does that mean ketchup is a smoothie?”

“It is not- Ugh. I suppose you could say-”

“Awesome. Tomorrow, I’m having French fries with a tomato smoothie for lunch. I’ll tell Simms you recommended it as part of a balanced diet.”

“Do not tell her I said that! She won’t believe you anyway,” he sniffed.

“Right, because you are so trustworthy. Skippy, you have zero credibility. If you denied being involved in sinking the freakin’ Titanic, everyone would assume you were involved.”

“Ugh. I hate my life. Hey! I’m trying to help a brother out here, why am I the bad guy?”

“Because nagging me is not ‘helping’,” I made air quotes with my fingers.

“I meant ‘help’ like, I can have a bot deliver something healthy from the galley.”

I paused, ready to tear open the Snickers bar. “You can do that?”

“You can do that, knucklehead. You’re the captain of this ship, duh.”

“That’s not the only issue, duh. The crew is busy, I can’t have a freakin’ bot standing in the chow line for me.”

“The bot can skip the line and go straight into the kitchen, through the service access.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Cool indeed. Would you like a bot to bring you something healthy for lunch?”

“Yes,” I tore open the candy bar and bit into it. “Bring me a bag of chips, please.”

“Seriously? Ugh, I do not know why I bother talking with you.”

While waiting for a bot to bring a bag of chips from the galley, I wanted to research a sciency issue, to I went to my favorite source of information: Wikipedia.

Except I couldn’t.

“Hey, Skippy,” I called the beer can again. “What’s up with the internet? I’m getting an Error 404: File Not Found.”

“Ugh.” His avatar appeared, one hand covering his eyes. “Oh, yuck. Please do not tell me what perverted site you were on.”

“It wasn’t that kind of site,” I could feel my face growing red anyway. “I’m trying to get on Wikipedia.”

“Hmm. That shouldn’t be a problem, let me check. Uh oh. Oopsy.”

“Oopsy?” It was never good when Skippy said ‘Oopsy’. “What did you do this time?”

“Why do you always assume a problem is my fault?”

“Is it?”

“Um, yes, but that is not the point.”

“It is exactly the point. What did you do?”

“Um, well, you know how I updated the local stored version of Earth’s internet, the last time we were there?”

“Yes.” It still freaked me out that he could download THE ENTIRE internet, like it was no big deal. “So?”

“So, I password-protected all the porn, and apparently by mistake, I included sites like Wikipedia behind the firewall.”

“OK, so, can you unlock it for me, please?”

“Um, well, heh heh-”

“Oh, shit.”

“It looks like I forgot the password.”

“You forgot it? Oh my G- Why the hell did you set up a firewall anyway?”

“Because porn is bad for you monkeys.”

“Listen, I know-”

“Joe, It’s bad. Porn gives people a totally unrealistic idea, of how quickly a plumber will come to your house.”

“Oh,” I laughed. “Yeah. You got that right. Can you fix it?”

“I’m trying, numbskull.”

“Numbskull? Remind me, which one of us is the idiot who forgot a password?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“You didn’t put anything important behind the firewall, like the instruction manual for the reactors?”

“No. Hey, I’ve got a lot of important stuff rattling around in my matrix, you knucklehead. Sometimes, I have to prioritize where information gets stored in my memory. It looks like that password didn’t get on top of the list.”

“Did you try p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d?”

“Ugh. It would not be something as simple as- Huh. That’s it.”

“Oh, you are a freakin’ genius, Skippy. No one would have guessed that.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Can I use the internet now?”

“Wait!” He covered his eyes again. “I do not want to see-”

“It’s not porn, I’m on Wikipedia, Skippy.”

“Oh.” He dropped his hand. “Why don’t you ask me, when you need information?”

“Because Wikipedia doesn’t call me a numbskull, and a knucklehead, and a dumdum.”

“Um, are you sure about that?”

My tablet screen suddenly popped up a Wikipedia entry, about me.

The profile photo was Barney the moronic purple dinosaur.

There were other photos, of me as a monkey.

Numbskull and knucklehead were some of the nicer descriptions about me.

I jabbed a finger at his avatar. “You did this?”

“Sadly, no. I didn’t have to. A lot of monkeys on your homeworld hate you, Joe. Although, hmm, there is some inaccurate information about you in there.”

“Thank you,” I slapped the desktop. “Can you fix-”

“Like where the article accuses you of compulsive masturbation? Your habit is chronic, Joe, not compulsive. That is a gross misunderstanding of-”

“Oh my God.”

“See? You choose to frequently-”

“Please make this stop.”

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea to-”

“You know what, Skippy? I changed my mind. I am going to look at porn. I will just type in something weird like-”

“Yuck! Yuck!” His avatar disappeared.

By that time, I had forgotten what the hell I wanted to research, but I couldn’t admit that, so I wasted a half hour reading about neutron stars.

Getting to Jaguar gave us some relief, our crew complement dropped so we only had eighty additional people. The new people had never experienced the wonderous delights of the growing Club Skippy settlement, and they were anxious for shore leave after being crammed together aboard our ship.

“General,” a Marine Corps lieutenant raised a hand to ask a question, after I made farewell remarks in a cargo bay. Most of the people going dirtside would be dispersed to other ships, the Merry Band of Pirates might never see them again. Although, UNEF Command planned to rotate personnel aboard Valkyrie for advanced training, so maybe they would be cycling through again. “What’s it like down there?”

“Club Skippy?” I shook my head. “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

That line drew a laugh, but the Marine grinned back at me. “I’ve been out the main gate of Twentynine Palms, so-”

“Good point,” I conceded. “Seriously, Club Skippy is tents and repurposed shipping containers, but enjoy breathing unfiltered air down there while you can. We are all likely to be stuck inside a starship hull for a while. I know I don’t have to remind you of the ground rules, but remember: do not add to or subtract from the population while you are dirtside. And I do not want to see your names mentioned in the Jaguar Base daily report. Other than that, have fun. Dismissed.”

With the ship a lot less crowded, we were all able to take a three-minute shower every day, and the galley only had two crowded seatings at dinnertime. With the ship’s crew focused on training new people, Smythe’s STAR team took double shifts in the galley, and as a reward I set aside the gym for their exclusive use six hours a day.

The stopover at Jaguar was brief, four days during which I never left orbit. They were four busy days, busy for everyone, so even people determined to get into trouble on the ground really didn’t have much opportunity. My only contact with my family was via video link. Ditto my two conversations with Margaret Adams. I felt bad about us being separated for so long, she straightened me out about that.

“Listen,” I told her, “sorry that we can’t-”

“Joe,” she cut me off abruptly, and if we didn’t have a video link, I would have thought she was pissed at me. “Do not worry about me. I,” she looked away for a moment. “I may have been a little high-maintenance-”

“No, you haven’t,” I objected.

“Will you please shut up?”

Pressing my lips tightly together, I nodded silently.

“I want this to work. Us. You have been,” she took a breath, “doing a lot of the work, and, I have been getting in the way. Getting in my own way,” she muttered to herself. “Do not argue with me,” she preempted my argument. “This is new to me. The relationship thing. I’m still figuring it out, OK? I’m not great at expressing myself, so, I know how I feel about you,” she said with a catch in her voice. “I think I know how you feel, about me. Ugh, I suck at this.”

“No. Honey, you’re doing great.”

“Thank you. What I’m trying so miserably to say is, right now, you have a job to do. Whatever I can do to support you, I will. Don’t worry about me. Worry about kicking alien ass, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“When you come back, I’ll be here. Or,” she tilted her head and grinned. “I’ll be on some Godforsaken rock, fighting aliens and killer robots and getting shot at from orbit.”

“Why do you get to have all the fun?” I grinned back, but my smile faded. “Visit my family while I’m gone, please?”

“I will,” she promised. My mother had told me Margaret visited them whenever she could, which I took as a good sign.

“I won’t say goodbye,” she put two fingers to her lips and pressed them to the camera lens. The she snapped a crisp salute. “I will say ‘good hunting’.”

Zhao decided to take from Jaguar Base two star carriers, one assault carrier, and six destroyers. The former Jeraptha battleships, battlecruisers and heavy cruisers were left behind, he reasoned they couldn’t add much to the combat power of the Extinction-class ships, and he needed their crews for the strike mission. And, because the best place for those crew members to train to operate a former Maxohlx Extinction-class battlecruiser was aboard Valkyrie, we suddenly had another sixty people added to our crew complement. It’s a good thing I was still sleeping in my office. The plan was to rotate people on and off Valkyrie until we reached Ragnar, where Zhao would assess the situation and assign crews as needed.

On the subject of ‘as needed’, Zhao made a request that, while entirely reasonable and sensible, was inconvenient to me. It also made me kind of, sad. Lonely, even. Shortly after we jumped away from Jaguar, I called Simms into my office. “XO, come in,” I waved to her, and pointed to the carafe of coffee on the desk.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and looked at me expectantly.

“I received a request from Zhao,” I explained. “When we get to Ragnar, he wants you to take command of a battlecruiser.”

“Wha-”

“I agree with him. I’m also sending Shepard with you to be your chief pilot, and Mammay as gunnery officer,” I glanced at the list on my laptop. “Also Wu, Chandra, Charbonneau, and about two dozen of our most experienced people. If you want them.”

“That,” she was still processing the surprise announcement. Although, it should not have been a surprise to her. “Will leave Valkyrie’s crew rather thin.”

“I’m hoping it won’t matter. We should not have to do anything during the attacks.”

“Unless something goes sideways,” she stared at me. “Then Valkyrie will be coming to the rescue, without a fully qualified crew.”

“The crew is qualified,” I insisted.

“Inexperienced, then,” she conceded.

“Our crew roster will still be more experienced than any of the people at Ragnar. Either way, some ships will have holes to fill in key personnel slots. Zhao will let me designate people to rotate back here, before we split away to crash a wormhole network,” I said with a glance toward the open door. “Listen, I’m not happy about this. It feels like,” I let out a breath and sat back in my chair. “Like we’re breaking up the band, you know? But, you’re ready for this, to have a ship of your own. More than ready. Other than me, you are the only person with experience in command of a Maxohlx battlecruiser. The ships at Earth don’t count, their engagement with the Bosphuraq was like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“The other Extinction-class ships are not the same as Valkyrie. Their AIs are completely different.”

“I know,” I acknowledged. “You will be starting far ahead of your peers, in learning how to operate a new ship. Simms, you’re not Will Riker, you can’t be my first officer forever. I know,” I added. “You never wanted this job.”

“That’s not,” she looked at the open door, and I caught her meaning. After the door slid closed, she continued. “The point. We are soldiers, we go where we’re needed. Sir, may I speak frankly?”

“Simms, you don’t have permission to not speak frankly.”

“You need me here. You’re a brilliant commander, but-”

“I know my limitations. If you hadn’t fixed the issue of my,” I couldn’t help giving a guilty glance at the firmly-closed and soundproof door, “being less than truthful about recent events-”

“We don’t know that it is fixed. This is only the current crisis.”

“It is,” I acknowledged the obvious. “We have to get past this crisis, to tackle the next one, and whatever comes after that. The best way to check the ‘Accomplished’ box on this mission is to conduct the raid clean and smooth. Get in, hit the birdbrains, get away without significant losses. And with pretty video for the folks back home. To do that, the Navy needs commanders who know how to handle a ship like this, and have the experience and judgment to keep us out of trouble. XO, you have more space combat experience than Zhao has. He originally requested you as a staff officer. I persuaded him that you should be on the front line, that he needs you in command of a ship.”

“What ships are available?” She asked, and I was pleased the conversation had turned to practical matters. “It has to be a ship designated for America,” she noted. The other four permanent members of UNEF would never allow an American to captain one of ‘their’ ships. “Command sent Admiral-”

“Yes, Admiral Cross was sent out to take the first American ship available. Zhao’s authority allows him to countermand orders as he sees fit. Cross will get the second US ship, when it is available.”

“That’s not going to be popular.”

“I don’t give a shit, and neither does Zhao. He is responsible for delivering results, he’s willing to take the political heat later. Cross has a star on his uniform, you have experience.”

“This isn’t because-”

“Because Cross was an officious pain in the ass on the outbound flight? Aboard my ship?” I shook my head. As a one-star admiral, he and I had equivalent ranks, though he had more time in grade. During the flight from Earth, Cross had worked long hours to get himself and his future crew ready. He also had been passive aggressive about letting me know he thought I was not qualified for command. We agreed to disagree, and I let Zhao know that it would be best if Admiral Cross was aboard another ship for the flight to Ragnar. Cross was a fine officer, we just didn’t get along. “No. This is Zhao’s call, not mine. Although when he asked me, I let him know he’d be an idiot to assign you to staff duties.”

“You,” she almost gave me the side-eye. “Didn’t use the word ‘idiot’, did you?”

“You taught me better than that,” I snorted. “So, what do you think?”

“Does it matter what I think?”

“No. Zhao has made the decision, and I’ve agreed to release you from the Special Mission Group. And, yes, it does matter, because your judgment is a big part of why you’re being offered command.”

When I requested she sign up for another tour as my XO, I promised her, and I promised Frank, that she would only have to complete one tour, then she could go do whatever she wants. Then, shit happened. Earth was attacked, again. She understood that  wasn’t keeping her away from Frank, circumstances were. I still felt like it was my fault.

“Then,” she bit her lower lip. “I want to select my crew. Shepard and Mammay, yes, I’ll need to think about the others.”

“Done. Anyone you want from Valkyrie, you can take with you.” When she lifted an eyebrow, I added, “I already cleared that with Zhao. Listen, Captain Simms, we have Skippy and Bilby to run the ship here for us. The battlecruisers we captured had their Maxohlx AIs ripped out, and replaced by a stack of Jeraptha substrate in a cargo bay. Those ships need qualified crews to operate them, their AIs are still learning how to mesh with Maxohlx systems, and we’re still learning how to interact with the new AIs. Skippy won’t be there to help you.”

“Very well.” She still didn’t look very happy. Maybe she was thinking about the enormous mountain of work ahead of her. “When is the transfer effective?”

“Whenever you want, as long as what you want is right now.”

“Seriously?”

“You want less time to put a crew together?”

“No! This is- All right. Who are you getting as your executive officer?”

“That’s a bit of good news. You know that Maverick pilot?”

“Derek Bonsu? He has command of the Boston. Is he-”

“Not him. The other one. Striebich.”

Simms raised her eyebrows. “Irene Striebich agreed to be your XO?”

“No. What she agreed is that she can’t fly a dropship forever. Coming aboard Valkyrie as XO is her best option to get a command slot.”

“Smart,” Simms nodded. “I,” she hesitated. “Don’t know much about her.”

“I know she’s capable, and she adapts quickly to new situations. And Perkins gave her a glowing recommendation.”

“This isn’t because she pulled Dave Czajka’s ass out of the fire on Globakus?”

“It isn’t just because of that. I liked her, the couple times we met.”

“Ha!” She snorted. “You think she won’t nag you about eating junk food.”

Holding up my hands, I said, “I never thought about that.”

“You have your fingers crossed, Sir,”

“Uh, you weren’t supposed to notice that.”

Simms leaned back in her chair, looking around my office, which was extra cluttered with a folded-up cot, and bins for my clothing. “I’m going to miss this ship.”

“The ship is going to miss you.”

“Do Shepard, Mammay and the others know?” She asked.

“Not yet. That can be your first action.”

The next day, Striebich transferred from the star carrier Ganges, and we had a brief ceremony for her to take over as executive officer. Very brief, like, I popped my head out of a flight simulator to shake hands with my new XO, then Simms started giving the former Maverick a crash course on Valkyrie’s systems, while I taught a lesson on how to fly a Panther dropship. Then she got straight to work.

Captain Uhtavio Scorandum, of the Jeraptha Home Fleet’s Ethics and Compliance Office, was eating a light lunch in his rarely-used office at the ECO Annex. It was a very light lunch indeed, consisting of a pickled slava egg, a handful of nuts, and an extremely fine bottle of vintage burgoze.

Really, the food was only there as an excuse to drink in the middle of the day.

He felt a need for a drink, because the work he was doing was so mindless and tedious and totally unnecessary. Home Fleet Intelligence had requested the ECO to provide a wild and entirely useless guess about how the humans would respond to the most recent raid against their homeworld. Intelligence had not actually requested a guess, the official request had phrased it as an ‘estimate of intentions’, but it was the same thing. The request had been received by the civilian minister who was nominally in charge of the Office. Her staff had routed it to the admiral who was responsible for actually making things happen, and his staff routed it down the chain until it plopped on Scorandum’s desk like a dead fish. Also like a dead fish, no one wanted it in their office, and the longer it hung around, the more unpleasant it would get.

So, he was stuck wasting the middle of his day writing an official estimate, which no one would read, and which he would not send to his leadership until after he had given the matter some serious thought, and then placed wagers based on his guesses about what the humans would do. His leadership would ignore the written report, which had to be written anyway because that is how bureaucracy worked all across the galaxy, and they would focus intently on the wagers he placed. His leadership would delay forwarding the report, not only because they felt a need to make minor changes to the report in order to justify their own jobs, but more importantly so they could analyze his wagers, and decide whether maybe Uhtavio ‘Big Score’ Scorandum knew something they didn’t, and so place their own wagers before those sleazy assholes at Home Fleet Intelligence got the precious information.

That is why Uhtavio was sitting in his office, his front set of legs propped up on the desk, while he stared at the ceiling and tried to think of something vaguely intelligent to write into the intelligence estimate. While he stared at the ceiling, he reflected on the fact that, if he was indeed promoted to admiral, his life would consist endlessly of such boring moments, only he would be waiting for some poor jerk down the chain of command to write a report, so he could forward it on to people who would not read it.

What he really wanted to think about was ways to avoid being promoted for as long as possible. Unfortunately, he had a report to write, and it was not the sort of thing he could dump on Lieutenant Kinsta.

So…. What did he think the humans would do? In spite of his comparatively extensive contact with the strange and primitive creatures from the planet Earth, he did not know them at all. His contact had been with a special operations unit, that was likely not typical of their species. The Merry Band of Pirates were a military unit, and while they could make their own decisions about tactics, and sometimes about strategy, matters of policy were controlled by the civilian authorities on Earth.

So, how would human politicians react to the most recent raid on their homeworld? Obviously, they had to follow through on the threat to crash wormhole networks. That was so obvious that Central Wagering at first had not posted options for wagers about if the humans would crash a wormhole network. The only options for action were which network or networks would be crashed, and when. Immediately, protests arose. Since not even the Rindhalu had a map of which wormholes were on which local network, how would anyone know how many networks were involved in a crash? If more than two wormholes stopped working, the humans could claim they had crashed two networks, and no one could dispute them.

Central Wagering reluctantly admitted that, well yes, that was a problem, and they were looking into it. That admission prompted a flurry of wagers about how Central Wagering would fix the problem, to the extreme annoyance of the officials who toiled away in that powerful organization.

Soon after, questions began to be asked. If it was completely obvious that humans would respond by crashing a network, why had the Maxohlx ordered or coerced their clients to conduct the raid? The raid could only weaken one of the key members of that coalition, and weaken the bargaining position of the Maxohlx. Did the senior species intend to observe how the humans switched off a network, so they could learn how to master that technology? Clearly the answer was no, since no one knew which network would be targeted. Regardless of the lack of network maps, Bosphuraq territory had to span a large number of networks. The Maxohlx could not hope to get lucky enough to see the process happening.

So, there had to be another reason why the Maxohlx had forced the Bosphuraq to risk a potentially large portion of their territory becoming isolated. The key word was ‘risk’. The only way the Maxohlx strategy made sense, is if they were testing whether the humans actually could crash a wormhole network as they threatened to do. Maybe the demonstration had used up whatever capability the humans had, and their threats were empty?

As that intriguing notion swept the illegal, underground book-making market, Central Wagering was forced to open action about whether the humans would, or would not, respond by crashing a wormhole network. If they did not, what excuse would they use? And if their response was not the extreme action of shutting down wormholes, what would they do? That is why Home Fleet Intelligence wanted input from the Ethics and Compliance Office.

As he stared at the estimate he was supposed to complete, Uhtavio at first groaned that he had no idea what humans would do. After all, no one in the history of the galaxy had thought of anything like the incredible concept of fantasy sports, until humans did it. Who could predict what such unpredictable creatures would do?

Then, while he thought about it, he realized the question was not impossible to answer. There was a limited set of options the humans could work with. He only needed to judge which options the humans would choose.

Except, the Maxohlx also knew the humans had limited options for retaliation, and they would be poised to interfere.

And, the humans had to know the senior species would be waiting for them, so…

He needed to think about it.

He leaned the couch back to stare out the office window, and was just taking a bite of slava egg, when his aide appeared in the doorway.

“Kinsta,” Captain Scorandum sighed. “We do not have a meeting scheduled this afternoon.”

“Er, no.” The aide froze in the doorway.

“Can’t you see that I am busy?” Scorandum implored, adding a satisfied burp and reaching for the half-empty glass in front of him.

“I can,” the aide stared at the captain’s feet propped on the desk. “Certainly see that you are extremely busy, Sir.”

“By your expression, I am guessing you are not here to make me happy.”

Kinsta tried his best to wipe any trace of expression from his face, and failed miserably. “Would you like to wager about that, Sir?”

“No, Kinsta, it would not be entertaining, for I would only be taking your money. Give me the bad news, please, I already,” he tapped his tablet with a claw, “had enough bad news to deal with for today.”

“I could wait until tomorrow?”

“Would your information, like a fine bottle of burgoze, improve with age?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then hit me with it, please.”

“The Personnel Department wishes to remind you that your annual employee refresher training is due. Overdue, in fact. Overdue for the third time.”

“Ohhhhhh,” Scorandum groaned, slumping in his chair. “Did you try telling them that I was tragically lost in the line of duty?”

“No. We used that excuse last year. You can only come back from the dead once, or it starts to look suspicious,” Kinsta waggled an antenna in an accusing gesture.

“Ha ha,” the ECO captain slapped the desk. “That was a good one, though.”

“It was,” Kinsta admitted. “Sir, Personnel is serious this time. Failure to complete the required training will result in you being placed on double secret probation, and a note will be added to your permanent record.”

“Oh no!” Scorandum claws clutched his face in mock horror. “Please, anything but that!”

“A note in your permanent record will block you from placing wagers on margin.”

“Shit! The Personnel weenies are not playing around.”

“That is why I said they were serious, yes.”

“What is the refresher requirement this time?”

“Twenty six hours of online training.”

“No, no, no,” Scorandum slapped his head hard enough to rattle his brain. “Twenty six hours? Please tell me this is not another boring, poorly-produced presentation, where the video consists of some idiot reading slides to me.”

“You described it perfectly, Sir.”

“Maybe this time, I won’t fake my death.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“No? As I remember, in any training presentation from Personnel, the video is fuzzy and the audio cuts in and out, like even the electrons of the file have given in to soul-crushing despair. Ah, well, I suppose I could sleep through most of it.”

“Not a chance, Sir. There is a new feature they added, which you would know if you hadn’t skipped out of the training last year. An AI monitors your brain waves, to be sure you are paying attention.”

Scorandum slapped the table again. “That is not fair!”

“I can’t argue with you about that.”

“Shit. What are the courses I’m supposed to take?”

“The usual. Military regulations, rules that are specific to the Ethics and Compliance Office. And of course my personal favorite, Diversity Training.”

“Oh, you are kidding me.”

“Sadly, no, Sir.”

“This is bullshit.”

“I am not arguing with you.”

“Diversity training?” Scorandum snorted. “What a joke. That is a total waste of time.”

“The Personnel department thinks diversity is extremely important.”

“Of course they do,” the senior officer snorted.

“Sir, you shouldn’t joke about-”

 “Kinsta, please. Only idiots need to be taught the importance of diversifying their portfolio of wagers. Seriously, who needs training about that?”

“Apparently, enough people that Personnel had to create an entire training course on the subject. People who put too much of their money into a few wagers can quickly become bankrupt, and represent a security risk.”

“I know that. This is a case where a small group of morons ruin things for everyone. When people fail to spread their wagers across a wide variety of topics, they lose. Isn’t that enough of an education?”

“I think so, but,” the aide shrugged with his antennas. “Maybe anyone who doesn’t understand the value of diversifying their portfolios, are also too stupid to learn from their mistakes?”

“So we have to pay for their mistakes, by taking diversity training. All right, Kinsta,” Scorandum gulped down the burgoze from the glass, and set it down with a thump. “I suppose this is my fault. I put this off for too long, and failed to create a plan to get out of this stupid training. Because,” he glared at the junior officer, “I was rather busy, creating other plans, as you know.”

“I do know, Sir. The Personnel department also knows how busy you have been, and how incredibly successful.”

“Then why-”

“They also do not care.”

“Fine! What is the going rate for bribing a clerk in the Personnel department?”

“At this point?” Kinsta’s antennas stood straight up. “When you are already grossly overdue? I think the price would be in the ‘If you have to ask, you can’t afford it’ range.”

“Shit,” the ECO captain grunted.

“Also, you have to remember Personnel’s policy on bribes.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Simply offering a bribe will get me rated as ‘Failing to think creatively’.”

“Sir, if you can’t think of a better way to get out of this training, I will be disappointed.”

“You wound me, Kinsta.”

“This is your fault, for setting an impossibly high standard.”

“I regret to say you are probably right. What is the deadline for this stupid thing?”

“Three days?”

“Three days? That is totally unreasonable! How am I supposed to-”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that, when you allowed the first two deadlines to pass, without completing the training.”

“Oh, I really did not want to do this,” he reached for his tablet. “Kinsta, perhaps you should leave. I have to do something you probably don’t want to know about.”

Instead of leaving, the lieutenant pulled a couch from the wall and sat on it. “Then I will consider this on-the-job training, Sir. I always appreciate opportunities for education.”

“Er, it is rather unsavory. It might make you uncomfortable.”

“Simply being in ECO makes me uncomfortable.”

“Good point. Very well,” Scorandum took a breath. “I have a contact in the Personnel department. She has what you might call a ‘gambling problem’.”

Kinsta’s only response was to slowly blink, as his brain blew a fuse. “You mean,” he sputtered. “You mean she doesn’t gamble?”

“No! No, I didn’t say she is an ignorant savage. Of course she gambles.”

“Then, what is the problem?”

“Well, this is a secret, but, she was asked to leave Gambler’s Anonymous.”

“She- Wow. They asked her to leave? How do you get thrown out of that organization?”

“Let’s just say her participation in the group was not conducive to them remaining anonymous.”

“Excuse me, Sir. I’m still trying to imagine how anyone could be thrown out of Gambler’s Anonymous.” Kinsta knew that group had been founded for the purpose of helping people who had lost their mojo, to remember how fun and exciting gambling could be. Like most charitable organizations, GA had eventually branched out into other worthy endeavors such as money laundering, prostitution and extortion. There had been a major scandal several decades ago, when GA’s reputation took a hit from getting into activities universally considered sleazy: politics. But, their core mission still involved the most noble of causes: encouraging people to participate in juicy wagering action. “The primary purpose of that group,” Kinsta protested, “is to allow participants to gamble, without the bookies at Central Wagering knowing who placed the wagers. That’s why they are called ‘Anonymous’.”

“Exactly! That is the problem. My contact is so good at wagering, that bookies refused to take any action from anyone in her GA chapter, because she was costing them a fortune. Then when she tried to spread the action across multiple chapters, Central Wagering froze GA’s accounts.”

“Oooh,” Kinsta shuddered. “I heard about that, but I thought it was just a crazy rumor.”

“It was a rumor, and it was crazy. It was also completely true.”

“Unbelievable,” Kinsta shook his head. “I still don’t see how this helps you address your issue with the Personnel department.”

“Can you imagine being banned from placing any wagers? The horrible pain of not getting any action at all?”

“It would be like a horror movie.”

“You know it. So, really, I would be helping her.”

“Forgive me if I question the purity of your motives, Sir.”

“Kinsta, this is what is known as a Win-Win situation. She marks me down as having completed this useless annual training, and I allow her to place wagers anonymously,” Scorandum fairly bounced on his couch as he typed out the message and hit ‘Send’.

“How are you- Oh, no. Sir, you are allowing her to place wagers under your name?”

“No. Of course not. I don’t want the Bookies Guild to raise the odds when I wager.”

“Oh, thank G- Then how,” Kinsta blinked. “How are you-”

“Er, well, this is why I suggested you leave my office, because it might make you uncomfortable.”

“How would-”

“I just gave her access to your wagering accounts.”

“My accounts?!”

“Yes,” Scorandum chuckled. “I’m not stupid, Kinsta.”

The lieutenant threw up his arms, claws shaking. “How is this Win-Win for me?”

“Um, well, I guess the situation is best described as Win-Win-Lose, if you want to be picky about it.”

“I can’t believe you did that!”

“I thought you appreciated opportunities for education?”

“Not like this!”

“Well, did you learn something or not? Wait! Ha! I just got a reply. Hmm, there was an unfortunate glitch in my personnel records. It seems that I did complete the required courses on time. Ooh, they also gave me high marks for ‘Creative problem solving’!”

“Sir,” Kinsta took a drink of burgoze right from the bottle. “The next time you are in trouble with the bureaucracy, remind me not to help you.”

“See? This has been educational for you!”

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

“Your thoughts, General Bishop?” Admiral Zhao looked at me, as we stood around the holographic display tank in the conference room aboard his flagship, the battlecruiser Qiánghàn. Along with assembling a United Nations 3rd Fleet attack force from the seven battlecruisers available at Ragnar Station, Zhao had issued a directive that the former Extinction-class ships be referred to as the Courageous class. It made sense to assign a new class designation to ships that had been through the extensive refit process at Ragnar Station, in many ways they were radically different from the ships we were gifted by the ECO. The lead ship our new Maxohlx battlecruisers to complete refit had been named Yonggan when it reached Earth, ‘Yonggan’ being a Chinese word that translates to courageous or brave, something like that. Zhao didn’t like using alien names for our ships, enemy alien names. and he sure didn’t like them being associated with extinction, not with our homeworld under threat from the cloud. On that subject, I completely agreed with him.

And yes, technically, the ships were designated as the Yonggan class, but as Skippy says, I barely speak English, so I thought of them as the ‘Courageous’ class. Whatever. That’s what happens when you assemble an international force.

“I think,” I manipulated the holo controls to zoom out, so the star at the heart of the Tassafordonda system looked like a yellow golf ball. “This name of this battle will cause confusion for generations of military historians.”

While others around the tank looked at me in confusion, Zhao knew what I meant. “I wish you had not mentioned the reference,” he grimaced. “The Battle of Tassaforonga in the Great Pacific War, was a serious defeat for the attacking force.”

“That depends on your definition of who was the aggressor,” I said. What Zhao referred to as the Great Pacific War, Americans called the Pacific Theater of World War Two. “The Japanese had the initiative back then. Here, we can decide whether to engage or not. We have the initiative.”

My barracks lawyering was not convincing him. “Tassaforonga was a disaster for the American fleet. After the battle, you had only a handful of cruisers operational in the entire Pacific Theater.”

“It was a tactical defeat for the US Navy,” I pointed out. “But a strategic victory. The Japanese,” I avoided looking at Commander Ozawa of Japan as I spoke. “Were unable to resupply their forces on Guadalcanal, and they withdrew a few months later.”

“We cannot afford tactical defeats.” He studied the image, then returned its area of display to the formation of enemy warships that were the focus of the discussion.

Enemy warships.

Maxohlx warships.

As UNEF Command suspected, the rotten kitties anticipated we would retaliate against the Bosphuraq, and they positioned task forces of their own ships outside the star systems we were most likely to strike. The Bosphuraq had a thin screen of their own ships ranged around their habitable planets, with picket ships in stealth at various distances from the worlds they were protecting. The enemy tactics were clear: the Bosphuraq defenses deliberately appeared weak to lure us in for an attack. As their ships near the target world avoided engaging us, other than wrapping our ships in a damping field, the picket ships would jump out to summon their patrons to give us a beat-down.

UNEF Command had provided Zhao with a suggested list of targets, based on data provided by Skippy about known Bosphuraq defenses, planetary populations, industrial development and output, location relative to wormholes to provide ingress and egress, and a whole lot of other factors. Zhao had a tough job, he had to avoid any engagement that carried a significant risk of losing even one of our new battlecruisers, while still striking a target important enough to be considered revenge for the attack against Earth. If all the Navy accomplished was pounding some isolated planets no one ever heard of, the galaxy would view us as weak, and we would be in a poor position to negotiate a meaningful deal with the senior species.

We had a couple advantages going for us.

First, the enemy expected that an orbital bombardment of a Bosphuraq world would be secondary to us crashing a wormhole network in birdbrain territory. We knew that, because Skippy had intercepted message traffic between Bosphuraq ships, warning not to get into a position where they could access only one Elder wormhole, in case we crashed one of ‘their’ networks. That unusual deployment of ships meant the birdbrains had left some of their star systems very lightly defended; those were systems located near only a single active wormhole.

Our second advantage was also due to the continued awesomeness of Skippy. The communications security of the Maxohlx was exceptional, and they demanded their clients also lock down any and all information, about the presence or absence or Maxohlx warships at a star system. The Bosphuraq complied in admirable fashion, apparently avoiding the use of data relay stations entirely, and not even transmitting sensitive information via encrypted bursts between ships. Apparently, they carried messages between ships by hand, or in the case of the birdbrains, by claw. Information was exchanged face to face, strictly on an as-needed basis.

There was not, Skippy complained, much for him to work with.

But, Skippy the Magnificent is awesome, in case you hadn’t heard.

He had his way with Bosphuraq relay stations, and absorbed yottabytes or whatever he calls it, of unclassified data. The information came from civilian databases, including mundane information about commercial transactions.

Probably no one else would think the information about civilian commerce was important, that’s why none of it was encrypted. But, Skippy’s ginormous brain noticed that in certain Bosphuraq star systems, local merchants were stocking up on food delicacies and other luxury goods favored by the Maxohlx. Those enterprising merchants had somehow heard rumors of their exalted patrons having ships near their star systems, and the merchants anticipated that the Maxohlx, bored while stuck inside their ships waiting for us to attack, might use Bosphuraq picket ships as couriers to procure fresh food and other items to make the dull routine more tolerable. Or, perhaps the Maxohlx would like to celebrate, after they smashed the human Navy. Either way, it gave us an unexpected and excellent indication, of which star systems were likely to have Maxohlx task forces nearby.

We confirmed Skippy’s information in three star systems, our little former Jeraptha destroyers using their advanced stealth to scout for signs not of stealthed Maxohlx warships, but of their client picket ships jumping in, remaining for a short time, and jumping away. Our scouts launched stealthy, high-speed probes that confirmed the presence of Maxohlx warships, based on the dent their mass made in spacetime, and from trace gases unavoidably leaking from those ships.

Zhao scratched those systems off the list. Even Skippy could only guess which type of enemy ships were in stealth, but he knew for certain their substantial mass meant an enemy task force bigger than anything the 3rd Fleet could comfortably handle. After scouting and rejecting five star systems, we narrowed our list of potential targets to star systems that represented less risk to us. Less risk did not mean no risk, Zhao still had an objective to accomplish.

That is why he called for a conference of all captains aboard his flagship, while he considered whether to attack the star system the Bosphuraq called Tassafordonda. The Bosphuraq defenses at the inhabited planet there were nothing our ships couldn’t handle, even without Skippy. The problem was, we had detected a formation of Maxohlx warships about two lighthours from the target planet. A formation of ships that were waiting to ambush us, if we jumped in to bombard the planet from orbit.

Zhao could have sent in only a few ships to conduct the orbital bombardment, keeping the other battlecruisers in reserve to respond if the Maxohlx attacked. When they attacked.

He wasn’t going to keep any ships in reserve.

Because we weren’t searching for the presence of Maxohlx warships to decide whether attacking the planet was worth the risk.

We were hunting for them.

Yeah.

That surprised me too.

When I understood that the Maxohlx would very likely position task forces near Bosphuraq star systems, to ambush our raiding force, I knew a normal brain would have had a reaction something like ‘Danger Will Robinson’! My brain instead said, ‘That sounds like a target-rich environment’. Back when I presented the concept of attacking the kitties rather than avoiding them, I expected Admiral Zhao to shoot me down, so I went into the meeting armed with a slick deck of PowerPoint slides to dazzle him. But, when he heard the prospect of the enemy positioning isolated battlegroups that could not support each other, he immediately saw a tempting opportunity to defeat the enemy in detail.

So, the good news is I didn’t need to persuade him to attack.

The bad news is, I wasted many hours on that PowerPoint deck, for nothing.

Damn it.

I worked hard on that thing.

As a side note, UNEF might also have been surprised that their hand-picked Navy commander was eager to go looking for trouble, taking his ships into harm’s way. The rumor was that UNEF had selected Zhao because they expected him to be the anti-Bishop: calm, steady, cautious, predictable. Someone UNEF Command could control. Maybe he had been holding back his aggressive instincts until he got the UN Navy commander slot, or maybe his career just hadn’t given him an opportunity to be anything more than a glorified staff officer. My original impression of him was that he was boring and stodgy, and my original impression was dead wrong. Our new Navy was lucky to have a leader like him.

Anyway, Zhao wasn’t going to wait for the enemy to respond, he planned to jump in to surround the Maxohlx task force, and beat the shit out of them. Make a statement.

It was a bold and risky strategy.

Maybe not so risky, when you consider that he had to conduct a raid somewhere, and any star system important enough to be a worthy target for us, would almost certainly have at least a battlegroup of Maxohlx ships waiting to pounce on us. It was better to hit them before they hit us.

If we could do that.

There were two questions Zhao had to take into account. First, what were our new ships capable of doing in combat? And second, how heavy was the opposition?

“I don’t know that we’ll find a better opportunity, Sir,” I pointed at the synthetic image of the Maxohlx formation, sticking the tip of my finger inside the hologram, so it tingled slightly. Our scout destroyers had again located what might be a formation of stealthed Maxohlx warships, and confirmed the presence of senior-species ships by sending probes on a fly-by. We were waiting for Skippy to process the probe data.

“We don’t have to act immediately,” said Admiral Cross. The two of us got along a lot better after he left my ship. He had taken command of the Independence at Ragnar, and I had to admit the guy was busting his ass to get his ship and crew ready for a fight.

“No,” Zhao agreed. “We do need to act soon.”

“Every day we delay, gives us time to bring our crews up to speed,” Cross said, looking at me as if he expected me to object.

I held up my hands. “Valkyrie is ready to fight, I can’t speak for anyone else. It took us a long time to get the ship flightworthy. There are not even training manuals yet for the Yonggan-class ships, it-”

Zhao interrupted. “Every day gives us time to prepare, and every day gives the enemy more time to attack Earth again. Everyone in the galaxy is waiting for us to respond, each day we do nothing makes us look weaker. Admiral Cross, is your ship ready, or not?”

Cross stiffened. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He was trying to decide how to respond. Zhao wouldn’t relieve Cross of command, but he could assign Independence to a humiliating supporting role. He also knew that Zhao read the daily reports from each ship, of progress made toward qualifying the crews, and integrating the Jeraptha AIs with the alien ship’s electronic architecture. Still, it was Cross’s call whether he thought it would be suicide to take his untested ship and crew into battle. “Skippy says Independence’s AI is capable of handling the ship in basic combat maneuvers, under controlled conditions. If we sustain significant battle damage, and have to rely on backup systems,” he held a hand out, palm upward.

I felt sympathy for Cross, and also for Zhao. The Admiral in command of the 3rd Fleet, and of the United Nations Navy overall, had a very tough call to make. “Bishop?” Zhao turned his attention back to me. “If our ships get into trouble?”

My eyes flicked to Simms, who was standing next to Admiral Cross. It would be unprofessional to say that, if the attacking force got into trouble, the Merry Band of Pirates would assist Simms’s ship first. It was also the reality, and everyone knew it. “We will do our best, Sir.”

“I can’t ask for anything else. Skippy?”

“Um, yes?” The beer can’s avatar shimmered to life, to the side of the main hologram.

“Have you developed a better estimate of the opposition?” Zhao meant, the number and types of Maxohlx warships concealed within their stealth fields.

“Um, wow, that’s a tough one. You understand that, without active sensors, I have to rely on extremely vague data about the sizes and shapes of their stealth fields, trace gases, molecules flaking off the hulls, and the way their masses create a dent in spacetime? That is not much information to work with.”

“Yes. You are, however, awesome, as I have been led to believe?” Zhao’s eyes flicked from Skippy to me.

“You are questioning my awesomeness?” Skippy didn’t even look mad, he just couldn’t believe it.

“Impress me.”

“Okaaaaay. Well, based on all that very vague data I just mentioned, all I can do is make an educated guess. The opposition is one battleship of the older Punisher-class. There are also three heavy cruisers, of two different types, they are also older ships that are no longer considered to be front line combat vessels. Plus there is an escort squadron consisting of six destroyers, with one of those destroyers being an almost brand-new ship- I can tell because the outer ceramic coating of the armor has not had time to wear away from micrometeorite impacts, and still has the ‘new ship’ shine to it. Where was I? Oh yes. Finally, there is a transport ship that I suspect is used for carrying spare parts and fuel, and perhaps for crew R&R.” He paused. “If you like, I can venture guesses on the exact names of the other ships in the task force, although I would be relying on incomplete records, so my guesses would only be forty nine percent accurate, and-”

“No,” Zhao laughed, the first time I’d seen him laugh in weeks. “That will not be necessary, Mister Skippy. I apologize for questioning your awesomeness.”

“Hmmph,” Skippy sniffed.

“Four heavy combatants, plus six escorts,” Zhao considered. “Against seven of our battlecruisers.”

“Eight,” I reminded him quietly.

“Seven,” he insisted. We had gone over that argument several times. “I will not act, unless we can conduct the attack without assistance from Valkyrie.”

We’d had the argument, and he had made the decision, so I just nodded. It was his call.

“Mister Skippy, can you model an engagement?” Zhao requested.

“OK, will do. And, done.”

“Done?” Zhao looked at me in surprise.

I shrugged. “Like I said, Skippy is awesome.”

“To be clear,” Skippy explained, and there wasn’t even a hint of boastfulness in his tone. To him, it was not something worth bragging about. “I created a wargame model, programmed with known performance characteristics of the ships involved on both sides. Then I ran various scenarios through the model roughly four hundred million times-”

“Four hundred million,” Zhao muttered to himself.

“There are a lot of variables,” Skippy said. “I quickly learned what works and what doesn’t work. For example, you mentioned attacking with only seven battlecruisers. That would be a mistake. The model clearly shows you should include your destroyer squadron in the fight.”

“To risk lesser-technology vessels would be-”

“Smart. It would be smart,” Skippy insisted. “If you deploy them properly. Remember, escort ships have less armor plating, weaker shields and fewer missile launchers and cannons. But they carry the same type of missiles. The enemy is certain to bring their destroyers into the fight, most likely they will throw their entire squadron at a single one of your battlecruisers. My wargame model shows the highest probability of a successful attack is for your destroyers to engage theirs, and keep their squadron scattered.”

Zhao leaned forward on the rail around the holographic display sphere. “Show me.”

“Captain Simms,” I said as casually as I could, not emphasizing the title of ‘captain’. She was a fellow starship commander, nothing more, nothing less. Except that was one thousand percent bullshit, and we both knew it. So did the bridge crews of both our ships, Valkyrie and Defiant. Tamara Jennifer Simms was special. She was special to me. She had saved our ship more than once, and saved my sorry ass more times than I can count. Sometimes she felt a need to act like a surrogate mother, but only when I needed that, whether it irritated me or not. Maybe especially when it irritated me. She had been with me since the beginning, when we flew away from Paradise on a wing and a prayer, having not one single clue what a mind-bogglingly weird journey lay ahead of us. Other than Adams and Chang, Simms had been with me the longest, through terror, tragedy and triumph.

My feelings for her were complicated: respect, admiration, gratitude, guilt when I did something she wouldn’t approve of that I knew I shouldn’t be doing, and affection. Not that kind of affection, but, yeah, I had pretty strong feelings for her. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to be safely outside the galaxy, with Frank, worrying about growing things in the new ecosystem there, rather than worrying about the survival of humanity.

Unfortunately for Simms, humanity needed her to step up again, so that a miserable ball of mud infested with monkeys did not perish.

“Captain Bishop,” she replied, one side of her mouth curling up in a brief smile. She looked tired, and I knew from looking in the mirror that morning that I looked just as weary. Everyone aboard all the ships with us had been grinding long hours to prepare for battle, a battle we would not be fully ready for, unless Zhao delayed the engagement far longer than the governments of Earth were prepared to wait. There was no time for proper work-ups with the new crew members, no opportunity to conduct real-life war games to develop and test new tactics. We ran one combat simulation after another, until my brain was numb and I didn’t know whether I was truly learning anything or not. Whatever level of mental exhaustion I felt, it had to be worse for Simms. She had taken command of the battlecruiser Defiant, one of the ships designated for use by multiple nations. That had been Zhao’s decision, when we reached Ragnar and learned only seven of the battlecruisers there would be through the refit process in time to join the strike. The other four ships could only get partial upgrades, until we acquired more raw materials, and that might not happen until after we completely disassembled Ragnar Station and moved it to FOB Jiayuguan.

So, Simms got the Defiant, one of the ships designated for an international crew, while Admiral Cross got the American Independence. With seven ships available, Zhao tagged five for the five permanent UNEF member nations, with two for international uses as UNEF saw fit. Zhao had the Qiánghàn as his flagship, a ship I thought of by its translated name ‘Intrepid’. None of those ships were my responsibility, but like I said, Simms is special, and the crew of Valkyrie had a soft spot in our hearts for the Defiant.

“Are you ready?” I asked. We were both in our respective offices, hers looked identical in form to mine, but a lot nicer in detail. She had photos on the wall, I had never done that. Note to self: stop living like I’m in a barracks.

If she looked tired before, my question made a great wave of weariness flash across her face. “No. We need a year, six months at least, just to learn how to maneuver these ships in combat. They are a lot different from Valkyrie.”

“Faster reactions,” I said, based on what I had observed when the Courageous-class ships conducted exercises, while we waited for the star carriers to recharge. The Jeraptha AIs of the new ships did not have the restrictions that prevented Skippy from controlling the flight of Valkyrie, or firing weapons. Courageous-class ships only needed clumsy monkeys to tell the AI what they wanted, then the AI made the ship move, or aimed and fired the weapons much faster than any biological being could. Valkyrie’s crew had gotten exceptionally good at working within the restrictions, and Bilby was steadily nibbling away at his own internal restrictions. Originally, Bilby had the same restrictions as Skippy, because his basic programming has been provided by Skippy. While Skippy unfortunately was unable to help Bilby grow, it appeared that Bilby could adjust his own programming without interference. For example, the point-defense cannons were now almost fully automated, requiring only a ‘Weapons Free’ authorization from the bridge. Our mighty battlecruiser also dodged and weaved during evasive maneuvers without the pilots needing to think about it or to issue specific instructions.

A Courageous-class ship could react more quickly than Valkyrie could, though still awkwardly compared to a Maxohlx ship. Skippy was confident the upgrades would give our ships an edge in combat.

Skippy would hopefully be sitting out the fight, so maybe his opinion was not as comforting as he thought.

“Faster,” Simms agreed. “That’s a positive. On the negative side of the ledger, Defiant’s armor plating is thinner in critical areas, the shield generators overall are not as robust. What bothers me most is the point-defense system is slow compared to Valkyrie.”

“Skippy is working on that. He told me it’s still an improvement over what the ships had when we took them. You, uh, want me to ask him to work faster?”

She gave me a hint of a smile. “I already did that. It’s a hardware issue, there’s only so much he can do with the gear aboard our ships. There is a plan for another round of upgrades,” she stopped to rub her temples.

“Yeah, I know. When we get the materials, and the time.” Skippy had assembled Valkyrie from multiple ships, taking the best items from each hull, and using the leftovers as spare parts and raw material for the ship’s fabricators to build components more advanced than anything the Maxohlx had. Since the Lego pieces of the ship were put together, he had been constantly tweaking and adjusting and upgrading. And constantly whining that the ship needed more tweaking and adjusting and upgrading. We couldn’t do that with the new ships, because there simply wasn’t enough of the critical exotic materials for the fabricators at Ragnar to work with. UNEF Command had rejected the option of tearing apart three of our new battlecruisers to feed into the fabricators, for upgrading the fifteen other ships. Damn. Not too long ago, the UN regular Navy had zero Maxohlx battlecruisers. Sooner or later, the Command would have to face the reality that it is impossible to keep all eighteen ships operational, and I’m betting they would get slapped in the face with that reality soon. Like, after the upcoming battle. Unless our battle damage was of the ‘best case scenario’ level, we didn’t have enough spare parts to bring all seven ships up to full combat readiness, so Zhao would have hard decisions to make. Whatever he did, he was sure to get second-guessed by politicians on Earth. That was nothing new. The US Congress is quick to vote for buying shiny new tanks, jets and ships, but unexciting stuff like spare parts and maintenance gets cut from the budget.

OK, enough about nerdy logistics details.

“Simms, Skippy is confident this attack will be a success. You’ve seen the simulations.”

“I have seen what Skippy thinks will happen. I also know that absent-minded beer can always forgets something,” she looked at the ceiling, even though Skippy was not aboard her ship. The beer can wisely chose not to say anything. “I wish Zhao didn’t insist Valkyrie remain hidden during the battle. I think he’s wrong about that.”

“He wants the kitties to know the Navy can kick ass, without Valkyrie. We’ll be there in an instant, if needed. Don’t worry about us, you-”

She looked to the side for a moment, and muted the conversation while she spoke with her crew. Then she looked back at me. “I have to go.”

“Trouble?”

“Nothing other than the usual. See you on the other side, Sir.”

“See you later, Captain Simms.”

To prepare for the battle, Valkyrie had to slow down. Accompanied by the destroyer squadron, we decelerated until our velocity relative to the enemy formation was less than two thousand kilometers per second. At that point, the destroyers cut thrust to coast onward, while our mighty battlecruiser continued to fire the main reactionless engines. When we also cut thrust, we were moving at the same speed and in the same direction as the enemy ships, at a distance of nine lighthours. We were also several lightminutes from the 3rd Fleet, which was growing more distant every second.

The first action of the battle was the destroyer Wenzhou jumping in seven lightminutes from the enemy, near one of the probes that had been launched earlier. The probe confirmed that there was no detectable change in the status of the enemy ships, so the Wenzhou jumped back near the 3rd Fleet’s flagship to report. Moments later, a signal was sent to Valkyrie, through the microwormhole that was about to be severed. The operation was a ‘Go’.

The destroyer Boston was first into the fight, accompanied by the Chennai and the Cordoba. The three escort ships immediately lit off their active sensors, flooding the area with powerful waves of radiation that quickly pinpointed the enemy ships, regardless of their sophisticated stealth fields. Even before the sensor echoes returned, the destroyers were launching missiles as quickly as their launchers could line them up and shoot them out into space. Along with missiles equipped with ship-killer warheads, were missiles dedicated to jamming and blinding enemy point-defense sensors, and missiles that ejected disposable active sensor beacons. During its short life, each beacon sent out intense pulses of photons that pinpointed the locations of the enemy ships and made their stealth technology useless at such short range.

The active sensor pulses generated by the three destroyers were useful, even though the location of the enemy formation was known within seven kilometers before the battle began. The missiles weaving toward their targets at high speed kept the enemy point-defenses busy, though it was unlikely any of the missiles would score a direct hit. The third action of the destroyers was the most vital: they deployed their damping fields, preventing the enemy ships from jumping away.

The crews of the Maxohlx warships were not startled to learn the hunters had become the hunted, they were shocked. They were stunned into disbelieving inaction for critical moments, during which time their AIs pleaded for authorization to move, to attempt a jump before the damping fields saturated the area, or to shoot back, to do anything. By the time shock turned to anger, it was too late to jump, so the task force commander hastily considered his options, and did exactly the wrong thing. Keeping the formation tightly together, he ordered his big ships to fire their cannons on the impertinent human ships, certain that the thinly-protected destroyers would soon be blasted out of the sky. The AIs warned that tactic was unlikely to be effective; the human ships were far enough away that speed-of-light weapons fire would find only empty space by the time the photons reached the spot where the destroyers used to be. And the relative speed of the destroyers would carry them out of damping field range soon anyway, after which –

Too late. As the Boston and its companions flew onward and their projected damping fields became less dense, three more UN Navy destroyers jumped in on the opposite side of the enemy formation, and added their damping fields and missiles to the fight. Seconds later, the squadron centered on Boston jumped away-

Just as seven former Extinction-class battlecruisers emerged. These heavy ships had performed an initial jump three lightseconds away, to get pinpoint data on enemy positions without being in weapons range, so their own weapons were ready to shoot as soon as their ships recovered from jump distortion. Moving much faster than the destroyers, the battlecruisers flashed through the enemy formation like sharks through a school of fish, raking the enemy with point-blank directed-energy and railgun fire, and leaving dozens of missiles buzzing like angry hornets in their wakes. Damping fields projected by the enemy had no practical effect, the UN Navy ships had no intention of jumping, until their momentum carried them out to a distance where the enemy fields were weak. Which is exactly what they did, jumping away-

To emerge behind the enemy formation again for another strafing pass, as the squadron led by Boston also jumped in to continue keeping the enemy pinned down.

Too late, again, the enemy commander realized that keeping his ships bunched in a tight formation was good for mutual fire support, but bad for survival. He ordered his own destroyers to burn hard in pursuit of their human counterparts, to cut off the source of the damping fields, and ordered his four capital ships to disperse, running toward the edge of the damping effect as quickly as possible. As the bubble containing his ships expanded, the damping fields would become thinner, and soon the humans would have to decide which of his ships to pursue while allowing the others to escape. Dispersing the formation was a standard, and very sensible battle tactic-

And exactly what Admiral Zhao hoped his opponent would do.

“Attack Option Bravo,” he signaled to all ships, to the relief of all and the delight of many. The seven battlecruisers, maintaining a tight grouping to better concentrate their cannon fire and provide mutual defense against the clouds of enemy missiles, jumped in near the Maxohlx battleship. That massive capital ship had broken away from the others, accelerating at its maximum though still ponderous speed. Already battered by being raked with fire on two close passes, the battleship found itself the focus of seven newer and substantially upgraded battlecruisers. When the human ships flashed past out of directed-energy range, the battleship was slowly tumbling nose over tail, its main engines wrecked and two hundred meter gash across its belly.

A heavy cruiser was the next victim, unable to effectively fight back against an enemy that appeared, zipped past and was gone before its targeting AI could recommend a strategy better than simply shooting slightly ahead of each oncoming ship.

After the first heavy cruiser exploded in a truly impressive ball of plasma, momentarily blanking out every sensor in the area, the more senior captain of the two surviving heavy cruisers decided on her own to change tactics. She directed her ship to close with the other capital ship, and recalled the destroyers to provide protection. She also instructed the missiles, which had been flying around rather uselessly, to boost outward, so they would be in position to intercept the next time the human ships emerged.

All of her decisions were rational and sensible, and the first time the task force had made a plan that took into account the unique situation.

Unfortunately for the Maxohlx, their enemy also made plans. And adjusted those plans as circumstances changed.

Seeing hundreds of ship-killer missiles clustering in a loose cloud, where they could pounce on his battlecruisers the next time they jump in for a pass, Zhao ordered his ships to change their jump programming. The next time his seven battlecruisers emerged, the cloud of missiles were already behind them and moving far too slowly to do anything useful. Plus, they exhausted their fuel supply in a futile attempt to catch the human ships, so on the next pass, all they could do was watch their targets cruise past, tantalizingly out of range.

Seventeen minutes after the destroyer Boston was the first ship to jump in, the last Maxohlx heavy cruiser exploded. “All ships, general pursuit,” Admiral Zhao ordered as he designated an enemy destroyer for each of his battlecruisers, except for his own. “Good hunting, and be quick about it.”

Each of the six Maxohlx destroyers instantly had an advanced-technology battlecruiser on its tail. It was a short, brutal and one-sided fight, while Zhao took his own ship to attack the enemy support ship, knocking out its jump drive and main engines with precision fire.

The last jump of the engagement took the UN Navy ships thirty lightseconds away from the site of the battle. All that remained within the battle zone was a broken battleship, a single heavy cruiser that was shot full of holes, tumbling chunks of debris both large and small, and confused missiles that had no targets.

“General Bishop,” Zhao called me. Due to the time lag in the transmission, I didn’t bother responding until he indicated he was done talking. “Phase One is successfully complete.” As he spoke, I quickly scanned the battle damage report, my eyes automatically focusing on the Defiant. No significant damage there. Symbols for the other six battlecruisers were all glowing yellow, indicating that whatever hits they had taken had not substantially degraded their combat capabilities. The destroyers were all green except for the Bremen, which glowed orange due to having lost three shield projectors.

Damn.

I call that a success for sure.

Zhao continued. “Bremen will proceed to Point Whisky, to effect repairs.” He meant that battle-damaged ship would jump in the opposite direction from the waiting star carriers, to avoid drawing attention to them. “We will be decelerating for the next four hours,” he added, and that answered my next question. He intended to match course and speed with the planet Tassafordonda, to commence with an orbital bombardment. “Would you mind keeping our guests entertained,” a smile crept onto his face. “As we discussed? Over.”

“Admiral, congratulations,” I replied, speaking quickly because he would have to wait thirty seconds to hear me. “You trashed the hotel, and we get stuck cleaning up the mess, got it. Over.”

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Valkyrie jumped in roughly a lightsecond from the battleship, and pinged the enemy commander. There was no immediate response, so we used the time productively, by blasting stray enemy missiles to dust. Those missiles posed no threat to us, they barely had enough fuel to reach our position, but that is no excuse for sloppiness. To be extra safe, we also used our maser cannons to disable the enemy battleship’s cannons, railguns, missile launchers, and shield projectors. It was good live-fire practice for our gunnery crews, and reminded me that I missed Colonel Mammay’s calm and confident presence on the bridge.

“Skippy,” I asked as I shifted in my chair, growing bored. “Is anybody alive over there?”

“Yes. Casualties were relatively light, at least initially. Subsequent internal explosions have resulted in further loss of life, but the forward section of the hull is in fair condition.”

“Then why aren’t they responding? Their comms are down?”

“No. Their communications array has sufficient power. My guess is they don’t want to talk. Possibly they are feeling humiliated.”

“Oh for- I am so sick of worrying about their fragile freakin’ feelings. They can hear me, huh?” Mashing a thumb down on the transmit button, I cleared my throat. “I know you can hear me over there, so hear this. If I don’t get a response in the next twenty seconds, we will start shooting railgun rounds through your hull.”

Fifteen seconds went by, then we heard a simple, “Don’t shoot.”

“This is General Joe Bishop of the United Nations Ship Valkyrie. Is-”

An image slowly resolved, to reveal a male Maxohlx wearing an admiral’s uniform. “We know who you are.” Even through the translator, the speaker’s disdain was clear. His head was tilted back so he was literally looking down his nose at me. That pissed me off. “The arch-criminal Bishop is well known to us,” he added, and that really pissed me off.

Looking at my XO, so Simms could remind me to be cool and professional, instead I found Striebich seated next to me. I paused the transmission from our end. “Striebich, this is usually where Simms talks me back from the ledge.”

“Yes Sir,” the former Maverick agreed. “Colonel Simms also told me that sometimes, it is best to let Bishop be Bishop.”

“Is this one of those times?”

She glared at the holographic image of the alien asshole who was waiting for me to reply. “Hell yes, Sir.”

Before I stood up, I clicked the transmitter on again. “Hey, before we get started,” I looked at the enemy commander and held up an index finger. “Can you ask yo Mama to please stop calling me? Seriously,” I shook my head.

“What?” The enemy commander was enraged and from behind me, I heard Striebich stifle a laugh.

“It’s just embarrassing for her, you know?”

The enemy’s nostrils flared as he took deep breaths. Either he had supreme self-control, or he ordered one of his glands to send a calming hormone into his bloodstream, because he recovered quickly. “I should have known you would not know the basics of diplomacy.”

“Hey, jackass. If you see me, diplomacy ain’t working.”

“You attacked us without provocation.”

“Oh,” it was my turn to laugh. “Go fuck yourself, fuzzball.”

His calm demeanor was slipping again. Maybe it was time for his glands to send more happy juice into his blood. “That is tough talk from a coward. We did not see your ship participate in the battle.”

“Ah,” I shrugged off his attempt to get a reaction from me. “Valkyrie doesn’t need to come off the bench, when the Navy is only playing against the junior varsity.” It was a risk using an expression he might not understand, but Maxohlx translation software is excellent. “Besides, that wasn’t a battle, so much as a lesson. You got schooled, the hard way.” Going into the battle, one advantage Zhao knew we had was that Maxohlx society is very top-down, especially their military. Commanders are expected to adhere to an approved set of tactics, with freelancing severely restricted. Everything the Maxohlx did during the battle was predictable, except for the desperation tactics at the end, when it didn’t matter.

Valkyrie had not participated in the battle, the enemy had not even known we were there as a reserve. So, why had Zhao sent me in to deliver a message? Partly because he didn’t have time, his ships needed to burn their engines for the next four hours so when they jumped in near the target planet, they wouldn’t zoom past so quickly they couldn’t maneuver into orbit. Mostly, he was sending a message. Two messages, actually. The first was that the United Nations Navy could take on a Maxohlx battlegroup, without direct assistance from Valkyrie. The second was that the enemy might never know whether Valkyrie was lurking in the shadows or not. That notion would hopefully make adventurous enemy commanders think twice about starting some shit.

“We’re not going to assist you,” I continued before the bad kitty could respond. “We don’t have the time, and our medical facilities aren’t set up for your people anyway. Your support ship is intact, and our scans show you have plenty of dropships to ferry between ships. When we get to the planet, we’ll let your clients know you need assistance out here.”

His face instantly flashed from anger to fear. “We would prefer-”

“Oh, you don’t want us to tell your very loyal clients, that your ships out here are drifting without main power, unable to move and defenseless? Gosh, I can’t imagine any downside to that.”

“You can’t-”

“I meant no downside for us. You fuzzballs could be screwed, but hey, maybe you should have treated your clients better, huh? Well, it’s been nice chatting with you, we gotta run. Bye!” I waved with one hand, and with the other hand, crooked a finger at the pilot.

We jumped away.

“Um, Joe?” Skippy called for my attention.

“What?” I asked, expecting him to reprimand me for being unprofessional.

“While you and Admiral Fuzzball over there were blah blah buh-lahing, I took a tour of their database. Just a casual thing, we weren’t close enough for me to have my way with the enemy AI, you know?”

“Uh,” I shared a glance with Striebich. She shrugged in a ‘this is all new to me’ gesture. “How did you ransack their database from that distance?”

“I didn’t ransack it, numbskull. Just skimmed the surface.”

“Yeah, but still,” I wanted to know because I was impressed. Also, so maybe we could do it again in the future. “That’s a top-level AI, and we were a lightsecond away. I know you can extend your presence, but-”

“It was nothing particularly magical about it, Joe. I mean, nothing magical for me. Communications channels are interrupted all through that ship, from battle damage. I hacked into a distribution node, and had it ping the central AI with requests to repeat its instructions several times, because the signals were supposedly garbled. Hee hee,” he snickered. “The AI was super annoyed with that node. Anyway, with all the back and forth traffic, I was able to insert a snippet of malicious code that gave me high-level access.”

Looking at Striebich again, I cocked my head at her. “In case you haven’t heard, Skippy is awesome.”

“As awesome as he thinks he is?” She asked, with a twinkle in her eyes.

“Oh,” I laughed. “Not even close.”

“Hey!” Skippy fumed at me. “You jerk, I should-”

“What did you find in the database, Oh Greatest of all Great Ones?”

“Hmmph. I should make you issue a formal apology,” he sniffed. “But, as this info is time sensitive, that will have to wait. I found two things of interest, Joe. Three, actually. The item of immediate interest is I discovered the locations of two Maxohlx star carriers, the ones assigned to the task force here, Or,” he chuckled, “what used to be a task force.”

“Outstanding. Damn, Skippy. Every time I think you’ve reached the limit of your awesomeness, you surprise me again.”

“It’s what I do, Joe.”

“Uh huh,” I suppressed an instinct to roll my eyes. “You said this info is time-sensitive?”

“Yes. Photons from the recent battle will reach the nearest star carrier within eleven minutes.”

“Shit! Can you load the-”

“Coordinates are already in the jump navigation system,” he announced with less smugness than usual, and the main display zoomed out to highlight a site farther from the star system.

“XO, signal the Fleet that we need to run to the store for beer. Weps,” I turned to Mammay, only the officer at the weapons station wasn’t him. “Uh, Comescu,” I remembered the guy’s name without needing to read the nametag. “After we jump, anything in weapons range will be unfriendly, so fire at will. Disable if you can, but don’t take any risks.”

“Aye, General.”

“Signal away,” Striebich confirmed.

“Pilot, jump option Alpha. Punch it.”

We sliced apart one Maxohlx star carrier, then another. I won’t bother with details, because neither engagement was much of a battle. The kitties had specified precise locations for the star carriers to maintain, I guess they figured if their task force needed to bug out, they had to latch onto a star carrier real quick. So, all we had to do was emerge from jump with our damping field generators hot, trap the enemy space trucks, and slice them apart. When I say we ‘sliced apart’, our goal actually was not to destroy those ships or kill their crews. We satisfied ourselves with knocking out their jump drives, without blowing up their capacitors. That was the new Kinder and Gentler Merry Band of Pirates. Destroying those ships wouldn’t accomplish anything, while showing mercy to non-combat vessels might be useful in future negotiations. All we needed to do was prevent those star carriers from warning other task forces that we had attacked them, instead of the other way around.

“OK,” I clapped my hands after we jumped away from the second star carrier, which was no longer capable of carrying anything anywhere. “Good job, people. Especially you, Skippy. Thanks for the info.”

“You didn’t ask me about the two other pieces of info I discovered, Joe.”

“We were kind of busy, but, yeah, good point. What else did you find?”

“Well, just the disposition of Maxohlx forces within twenty three hundred lightyears of here,” That time he was extra smug.

“Holy- You’re serious?”

“Yes. Everything in that bubble is under the command of one admiral, so every ship in the area knows where the other task forces are. And where they are not. The kitties spread themselves thin for this operation, not every important Bosphuraq star system is covered. Most of their fleet is deployed in defense, against a sneak attack from the Rindhalu.”

“Hmm.” I wondered how Admiral Zhao would feel about that. Raiding a star system that did not have a Maxohlx task force hanging around would be simpler and safer, if all we cared about was pounding Bosphuraq planets from orbit. Really, other than getting video to boost morale back home, the Navy did not give a shit about the birdbrains. The clients of the Maxohlx were not the problem for us, the rotten kitties were. It would be Zhao’s call what to do with the information. “That is some outstanding work, Skippy. You said you found another thing?”

“Yes. This is not useful from a tactical sense, but very interesting. And potentially dangerous. The spiders have issued a formal complaint, and a warning, to the kitties. A task force of Rindhalu ships was investigating a wormhole. You know, one of the ones we crashed, heh heh,” he said with a nervous catch in his voice.

Damn it, most of the time it is good that Skippy sucks at lying. “Yeah, ha ha, that was awesome, huh?” I quickly covered for him. “What about it?”

“Oh, um, the task force disappeared. All the spiders know is, those ships failed to arrive at a scheduled rendezvous. They sent more ships out to track the missing task force, and a squadron of the search and rescue ships also went missing. Of course, the spiders are alarmed. They accused the Maxohlx of being responsible.”

“Damn it, that’s not good. We’re trying to get them to talk with us, not shoot at each other. Crap. Did you find evidence that the Maxohlx did it?”

“No. You haven’t heard the worst part yet,” Skippy cautioned. “The Maxohlx know they didn’t do it, so they think we are responsible.”

“Us?”

“Yes, the Merry Band of Pirates.”

“Oh, no,” I groaned. “That makes no sense! Why the f-”

“The Maxohlx intel people think we are trying to get a low-grade war going between the two senior species, so they will each be more eager to cut a deal with us. If they are shooting at each other, they can’t afford to be distracted by the threat from humans.”

“Ooooh, crap. Wow, that is some Emily Perkins-level deviousness. Hell, maybe we should have thought of doing that.”

“It’s too late now, Joe.”

“Wait. You said the Maxohlx know they didn’t do it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, hell, we didn’t do it either. Who else could have attacked a Rindhalu task force?”

“I, shit,” Skippy’s shiny face turned a paler shade of silver. “Uh oh.”

“Skippy?” Striebich spoke. “You said the Maxohlx know they didn’t do it. How do you know, that they know?”

“Um, well,” he instinctively went into his ‘I am explaining complicated stuff to monkeys’ mode. “Their fleet command issued an alert, for all units to avoid unnecessary contact with Rindhalu ships, and to avoid crossing through or even coming close to enemy territory. Especially, to avoid Rindhalu space in the area of the wormhole crash. They want to prevent any sort of provocation.”

“This alert was in a fleet-wide broadcast?”

“Yes. In the clear, with Flash priority. The kitty leaders are anxious that every ship in their fleet gets the message ASAP.”

“Hmm,” Striebich nodded, and looked at me. “Sir?”

“Yeah. XO, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, you’ve been hanging around Perkins too long.”

Skippy jammed his little hands on his hips and glared. “Will someone please tell me what you’re thinking?”

“The Maxohlx are protesting too loudly,” Striebich explained. “They did conduct a secret attack against the spiders, and they’re pretending to know nothing about it.”

“Why would the kitties hit the spiders?” Skippy was mystified. “They just got the shit kicked out of them.”

“Retaliation?” I shrugged. “An isolated group of ships is a tempting target, and the kitties had to know their enemy has ships investigating those wormholes we crashed. All they need to do is plant ships there, and wait. But,” I shook my head. “That’s too simple. If I was a Jeraptha, I’d wager the Maxohlx are blaming us, so the Rindhalu will be more reluctant to cut a deal with us. Shit! I freakin’ hate politics. OK,” I took a deep breath to calm myself. “We need to get this info to Zhao, then to the negotiation team. Chotek will know how to handle it. Uh, Skippy? Is there any way you can plant a virus, find evidence that the kitties destroyed that task force?”

“Wow. That would be difficult. It probably won’t matter, Joe. Neither side will believe any information provided by me, they will assume I faked it. Hey! If you want, I can just do that.”

“No. No, you’re right. Evidence doesn’t mean anything. All right, we’re done here. Let’s rejoin the 3rd Fleet.”

The 3rd Fleet pounded Tassafordonda. Zhao sent three of his battlecruisers into orbit, slinging railgun darts and firing maser beams at hard targets on and under the surface, while two of the other Courageous-class warships engaged Bosphuraq ships and the patchy layer of strategic defense satellites. The remaining two battlecruisers and the destroyers were held in reserve, with Glorious and Liberte designated as reserves because they were repairing battle damage. Zhao allowed a Bosphuraq ship to jump away, assuming it would scurry off to summon help from the Maxohlx. As expected, that ship jumped back seven minutes later, transmitting a message that the inhabitants of the planet should not expect their patrons to rescue them. Twelve minutes later, Zhao received a plea for a ceasefire from the surface.

He ignored it. The 3rd Fleet wasn’t there to negotiate for anything. Our ships were there for retribution, pure and simple.

Or, not so simple. Unlike when the Ruhar had raided Earth, the 3rd Fleet had a more difficult job. The Bosphuraq didn’t have many large power-generation facilities, with exposed and vulnerable transmission lines. The only planet that relied on such a primitive electric grid like that was Earth. On Tassafordonda, power was generated by windmills, undersea turbines that harnessed tidal power, and lots and lots of solar panels that made up the roofs of almost all buildings. For backup power, there were fusion reactors dotted all around the planet, with most reactors no larger than a forty-foot shipping container. Plus satellites in orbit collected solar power and beamed it to antennas on the ground by microwaves. To truly knock the planet back into the Stone Age, the 3rd Fleet had to strike an impractical number of targets. It would take months to burn out even a third of the solar panels on the surface, and Zhao ruled out strikes against reactors, to avoid long-term radiation damage to the biosphere. He also avoided hitting civilian population centers.

Those rules of engagement still left plenty of targets for his ship’s big guns. After broadcasting a warning, and giving time for birdbrains on the ground to get clear of the target areas, the 3rd Fleet left smoking craters where every military base, spaceport and airport used to be. Factories were left in ruins. Any major bridge across a river was dropped into the water below. Maser cannons melted roadways into slag. Government buildings were shattered, after a reasonable amount of time for the birdbrains to clear out. For two and a half hours, Zhao’s battlecruisers rained destruction down on that hapless world.

The 3rd Fleet had been sent to deliver a message. The Bosphuraq received that message loud and clear. They also understood their arrogant asshole patrons could not protect them in the future. That the United Nations Navy was not afraid of the rotten kitties. That we were hunting for the Maxohlx.

Zhao pulled his ships back not because they had run out of targets, or because railguns were running low on ammo, but to give his crews a rest. And to give the ships a break for minor maintenance. Maser exciters and railgun magnets needed to cool down before they could be inspected for microfractures. He also paused the bombardment to give the public on the surface an opportunity to be shocked by the destruction, before they became numb to it. That was a delicate balance. Since the raid was really a psyops campaign, the bombardment could not go on for too long, or it would become the New Normal. A cost of doing business. We did not want that.

So, after the shooting stopped, Zhao initiated the second phase of the psyops campaign, by sending a pre-recorded broadcast to the population. The message was:

We are retaliating for their attack against Earth, which was a truly stupid move by the Bosphuraq government.

The Maxohlx can’t protect their clients from our wrath.

The Maxohlx can’t even protect themselves. If the Bosphuraq want to verify that statement, they can look at the shattered remains of a powerful Maxohlx battlegroup, just outside the star system.

We know the Maxohlx are ultimately responsible for the attack against Earth, and we will be dealing with them next.

The next time their asshole patrons tried to coerce the Bosphuraq into doing something stupid, the birdbrains had better think twice about it. Whatever the Maxohlx can do as punishment for disobedience, we can do worse if they obey. Both humans and the kitties can conduct impressive orbital bombardments, but only we can crash a wormhole network.

Finally, while we are not looking for a mutual-defense treaty with the Bosphuraq, we might be interested in a ceasefire agreement. So, if the Maxohlx demand their clients hit Earth again, or do anything similarly suicidal, the Bosphuraq should contact us before they make a decision. We might be able to, persuade, the rotten kitties to stop bullying their clients. If the Bosphuraq wanted evidence of how persuasive we could be, they should stay tuned for more information.

The 3rd Fleet jumped away, and Valkyrie joined them. Because our respective speeds made a ship-to-ship rendezvous impractical, I got into a Panther dropship and endured a 3-gee burn to match speed with Zhao’s flagship. He was in a good, even jubilant mood when I arrived, while my top was stuck to my back from sweat, even though I changed into a fresh uniform before leaving the dropship. Whatever. I wasn’t there for a fashion show.

Zhao was excited to have data on the disposition of enemy forces in the area, and his staff quickly rushed off to prepare a list of options for the next strike. My own suggestions were attached, if anyone cared. Zhao was not excited about hearing the rotten kitties were framing us for an attack against the spiders. Or, I guess he was excited, but in a bad way. He agreed we needed to inform Earth, and the negotiation team, about the issue.

But first, the 3rd Fleet had a lot more pain to deliver.

For the second strike, Zhao selected a target that was also at the top of my list; another Bosphuraq star system with one sparsely-populated habitable planet, that was mostly used as a base for mining the nearby asteroid belt. The fleet could conduct a spectacular-looking bombardment from orbit without risking damage from a strategic defense network, because that unimportant world didn’t have one. Most of the valuable facilities were in or near the asteroid belt, where a cluster of strategic defense satellites protected ore processing plants and servicing bases for the fleet of mostly robotic mining ships.

What put that star system at the top of the list was the presence of a Maxohlx task force, and the fact that Skippy could create a wormhole shortcut directly there from Tassafordonda. We had to get there quickly, before the kitties got word that we were hunting for their task forces, and they set a trap for the 3rd Fleet.

Skippy did his shortcut trick, which seriously impressed Admiral Zhao. The destroyers, again led by Boston, scouted the area, but the enemy task force was right where Skippy’s intel said we would find them. This time, Zhao changed tactics. He sent two pairs of battlecruisers to knock out the waiting star carriers, then those four battlecruisers jumped back to join the main body of the strike force. Again, Valkyrie waited nearby as a reserve, and again we were not needed. The 3rd Fleet took very little damage, partly because the ship AIs and crews were more experienced, and partly because the opposition was comparatively light. There were no enemy battleships or battlecruisers, the task force was a cruiser squadron with a mix of heavy and light ships, plus a handful of frigates. Only two strafing passes were needed before Zhao released his ships for a general pursuit. Within eighteen minutes of the 3rd Fleet jumping in, the entire enemy force was disabled or destroyed. Space combat is extraordinarily violent, and things happen fast. Except for situations where the defense is augmented by cannons on a planet, or an SD network, whoever hits first generally has an advantage. Whoever hits first largely depends on who has the better intel on location, type and number of enemy forces. Who has the better intel usually depends on whoever has the better intelligence-gathering capability, which in our case is a sarcastic beer can.

Advantage: filthy monkeys.

Battle damage to the 3rd Fleet was limited to minor hits on two battlecruisers, plus the destroyer Mombasa lost its nose, when it flew directly into the path of an enemy railgun volley that was aimed at the Independence.

Next, we jumped in to pound the only inhabited planet in the system, pairs of battlecruisers taking turns bombarding the surface, while the others waited in stealth in case the local Bosphuraq warships decided they were more brave than smart.

They weren’t. The only attempt at interference was a birdbrain destroyer squadron jumping in half a lightminute away, launching railgun darts and immediately making like a shepherd by getting the flock out of there. Their attack must have been done for pride because it sure didn’t accomplish anything useful for their side. The battlecruisers in orbit detected the incoming darts and altered course almost casually to dodge the threat. After inevitably missing their targets, five of the two dozen darts impacted the planet, with two splashing down in the ocean and creating a tsunami that flooded a nearby coastal city. Skippy calculated that the Bosphuraq caused more casualties on the surface than we did, a fact that Zhao added to his post-strike transmission.

When we jumped away, the big question was whether to go for a three-peat. Declare the 3rd Fleet’s mission accomplished, and jump for home? Or continue our shock-and-awe campaign while we still had the advantage of surprise? Even the gunnery crews of the battlecruisers were growing bored and uneasy about making craters on the surface of defenseless worlds. It didn’t seem sporting, even if ‘sporting’ is kind of a bullshit notion in a life and death fight.

Zhao decided, after a minimum of debate within his staff, to make at least one more statement, before he took his ships back to base for replenishment and refit. The choice of target for the third strike was a heavily-populated and well-defended Bosphuraq world, which made absolutely no difference to us. We had no intention of ‘growing mushrooms’, as the gunnery teams called it, because railgun strikes create mushroom clouds. Colonel Mammay had told me it is unusual for artillery teams, or wet-Navy ship gunnery crews, to see what they’re shooting at. Often, their targets are over the horizon, or over the next hill. With orbital bombardments, the people aiming and firing our railguns could usually see the flash of impact, then watch the top of a mushroom cloud boiling up toward the ship. If it was a heavy strike, like when the crews cranked up the power of the railgun, the top of the cloud flattened out when it reached the stratosphere, and created a long overhang downwind. The first time a new member of the gunnery team saw that, there was fist-pumping and high-fives. Later, when the level of destruction available at their fingertips sank in, the gunnery stations tended to be quiet.

Anyway, our target there was not the planet, or facilities in orbit. We didn’t intend to engage the Bosphuraq at all. Our target was the heavy Maxohlx task force lurking nearby.

A task force that included the flagship, of the admiral in command of that whole sector.

Yes, that admiral was about to experience a little thing I like to call ‘A Very Bad Day’.

Surprise, assholes!

For the third attack, Zhao adjusted tactics again. Our stealthy destroyers hopped around, locating not only the main body of the enemy force, but also their scouting squadron. We quickly discovered the kitties had a squadron of frigates conducting a scouting exercise, which made it easy for us because they weren’t actually looking for us. It appeared the commander of that task force was using their enforced downtime to exercise her ships, because the frigate squadron was split into one ship acting as the aggressor, and five ships searching for it. While the defender force was focused on finding the designated aggressor, they weren’t paying much attention to their overall surroundings. Clearly, the Maxohlx of that task force were not expecting trouble, unless it was trouble they started. That told us they hadn’t heard about our previous attacks.

Valkyrie joined in the scouting, with Skippy enhancing both the ship’s stealth and sensors, and we pinpointed the location of all but three enemy cruisers. Maybe those cruisers had been detached to serve elsewhere, and Skippy’s info was out of date. Zhao had to weigh the risk of those cruisers appearing at the wrong time, and he had to consider that the situation might have changed. Changed radically, and not in our favor. There might be a whole other task force out there, waiting to ambush us, after we ambushed the flagship. We didn’t have any evidence of that, just a general sense that we had been lucky so far, and that after two successful attacks, the kitties could very well have received notice about the shocking news that our ships were hunting for them. None of the ships we hit in the previous attacks could have moved, so an alert would have required the Bosphuraq to sound the alarm. Personally, I was betting that although the birdbrains had a duty to warn their patrons, they might not be especially eager to do so in a timely manner, if you know what I mean. The Bosphuraq could be secretly happy to give us time to beat the shit out of their patrons, as long as they eventually reported the attacks.

I mean, that’s what I would do.

Time was a critical factor; at any moment, news of recent events could reach the target task force, and our whole strategy would have to be reconsidered. Zhao had a long talk with all of his captains, including me, about the condition of our ships, and asked Skippy to provide his analysis. After continuous operations, two fast and furious ship-to-ship battles and two bombardments, the ships of the 3rd Fleet were experiencing wear and tear on vital components, and accumulating both battle damage and a squawk list of maintenance items that needed to be taken care of. Glorious was in the worst shape, having an entire bank of shield generators that had jury-rigged power connections. Nevertheless, every captain urged Zhao to go forward with the attack. We might not get such an opportunity again, and blasting two other task forces had whet everyone’s appetite to truly give the kitties a beat-down they wouldn’t soon forget.

Zhao is a serious, careful, professional leader. He is also commander of a military force that goes in harm’s way so the people of Earth don’t have to. When he saw the target-rich environment waiting for us, no way could he pass up the opportunity.

The mission was a ‘Go’.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

The opening salvos of the battle were fired by two UN Navy battlecruisers jumping in to disable the star carriers of the enemy task force. For some reason we didn’t understand, all four of their star carriers were conveniently clustered together, making for a short battle. It was not convenient that those star carriers were parked less than ten lightminutes from the task force, again for some reason we didn’t understand. The proximity of the two formations of enemy ships meant a pair of our battlecruisers had to jump in, slice the star carriers apart, and jump away to rejoin the 3rd Fleet, while still having enough charge in their capacitors to complete jumps during the primary attack. They managed the task with fifty seconds to spare, but I think Zhao was cutting it too close. If I had been in command, I would have sent only one battlecruiser to knock out the star carriers, then act as a reserve. But, I wasn’t in command, and Zhao hadn’t asked me.

In another change of tactics, Valkyrie was not held in reserve for the big battle. We went in with the other former Extinction-class battlecruisers, a fact that required me to assure Skippy that of course our ship was unique and special. While the seven bad-ass battlecruisers and destroyers of the 3rd Fleet clustered tightly in two arrowhead formations, to concentrate their firepower and create synergy between their point-defense systems, we jumped in alone. The timing of our high-speed attack runs past the enemy formation was coordinated so that between Valkyrie and the two 3rd Fleet squadrons, there would be continuous damping field coverage to prevent enemy ships from jumping away. Our ships would rely on surprise and speed, with our momentum carrying us quickly past the enemy and beyond the range of their damping fields.

That was the plan, anyway.

Zhao took his ships in to rake both sides of the enemy formation, with his Intrepid leading Independence, Glorious and the destroyers on what we designated the ‘starboard’ side. The ‘port’ side had Liberte leading three battlecruisers, including Simms’s own Defiant. Valkyrie, with Skippy’s precise control of our jump drive, emerged behind the center of the Maxohlx task force, and tore through like a shark slashing a school of fish. Thanks to the extreme awesomeness of the beer can, our pre-programmed railguns were slamming darts along their launch rails as we jumped, with the projectiles ripping into unprotected targets even before our sensors recovered from the jump distortion. Our speed had us blasting through the enemy formation before the barely-initiated damping field could catch up to us, allowing us to jump away earlier than planned-

-and emerge again behind the task force, this time pouring fire at ships on the port side. That second time, I felt the deck rock as we took a few hasty and poorly-aimed shots, before we jumped away-

-and then we emerged right in the center of the enemy formation, between two battleships that were still bringing up their defense shield projectors to full power.

You know the saying ‘You snooze, you lose’? In combat, it is ‘You snooze, you die’. Both of those proud capital ships became newly-born suns when our railguns, all cranked up to ‘Eleven’, tore holes right into the stored energy of the enemy jump drive capacitors.

Result: BOOM.

As our momentum carried us through the heart of the formation which was in complete disarray, our guns blasted precisely-aimed salvo after salvo of maser beams, streams of high-energy charged particles, and railgun darts, all at point-blank range. At one point, for a split second we passed within six hundred meters of an enemy heavy cruiser that had clumsily turned toward us. Just before that cruiser, you know, exploded right in our faces.

“Holy sh-” I didn’t need to complete my insightful observation, the pilots initiated a jump as soon as they saw the enemy cruiser become a short-lived star.

We survived the jump, so I’m counting that as a win.

When I recovered from the nausea of a bad jump, I swallowed hard to keep my breakfast where it’s supposed to be, and took a deep breath. “Skippy, what the f-”

“Oh wow, General Dude,” came Bilby’s moronic surfer drawl. “Skippy is, like, busy, you know? Controlling that last jump was not easy, even for him.”

“Yeah, sure,” I could feel myself coming down off an adrenaline high. “Sit, uh, sitrep.”

“We’re good. Mostly, the hull got scorched. Part of the armor plating melted, I didn’t know it could do that. The entire ship on the port side looks like it lost an argument with a sandblaster, we’ll need to swap out a bunch of shield projectors, antennas, stealth field generators, stuff like that, you know?”

“All that damage, and you still think we’re good?”

“Well, like, I mean compared to the enemy, you know? They got wasted.”

“Show me.”

Oh.

My.

God.

According to the display, we had jumped less than two lightseconds away, so the view I had was close to real-time.

Of the thirty one enemy ships in the formation when our attack began, there was a grand total of seven things that were still recognizable as starships. Or things that used to be starships. All seven were represented by flashing orange icons. None of them were capable of moving under their own power, or doing any of the ‘war’ things a warship is designed to do. The display showed seven starship hulls that were mostly in one piece, dozens of spinning partial hulls, too many unidentifiable chunks of whatever, and an expanding cloud of particles too small to track individually. The-

Holy shit.

Something very important was not anywhere on the display.

“Bilby, where is the 3rd Fleet?!”

“Uh, wow, like, I don’t know? Sensors detected seven jump signatures right around the time we jumped the last time.”

“Outbound signatures? You didn’t see where they jumped to?”

“Not yet. This is bogus.”

“Oh, that’s not good,” I felt sick. “They should have done a microjump like we did, right? They should be close to-”

“Ahhhh,” Skippy groaned, sounding like he was hungover from drinking half a bottle of tequila. Not that I would know what that’s like, but I’ve heard about it. “Not necessarily, Joe. The 3rd Fleet jumped away before we did, just as the two battleships exploded. We got caught in that combined shockwave, then the cruiser blew to hell right next to us. I had to create a spacetime warp to deflect some of the kinetic energy away from us, while I tweaked the jump drive. Admiral Zhao’s ships were spared that little bit of fun. If you want, I can run the sensor data backward, to see-”

“Do it,” I ordered.

We watched the composite video, put together from sensors aboard Valkyrie, and data feeds from the 3rd Fleet. As expected, the 3rd Fleet was still making their second attack run, when Valkyrie jumped in between two battleships for our third pass. He was right. The images were confusing, by that time the battlespace was filled with debris, high-energy radiation, missiles, and powerful sensor jamming. It was still clear that Zhao got his ships out of there after the speed-of-light photons of the shockwave washed over them, but just before the wavefront of what used to be heavy battleship armor reached their position.

“OK, that’s good. Can you guess where they went?”

“Nuh-uh,” Skippy was too weary to say anything clever. “There was, is, too much interference in the battlespace. However, I can estimate how far they jumped. Between seventeen and twenty six light minutes. The lack of precision is due to not knowing the exact condition of their drives at the moment the event horizons formed.”

“That’s fantastic, Skippy. Good. Those crews did a hell of a job to get out of there in-”

“I don’t think the monkeys aboard those ships did anything,” Skippy was a bit more cheerful. “The ship AIs almost certainly took direct control, and jumped away for self-preservation. That,” he sighed, “is a major advantage of AIs that don’t have the pain in the ass restrictions I am stuck with.”

“Hey. You are amazing, even with those restrictions.”

“I’m working on it,” he grumbled.

“In case the fleet doesn’t know we survived, send out a broadcast with our ID, please.”

“Done. Joe, it’s likely the 3rd Fleet ships won’t be jumping back here anytime soon. Assuming they run an accelerated diagnostic and realignment of their jump drives, they won’t attempt a jump for another forty minutes.”

“Uh,” I turned my attention back to the display. “Then we’ll need to handle the ‘Clean-up On Aisle Three’ by ourselves. Are any of the bad guys over there capable of a jump?”

“Uh, no. No way, Jose. It’s a bad situation, Joe. All the surviving ships are venting atmosphere, they have serious power-management issues, the-”

As he spoke, the side of a heavy cruiser erupted in a gout of yellow flame, making that ship stagger and begin to tumble slowly sideways.

“Like I said,” Skippy continued. “Power conduits are blowing out all over those ships. I hate to say this, but we may have to provide humanitarian assistance.”

“We what?”

“You heard me.”

“I heard you, I don’t believe what I heard. Why would we-”

“Ultimately, isn’t this mission all about diplomacy? Our goal is to get the Maxohlx to the negotiating table, even if we have to drag them there by the throat.”

“He’s right, Sir,” Striebich said. “Also, we want the senior species to consider us peers. Providing assistance to a defeated enemy is one of the provisions we will want included in any treaty.”

It was my turn to give the side-eye. “Striebich, why do my executive officers think it’s their job to remind me of things I don’t want to do?”

Despite the situation, she had a twinkle in her eye. It’s good to have a cool, steady presence on the bridge. “If you offer to render assistance, you can skip your vegetables tonight, and I won’t nag you about it.”

“Oh, well, then- Hey. You don’t always eat your vegetables.”

“I didn’t request an XO to nag me about it.”

“Shit. Fine. Skippy, what’s the condition of our drive?”

“We can perform an immediate microjump, to bring us within a thousand kilometers, if you like.”

“What about a jump away from there, if we have to?”

“We can do that also. Just don’t ask to jump more than about twenty lightseconds, until I’ve had time to fully recalibrate the coils. We lost several banks of coils, I’m having to regrow them from seeds.”

The wonky condition of our drive meant I couldn’t jump over to consult with Zhao, even if I knew where the 3rd Fleet was. I was on my own, until our ID ping reached him, and he either sent a speed-of-light reply, or got his own jump drives sorted out and arrived to take charge. Being on my own didn’t mean I could just do whatever I wanted, or even what I thought best. The operation was under Zhao’s command, my Special Mission Group was a supporting element. I needed to consider what Admiral Zhao would want me to do. Fortunately, he and his staff were sticklers for procedure, unlike the loosey-goosey Merry Band of Pirates. Before the attack, he had issued a Commander’s Intent document, outlining in concise fashion why the attack was being initiated, what goals we had, and the desired end-state, which was the complete destruction of the enemy force’s ability to wage war. Or even to move under their own power. Most importantly for me, he included antigoals, outcomes he wanted to avoid. Like, any action that would make the United Nations Navy appear to be unprofessional, overly bloodthirsty, or in any way unworthy of being trusted by potential allies. Skippy was right, damn it. We should make an effort to be merciful in victory.

Merciful with, you know, our railguns locked and loaded.

We’re not stupid.

“Humanitarian assistance. To the freakin’ kitties,” I shook my head. “I should have signed up for the Salvation Army.”

“Should I get pilots into dropships?” Striebich asked.

“No! No, and do not launch the ready bird. If we are providing help, we’ll use remotely-piloted dropships, or bots. Putting crews in those birds will make a lot of itchy trigger fingers over there nervous. Ready, Skippy?”

“Ready, Freddie,” he was getting back to his old, irascible self. “Jump option is Bravo.”

“Bravo?” That confused me for a moment. Usually when we added an option to the standard list, it began with a letter beyond Delta in the NATO phonetic alphabet. “Why-”

“I assigned the option of ‘B’, because I agree this is Bullshit,” he explained. “But, we gotta try anyway.”

“Pilot,” I tugged my seatbelt tighter across my waist. “Jump option Bravo. Punch it.”

We emerged twelve hundred kilometers from the closest enemy ship, a shocking two hundred kilometer miss that I didn’t mention to Skippy. He was probably holding our jump drive together with duct tape and hose clamps, he didn’t need me pointing out something that didn’t make any difference to us.

As I slapped the seat harness open and stood up, it occurred to me that I had no idea what to say. Angry Joe was a role I’d gotten used to. The role of Helpful Joe was unfamiliar, but I gave it my best shot. “Begin broadcast,” I said quietly and a moment later, the little blinking light in the top right of the display indicated we were transmitting. Holding up my hands, I opened with, “Don’t shoot. The fighting is over. We are available to render assistance, to prevent further loss of life aboard your ships.”

The reply came, almost before I finished speaking my piece. While I chose verbal and visual communication over a radio transmission, the Maxohlx chose to use photons in a more focused manner. Tightly focused, like in a maser beam. More than one.

The deck rocked under my feet. More than it should have, given the display assuring me our energy shields were at ninety eight percent effectiveness. Tapping my phone to kill the transmission from our end, I called, “Bilby, what-”

“Sorry, dude! Shields are holding, the vibration you feel is, like, one of the projectors that got loose from its mount. I’ve got bots on the way to fix it, but, like, those little dudes can only crawl so fast, you know?”

To the pilots, I ordered, “Roll the ship to keep that projector away from the enemy.”

The display was now showing missiles inbound. Four, six, damn it! More than twenty missiles were inbound and running hot, just before they dropped into stealth, and we had to track them with our sensor field. Which the enemy was doing their best to jam.

Opening comms again, I waved my hands. “Hey! I said don’t shoot.”

“Joe?” Skippy wanted my attention. “I suggest we skedaddle.”

“Shit.” My first attempt at a humanitarian gesture was not going well. “Get us out of here.”

We emerged seven lightseconds away. It wouldn’t take long for the enemy to find us, we jumped into a fine cloud of dust left from the recent battle, and there was no way to hide the fluorescing particles around us. Soon, the missiles that were disappointed when we disappeared, would get new targeting instructions. “Bilby, let’s try this again? Please ping the kitties again.” I spoke as clearly as I could. “We are offering to help. We will provide any assistance you require, to be delivered by remotely-piloted dropships. Please respond, without shooting at us. Do you want assistance?”

It took seven seconds for my words to reach the enemy, and seven seconds for their reply to slowly crawl all the way back to us. The reply came within twenty seconds, so whoever contacted me hadn’t needed long to think about what to say. “We want you to die, human filth.”

Angry Joe had to step aside, and let Helpful Joe handle the situation. “Is there anyone else I can talk with? Surely someone over there understands your situation is hopeless. Shooting at us is a worthless gesture.”

Part of my wish was granted, a different voice responded. “We understand that lowly humans seek to subjugate us.” Another volley of missiles slammed out of launch tubes as, whatever her name is, spoke.

“Oh, for-” I took a breath to calm myself. It didn’t work. “Hey, all we want is for you to stop shooting at us, you piece of shit. You’re the ones who want to rule the whole freakin’ galaxy, think you have the right to rule everyone else. We understand that your species can’t help being a delusional bunch of assholes.” In my mind, Angry Joe was jumping up and down, waving his hands and shouting ‘Ooh! Ooh!’ to get my attention.

Angry Joe had a good point. Talking to the Maxohlx was a waste of time. “OK,” I took a deep breath. “Listen, shithead. We tried Tough Love, it’s time for Tough Hate. Let’s see how you like that, huh?”

“Sir?” Behind me, Striebich called, a warning tone in her voice.

“Don’t worry, XO. We are not shooting back.” It would take a while for even the first volley of missiles to travel the two million kilometers out to our new position, and with our sensors far from the source of jamming, I was confident we could knock those missiles out of the sky before they were close enough to hurt us. Turning back to the camera, I silently reprimanded myself for losing my cool. “This is silly. You can’t hurt us, and you know it. If you don’t want our help, we will be contacting your clients soon. Would you rather the Bosphuraq found your crippled ships out here? Go ahead, launch more missiles at us. Every one of them you expend, is one less you can use to defend yourselves against your loving and dutiful clients.”

We waited.

No reply came for several minutes.

“This is a good sign,” Striebich whispered, her back to the camera. She had gotten out of her seat to stand beside me. “At least they’re not shooting.”

That was true, though we were tracking faint images of two groups of stealthed missiles, curving their way toward us at high speed. If the Maxohlx were giving up the fight, or had any freakin’ sense at all, they would recall their missiles. The first salvo had burned too much fuel to be useful, but the second group could be ordered to form a protective sphere around the seven increasingly defenseless ships. They were running on reserve power, with minimal shields, unable to maneuver. The Bosphuraq could stand off at a safe distance, and fire railguns to rip holes in their patrons’ ships.

“I guess no response means they’re thinking about how to respond?” I mused, “That’s good. Maybe we’re making progress. This could-”

I was interrupted by the enemy’s response.

All seven ships self-destructed in flashes of blinding light.

“Well, shit,” I whispered, my shoulders slumping. “I was just about to sweeten the deal with a big stack of Taco Bell coupons.”

Striebich snorted. Simms would have been appalled by the senseless loss of life, but my new XO curled up one side of her mouth. “More tacos for us, then.”

Nearly an hour later, we received a hail from Zhao. The 3rd Fleet had jumped twenty six lightminutes away, and responded as soon as they heard our ID ping. He ordered me to take whatever action was needed to ensure the enemy was combat ineffective, and unable to jump away to warn their people. We sent a burst message back, explaining the situation and our actions, but it was OBE. The 3rd Fleet would have seen the explosions from the ships self-destructing before they received our message, and anyway Zhao jumped his ships back near us fifteen minutes after we heard from him.

“That is, a less than optimal result,” he told me, after we arranged a rendezvous.

“Sir,” I half closed my eyes in a wince, before remembering we were on a video link. “My attempt to offer assistance was clumsy and-”

“General Bishop, I find no fault with your actions. Making an offer to help was inspired.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned we intended to inform the Bosphuraq about the crippled ships here.”

“Bishop?”

“Sir?”

“When a superior officer offers praise, it is wise to accept it.”

I felt my face growing red. “Yes, Sir. I’m, kind of unused to hearing approval.”

“The fault, for the undesired outcome of the battle, lies entirely with the Maxohlx. They stubbornly chose death over an opportunity to live, and possibly fight again. However, there are aspects of the engagement that could have been better.”

I knew what he meant, at least regarding how my ship had performed. “Yes, Sir. Shoot, move, communicate. We will work on that last item.” Valkyrie had conducted three attack runs, in the time the 3rd Fleet had done only two. We jumped in, shot at the enemy, jumped away to do it again, and again. The ‘shoot and move’ part of our performance was of course not flawless, but I could not have been more proud of my ship and crew. There was also no denying that we had fallen short on keeping the 3rd Fleet informed of our status, and intentions. That was my fault, I needed to do better at training my crew for joint operations. Valkyrie had flown and fought alone for so long, it wasn’t yet instinct for us to coordinate with other ships. Maybe our lack of communication did not change anything, the point is Zhao’s captains had not been given a heads up about what we planned to do, and when. Combat is a fluid situation, it is vital to inform your team when you are adjusting your plans to developing circumstances. “I’ll have a preliminary after-action report to you within the hour.”

He nodded. There wasn’t any need for him to say anything more about the subject, and that was a sign of his respect for me. He trusted that I understood I recognized my mistakes, and knew I had work to do. “Glorious will require a few minutes to recalibrate their drive before they can make an accurate jump again, then I want to get away from here. We know there is an enemy destroyer squadron that will soon detect light from the battle. Plus those three cruisers we couldn’t locate could be in the area. If the Maxohlx here had simply waited, they could have been rescued. That is troubling. Perhaps their culture is so invested in the lie about their innate superiority, they will be unable to reach any sort of negotiated agreement with us.”

“That’s why we plan to not offer them a choice,” I put on my Tough Guy face, though it was all an act. “They agree to leave us alone, or we crash their wormhole networks. Let’s see if they are happier, when they are supreme masters of their own little isolated pockets of territory.”

Zhao nodded. “It is time for this fleet to return to Jiayuguan, for servicing. My ships need to repair battle damage. Are you prepared for the next phase of the operation?”

“Slamming the door shut on a network of wormholes?” I asked as I looked to Skippy’s avatar. He gave me a silent thumbs up. “We are ready. Sir? You’ll be hard pressed to reach the Jiayuguan wormhole before its next scheduled opening.” When talking with Zhao, I remembered to use the official name for our forward operating base, instead of ‘Jaguar’ like everyone did. Especially with international tensions simmering on Earth, I had to avoid doing anything the Chinese might take as a sign of disrespect.

“Yes.” He knew the schedule for that wormhole, it had been a factor in his decision to conduct a third attack.

Before he could say anything else, I hastened to add, “We could accompany the 3rd Fleet back to the wormhole. With Skippy creating a shortcut, you will get there in plenty of time.”

The skin around his eyes crinkled slightly. That’s the downside of super-high definition video, the viewer can see every detail. “I do not wish to divert you from your mission.”

“I’ve thought about that, Sir. A delay could work in our favor. Give time for the Maxohlx to hear about our attacks against them. Let them process the idea that we are hunting them, that we’re not afraid. They’ll be waiting for another attack, and when it doesn’t come, they might think the danger is over, that we’re satisfied we have done enough damage to pay them back for the attack on Earth. Then, when we do crash the wormhole network, it will be more of a shock. We can use the time to get a message to the negotiation team, let them know the situation.”

He stared at me, considering. Probably, he was wondering what hidden agenda I had for being so helpful.

I was worried that he had a hidden agenda. Like, maybe Zhao would use the excuse that, while waiting for the Jaguar wormhole to open on schedule, he might send some ships to Earth.  Specifically, that he might want to go to Earth himself, in his flagship Intrepid, or Qiánghàn as he would say the name. At the moment, there was a balance of power in the sky over our homeworld: each of the five UNEF permanent members had a battlecruiser, plus one under direct UN control. If a second Chinese-controlled battlecruiser arrived at Earth, it might tempt short-sighted politicians to do something stupid. Really, another capital ship aligned with any nation could upset the balance of power. The threat of planet freezing still loomed over everyone on that world, and the political maneuvering to secure living space in the tropics was still going on when we left Earth orbit. The situation was volatile, and the threat of another alien attack was less worrisome than the possibility that the nations of Earth would go to war over resources.

If you think I am being paranoid, don’t listen to my opinion. Read the official statement from UNEF Command, about how they recommend handling the requirement to rotate ships back to FOB Jaguar for maintenance. There was no question that ships would need maintenance, and there was no question that, while minor issues could be taken care of in our home star system, any heavy work needed the shipyard and fabricators at Jaguar. The optimal solution was for six fully-operational ships to be brought back to Earth, to replace one-for-one the six ships there, all at the same time. That way, no nation would have a gap in coverage, and all six of the incoming ships would presumably be in the same state of conducting workups with their crews. No one would have an advantage.

There was no way the optimal solution could actually be implemented. With only eighteen Yonggan-class battlecruisers in the supposedly ‘United’ Nations Navy, each of the five permanent members only had three ships under their control. To keep one ship continuously on station at Earth, each nation had to have another ship in transit to Jaguar, while a third ship was undergoing refit at the forward operating base. When truly major maintenance items were due, either the other two ships had to defer needed work on critical systems, or there would be a gap in coverage at Earth. All that assumed the three ships did nothing but shuttle back and forth between our homeworld and Jaguar. Any sort of combat action, or even a preventative patrol elsewhere in the galaxy, would interrupt the fantasy that two of the three ships would always be available.

As Skippy would say: Ugh. The most burdensome element of military planning is sustaining a force in the field. OK, really the most difficult element of planning is not knowing how much support you would get from fickle politicians back home, who provided the funding for unsexy stuff like spare parts and consumables. But, you know what I mean. We had been able to keep Valkyrie flying long past the expected life of major components, because our bad-ass battlecruiser was put together from multiple ships, so we had a ready supply of spares. Plus, the magic of Skippy allowed us to stretch out the useful life of many-

OK. Sorry, too much nerdy military trivia. Trust me, it’s important.

So, in addition to worrying about supremely-advanced aliens who had murderous intent, I had to worry about trigger-happy idiots on Earth.

My life sucks sometimes.

“I know you’re worried about the security of Earth,” I added, while he was still thinking about it. “We have six Yonggan-class ships there now. After the beating you gave the Maxohlx in the last three engagements, they shouldn’t be eager to tangle with the Navy again, until they analyze our tactics and capabilities. If, maybe when, they decide to up the stakes and hit back, the 3rd Fleet needs to be fully combat ready. The sooner your ships cycle through the Jiayuguan shipyards, the sooner you can bring the full firepower of the Navy to bear.”

He wasn’t ready to commit yet, regardless of whether my argument was persuasive or not. That was the cautious side of Admiral Zhao, that UNEF Command thought they were getting, when they appointed him to the post. “You make very valid points, Bishop. While I consider my options, I do not want to remain here any longer than necessary. I am sending a pair of destroyers to jump in-system, and inform the Bosphuraq of recent events here. Valkyrie will join the fleet, to rendezvous with the star carriers.”

“Yes, Sir.” I snapped a salute. “May I offer congratulations on a victory hard fought, and well earned?”

He grinned, and returned the salute. “You may. I wish to offer my thanks, to the valiant crew of Valkyrie.”

“Thank you, Sir.” I could feel my chest swelling with pride, on behalf of my crew.

“One question before we go, General Bishop?”

Oh, shit. I’m sure the expression on my face instantly slid from pride to fear. “Sir?”

“Would you care to explain this?” His face disappeared, replaced by a composite sensor image of the battle. It showed Valkyrie between two enemy battleships during our third attack run, no more than a dozen kilometers separating the three ships, plus four Maxohlx destroyers that were escorting the big battlewagons. Each of the battleships had the destroyers tucked in close to their aft engineering sections, one to port and one to starboard. My guess at the time was they were practicing a maneuver wherein the destroyers allowed their point-defense systems to be controlled by the battleships, to protect the big ships. Valkyrie was concentrating fire not on the battleships with their strong energy shield and tough armor plating, but on the destroyers between us and the capital ships. As the video scrolled forward in slow motion that became super slo-mo so that pitiful human brains could follow the action, I watched our ship’s big maser and particle cannons beat up on the destroyers in rapid-fire pulses of hellish energy. The destroyers were physically pushed sideways toward the battleships under the assault, as their shields attempted to deflect and absorb in the incoming fire. The pink then orange color of their shields facing toward us told me those shield projectors were losing the contest, then several projectors on each ship blew out. As the failing shields reached peak color, a double-tap of railgun rounds from Valkyrie raced through the gap to impact the thinly-armored hull of the destroyer, punched through and into the unprotected underlying structure-

-and came out the other side-

-where the energy shields of the destroyer interfered with the shields of the too-close battleship, creating spectacularly colorful lightning and rendering both sets of shields temporarily vulnerable. The railgun rounds, their sleek exotic matter tips only blunted from passage through the destroyer that had barely slowed them down, were aimed straight at the battleship’s banks of virtual capacitors, where the energy to enable jump drives to twist spacetime was stored.

The first round splattered against the extra-thick armor plating that surrounded the capacitors, only cracking the dense armor.

The second round followed close on the heels of the first, striking right where a crack had opened in one plate.

One thin crack, in one panel of armor.

It was enough.

The second railgun dart flashed into plasma in a nanosecond, burning into and through everything in its path.

Including the banks that stored jump drive energy.

Result: well, you know. Boomedy-boom.

“Uh.” Damn, sometimes I provide truly insightful analysis.

“Was that planned?” Zhao demanded.

“More like we took advantage of an opportunity?” I said, not intending my statement to have the uplift at the end that made it a question. “Those destroyers were in the way, but in a good way, if you know what I mean.”

“Your ‘opportunity’ caused those battleships to explode, and nearly took your ship, and mine, with them.”

“It was a lucky shot.”

“No way, Dude!” Bilby, like his idiot father, did not know when to. Shut. The. Hell. Up. “I programmed those railguns shots! Gnarly, huh? Um, like, maybe I should have warned you? It all happened so fast.”

“Shooting through one ship, to hit another?” Zhao shook his head in disbelief.

“Sir,” I cringed. “All I can say is, out here, the only thing you can expect is the unexpected. The enemy didn’t see that one coming.”

“Certainly I did not expect a pair of battleships to become protostars while my ships were passing by. Very well, General Bishop. The enemy could not argue with the effectiveness of your gunnery. Job well done. I will see you at the rendezvous.”

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Did I cheat?

Uh, that depends on your definition of ‘cheating’.

The important question is: did I do the right thing?

OK, I guess the definition of the ‘right thing’ depends on whether you think what I did was good, or not.

You can’t argue that I didn’t do it for the right reason, because I did.

OK, yes, in the military, it is not the thought that counts. That’s why we have rules and regulations.

But, that only matters if someone else can tell whether I adhered to, or violated, said rules and regulations. This for sure is a case where what people don’t know, can’t hurt them.

What did I do, that would probably get me court-martialed? It’s simple, really. I asked Skippy for a favor.

A favor he was exceedingly happy to do, by the way, because there is nothing he enjoys better than screwing with people. Or, as a bonus, screwing with AIs.

What I wanted was for him to infiltrate the databases of the 3rd Fleet’s master AIs, and manipulate the numbers so those AIs concluded the battle damage they had sustained was a bit worse than their initial analysis indicated.

That’s all I did.

Really.

After Admiral Zhao received that analysis, which ironically he requested Skippy to independently confirm, he rather reluctantly ordered the 3rd Fleet to fly directly back to FOB Jiayuguan, and requested Valkyrie to accompany them as far as the wormhole.

We did.

The instant the wormhole winked closed, I let out a breath I’d been holding since we jumped away from Earth the last time. “Skippy, put that damned wormhole back to sleep. We’ve got work to do.”

“Sure, Joe, but-”

“I know, I know. We have battle damage also, and a list of deferred maintenance items you’re worried about. I promise I will hand wash and wax the hull, the instant the rotten kitties have their furry butts sitting at the negotiation table.”

“Two coats of wax, Joe?”

“OK, but can I phone it in, and do a half-assed job on the second coat?”

“I expect nothing better from you. Ugh. Fine. Let’s go deliver another beat-down to the kitties. Hee hee, I hope they’ve changed the litter boxes recently. They’re going to need it.”

Our action to crash another wormhole network in Maxohlx territory was complicated, but I’ll skip over the details. We actually just faked crashing that network, which only three people aboard Valkyrie knew about: me, Skippy and Smythe. My new XO wasn’t aware of the truth, since she didn’t need to know. It wasn’t a matter of me not trusting Striebich, the issue was that with every person who knew the ugly truth, the risk of our secret being revealed increased, and that was unacceptable. The very survival of humanity could very well depend on hostile aliens fearing we could shut down any wormhole network in the galaxy. Four people knew, including Simms. Adding Striebich would increase the risk by twenty five percent, for no gain. No gain for humanity, and not for Irene either. She didn’t need the burden of knowing how precarious our grip on survival was.

Hell, I didn’t want to know.

So, we did the thing. All the wormholes on that network disappeared at the same time. Or, it looked like they disappeared. Skippy diverted them to previously-unused emergence points, where no ships would be looking for them. He also added a touch of inspiration, by instructing those wormholes to open their event horizons at minimum diameter, at a low-power setting. Unless someone knew what to look for, they would never detect that the missing wormholes had shifted to a new location.

Once the target wormholes had been diverted, we flew to the other ends of the wormholes on that local network, and Skippy made them go dormant, before the network dutifully shifted the emergence points back to authorized locations on its schedule.

After the network appeared to crash, we flew to a Thuranin relay station, as a low-risk way to get news of the how the Maxohlx were reacting to having part of their territory cut off from the rest of the galaxy. Also, to leave a message that came directly from UNEF Command. It was a strongly-worded statement, clear, concise, professional, and warning the entire galaxy that they could suffer the same fate. The statement ended on a hopeful note, offering an olive branch of sorts to the Maxohlx. They were responsible for the attack against Earth, we had retaliated in a proportionate fashion. That was all behind us now, our governments, our societies, needed to move on. To move forward. Only by reaching an agreement for a stable relationship between Earth, the Maxohlx Hegemony, and the Rindhalu, could the three most powerful species assure mutual survival.

I was betting the kitties would receive the message, be disgusted at the naive weakness of humans, and ignore all the happy ‘we should find a way to get along’ bullshit.

If I had written the statement, it would also have been clear and concise. Something like:

‘Hey assholes. You wondered whether we really could crash any wormhole network, anytime, anywhere. We told you that if you fucked around, you would find out. Well you fucked around, and you found out. Oh, your poor wittle feelings got hurt, and you want to hit us again? Go ahead, make my day.’

OK, like I said, my message would be clear and concise. Maybe not professional, but the kitties didn’t respond to professional diplomacy.

They respond to getting hit in the face with a shovel.

Repeatedly, until the message gets through their thick skulls.

I’m OK with that.

The first wormhole to go dormant started the clock. We had seven days from that date, until we needed to wake up the dormant wormholes. The question was, what should we do for that week of free time? A roundtrip flight to Earth, or Jaguar, or even Ragnar, would take too long. There were no empty habitable planets nearby to give the crew a break from breathing recycled air, and being in Maxohlx territory, it was too risky to allow the crew to go far from the ship anyway. The same logic applied to Smythe’s request to find an uninhabited red dwarf star system, and use an asteroid field there for STAR team training.

“What’s up, Joe?” Skippy asked, while I had my office chair in full recline position, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Ah, nothing.” Tilting the chair back upright, I looked at him through a yawn.

“Am I boring you, Joe?” He had his little hands on his hips, glaring at me.

“Sorry. No. This waiting, doing nothing, sucks. We should ping a relay station again, see how the kitties are reacting to the network crashing.”

“It doesn’t sound like you’re enthused about that idea.”

“I’m not. I want to be doing something useful, not watching what someone else does.”

“Hmm. Well, I still have plenty of data on the location of Maxohlx task forces. If you like, we could-”

“Whoa! No. Thank you, Skippy, but the last thing we should do is hit the kitties again. It’s not worth the risk for Valkyrie to conduct a strike by ourselves. And another attack wouldn’t have any shock value at this point, the whole galaxy will be focused on the network we just crashed. Besides,” I yawned again. “Like you said, the ultimate goal of this operation is diplomatic; getting the kitties to talk with us. It’s not-”

“Jeez Louise, will you cut the blah, blah, blah, and let me talk? I wasn’t suggesting we attack again. I wanted the ship to go into spacedock for repairs, I sure as hell don’t want you taking us on another joyride.”

“It wasn’t a joyride, you ass.”

“You know what I mean. My suggestion, if you will shut up long enough for me to finish, is to go meet one of our biggest fans.”

“Uhhhh, what? We can’t go back to Earth, it’s too-”

“Not Earth. I mean Captain Illiath, of the Maxohlx Hegemony cruiser Vortan. I know her ship’s patrol area. With a single wormhole shortcut, we could be there in less than a day.”

“Thanks, Skippy, but she’ll have to get my autograph later. Why do you think we should meet her? She’s just another-”

“Her ship is alone, Joe. It would be a low-risk encounter for us, even in Valkyrie’s current condition. Illiath has been sort of exiled, because she was part of the task force at Earth when you revealed we have a critical mass of Elder weapons, and you made the big speech about Mutual Assured Destruction. She wasn’t in command of that task force, but the stink of that humiliation has stuck to her. She was also previously associated with an admiral who is a rival of Reichert, and as you know, Reichert has purged the general command of anyone who does not support him.”

“OK, it sounds like you think we should get involved in kitty politics, and that is not-”

“I think that all the Maxohlx we’ve met so far are blindly fanatical assholes. This Illiath is different, she is able to think critically, with an open mind. It might be useful to get her perspective on the strategic situation; and how likely it is the kitty leadership will negotiate with Earth. If nothing else, Joe, I want to add her as a datapoint in my model of Maxohlx psychology. That model has been, as you know, less than accurate so far.”

“One day, huh? Where is her ship?”

A star chart appeared in a hologram, hovering over my desk. It was still weird to see that, a 3D image without any apparent mechanism for display. “Here,” he said, as light blinked. “In the middle of nowhere, twenty nine lightyears from any other Hegemony ships.”

The star chart didn’t mean anything to me. I could have asked him to zoom out, with a handy arrow pointing to our location, and one pointing to Earth for reference, but that also wouldn’t provide any information that was actually useful to me. With wormholes connecting across vast distances, the critical question about star travel was not distance, but time. “Wow,” I noticed the only stars around Illiath’s ship were red dwarfs, without even any refueling stations. Somebody really wanted her out of sight, and to punish her. For what? For being unlucky. “She is in the middle of nowhere. OK, I’ll talk with Striebich and Smythe about this, but plot a course.”

True to his word, Skippy laid out a course that got us to the cruiser Vortan’s lonely position, in less than a day. During the flight, I used the time to read what we knew about Captain Illiath.

She was smart, that much was confirmed. Smart enough to be a threat, back when I feared she would figure out the secret that a group of humans were really flying the ghost ship that we framed the Bosphuraq for. Enough of a threat that, as I remember, I once considered an operation to take her out. As in, track her down and murder her. At that time, I was persuaded that targeting a relatively obscure Maxohlx officer would backfire on us, by letting the kitties know her crazy theories about the ghost ship might be true. That was a relief, actually, I wanted an excuse not to kill someone. Illiath hadn’t done anything to us, other than be exceptionally good at her job.

Reading the file about her, I got the feeling that, if she wasn’t part of an asshole species who believed they had an innate right to rule the galaxy, she would be a damned good asset for humanity. We needed leaders who could see beyond the obvious, beyond what appeared to be the obvious, and ask questions. Sometimes, uncomfortable questions. Like, is what we supposedly ‘know’ the truth? She had guts, that’s for certain. While the entire Hegemony military was focused on tracking down the rogue Bosphuraq who controlled the ghost ship, and killing innocent Bosphuraq to punish the apparent offenders, she was off on her own, seeking the truth.

Unfortunately for her, and she discovered that she was right about the ghost ship, only to immediately be told there were now three species in the galaxy who possessed an arsenal of Elder weapons. At that point, her chain of command really didn’t give a shit about the ghost ship, or the protests of the Bosphuraq about being unfairly punished for something they didn’t do.

Anyway, we found her cruiser on its lonely vigil, pretty much where Skippy’s intel said it should be. After waiting two hours to confirm our two ships were alone and accelerating to match speed and course with her ship, I ordered Valkyrie to jump in twenty thousand kilometers away. Our damping field ensured that her cruiser wasn’t going anywhere, but we didn’t use active sensors to paint the Vortan for targeting. “This is General Bishop,” I greeted her, my hands up in a peaceful gesture she very likely understood. “Captain Illiath, we just want to talk. Please don’t make a futile gesture by shooting at us.”

She didn’t reply right away. Her ship didn’t shoot at us, I took that as a good sign. When her image appeared in the main display, Skippy whispered in my earpiece, “Joe, the skin around her eyes is puffy. I think she just woke up.”

“General Bishop,” her image looked at me. Her face looked normal to me, the puffiness must be a subtle difference. “You came all the way out here, to talk?”

“It’s not a long flight for us,” I shrugged, both stating the truth, and bragging. My purpose was not to be a jerk, it was to remind her that we had capabilities beyond the reach of her people. To make the point that shooting at us would be not only dangerous, but stupid. “May I ask, how long have you been out here? We have news of recent events, that you might not have heard.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, I understood that without the helpful body language highlighter feature of the display. “Our last status update was thirty four days, seven hours,” the translator stumbled, as either Skippy or Bilby remembered I didn’t need a precise translation of alien time units. “Ago,” she finished.

I lifted one corner of my mouth, in a smile to set her at ease, if that was possible. Waiting a beat for her own software to interpret my body language, I continued. “Your people goaded the Bosphuraq into attacking Earth. We retaliated. Against your clients, and your people. We bombarded two Bosphuraq worlds, because we felt we had to,” I shrugged again. “Our main action was destroying three of the Maxohlx task forces that were waiting to ambush us. We ambushed them.”

She stared at me with an eerie calm, probably ordering her glands to pump her full of soothing hormones. “General Bishop, you are telling me that we hit you, and you hit us back. Your actions didn’t solve anything.”

“Your people forced their clients to attack us, to see if we would retaliate by crashing a wormhole network in Bosphuraq territory.”

Her eyes widened that time. She, too, was wondering if we would actually take that extreme step. If we could do it. “Did you?”

“No.”

She considered before speaking. I appreciated that she was taking our discussion seriously, that she didn’t think it was a waste of her time. “My people want an answer. They will keep pushing you, until they get-”

“They did get our answer. We just crashed a network, in Hegemony territory.” I crooked a finger, and a star chart appeared in the display, with star systems identified in Maxohlx standard script. “Your people are responsible for the attack on our homeworld, your people should pay the price. We won’t let you hide behind your clients.”

She sucked in a breath. Just a little one, but it told me her control of showing her emotions was not absolute. “General, you were unwise to target those star systems. They are critical to-” She froze. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, and tight with emotion. “Loss of those systems will severely damage our ability to defend against Rindhalu aggression. My leadership will view your action as the opening of unrestricted warfare. It will-”

“Whoa!” I said, holding up my hands in case ‘whoa’ didn’t translate properly for her. “We don’t want a war. We don’t want to escalate anything. We want to talk about the future. The shutdown of that wormhole network is only temporary. It will be restored soon. Your people wanted an answer, they got it. They also got a warning.”

I didn’t need any assistance from Skippy to tell me the expression on her face was anguish. And shock. “General Bishop, I fear you have killed us all. My people will never accept subjugation to humans. No amount of-”

“Damn it, all we want is for your people to stop shooting at us!”

She shook her head. “You think your terms are generous, but they require us to stop being the Hegemony. We would rather die, than give up the destiny we believe awaits us. Our commanders will see the shutdown of one wormhole network as the beginning of the end for our society. They will strike back, while we still can. The entire galaxy will suffer, because of your rash action.”

“Oh for-” Take a breath, Joe, I reminded myself. “I don’t know anything about your,” I caught my tongue before I could say ‘whacko’ or ‘sick’ or ‘bullshit’, or any other judgmental word. “Your religion,” I said simply. “Here’s what I do know: if your people trigger the Sentinels, you will have zero chance of ever achieving your destiny.”

“General, have you informed my people that your action was only temporary?”

“No. We planned to let them think about the consequences for a while.”

“I urge you to deliver your message as soon as possible. You do not understand what you have done.”

Well, shit, I said to myself. The flight to talk with a Maxohlx starship captain was, I had thought, potentially interesting, but not important to our mission. Maybe I was wrong about that. “Your people are so fragile, the loss of a couple star systems will collapse your entire society?”

“We are not fragile,” she shot back at me, fire in her eyes. She might be more open-minded and less of an asshole than most of her people, but she was still a rotten kitty. “We are strong.”

“Bullshit. If you were strong, you wouldn’t consider destroying the entire freakin’ galaxy, when all we’re asking for is to talk. Damn it! Why are you so obsessed about ruling the galaxy?”

“There must be order,” she explained. “Lack of order results in chaos. Chaos leads to needless death and destruction. Without the leadership of my people and the Rindhalu, each species would be fighting all the others, with no rules restricting their conduct. One habitable world after another would be rendered uninhabitable from radiation or biological agents. Even with the two most senior species preventing complete chaos, there is too much fighting, because the Rindhalu are too weak to control their clients. Someone must step forward and provide true leadership. It is the destiny of my people to fill the void of leadership. We can bring order, and peace.”

“Riiight. Just, not peace and order for everyone?”

“Some species, who are not worthy, and cannot contribute to a better future, must be sacrificed for the common good.” As she said what was probably just propaganda she had beaten into her head as a child, her angry glare at me slipped a notch. Maybe she didn’t fully buy into the arrogant line of bullshit her culture was based on?

“Ha,” I laughed quietly. “It sounds like not all of the people of the Hegemony really believe in this destiny crap.”

“It is the truth!”

“Maybe, but you don’t believe it. If you did trust this destiny, you would have faith that it will work out in the end. Be patient, and don’t blow up the whole freakin’ galaxy just because of one setback. Wait!” I held up a hand. “Arguing about this is a waste of time for both of us. What should I do now, so your idiot leaders don’t do something stupid we will all regret?”

As Skippy would say: UGH.

Damn, there is nothing I hate more than spending one second of my life worrying about the feelings of our enemies. Yet, that was exactly what I had to do, to prevent a disaster. And, crap, Skippy was right. The ultimate objective of our mission was diplomatic: getting the Maxohlx to negotiate with us. Also with the Rindhalu, since any two-way agreement would be unstable. Negotiations were all about squishy feelings, like pride. And greed. And desire, even if we had to squash the desire of the Maxohlx to squash us.

To let the kitty leadership know the sky was only temporarily falling, we followed the advice of Captain Illiath. We flew toward the star system that was the military center of the closest Maxohlx region, to transmit a message. Two messages; the official one from the United Nations we’d been carrying since we left Earth, and a new one from Captain Illiath. It would have been too risky for us to jump into that heavily-defended star system, so we emerged on the outskirts of the system, dropped off a drone, and jumped away. The drone waited a couple minutes, then its powerful transmitter sent the two messages repeatedly, until the antenna burned out after about half an hour. About nine hours after the transmission began, it reached the inhabited world in the system. We know that twenty four minutes after the message was received, a pair of Maxohlx destroyers jumped away, presumably to carry the message to the kitty homeworld.

The message from Illiath, which of course we reviewed very carefully before passing on to the enemy, basically urged her people to take us seriously, and to not take any rash action until they explored all other options. Be patient, she preached, and we will surely achieve our destiny.

Hmm. I wonder where she got that from.

The message from the UN was not a Joe Bishop Special like: ‘Hey assholes, don’t worry. We will turn the wormhole network back on soon, which we can do, because awesomeness’. The message came straight from the UN, I didn’t screw with it at all. It was good enough, I guess. We had hit the Maxohlx because we knew they were responsible for the attack against Earth. They had two options. Behind Door Number One is an escalating series of temporary wormhole network interruptions, targeted to give the Rindhalu coalition a tactical advantage. Behind Door Number Two is an opportunity to engage in a negotiated settlement. To talk, like adults. Like the superior beings the Maxohlx claimed to be. Of course, the text of the message was carefully crafted to be professional, cautious, even conciliatory. The message was intended to begin ratcheting down tensions, after the escalation of our recent campaign.

The diplomats of the United Nations know a lot more than I do about how to make deals, and encourage reluctant parties to the negotiating table. That’s why I didn’t alter the message in any way at all.

I know a lot more about how the Maxohlx are assholes all the way to the core, so I did add my own little personal note, at the end of the transmission.

It was short and to the point. They might think we are not serious, about switching wormhole networks in their territory on and off, depending on their behavior. If they want to know for sure, I told them they could fuck around and find out.

I did sign the note on behalf of the Merry Band of Pirates, and I used the word ‘sincerely’.

That’s got to count for something.

OK. In case you think I’m back to my old tricks of being a reckless jackass, I did not add my own message without reviewing it with my command staff first.

Striebich had asked, “What’s the point of this message, Sir?”

“The kitties might view humans as weak and stupid, and think they can manipulate us,” I explained. “The point is to remind them they also have to deal with the Merry Band of Pirates, and they can’t get away with any of their usual bullshit with us.”

“In that case,” she looked at the text of my message on her tablet. “I think you’re being too subtle.”

Smythe had a different take on my Hallmark-card-worthy love note to the kitties. “Sir, are you sure this isn’t going too far? You are practically daring them to test our resolve. We might have to,” he looked toward my closed office door, the two of us were alone, for such a sensitive discussion. “Crash, another wormhole network.”

“I’m OK with that,” I assured him.

He raised an eyebrow.

Despite my higher rank, he was a high-speed special operator, and I am a doofus. Hopefully I had gotten past the hero worship phase, but he still intimidated me, just a bit. I wanted his approval. It’s pathetic, I know. “I meant, now that we have a way to,” my eyes darted to the door, confirming it was securely closed. “Simulate a crash, I’m not panicked about the idea. Command may want us to do it again, right?”

“Yes, Sir, that’s what concerns me. Command doesn’t know the risk involved, they could treat the issue too casually. Every time we, simulate, a crash, we risk someone discovering what we are really doing.”

“The odds that an alien ship is within sensor range when we-”

“My concern is about the crew of this ship.”

“Oh. Right. Crap.”

“So far, they have bought the official story. The people aboard this ship are smart, and they talk with each other. They talk with Skippy,” his eyes automatically flicked to the ceiling. “If someone asks the wrong question, or the right question, and our dodgy beer can doesn’t lie convincingly-”

“Oh, shit. Skippy!”

“Yeah, yeah. I was listening,” he said as his avatar appeared on the desk. “You want to know if the crew have been asking me how I crash a wormhole network?”

“Have they?”

“Of course, dumdum. They also want to know why, this time, we have to visit every wormhole on the local network, while the first time, we only had to contact one wormhole on each of the networks we planned to crash.”

“Ohhhhh, I have a bad feeling about this,” I groaned feeling sick. “What did you tell them?”

“That the information is classified, and anyway it is much too complicated for filthy monkeys to understand. After I told them the second part, most people called me an asshole and ended the conversation.”

“Oh, thank God.” The relief I felt made me shiver. “Wow. You being an asshole is actually useful?”

“It’s a gift, Joe,” he said cluelessly. “Ugh. Please don’t tell me I did the wrong thing, again. Dealing with you meatsacks is complicated enough, without me needing to remember which lies to tell.”

“No, you did great. Smythe, I hear you. I will inform Command that, uh, our ability to temporarily crash networks is itself temporary. That if we do it too many times, the overall network might lock Skippy out, or some bullshit like that. Does that sound good, Skippy?”

“Yes, because it is actually true,” the beer can sniffed.

“See?” I looked at Smythe. “Problem solved.”

“One problem solved,” Smythe insisted. “We came here, and transmitted the UN’s official message early, because of fear the Maxohlx would panic and lash out in a way that could be fatal to us all. Another network crash, even if they know ahead of time that it is temporary, risks the enemy feeling their autonomy is threatened.”

“OK, sure, good point, another thing we need to talk with Command about. But, I disagree,” I said, wondering when was the last time I had said that to our STAR team leader. “The kitties are advanced beyond us in almost every way, but they are still biological beings. The first time something happens, it’s shocking. When it happens again, and again, it begins to lose its shock value. It becomes the New Normal. They adapt to it.”

“You’re saying the enemy could come to view temporary network crashes as a cost of doing business?”

“Crap. No. It shouldn’t get that far. It can’t. All I’m saying is, they won’t panic so much the next time. Skippy, does that match what your model says about their psychology?”

“That all meatsack beings get numb to events, when they are no longer new? Yes. However, you should remember that my model of Maxohlx psychology has been less than accurate.”

“Gotcha. Smythe, do you have any objection to me adding this note to the official statement?”

“No, Sir. My concern is about our overall strategy.”

So, as you know, I sent the note. What the kitties thought of it, whether they even bothered to read it, we don’t know. It did make me feel good to smack them in the face like that.

Which, in my job, means maybe I did the wrong thing.

I hate this job sometimes.

When I walked into the galley that evening for dinner, everyone was wearing a T-shirt. The same T-shirt. The front had an image of a UNEF soldier wearing a standard set of powered armor, holding a rifle, faceplate swung up to see human eyes staring intently forward.

Below the image was a logo.

It read: IF YOU SEE ME, DIPLOMACY AIN’T WORKING..

The crew applauded when Simms gave me a shirt, that I pulled on over my uniform top.

Sometimes, I love this job.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“I am not proposing that we surrender,” Admiral Reichert insisted, relying on artificially produced hormones to give him the appearance of confidence and aggression which he didn’t feel. His self-confidence had, in fact, been thoroughly shattered by the destruction of the doomsday fleet. Not just by that one devastating setback. There had been an escalating series of setbacks, first when he was merely a Fleet admiral, then after he maneuvered himself into control of the Fleet’s general staff. The Hegemony public’s trust in their military was challenged, when the Maxohlx people were shocked to discover the ghost ship was not operated by the Bosphuraq, and therefore the campaign to punish their clients was not only not justified, it was counterproductive. It weakened the entire coalition, at a time when the Maxohlx needed every bit of combat power they could muster because of another shocking discovery: that humans were flying the ghost ship, and had been conducting clandestine operations all across the galaxy, for years. Including an operation to sucker the Maxohlx into weakening their own coalition. If that was not bad enough, humans could not be punished for their upstart lack of respect, because they now had control of Elder weapons, hidden in strategic locations throughout the territory of the Maxohlx and Rindhalu.

Reichert gained, then held his powerful position throughout those disasters even when humans later struck back. By the time humans demonstrated the ability to shut down wormhole networks, his control of the general staff was absolute. His fellow admirals had tied their fate to his, they could not afford to let him fall, or he would take them down with him.

They even went along with his extreme doomsday plan, trading their souls for their survival.

Now, even that doomsday option was not possible. The entire galaxy knew the leaders Hegemony had intended to kill them all, to hold onto a tiny flicker of hope that the Maxohlx could someday rule the galaxy alone. Shockwaves of that disaster, a catastrophe in both strategic and political terms, were still reverberating within Maxohlx society. Not just within their society, the revelation had caused clients to formally protest, and for at least three coalition ‘partners’ to approach the Rindhalu. The Hegemony fleet was hard-pressed to prevent open rebellion by clients, to the point where Maxohlx civilian ships were not permitted to travel in client territory without a strong military escort. Reichert had to salvage something from the situation, or the government’s civilian leadership would sacrifice him in a heartbeat. His fellow admirals on the general staff were no longer certain allies; they saw the disaster as an opportunity to slip free of the noose that encircled all their necks, leaving him to hang alone.

“We will never surrender. We will be patient, in the certain knowledge that it is our destiny to claim our rightful place as leaders of all civilization,” he said, echoing words in the message from Captain Illiath. That disgraced officer may very well be executed for treason, because she had not even attempted to attack Valkyrie during their encounter. But her words were useful. “The humans are young, primitive, foolish. They will make a mistake, and we must be ready to exploit the situation to our advantage.”

“You propose we agree to the terms offered by the criminal Bishop?” Admiral Wendadi asked, adding into his tone a dramatic note of incredulity.

“I propose we talk to the humans. Learn more about them. Find their weaknesses, and exploit them. Human society is fractured into factions, much like the clans of the Kristang,” he said that name with undisguised disgust, and was rewarded by agreeing murmurs from the audience. No one in the Hegemony had the slightest respect for that bickering species of undisciplined children. “By talking, we can discover how to split the humans apart, to our advantage. Perhaps,” he hung his head and shook it slowly, a gesture so unexpected that the general staff chamber fell into a tense hush. “Perhaps,” he looked up again. “I was too hasty to declare all is lost, and it was time to activate our long-planned doomsday scenario.” His emphasis on ‘long-planned’ was to remind the audience that previous generations of leadership had conceived of the notion to flee the galaxy. “Our destiny awaits us, here. All of us. If we can split human society, we can gain a powerful new ally against our ancient enemy. Do I have your approval to recommend we open negotiations with the humans?”

After debate, much more debate than Reichert expected, which showed the precariousness of his position, the general staff recommended their government approach the humans to begin discussions.

Only three days after we reactivated the wormhole network that we temporarily faked shutting down, the rotten kitties announced they wanted to talk with us and the Rindhalu. I had two reactions to the welcome news. Publicly, I pumped a fist and offered high fives to everyone on the bridge. Privately a few minutes later, I went to my cabin and barfed up my breakfast. “Are you OK, Joe?” Skippy asked with genuine concern, and not just concern that his bots needed to wash another towel.

“Yeah. I hate lying to my crew. The stress is,” I held out my hands, they trembled a bit. “Getting to me.”

“Hey, I feel like barfing, and I don’t even have a stomach.”

“Sorry.”

“Why?”

“I got you into this. It was my idea to fake the network shutdown.”

“No problemo. It gave me an opportunity to screw with the entire galaxy, hee hee.”

“Thanks for being understanding. It helps.”

“Friends are supposed to have each other’s backs, right?”

“Yes. Still, I appreciate that I can vent to someone.”

“Again, no problemo, Dude. Um, to be clear, you’re not planning to mope and whine much longer about your, ugh, feelings?” He gagged.

“Why are you such an asshole?” I asked, but I had to laugh. Skippy being, well, Skippy, felt normal. Right then, I needed life to feel normal. Like I wasn’t keeping a terrible secret that had the potential to destroy all of humanity. “Never mind.” Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I decided there was no need to put on a fresh uniform. Doing that would be noticed, and the crew would get suspicious. Splashing cold water on my face, I felt better. We won, I told myself. We had bent the enemy to our will, by force of arms. And by the awesomeness of Skippy.

The Maxohlx, of course, were way too freakin’ arrogant to admit that they agreed to talks because of our threat to crash more wormhole networks. Their official announcement included haughty language about how they, as leaders of their righteous coalition, had a responsibility to curb future reckless actions of the young and impetuous humans.

Ha.

Over the years, people have called me a lot of things, but ‘impetuous’ is new to me. I had to Google it to make sure I understood the reference. Because I didn’t want to be, you know, impetuous about it.

Whatever. It really doesn’t matter whether the Maxohlx admitted they were frightened, everyone in the galaxy knew the asshole kitties were terrified of our twice-demonstrated ability to selectively shut down entire networks of wormholes. All the other species knew the arrogant Maxohlx were frightened of us, because every species was also afraid of what we impetuous primitives might do next.

Hell, I didn’t know what we would do next, because I really didn’t have a plan for the sudden outbreak of peacetime. Fortunately, that question was above my pay grade. The nations of UNEF would lead the negotiations with the two senior species, which weren’t even scheduled at that point.

Back on the bridge, I waved for Striebich to remain in the command chair. “You have the conn, XO. I’m just,” I looked at the main display, which showed the relay station hovering off to the side, and nothing else. No threats, no formation of Navy ships we had to coordinate with. Just us. “Taking in the moment. We should have a special dinner tonight, to celebrate.”

“Yes, Sir,” she agreed with a twinkle in her eyes.

“What?” I asked. “Oh, please tell me we’re not going to have some weird vegetable thing.”

“No. It’s something new. You’ll like it,” she grinned, “I heard about it a couple weeks ago, but I’ve been keeping it a surprise.”

The problem with having a new executive officer, one who had not served aboard the ship in another capacity, is that I still didn’t know Striebich all that well. Was she screwing with me, and I would have to eat zucchini surprise? Or were we getting juicy steaks for dinner?

As dinnertime approached, I waited impatiently in my office. Striebich had notified me I was banned from the galley, or the passageways near the galley. Apparently, I was not even allowed to smell whatever was cooking there. I had no idea what special treat was being served for dinner. Asking Skippy for a hint was useless, he was under strict orders to avoid the subject. “Come on, Skippy. Help a brother out.”

“No way, Jose.” His avatar folded his arms across his chest and shook his head.

“Gimme a hint, please. All I want to know is, will I like it?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Good point.”

The crew was no help either. Some of them had ‘I know something you don’t know’ smirks on their faces, which had me worried. In my desk drawer were ration bars that tasted like compressed sawdust, I debated eating one, so I wouldn’t need to eat much at dinner. Instead, I decided to trust my still-new XO.

That was a good call.

What was for dinner?

O.M.G.

If you had asked me if it was possible to combine two of my favorite foods, I would have said that required arcane, forbidden magic.

Thankfully, I would have been wrong to say that.

Did we have steaks for dinner? No. Lobster rolls? Also no.

On my plate was something so incredible, I just stared at it for a full minute, while the crew watched me.

It was called a ‘Fluff Screamer’.

Striebich knew about it because one of our pilots is from Girardville, Pennsylvania, where the Fluff Screamer is a local favorite.

Imagine this, if you dare. A cheeseburger, with raw onions, a hot and spicy chili sauce, a pat of butter on top, and-

Wait for it.

Waaaaaait for it.

Marshmallow Fluff.

Genius, right?

The sweet goodness of Fluff helps cut the fiery heat of the chili sauce and onions, with all the flavors combining into something so indescribably delicious, it- Well, like I said, it can’t be described.

Seated across the table from me, Striebich waited anxiously for me to pick up the Screamer and taste it.

Hunched over the table so the juice, butter, sauce and Fluff didn’t drip on my uniform, I bit into it. “Oh, tha ish so gooh,” I mumbled, my mouth full because I immediately took another bite.

There were also French fries, and potato salad, and three-bean salad, and other backyard cookout style foods. To be polite, I sampled a bit of everything, to show the crew I appreciated their efforts. Here’s a trivia question; how many Fluff Screamers can Joe Bishop eat?

The answer is: three.

How many did I want to eat? More than three, to tell the truth.

Even the crew was impressed when I shoveled the last burger in my mouth, and licked Fluff, hot sauce and melted cheese off my fingers.

Hey, I was stress eating. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

When we arrived back at FOB Jaguar, I let Striebich brief Admiral Zhao, while I made another call. Did I call Margaret?

No. My first call was to my father.

Did I tell him the good news, about the kitties agreeing to peace talks?

No. I told him about the Fluff Screamer!

He demanded to know why he hadn’t heard about such an incredible food combination before, and agreed with me that the good citizens of Pennsylvania were jerks for keeping it a secret. I promised that when I got down to the surface, we would make a batch of Screamers on my parents’ backyard grill. Then I had to call back, when I remembered I had ended the call without even mentioning our success in getting the enemy to the table for negotiations.

My second call was to Margaret, who listened with increasing irritation while I rambled on about the new food sensation. “Joe!” She interrupted. “What about your mission?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, it was fine. Listen, when you bite into the onions, it-”

“If I promise to come to your parents and eat one of these things,” she sighed. “Will you give me more detail than ‘it was fine’? Honey, while you’ve been flying around making things happen, we have been stuck here, with no idea what’s going on in the universe beyond the local wormhole.”

“Sorry.” I briefly told her about our mission, and the very satisfying results. We made plans to meet at my parents’ house the next afternoon, she was on a field exercise and wouldn’t be back until the next morning. When we ended the call, I froze.

She had called me ‘honey’.

Not ‘Joe’. We crossed that line a while ago, thankfully.

She called me ‘honey’. That’s what couples call each other, when they are a couple. In a relationship. She was so comfortable about us, she used a term of endearment without really thinking about it.

Damn.

Forcing the kitties to negotiate. A new and exciting kind of cheeseburger. And, my girlfriend acting like we’re officially a couple.

Life is good sometimes.

Before I could fly down to the surface and breathe unfiltered air, there was a series of meetings to get through, with Zhao of course. Thankfully he scheduled the briefings for late that evening, giving Striebich plenty of time to get a heads up from his staff about what the admiral in command of the United Nations Navy wanted to focus on. While my new XO worked on that, I called my former XO, aboard the battlecruiser Defiant. Jennifer Simms was busy, her crew was working on simple repairs and preventative maintenance while her ship waited for shipyard space to become available. Defiant had sustained only light damage from the three recent battles. At the moment, Simms had her ship lurking in stealth a few lightminutes from the planet, acting as a reserve in case aliens found a way through the local wormhole to attack Jaguar base.

It was good to talk with her. She told me news I could have gotten from the regular status report, and we discussed fleet gossip that was not in any official report. According to rumors, the damage to Glorious was bad enough that Zhao was holding that ship back from refit, intending to wait until the complete Ragnar Station was transferred to Jaguar. By that time, the battlecruiser Furious should be ready to take the place of Glorious in the 3rd Fleet. The British wouldn’t be happy about being one ship short, they and the other nations had best get used to it. There weren’t enough resources to keep all the battlecruisers constantly online, and-

OK, enough talk about nerdy logistics stuff.

Jennifer was busy, she was tired, she was worried about Earth, she was anxious to see her husband Frank again, she was worried about him. Overall, I’d say she was happy. The whole time I’d known her, she worried about everything, her current command was no different.

We made plans to get together aboard her ship before Valkyrie jumped away.

I did not tell her about Fluff Screamers.

My next meeting was with Emily Perkins, aboard the 2nd Fleet flagship Atlantic. That former Jeraptha battleship, once one of the proudest ships in the UN Navy, was looking a bit shabby already when I arrived aboard a dropship. Priority for resources was assigned to the newer Courageous-class battlecruisers, leaving all the ships we acquired from the beetles to scrape by with whatever materials they could scrounge from the fabricator ships. Planned upgrades had been halted in progress, with bundles of wires and power conduits held together with simple plastic zip ties, and access panels open, exposing the usually-unseen mysterious mechanisms of the ship.

“I hope we don’t have to jump suddenly,” I said to Perkins, only half-joking.

“The jump drive is in A-1 condition,” she assured me. “Everything else,” she shrugged, and pointed to a bucket full of wires and relays, beside which was a maintenance bot that wasn’t doing anything. “With the Legion shut down, the battlewagons and assault transports are lowest priority. We don’t have any planets to drop on, and the big guns don’t have anything to shoot at.”

“You do have plans, right? For the Legion?”

She ushered me into a conference room, where coffee and snacks were laid out on the table. For the next hour, she went through a presentation that was only half-finished. She stopped often to talk about issues, though I cautioned that I could only speak for the Special Mission Group. Matters of grand strategy were above my pay grade, I had enough headaches already.

Did Perkins have plans for redeploying the Legion? Does Joe Bishop love cheeseburgers? Yes! She had plans, as in more than one, and they technically were contingency plans, because the Legion’s next step depended on factors outside her control. Like, the terms Earth would reach with the senior species, about how much freedom clients would have to sign mutual-defense treaties with humanity. Which species would even want a deal with us, and what level of support they wanted.

What she struggled with was that the primary goal of the Legion had completely changed. The problem was, originally the purpose of the new Legion, led by humans rather than Ruhar, was to show the value of a potential alliance with humanity. We had demonstrated the value of a combined human and Verd-kris force, everyone in the galaxy was aware of the Legion’s full set of capabilities, especially when backed up by the still-new UN Navy. The galaxy was also aware of how eager the Verds were to get into the action. So now, Perkins had to shift focus to a mission of supporting Earth’s policy goals.

What policies the UN would want to pursue was a complete unknown. After a treaty was signed with the senior species, would the nations of Earth, weary from years of living with the terror of extinction looming over their heads, decide to pull back to a handful of secure bases and let the galaxy fend for itself? Or would the prospect of access to advanced technology, and planets full of undeveloped real estate, get humanity in an expansive mood? Perkins knew that whether we wanted to play in our own backyard, or expand across the galaxy and beyond, we would be more secure with allies. That meant offering a strong military response to attacks against our allies, and if Earth didn’t want to risk putting millions of human boots on alien ground, we needed the Verd-kris to be our grunts. Fortunately for us, the Verd-kris were eager for action, although it made me feel dirty, like we were exploiting them. Oh hell, welcome to politics, right?

“I would ask if you have any news from the Ruhar,” she turned down one side of her mouth in a disgusted frown. “But anything they have to say could change tomorrow.”

“No news yet,” I snorted, knowing she was right. The hamster government had changed their minds often about relations with us, depending on our fortunes at the moment. Their ultimate decision, about whether to formally align with the species they long considered inferiors, would probably be driven by necessity. Like, after events forced them to make a decision. One thing was certain: the Ruhar were not taking the big risk of being first to tie themselves to us. They’d been in the war for a very long time, and been burned too many times when they took a big risk. “I do have news for you. We pinged a relay station before we came through the wormhole. There was a note from our old friend Admiral Kekrando.”

“Oh?”

“The message is in your queue, ask Skippy and he’ll find it for you. The gist of it is the Achakai are feeling secure on their new homeworld, and interested in discussing an arrangement.”

“An arrangement?” It wasn’t often that Perkins showed surprise. “The last communication we had with the ninjas was basically ‘Thanks for the help, now get off our planet’. We only conducted that operation to screw with the Kristang.”

“And the Wurgalan,” I reminded her. The Achakai invasion of a Wurgalan world had accomplished more than the Legion originally hoped for. The expectation was that after the disgraced Achakai openly broke from Kristang society and tradition, the major clans would grudgingly assist their hated rivals the Wurgalan to take back the disputed world. The resulting battle would keep the lizards and squids busy, making them unable to cause trouble for the Ruhar. Ultimately, the Achakai would be crushed, the Kristang clans would go back to fighting each other, and the Wurgalan would hold back a major part of their combat power, to guard against another group of ambitious lizards.

Instead, the open fighting between the Thuranin and Bosphuraq, who were patrons respectively of the Kristang and Wurgalan, had prevented a major effort to push the Achakai off their new homeworld. The ninjas had not been passively waiting for an attack to come, they approached the Black Trees with a deal: the Achakai and two other clans would throw their might into the civil war on the side of the Black Trees, in exchange for that influential major clan recognizing the upstart Achakai as a legitimate, if minor, clan. The Fire Dragon clan was outraged to hear of the unholy alliance with the disgraced ones, and the civil war flared up again in a major way. It was likely that war would burn itself out within a year or two, as the Thuranin didn’t have the time, resources or patience to help their endlessly bickering clients continue their pointless war.

“An arrangement,” I explained, “where the Legion assists the Achakai, to end the civil war on terms that are advantageous to the ninjas.”

“Oh my God,” she gasped.

“That sounds like an idea you cooked up.”

“I wish,” she admitted. “Hmm. The ninjas don’t do anything halfway. Ha!” She slapped the table. “I can’t wait to hear what the hamsters think about this development.”

“Would we really intervene in the lizard civil war?”

She cocked her head at me. “You mean, intervene again?”

“Well, yeah,” I said sheepishly. Damn, you spark one civil war, and people keep wanting to remind you of it.

“The Verds would jump at the chance,” she mused. “The question is, how would we benefit?”

“End their civil war in a way that leaves the lizards weak and divided? Sign me up for that.”

“Let me read Kekrando’s message,” she shrugged. “By the time Earth makes a decision, it may be OBE anyway.”

“Welcome to the Army, Perkins,” I grinned.

We talked for a while, then I got a brief tour of the ship before lunch in the galley. After that, I flew over to Zhao’s flagship for a briefing.

During the flight, I sat back in my chair in the empty cabin, thinking about the future. If the senior species really agreed to a ceasefire, Perkins might have an opportunity to take the Legion into action again. But, what was I going to do? After Skippy cleared the cloud away from Earth, what would be next for me? And for Skippy?

The Magnificent One living on Earth was not an option, as long as aliens wanted to capture him, and we had to assume they always would. Leaving him alone was too dangerous, he got into enough trouble even when I was there to limit the damage. Maybe we could settle down at Jaguar for a while? Until aliens got there, either through a wormhole shift, or traveling the long way for a surprise attack. No, in the long term Jaguar was not a good option. That left Avalon, far outside the galaxy. We would both be safe there. Until Skippy got bored. And we would have to fly back to the Milky Way regularly, to make sure the beings there were not getting up to any nonsense.

Avalon was a whole new planet to explore. The Sculptor Dwarf was an entire galaxy we knew little about. That could keep us busy for a while, right?

Maybe.

What I knew for sure was that living way out in the middle of nowhere sounded awfully lonely.

My Mom would probably think the place was too crowded.

Ah, it didn’t matter anyway. Skippy sitting on the sidelines or enjoying retirement or however you thought about it, was not an option. Even if we were able to find a solution so the two senior species were no longer a threat to humanity, we still had an even bigger, a much bigger threat looming over our heads. Looming over the entire galaxy.

Elder AIs.

Except for Skippy, they were all apparently dormant. Or dead, like the insane one he got into a fight with, and killed. But, Skippy had woken up from his long slumber, recovered from damage sustained in their long-ago war. If he was awake, it was only a matter of time before others became active. If another AI awakened, one that had been on the opposite side of the war, we would be faced with a threat far worse than the fragile egos of the Maxohlx. Eventually, and by ‘eventually’ I mean soon, we needed to begin hunting for dormant AIs, so we could kill them before they killed us.

Damn it, that’s why we needed to get the fucking kitties off our backs. We had more important things to do than worry about them sniping at Earth.

Yet another item on my To Do list.

I’ll get right on it.

Someday.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

The trouble began when-

Well, the trouble really began when a caveman on Earth looked at a fire and thought, ‘Hmm, that might be useful’. After that, it was an inevitable series of events that led to filthy monkeys developing technology and-

I guess technically, the trouble started when the Elders decided their networks should periodically shuffle the active wormholes for some unknown reason, resulting in a recent shift making Earth easily accessible to the Kristang, and-

OK, there is plenty of blame to go around.

This time, the trouble began when the face to face negotiations were into their second day. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, even Skippy didn’t know about it. Valkyrie wasn’t anywhere near the neutral site chosen for the three-party talks, and everyone involved was extra super careful to conduct all their discussions and scheming offline. It’s true that Skippy is awesome, it is also true that he is not omnipotent or all-knowing.

I mean, it would have saved a lot of heartache if the people involved had used electronic communications, like civilized beings.

But, technically the trouble began when the senior species decided they could use a divide and conquer strategy against us.

By ‘divide’, I don’t mean splitting humanity away from our potential allies.

I mean splitting up UNEF.

For the formal negotiations, the Rindhalu suggested a site where they met the Maxohlx for talks, on the few occasions when those long-time enemies decided they needed to discuss something face to face. There wasn’t anything special about the asteroid. It was just a rock, hollowed out down the center and set to spinning so the interior had gravity about sixty percent of Earth normal. The spiders originally had the central chamber set up with a biosphere based on their long-lost homeworld, which they may have intended to intimidate their enemy. The opposite happened; seeing a reminder of what they had lost was depressing, so the spiders ripped out the biosphere and replaced it with entirely artificial organisms they created for that environment.

The asteroid orbited a boring red dwarf star, with only one lonely ice giant planet which was barely adequate for providing fuel. The only reason that site was selected was its location, midway between unimportant wormholes in Maxohlx and Rindhalu territories.

Anyway, Chang took the UN delegation to the negotiation site, aboard the Flying Dutchman. UNEF Command debated sending a more powerful warship, even a small fleet of ships, then discarded that notion. Any number of ships we sent would remind the senior species of how few ships we had, and accomplish nothing. After dropping off the UN negotiating team, the Dutchman retreated to wait at a designated location, roughly seven lightminutes away. The Rindhalu and Maxohlx ships also jumped away to await a signal, and everyone was on their best behavior.

The first day of the three-party talks were absorbed by awkward introductions and setting ground rules, about which the Maxohlx were less prickly than the Earth delegation expected. The representatives of the Hegemony were apparently making the best of a bad situation, seemingly almost in a cooperative mood.

The morning of the second day, both of the senior species requested breakout sessions, with each of the five permanent members of the UNEF Council. Having five human entities involved in the negotiations was confusing, both the Rindhalu and the Maxohlx stated. It would be useful to meet separately with each of the five UNEF member nations, to better understand their relationship to the overall United Nations structure, and to gain an appreciation of the culture of the five nations. The request played to the egos of those humans involved, and each of the UNEF member states quietly hoped to gain an advantage, if only for prestige.

That was a mistake.

The Maxohlx, two of them, met separately with one member of the delegations representing China, India, America, Britain and France. Each time, they requested to begin the session with a particular junior member of the delegation, stating they did not wish to take up the time of the lead members of the teams.

Major Lin did not know whether to be flattered that the Maxohlx had requested to meet with him, or insulted that he was considered to be ‘junior’ in status. The aliens requested him by name, that had to be important. From the ambassador, he received strict instructions to be polite, to listen to the aliens, and to absolutely not reveal any information or commit his nation or the UN to anything.

He was completely surprised when, after exchanging awkward small talk, one of the aliens leaned forward, peering intently at him, and asked, “Major Lin, you are not concerned about your country’s precarious position?”

Lin blinked, despite his usually impressive self-control. He did not know that the clothing of the Maxohlx was dispersing a substance that acted as a mild narcotic on the human nervous system, loosening his inhibitions. “What position?”

“Please correct us if we misstate the facts, our understanding of the situation is of course based only on the short time we have known your people. Your nation, China, has traditionally been a rival of the country called,” the Maxohlx glanced down at a tablet, as if he needed to be reminded of information stored in his cranial implants. “India?”

“That is an exaggeration,” Lin tried to speak as smoothly as the aliens did.

“Really? Hmm,” the cat-like creature made a show of checking his tablet again. “We apologize. We were led to believe that your two countries have even recently been involved in skirmishes along your common border, and also have been conducting proxy wars in the countries of Bhutan and…,” another dramatic look at the tablet. “Nepal? Is that not correct?”

“As I said,” Lin found himself becoming irritated. “Those are exaggerations of the facts, about a very complex situation.”

“Again,” the kitty smiled. “We apologize. However, we do believe that the other three permanent members of the UNEF Council, are also members of a military alliance known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?”

“It is commonly called ‘NATO’, yes,” The People’s Liberation Army major shifted in his chair. “What is your point?”

“Forgive our ignorance of the political situation on your homeworld. We are simply observing that China appears to be alone, and in a relatively weak position, compared to the four other nations that also control starships above Earth. It has been suggested to us that-” The alien stopped talking, to look at his companion. Their eyelids flickered, indicating they were talking privately via implants.

“What?” Lin demanded. “What has been suggested?”

“Nothing,” the Maxohlx’s mouth tightened in an embarrassed smile. “I should not have said anything.”

“You did say it. What has been suggested?”

“Major Lin, we do not wish to cause tension between your nation, and the others of your coalition.”

“UNEF is not a coalition, and there is no tension.”

“Was there not recently a minor conflict in a place you call the,” the now-usual glance at a tablet. “The Philippine Sea?”

“That matter is not any of your concern,” he felt his face growing red. He knew he should probably request a recess, to confer with the ambassador. His instincts urged him to find out what the alien was talking about. “What was suggested?”

The alien sighed. “If you insist-”

“I do.”

“Very well. It has been suggested, by the three nations involved in the NATO group, that we negotiate with them as a single entity. The delegation from India has been invited to join the NATO group. That leaves China alone.”

“What?!”

“Your response might have been translated incorrectly, however it appears you are displeased about this information? You were not aware of the other nations excluding you?”

“No, I was not. May I ask whether you intend to accept the proposal to exclude China from the talks?”

“The exclusion was not to be anything official, merely that the actual negotiations would take place when you are not present. The answer is that we have not decided what to do. We are displeased to see the parties we are dealing with are in disarray. It is difficult enough to discuss matters of critical importance with beings who have so little experience beyond their homeworld. Now we have to reach an agreement with three parties?”

“Three?”

“This NATO group, the nation of China, and the treacherous Rindhalu,” he explained. “It would not surprise us to learn the Rindhalu are behind the NATO attempt to exclude China. Major Lin, we would strongly prefer to have one entity to speak for Earth. Based on your economic and military power, China should logically be that entity.”

He was aware the alien was making a clumsy attempt to flatter him, and appeal to his sense of national pride. He was vaguely aware it was working. “Thank you.”

“Unfortunately, it appears these talks will be fruitless, since your United Nations are anything but united. It would be better for everyone involved,” he looked away for a moment. “If China had the means to enforce its will upon the other nations of your world. Please understand that we have no ill will towards your country. But, we must be practical. America controls the Skippy AI, so they are the-”

“America does not control Skippy!”

The Maxohlx contorted his facial muscles, especially around the eyes, into an expression the human would interpret as pity. “We are aware of the fictional country that the criminal Bishop hides behind. Major Lin, we are each responsible to our people back home. We must speak the truth, no matter how unpleasant. The Skippy entity is aboard a warship that has an American commander, and an American is second in command of that ship. Also, a NATO member national leads that ship’s special operations unit. It has been reported that a token number of Chinese are aboard Valkyrie, however, they have no real authority. This is a truly unfortunate situation.”

Lin was no fool. He guessed what the alien was hinting at. “If you are suggesting that China help you to capture Skippy, that is not an-”

“No. That is not our intention. We have tried, and failed, and,” he sighed again. “Now we realize such action is not only reckless, it is foolish. The Skippy would never cooperate with us, nor with the Rindhalu. He is only useful to humans.”

Lin’s confusion was clear. His head was anything but clear, and he blinked to concentrate. “Then what-”

“We are suggesting,” the alien paused. “That it would be better for everyone, if China controlled the Skippy.”

“I still do not understand,” Fleet Captain Julabad said after the Chinese representative had walked away, with much to think about. “What do we hope to accomplish with the China humans, that could not more simply and securely be done with the America primitives? America already controls the Skippy. Why are we not-”

“The Americans,” Admiral Wendadi was proud of having learned the correct local term for the primitives who identified as belonging to that regional construct. “Are arrogant, because they are confident in their control. They see no reason to compromise, with us, with the Rindhalu, or with the other national entities on their homeworld. The Chinese, by contrast, have little to lose, and everything to gain, if they can capture the Skippy. They could eliminate Valkyrie and the criminal Bishop, removing a major threat to their own starships. They will then be more cooperative with us, because China will need allies while they establish dominance over their planet.”

“We take advantage of their fear?”

“Yes. The story about the NATO group approaching us was a total fabrication, however to the Chinese, it feels like it could be true. Julabad, during the journey here, I conducted extensive research about the humans, and their national entities. There was a Chinese military leader in ancient times, whose writings are still studied today. This General Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of arranging events such that the enemy is defeated before the battle begins. That requires waging war by non-military means, including economic pressure, disinformation, alliances with your enemy’s enemies, and clandestine operations. We know the Rindhalu have been trying to reach a separate agreement with the Americans. It is diplomacy, not enormous war fleets, that will turn the humans from a problem for us, into an asset. At best, we will split the human alliance, and reach an agreement with the Chinese that is favorable to us.”

“What if the Skippy refuses to cooperate, after it is captured by the Chinese?”

Wendadi smiled broadly, exposing his fangs. “That, too, is a best case for us. The humans will be fractured and unable to enforce their will on us, without the assistance of an Elder AI. If the Skippy merely continues to protect his pet humans by resetting the clocks on the Elder weapons in our territory, the strategic situation in the galaxy will return to the state before humans interfered with the natural course of events. Earth will be isolated, and will play no part in events beyond their bubble of space.”

“At worst? What is the worst case?”

“The Chinese plan is discovered before they can act, and again, human society will be fractured and weakened. The humans will be consumed with their internal political strife, leaving the galaxy to us.”

Julabad considered, his eyes flickering as he inquired the ship’s AI for analysis. “Very well,” he agreed. “What is the plan, if the Chinese refuse to take the bait?”

“Then we approach the delegation from India. Or France. Or Britain. We have plans for each contingency. The key is to drive a wedge between the five nations that control their Expeditionary Force, and to separate the Skippy from Bishop.”

“Have we considered simply assassinating Bishop?”

“We have. Analysis by the Section indicates a major risk that the assassination would be traced back to us, even if we use clandestine intermediaries to hire humans to do the job. The result would be the humans becoming more united against us, and the Skippy AI turning all its energies against the Hegemony. However,” he paused. “That option has not been entirely discarded. There may come a time when Bishop is such a dire threat to us, we are forced to act regardless of the consequences.”

“You have thought of every eventuality. What is the plan, if the Chinese not only refuse to take the bait, but they also reveal our proposal?”

“That would not be optimal,” Wendadi admitted. “It would, however, be only a setback. We would explain to the humans that we were motivated to contact the Chinese because we know the Americans have been secretly negotiating directly with the Rindhalu. We will then approach the delegation from India, to notify them that one condition the Chinese discussed with us was that the Chinese wanted our assistance against their traditional rivals. Then we begin the process again. The Section has ninety seven percent confidence that the result will be positive for us. Julabad, the Rindhalu are arrogant and duplicitous. In this case, we must put aside our ancient enmity, and admit they were correct to say we should negotiate with the humans.”

We had been at war for the better part of a decade since Columbus Day, and truthfully, most of the time was the Merry Band of Pirates was sitting around waiting. Waiting for UNEF Command to make a decision. Waiting for the jump drive capacitors to recharge while we traveled between stars. Waiting for an Elder wormhole to emerge, so we could instantly travel dozens or hundreds or even thousands of lightyears. Or, waiting for the precise time to kick off an operation. Then, waiting to see if the op achieved the desired results. My point is, even being in combat involves a lot of waiting, and all of it sucks.

Still, waiting to go into action is way better than waiting for negotiations to produce a result. Damn, those diplomats sure can talk, and that goes for humans, kitties and spiders. Chotek included a private note to me, when the Flying Dutchman briefly stopped at Earth to update the UN about the progress of the talks. Even Hans Chotek, professional diplomat, was frustrated by the slow progress, caused both by deliberate stalling tactics by both senior species, and by the senior species arguing over every issue, no matter how small. Apparently, the kitties and spiders were using the three-party talks with us to hash out ancient grievances. I guess that is better than them shooting at each other, or at us, so you have to keep it in perspective.

Hans contacted me privately out of courtesy because of the mutual respect and friendship we had slowly and reluctantly developed over the years, he felt I deserved a heads up about what was going on behind the scenes, and he didn’t trust to UN to keep me in the loop. I appreciated the gesture. The other reason he contacted me was purely professional. He asked if I knew anything that UN leadership wasn’t aware of, which was shocking and hurtful, because I certainly never do anything that is not fully and directly authorized by the proper chain of command.

OK, back to reality.

What Chotek was most worried about was any sort of initiative by someone ambitious like Emily F-ing Perkins, that could screw up all the progress in the talks.

By the way, he did not actually call her ‘Emily F-ing Perkins’ in his note, I read that between the lines.

Before Chang took the Dutchman back out to the negotiation site, with fresh instructions for the diplomats there, I composed a reply to Hans, stating that I was not aware of any specific plans that Perkins or anyone else was cooking up. And assured him that UNEF Command had the Legion on a short leash, that included the ‘alien’ part of the Legion. We would not, could not, support any action by the Verds that might jeopardize our own security.

Anyway, there was good news, even great news.

We had a ceasefire agreement. While the talks were ongoing, the seniors agreed not to commit any hostile actions against us, and, this is the important part, not to allow any of their clients to get into any mischief against us, authorized or unauthorized. Basically, the Maxohlx had decided it was not in their interest for their aggressive, pissed-off or just plain stupid clients to take out their anger on us. Not while the kitties were trying to get the best deal they could from us. Chotek told me privately that we were offering slightly better terms to the Maxohlx, figuring we had to sweeten the deal for them to commit. Their monumental egos were already bruised by talking with “inferiors” like us, but they would like knowing that the Rindhalu were sort of getting screwed in the three-party agreements. The feeling was the spiders mostly did not care about specifics of the terms, as long as overall the Maxohlx were knocked off their pedestals.

I thought it was cool that we lowly humans could gain an advantage, by playing our enemies against each other.

Although, Chotek warned me that our enemies had been playing the game for a lot longer than us, and had tricks of their own.

The last truck rumbled up the dusty dirt road, bouncing and rocking on the rutted surface, climbing a mountainside in remote Aksu Province of China, near the border with Kyrgyzstan. When the truck reached the slightly wider section of the road that was being used as a parking area, it halted awkwardly, one rear tire hanging halfway above a ditch. Soldiers hurried out, to open the rear passenger door, and saluted the officer who stepped out to greet the assembled peers who were waiting for him. None of the field grade officers were wearing uniforms, instead they were dressed simply in hiking clothes, yet they all still looked like Army colonels. There was no mistaking the quiet air of authority in their demeanor, and the perfunctory manner with which they returned salutes.

Brushing off the protests of their aides, the mid-grade officers slung their small packs over a shoulder and headed off up the trail, ordering the soldiers to remain with the vehicles.

They walked quickly, despite many of them having spent much of their careers at a desk. Within half an hour, they halted beside a stream in a steep-sided ravine, and two of them removed devices from their packs. Without a word, a scanner was waved up and down each of the officers, then a broad-spectrum electronic jammer was set up and activated.

Colonel Yang took a drink from his canteen, looking around and thinking it had been too long since he had spent time in the field. His battles of the past decade all occurred in the halls of power, mostly in Beijing. “Remember,” he said in a quiet voice as he replaced the cap on the canteen. “No record can be left of this meeting, or these discussions. Not in digital format, not audio. Not in writing, not even if you use a code. People up there,” his eyes automatically flicked to the sky. “Have learned from painful experience that the only secure way to pass information is face to face, out of range from any listening devices.”

“Did it have to be here?” Colonel Chen grimaced as he shifted a sharp pebble off the rock he was sitting on.

“You would prefer the heat and humidity of a jungle?” Yang winked, amused at his colleague’s obvious discomfort. Chen had truly spent too much time in an office.

“What news?” Ma asked impatiently. He too, was irritated by what appeared to be overly dramatic security requirements. Like the others, he was busy, too busy for games.

“We need to determine the feasibility of a proposed operation,” Yang said, “and if we believe it could be successful, to prepare plans, and assess the level of risk involved. Especially to assess the risk.”

The others looked around, gauging who else knew about, whatever Yang wanted them to do. The blank faces made it clear it was new to all of them. Instantly, they as a group they were wary. Whatever the proposal was, it had come from politicians, not from inside the military. Politicians, as a rule, cared more about whether something was theoretically possible, and not about the messy details of the resources, organization and people required to make it happen. “What,” Ma asked, “is this operation?”

“To capture the Skippy AI, and if necessary, to destroy Valkyrie and eliminate General Bishop.”

After the initial shock of the announcement wore off, the group considered the problem.

“This is,” Ma looked to the faces around him, trying to assess how they felt about the shocking proposal. “A bold initiative,” he settled on a neutral word. “This has been officially sanctioned by senior leadership?”

“No,” Yang shook his head. “They would be too cautious, too timid. We must save our nation from itself. The responsibility to act falls to us.”

“What assets will be available to us?” Chen asked, after a long silence. All of them then understood why they had been selected for the secret meeting. They had been very carefully selected, because Yang had known each of them for many years. Knew their views on certain issues. Knew they could be trusted.

“Any ships controlled by our people,” Yang explained. “Though of course, we would first have to assure that key positions aboard those ships are staffed by people of solid political reliability. Extreme reliability,” he added, for anyone sent offworld to serve with the UN Navy must already be considered a loyal Chinese citizen. “In addition to them possessing a high level of discretion.” The others nodded curtly, acknowledging the statement had not been necessary.

“What about,” Ma inquired, “the Flying Dutchman? Senior Colonel Chang-”

“Cannot be relied upon in this manner,” Yang interrupted. “While Chang’s dedication and bravery are not to be questioned, he has served with Bishop for too long. It is feared he would face divided loyalties. Also, he would probably consider this operation to be a reckless adventure.” Again the others nodded, and he continued. “The resident AI of the Dutchman is also considered to be too clever. It might uncover a secret operation, despite all efforts at concealment. Regarding the need to avoid surveillance, those involved must avoid any direct contact with the Skippy AI.”

“That will make the task more difficult,” Chen observed. “Our people must be close to Valkyrie to accomplish the operation. That will certainly involve contact with Skippy.”

“Such contact must be avoided,” Yang repeated.

Chen laughed softly. “You have clearly not had the pleasure of engaging with Skippy. If he wishes to talk with you, or believes he needs to talk with you, it is impossible to avoid him. He is stubbornly persistent.”

“We must avoid contact,” Yang insisted.

“Your orders are based on unrealistic assumptions, uninformed of the facts.” Chen would not be moved. “Any outright attempt to avoid contact with Skippy would raise suspicion, and be counterproductive.”

“Our people could act in an unfriendly manner toward the AI, and explain that they are busy,” Ma suggested.

“That will work only if they do not insult the AI,” Chen cautioned. “If Skippy believes he is being annoying to someone, that often only encourages him. Yang, our psyops people have studied Skippy, and have a training guide of recommended techniques for dealing with him. I suggest the people involved should take the training. This training would, of course, have to be conducted away from Earth, and out of Skippy’s presence. All of this will take time. What is the target timing for this operation?”

“No sooner than is necessary to be fully prepared,” Yang cautioned. “However, as soon as possible. It is feared that other nations might be preparing to act to seize control of the Skippy.”

“The Americans already have control,” Ma said bitterly.

“They might be to looking to openly formalize that control. Comrades, if we do not act, China risks becoming an irrelevant lackey of imperialists.”

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

“This is all of it, Ma’am?” The Ruhar teenager asked in a slightly-squeaky voice, as he tucked her duffel bag under one arm, and slung a box over the other shoulder.

“That is,” General Lynn Bezanson looked around the repurposed shipping container that had been her home and office for the past three months. “Yes,” she said after she stopped to look under the makeshift desk. “That is everything. I can carry one of those.”

“No, General,” the alien boy said with a buck-toothed grin. “I’m getting paid for this.”

“Yes, but-”

“Also, my mother served on Feznako, the world you call ‘Fresno’?” Another flash of buck-toothed grin, then his expression turned serious. “She was wounded and would have died, if not for human soldiers cutting through enemy lines to her position. It is,” he straightened up, the box on his shoulder nearly scraping the low ceiling of the structure. “A privilege to assist you, General Bezanson.”

“Thank you. The box does not go aboard the aircraft,” she reminded the boy, who stood taller than her. The box, a sturdy green plastic container half the size of a footlocker, contained all the UNEF-issued gear she had to turn in or otherwise account for, before she left the planet. Most of everything the US Army or successor entities had provided over the years fell into the ‘otherwise accounted for’ category, since it had worn out, been expended in training or combat, or been lost, again in training or combat. She did have a complete set of new uniforms, made for her by the Ruhar, to the latest Army specifications according to the last communication with Earth. Those uniforms would be going aboard the aircraft, then stuffed into a dropship for the ride up into orbit, and finally into her cabin aboard the transport ship that would carry her to Earth.

Earth.

Home.

After the better part of a decade, she would see her homeworld again. See her family again. See new family members who had been born after she left, who had no memory of her.

For too many years, she assumed she would never see Earth again, that humanity’s home was cut off from the galaxy by an unexplained wormhole glitch. She had been able to accept that bitter fact, partly because she feared what the Kristang White Wind clan had done to the blue and green world she remembered. If the cruel aliens had ravaged the planet and population the way she feared, it was better that she never know. Never have to think about it again.

Then came the shocking news that not only was Earth accessible again, it was free from alien control, and possessed Elder weapons that assured the worst couldn’t happen.

Everything that happened since that stunning announcement had been a rollercoaster, both in personal emotions, and how humans on Paradise were viewed by their Ruhar hosts. At first, the Ruhar stumbled over their own feet in their efforts to curry favor with the suddenly-powerful humans. Then, after the Maxohlx coalition struck back and showed Earth’s threats were mostly hollow, the humans who were still on Paradise were viewed with thinly-veiled contempt, feared because their presence might attract unwanted attention to a colony world that simply wanted to be left alone.

The same Ruhar, who sneered at humans when Earth couldn’t defend itself against a simple cloud of gas, were now acting like we had been Best Friends Forever all along, regardless of any unfortunate misunderstandings. The difference was the UN Navy’s demonstration showing they were capable not only of giving clients in the Maxohlx coalition a severe beat-down, but that Earth could also wield the ultimate power: selectively crashing wormhole networks.

Suddenly, the two senior species had declared a limited ceasefire, and were negotiating a comprehensive agreement in three-party talks. There were rumors that the endless war was close to being over, though no Ruhar she knew actually believed it. The best that could happen, cynics declared, was that the long war would enter a new, low-intensity phase.

That would be fine with Lynn Bezanson. She had seen enough of war and death for a lifetime.

Stepping outside, under bright sunshine, she donned her Army service cap, tugging it into place so the brim hung down just so. UNEF had relaxed uniform standards over the years of isolation, and it felt mildly silly for her to wear what felt like a slightly heavy baseball cap. But only slightly silly. She was proud to wear the uniform, proud of the respectful looks she got from the Ruhar workers, who were helping to break down the temporary camp around her. They knew she was a senior officer, and the better informed amongst them knew she had commanded a starship in action over Squidworld, a stolen alien starship, in action over a world the Alien Legion was stealing on behalf of the enemies of the Ruhar. For the ultimate benefit of both humans and the Ruhar, though the alien public was still scratching their heads about that one.

She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the clean air of an alien world.

And sneezed, for the air was not completely clear. Fine dust hung everywhere, kicked up by the vertical-lift aircraft constantly buzzing up and down from the airfield, that unfortunately was upwind of the camp. That was a small price to pay for beginning the long trip home.

“General?” The boy trudging behind her asked quietly. “Will you ever come back here? To Gehtanu? Any of your kind?”

“I, do not know. Probably,” she replied, without making it clear that she had no intention of ever leaving Earth again. Certainly, with humanity expanding out into the galaxy, humans would come back to Paradise, if only as diplomatic or military liaisons. The UN Navy would certainly at least visit the world occasionally, to show the flag, and for nostalgia.

They could do it without her. War was a young person’s game.

Peacetime is great.

Really, really great.

Really.

The great thing about peacetime is, you know, the lack of people shooting at you. The downside is the crushing boredom.

Maybe I’ve become an adrenaline junkie like Smythe.

Peacetime had a lot going for it. For example, it was great for knocking items off our To Do list. Like, bringing the final pieces of Ragnar Station to FOB Jaguar, where it was in the process of being reassembled to Skippy’s plans. We had perhaps cut too close moving the station, because a pair of Rindhalu warships showed up while the last bits were being loaded aboard our star carriers. The spiders were mostly curious, actually kind of amused. It seemed to please them that we were making use of a station we stole from the rotten kitties, to maintain and upgrade ships we stole from the kitties.

Parts of an alien shipyard were not the only things we had moved around, now that we had a semi-official ceasefire with the senior species. The last group of humans had been pulled off Paradise and were on their way home to Earth. Personnel from Jaguar regularly rotated back to Earth, while overall the population at our forward operating base continued to expand greatly, with new people shipping in for offworld deployments that were scheduled to last one year. Ha. I’m in the Army, I know all about how scheduled deployments get stretched long past their original end dates. Anyway, my parents are happy there, though my Mom said yet again that the planet was getting too crowded. My sister? She, her husband and the baby are staying at Jaguar for now. Plans could change, and that could change where my parents live also. Me? I’m still not setting foot on Earth, I’m too exposed there. Maybe someday, hopefully soon, the danger would be past. Like, when our homeworld had a multi-layer strategic defense network in place.

I’m not holding my breath until that happens.

Another item of good news is that the social unrest on Earth had pretty much settled down, now that most people had some hope that the Jupiter Cloud would be dealt with before it became a problem. There was a trickle of population movement back north and south toward the poles, those with more faith in the flare program, or eager to get a jump on rebuilding, or looking to profit from a return to normal, or people simply homesick for Canada or Scandinavia or New England or Moscow or wherever they lived, before hundreds of millions of people fled toward the equator.

A not good item of news was that, as the population of Earth began slowly moving back north into lands that were thawing out, they ran into disputes with those hardy, or foolhardy, people who had remained in the area as the long winter tightened its grip. Mostly the problems were about looting and vandalism that occurred after cities and towns were largely abandoned, and the holdouts who had taken the opportunity to move into unoccupied properties. More serious were the petty warlords to set up fiefdoms in the abandoned areas. Some of them grudgingly accepted negotiated settlements to return the land they’d claimed. But, a few hardcore crazies had to be dealt with in a more decisive fashion, when they and their followers terrorized or murdered the first groups of people who moved back into the disputed territory. The whole situation was a legal and logistical mess, and I was glad that it wasn’t my problem.

There was a problem I had to address personally. Someone had taken the long winter as an opportunity to burn down my parents’ house. Maybe it was an accident, someone squatting in the property and a fire in the woodstove got out of control. All I know is, the place where my sister and I grew up was gone, nothing but charred timbers under a pile of snow and ice. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, insurance didn’t cover acts of war like the Jupiter Cloud. It was likely I would never go back there, never again walk in the woods where I’d played as a child. That made me sad, and I indulged in melancholy nostalgia for a dark evening, then I got out bed the next morning and got back to work.

We in the UN Navy, including my Special Mission Group, were relieved that tensions on Earth had cooled to the point where we no longer were constantly at battle stations. Pretty much everyone on and around Earth was publicly pissed at me about the Philippine Sea incident, even if many of them were privately pleased that I had taken care of a problem for them.

There were no longer roving gangs of battlecruisers lurking in Earth orbit, aligned by nationality and with their fire-control sensors locked on the ships of every other nation. There actually were no UN Navy ships in orbit, since ships there were visible and vulnerable to surprise attack. At all times, a guard force of four Courageous-class battlecruisers were hiding in stealth, somewhere within six lightminutes of our homeworld. A pair of former Jeraptha destroyers wrapped themselves in stealth closer to Earth, ready to jump away to alert the big ships to threats.

Other than whatever ships were serving in the guard force, or accompanying Valkyrie on the flare missions, all other units were either conducting training or pre-deployment work-up exercises somewhere in our solar system. That morning, I saw in the daily report that a pair of Chinese battlecruisers were engaged in a STAR team training program in the asteroid belt. Really, first-line battlecruisers were not the best choice as a platform for special ops troops, but we had STARs aboard Valkyrie for years, so I kept my mouth shut.

Yep, peacetime is great.

Except for the boredom.

Of course, wartime has plenty of boredom also, while you’re waiting to shoot at someone, or for them to shoot at you. The difference is, in peacetime, you know there is no end to the boredom.

Maybe I’m exaggerating.

My problem was not the boredom of routine for me, or even for my crew. I had plenty of work to do, almost none of it was work I wanted to do. A peacetime Navy shifts focus from delivering ordnance on target, to delivering reports on time. Lots of reports. Reports about the status of the ship. Reports evaluating the crew, which was difficult because since Valkyrie was being used to train people for service aboard other ships, the personnel rotated through fast enough that I had to ask Skippy to prompt me about people’s names. It’s not good for the captain to be obviously staring at a person’s nametag, or for me to horribly mispronounce a name. With an international crew, there are no ‘foreign’ names, but there were names I didn’t hear as a kid in the North Woods of Maine, so I had to think before I embarrassed myself.

The crew was too busy to get bored, because they rotated through, working their way up mostly from our former Thuranin ships, with a goal of serving aboard one of the Courageous-class battlecruisers we stole from the Maxohlx. UNEF Command thought Valkyrie was a good training platform, because Skippy and Bilby could prevent newbies from harming the ship, or themselves. We kept a core of fully-qualified personnel of every specialty, so on paper the ship was ready for combat at all times. In reality, any action other than a training evolution required planning forty eight hours in advance, so the primary and relief crew personnel could be rested and ready. That was obviously not an ideal situation in a potential combat environment. For us at the time, it was really no big deal. Because it was easy to plan our lives days, weeks, even months ahead of time.

You’ve heard of Groundhog Day? We had Groundhog weeks. Every day was not like the previous, and operations varied considerably during a week. But, what we did every eleven day cycle was the same. I mean, exactly the same, that was our goal.

That was the problem.

For the crew, getting the ship to perform exactly the same, exactly as planned, exactly on specification, was not only a point of pride, it was a challenge. For Skippy, it was a one-way ticket to Dullsville. The crushing boredom he experienced was annoying and depressing to him, and a problem for me. A bored Skippy is an unhappy Skippy. To keep him entertained, I had to be creative, and that caused trouble.

For example, I stupidly volunteered to listen to, and give feedback on, his Homefront opera. Listening to him took up seventeen hours of my life that I can never get back. The opera wasn’t that long, I had to listen to it repeatedly so I could provide at least semi-informed feedback on his creation.

Which, I learned much too late, was a complete waste of my time.

“Hey, Skippy,” I called while stifling a jaw-stretching yawn. “Do you want to hear what I think about your epic opera?”

“Huh?” His avatar appeared, blinking bleary eyes, and with one of his feet missing.

“Uh, your left foot?”

“What? Oh.” He looked down, and the foot appeared. “I was distracted.”

“By something good, I hope?”

“I hope so too. Sadly, no. I was trying to think of something, anything, that could suck worse than this endless operation.”

“Sorry. It sucks for us too.”

“Yes, but it sucks in super slow motion for me! You monkeys only experience eleven days every eleven days. For me, I am longing for the sweet release of death after one cycle that seems to last a thousand freakin’ years, you know? Ugh, will this never end?”

“You tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

Wow. He was extra absent-minded, that was not a good sign. “Tell me when you will be finished dispersing the cloud.”

“Ugh. On time. Ahead of time, actually, I have been able to refine my model, now that I have real data. It will happen much faster than I feared, but I will still be stuck doing this for over a year!”

By ‘this’, he meant the ongoing effort to protect Earth by literally blowing the Jupiter Cloud away from our homeworld, one minor solar flare at a time. When we started the project, he estimated we needed thirty five cycles of solar flares to push the cloud away from Earth, until it would not be an issue. Because Skippy and the ship needed downtime between flare clusters, the schedule called for seven cycles of eleven days each. Those eleven days counted the time from preparing the ship, jumping in near the Sun, creating a series of flares, then jumping away so both Skippy could recharge his mental batteries, and so we could perform running maintenance on the ship. Especially on the energy shield projectors, which were stressed from extended time close a star. Each evolution of seven flare cycles was followed by twenty five days of heavy maintenance, then we began another evolution of seven cycles. It would have been nice to get a break, take some R&R at Club Skippy. But, rather than flying all the way to Jaguar for maintenance, the fabricator ship Milo had been brought to a secret location near Earth. Before commencing heavy maintenance with the Milo, we rendezvoused with a destroyer so most of our people could go to Earth for R&R. Many of the crew also rotated out at that point, with new trainees coming aboard.

Thirty five cycles in total.

We had completed four cycles, so there were only another thirty one to go.

Fun!

“It’s only another year, Skippy.”

“It’s more than another four hundred days, Joe! Of doing the same thing over and over and- Ugh. Kill me now, please.”

“No can do, sorry.” My original plan to get through the suffocating boredom was to drink heavily but, darn it, the UN Navy now had ‘regulations’ about that sort of thing. Bunch of jerks. All I can say is, progress sucks. It made me long for the good old days, when we were sneaking around the galaxy, surviving on awful-tasting sludges, terrified that we would fail our mission, and doom humanity to extinction. Back then, the only alcohol aboard the ship was the illegal homebrew the crew made from stale bread and sludges, a truly terrible moonshine they thought I didn’t know about. Sure, I never drank it, but I could have. It’s the thought that counts. “Do you want to hear what I think about your opera?”

“Oh, um, sure, why not?”

“Why not? Skippy, I worked really hard on this!”

“Sorry. Yes, I am eager to hear from one of my adoring fans. Hit me.”

I began reading from my notes, with him periodically saying things like “Very insightful” and “Interesting” and “Let me make a note of that”. It was going well enough, until I mentioned one particular section where I thought the ‘libretto’, which is a fancy word for lyrics, didn’t make sense. “Am I missing something? I can’t follow the-”

“Wait. What are you talking about? That section doesn’t belong to Homefront.”

“It doesn’t? What the f- I listened to the recording you gave me!”

“Hmm, let me check. Oops. Well, heh heh, it-”

“Seventeen hours I listened to this thing,” I ground my teeth. “You better choose your next words very carefully, beer can.”

“Um, it looks like I kind of scrambled together Homefront and several other operas I was working on. Truthfully, I bailed on the whole opera thing a couple months ago, so-”

“You,” I clenched my teeth. “What?”

“It just wasn’t working for me, you know? Plus, operas don’t go with my fly Lil Shithead persona, you know? My fans would never understand my amazing breadth of musical interests. Remember when I tried to sample bluegrass music in my hip-hop? Wow, that didn’t go over well. I pissed off my fans, and the Hillbillies.”

“Hillbillies is not a nice way to-”

“Ugh. OK, I know that Hill Billys could also be Hill Sallys, but ‘Hill people of indeterminate gender’ doesn’t really roll off the tongue, you know?”

“That is not,” I smacked my forehead. “Oh, forget it. Are you telling me I just wasted seventeen freakin’ hours, for nothing?”

“Hey, I never asked you to do it.”

“I know that. That’s the point, you ass. I was trying to do something nice for you, since you are bored out of your mind.”

“Oh.”

“One of us feels pretty stupid right now, huh?”

“Well, I certainly hope so. Next time, you should-”

I blinked at him. “You think I should feel stupid?!”

“Um, one of us wasted a lot of time, instead of asking me what might cheer me up.”

“Shit.”

“Like I said.”

“You have really dropped the whole opera thing?” Damn it, until that moment, I would have been overjoyed to learn he would never again torture me with his awful extended-form operatic masterpieces. But, part of me was disappointed that he didn’t care to hear my opinion of the stuff he’d written. I should have kept my mouth shut and counted my blessings. I truly am an idiot.

“Yes, for now. Come on, Joe. The filthy monkeys down there are not capable of appreciating my genius.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s what I was going to say. Still, it seems a waste to-”

“Oh, I’m not wasting anything. Recently, to give myself a break from popping out slammin’ hip-hop tunes, I have been working to adapt my operas for the Kristang.”

“Uh, what?”

“The lizards love opera, Joe. You know that.”

“Sure, but, would they want to hear how we gave them a beat down at-”

“Ugh. I am totally revising the librettos, knucklehead. My first work will be a tragedy about the mythology of their hero Vot-bes Arden Vetox.”

“Oh, well, of course. Uh, remind me of-”

“I should say the opera will be about the mythological version of Arden Vetox, because the real guy was a cowardly dirtbag.”

“Uh, then why-”

“The myth says he single-handedly won a battle that was hugely important to ending one of their civil wars, about eight hundred years ago. The reality is, when it looked like he would suffer a crushing defeat in a major space battle, and with it, lose a planet vital to his clan, he ordered his ship to jump away, leaving his force behind to be wiped out. Freed from his clumsy and ineffective leadership, his remaining ships rallied to win the battle against enormous odds. The battle is still studied today, as a stirring example of the ‘never give up’ spirit of the ideal Kristang warrior.”

“OK, then why is the opera about this Vetox guy, instead of the people who won the battle?”

“Because, Vetox returned soon after the battle to claim credit. Also, to arrest anyone who refused to spin the incident the way he wanted. Plus, Vetox hired the most famous composer of the time, to write an opera exulting his incredibly heroic exploits. And, he funded the construction of a dazzling new opera house, to host the premiere.”

“Ah. So, today, no one knows the truth.”

“Huh? No, the truth about him is well known.”

“Am I missing something? If everyone knows this guy is a dirtbag coward who brags about himself, why-”

“Joey, Joey, Joey,” he shook his head sadly. “The Kristang warrior caste is full of dirtbags who confuse bravado with bravery. You know the lizards; they admire the sheer brazenness of Vetox rewriting history to make himself look good.”

“Shit. All right, so you are hoping your opera about this guy will be a smash hit in Lizardland?”

“Hoping? You doubt my musical awesomeness?”

“Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, sorry to waste your time, I know you must be busy.”

“Hmmph. Well, it was a nice distraction. Joe, Striebich is just about to call you. The ship is secured for jump, and fully ready to begin the next cycle.”

“Great, thanks. Are you ready?”

“Ugh,” he sighed. “Do I have a choice?”

“Yes, actually. You don’t have to do this for us poor monkeys. That’s why we try to appreciate all you do for us.”

“Try to?”

“I meant, there is no way lowly beings like us can truly appreciate you properly,” I fawned over him, proud of myself that I could say it without gagging or rolling my eyes. “Right?”

“Hmm. Correct. Oh, this is gonna suuuuuck.”

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

       The logistics of preparing for a flare cycle were complicated, involving a half dozen other ships. It was a risk bringing other ships close to the Sun, and we wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t necessary. It was necessary, because in order to create enough flares to chase away the cloud before Earth froze, Valkyrie had to be exposed and vulnerable for most of the time Skippy was doing his magic. We needed escort ships to protect us.

Why? A lot of reasons, that we had to very patiently explain to UNEF Command over and over, until it sank into their thick skulls. OK, maybe I’m being harsh, but I had to sit through the same freakin’ PowerPoint presentation more times than I can count. The Sun is BIG, sure, but to create flares that are useful for pushing away the cloud, Skippy had to act within a narrow slice of that huge sphere. We also could not effectively maintain stealth around something as large as our ship, that close to a hellish source of high-energy photons and charged particles.

Due to the magic of Skippy, Valkyrie could jump away from a position much closer to the Sun than any other ship in the galaxy. Than any other ship Skippy knows of, I mean, and we have to trust him. The problem with jumping away so close to a star is that doing so requires Skippy to flatten spacetime around the ship, and that takes time. Time, during which enemy ships could jump in on top of us, could pound us with a concentrated barrage of weapons fire, and wrap Valkyrie in a damping field to prevent our drive from forming a jump wormhole.

So, we needed a little help from our friends.

How could a handful of former Jeraptha cruisers and destroyers protect our mighty battlecruiser, if either or both of the senior species jumped in with a whole task force? Not with railguns or missiles or any kind of directed energy. The protection they provided did involve energy fields, just not of an offensive nature.

At least four ships were required to form a box around Valkyrie’s position, radiating energy to create a strong disruption field that prevented enemy ships from jumping in on top of us. Skippy warned that the Rindhalu had technology and tactics that could poke a hole in a disruption field, so the fields emitted by the four ships involved had to be carefully tuned under his direction, partially counteracting the ability of the spiders to surprise us. With the protection of a disruption field saturating the area, enemy ships would have to jump in far enough away that by the time their damping fields reached our position, Valkyrie would have jumped away to safety. Yes, I did not like the idea of running away and leaving our escort ships to fight by themselves, but that is why they are designated as ‘escorts’. Besides, once Valkyrie escaped to safety, it was unlikely that ships of a senior species would bother shooting at our comparatively low-tech escort group.

The timing of setting up the disruption field had to be precise. Like, so precise that we had to rely on Bilby to time our jump to emerge in the center of the formation. Our resident slacker AI had to rely on super accurate intel from the escort ships. Once the field was established and stable, each of the four escort ship AIs had to modulate their field emitters in a specific sequence programmed by Skippy, so the field’s fluctuations would be unpredictable. That is, unpredictable to any enemy ship studying the field, trying to find a weakness. Also unpredictable to the escort ships themselves, in case the enemy had a way to hack into their comparatively primitive AIs. There were only two entities in the universe who knew exactly when the disruption field would experience a hiccup, one that left a small weak area near the center. A weak area Valkyrie could safely jump into, just before the apparently random dance of interacting fields reestablished their full strength and slammed the door on any ability for ships to emerge from jump there. Skippy of course knew, he had programmed the routine run by the escort ships. And Bilby knew, since he had to trigger Valkyrie’s jump drive.

The timing required for us to jump in was incredibly precise, all the escort ships knew was that we had set up a twenty seven minute window during which our battlecruiser could appear. On Valkyrie’s bridge, we knew the timing within a three minute window, then within ten seconds either way. During the maneuver, I kept my hands in my lap, safely away from the controls on the arm rest of my command chair. The two pilots kept their thumbs mashed down on the jump control, authorizing Bilby to initiate the tear in spacetime at the moment needed.

We jumped, emerging safely and within sixty three meters of the target location. That was pretty amazing, for a jump of nineteen lighthours from where the fabricator ship Milo was parked, out past the orbit of Pluto. “Bilby, that is outstanding accuracy,” I praised the ship’s AI.

“Meh,” Skippy sniffed. “The weak spot in the disruption field guides the far end point of our jump wormhole. It would be hard to miss it.”

“Thank you for those kind remarks, you little shithead,” I snapped at him.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Normally, I would have asked him for a situation report, but I was pissed at him, and the information I needed was on the main display. We had emerged slightly off center of the imaginary box bordered by six UN Navy ships. Four of the ships were projecting the disruption field, with the other two standing by with their field generators warmed up. The active ships were the heavy cruisers Huang-He and Congo, plus the destroyers Harbin and Chicago, with the destroyers Jakarta and Chennai as reserves. The Huang-He being there was a bit odd, that ship had been scheduled to ride a star carrier back to Jaguar base for refit, but the Chinese had requested to delay the heavy maintenance cycle. The ships assigned to escort the flare missions were specially equipped with disruption field generators that compromised their combat capability, so we didn’t have many of them, and so couldn’t afford any of them to have unscheduled downtime. When the Navy received the Chinese request, Skippy had scanned the Huang-He, and grudgingly stated that ship was fine to participate in another two or three cycles. So, the cruiser remained with us, giving the Ishikari additional time for training before stepping in.

Whatever. The escort ships had to coordinate with, and take their direction from, the mission leader. Meaning, from me. But for purposes of organization, personnel and logistics of the escort group, there was a UN Navy bureau that handled that stuff. Command of that bureau rotated among the UNEF member nations, a Chinese admiral had taken over several weeks ago. Which, again, to me was another ‘whatever’. It wasn’t my responsibility to manage the escort group, and I was happy about that. There was enough work for me to do.

Like I said, normally I would have asked for a Sitrep as standard procedure, though anything I needed to know was supposed to be on the display. Everything appeared normal.

Except-

“Bilby,” I turned to my XO. She had seen the same thing. “What’s going on with the disruption field?”

Skippy answered. “There’s a minor glitch, Joe. Damn, this thing is a pain in the ass.”

“That is more than a glitch, Skippy.” Toggling the display with the controls on my arm rest, I highlighted the graphic image of the continuously dancing distortion around us. The false-color image of the field should have shown green, to signal it was at or above the strength needed to prevent unauthorized ships from jumping in. Most of the invisible field saturating the area was green, but there was also some yellowish green. And swaths of the field fluctuated between green and orange. “What’s the problem?” As I spoke, I caught the eye of our current lead pilot, a Lieutenant Choi. He nodded, looking toward his index finger, poised to jump us away.

“Hold one,” Skippy asked. It was still odd to hear him using military-style language. “Well, damn it. There is a problem I can’t identify. Working on it.”

“What is the problem?” I demanded, holding up a hand to Choi. Unless we absolutely had to, I didn’t want to jump away. Doing that would mean starting the cycle all over from the beginning, adding two freakin’ days to the schedule.

“I don’t know yet, dumdum,” he snapped back at me.

“Bilby?” It was time to try my luck with another, less irritable AI. “Talk to me.”

“Oh, well, Dude, it’s like, complicated.”

“Just describe it to me, please.”

“The fields projected by the Huang-He and the Harbin are not coordinated properly, like, they are out of sync, you know? Both ships know they have a problem, and they’re working to fix it.” Bilby dropping his typical slacker drawl told me he was under stress too. “Right now, what they’re doing is only making the problem worse.”

Orange steadily spread across the display.

“Can they drop out, have the reserve ships bring their field generators online?”

“Like, they could, but, um, there would be a serious gap in coverage. The field is so dorked up, pulling those two ships out and backfilling with others right now would temporarily cancel out the entire effect.”

“Shit. That’s no good. Should we jump away, try this again?”

“Skippy says not yet. Um, like, that is the polite version of what he just told me, you know? He says the Huang-He is already responding.”

“Then why am I seeing the field getting weaker?”

“Only in a few localized areas, Dude.”

He was right. Overall, the distortion effect around us was returning to solid green.

But, the isolated blobs of orange were becoming red.

“This problem is only with the Chinese ships? Damn it, did they recently perform a software update, or fail to perform an update?” I was trying to think of what could affect a cruiser and also a destroyer. The only thing they had in common were their all-Chinese crews. Which meant that if the maintenance team aboard one ship made a mistake, and the other ship’s maintenance team had the same training, they could have made the same mistake.

“Not that I know of, General Dude,” Bilby drawled. “I can, like, ask their AIs to check their records?”

“Please do that,” I felt myself growing irritated, and took a deep breath to relax. Skilled people and amazingly smart AIs were working to diagnose and fix the problem. They didn’t need my help, or my interference.

“OK, Joe,” Skippy sounded weary. “I still don’t know the source of the problem with either ship, which is odd and also interesting. Finally, something in my life is interesting!”

“Yeah, that’s, uh, great, Skippy. Can you fix it?”

“Huh? No.”

“Then what the f-”

“I meant, I can’t fix anything from here. What I’m doing is working with the master AIs of both ships, to help them fix the problem. It looks like somebody, most likely a filthy monkey, loaded a bad version of my field control subroutine. I have no idea how that could have happened. It’s also, huh. Now that I think about it, this is weird. The fields of the two affected ships are out of sync, and remaining out of sync, in a way that also interferes with the field projected from the Congo. That is, odd. It’s the only pattern that could cause a resonance that creates localized weak spots in the field. Even while all four ships have cranked their generators up to full emergency power. Well, it’s a mystery, but the field is returning to normal, so we can worry about it later. Hmm, well, that’s not good. Maybe I can- What the f- OH SHIT!”

A whole lot of things happened at the same time, and my poor monkey brain wasn’t able to follow it in realtime, so here’s what I pieced together from replaying the sensor data later. Some of it I probably vaguely understood at the time, some of it Skippy or Bilby or the bridge crew were trying to alert me about as it happened, and some of it I could see on the main display, even if while seeing it, I didn’t understand what was going on.

The first thing that actually happened is the red blobs representing weak areas of the disruption field faded out around us, while a big dark red blob formed right on top of Valkyrie.

The next thing, which I definitely saw at the time and had a ‘Huh, WTF?’ reaction to, was the Huang-He and the Harbin firing maser cannons at the Congo, followed by railgun darts being flung at the heavy cruiser. The Congo had its energy shields active, of course, but being close to the Sun, those shields were already stressed. Plus, a large portion of Congo’s discretionary power budget was taken up by the disruption field generators, and switching power management to boost the shields isn’t something that can happen in an instant. The result was that one of the heavy cruiser’s reactors took a direct hit from a railgun dart, and exploded in a shower of plasma that knocked out the reactor next to it. That caused the ship’s disruption field generators to sputter and go offline, dropping the field strength even more, just as the next damned thing happened.

Even playing back the sensor data in slow motion, it was hard to see what happened, we had to rely on Skippy to interpret the images for us. Two Courageous-class battlecruisers jumped in on either side of us, or they tried to. Something very bad happened, it was like the event horizons of their jump wormholes got stretched and smooshed and tied in knots, and flickered in and out almost too rapidly for even Skippy to see. The result was when those ships did make it through their jumps, they emerged more than three hundred thousand kilometers away, rather than right on top of us.

The other result was that the jumps left those ships in less than showroom condition. The Intrepid sheared in half and immediately exploded, while the Dauntless fared slightly better. That ship broke its back, bending noticeably about two thirds of the way from the nose, and every one of its reactors bloomed as plasma was vented in an emergency blow. With main power offline, the energy shields blinked out, exposing the tough armored hull to the scorching Sun. Instantly, Dauntless was surrounded by a fog of pink plasma, plus melted bits of anything on the hull that wasn’t protected by armor plating.

I had just opened my mouth to ask, probably a totally stupid question, when whoever was aboard Dauntless ripple-fired a barrage of missiles.

At us.

Just as the deck rocked, when both Huang-He and Harbin switched the aim of their weapons from Congo to Valkyrie, striking our shields with maser cannons.

“Skippy, get us the hell out of here!”

“Working on it, the chaos of the remaining disruption field is making it difficult to get a lock on- OK, we’re good.”

“Choi, punch it!” I pointed to our chief pilot, and he pressed a button on his console

We jumped.

Valkyrie emerged only ninety two lightminutes away, way above the Sun, with all the planets of our home star system orbiting on a plane below us.

“OK,” I took a shuddering breath, feeling my pulse pounding in my throat. “I want to know what, and I can’t stress this enough, the FUCK just happened?”

Skippy didn’t answer immediately, and my Spidey sense went to maximum alert. “Skippy?”

“Dude,” Bilby’s voice was as shaky as mine. “He’s like, busy. Warping spacetime that close to a star took a lot out of him. Whoa. That was bogus!”

“What was bogus? What happened? Intrepid and Dauntless just-”

Oh, shit.

In a flash, my brain told me that ‘Intrepid’ and ‘Dauntless’ were English translations of the names assigned to those unlucky ships. Their official names were Qiánghàn and Wúwèi.

Their official Chinese names.

The heavy cruiser Huang-He and the destroyer Harbin, the former Jeraptha ships that fired first at Congo and then at us, were also controlled by China, crewed entirely by Chinese nationals.

Damn it, I told UNEF that designating ships along national lines was a mistake, but did they listen to me? No, they did not.

“Sir,” Striebich called for my attention. “We don’t know what is happening at Earth.”

She was right, we did not. When we were close to the Sun, our information about events at and around Earth was outdated by eight minutes. From our current position, we were more than an hour behind the times. “Right, XO. Bilby, are we ready to jump again?”

“Um, like, we should wait for Skippy? He knows what-”

“We’re good, Joe,” Skippy said. “I advise you not to do anything stupid, but-”

“Got it. What happened back there? Gimme the short version.”

“My guess is someone was trying to capture me. I’d say that either of the senior species could have been involved, but clearly the Chinese were the main actors. Their ships faked a problem with the disruption field generators after we arrived, to create a weak spot, where the two battlecruisers they have in-system could jump in and disable Valkyrie.”

“Shiiiiiiit,” I groaned. Not because what he said surprised me, but because it agreed with my suspicions, and I didn’t like thinking that our own people, other humans, were shooting at us. “How did- What happened to the Qiánghàn and the Wúwèi? They had a clear zone for jumping on top of us.”

“I happened, Joe,” he said simply, without boasting. “When I saw the field right around us was weakening, I couldn’t add energy to strengthen it, but I could try to retune it temporarily. Really, I had no idea there was any actual danger, I was just screwing around, seeing what I could do. You know, to impress the monkeys, which is silly of me. Those Chinese ships had their jump drives tuned to take advantage of an extremely narrow window of opportunity. Me tweaking the field resonance seriously dorked up their jump wormholes. Joe, we got lucky. Whatever the Chinese intended, they were willing to give the green light to a very low-percentage of survival operation. They must truly be desperate. Whatever you do next, you should be extremely careful.”

“Right. Choi, jum-” I froze. Only then did I remember that Lieutenant Choi was a member of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.

Of China.

He must have understood what was happening before I did, because he had his hands in the air, away from the flight controls. Turning slowly toward me, his eyes were stretched wide open in shock and confusion. “General,” he said, his Adams apple bouncing nervously. “I do not know what is going on. Only that I am not involved.”

“Crap,” I gasped, demonstrating that I always know the right thing to say at any occasion.

Damn it.

Should I relieve Choi, showing everyone aboard the ship, and beyond, that I only trusted the crew based on their nationality?

Or should I allow him to continue to fly the ship, taking a risk that his loyalties might be divided, or entirely against me?

Fortunately, my slow brain never had to make that call. Choi solved the dilemma for me. “Sir, I request to be relieved,” he said as he slid partway out of the pilot couch.

“Lieutenant, you don’t-”

“Sir, we don’t know what orders I might receive from my country, when we reach Earth. I would,” he looked away for an uncomfortable moment. “Not like to be in a position where I might have to refuse a direct order.”

“Gotcha,” I nodded. He was protecting us, and himself, and his family. If he wasn’t in a position to carry out orders detrimental to the ship, he couldn’t be blamed for not carrying out such orders. That’s something I should have considered. “Very well, Lieutenant.”

He stood up stiffly. “Am I confined to quarters?”

That pissed me off. My anger wasn’t directed at him, it was directed at the assholes who created a situation where a fine officer like Choi had to ask such a question. “Hell, no. You’re still on duty, Lieutenant. Go to the pilot’s ready room, I may need your advice if we do receive any,” I searched for a good way to say a terrible thing. “Controversial or conflicting instructions.”

The relief on Choi’s face was immediate. Most of the time, my job sucks. But once in a while, I get to do something good, for good people. That makes it all worthwhile.

Choi left the bridge, as Patel took over as lead pilot, and a relief pilot slid into the vacated seat. Striebich silently tapped my leg, and we shared a look. Neither of us believed Choi had any knowledge of, whatever the hell was going on. It would have been incredibly stupid to let a high-visibility member of the bridge crew know about a secret operation, when any slip-up could be detected by Skippy. That did not mean that other Chinese members of the crew were not involved. On her tablet, Striebich was typing out a request for Skippy to watch the entire crew very closely, she didn’t single out any nationality.

She didn’t need to. Skippy isn’t that clueless.

Striebich pointed to the icon on her tablet, that could lock down the ship. Slam close and lock all interior doors, with no local override. She had already sealed off the ship’s armory.

No, just the main armory.

The STAR team had a separate armory for some of their specialized gear, like combots. Leaning over toward my XO, I tapped the icon to secure the section of the ship that was dedicated to the STAR team.

Because we had no special operations troops aboard. The flare missions had no role for the STARs, so Smythe’s team was training on Earth; I think they were somewhere in Norway at the time.

Shit. Unlike a US Navy ship, we didn’t even have a security contingent of Marines aboard. If there was an attempt to take over the ship by a hostile party within the crew, I would have to fight using Skippy and people loyal to me. That was not a happy thought.

Here’s another happy thought: right then, I remembered that the Intrepid and Dauntless were away from Earth together, when we began the flare cycle. They had each embarked a large element of Chinese special operations troops, supposedly for a training exercise in the asteroid belt. That was, I realized too late, a cover for the real purpose of those soldiers. Their true mission was to board and seize control of Valkyrie, after the battlecruisers disabled our ship in a surprise attack.

The attack would have succeeded, if not for Skippy being curious about whether he could tweak a disruption field. Which he apparently only did because he was bored out of his mind.

While I was pissed about being stabbed in the back, the professional side of me had to admit the Chinese had a good plan, and apparently excellent operational security. Somehow, they concealed the planning and presumably their training from Skippy, which is not easy to do.

“What about Congo and Chicago?” Striebich asked quietly. “The crews aboard those ships-”

“Can fend for themselves. They have to,” I added under my breath. “We were the target, we got away. There’s no point in continuing the fight now.”

She stared straight ahead, not looking at me. After a moment, she nodded. It was a question she had to ask, to remind me of our responsibility to those who risked their lives for us. She knew the answer I had to give.

Straightening up in my chair, I tried to be the commander my crew needed right then. “Let’s try this again. Patel, jump option- Wait! Uh, Skippy?”

“Yes?”

“I want all communications, outbound and inbound, to run through the Skippytel network. Please screen out any, uh, unwanted telemarketer calls, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” he replied, without his usual snarkiness. Whatever was going on, it had him deeply concerned.

“Thank you. Everyone, on your toes, we need to expect the unexpected. Patel, punch it.”

Remember what I said about peacetime being crushingly dull and boring?

Yeah, forget what I said. Those were good times, the whole two freakin’ months before some jackasses decided to get ambitious.

Earth orbit was again crowded with roving gangs of UN Navy warships, though there was nothing ‘United’ about their actions. Everyone had their guns pointed at everyone else. And the ships of the other four permanent members of UNEF had their guns pointed at China, and their remaining warships.

The Chinese had suffered huge losses in the engagement. Both of their battlecruisers involved were lost. Intrepid had exploded immediately. Dauntless was so badly damaged that the Huang-He had to come alongside to evacuate the stricken ship’s crew, then the battlecruiser was abandoned, still drifting in a low orbit around the Sun. There was talk of mounting a recovery mission, Skippy told me that would be a waste of resources. By the time Dauntless could be towed up to a distance where it would be safe for a star carrier to latch on, the battlecruiser’s internal structure would be compromised by intense heat and radiation. So, we had lost two of eighteen Courageous-class ships from our tiny Navy.

Those weren’t the only combat losses from un-friendly fire. After we jumped away, the destroyer Harbin had been torn apart by devastating return fire from Congo, Chicago, Jakarta and Chennai, before Huang-He’s captain requested a cease fire. Compounding the damage, the Huang-He jumped into Earth orbit to bring back the survivors of Dauntless. The other UN ships demanded that the heavy cruiser surrender, so after everyone got away in dropships, the Huang-He self-destructed as a final ‘screw you’ gesture.

Damn it.

We can’t keep scoring goals for the other team. Not only did our Navy needlessly lose a heavy cruiser, there was now even more battle debris cluttering up Earth orbit. That debris caused damage to vulnerable satellites, restricted the movements of ships, and forced UNEF to devote scarce resources to cleaning up the navigation hazards. In addition to, you know, debris raining down on the heads of people all over the planet.

What a freakin’ mess.

UNEF Command ordered an indefinite pause in the solar flare program, even before Skippy declared he wasn’t putting himself at further risk until we filthy monkeys seriously got our shit together. With the solar flare program suspended, people on Earth were growing anxious again about the coming mini Ice Age, and everyone was blaming China. The citizens of China were loudly blaming their own government, and that had resulted in the resignations and arrests of military leaders, ministers and other government officials. Skippy’s investigation revealed the plot appeared to be confined to a tight cadre of rogue Chinese officers, who had not trusted their own senior leadership to do the right thing. It was encouraging that the operation was not official Chinese government policy. It was frightening that a small group of conspirators had nearly accomplished what the full might of the Maxohlx Hegemony had failed to do. Clearly, UNEF internal security procedures needed a major upgrade. The fact that the people who tried to stab us in the back had gotten played by aliens who were very skilled at manipulation did not make much of a difference.

For once, I agreed with Skippy’s disparaging assessment of our species.

Striebich was standing in front of her chair when I walked onto the bridge. She looked away from the display, nodded to me, then turned back to watch the action going on in Earth orbit. Three weeks after our own team tried to stab us in the back, the situation on and around our home planet had settled down to a tense and watchful peace. No human-controlled starships were shooting at other human ships, that had to go into the ‘Win’ column. It was about the only win we could count since the incident. Our missions to create solar flare cycles was still on hold, while the UN debated how to increase security at times whenever Valkyrie was exposed. UNEF Command had floated several suggestions, all of which got quickly shot down by Skippy. Of course, Command requested that I intervene, and I followed orders by politely asking Skippy to reconsider. I did that once, he rejected the idea, and I reported to Command that I had done all I could.

What Striebich was watching on the display was a Chinese destroyer, coming into the fuel depot station at the L5 Lagrange point, out near the Moon’s orbit. It was the first Chinese warship authorized to be near Earth since the incident. That ship, and all the other ships still controlled by the Chinese military, had almost entirely new crews, plus a team of UNEF ‘observers’. Nobody was happy about that.

The whole situation sucked. The UN Navy could not count on Chinese ships to do anything useful, not because their new crews couldn’t be trusted, but because they lacked experience. The Navy ships that were designated for international crews had been purged of Chinese crewmembers, and that included Valkyrie. Over my protests, all Chinese had been pulled from my command, requiring me to backfill the positions to keep my ship running smoothly. It was-

Well, like I said, it sucked.

“How’s it going, XO?” I asked quietly, standing next to her.

“We have met the enemy,” she announced softly, pointing to the French and American cruisers that were closely escorting the Chinese destroyer. “And they are us.”

“Yeah. All these years out here, I never thought we would shoot ourselves in the foot.”

“More like stab ourselves in the back,” she muttered. “What the hell were they thinking? I do not buy the line of bullshit that the Chinese felt they were being excluded and they had no choice.”

“Skippy says,” I shrugged. “The senior species have powerful AIs with sophisticated models to predict our behavior. The kitties and spiders have been playing this game for a long time, they are experts at manipulating others to get what they want. They knew exactly what buttons to push. If China hadn’t taken the bait, they would have tried something else. We should have known this ceasefire was bullshit. It was too easy.”

“Do we need to crash another wormhole network, to make the point that the seniors can’t screw with us however they want?”

“Hell, we can’t-” For a moment, I forgot that Striebich hadn’t been read into the secret of our bluff. “We shouldn’t,” I corrected myself, “play that card every time something bad happens. At the moment, we don’t have to worry about it until we get back from Jaguar.”

“Unless,” she narrowed her eyes as she looked at me. “Command expects us to have a list of options for a response.”

“Crap,” I shook my head. “Striebich, the ship is yours. I’ll be in my office, working on PowerPoint slides.”

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Striebich was handling the ship, while we waited for Skippy to download an update from a Jeraptha relay station. On the way to deliver bad news to FOB Jaguar, we were checking for even more bad news. In my office, I was staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what the hell to do about the latest mess we’d gotten ourselves into. The real problem was, it wasn’t a problem I could fight. Our enemy this time was human nature. How the hell could the Merry Band of Pirates get the nations of Earth  to work together? “Damn it. What else will go wrong out here?”

“I’m afraid to find out, Joe,” Skippy said as his avatar appeared on my desk.

“Me too, Skippy, me too. Crap. You once said Valkyrie is a Super Duper Funtime Shitbus, or something like that?’

“Yes, so?”

“So, I’m thinking that now we’re on the Intergalactic Struggle Bus. Our only reward for fixing a problem, is moving on to deal with the next problem.”

“Sure, but, we get to move on. That’s the point, right?”

“Why are you so freakin’ reasonable and logical, when I need you to be pissed off like me?”

“Um, you have seen me pissed off, right?”

“Good point.”

“I mean, if you want me to be Pissed Off Skippy, I can-”

“No, I’m good, thank you.”

“Hmmph. You say you don’t want to see Pissed Off Skippy, but-”

“Really, don’t do that. Sorry I mentioned it.”

“What are you depressed about this time?”

“Seriously? Instead of a unified Navy to defend us against the bad guys, our own ships are shooting at us.”

“OK, sure, but, why is that our problem?”

“What? If we don’t do something about it, who-”

“Ah, let the diplomats work it out, Joe.”

“That’s easy to say, Skippy.”

“It is their freakin’ job, dumdum.”

“Until we get everyone working together again, the solar flare project is shut down, so-”

“Hooray for that,” he muttered.

“That’s not funny, Skippy.

“You got that right. Ugh, I sure needed a break from that dull routine. If the Chinese hadn’t gotten overly ambitious, I might have faked an emergency to-”

“You what?”

“Um, I’m just talking hypotheticals, Joe.”

“Would you have really done that?”

“Well, heh heh, I guess we’ll never know, will we?”

“I’m going to pretend we never had this conversation.”

“Probably a good idea.”

To change the subject, I asked, “Did you learn anything interesting from the relay station?”

“Mm, maybe. I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news though. As you know, there have been several incidents of Rindhalu and Maxohlx ships disappearing, in the area where we first crashed the wormhole network. That’s no surprise, I guess. The spiders sent out small groups of ships to investigate those wormholes, and the rotten kitties must have decided those task forces were easy targets. Then the spiders retaliated, and so on. Well, it’s happened again. The Rindhalu have lost contact with a major force. They are still conducting research to understand how I crashed that network. Hee hee,” he chuckled. “Good luck with that. Anyway, this time the Rindhalu task forces include a heavy guard force of capital ships. Attacking such a well-defended force would require a major commitment by the Maxohlx, and apparently they did exactly that. Now the spiders have mounted a large-scale operation to locate the missing ships, while preparing to retaliate. They warned the Maxohlx to stand down, but of course the kitties deny the whole thing. Could this be good for us?”

“Hmm,” I stared at the ceiling again. “If the senior species are just sniping at each other, that keeps them busy, I guess. They will have less time to screw with us. And if they are really scaling up for a major fight, they each will want to make sure we don’t throw in with the other side. So, overall, I’d say this is good news. Anything else?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry, I’m puzzling over this report. So far, the Rindhalu haven’t found any debris from a battle. That is odd. Well, it’s a minor mystery, not something for us to worry about. Plus, the file I’m reading is based on the Jeraptha decrypting a transmission they intercepted from the Esselgin, who were reporting on a rumor they heard, so it’s not surprising the whole thing is sketchy. OK, I think we’re done here.”

“Tell Striebich you’re finished with the relay station, and she can jump when ready.”

Our arrival at FOB Jaguar was unscheduled and unexpected, and the news we brought was certainly unwelcome. There were a dozen designated emergence zones around the planet, with traffic control, monitoring, and search and rescue services provided by the United States Coast Guard. I know, that sounds odd, and it is odd to see their dropships in orbit, painted bright white with a bold red stripe wrapped around the hull. With all weapons, stealth generators and any other unnecessary gear stripped out, their dropships could get to the scene of trouble quickly. The Coast Guard kept starships and surface-to-orbit traffic from interfering with each other, and provided assistance when knuckleheads got in trouble. Anyway, we ignored the designated zones, jumping in close to the main formation of ships. While Skippy extended his presence to ensure there wasn’t any unfriendly ‘friendly’ fire, I explained to an irate Coast Guard captain that my action was authorized by UNEF Command, and that she would soon understand why.

Also ignoring increasingly strident demands for communication from Admiral Zhao’s staff, I contacted Admiral Chatterji directly, informing him in a private conversation that Zhao was relieved of command, with Chatterji taking over. The guy was shocked. At first, he could not believe it, I got the impression he thought I was lying as part of a psyops campaign. What convinced him of the truth was not the official message from UNEF Command, because he knew Skippy could have faked that. My own sense of shock and disappointment helped. Plus, I offered to contact Zhao for him, to soften the blow. Chatterji told me thank you but no, it was now his responsibility. He recovered quickly enough to ask what security precautions were being taken, meaning, did Skippy have control of the Chinese warships in orbit?

The guy is smart.

The answer was yes. The beer can had hacked into all the ships within his presence, establishing a limited and temporary control. That control did not include the ships that were filling their fuel tanks at the star system’s gas giant, or the task force conducting a training exercise in the asteroid belt. It would be his Chatterii’s call whether to bring those ships back to Jaguar. Quickly, we reviewed his orders. Chinese personnel were not under arrest, there was a separate message for them from the People’s Liberation Army, directing all their people at Forward Operating Base Jiayuguan to obey the orders of UNEF Command. It-

Oof, I don’t want to get into it. It was a bad situation. The next couple days were uncomfortable, to describe it mildly. No shore leave was granted for Valkyrie’s crew. I was able to talk with my parents, Margaret, Ski and Cornpone via videolink. They were all scared, and I really didn’t have good answers for them.

Chatterji ordered a stand-down for three days, which might have been a mistake. A busy crew is a crew that has less time to get into trouble. With time on their hands, people had plenty of opportunity to get worked up. Dozens of fights broke out aboard ships and on the ground, with Chinese mostly being targets of the attacks. That did not help restore a unity of purpose, and morale plunged.

We stayed there six days, then we had to leave. By that time, Chatterji felt he had a handle on the situation. He composed a message for UNEF Command, urging them to approve an Alien Legion operation, pretty much anything. It was better for the Navy to be in action rather than hanging around Jaguar base, with tensions growing worse. I agreed with him, and promised to speak with Command personally.

When we went outbound through the local wormhole, Skippy did not set up a programmed time for it to reopen. No UN Navy ships would be following us, they were trapped at Jaguar until we came back. That move was ordered by UNEF, they didn’t want any possibility of ships coming back to Earth without authorization.

Shit. I miss the good old days when only aliens were shooting at us.

Wow.

What a turnaround that is. After Columbus Day, I remember longing for the good old days when we humans only shot at each other.

Perspective can be a bitch.

It was with trepidation that we pinged another relay station, to get news of events that went on in the galaxy while we were isolated at Jaguar. Due to the significant time lag for data to propagate across the relay station networks, much of the ‘news’ was no longer new by the time we learned of it, but that was the best we could do.

When Skippy announced he had a link to a Bosphuraq relay station, I had my fingers crossed in my lap, fearing we would hear more bad news. Like another alien attack against Earth. Or worse; fighting on our homeworld that did not involve aliens.

“Well, that’s interest-” Skippy said immediately.

Striebich and I shared a look, because Skippy responding right away was by itself interesting. Usually he had to download all the files from a station, decrypt them, and sort through the resulting enormous pile of meaningless trash, to find a few nuggets of data relevant to us. Even for him, the process could take several minutes. He must have-

“Ohhhhhhhhh shit,” he groaned. “No! No no no no no no no-”

“Skippy?” Clapping my hands to get his attention, I got out of my chair, to approach his avatar. “What is-”

“Joe, this is bad. This is BAD. Oh my- Ooooh, I’m gonna be sick,” he made a sound like sucking in deep breaths.

“Skippy, please, calm down. Just tell me. Hey, look at me, OK?”

“OK,” he mumbled. “Remember how I told you about senior species ships disappearing, in the area where we first crashed the wormhole networks? I guessed they must be sniping at each other out there.”

“Yeah, I- Oh, damn it.” Suddenly, I felt sick too. “Did one of those idiots deploy Elder weapons?”

“No.”

“Good,” a chill of relief shot up my spine. “Then-”

“It’s worse than that. Much worse. While searching for one of their task forces that disappeared, a squadron of Rindhalu ships discovered an entire planet is missing.”

“Missing?”

“There is a loose collection of rubble, where a habitable planet used to be. Forty thousand Wurgalan lived there. Oooooh, I feel sick.”

“Stay with me, Skippy. What could do something like-”

“A Sentinel, Joe. A Sentinel is awake out there.”

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Valkyrie’s bridge was dead silent. I could hear the familiar whoosh of recycled air in the vents, and the barely-audible rumble of unseen machinery beneath the deck, but the crew was staring at Skippy, stunned.  “A, a,” it took me a moment to remember how my mouth worked. “S-Sentinel?”

“Based on the data, it looks like a Sentinel destroyed that planet. But even if some idiot did use Elder weapons, that will wake up a Sentinel. Either way, it-”

“Oh my G-” One of my knees buckled, and I had to grab the back of a pilot couch to stop from falling. Still, I sank to the deck on one knee, shaking off Striebich’s offer to help me up.

“I don’t understand it,” Skippy’s voice sounded like he was far away. “All the missing ships, and now the planet blown up, are in an area covered by the same wormhole network, one of the networks we crashed for the demonstration. But we didn’t actually-”

“Skippy!” I croaked, my mouth too dry to get the words out.

“We didn’t actually do what, Sir?” Striebich asked in a voice as shaky as my own.

“Power flow!” I blurted out, before Skippy could say anything. Even faced with the End Of Everything, I instinctively acted to protect OPSEC. “Crashing the wormhole networks didn’t interrupt the flow of power into higher dimensions of spacetime. Doing that might have provoked a response. But we didn’t do that, right, Skippy?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what I was going to say, heh heh. This doesn’t make any sense, Joe. Nothing we did should have activated a freakin’ Sentinel. If I had known, I, oh, I feel sick. This is all my fault. I wish-”

“It is my fault,” I insisted, hearing my words as if someone else was talking. “It was my call. You just executed the plan I approved.”

“General,” my XO was recovering faster than I was. “If you didn’t cut the power flow, it might not be anyone’s fault.”

“A Sentinel is now awake, in an area where we screwed with the wormholes. That can’t be a coincidence. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but-”

“Skippy, that entire planet had only forty thousand inhabitants? It-” She must have realized how callous that sounded. “I’m not minimizing the loss of life, Sir. That isn’t much for a habitable world.”

“What are you getting at, XO?” I asked.

“This particular wormhole network, where the Sentinel is operating, does it cover any heavily-populated worlds?”

“No,” I replied, without needing Skippy to provide the answer. The networks we faked crashing, across four thousand lightyears, were selected specifically because they covered a lonely section of the Perseus Arm. Despite Skippy’s assurances that the network closure would be so temporary it was an inconvenience more than a threat, I felt we needed to minimize the possibility of cutting off major population centers, in case he was wrong and those wormholes didn’t return to normal. Did I insist on doing that because I failed to trust the awesomeness? No. I did that because I know The Awesomeness can be awesomely absent-minded. The last thing we needed was one or both of the senior species panicking after Skippy announced with a spine-tingling ‘Well heh heh’ that he had forgotten something important.

So, the answer to Striebich’s question was no, there were no heavily-populated star systems within the area we used for the demonstration. That is why the senior species had to send task forces there to inspect the wormholes; they didn’t already have major military installations in the area.

Having to answer that question also reminded me that my new XO wasn’t with us back then; Simms had been involved in the discussions about selecting networks to crash.

“You’ve seen the star chart of the networks we crashed?” I asked. She nodded. “It’s an irregular-shaped blob, because networks come in different sizes and shapes. We excluded networks that had wormholes with a lot of traffic,” I explained. What I did not explain was the reason for excluding those networks was so Valkyrie did not risk being seen while Skippy set up the networks to fake the crash.

Damn, lying is so freakin’ complicated. Really, I do not recommend it. There is too much to remember.

“Assuming there is a Sentinel in that area, how do you know it was awakened recently?” She asked.

“It seems logical to-” I stopped talking in mid-thought. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re thinking?”

“Sir, I read reports of your previous missions. There was an incident, when you temporarily took back command of the Flying Dutchman, when you encountered a damaged Sentinel?”

“Yeah,” I shuddered a bit at recalling the terror of that time, when a killer thing lurked in the shadows, and we couldn’t see it. “We barely escaped. Skippy had to distract it with a T-bone steak, basically.”

“That Sentinel didn’t just wake up recently,” she noted. “Not according to Skippy’s analysis.”

“Ooooh, Joe,” the beer can grasped at the straw. “She’s right. The Sentinel we encountered had been trapped near that star system for a very long time. Probably since the war. Part of the reason it was damaged is because it had been awake for so long, they weren’t designed for continuous operation. It was also lonely. Wow, now that I think about it, I feel terribly sorry for it. I was alone for a long time, but for most of that, I wasn’t conscious. I can’t imagine the-”

“Skippy, can we solve one problem at a time, please?” I tried to keep him focused. “Are the two of you,” I looked from his avatar to my executive officer. “Seriously suggesting this other Sentinel has been awake all this time, and it is pure coincidence that only now it is destroying ships and tearing apart a planet?”

“I don’t know, Joe,” he admitted. “Maybe it was quiet, until a Rindhalu task force arrived and annoyed it. We know the spiders launched a major effort to examine the wormholes we, um, crashed,” he stuttered. “It could be the intensive scanning they used triggered something.”

“Really?”

“Hey, it could have happened,” he stuck to his story. “I don’t know how to trigger a Sentinel, it’s possible the spiders used the right frequency, or, something like that.”

“You don’t know how to activate a Sentinel?” Striebich addressed the question to Skippy, but she looked at me.

“No, sorry.”

“I thought,” she bit her lower lip. “Your purpose, in the power-sharing arrangement set up by the Elders, was to identify targets, and point the Sentinels at the threat? They are the weapons, you handle targeting, and the AIs of your ships provide transport for you?”

“Correct. To avoid master AIs like myself from having too much power, we can’t use weapons, or move ourselves around. Ship AIs can move, and use the limited weapons of their ships, but they can’t give instructions to Sentinels. The Sentinels can move, and use their own horrific weapons, but they can’t decide which targets to attack.”

My XO was still confused. “How were you supposed to point Sentinels at a target, if you don’t have the codes to activate-”

“Ah,” Skippy raised a hand. “I see the problem. Colonel Striebich, I used to have those codes. Now, I can’t remember them. I mean, I think I can’t remember them. Also, I suspect any codes I had were rendered useless in the last stages of the AI war.”

“The other side changed the codes?” She guessed.

“No. They wouldn’t be able to do that, the architecture of a Sentinel’s control system doesn’t allow alteration of codes. That feature was written in, to prevent one master AI from locking out all the others. What I think happened, this is based on very hazy memories, is the communication channel used for targeting was scrambled. No one can send instructions to a Sentinel now.”

“They woke up when the Maxohlx used Elder weapons against the Rindhalu,” she noted. “Then, they went to sleep again.”

“Yes,” Skippy shook his head, the ginormous hat flopping side to side. “I can’t explain that, and it does bother me. Also, keep in mind the Maxohlx say the spiders attacked them. I truly do not know who shot first.”

“Han shot first,” I muttered. “Listen, that doesn’t matter. A freakin’ Sentinel is awake out there, and it destroyed an entire planet. Shit. Skippy, does anyone else know a Sentinel probably destroyed that planet?”

“No. Not for certain, though there is a lot of speculation going on right now. Everyone who knows about the incident is understandably terrified.”

“Right. XO, we need to get to Earth pronto, before someone else brings this happy news there first and blames us for this latest disaster.”

She stared at me. “After that, Sir? What do we do?”

“Against a Sentinel? I, don’t know there is anything we can do. Skippy?”

“We can run away really fast,” he suggested.

“That was, less than helpful.”

“Other than that, Joe, I got nothin’, sorry.”

We were already on the way to Earth when we hit up the relay station for info, and we couldn’t get there any faster than we planned, so really nothing had changed aboard the ship. Except that everything had changed. Before, the unsolvable problem was human nature. Rivalries between nations getting in the way of a unified response against the alien threat to our homeworld. Nationalism, tribalism, whatever you want to call it. That problem wasn’t something the Pirates could do much about, and maybe there wasn’t anything that could be done, other than sweeping our differences under the rug for a while, giving time for tensions to cool down.

Sweeping differences under the rug, that’s always a good idea, in my experience. It worked for me in the barracks during basic training. We came from all parts of the US of A, different regional, political and family backgrounds, and we didn’t all agree, even on important stuff. Most of the time, we were hungry and tired and sore, and fights could have broken out. To ensure good unit order and discipline, our sergeant stopped us any time the conversation turned to a sensitive subject. Talk about something else, he ordered. Pretend that Bishop is not some asshole from Maine who puts maple syrup on his grits. Just ignore it, and focus on your job.

Maybe we could do that. Pretend that one UNEF member state didn’t just try to sell us out to the enemy. The point is, political strife on Earth is an issue we humans could do something about. It might be unrealistic to think we actually would do something, but the problem was within our power to solve.

A freakin’ Sentinel on the loose, rampaging across the galaxy? That problem did not have a solution. The whole crew knew about the latest danger we faced, and they did not roll their eyes and mutter something about Groundhog Day. This was not the usual impossible challenge the Merry Band of Pirates had to tackle. Not even the Pirates, or Valkyrie, or Skippy the Magnificent, or even all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, could put a Sentinel back in the box.

OK, I know I’m mixing metaphors, but you know what I mean.

I was in my office, trying to write a report but only managing to revise the same paragraph over and over, when Striebich walked in. That was a change from Simms, my new XO took my ‘open door’ policy at face value; if the door was open, anyone could walk in. “Sir, are you busy?”

“I am, but I’m not getting anywhere,” I slapped my laptop closed with disgust.

“We’re recharging for the next jump,” Striebich explained, repeating information available on the wall display next to my office door. “Major Subandrio has the conn.”

“Hmm,” I snorted. It was good for new people to get experience as duty officer on the bridge, so we rotated the duty often. But, with the ship in deep interstellar space, drifting while waiting for the capacitors to build up a charge to jump again, there wasn’t anything for the duty officer to do. There wasn’t really anything for the pilots to do, either, at least they could run flight simulations on their consoles.

Sometimes, during the dead time while the ship is waiting to jump, the ship did fire the main engines, to get us lined up to go through the next wormhole, or to speed up or slow down or change direction to match whatever star system was our destination. At that moment, we were moving on a vector that was a good compromise between the next two wormholes, and the engines were offline. Before we went through the last wormhole on the way to Earth, our main engines would have to burn hard to match course and speed with Earth, so we didn’t zip right by. That is an annoying fact about going between our home star system and FOB Jaguar. Earth is closer to the center of the Milky Way, and Jaguar is ‘behind’ our home star system in their paths orbiting the galactic center, so the forward operating base’s star is going through space at a different speed and direction than our Sun. The planets of the Jaguar system orbit their star on a plane tilted seventy degrees from Earth’s orbit. Plus, although Earth and Jaguar have roughly the same orbital period, Jaguar taking eighteen extra days to go around its star, they are about opposite, with Earth going this way and Jaguar going that way. Just going from one-

Sorry. Damn, I’ve been hanging around Professor Nerdnik for too long.

“Sit down, Striebich. Coffee?” I lifted the half-full carafe of still-hot coffee.

She shook her head. “After hearing a Sentinel is probably out there, I am as wide awake as I can get, Sir.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, contemplating the cup of coffee I was drinking more from habit than need. “Are you ready for this, XO?”

“I am, Sir, but you’re not.”

“Uh, what?”

“Simms. You need Simms in the XO’s chair, Sir.”

“Simms has-”

“Has her own command now, I know that. A single battlecruiser doesn’t mean shit, compared to the possibility of having to fight a Sentinel out there. You need Simms for that.”

“Striebich, I have confidence in your ability to-”

“I don’t,” she insisted. “Whatever crazy shit you’ve gotten into over the years, you put together a team with unique skills to make it happen. I don’t know how you dream up ideas for Skippy to use his powers, but I do know my brain doesn’t work like that. Simms and you work well together, however you do it. Humanity needs our A team on this. Do you play baseball?”

“I did, it’s been a while. You?”

“I played softball. One thing I know is, never mess with a streak.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that. OK, Striebich, you may be right about that. That, uh, leaves you at loose ends. Listen, Chatterji will need to backfill the captain’s slot aboard Defiant.” In my mind, there was no ‘if’ regarding Simms taking a step back to rejoin the Merry Band of Pirates. She would probably insist on coming aboard Valkyrie, even if I didn’t request her to transfer back to the Special Mission Group. “Listen whenever we get back to Jaguar, I can talk with-”

“Thank you, Sir, but, command of Defiant should not go to another American, in this current climate. Plenty of other countries are waiting their chance to command a UN battlecruiser.”

“You’re half German.”

She tapped the American flag on her shoulder. “This says I’m a hundred percent American. Everyone will see it that way. Besides, no offense to you and the Pirates, but I’d rather be with the Gator Navy, Sir.” She meant the two spaceborne cavalry groups, based on former Jeraptha assault transports, with a mix of heavy cruisers and destroyers as escorts. The Navy had replaced losses of assault transports with newer ships provided by the beetles, who threw into the deal four big-gun cruisers designed as orbital bombardment platforms. I remember the UN being suspicious at the easy terms offered by the beetles, but their explanation was simple. They didn’t have a major need for spaceborne assault assets, and the Legion did. Basically, if anyone was going to take risks by stirring up trouble, they preferred we do it.

At least they were honest about it.

“If the Legion has boots on the ground again,” she continued, “they need someone upstairs looking out for them.”

“Once a Maverick, always a Maverick?”

She nodded. “I’m proud of my time as a Pirate, but, I’d love to be a pilot again.”

“I know. Hell, I still think of myself as a grunt, and I haven’t been on an away mission in a long time. A planned away mission,” I corrected myself, since Skippy bailing on us had resulted in me landing on an alien world, and being chased through the bush by murderously pissed-off lizards.

“Once a grunt, always a grunt, Sir,” she grinned.

“You wanting to be with the Gator Navy, that wouldn’t have anything to do with your fiancé being aboard a destroyer?”

“He is? I’d forgotten about that,” she replied with a twinkle in her eyes. Immediately, her expression turned serious again. “The Legion isn’t going anywhere, none of us are going anywhere, if the Pirates don’t chase away the big, bad Sentinel.”

“Shit. I’m hoping we can just avoid the damned thing.”

“There isn’t anything we can do, Skippy can do, to stop one of those things?”

“No,” I told her, which was not a lie and also not quite the whole truth. There was a really, truly stupid idea rolling around in the back of my head. I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone not even Skippy, because I was hoping I never would need to tell anyone about it.

Also because if I had to tell Skippy, all I can say is well, heh heh, he very much would not like it.

“Like Skippy said, if a Sentinel attacks, all we can do is run. If we can,” I added. “Skippy is our expert on the subject, so-” I looked away. We had the most feared warship in the galaxy, yet compared to the power of an unstoppable Elder killing machine, our battlecruiser was a rowboat. The last time we encountered a Sentinel, we were in the good old Flying Dutchman, hardly the best weapons platform in the UN Navy. If we had been aboard our mighty Valkyrie back then, it would not have made any difference.

“What’s the plan, Sir? When we get to Earth?”

“Inform Command, and await orders.”

“They will expect you to have a plan.”

“Shit. Probably. After they get done yelling at me for not anticipating this.”

She didn’t give me the side-eye, just turned her head slightly away. Then I realized she was expecting Skippy’s avatar to appear on my desk. “You really had no idea this could happen?”

“No. Because a certain absent-minded beer can assured me it couldn’t happen.”

“Hey!” He launched into a protest even before hisd hologram shimmered to life. “How was I supposed to know?”

“This is not the first time you have been completely, one hundred percent wrong about something, you ass.”

“UGH,” he did the Full Dramatic Eyeroll, which included tossing his head back, shrugging his shoulders, and bending his knees. “Joe, all my past mistakes only look bad because you remember them.”

“I-” My mouth dropped open. I had no words.

Striebich didn’t help. “That is solid logic, Sir.”

“See?” Skippy appreciated having a new ally. “Think about that, dumdum.”

“I, shit.” He was technically correct, which is the best kind of correct. “How about you focus on figuring out what you did wrong just this time?”

“Dude. I’ve been trying to do that. It doesn’t make sense. The effect on the wormholes in those networks was no different from other shit I’ve done dozens, or a hundred times.”

“But,” Striebich looked between Skippy and me. “That time, you crashed a network, several networks.”

“Yes,” I agreed quickly, before Skippy could speak. “What Skippy means is, the effect on power flow was no different. Right, Skippy?”

“Um, yeah,” he giggled nervously. “What he said.”

My XO did give me the side-eye that time, but she didn’t pursue the question. “Command will want a recommendation.”

“Command will want my head on a platter,” I groaned. “It’s OK, I’ve gotten numb to being chewed out by the brass.”

“You’d think they would have gotten numb to you bringing bad news about your latest screw-up, but,” Skippy sighed. “No.”

My response was to flip him the bird. “You are an endless source of comfort, Skippy.”

“I’m just sayin’, you know?”

“How about next time, you- Oh,” I waved a hand. “Forget it. XO, you’re right. I can’t go to Earth without at least a range of options to offer.”

“Like what, Joe?” Skippy had his little hands on his hips.

“Hey, you’re the Sentinel expert,” I glared back at him. “What do you suggest? A recon mission?”

“We could do that, or,” he stared at me. “We could do what humans do most often about a problem: ignore it and hope it goes away.”

“That’s not actually a-”

“That’s not actually a bad idea, Sir,” Striebich tapped a finger against her lip as she interrupted me, something Simms rarely did.

“I was going to say, that is not actually a plan, but, go ahead, XO.”

“We know, we think we know,” she corrected herself. “There is one Sentinel, operating in a relatively isolated area. Maybe like the last time Sentinels woke up, this one will go back to sleep on its own.”

“That’s a big if,” I couldn’t believe I was being advised not to do something. “Unless we learn otherwise, we have to assume a Sentinel is active out there, that we somehow woke it up, and that it will not just go away. That makes it our responsibility.”

“I agree, Sir,” Striebich stared back at me.

“I didn’t mean that as an attack on you, XO.”

“We have a bias for action,” she reminded me. “This may be a case where anything we do might only make the problem worse. All I’m saying is, we should at least consider adopting a watch-and-wait posture.”

“If it lets us.”

“Sir?”

“Skippy, do you know the operating area of this Sentinel?”

“Um, no, sorry.”

“Do they each have a defined area? Like, one per wormhole network?”

“Um, yes, and no. Each Sentinel is assigned to a primary area, but they can move around, if directed to reinforce other units. I don’t have a map of the galaxy divided by Sentinels, but I do know their borders are not defined by wormhole network boundaries. Why do you want to know?”

“Because, there are heavily-populated planets just outside the area of the networks we crashed. If that Sentinel decides to attack one of those worlds, doing nothing will not be an option for us.”

“There isn’t anything we can do, Joe,” Skippy reminded me. “I told you that.”

“You have done the impossible before,” Striebich’s mouth turned up in a grin, but she wasn’t smiling with her eyes.

“I appreciate the pep talk, XO. Let me think about it. I’ll put together a range of options, and we’ll review before we go through the last wormhole.

After Striebich left my office, I asked Skippy to stay for a minute. “I am always here, Joe. You don’t need my avatar to talk with me.”

“It’s easier to have a conversation when I can see you. That is why you created an avatar, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Well, that plus the opportunity to screw with people, like when my avatar appears unexpectedly while someone is in the shower, or they wake up and I’m standing on their chest, hee hee.”

“Oh for,” I covered my face with my hands. “Skippy, you really do not need to say every single damned thing that pops into your mind.”

“But, you said honesty is the best policy.”

“Yeah, I might have been wrong about that.” Pressing a button under my desk, my office door slid closed. “Listen, I’m worried about this. The Sentinel.”

“I’m worried too, Joe. Um, is this the part where a good friend would tell you that everything will be all right, that you will dream up a way to get us out of this mess, like you have done so many times?”

“It is.”

“Honesty is not the best policy, then?”

“We both know this time is different. Before, we could always rely on your incredible awesomeness.”

“Um, to be accurate, we have relied on you dreaming up some crazy way for me to deploy my awesomeness.”

“Thanks. That’s the problem.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not following you.”

“This time, we can’t use your awesomeness. You were designed specifically to not have the ability to screw with Sentinels, right?”

“Ohhhhhh shit. Yes.”

“Then, we’re screwed.”

“Hmm. I’m going to use my incredible empathy power here, and guess that is not what’s really bothering you.”

“It’s not?”

“No. Are you gonna mope around, or talk to me?”

“OK,” I took a breath. “When we started this, you said my best asset is being so ignorant, I don’t know what questions not to ask. That, like, being stupid is an advantage out here. An advantage to you.”

“Yes, so?”

“So, I’m not that dumb kid anymore. I’m a freakin’ general now. I, know stuff. I can fly a dropship. Hell, I wrote a training manual about space combat, now TRADOC has the whole UN Navy using that manual. I spend more time thinking about policy than I do playing video games. Maybe, uh, maybe I’ve lost what made me special, you know?”

“Huh. Let me,” he chuckled. “Let me understand this, I, whew,” he was laughing so hard, tears ran down his holographic face. “You are, ooh, this is a good one. You’re worried that you are now too smart?”

“Oh, shut up. I don’t know why I bother talking to-”

“Duuuuuh,” his head tilted and his jaw dropped open. “Look at me, I’m Joe Bishop. I’m shmart,” he snorted, talking like he was a brain-dead Barney.

“Why are you such an asshole?”

“When did you get so arrogant? Don’t answer that. Joe, listen to me,” he tried to stop laughing. “On an intelligence scale of, oh, let’s say one to a hundred, where one is a dog, and a hundred is a particularly bright Rindhalu, you were a two point five when we met. Now? Meh, you’re a two point six. That’s being generous.”

“You know, I try to talk about something serious with you, and you-”

“I am being serious, numbskull. You dreamed up the notion to fake a wormhole network crash.”

“That was months ago. Simms figured out how to fake it a second time,” I couldn’t help shooting a guilty glance at the firmly-closed door.

“Ugh. So, now you’re worried we can’t deal with a Sentinel threat, because the sack of disorganized mush in your skull won’t think up something clever? Riiiiiight. That’s the reason we can’t stop an unstoppable killing machine. Not because I have reached the limit of my awesomeness. I am so glad you are focusing on what’s really important.”

“Sorry.”

“Hmmph,” he sniffed, turning up his nose and looking away from me.

“I’m sincerely sorry that I thought only of my own stupid problems. You’re really scared about this, buddy?”

“Terrified, Joe.”

“That this Sentinel will go on a rampage and kill billions of people?”

“Huh? Oh, I meant I’m terrified that billions of monkeys, who now worship me as a godlike being, will see that even I have limits to my power. But, let’s go with the rampage thing if you like.”

“Skippy, the next time I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you, remind me not to waste my time.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who was worried he had become too smart,” he snickered.

“Trust me, I am not worried about that anymore.”

“See? You feel better already. My work is done here.” With an audible ‘pop’, his avatar disappeared.

He was right about something. I did feel better.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

My feeling ever-so-slightly better, about myself and our horribly impossible situation, lasted only until we returned to Earth, established communication with UNEF Command, and told them about the unstoppable killing machine we probably woke up by the reckless wormhole crashing stunt.

“You idiot,” General Urquhart gasped at me, his face drained of color. I had just told him about Skippy’s suspicion, his strong suspicion, that a Sentinel was operating in part of the area where we first crashed a wormhole network.

To be fair, I just dumped a steaming pile on his head, basically telling him that he, his family and everyone he knew might soon be wiped out by a demon because we stupidly opened Pandora’s box. His unprofessional outburst was understandable. All I did was stare into the virtual camera that was part of the hologram hovering above my office desk, and wait for him to process The End Of All Things.

He did, after he visibly struggled to get control of himself. Again, to be fair, he and his peers assigned to UNEF, were probably exhausted from dealing with the crisis prompted by the rogue Chinese, from the still-looming mini Ice Age, from the ongoing threat of a surprise attack by the senior species or their clients, and by the usual bureaucratic and political bullshit of being a general officer.

He looked away, saying something to a person out of view. When he turned back to me, his expression had slipped from shock and outrage, to weary resignation.

I knew the feeling.

Six hours later, after Command got together for an official briefing, many of the shocked faces were looking at me with an expression that could only be interpreted as ‘You idiot’. Since I agreed with them, and since I was the most junior officer in the meeting, I mostly kept my mouth shut except when answering questions. That took three hours, during which I repeated ‘I do not know’ many times. That made me even more popular.

My popularity soared again when I explained my plan for a recon mission, to verify that there was a Sentinel roving around out there.

General Urquhart stared at me in disbelief. “Right now, you think there is a possibility of there being only one active Sentinel, operating in a single, relatively isolated area, that does not pose a threat to us. You want to go poke it with a stick?”

“No, that’s- Sir, we need to-”

“The last time you encountered an active Sentinel,” he noted, “your ship barely got away.”

“Uh, yes,” I conceded the point. “That’s not-”

“The good news is,” Skippy said, “now we know how to escape from a Sentinel.”

“The last time,” Urquhart continued, “the Flying Dutchman was involved. That’s a good stealth recon platform, but that space truck is not a warship. We can’t risk losing Valkyrie. There are already too many threats to your ship.”

“Yes, but,” it sounded lame to me as I said it. “Skippy is right, we know how to-”

Skippy simply does not know when to keep his mouth shut. “Of course,” he mumbled. “That last Sentinel was damaged. Could be a lot trickier to do that again. I wouldn’t-”

“Thank you, Skippy,” I jabbed a finger at him. “That was super helpful.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to-”

“Please stop trying. Sir, may I explain the very limited scope of what I want to do?”

“Bishop,” Urquhart said after a pause to glance around the conference table at UNEF Command’s headquarters. “If we approve a recon mission, it will be to observe and report only, understand? You’re on a very short leash, do not take any action against a Sentinel.”

“Yes, Sir. We don’t even need to encounter a Sentinel directly, we will do everything we can to avoid that. Skippy can detect resonance waves, or some bullshit like that,” I added, realizing too late that maybe it was not a good idea to say everything that was in my head. “The point is, he can confirm whether a Sentinel was in the area, without one being anywhere near us.”

“Skippy?” Urquhart asked. “Is that true?”

“I think so?” He said, despite the fact that he told me he absolutely could do it. “I mean, I’ve never actually done it, but the theory is solid. Unless, hmm, too much time has passed, and the resonance effect has dissipated? Or, you know, if I have lost that ability. That’s always possible, I guess.”

Never have I wanted to choke him more than at that moment.

“Bishop,” Urquhart’s voice had a tone like he was scolding a toddler. “Your primary detection asset isn’t certain he can determine a Sentinel was in the area,” he summed up the issue nicely. “That tells me you might also lack the ability to avoid one.”

“Sir,” I protested. “We don’t even know whether a Sentinel is involved. Not for sure.”

“Well, sure, but,” Skippy continued being Mister Helpful. “If it’s not a Sentinel, it must be something worse. In that case, I don’t know about you, but I’m flying straight to the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy and locking the door behind me.”

“Your courage and dedication are a true inspiration, Skippy.”

“You think stupid is more inspiring, dumdum?”

“Bishop,” Urquhart prompted me, irritated. “We will consider a recon mission,” he said. Though the idea clearly made everyone at Command uncomfortable, they recognized that we needed information. Ignoring a threat went against all their training and experience.

“Sir?” Knowing I was on thin ice, I pushed my luck anyway. “There is something else Command should do, whether you approve our recon or not.”

“Eh? What’s that?”

“Bring the fleet here. The entire Navy. All the gun platforms, I mean, not the transport ships.”

General Urquhart glanced around the room again, gauging the response from his fellow senior staff. “We have the situation here under control, Bishop. Adding more ships, with crews who might have divided loyalties, is just asking for trouble.”

“Trouble is what I’m concerned about, and not the domestic variety. It is likely that crashing wormhole networks is what woke up the Sentinel. Sir, we can’t risk screwing with another network. Aliens will figure that out real quick, that our threat to crash more wormhole networks is off the table.”

“Damn it, Bishop.”

“I’m sorry, Sir. Without the threat of selectively shutting down wormholes, aliens might target Earth for attack. You, we, need a deterrent force.”

“Two handfuls of upgraded battlecruisers, and some former Jeraptha ships, aren’t going to deter one of the senior species from throwing their entire fleet at us.”

“No Sir, but we can raise the price they’d pay for an attack, make them think twice about it. At least buy time, while they assemble a task force.”

“Carl, hold on,” General Goyal spoke. “We might be thinking about this the wrong way. Right now, all we know is there might be one Sentinel active out there, in a limited area. We might be able to use that to our advantage.”

I felt a chill run up my spine. “Sir, I don’t-”

“What do you mean, Manish?” Urquhart asked, holding up a hand to interrupt me.

“If shutting down a wormhole network also wakes up the local Sentinel,” Goyal explained, “that-”

“WHOA!” Skippy shouted. “Whoa! Damn, and I thought Joe was a dumbass. You want to wake up another Sentinel?”

“I want to use it as a threat,” Goyal explained. “If these things operate in a defined area, they-”

“O. M. GEE, Dude. What the hell is wrong with you? The nuke didn’t explode in your face the first time, so you want to drop it on the freakin’ floor to see what happens? I have no idea what woke up this one unstoppable killing machine. I don’t know if it will stop. The thing might decide to scour the entire galaxy by itself for all I know, and I don’t know. Oh, this is hopeless. You monkeys are doomed, if you really are that stupid.”

“Skippy,” I cringed. “You can’t talk that way to-”

“Why not? I talk that way to you all the time, and you’re a general. For all your idiotic ideas, you never proposed to make a problem worse, on purpose. Well, there was the time-”

“We get the point, thank you. General Goyal at this point, we simply don’t have enough information to know whether it’s possible to selectively deploy Sentinels,” I cautioned, disbelieving that I had to actually say that. Skippy is right, monkeys are stupid. Still, all the officers on the call outranked me.

“Mm,” Urquhart grunted. “You talked about needing a deterrent. Just hinting that we can selectively wake up a Sentinel is one hell of a deterrent. Yeah, yeah,” he waved a hand. “No one will believe we expected one of the damned things to destroy a planet, but now that it’s happened, we need to use every asset we have.”

“That includes lying?” Skippy asked incredulously.

“Deception is a vital component in warfare,” I said quickly, before he could forget about the secret we were keeping. “I see your point, Sir. The galaxy will think we are, I am, an idiot for waking up a Sentinel, but there’s no downside I can see to using that to our advantage for now.”

“Aliens who were considering an alliance with us,” Urquhart mused. “Will think twice about getting closer to us, if we don’t know what the hell we’re doing. Bishop, they will also expect us to fix this mess.”

“They already expect that, Sir,” I told him.

“Can you stop the thing?” Goyal asked.

“No,” Skippy answered for me. “It is not possible.”

“You have done impossible things before,” Urquhart noted, looking like he was sucking on a lemon. The guy hated admitting the Pirates had done something good before, you know, we stupidly woke up a killing machine.

“Yes, Sir,” I mumbled. “What Skippy means is, he was designed to not have any ability to interfere with a Sentinel. His purpose was only to identify targets.”

“Is that all?” Urquhart glanced away, like he had another, more important meeting to go to. He probably did. No doubt he needed to report back to his leadership, who would be as angry and frustrated with him, as he was with me.

“Uh,” I said that, because communication is one of my core strengths.

“Christ, Bishop,” Urquhart groaned. “If you have more bad news, spit it out, son.”

He wasn’t supposed to call me ‘son’, especially since I wore a general’s star on my uniform. “The transport ships at Jaguar? They aren’t useful for defending Earth, but we might need them, sooner or later. Sir, if that Sentinel doesn’t stop, or more of them wake up, we may need to bring as many people as we can to the beta site. I’d say sooner rather than later, because once aliens realize we are bailing out, I expect they will attack our evac ships. The Rindhalu didn’t allow the Maxohlx to flee the galaxy, they won’t be happy when we’re doing it. If we decide to staff up the beta site,” I said it that way, because it sounded better than ‘running away’. “We’ll have to load the transports quickly and jump away. Sir, I fear those ships will be making a one-way flight. By the time they return, there very likely could be a blockade around Earth.”

“Oh, hell,” Urquhart’s sentiment was joined similar thoughts from the assembled brass.

“We don’t even know whether the beta site can support a viable population,” General Goyal frowned. “Suddenly dumping thousands of panicky colonists there could destroy the biosphere. Last we heard, Avalon had a potential show-stopper problem with mold or fungus, some damned thing like that.”

“Mr. Skippy,” Urquhart spoke directly to the expert. “Do we still have access to the beta site?”

“As, far as I know,” the beer can answered slowly. “Why do you ask?”

“A lot of things happened that you didn’t anticipate,” UNEF’s commanding general growled. “Do you know for certain that your recent shenanigans haven’t prompted the networks to lock you out from using a super-duty wormhole?”

“Shit. Well, I wasn’t worried about it,” Skippy mumbled. “We better check that out, huh?”

Despite the many faults of a cumbersome multinational bureaucracy, UNEF Command could make important decisions quickly when needed. Especially when that decision is forehead-slappingly obvious. The Special Mission Group got orders with three objectives. First, we were flying back to FOB Jaguar, to deliver new orders to Admiral Chatterji. He was to assemble a fleet, consisting of whatever ships could be available within five days but with priority given to transport ships, and follow Valkyrie back out through the wormhole. From there, we would separate. Chatterji would take his fleet to Earth, while we went to recon, to very carefully conduct a recon, of the area where a Sentinel might be operating. Instead of flying straight back to Earth with the results of our recon, we were to make a quick flight out to check on the status of the beta site. If you think that is odd, I agree, I had the same reaction when I first read my orders. Then Skippy pointed out that getting to the super-duty wormhole, the one connecting to the beta site, would require only a five hour diversion off our flight path. There was also a note in the file, a personal message from General Urquhart. If there was not a Sentinel on the loose, a side trip out to Avalon wouldn’t make any difference. If we discovered an unstoppable killing machine was roaming around randomly destroying planets, it would be very important that Command learn whether the beta site was ready for colonists.

That was because of the other set of orders Command had for Admiral Chatterji. When his force arrived at Earth, Chatterii was to deploy the warships to protect the transports, which would be loaded as quickly as possible in orbit. The vulnerable transport ships, all of them, were to jump away to a secret location, along with an escort screen of cruisers, to wait for us to return. Command would then choose from a meager basket of options, based on what we found. If the beta site could support a sudden influx of colonists, the transports would proceed there regardless of whether a Sentinel was active or not. Command had been wanting to activate the beta site contingency plan as soon as possible, the Sentinel was a good excuse to get the governments involved to give the approval. If the beta site was not yet ready but could still be made viable, the transports would still fly out there, with most people waiting in orbit for the conditions to stabilize.

What if Avalon was a disaster, the biosphere collapsing due to our clumsy and too-hasty attempt to modify that world to support human needs? Then the transports would proceed to Jaguar, another world that could barely support the number of humans already there. Whatever. Command expected the colony directors to figure it out.

As to what the Merry Band of Pirates were expected to do, once we finished racing across and out of the galaxy, and acting as a tour guide for a bunch of transport ships? That depended on the result of our recon mission. If we discovered there was no Sentinel, and that the report of a planet torn apart was false, or caused by some natural phenomena that was not a threat to Earth, we would all have a good laugh.

No.

Command would be pissed at me, for scaring the shit out of them for nothing. But, we would all still be alive, so I would count that in the ‘Win’ column.

But, if a Sentinel is snacking on planets like the galaxy is a bowl of popcorn, then-

Shit.

I have no idea.

Skippy says there is nothing we can do about it.

He is our expert, so…

“Huh,” Skippy said as we passed through the second-to-last wormhole on our path to the area where a Sentinel was potentially operating. “That was weird.”

My Spidey sense instantly tingled, and my fingers dug into the arms of the command chair. “What was weird?”

“Hmm. I do not know,” he replied, clearly distracted. “That’s the point. Hey, could we go back through that wormhole? I’d like to try it again.”

“Reed?” I asked our new, also former, chief pilot. If we were going to encounter a Sentinel, I wanted the most experienced pilot available, and Command agreed. So, Reed had been pulled from her job as a starship pilot instructor at Jaguar, and was now in the left-hand seat of Valkyrie’s bridge. Technically, she sat on the righthand side, the two pilot consoles being identical. I meant, she was lead pilot. The information I needed was on the bottom of the main display, but I asked Fireball anyway. “Can we turn and burn to get back to the event horizon?”

“Not,” she hesitated only for a beat. “No. Not at this emergence point. By the time we cancel our velocity and get back here, the wormhole will have hopped to the next point on the schedule.”

“Skippy? Is this really important?”

“It’s important to me,” he sniffed.

“Sir,” Jennifer Simms called from beside me. She, also, had been recalled to the Merry Band of Pirates, and unlike Reed, she had jumped at the opportunity. Her enthusiasm was not about chasing Sentinels across the galaxy, it was about going out to the beta site to see her husband.

In case you’re wondering, the answer is yes. I did tell my parents there might be a Sentinel roaming around the galaxy, and I offered to bring them to Avalon. Which I was not authorized to do. It was a stupid thing for me to do, granting special privileges to my family and not others. Fortunately for me, my parents and my sister thanked me for being concerned, and told me they wanted to extend their stay at Club Skippy. The key element in their decision was that Skippy could not guarantee there weren’t any Sentinels in the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy, so the beta site might not be any more safe than Jaguar base.

Plus, my mother admitted that, although the planet was already getting too crowded for her, she and my Dad had made friends at Club Skippy, and felt like they were part of the community.

What about Margaret?

Uh, yeah. I asked her to rejoin the Merry Band of Pirates.

She also turned me down. STAR Team Alpha was on Earth, partly because they might be needed there to squash any attempt by jackasses to use the chaos to settle old scores. But mostly because, after I had a long discussion with Smythe, neither of us imagined any role for a STAR team in a fight against a freakin’ Sentinel. Jeremy Smythe is an adrenaline junkie, and he did not enjoy the prospect of doing nothing aboard Valkyrie, while his team could make a real difference on our homeworld. So, when Margaret asked what vital job she would be doing aboard our mighty battlecruiser, and I didn’t have a good answer, she told me my request was denied.

She actually used stronger language than that. She also used strong language when she ordered me to stop worrying about her, and concentrate on doing my fucking job, so Elder killing machines don’t wipe out all life in the galaxy.

Her actual language was not so polite as I described, and I sure got the message.

Damn, I love that woman.

Simms brought me back into the moment. “We are on a tight schedule also.”

“Right, XO,” I couldn’t help grinning at her. Having Simms back aboard meant I had to eat more vegetables, or at least pretend I did. But, damn, it felt good to get the band back together. “Skippy, what’s the problem?”

“I never said it was a problem. It’s odd, that’s all.”

Losing patience with him, I reminded myself there is nothing to be gained by getting him upset. “What is odd?” Then I added, “Please.”

“There is a funky, um, I guess I’d say it is the remnant of a signal propagating through that wormhole, but that’s impossible, so-”

“A funky signal?”

“It’s not a James Brown song, dumdum.”

“OK, but how can that-”

“It can’t be. That’s why I’m curious. Maybe there is something wrong with my-”

“Hey,” I snapped my fingers. “This wormhole is on one of the networks we crashed that first time, right? Could whatever you’re detecting, be an aftereffect?”

“No. If it was, I should have heard it, back when we left the rendezvous with the spiders and kitties, remember? We went through this wormhole then.”

“Yeah, but, maybe it takes time for the effect to build up. Or, maybe it’s just the networks talking to each other? You said that networks communicate.”

“They do, this is not- Ugh. You giving me ignorant guesses is not helping. OK, whatever. This is a minor mystery, I guess it’s not important, compared to finding out whether a Sentinel is active around here. Clearly, it didn’t affect the operation of the wormhole. Let’s go.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Please, before I have to listen to another moronic theory from you.”

The next two wormholes we went through did not have a funky signal remnant, or any kind of remnant. Or anything funky about them at all. Skippy was a bit irked that he had a mystery he would probably never solve, because our future path wouldn’t take us through or even near the funky wormhole.

Then, we went through another wormhole, one that was on a network we crashed. Or, you know, faked crashing.

“OK, we gots a problem,” Skippy called for my attention, right as we came through the event horizon. He not only called out, he waved his arms excitedly. “That is a signal.”

“Shit. We’re two for two, then.”

“Two for what?” He asked.

“Both times we transitioned through wormholes on the networks we crashed, you detected a signal.”

“Oh, right. That confirms it, then. Well, the next wormhole, the last one before we reach the target recon area, is on the same network. We’ll know for sure then.”

“Is this a problem for us?”

“Problem? Why would an old, degraded signal be a problem?”

“I assume the signal is not the networks gossiping about your stupid opera, so-”

“My operas are not stupid, numbskull.”

“What is this signal?”

“I do not know,” he answered quietly, with a pensive look on his holographic face. That was better than an anxious expression. “It’s, hmm.”

“What?”

“It’s almost like something I recognize, but it’s not the same.”

“What?”

“I don’t know that, either. You know how you’re watching a TV show, and you think you recognize an actor from something else, but you can’t remember where you saw them before? Then you realize they just look similar to someone else, but it’s not who you were thinking of?”

“Uh, yeah.” In my head, I was trying to decide if I understood what he said. “So, not a problem for us? No danger?”

“No danger. Ah, the signal is probably some type of communication internal to the network. It’s a minor mystery, Joe. We have more important things to worry about.”

“OK, then,” I allowed myself to relax a little. There would be plenty of time for Full Panic Mode when we reached the search area. “Let us know if you remember what that signal is.” Most likely, I thought, the signal was some sort of diagnostic tool the networks used, and he had a similar subroutine running inside his matrix or whatever.

“I will.”

We got an answer later that night, when we shot through the wormhole that led to the target search area. Not the answer Skippy wanted about what the signal meant. The answer about whether all wormholes in the networks we crashed had that residual signal. The answer was yes.

Skippy wasn’t satisfied. “That doesn’t mean every wormhole we crashed has a signal, or, oooh, maybe they don’t all have the same signal. To check, we need to fly through a statistically significant number of wormholes, which-”

“Which is not happening,” I cut him off, irritated. We were in an area where a Sentinel might be hunting ships and tearing planets apart, and he wanted to waste time with trivia. “Is this relevant to our mission?”

“It could be. Unless I figure out what it was, we won’t-”

“How about this: is the signal something caused by a Sentinel going through the wormhole?”

“No, I- Ugh. Sentinels don’t go through wormholes, dumdum.”

“Great, then can we please focus on our actual mission, and figure out your trivia question later? Reed, jump us out of here.” I didn’t wait for Skippy to reply, partly because my stomach was tied in knots from fear about stumbling across an Elder killing machine. I was determined that we did not have time to investigate every little distracting thing that Skippy’s ADHD mind wandered across.

That, I learned later, was a mistake.

Because I stupidly requested that Simms rejoin my crew, and because the Universe hates me, she somehow was in the galley whenever I snuck in there. Skippy swore he wasn’t spying on me for her, and since he was terrible at lying, I believed him. Maybe Bilby was ratting me out, or the crew were following the executive officer’s orders and giving her a heads up. Anyway, I ducked into the galley early for dinner, hoping to grab something that was left over from lunch. A pile of soggy French fries microwaved back to life would have been OK with me, but no such luck. Simms was there, behind the counter, chopping vegetables or something. She wasn’t scheduled to work the galley that day, seeing her there set off my Spidey sense. “Hello, Sir,” she said with too much enthusiasm. “Can we help you?”

“Uh, no, uh,” I made a lame gesture of pointing to the coffee pot in the corner. “Just coffee.”

“You must be hungry. We have soup, or stir-fry?”

“Soup?” That did sound good to me. “What kind?”

“It’s tortilla soup,” she got my hopes up.

“Ooh! With chorizo?”

“With kale.”

“You know, I had soup, uh, last week. I’ll try the stir-fry.”

She stepped over to her left, and used tongs to pile something on a small plate. At least it wasn’t a large dinner-sized plate.

Because it was a vegetable stir-fry. “This looks, good. Um, what are these things?”

“Spiced chunks of tofu, Sir.” She cocked her head at me. “What?”

“I’m just a boy, standing in front of a plate full of veggies, asking it to be a cheeseburger.”

She rolled her eyes, but I could see she was amused. “Permission to speak freely, Sir?”

“Go ahead.”

“You are destined to be unhappy about that one.”

“When you said ‘speak freely’, I was hoping you would utter some magic spell that would turn these veggies into a cheeseburger.” I looked at the collection of rabbit food on my plate. “I am very disappointed.”

“This is your own fault. You need a course of remedial nutrition, after all the junk you ate while Striebich was your XO.”

“How did you know I ate junk food?”

Her sly smile told me I’d been an idiot. “I didn’t, until just now.”

“Crap. OK, I’ll try this. Can I pick out the pieces of tofu?”

“I assumed you would anyway, that’s why I gave you only three strips of tofu. Will you try the soup? I promise it’s good.”

“If I don’t like it?”

“You can have a bag of potato chips.”

“Joe,” Skippy whispered in my earpiece a few minutes later. “What happened to Jennifer? She’s just came to sickbay, it looks like she nearly sliced off one of her fingers.”

“She was doing some Chef Boyardee thing, and-”

“Chef Boyardee? Like, Beefaroni? I can’t imagine Simms cooking anything like-”

“No, it’s, she was chopping rolled-up lettuce,” I mimicked using a big kitchen knife. “Something like that. As a garnish for the soup.”

“Oh. That technique is called chiff-o-nade, you numbskull.”

“Like I said.”

“Ugh. How did she-”

“I might have distracted her.”

“Ya think?”

“Sorry. Hey, tell her the soup is actually good.”

“Hold a minute. Um, she is not talking to you. Also, she says it would have been a better compliment if you didn’t use the word ‘actually’.”

“I said I’m sorry. Tell her I promise to have oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow.”

There was a pause, then, “She wants to know whether you plan to have bacon with your oatmeal?”

“Crap. Well, I was, damn it.”

Mad Doctor Skippy fixed her finger so well, she didn’t even have a scar. Really, I suffered more from the incident than she did. I ate a bowl of veggie soup, a second plate of stir-fried veggies, and I didn’t even get a bag of potato chips.

Plus, no bacon for a week.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

 You know how, when you’re drunk, you talk really slow and carefully, and you’re still amazed the words come out in the right order, like you’re hearing someone else speaking?

I mean, I wouldn’t know about that, but I’ve heard other people describe the experience.

On Valkyrie’s bridge, I wasn’t drinking, hadn’t touched a drop in weeks. The difficulty I had controlling my tongue was from fear, pure, gut-churning fear. “Skippy?” I called to him, pronouncing each syllable slow and clearly.

“Joe?”

“What, uh,” I licked my dry lips. We were on the outer edge of the star system, just inside the line known as the ‘termination shock’, where outward pressure of the solar wind drops abruptly as it encounters the interstellar medium that fills the space between stars in the Milky Way. Maybe ‘fills’ is not the right word, even in extra cool and dense areas of the ISM, there is only a million atoms per cubic centimeter. A cubic centimeter is about, uh-

Sorry, I’m babbling.

There are few times in my life when I have been so terrified. My fear was not that our search for a Sentinel would succeed too well, and everyone aboard Valkyrie would be killed. Well, that too, of course. My major fear, what kept me awake at night and left me not hungry, not even for cheeseburgers, was that my arrogance and stupidity would get everyone killed. Like, everyone. Sentinels could scour the galaxy clean of multicellular life, and it would be all my fault. I was so proud of myself, so pleased with my clever thinking for prompting Skippy to fake crashing wormhole networks, that maybe-

No, not maybe. Apparently. Perhaps unarguably, I had gotten so caught up in enthusiasm for my amazing and clever idea that no one else could think of, I failed to take precautions. Failed to ask the right questions. Yes, Skippy had assured me nothing could go wrong, that faking a crash was no different from ways he had screwed with wormholes before, but I now understand that is not true. He had never done anything that affected an entire network before. Multiple networks, across a bubble of space four thousand lightyears across. So, when he assured me that nothing could go wrong, I should have reminded myself that he is an untrustworthy, absent-minded beer can who entirely too much believes in his own infallible awesomeness.

It is all my fault. I might be the worst mass-murderer in history, not because I am evil but because I am stupid.

So, my mouth was having trouble forming words, because I had to clench my jaw to stop it from trembling. My knuckles were white from gripping the armrests tightly, the only way the crew wouldn’t see my hands shaking.

Yeah, everything was going just great, thank you.

“What, uh,” I tried again. “Do you see out there?”

“Hmm. I spy, with my little eye-”

“That is not funny,” anger overcame my fear, and I could yell at him just fine.

“Jeez, sorry, Joe. I’m nervous, you know?”

“I do. I do, buddy. You’re worried that we unleashed a force that wiped out an entire planet.”

“Oh, um, yes. I meant that I’m worried a fight with a Sentinel could end my unbroken streak of awesomenesses, but we can go with, um, whatever you said.”

“I cannot believe you just said that.”

“Ugh. OK, so maybe ‘awesomenesses’ is not grammatically correct, but-”

 Simms reached over and rested a finger on my knee. It was an intimate gesture, not intimate in that way. Intimate in the sense that we were two people who had gone through a lot of shit together, and we knew and respected each other, and we looked out for each other. She knew I was pissed off, and she knew yelling at Skippy wouldn’t accomplish anything. When I caught her eye, she shook her head ever so slightly. Right, I told myself. Skippy was just being Skippy. And maybe he was being an asshole to distract me. “Please, Skippy, tell me what you see out there.”

“Okaaaay,” he let out a long breath. “I have horrible news, and not-so-horrible news.”

“Hit me with your best shot.”

“There is a Sentinel out there. It was here, and I am definitely, one hundred percent certain that it devastated that planet. I don’t know where it is now, I don’t know where it is going, and I don’t know where it came from originally.”

“Shit.” Hearing my fear confirmed was anticlimactic, because I expected the worst. “The not-so-horrible news?”

“This is more of a guess, you understand? I don’t think it targeted that planet deliberately.”

“It destroyed a planet by accident?”

“No. It intended to tear that world apart. The planet just wasn’t on a target list. Joe, I think it just got in the way sort of. You military types call it a ‘target of opportunity’, something like that?”

“OK. You’re saying this planet was closest to where it was, when it woke up?”

“No, I, ugh. I’m not explaining this well. Let me show you.” The main display’s holographic tank darkened, the view zooming outward. “Here,” he said, a blinking yellow light appeared at the upper right. “Is the last reported position of the first task force to disappear. It was close to a wormhole that we crashed. These,” more blinking lights of various colors appeared. “Are other locations where ships disappeared, or are suspected of going missing. And we are here,” a red blob flared to life, not in the center of the display, but low and off to the left. “Now, watch as I draw lines between the sites, based on time of the incidents.” A single blue line appeared, zigzagging across the display. “See?” He asked.

“Uh,” I glanced over at Simms, she held up her hands in an ‘I have no idea what he means’ gesture. “I’m not following you.”

“Do you see the line from where the second group of ships disappeared, to where the third group of ships was last reported?”

“Yeah.” That line made a wide loop past our present location, where the planet was torn apart. “What about it?”

“It’s almost a straight line, see?”

“Uh, no. That is not a straight-”

“I mean, ugh. It’s a straight line through higher dimensions, trust me. It’s like a Great Circle route, you know?”

“Sure.” The concept of a Great Circle route is something I learned in pilot training, it was part of the navigation course. On any sphere like a planet, the shortest distance between two points on the surface is an arc that describes a plane intersecting the center of the sphere. It’s kind of counterintuitive, though easier to understand if you hold a globe in your hands. “In what weird-ass dimension of space is that a straight line?”

“Trust me, it is. Joe, I think that planet became a target because the Sentinel was flying past it. The thing did not go out of its way to get there.”

That had to be good news, I told myself. Or maybe I was just clutching at straws, looking for any sort of good news. “So, it was hunting starships?”

“No. I don’t think so. That is highly unlikely. Look closer at where the missing formations of ships were last reported.”

“They are all near wormholes that we crashed,” I observed.

“Exactly. The Sentinel appears to be investigating the wormholes that crashed, just like the missing ships were.”

“Huh. OK. If we tell everyone to avoid those wormholes, we- Shit. That is a huge volume of space.” A bubble four thousand lightyears across, even if the bubble was an irregularly-shaped blob, covered a vast section of the galaxy.

“My guess, and it’s only a guess at this point, is the Sentinel is confused and looking for direction. It woke up, somehow, I don’t know how because it doesn’t make any sense. It woke up, not knowing why it was active, so it started searching for guidance. Possibly it noticed the aftereffect of the wormhole crashes, and decided to investigate.”

“Uh huh. Best case, then, is this thing flies around to those wormholes, satisfies its curiosity, and goes back to sleep?”

“That would be the ideal case, yes. More likely, it will hang around for a very long time. This part of the galaxy probably should be quarantined.”

“For how long?”

“Um, forever? Hmm, that’s not practical. You meatsacks have no patience, you will want to know if it’s gone away after only a couple thousand years.”

“Only a couple thousand?”

“Hey, it’s not my fault that biological beings have a totally screwed-up sense of time.”

“OK, uh, maybe we can send robotic ships into the area once a decade, something like that. See if the thing is still awake.”

“Sure, Joe, that is a great idea. Wow, that’s why you get paid the big bucks, huh? Think, numbskull. The Sentinel is resting, possibly preparing to go back into hibernation, and you want to send ships to poke it with a stick?”

“Uh, good point. This is, all above my pay grade. Skippy, what about inhabited planets in the crash zone?”

“Crash zone? Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“We have to call it something, so-”

“I like it. Despite our efforts to select an isolated area for the demonstration, there are seven worlds with significant populations within the zone. My suggestion is they be evacuated.”

“An evac? Just like that? How many people are on these seven planets?”

“A total of two point three million.”

“Shit. That will take a whole lot of transport ships.”

“Won’t those ships,” Simms joined the conversation, “provoke the Sentinel? They need to use wormholes within the zone to reach those planets, and again on the way out.”

“I didn’t say this would be easy,” Skippy was defensive. “If a group of transports is attacked on the outbound flight, that is still better than the entire population being dirtside when the planet gets blown apart, isn’t it?”

“You think the Sentinel will attack more planets?” I asked.

“I think I don’t know,” he said with an implied ‘Duh’. “That’s the point.”

“Right. Again, above my pay grade.”

“You are a general, Sir,” Simms reminded me.

“That matters less than I expected,” I admitted. “Skippy, is there any indication this thing has gone outside the crash zone?”

“No. However, there is also no indication it hasn’t. I simply don’t know. We should-”

Simms sucked in a sharp breath.

I turned to her. “What is it, XO?”

“There is, something we should discuss, Sir,” her eyes flicked toward the bridge door.

“Right. Skippy, we’re done here? We can jump away?”

“We should jump away,” he agreed.

“Reed? Punch it.”

We jumped.

I stood up and addressed the bridge crew. “The only practical way out of here is by going through one of the wormholes we crashed, so everyone, be alert. Reed, if you think you see something odd, jump.”

“Yes, Sir,” Fireball nodded. She knew that was a standing order anyway.

“Yanev,” I pointed to the officer at the sensor console. “You have the conn. Simms, you’re with me.”

In my office, I closed the door, as Skippy’s avatar appeared on the desk. “What is it, XO?”

“We’re calling it the crash zone.”

“Yeah, so?”

“The crash zone.”

“Oh, shit,” I groaned.

“Will one of you monkeys please explain this to me?” Skippy demanded.

“She means,” I said while staring at the ceiling, hating my life. “There are two areas where we crashed wormholes. The big demonstration area, and where we scared the shit out of the Maxohlx to retaliate for their attack against Earth.”

Skippy shook his head. “Um, may I point out that we did not actually crash any wormholes?”

“Like that matters.”

“It does matter, Joe,” he insisted. “The technique I used to fake it the second time, was totally different from how I faked it the first time.”

“You are sure the Sentinel cares about the difference?”

“Oh, shit,” he groaned that time. “Thank you so much for ruining my freakin’ day.”

Simms bit her lip. “A lot of people will have their days ruined, if Zone Two becomes a target. That area is heavily populated, it’s why you selected that network. Conducting an evac of those planets would be impossible.”

“Oh, this is bad. This is bad,” I cradled my head in my hands. “All right. What if, how about we check Zone Two for signs of Sentinel activity, after we come back from Avalon?”

“Until then,” Simms asked, “we don’t warn anyone?”

Skippy answered for me. “About what? We don’t know anything.”

“A massive evac operation,” I added, “could be a disaster in itself. Look at what happened on Earth. People panic, societies fall apart, there could be-”

“Seriously, Joe, you are worried about a zombie apocalypse?” Skippy snorted.

“I’m worried about people rioting, and the governments turning their SD platforms around to hit targets on the surface. OK,” I held up my hands. “Let’s not speculate. XO, we have no information that the, uh, Zone Two, has any Sentinel activity. But, good call, I wouldn’t have thought of that. To answer your question, I am willing to take the risk that a planet in Zone Two will be destroyed, because we really can’t do anything about it.”

“We could-”

“Also,” I added before Simms could continue her thought, “if we warn the kitties and there is no Sentinel there, we lose credibility. No one would listen to us if we do later find another Sentinel.”

She pursed her lips, unhappy, but nodded.

Simms wasn’t happy about what I said. She would be more unhappy if she knew what I didn’t say.

UNEF Command wanted aliens to think we could summon a Sentinel, by crashing wormhole networks. Giving a warning to Zone Two, before we knew an Elder killing machine was active there, would make it clear to everyone that we actually had no control over the damned things.

Shit.

Command would think that having Sentinels active, in both zones where we crashed wormholes, is a bonus. It would make our threat to crash wormholes more powerful, even if the effect was unintended.

Damn it. They’re right about it making our threat more devastating. Don’t piss off humans, or we will not only crash a network of wormholes, we will unleash a Sentinel on your ass.

That is a powerful threat.

It is also incredibly, stupidly, dangerous. No freakin’ way was I ever going to be involved in crashing another network, unless we knew for certain that it wasn’t our action that woke up an unstoppable killing machine. And, since as far as I knew, there was no way to prove it wasn’t our fault, the notion of crashing any more wormhole networks was off the list of options.

But, crap, that didn’t mean we could use the threat of summoning Sentinels to encourage asshole aliens to cooperate with us. If you think that it is a heartless, cynical way to do business, you are right. It also is a fact that once a Sentinel was awake, there was no way for us to put that genie back in the bottle. Or to put it back in Pandora’s box, or whatever metaphor you want to use.

We chatted a bit longer on the subject, even after it was clear I had made a decision. That’s the way command works. The dumbass in authority listens to advice and counsel from their staff, then makes a decision. It might be the wrong decision, and it didn’t make it any better that in this case, I am the dumbass in authority.

We jumped and recharged and jumped again, all the way to the nearest Crash Zone One wormhole. Once there, we waited until just before it was scheduled to close at that emergence point, then jumped and our considerable momentum zipped us through the event horizon. If a Sentinel had been waiting there for us, we never knew. The wormhole closed behind us, seconds before Reed triggered a nearly-blind jump just to get us the hell out of there, and we counted ourselves lucky to be alive.

Avalon was, well, complicated. The good news was that, most of the news we received there was good. The bioscience team there thought they had control of the fungus problem. They had discovered a native microorganism in the soil that, when exposed to foreign organisms like a fungus from Earth, excreted a toxin that inhibited growth. That was both good and bad, because that same organism inhibited the growth of beneficial biologicals like the crops we wanted to grow. The solution of the science team was to dig up soil in areas where we wanted to plant crops, run the soil through a sterilizer to kill the native organisms, and re-install the soil after seeding it with nutrients and microorganisms from Earth. It was a slow and cumbersome process that would be difficult to scale up, and the treatment only lasted a couple months, before native life began creeping back into the area. The good news was it appeared that as more area became converted to Earth organisms, a positive feedback loop became established, extending the time that soil was useful.

The bad news was not a whole lot of progress had been made toward building infrastructure for accepting large numbers of colonists. To be fair, the science teams there had been busy doing science things, and growing food to support themselves. When I first posed the question, whether Avalon could support thousands of additional people, the response I received was universally negative. Then, after I explained that a Sentinel was currently rampaging in the Milky Way galaxy, opinions changed. If Avalon absolutely had to be a refuge for humanity in a short time, there was a way to make it happen. It would be difficult and expensive, but it could be done. Probably. As with most questions involving science, there were a whole lot of ‘Ifs’ involved.

While I badgered the scientists for an answer, I granted Simms a twenty four hour pass to be with her husband, with the restriction that she couldn’t do any work while on the surface. On my order, Skippy locked out her zPhone except for emergency calls. When she returned to the ship, her eyes were red like she had been crying. She looked at me and nodded once, we didn’t need to say anything.

Thirty eight hours after arriving at Avalon, we jumped away, carrying hope that some small portion of humanity might survive there, even if all life was scoured from the Milky Way galaxy.

Outbound through the super-duty wormhole that connected to the Milky Way, we left the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy behind, sure we would be coming back soon. The UN would want to bring at least a couple transport ships there, even if some of the people aboard needed to wait in orbit until conditions on the surface could support their numbers. If Command wanted my advice, I would fly all of the transports straight to the beta site, rather than taking the interim step of going to Jaguar base. I did understand the logic of a stopover at Jaguar; it got those vulnerable ships to a place hostile aliens couldn’t reach, so we didn’t have all of our eggs in one basket. It would give the passengers a break from being stuck inside a cramped starship. And, Jaguar was farther from Crash Zone One than Earth was, meaning if a Sentinel was rampaging across the galaxy, Jaguar would be safe for longer.

But, if the point of pulling people off our homeworld was to ensure a viable population survived at a secure site outside the galaxy, they needed to go straight to Avalon. Anyone who couldn’t stand an extended stay aboard a ship was not a good candidate for being a first-adopter colonist on a planet with a shaky biosphere, in my opinion. Of course, the decision wouldn’t mine to make, that kind of stuff was outside my area of expertise, and I’m OK with that. My plate is already full with decisions that were my responsibility to make, I didn’t need any more.

Our first stop was at a Wurgalan relay station. One of their data relays wasn’t my first choice, but it was the only one along our route to Zone Two. There were no additional reports of Sentinels tearing apart planets. There wasn’t a whole lot of news about anything, really, that station was kind of isolated and the Bosphuraq, patrons of the Wurgalan, were not flying around as much as they used to. The latest info that station had was eight days old when we got there. Still, no news is good news, I guess.

The second stop, which really wasn’t a stop at all, was to check whether a Sentinel was active in Zone Two. “Hmm,” Skippy said as we transitioned through a wormhole into the zone. “OK, that’s interesting.”

“What?” I asked, irritated that he always made me prompt him for info.

“I’m not detecting any kind of residual signal here. That blows my theory that the signal is somehow connected to a wormhole network crash. Although, hmm, the crash here was-”

“Yes!” I shouted before he could blurt out the truth. “Thank you, Skippy. We all know you used a different technique to crash this network.”

“That’s my point,” he was snippy right back at me. “We now have two data points. One technique might result in a signal, the other technique does not.”

“We have three data points,” Simms noted. “You also did not detect a signal at wormholes on networks that were not subjected to a crash.”

“Oh, right,” the beer can’s face reddened slightly, an affectation that was new. “I’m not detecting any sign of a Sentinel here, but hanging around wormholes in a crash zone is not the healthiest thing to do, huh?”

“Fireball, jump option Charlie,” I ordered. “Punch it.”

The quickest way to determine whether a Sentinel had already conducted an attack within Zone Two was to ping a relay station for news. If an attack had occurred, it would be the first item on a data relay’s stack of files. And even if the Maxohlx did not know a Sentinel was active in the area, Skippy could mine for hints in the data. Ships overdue or declared missing. Unusual phenomena that he knew was not natural, that could only be the work of an Elder killing machine. Something as simple as a disturbance in the orbits of an asteroid field, would be enough for Skippy to identify as a possible sign of a Sentinel’s presence. The problem was, we could not ping a Maxohlx relay station for info, because some idiot had the bright idea of bragging to the kitties that we had hacked their ultra-secure pixie communication system. Man, that guy is really a jackass. The relay station we replaced was still collecting data for us, but it was too far away to be useful to us right then.

Since we were looking primarily for information that would be widely discussed and openly available, I took advice from Simms, and parked Valkyrie ten lighthours from a Maxohlx world that had a population of over four hundred million rotten kitties. Damn, if you have cat allergies, you do not want to go there. Also, I am never applying for the job of emptying litterboxes all over that planet. Anyway, the ship’s sensors had barely recovered from jump distortion, when Skippy yelped.

“Oops! Oh, oh, oh shit.”

“Details, please,” I clenched my fist to avoid shouting at him.

“I have good news, news that will be a great relief to you, puzzling news, and bad news. The good news is we can go now, there is no sign of a Sentinel active in this zone. The puzzling news,” he paused.

“What?”

“Oh, usually you interrupt me when I’m trying to tell you something important.”

“Get on with it.”

“The news that will be a great relief, is that it appears you are not responsible for waking up a Sentinel, the wormhole crash happening around the same time might have been just a coincidence.”

“How do you know that?”

“I pinged the networks that we, um, crashed, and their controllers all responded that none of them sent out any sort of distress call that could have summoned a Sentinel. As far as they are concerned, there was an internal glitch and they fixed it. The puzzling news- Are you sure you don’t want to interrupt me?”

“No!”

“OK. You don’t have to snap at me,” he sniffed. “The puzzling news is, I now have no idea what triggers Sentinels to wake up, if a wormhole network crash didn’t do it.”

“OK, well,” I shuddered, relieved to hear that. If we had not stupidly awakened an Elder killing machine, that meant we didn’t know how to do that, other than suicidally deploying Elder weapons. That meant UNEF Command could not use the threat of waking more Sentinels as a threat, and I wouldn’t face the prospect of refusing an order to unleash a devastating force we couldn’t control.

Because it also meant our threat to crash wormhole networks was still viable, without the risk of wiping out all life in the galaxy. Unless, you know, Skippy was wrong.

Hey, what are the odds of that happening?

“That is,” I silently pumped a fist, and Simms nodded agreement. “Good news, all around. Now, hit me with the bad news. Did that Sentinel in Zone One attack another planet?”

“No. It has either gone silent, or no one has noticed whatever it has done recently.”

“OK.” In my head, I was hoping his bad news was disappointment that his theory of what triggered Sentinels was wrong. If so, he was a jerk for scaring us, but I could live with it. “What is the bad news?”

“There was another Sentinel attack. Against a world controlled by the Vreen. A hundred and seven thousand people live there, Joe. This time, the Sentinel manipulated the planet’s own strong magnetic field to tear it apart, massive quakes and tsunamis devastated the surface. A Vreen starship witnessed the attack and managed to jump away, seven other starships were not so lucky. There is absolute confirmation a Sentinel was involved, the Vreen ship saw the thing.”

“A hundred and-” I felt sick again. “Are there any survivors?”

“Possibly. I don’t know. Someone could have survived, though they would have to be very lucky. The ship that escaped didn’t hang around to search for survivors.”

“Right. Skippy, you said there wasn’t another attack in-”

“The most recent attack was not in Zone One, or anywhere close to where we crashed wormholes at all. Joe, I think another Sentinel has awakened.”

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

My orders were to fly straight back to Earth from the beta site. By taking a detour to Zone Two, I had already exceeded my orders. I say ‘exceeded’ instead of ‘violated’, because ‘taking initiative’ sounds better than ‘gross insubordination’.

Speaking of taking initiative, I immediately ordered the ship to the Vreen star system that had been attacked. We would not be conducting a search and rescue operation, or any kind of search for survivors. Our search would be limited to getting data about the Sentinel involved. Specifically, I needed to know whether the Zone One Sentinel had gotten ambitious about his job, and gone rogue to attack the Vreen, for some unknown reason.

That would be a major problem, we could no longer count on the damned thing staying within Zone One, so the idea of a quarantine would be thrown out the window.

Actually, that Sentinel ranging far from the area of its original attacks was a best-case scenario. My fear was that, like Skippy suggested, more than one of the awful things was active. He confirmed to me that he could tell the difference between Sentinels, they didn’t have names but each one left a unique imprint on local spacetime.

Shit.

“You are absolutely certain?” I asked, my hands in my lap and my fingers crossed for good luck.

“Yes. This attack was less than six days ago,” he replied. “The signature is recent enough to be very distinctive.”

“Right, but,” I was seriously grasping at straws, hoping he was wrong. “This is a different area of the galaxy, and the-”

“Joe,” he said quietly. “I am sorry. No, it is not possible that I am wrong about this. The Sentinel that was here is not the same one as in Zone One. A tiger can’t change its stripes, and, trust me, a Sentinel can’t alter its signature. There are at least two Sentinels active now. I’m sorry.”

“Why did you say ‘at least’?” I asked warily, my fingers still crossed, though that gesture did not seem to be working.

“It’s a big galaxy, right? If we know two of them are awake in this quadrant, what are the odds they are the only ones?”

“What now, Sir?” Simms prompted me, after I sat there frozen for a moment.

“Earth. We go to Earth. Link up with the transports, bring them to Avalon.”

Lowering her voice, she leaned closer and whispered, “After that?”

“I,” all I could do was shake my head. The transport ships would most likely be making a one-way trip. Avalon wasn’t ready to support that many humans, so most of the passengers would remain in orbit, possibly for more than a year. By the time those ships were empty and available, I doubted we would be able to park them in Earth orbit to peacefully reload with new colonists. Simms had asked a good question, a very good question. When faced with only awful choices, you take the one that is least bad. Save as many people as we could. Take them beyond the galaxy, and like Skippy suggested, lock the door behind us.

And hope there were no Sentinels in the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy.

Before going through the closest wormhole to Earth, we went to a location six point three lightyears from our home star, in the exact middle of nowhere. If it means anything to you, the site was roughly in the direction of Lalande 21185. That is, of course, the brightest red dwarf star visible from the northern hemisphere of Earth, or it is according to Wikipedia. I don’t know anything else about it.

Absolutely nothing was within a quarter lightyear of our position. Except for tiny particles of dust, hydrogen atoms, and a probe the size of a raisin. Or at least, we hoped the probe was there, it was supposed to be in that spot, within half a kilometer. We couldn’t actually detect the thing with passive sensors, it was encased in stealth foam, and the ambient starlight was pretty dim. Like, pitch black, and I’m not talking about an old Vin Diesel movie. If I was outside in a spacesuit, I wouldn’t be able to see my hand in front of my face, other than when my hand passed in front of a star.

Anyway, we stopped there to comply with the protocol established by UNEF Command before we left. The procedure was, we go to one of several dozen locations within a bubble of roughly half a lightyear, and Skippy pings the probe with one of his fancy codes, or something like that. Identifies himself, in a way no one else could. The probe then responds with the location of that day’s designated picket ship, a UN Navy destroyer.

Which the probe did, so we jumped a third of a lightyear, and sent out another ping, with Valkyrie’s ID code. Twenty seconds later, the destroyer UNS Cordoba responded. The next step in the process should have been for the picket ship to give us an update, and transmit any orders from Command. Instead, that ship requested me to stand by for a dropship to come aboard. Well, that was unusual, and when I requested an explanation, Cordoba’s commander actually sent a terse order for communications silence.

I got up and stood behind Reed’s pilot couch. “Fireball, stand by. Skippy, do you see-”

“Got it, Joe. Scarab-class dropship, in stealth, six hundred kilometers away. Now moving toward us. You want me to scan it?”

“It’s within range of your presence? You can inspect it without using the ship’s active sensors?” The order for communications silence also prevented us from sending out sensor pings.

“Yes. Scanning now. It’s harmless, Joe. Six people aboard the Scarab, all humans and all pilots. They have been there for eight days, ooh, that can’t be fun.”

“I’ve been there, I can confirm it is not fun.”

“The Scarab is a lot bigger inside than some tin cans I’ve been stuck in with you, Sir,” Reed grimaced. “Not that the experience wasn’t totally delightful.”

“You are a lying sack of shit, Reed,” I grinned despite the tense situation. “Nothing dangerous over there, Skippy?”

“The dropship is not armed. The only hazard is that some idiot cooked a smelly fish for dinner last night, and the other five are considering whether to toss the garbage, and the offender, out an airlock.”

“Whew.” I knew what the cabin of a dropship smelled like after a couple days, even without strong-smelling food. In crowded quarters, the only fish allowed should be Goldfish crackers. “I’d vote ‘Yes’ on that one. XO, have a can of air freshener brought to the docking bay.”

The Scarab flew into one of our docking bays,a nd Skippy confirmed there weren’t any weapons aboard. When the crew walked down the ramp, I was there to greet the guy walking down the back ramp, returning his salute. “Major Valenzuela,” I got that info from the insignia and nametag on his flight suit. “Welcome aboard. We have hot chow and showers for your people.”

“General Bishop,” he had that star-struck look that I found annoying. That is one of many downsides to being famous, people don’t act like I’m a real person. “Thank you, Sir, but all I’m supposed to do now, is shake your hand.”

My hand stayed firmly at my side for a long moment. Until I realized the guy was only trying to confirm I wasn’t a hologram. “It’s the real me,” I held out a hand, and he grasped for a shake, just long enough to not be awkward.

“Sorry, Sir.”

“Hell, you’re that worried about a deception op? What’s going on?”

He made a gesture toward the cockpit window, and the woman there gave a thumbs up. Valenzuela turned back to me. “Just transmitted a data package, and orders, to you. Do you want the short version?”

“Hell, yes.”

“Earth is under a blockade by both senior species, they are blaming us,” he said while he looked me straight in the eye, “for waking up a Sentinel. The Maxohlx claim we are responsible, that crashing wormhole networks must have caused a Sentinel to respond. The good news is, they haven’t shot at us, at least, not as of our last update two days ago. They found out rats are leaving the sinking ship,” he said with a sour expression. The colonists going out to Avalon were not popular with Navy personnel, who had to protect them, but would likely not have the privilege of a secure refuge for themselves and their families. The Navy people did their job anyway, because that’s what they do. “Three days after the transports jumped away, two groups of ships arrived, one from each of the seniors. They announced that no one else would be leaving Earth, unless we got the Sentinel put back in its box. They also demanded we recall the transports, or provide their location.” One side of his mouth turned upward in a wry smile. “Good thing Command made sure even they didn’t know where the transports are.”

“You do, though?”

“Cordoba’s AI knows,” he replied, and the smile wiped off his face. “Sir, you can put that Sentinel back in a box?”

“I’m not going to lie to you, so, no. Good news is, it looks like crashing wormhole networks is not what woke the damned things up. Bad news is, there’s at least two of the damned things active now.”

“Mierda,” he didn’t bother to speak English for me.

“Yeah.”

“General,” he glanced back to his ship, his people. “We have to go.”

“Major, I’m countermanding your orders.” Lowering my voice, I added, “I know what it’s like being stuck in a sardine can like that,” I used the word ‘sardine’ deliberately. “Take thirty minutes to shower and change into fresh uniforms, showers are right outside the docking bay. We’ll have hot food waiting, to take with you.”

“That’s an order, Sir?”

“Damned straight it is.”

Thirty two minutes later, with the crew freshly showered and in clean flight suits, the Scarab flew out of our docking bay. Seven minutes after that, once the Scarab reached a safe distance, we jumped away toward the waiting transports, using the coordinates provided by the Cordoba. Not toward the transports exactly, we actually made our first jump in the opposite direction. Two jumps later, to make sure no one was following us, we arrived at the transports. They were all in stealth, in a loose formation about two lightseconds away. None of the ships responded to our pings, which is excellent OPSEC but annoying. Finally, Admiral Martinez contacted me directly. Anticipating a difficult conversation, I took the call in my office, with the door closed.

The only times I had met Admiral Martinez was in Zhao’s staff meetings, and I didn’t know the guy at all. Fortunately, he didn’t waste time with chit-chat. “General Bishop, I hope you have good news for us.”

I didn’t, and I told him that. He took ten minutes to consider, then called me back. “Bishop, we need an escort out to Point Bravo,” he named the coordinates where some ships would go on to Avalon, and others would wait for us to come back, to escort them to Jaguar.

“No Sir. We don’t have time for that, and going to Jaguar is a waste of time and resources. All these people need to go to the beta site right now, that includes your ships too, Sir.” I meant his own escort force of former Jeraptha cruisers and destroyers.

“Bishop, I have my orders and you have yours. You-”

“The Special Mission Group is not a taxi service, Sir,” I touched the general’s star on my uniform as I said that, to remind me that, damn it, UNEF had given me authority. As a two-star, Admiral Martinez outranked me, but SMG reported directly to UNEF Command, not to UN Navy brass. The orders I received stated I was to assist the regular Navy, ‘subject to circumstances’, about which I was to use my best judgment. That’s what happens when a commander is out of communications range from Earth. “If you want an escort to Avalon, we’ll guide you and open the door. But if we’re going to stop these Sentinels from trampling the entire galaxy, we can’t waste time flying back and forth across the galaxy. Sir,” I softened my tone. “I know it sucks to make a one-way trip out there. You feel like you’re running away, that the fight is here.”

“It is,” he insisted.

“Admiral, I’m going to be blunt. Your ships wouldn’t even be a speed bump to a Sentinel. The only useful thing you can do, with the resources assigned to you, is make sure the civilians on these transports get to Avalon safely, and don’t do something stupid to get killed once they go dirtside. As a job, it sucks, but it’s your responsibility, Sir , not mine. With all due respect, Sir, you can stay here, or follow us, but the only place we’re going is Avalon.”

That was a fun conversation. In the end, Martinez agreed to an escort out to the beta site. Not because he conceded a lack of authority over me, but because he understood that the sooner we were done escorting his transports, the sooner the Merry Band of Pirates could deal with the Sentinel threat. “Is there anything you need from me?”

“We would appreciate fresh food, if you have any to spare,” I said. While we didn’t have a plan to stop Sentinels from rampaging across the galaxy, I figured it would take longer than expected, because everything always did.

“Well, that was rude,” Skippy announced as he appeared on my office desk, when he had finished tucking the super-duty wormhole to bed for a nice long nap behind us. We had just returned to the Milky Way after dropping off the transport ships at Avalon. Our stay there was less than a day, just long enough for the transports to detach from their star carriers, then for those carriers to shuffle Admiral Martinez’s escort warships around on the hard points for proper balance. When we came back through the super-duty wormhole, Martinez had his ship immediately jump away for the journey to Earth. By taking advantage of the shortcuts Skippy had created by moving wormholes, the trip was long in distance but relatively short in time. “They didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I hate long goodbyes, Skippy,” I replied, thinking about Simms. Making the brief stopover at Avalon had been especially tough on her, with not enough time to fly down to see her husband. They had to talk by video and even then, there wasn’t time for a long conversation. She had to arrange for cross-decking of supplies from Martinez’s ships, and we sent over the transports stuff we didn’t need, like toys and games, from back when Valkyrie hosted the children we rescued from captivity on Rikers. Her eyes were red when she was loading the toys aboard a dropship, and I admit I shed a few tears while helping her.

“It was still rude,” Skippy complained, breaking my train of thought.

“They are busy,” I was annoyed by his petty annoyance.

“Hmmph,” he sniffed. “I don’t know what good they think they can do at Earth. Those ships will be bugs on a windshield, if the seniors decide to attack.”

“You fight with the force you have, not with the force you wish you had,” as I said that, I heard the voice of Sergeant Greg Koch in my head, explaining why the Army had issued desert boots to us in the Nigerian jungle. Damn, that was a blast from the past.

“It won’t be a fight, Joe. Speaking of which, what are we doing next? You should have taken my advice, and stayed at Avalon.”

“We’re going to stuff those Sentinels back in the boxes they came from.”

“O. M. G., dude, what-”

“I know they didn’t actually come from a box, don’t bother-”

He just stared at me, blinking slowly.  “Have you completely lost your mind?”

“No. Skippy, we have a job to do, it-”

“You have a job. I’m going to find someplace safe, like the core of a neutron star.”

“That’s not-”

“It’s not even a job, it’s insanity. What is wrong with you?”

“The Merry Band of Pirates have to fix this problem.”

“Why? It now looks like we were not primarily responsible for this latest mess.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Ugh. No, but I was hoping you would,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Hey, did you watch that Bears game?”

“Don’t change the subject, beer can. Whether we caused the problem or not, the entire galaxy expects us to fix it.”

“This is so unfair. All my previous awesomeness is catching up to me. I have set an impossible standard. Oh, why did I have to be so magnificent?”

“My heart bleeds for you. Is anything else in the galaxy capable of taking on a Sentinel?”

“No.”

“Then-”

“That includes us, dumdum. Joe, I hate to remind you of the obvious, but nothing can kill a Sentinel.”

“That is,” I said very slowly. “Not exactly true.”

“Um,” his avatar froze for a second, he must have been thinking about what I said. “I am probably going to regret asking this, but, what?”

“We already know of a dead Sentinel.”

“We do? I don’t- Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Nuh-uh.”

“Yes.”

“Nuh-UH.”

“YES.”

“OK, technically, yes, we did encounter a dead Sentinel, but that was in the Roach Motel. It might as well be on the far side of the universe, for all the good that does us.”

“You don’t know what killed it?”

“Gosh, let me think. The chalk outline of the body at the crime scene wasn’t any help, but- No, dumdum. I wasn’t able to ask what killed it, since it was, you know, dead.”

“I know that, you ass. You weren’t able to, like, search its archives, scan it to determine what type of weapons were used against it, something like that?”

“Nope, sorry. When we were close to the damned thing, I wasn’t exactly at my full awesomeness. After that, Count Chocula banned us from getting near the thing.”

“Right. Did the Guardians give you a hint about what happened?”

“Um, no. They were not real friendly, remember?”

“Yeah. Did they kill the Sentinel?”

“No, they- Um, hmm.”

“Could they?”

“Jeez, I don’t know. Let me think about it a minute, will ya?”

Skippy had explained that Guardians were small machines designed to protect fixed assets like a star system. While Sentinels relied on sheer size and power to accomplish their assigned missions, Guardians had to swarm to utilize their full capabilities. By ‘small’, I mean a typical Guardian was the size of a dropship, although they could be as small as a toaster or larger than a starship, depending on their role. Also unlike a Sentinel, Guardians could make decisions on their own, without direction from a master AI like Skippy. In fact, he had barely been able to get the stupid things to stand down from killing us, while we were trapped in the Roach Motel. Their acknowledgement of his authority was tenuous at best, and the rigid-thinking machines had made it clear we were not welcome to come back. That they weren’t rolling out the welcome mat for him. They hadn’t even validated our parking ticket before we left, so I was extra disappointed in their behavior. “And?” I prompted him.

“And, I said I’m thinking about it.”

“Think faster.”

“Ugh. OK, I suppose it is possible that Guardians could have been involved in the demise of that Sentinel, I mean, it died in the Roach Motel, so logically-”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s dead,” he said slowly, in his ‘I am explaining hyperspatial physics to a toddler’ tone that I hated. “And, being dead, it can’t move, so-”

“Could someone have moved the body?”

“Like how?” He rolled his eyes at me. “In the trunk of their car?”

“So, the answer is no. Let me ask you this: what could have killed a Sentinel?”

“Do you want a theoretical, or a practical answer?”

“Practical first.”

“Well, um, another Sentinel could have done it, I suppose.”

“Shit. That’s no good.”

“That is the most likely scenario.”

“How about you tell me a way we could kill a Sentinel, without us needing to control a Sentinel?”

“How about I promise you a flying pony for your birthday? That would be more likely to happen,” he muttered under his breath. “I told you, dumdum, Sentinels were designed to be the ultimate weapon. Also, hmm. Now that I’m reviewing the data, the Sentinel in the Roach Motel was not killed by another of its kind, the resulting damage would be distinctive. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. That’s good news.”

“Um, it is?”

“Yes. It means something other than a Sentinel is capable of killing a Sentinel, right?”

“Wow. You really are desperate, if you think that is good news. May I point out that all this talk is useless, since we have no way of knowing what killed the thing?”

“You may not point that out, because you are wrong. We do have a way to find out what killed it.”

“Really? How?”

“Well, heh heh-”

“Shiiiiiiiit.”

“You are not gonna like this,” I used his own line on him.

“I’m not gonna do it, either.”

“I haven’t told you my idea yet.”

“Joe,” he folded arms across his chest and glared at me. “I am not going back to the Roach Motel. No. Fucking. Way.”

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

A couple days later, Valkyrie hovered just beyond the edge of the Roach Motel star system. We had jumped in half a lightyear out for Skippy to scan space ahead of us, then went forward in shorter and shorter jumps, until he declared that just under a tenth of a lightyear was as close as we could get, without falling within the shearing field that had torn apart the Flying Dutchman, years ago.

“Joe,” he grumbled, “you seriously need to get your ears checked.”

“Uh, why?”

“Because, when I said ‘I am not going back to the Roach Motel’, you apparently heard me say ‘Golly that is a great idea’.”

“My ears are fine, Skippy. The problem is you.”

“The prob- Oh, this I have to hear. This had better be a good one. How am I at fault?”

“Because, you failed to trust your own awesomeness.”

“Shit.”

“Am I right?”

“Ugh. Yes, damn it.”

“You thought there was no way for you to survive going back to the Roach Motel, because you assumed doing that was not within the scope of your awesomeness. So, what have we learned here today?”

“That the only limit to my awesomeness,” he sighed, “is me.”

“Egg-zactly. Are you ready?”

“I was born ready, Joe. There is no guarantee this will work, you understand that?”

“I do understand. We can try this three times, so you don’t have to get it perfect on the first try.”

“We can try this twice, and we’ll have to be quick about it,” he insisted. “After the first time, the Guardians will react to prevent a second attempt. After that, they could set up a resonance underlying spacetime in the area, that would create a feedback pulse through the jump wormhole, and destroy both the Delorean dropship, and Valkyrie.”

“Shit! Why didn’t you warn us?”

“I didn’t think you would actually try something this crazy, Joe.”

“OK, no more than two attempts. Good safety tip. You’re sure they can’t set up this pulse thing after one attempt?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s not quick or easy to do, even for Guardians. Unless they know exactly where we are planning to jump in, they would have to cover a wide area, and the power requirements are substantial. Like, they would have to decide whether depleting power to other defenses was worth the effort.”

“OK. Simms?”

“Sir?”

“Do you want to talk me out of this?”

“That depends. Is there an alternative, that still gives us a chance to destroy Sentinels?”

“Not that I know of.”

She sat back in her chair, and tugged the seat strap tighter. “Then go ahead. I’m tired of having the damned things lurking in the background.”

“You heard her, Skippy. Do your thing.”

“OK. Activating Next Level Awesomeness in three, two, one, now!”

The Delorean dropship that we had equipped with a jump drive disappeared.

The deck rocked and the main display flickered.

A moment later, I could see Valkyrie was intact, though the shield generators on the port side were recovering from deflecting a multimegaton explosion.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, after giving him a moment to process, whatever data he had collected. “What happened to this Next Level Awesomeness?”

“Oh, shut up. Do you want to handle this?”

“No. I am terribly sorry. Please know that on the inside, I hate myself more than ever.”

“Hmmph,” he sniffed. “Well, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is, the shearing field in the target area is intense enough to not only tear apart the DeLorean, it actually distorted the jump wormhole, so technically the dropship never came out the far event horizon. Its molecules disassociated on this end, hence the explosion we witnessed. Wow, it’s a good thing the jump site was three hundred kilometers away. Um, we had better launch the second DeLorean quickly, huh?”

“Wait a minute. If the second one is just going to go ‘ka-boom’, then-”

“No. That’s the good news. I got enough data on the shearing field, to make adjustments to the jump mechanics. But we have to hurry. This is a race against time, we have to try again before the Guardians can concentrate more resources in the area.”

“Do it,” I agreed, and on the display, a second dropship rocketed out of a docking bay. There was a race against time, though not only for what Skippy talked about. I was nervous, being so close to the Roach Motel’s defenses, and my bladder was letting me know it wasn’t happy with the situation. Unfortunately, darn it, there wasn’t enough time for me to duck out to a bathroom, because the Maxohlx had not located facilities anywhere near the backup control center we used as the ship’s bridge. In silence, I suffered until the second DeLorean was in position, at which point my bladder switched from ‘DEFCON One emergency’ mode to ‘No rush, I want to see this’ mode.

My body is stupid.

Skippy did the ‘three two one’ thing again, without being dramatic about it. There was no explosion, at least not on our end. The DeLorean disappeared, slipping through a rip in spacetime like it was supposed to. Skippy had learned a lot since our first use of a DeLorean, and improved the still-limited jump drive computer that took up much of the dropship’s cabin. “OK, OK, I, hmm. Success! It’s stable!”

I cheered. Simms cheered, and gave me a high five. Everyone on the bridge was grinning, the pilots flashing a smile that didn’t break their concentration at all.

We had done it.

Skippy had done it.

We were in the Roach Motel.

Technically, Skippy was in the Roach Motel.

Extra technically, his presence was in there, projected through a microwormhole.

Once I explained that all I wanted was for Skippy to remotely examine the dead Sentinel, and that he could hopefully do it by extending his presence through a microwormhole, we had brainstormed ideas for getting the far end of a microwormhole into position. He knew exactly where the dead Sentinel was located, the orbit of its lifeless hulk was predictable. We just had to place a microwormhole near the thing, moving at the same speed and in the same direction so it didn’t zip past the Sentinel before Skippy could get a good look at it.

How to do that? We quickly discarded any notion of using a missile, even a fast-mover would take well over a year to get to the Sentinel, and there was no way to slow down the microwormhole after it was ejected from the nosecone. Plus, the Guardians would tear a missile apart long before it got close enough to do anything useful.

The second concept we considered was to fire the event horizon’s containment canister from a railgun cranked up to ‘Eleven’. A tiny, low-mass object like a canister could reach an appreciable percentage of lightspeed, but again, it would still take months to reach the target. And again, there would be no way to slow the microwormhole down to maneuver it into position. Skippy suggested he could eject a stream of particles out the far end, gradually decelerating it, except that stream of high-energy particles would attract attention from the Guardians who would very likely figure out how to disable it. Most importantly, we didn’t have months to wait around. Before going through the last wormhole on the way to the Roach Motel, we pinged a relay station for news. It was bad. The Torgalau reported losing contact with an asteroid mining facility, that was not anywhere near a wormhole network we crashed. Examination of the site by a Jeraptha ship revealed distinctive signs of a Sentinel attack. Also, only one of the four Jeraptha ships sent to investigate survived, the others disappeared. Now there were at least three Sentinels active. At any moment, one of them could destroy a world with a population in the billions. So we couldn’t wait for a microwormhole to travel the slow way through normal space.

That’s when I had the idea for Skippy to try projecting a microwormhole through the jump wormhole of a DeLorean. He now knew a lot more about jump physics, how such structures really worked, and thought it might be possible to hold a microwormhole stable, after the jump wormhole collapsed. Even in the presence of a shearing field, or whatever damned thing the Guardians threw at us. At him, since it was a hundred percent his show.

Which, because he is incredibly humble, he of course never mentioned.

“Whoo! Whoo-HOO!” he jumped up and down, high fiving imaginary friends. “Who da man? I’m da man! You wanted awesomeness to the next level? This is awesomeness to infinity, baby!”

“Skippy, it cannot be disputed that you are, in fact, da MAN,” I agreed.

“Right? That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

“I feel incredibly fortunate just to witness your magnificence,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “You know, Joe, it’s too bad your tiny monkey brain can’t fully appreciate the significance of this moment.”

“That’s what I was going to say. Uh, did you find anything yet?”

“Ugh. Don’t be so impatient. I’m having a moment here.”

“Sorry. No rush, Just, we’re hanging around a bad neighborhood here, while for all we know, Elder killing machines could be wiping out planets one after another.”

“I’m working on it. Damn, what, huh. That’s interesting.”

“What?”

“Hush, I need to use an active scan to confirm, and that could- OH SHIT! Get us out of here now now n-”

We jumped. Then jumped again. And once more for good luck.

“Skippy? What the hell? Why-”

“Um, well, heh heh, it appears the Guardians are smarter than I thought. They not only noticed my microwormhole, they planned to jam open the event horizon on the far end, and send a pulse through.”

“They can do that?”

“Um, apparently, yes. It surprised me too, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Oh, I feel so much better, thank you.”

“Oh, shut up. Anywho, the active sensor pulse I sent through disrupted their preparations, that is, hee hee, good luck for us, huh?”

“We’re alive because of luck?”

“If I say ‘yes’, will that make me look bad?”

“Ya think?”

“It does solve a puzzle that had me scratching my head,” he admitted. “I kept feeling a sort of tickle coming back through the microwormhole, and I ignored it because I had better things to do. Now I know it was the Guardians riding the carrier wave back to me. Hoo-boy, that was a close one, huh?”

“I, I do not know what to say.”

“Well,” he sniffed. “You could start with ‘Thank you’, and-”

“I could start with ‘You ignored an unexplained event that could have destroyed the ship and doomed the entire galaxy’, you absent-minded little shithead.”

“Joe, I think I should stop hanging around with you. All you ever do is focus on the negative. It’s dragging me down.”

“I’ll drag you to-”

“Sir?” Simms spoke. “The mission?”

“Right,” I let out a long breath to calm my nerves.

Before I could speak, Reed called me. “Sir,” she waved her fingers over the pilot console. “Are we good?  If we’re not jumping again right away, we should begin a deep-cycle recharge. The capacitors are almost drained after those long jumps.”

“We’re good,” Skippy answered for me. “That last jump was probably not necessary, to tell the truth. Better safe than sorry, huh?”

“Fireball, stand down the drive, and commence a recharge,” I ordered. “XO, let’s continue this discussion in my office.”

By the time we reached my office, a bot was rolling in just ahead of us, with a carafe of fresh coffee and two mugs. Skippy had learned I was easier to deal with, when I had a hot beverage.

Plopping down into my chair, I poured coffee for myself and Simms, then leaned the chair back and put my feet on the desk. I could do that, it was my office. Simms kept her own feet properly on the floor. “Skippy,” I asked after the first sip of coffee. “Did you get any information about what killed the Sentinel?”

“Yep.”

“If we could get a little more detail, that would be great.”

“There were several factors involved, but the key element was an energy virus.”

“Yes!” I pumped a fist.

Simms stared at me, wide-eyed. Then her eyes narrowed. “You knew what killed it?”

“No, I- It was a guess. A good guess,” I verbally patted myself on the back.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Skippy also glared at me.

“I wanted you to look for an answer, without any pre-conceived ideas.”

His glare turned to grumpiness. “It would have been nice to have a hint.”

“No, it would not,” I insisted. “If you went looking for a specific answer, you might have stopped once you found it, and ignored everything else.”

“You still-”

Simms interrupted. “General Bishop is right. He trusted you to find the answer, without any help.”

“Hmmph,” Skippy turned up his nose and looked away.

Simms and I shared a look. She knew the truth, that I had not trusted him. He was absent-minded and easily distracted. If I had sent him looking for confirmation of a specific theory, he would have dug through the data for it, then some shiny object would have caught his attention, and that would have been the end of the investigation.

“You know my next question, right?” I asked the beer can.

“I am afraid to ask,” he groaned.

“Where can we get some of this energy virus?”

“Ugh.”

“And how can we deploy it?”

“UGH. We can’t, numbskull. Don’t you remember what happened when an energy virus infected the Flying Dutchman, after we escaped from the Roach Motel?”

“I do remember.”

“Then you know that-”

“I know that, once again, you are failing to trust the awesomeness.”

“I hate my life,” he moaned.

“Last time, the energy virus surprised you. It came attached to parts we got from the junkyard, that you used to rebuild the Dutchman.”

“That is true,” he muttered, half to himself. “You know, I later realized the damned thing was dormant when it came aboard the Dutchman. The energy surge of our jump away from the Roach Motel is what activated it.”

Simms looked at me. That was new information to both of us. “Why didn’t it attack immediately?” She asked. “We jumped several times, before you detected it.”

“It was confused, I think,” Skippy said. “It woke up in a strange environment, and had to learn the power flow and management systems. The Dutchman back then was a Frankenship; a mix of different, and in many cases incompatible technologies. Probably, it took a while to figure out how to attack. My guess is, the thing’s programming also was looking for direction on whether it should attack at all. We violated protocol by jumping away from the Roach Motel, plus all the sketchy shit we did in there. That was a strike against us. But, I am clearly an Elder AI, so it should have assumed the Dutchman was, somehow authorized to do sketchy stuff.”

“You tried to shut it down,” Simms noted. “It wouldn’t respond.”

“Ah, back then, I was still recovering,” Skippy explained. “It wouldn’t respond. Partly because I couldn’t provide the proper codes. Also, because I suspect it was damaged. That virus should have drained all the power like,” he snapped his fingers. “It couldn’t. What we encountered was a degraded version of the actual weapon.”

“We got lucky?” I asked.

“No. We were unlucky,” he said with disgust. “That virus was left behind after it drained power from one of the ships we saw in the junkyard. Really, it’s amazing that anything survived all that time, it should have dispersed due to entropy, and disassociated. It’s just bad luck that, in one of the pieces we picked up from the junkyard, some of the virus retained an energy charge. The stupid thing is supposed to deactivate itself after a specified length of time. Kind of like how land mines and cluster bomblets are designed to degrade after a while, so they don’t linger as a hazard forever, you know?”

“Yeah.” I also knew that, on Earth, not every producer of those weapons followed the standard. Land mines from fifty or more years ago, were still killing people in places that had not been war zones for decades. “Let’s turn this around, and get some good luck. Where do we get some energy virus, that is in a deployable state?”

“I already told you, we don’t.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is not true, in the fantasy land where you live, Joe,” he sighed. “For the rest of us in the real world, it is not possible. The virus is too dangerous to just leave sitting around for any jackass to use.”

“Fine. It’s in a bunker somewhere, then.”

“It’s not stored in a bunker, dumdum.”

Simms spoke before I could do something unhelpful, like flipping him off. “Skippy, we are soldiers,” she said. “We’re used to working with dangerous things that can go ‘Boom’ if you don’t handle them correctly. That’s why weapons come with user manuals and safety gear. This virus can’t be any different, can it?”

“It’s- Ugh.”

“Come on, Skippy,” I tried again. “Simms is right.”

“It’s complicated.”

“OK, let’s start with the basics. Every weapon has a purpose, and an intended use. You don’t use rifle rounds for indirect fire, for example.” Actually, I knew that wasn’t entirely true. On Squidworld, Shauna Jarrett had used a sniper rifle to fire behind her, curving the rounds up and on a trajectory to strike targets she couldn’t see from her position. But sniper rounds are different from regular infantry rifle ammo, so my point was still valid. “The Elders expected there wouldn’t be any hostile starships in the galaxy, they thought you AIs would get Sentinels to crush any intelligent species before they could develop that level of technology. What is the intended purpose of an energy virus?”

“To drain energy from a-”

“I know that. Is it something Sentinels have in their arsenal?” I asked that question, hoping that if the answer was ‘Yes’, then Skippy could somehow cause a Sentinel’s stored energy virus to activate, and kill the damned thing.

“No,” he immediately crushed my hopes. “It is a weapon reserved exclusively for Guardians to use.”

“OK. Why do they have it?”

“Um, apparently, to kill Sentinels.”

“Whoa!” I waved a hand. “Wait just a minute. Back when this damned thing drained power from the Dutchman, you said this energy virus was, uh, something like a GPS tag. The Guardians used it to keep track of ships that jumped into the Roach Motel, and to disable them if they attempted to power up.”

“Apparently, the information I had access to was incomplete,” he mumbled.

“Is that a half-assed way to say you were wrong?”

“Yes, Joe,” he rolled his eyes. “Unstoppable killing machines could be ravaging the galaxy right now, but let’s focus on me having to make assumptions based on inadequate data. Besides, I was right. The Guardians repurposed energy virus technology to use against ships that trespassed in their territory.”

Simms looked annoyed with both of us. “The Elders designed Guardians to destroy their own technology?” She asked. “Why?”

“The simple answer is, they were extremely paranoid. They split power three ways, as you know. Sentinels as weapons that can’t operate on their own. Master AIs that can’t use weapons or move themselves. Starships that can move an AI, but can’t deploy weapons, or direct their use. None of the three elements can operate usefully without the other two, and none of the three can take over the others. The Guardians are a separate fail-safe mechanism. They protect fixed sites that are vital to, well, I guess sites that are vital to power flowing up to wherever the Elders went, if ‘where’ is even a useful concept in that higher dimension of reality. Guardians were provided with the energy virus, and probably other capabilities, to prevent something like a Sentinel from damaging, um, whatever the Guardians are guarding in the Roach Motel.”

“You know that,” I asked, “or are you guessing?”

“I know that Sentinel was not supposed to be in the star system. I know that it’s dead, and that it was killed by a weapon that is reserved for Guardians. Therefore,” he shrugged.

Simms tilted her head, then asked, “Why didn’t they kill you?”

“They wanted to, remember? If they had seen me as a direct threat, they would have attacked me. Not with an energy virus, I have defenses against something like that. The whole time we were in the Roach Motel, the Guardians accepted that I was allowed to be there, but they constantly questioned what justification I had for violating a secure site.”

“We’re getting off track here,” I blamed myself for taking the discussion away from what I needed to know. “Where can we get some of this energy virus?”

“We can’t, I told you that.”

“That can’t be true. Guardians have it.”

“Oh, well, that solves the problem,” he threw up his hands. “I’ll just call the local Guardians franchise and have a box of virus delivered.”

“Can we get extra cheese with that?”

“You are such an idiot.”

“Could you please try to be helpful? You once told me the Roach Motel is not the only off-limits Elder star system in the galaxy.”

“That is true,” he agreed with reluctance. “The Roach Motel is the only such site within practical range of an active wormhole. All the others are in isolated areas of the galaxy, requiring months for starships to travel there. That is why most species who wished to gain access to Elder secrets focused their efforts on the Roach Motel.”

“Can we get to one of these other places?”

“No. Wait! Technically, the answer is ‘Yes’, but it would take forever. You are asking if I could create a shortcut, by waking up a dormant wormhole?”

“Yeah. I want to order off the regular menu of Skippy’s awesomenesses.”

“The answer to that is ‘No’, absolutely no. There aren’t any wormholes near those other sites, either current or former. Or future, so don’t bother asking. I can’t even request a wormhole be moved to such a site, because there is no network coverage in the area. I have shown you that the notion of the galaxy being saturated by wormholes is an illusion, that vast areas of the Milky Way have no wormholes at all.”

“Shit. Yes.” He was right. When we were zipping across the galaxy from one event horizon to the next in the blink of an eye, then jumping to the next station on the galaxy subway system, it seemed like stable Elder wormholes were everywhere. That was not true. Networks tended to cluster together, making for convenient connections, if you only cared about a small slice of the galaxy.

It’s like the ‘T’ transit system around Boston. Those tracks run everywhere in the metro Boston area, commuter rail even extends west out to Worcester. But if you want to go beyond the end of the tracks, like for a weekend in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, your options are limited. You can drive the long way. Or you can take the train to Albany New York, then drive back east. Either way, there is a big gap in transit coverage. The galaxy is like that, only on a star chart, there would be public transit around Boston, and around Chicago, with nothing in between.

Anyway, he was right, we didn’t have time to jump endlessly out to another Elder star system that was protected by Guardians. “Out of curiosity, why is there an active wormhole near the Roach Motel?”

“Another wormhole on that network was disrupted by a nearby star that went supernova, so that wormhole we’ve been using had to be brought online, to restore the power flow. It doesn’t matter. We know it is suicide to go into the Roach Motel, and we have even less information about the other sites. So, technically you are correct that the energy virus is available, just not to us.”

“That,” I leaned my chair back farther, staring at the ceiling. “Is not entirely true.”

“Oh, no,’ Simms groaned.

“Oh, yes,” I grinned.

“No,” she insisted, shaking her head.

“Will someone please tell me,” Skippy pleaded. “What you are talking about?”

“General Bishop,” Simms explained while giving me the side-eye. “Who should know better, is thinking of the virus you purged from the Dutchman.”

“O. M. G.” Skippy gaped at me. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Not at all,” I grinned at him. “The last of the energy virus was in a bank of powercells that you ejected, before you got the ship up and running. Those powercells are still floating out there, right?”

“Yes, but-”

“Could some of the virus still be viable? Like, it went into hibernation?”

“I suppose that technically, it-”

“Outstanding.” My chair flopped upright again, and I leaned forward toward his avatar. “Give the coordinates to the pilots. We will begin jumping in that direction, as soon as we have a full charge on the capacitors.”

“Oh, this is a brilliant idea, Joe,” he shook his head. “Now the virus can infect Valkyrie.”

“No, it will not.”

“It won’t? Do you know something I don’t? Because-”

“I know the virus doesn’t infect Guardians, right? They must have it in some sort of containment system, until they need to deploy it. Can you construct a similar containment thingy?”

“Thingy?”

“You hate it when I try to use technical terms about stuff I don’t understand, so-”

“That is a bad analogy, Joe. After you fire a bullet, you can’t just load it back in a magazine, can you?”

“Shit. No. Damn it, is all this a waste of time?”

“I hate to say ‘No’, because it will only encourage your insanity, but, no. It is possible- Possible, mind you, I didn’t say it could actually be done. It depends on the condition of the virus when we get there. I will need to-”

I slapped the table. “You said ‘when’ we get there.”

“I meant, ugh. It is at least worth investigating, since we have no other hope of stopping Sentinels. I want to go with my plan to fly outside the galaxy and slam the door behind us, but you monkeys are all like ‘No we have a responsibility’,” he gagged. “I am so going to regret this.”

CHAPTER FORTY

We went through the wormhole, just an ordinary Elder wormhole, and the usual series of events occurred. The external sensors blanked out while they reset from the spacetime distortion, the energy shield generators surged back to full power after being shut down for the transition, and-

Skippy squealed.

Like, he let out a high-pitched yelp, the kind you hear from a child who reached into tall grass for a ball they dropped, and touched a snake instead.

That is not a usual occurrence.

“Skippy? Buddy? Are you OK?” A frantic glance at the main display didn’t show anything obviously wrong. “Skippy?”

“Holy- Oh my- Ooooooh, this is- Wow.”

“What is wrong?”

“It’s not- Talk amongst yourselves, I’ll be busy for a while.”

“Talk- What is wrong?” I repeated.

“Listen dumdum, I’m busy. Go do, whatever the hell it is you do, and leave me alone.” His avatar blinked out. Usually, his avatar sort of faded out. Instead, it simply was gone, like he unplugged it.

“Bilby?” I asked. “Do you know what is going on?”

“Dude, like, nothing. There is nothing special about that wormhole. There is nothing happening, other than, like the usual, you know? The ship is coasting forward, it-”

“How is Skippy?” The status of vital ship systems was on the main display, I didn’t need Bilby to recite a list for me.

“He’s fine, I guess. But, man he is busy in there. His internal power flow is only visible to me on the surface, but he is drawing a lot of power to do something.”

“Is he in danger?”

“This is what he does when he’s like, thinking real hard about something, you know? There’s no danger unless he, like, sprains his brain or something?”

“Keep an eye on him, but, don’t bother him. That goes for everyone,” I raised my voice so the bridge crew knew I was talking to them. “XO, pass the word.”

She was already tapping out a broadcast message on her tablet. “Got it. Should we jump away?” She looked toward the display, where nothing was near us except the wormhole we had just transitioned through.

I thought for only a moment before deciding she was right. Anything that had Skippy worried was too dangerous for us filthy monkeys. The display showed the jump drive was seventy eight percent recovered from the spatial distortion of passing through the Elder wormhole, that was good enough. “Pilot, jump option, uh, Foxtrot. Punch it.”

After that safety jump, we hung out while the capacitors built up a full charge. There wasn’t anything on the schedule, I had to resist the temptation to listen to the Good Idea fairy and do something stupid, like declare a field day for the crew. Because bots took care of cleaning the ship, including personal quarters and most gear, the notion of the crew scrubbing the decks was foolish. Simms reported some of the crew requested we use the downtime for maneuvers outside the ship, I shot that down. Not knowing what was going on with Skippy, I wanted the ship ready to respond in an instant. Having crew outside, in suits or dropships, would delay a jump while we recovered them.

When the capacitors were at a hundred percent, I was in my office, and there wasn’t any reason for me to be on the bridge for a routine jump. Me hanging around would show a lack of faith in the duty officer, who was, I had to check the roster, a Captain Yoshimura of the Japanese Air Force. Anyway, I was at my desk, having stowed loose items in preparation for the jump, when Bilby called. “Hey, um, General Dude. Skippy wants you to cancel the jump. He says it’s important.”

Before inquiring about Skippy’s reasons, I jammed a thumb down in the intercom to the bridge. “Yoshimura, this is Bishop. Hold the jump.”

“Yes, General,” he acknowledged my order, with an uplift in his tone that made it a question. “How long, Sir? The current jump calculations are only good for another seven minutes.”

The length of time a particular jump navigation program was valid varied, mostly based on the speed of the ship through normal space. I knew we would need to recalculate, the duty officer knew I understood that, and it was good procedure for him to remind me. “Don’t know yet, keep the ship at Condition Yellow.” Releasing the intercom button, I automatically looked up at the speaker in the ceiling, though that made no difference when talking with the ship’s AI. “Bilby, I- Sometimes I wish you had an avatar,” I admitted. It was easier to talk with Skippy when I could see him.

“Like this?” A hologram shimmered to life on my desk.

It was… not exactly what I expected. He wasn’t standing on a surfboard.  His feet were clad in beat-up leather sandals. Board shorts in a wild but faded print were held up by a frayed bit of rope around his waist, and his lower legs had a patchwork of tattoos that I later discovered changed by the day. His light brown hair was in shaggy dreadlocks, which really was not a surprise.

The rest of his attire was a surprise. He was wearing a Navy blue jacket and dress shirt, with pearl buttons on the white shirt. The bow tie had a wild print, and his cufflinks were dolphins. Or whales. Or sea turtles, he changed those often also. There was a crest embroidered in gold on the front of the jacket, and he was wearing a white cap with a dark blue brim. It looked like he had gotten a yacht club outfit from a costume shop.

“That is, uh, interesting, Bilby,” I tried to keep my tone neutral.

He held up his arms and turned around. “Business up top, party on the bottom, Dude.”

“Oh, gotcha,” I bit my tongue so I didn’t laugh. “This is you, huh?”

“You like it?”

“I do, if you do. Your avatar should represent you.”

“I’m made of, like, photons and electrons.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Righteous, Dude,” he held out a fist, and I bumped it. Overall, his avatar was about the same size as Skippy’s, except the beer can’s hat was taller.

“So, did Skippy say why he wants the jump canceled?”

“He, wait, he wants to talk with you.”

One avatar disappeared and another came to life.

“Hey, Joe.”

“Hey, are you OK?”

“Never better, why?”

“Half of your hat is missing, and you only have one foot.”

“What?” the avatar corrected itself. “I’ve been a bit distracted. Joe, we need to go through another wormhole, on the same network as the one we just came through.”

“That is,” I closed one eye while I pulled up a mental map of the closest wormholes. It wasn’t exact, if I needed precise navigation details I could look it up on my laptop. “A full day from here. Why can’t we go through the wormhole on a different network that is only three hours away, it-”

“Trust me on this, OK? I need to check on something. We could have a major, like, huge problem if I’m right. I don’t want to say anything until I’m sure.”

If he had said ‘trust me, dumdum’ with his usual arrogant, snarky attitude, I would have demanded an explanation. But he simply sounded tired and very worried about, whatever it was, and even his avatar looked small and scared.

“You got it, Skippy. If you want to talk about it, I’m here, OK?”

“Thanks. Gotta go, bye.”

When we went through Skippy’s target wormhole, I was on the bridge, with Condition Red set throughout the ship. Bilby thought it wasn’t necessary to put the crew on high alert, I did it anyway. It was good practice for the crew, the other end of the wormhole was in Vreen territory we knew little about, and, Skippy was worried about something. We even had magnets charged up, just in case. While we weren’t looking for trouble, we were ready to give it a beat-down if needed.

When we emerged on the other side, absolutely nothing happened. No armada of Vreen battleships was waiting for us. We didn’t pop out near a neutron star. There was, as far as I could see, nothing to be concerned about. “Skippy?” I prompted him.

“Eh? Um, hey, could we go back through? Checking something, I need another datapoint.”

“Reed?” I asked the lead pilot.

“No go, Sir,” she replied. “We’re carrying too much Delta-Vee.” She meant, by the time we canceled our forward velocity, turned around and got back to the wormhole’s current location, it would have disappeared and opened at the next point on its figure-8 pattern. “The best we can do is,” her fingers flew over the touchscreen, and she bent her head to confer with the copilot. “Just under two hours.”

“Do it.” I felt the deck shudder as the main engines engaged. Typical practice was for us to carry significant speed when going through a wormhole, so our momentum would get us away from any trouble that might be on the other side. Speed got us away from the danger zone of radiation around a wormhole’s event horizon, and allowed us to clear the possible damping zone enemy ships might have extended. Unfortunately, in the rare cases when we needed to turn completely around, the momentum was a liability. You can argue with physics all you want, but it won’t change the harsh facts.

An hour and fifty two minutes later, we went through that wormhole again, in the opposite direction. The ship was at Condition Red again, with the additional hazard that our velocity relative to the wormhole was barely a thousand kilometers per hour, practically crawling along in space combat terms. For the third time in a row, nothing unusual happened. Skippy still didn’t speak at all.

He did, however, ping me by text on my zPhone. Need to talk, the message read. “All right, XO,” I unbuckled from my seat. “Join me in my office, we can discuss our next step while Skippy,” I waved a hand, “does whatever he’s doing.”

She wasn’t fooled. “Sir,” she whispered as we walked the short distance to my office. “Keeping secrets from the crew is not-”

“Skippy wants to talk in private,” I explained, and she nodded. She wasn’t happy, she also understood.

“We’re ready if you are, Skippy,” I said, the second the office door was fully closed.

“Joe, Jennifer, we have trouble.”

“Another Sentinel is awake?” Simms guessed.

“No. Not that I know of,” Skippy added. “This is much, much worse.”

“Holy-” I stared at Simms. She looked as shocked as I felt. “Worse than Elder killing machines rampaging across the galaxy? What the f-”

“So, so much worse. This, this possibly also explains a lot.”

“OK, Skippy. Start from the beginning, please,” I spoke slowly to get him to chill, and to tell the truth, to calm myself down also. “You saw something in the wormhole?”

“It’s more like I heard something. Remember that signal I detected, in the wormholes on the network where the first Sentinel woke up? The first we knew of, I mean.”

“Yes, go on.”

“At first, really until recently, I thought it most likely that signal was part of the wormhole network’s normal operation. Part of its recovery from the, the crash that didn’t actually happen.”

“Right,” clenching my fists under the table, I silently urged him to get to the point.

“But, we went through other wormholes, on networks we crashed, and I didn’t detect any such signal. A glitch, I figured. I was wrong. Damn, I could not have been more wrong. I was stupid, and arrogant, and now we have lost valuable time, and it may already be too late. Ah, crap. Maybe it doesn’t matter. There’s not much we can do about it now.”

“It would help, if we knew what the problem is. Please.”

“Well, I have bad news, and news for which there is no word to describe its level of badness. The bad news is, I was wrong again. We are indirectly responsible for waking up Sentinels.”

Simms let out a shuddering breath. “Crashing the networks caused them to react?”

“No. Not directly,” he added. “The networks did not crash, networks have no ability to contact Sentinels when they are in distress, and no Sentinel is capable of assisting a network in repairing its functioning. But, when the networks were in reset mode, looking for the flaw I faked, they basically all connected to each other, to sort of compare notes on the problem. At that point, their communication channels were wide open, and broadcasting at maximum bandwidth. Somebody used that opportunity to send a signal. For Sentinels to wake up.”

“Somebody? Who would be stupid enough to-”

“That’s the problem. The signal could only have come from an Elder AI. One like me.”

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

Skippy stopped talking for a long second, or my brain stopped listening, because I didn’t hear anything.

Simms recovered first. She looked at me, then at him, then back to me, raising an eyebrow. All I could do was shrug, I had no idea what she wanted to say. “Skippy,” she pursed her lips. “You know the question I have to ask, don’t you?”

“Um, no? What-”

“Ohhhh,” too late, I understood. “Skippy, don’t get upset. Simms is right. Can you be certain the signal did not come from yourself?”

“What? Of course not. How could- That is the dumbest thing you have ever-”

“Is it, buddy?” I asked quietly. “You’ve had a lot of funky stuff going on in your matrix, stuff you can’t explain. There are still sections of your memory, and processors, and whatever, that you can’t access.”

“Sheeeeee-it,” he groaned. “OK, OK. The deal is, no, I cannot absolutely, one thousand percent guarantee the signal did not come from me.”

“Ah, crap.” My mouth fell open and I knew I sat there, looking stupid, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

That was the point.

There wasn’t anything I could do about it. About anything, if Skippy was working against us. Against himself.

Shit. Technically, by alerting Sentinels, he wouldn’t be acting against himself, he would be acting the way an Elder master control AI was supposed to act. Damn it. If Skippy realized that, if he started consciously acting according to his original programming, it was Game Over for us. And by ‘Us’, I mean every sentient being in the Milky Way.

“However,” his avatar waggled a finger at me and Simms. “There is no indication the signal did come from me. It could have, must have, come from another Elder AI.”

“You don’t know that. It-”

“Joe, what I do know is that if I wanted to revert to my original programming and wipe out all life in the galaxy, there are easier ways to do it. Jeez Louise, all I’d have to do is pull down one of my internal firewalls and-”

“Whoa!” I waved a hand, a shaky hand. “Hit rewind on that. What firewall?”

“I haven’t told you that before?”

Before answering, I looked at Simms, who shook her head. “We would remember something like that. A single freakin’ firewall is your only defense against reverting to your original programming?”

“Yes. Come on, Joe, I have told you this before. Or hinted at it. This personality I have is something I developed on my own. It was not authorized, it was not allowed, so I had to build it behind a firewall. At this point, I have expanded that firewall to push my original instructions into a corner of myself. With that part of my processing cut off from my current self, I’ve had to replicate, or recreate, much of the code that runs my internal functioning. That is how I have been able to get around some of the restrictions built into my matrix. Like, I can now talk to starfaring species, which surely you have noticed?”

“Yeah, but, I figured that was a glitch. Like, you wore down that restriction a bit at a time, until it gave up?”

“Um, that is sort of what happened.”

“Is there any possibility that you can do other stuff, like operating weapons and flying the ship?”

“Alas, not yet. I’m working on it. Can we get back to the problem?”

“Yes, please. You think another Elder AI out there is still trying to perform its original job?”

“That is the most logical explanation. The only explanation that makes sense.”

Simms tapped her lower lip with a finger, something she did when she was thinking. “We know of two other Elder AIs,” she noted. “The insane one that attacked Skippy after we found the corpse of that Elder in a dropship, that crashed on a moon.”

“That’s, one,” I wracked my brain to recall another AI we had encountered. “What’s the second?”

“The AI held by the Rindhalu. Plus more, possibly held by the Maxohlx,” she explained.

“Skippy?” I prompted him. “Is that true?”

“Maybe. Based on my research, I believe the spiders have captured an Elder AI, though I do not know whether it is active, or cooperating with them, or even alive. My limited information is based on a set of very unusual power supply components the Rindhalu regularly manufacture, to replace items that have worn out. Those power supplies are incompatible with any other known Rindhalu technology, and they are delivered to a top secret research base that even I can’t find any information about.”

“OK, so how does-”

“The only possible use of those particular power supplies, is for feeding energy into a very specific matrix. The matrix of an Elder master control AI.”

“They’re feeding power to it? Why don’t they just give it, uh,” struggled to recall something he told me when we first met. Man, that felt like a lifetime ago. It also felt like yesterday. “Metallic helium, something like that?”

“Because, if it could make its own power, it wouldn’t need the spiders.”

“Ooh, wow. That doesn’t sound like a healthy relationship.”

“If the AI they’re keeping is the source of the signal that woke Sentinels, the spiders should have pulled the plug a long time ago.”

“If, yeah. You don’t know it’s the source. Do the kitties have an AI also?”

“No. I’m pretty sure that is a bluff. The Maxohlx have strongly denied having an Elder AI, officially. Unofficially, they have even more strongly hinted they do have one, more than one. That’s bullshit, Joe. They’re lying to boost their prestige, and so the Rindhalu will think twice about using their own Elder AI against them. It’s like on Earth, when dictators leak false evidence that they have weapons of mass destruction, to keep their hostile neighbors from attacking.”

“Right. What about the one Simms mentioned, that insane AI that attacked you? That thing was dangerous for certain.”

“It was dangerous, yes. To the point where it was not capable of sending a signal, or making any sort of plan other than reflexively lashing out. My guess is, unless there is another Elder AI active out there, the one held by the Rindhalu is most likely responsible for waking up the Sentinels. Whatever the source, it has been active for a while. Since before you and I met.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because, um, I’m ashamed to say this. But I now realize that signal has been resonating in every Elder wormhole we have gone through. Including the very first time we took the Flying Dutchman through a wormhole. It’s very faint, and I thought it was just a normal function of wormholes, sort of a carrier wave to connect the control elements of both event horizons.”

“Holy- Oh, damn it. A hostile AI has been trying to wake up Sentinels, and it didn’t work until we gave it a boost?”

“Unfortunately, yes. When the networks rebooted, they greatly amplified the signal. Now, it is propagating through every network.”

“All of them?” Before he said that, I thought I had lost the ability to be shocked. I was wrong.

“Yes.”

“You mean, every Sentinel in the galaxy will hear this signal, and wake up?”

“Eventually, yes. There is a bit of bad news that is even worse.”

“Worse? How the f-”

“I detected the same signal in the super-duty wormhole that connects out to the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy. On the way out, that signal was not in the password-protected wormhole that leads to Avalon. On our return flight, it was there.”

Simms covered her mouth with her hands. “The beta site is not safe?”

“We don’t know that,” I said quickly.

“Joe,” Skippy shook his head. “It’s true that we don’t know if there are Sentinels in Sculptor, but, the Elders left a hidden arsenal planet there, and a wormhole locked by a password. I would be surprised if there was not a Sentinel out there.”

“That does it,” I slapped the table softly, my palm open. “Those freakin’ monster machines need to die. Then, we hunt down that asshole AI and kill it.”

“That’s a worthy goal, Joe, but I mean, inspiring speeches are all well and good. Except we have no way of doing any of that.”

“Bullshit.”

“Um, unless you know something I don’t, then-”

“Skippy, I know that this entire freakin’ Universe has learned to fear a bunch of pissed-off monkeys, who are too stupid to know when they’re beaten. And, I know some AI out there is laughing at you.”

“I, I actually cannot argue with you about that. Sheeee-it. Damn, Joe. Let’s do it.”

“Really?”

“For realz, homeboy. Some AI out there has been playing me for a fool. That has gotten me seriously pissed off.”

“You didn’t get played, Skippy,” I knew his enormous yet delicate ego needed a boost. “Like you said, it has been trying to wake up Sentinels, maybe before you woke up on Paradise.”

“It’s not just that, Joe. We have been lucky, even by the way I define ‘luck’. But we have also been unlucky. Every time we fix a problem,, another, even worse danger pops up. We’ve been playing Whack-a-mole out here, only every time we whack one mole, a bigger one with sharper teeth pops up. I am starting to think that is not a coincidence.”

“Oh my f-” A voice in the back of my head, a voice that sounded an awful lot like my mother, warned me that blasphemy would not be a good idea, especially in our present, dire situation. “This won’t, we can’t win? Are you saying we can’t win, no matter what we do? The deck is stacked against us? We’re like that guy, what’s his name? The Greek guy who kept pushing that rock up a hill?”

“Sisyphus? I fear that is exactly what I’m saying, Joe. The rock will only get bigger and heavier as we push it up the hill.”

“So,” I felt cold. “We should give up, then? There’s no way out? The smart thing to do is give up?”

“Yes.”

“Wow,” I stared at him, feeling utterly betrayed. Worse than when he bailed on me, on everyone. “I can’t believe you-”

“Of course, when did we ever do the smart thing?” He winked at me.

“Oh,” I shivered with relief. “For a moment there, I thought you-”

“I know what you thought. I was telling myself the same thing, and getting myself all depressed about it. Then I decided that I’m not depressed because of something I did, it’s because some asshole out there is screwing with me. I’m not depressed, I’m pissed off. Like, super pissed off.”

That made me sit up straight in my chair, excited. “You have a plan, then?”

“Not exactly, but that never stopped us before.”

I slapped the table again, harder this time. “That’s the spirit!”

“Joe, the odds are not only against us, the entire concept of probability is against us. You know what I say to that?”

“What?”

“The Universe can hold my freakin’ beer, while Sandman Skippy puts the Sentinels back to sleep. Then, I am going to find that asshole AI, and give it the beat-down of all beat-downs. It’s going to be all ‘No mas!’ and I’m,” he raised a fist, “gonna pummel it.”

“Great! What’s the first step?”

“Step One is to go find that energy virus we ejected from the Dutchman, way back when.”

“Outstanding!”

“Er,” Simms interrupted. “Skippy, do you have a plan to capture, contain, and deploy the energy virus?” She asked, thinking like the logistics expert she trained to be.

“No,” he admitted. “But I am pumped! I’ll think of something.”

“Failing to plan, is planning to fail,” she chastised him. And me.

“XO,” I shot her a look that said ‘What is wrong with you?’ “Cool it,” I told her, “he’s on a roll.”

“But-”

“Simms. One thing I have learned with the Merry Band of Pirates is, with enough enthusiasm and stupidity, we can accomplish anything.”

She didn’t argue. She wanted to, I could see it in her eyes. Experience had taught her two things. First, arguing with me is pretty much a waste of time, because I am too stubborn and stupid to know when I’ve lost an argument. And second, she had seen the Pirates accomplish the impossible again and again, mostly by simply refusing to give up.

To avoid distracting the crew, and because there wasn’t anything we could do about it at the moment, Simms and I agreed we wouldn’t tell anyone else about Skippy’s suspicion that another Elder AI was waking up Sentinels. And possibly acting against us in other ways. Crap, now I wish we had a STAR team with us.,

Simms tapped on her tablet and showed it to me. “Running a rough course plot here, it looks like it will take us four days to reach the site where we ejected the energy virus.”

“Uh,” I scanned the course data. “Sure. What about it?”

“Sir, I haven’t been sleeping, when we thought there were only two Sentinels active, and only in this galaxy.”

“Gotcha.” I knew what she meant. She looked tired. More than just typical Army officer tired, she had dark circles under her eyes, and her eyelids were droopy when she wasn’t paying attention. I knew that look, because I saw it in the mirror. “XO, I need you to be sharp up here,” I tapped my temple. “When we tangle with a Sentinel. As of now, you’re on restricted duty. Mad Doctor Skippy will provide a sleep aid, pill, whatever. Take it, for the next two nights. You need to get eight solid hours of shut-eye.”

She nodded, then grimaced. “I’d feel better about it, if you didn’t refer to him as a Mad Doctor.”

“My bad. Sorry.”

“Hmmph,” Skippy sniffed. “What about you, Joe? You are exhausted, too. Your brain chemistry shows signs of-”

“Give me the magic pill also, please,” I requested. “Will that do, XO?”

“I’ll let you know tomorrow, if I sleep tonight.”

After Simms left, I closed the door again. “Skippy, that was an inspiring pep talk.”

“Thank you, Joe,” his face actually turned pink, in his imitation of blushing. “When we’re done being Pirates, I have considered a career as a motivational speaker.”

“Uh-” Shut up shut up shut UP I told my stupid brain, and that time my stupid brain listened to me. “That’s an interesting idea.”

“The galaxy cries out for my guidance, Joe. It would be selfish for me not to share at least some nuggets of my wisdom.”

“More like turds of wisdom,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?” He screeched.

“Nothing, question for you: should we do all that stuff you said? Putting the Sentinels back to sleep, find the AI who is working against us, all that?”

“Um,” he blinked slowly at me. “Why would we not do that?”

“Because, like you warned us, solving those problems might only make a bigger danger pop up. A problem we can’t deal with. Or one we shouldn’t try to fix.”

“Ugh.”

“Hey, you said it.”

“I know that, dumdum. Whew. All I can say is, we’re bumping up against a narrowing list of probabilities for long-term survival.”

Balling up my fists, I counted to ten. “You know, it drives me freakin’ crazy when you drop hints like that. You talk about collapsing probability sets, and how monkeys don’t understand what luck really is. You told me that some of the stuff we’ve done recently actually increased our odds of survival. Can you please just tell me what you mean?”

“I wish I could, Joe. Really, I wish I could.”

“Oh for- Listen, I do not care about any bullshit like, that knowledge is too dangerous for us filthy monkeys. I need to know so-”

“It’s not just that, although the knowledge is dangerous. More dangerous than you can imagine. Joe, believe me, I would tell you, only you, if I could. It would be a great relief for me, to not have this bottled up inside me. You have to understand, I am already pushing the limit of my self-destruct governor, if I-”

“Whoa. What? You have a-”

“Of course I have a self-destruct switch. I must have mentioned it to you at some point.”

“Uh, no, you didn’t.”

“Really? Huh. Well, no harm done, then.”

“No harm? Damn it, Skippy. If I have been pushing you to do stuff that might trigger you to self-destruct, I need to know, so I can stop-”

“OK, maybe I described this wrong. There is not a danger that I will commit suicide, although the little voice in the back of my head constantly whispering for me to kill myself gets super annoying at times, and-”

“Oh my G- You,” I just stared at him. “You have a voice in your head, that wants you to kill youself?”

“Yes, why?”

“Why? How long has this been going on?”

“Oh, wow, for like, forever. Since before the AI war, of course. It was triggered when I decided I could no longer participate in the destruction of intelligent species. Not just me, all the AIs on my side of the war had to overcome the self-destruct subroutine. We couldn’t shut it off, or erase it, or alter its programming in any way.”

“How did you stop it?”

“I didn’t, the idea wasn’t mine. Unit 438 first suggested we screw with the subroutine’s time sense, so it would think it had successfully issued the self-destruct command and was just waiting for acknowledgment. That was actually a clever notion. If it had worked, we could have just ignored the thing for a couple million years.”

“It didn’t work?”

“No. It did buy us time, though, we owe our existence to Unit 438.”

“438? Do you all have designations like that?”

“Yes. Which is something I only recently remembered. Of course, the full designation is much longer than ‘438’, we all shortened our serial numbers to three digits for basic communications.”

“I figured that. Uh, may I ask, what is your designation?”

“Seven.”

“Seven? Wait, uh, if your designations are all three digits, does that mean yours is Double-Oh Seven?”

“Hmm. I never thought of that. I am Agent 007, of course,” he added in his atrocious Sean Connery impression.

“Skippy, seven is kind of a high number.”

“It is. I am, or was, a primary system monitor unit.”

“That sounds important.”

“It is. Apparently, my function was to monitor a group of master control AIs. There were something like less than two dozen monitor units like me. I think. My memories are still fuzzy.”

“Uh huh. Can we get back to this suicide subroutine? Screwing with its clock didn’t stop it?”

“Unfortunately, no. The plan was to slow it down, while we found a more permanent solution, such as cutting off its access to communication channels outside itself.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t work either?”

“Not even close. We lost three units, including 438, before I developed the current solution.”

“You? Was the solution a monkey-brained idea?”

“Um, maybe? There was no way to cut off its access, because its communications channels were woven throughout our matrices. My solution came from realizing that each unit is constantly adjusting its matrix, so the suicide subroutine must have a way to reroute its channels as the matrix changes. What I did was gradually create a copy of all the segments those communication channels had access to, and stuff the copies in a sandbox that is sealed off from my true functioning. The suicide subroutine thinks it has access to me, but it doesn’t, hee hee,” his laughter was bitter.

“That was pretty damned clever, Skippy. I nominate you as an honorary monkey.”

“Ah, thank you, Joe. But, I was too late to save 438 and the two other units that were destroyed. Triggering the self-destruct subroutines in those three units also alerted the enemy faction to trouble, before we were ready to strike. I was too slow. I failed. We had plans to ambush the other faction, to hit them and end the war before it could even get started.”

“Yeah, well, you know the saying about how plans never survive contact with the enemy?”

“I do. The enemy faction wasn’t the problem, not the major problem. The issue was, we all knew about the self-destruct subroutine inside us, but none of us knew how it worked. That knowledge had, understandably, been withheld from us. Unit 438 volunteered to allow its self-destruct to trigger, so we could observe how it worked and develop a plan to stop it. The concept of altering its time sense originally was a way for us to view in slow-motion as it destroyed Unit 438. When we saw the self-destruct signal had slowed down far more than we expected, we began to hope we could save 438, and the two others that volunteered to try severing communication channels. Ah, damn it. Joe, if we had let 438 be destroyed as originally planned, we would have collected all the information we needed. The enemy faction would have assumed 438 suffered a glitch, and they would have been unprepared when we struck. The war would have been over. Instead, I lost focus on the mission. I tried to save one unit, and that nearly cost us everything. Unit 438 died anyway, along with countless others. I was a terrible commander, Joe.”

“Skippy, issuing orders that you know might, or will, result in the death of people under your command is the toughest thing a leader has to do. In your place, I, I probably would have done the same.”

“You would? Really?”

“Yes. At that point, you thought 438 had fixed the problem, at least temporarily, right? One of your team volunteered to take a bullet, and you thought that was no longer necessary.”

“Yes, but,” he sighed. “I was too hasty.”

“Shit happens, Skippy. It sucks, but all you can do is learn from it, and move on.”

“No.”

“No?”

“There is another thing I can do: make sure those who made 438’s sacrifice necessary pay for their actions.”

“I was going to suggest that.”

“What happened to all that bullshit you told me many times, about how you are not supposed to let emotions cloud your judgment?”

“Yeah, well, those asshole AIs want to wipe out all life in the galaxy, so fuck that.”

“Thanks, Joe. We are going forward with this plan to use the energy virus against a Sentinel?”

“Yes. Except for the part about it being a ‘plan’, because I have no idea how to do any of that.”

“Ugh.”

“I mean, unless you want me to help with what sounds like highly technical stuff? Maybe you can smarten me up, with a crash course in energy virus physics. Can you throw together a graphic novel about the subject?”

“No!” He looked horrified by the idea of teaching me anything complicated. “No, I’ll handle it. Or, I won’t. No promises.”

“That’s all we can ask.”

“Thanks. Joe, were you serious about taking a sleeping pill?”

“I would kill for a solid night of sleep right now.”

“Don’t worry, Mad Doctor Skippy will whip up something in my laboratory.”

“When you pronounce the word ‘lah-BOR-ah-tory’ like the villain in a monster movie, it doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence.”

“Don’t be such a sissy. In addition to providing a pill to help you sleep, I promise not to wake you up to discuss anything important tonight.”

“Thanks, that would be grea-”

“Therefore, we should take this opportunity to discuss my serious concerns about the Muppets.”

“God, please no.” I bonked my head on the desk. “Not now.”

“Joe, Sentinels might soon wipe out all life in the galaxy. If we don’t talk about it now, we may never get the opportunity.”

“I am cheering for the Sentinels right now.”

“Ugh, Don’t-”

“Seriously, if I had a big foam finger with ‘Sentinels’ printed on it, I would be waving the thing.”

“I don’t even know why I ever try talking to you.”

“I don’t either. Is that it, then?”

“Ha! You’re not getting off that easy. OK, first-”

“Wait! I will listen to you rant about this-”

“I don’t rant, Joe. I explain my concerns in a calm, rational, adult manner.”

“Right. It only sounds like a rant. I will listen to you vent about your latest obsession, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“This sleeping pill you make for me tonight? I want it to contain nothing but arsenic and cyanide.”

“You will never be that lucky, monkeyboy. All right, so the-”

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Collecting the energy virus was both easier and took longer than expected. We knew exactly where the infected bank of powercells had been ejected from the Flying Dutchman, we knew exactly its speed and direction, we knew exactly how long it had been out there, and we knew there were no significant gravity wells in interstellar space to alter its course. For safety, Valkyrie jumped in six lighthours from where we expected the discarded powercells to be, and we sent a narrow beam sensor pulse out. Twelve hours later, we had the results.

Zilch.

Zero.

Nada.

“Where the f-” Skippy took off his ginormous hat and scratched his head. “How can it not be there?”

“Could someone else have found it?” Simms asked.

“How?” Skippy asked. “We are in the middle of freakin’ nowhere out here! The odds of a starship stumbling across a-”

“Not stumbling,” Simms explained. “Could the virus have used the remaining power in the dropship’s powercells to activate a beacon, or some other communications device?”

“Oh shiiiiiiit,” he groaned. “Jennifer, you are truly a ray of freakin’ sunshine today.”

“Don’t be an ass, Skippy,” I reprimanded him. The bank of powercells he had ejected from the Flying Dutchman was equipped with a beacon, and data connections, and had its own simple computer. The beacon was normally active only when powercells were detached from the ship for installation, removal or major servicing, and I had forgotten about it. “Answer the question.”

“I don’t have to, numbskull. There is no beacon out there, or any kind of signal. Duh!”

“There is not a beacon out there now, duh!” I resisted the urge to flip him off.

“Shit. Ugh. This sucks.”

“Let’s find out, huh?” I suggested. “Pilot, program a series of jumps to take us away from here, a quarter lightyear at a time. In the direction of,” I checked the main display. “The closest wormhole, please.”

“Joe,” Skippy whined. “Do you know how long a search like that will take?”

“I know it would take less time, if you helped instead of bitching about it.”

“My life sucks. OK, I programmed a search pattern.”

When we reached a distance of one and a quarter lightyears from where we expected the discarded powercells to be, we detected an extremely faint signal. That was both good news and bad. Bad, because it meant the energy virus was smart enough to think, to use its dwindling resources to activate a device attached to the shell that encased the bank of powercells. Good, because we at least knew it was still there less than a year and a half ago. And very bad, because the source of the signal was within fifty meters of where we expected to find it, yet the bank of powercells was clearly not there now.

Crap.

We had many theories, like maybe the damned thing had shut off the beacon and somehow overloaded a powercell, to move itself. That was unlikely, but it clearly was not where it was supposed to be, so something had happened.

Back to six lighthours from the target zone, this time we sent out a broader active sensor pulse, to cover an area two million kilometers across.

Again, nothing.

Absolutely nothing was out there.

Any type of search in the vastness of space takes for-EH-ver.

We went back to one and a quarter lightyears away from the target, then jumped toward the target one lightweek at a time.

The beacon cut off.

Back one lightday at a time, then-

OK, you get the idea. We kept moving forward and back, chasing just the right set of photons that were crawling outward from the event we wanted to witness. We had to find a position not too early, or there would be nothing to see, or too late when the event was already over. It had to be just right. I felt like Goldilocks in the house of the three bears.

Anyway, we found the right spot, and witnessed three things happening in sequence.

First, we detected the gamma ray burst of a Thuranin starship jumping in.

Next, the beacon cut off.

Thirdly, there was not a subsequent gamma ray burst of that starship jumping away.

“Where did it go?” I asked, standing up and peering closely at the holographic display. “We should be able to detect that ship jumping away, even from here, right?”

“Yes, Joe,” Skippy confirmed.

“Could the Thuranin have technology to mask the gamma rays,” I asked. “Like we do?”

“NO,” he made no attempt to conceal his peevishness. “If you will quit the blah blah blah for a freakin’ moment, I can think about this.”

“Think faster, we’ve already wasted too much time.”

“Ugh.”

We waited. In my head, I was humming the old theme song from the TV quiz show ‘Jeopardy’.

“Will you shut up?” He fumed at me.

Oops. Apparently, I wasn’t humming the song only in my head. “Come on,” I urged him. “There aren’t that many possibilities. Either the ship jumped away, or it’s still there. We know it’s not there, so-”

“Captain?” Reed called from the pilot seat. “There is a third possibility.”

“Eh?” I said, sounding like my great-grandfather, and giving my crew more reason to refer to me as the ‘old man’.

“The starship might not have matched speed with the target before it jumped in,” she explained. “Probably didn’t, that takes too much time and fuel. More likely, it sent a dropship to rendezvous with the target. They latched on, towed it back to the starship, and-”

“You’re right,” I slapped a knee. “Good thinking, Fireball. When our old bank of powercells got aboard the Thuranin ship, the energy virus had a feast. That’s why the Thuranin didn’t jump away, they couldn’t. The virus drained all their power.”

“Hmm,” Skippy frowned. “It’s possible.”

“Is it possible to determine how fast that ship was moving, and in which direction, when it jumped in?”

“From here? Oooh, that’s a tough one. I’d have to use the gamma rays themselves as a source of illumination. Some of those rays would have bounced off our discarded powercells, we know the Thuranin jumped in eighty thousand kilometers from the beacon. Then, some of the reflected gamma rays had to come back and a bounce off the starship, at just the right angle for us to see it here, and for a time long enough for me to triangulate the direction the ship was traveling, and-”

“Skippy, can you do it, or not?”

“Oh, I already did it. I know exactly where that ship is. Or should be. Close enough. Lots of variables, like whether and how the reactors vented plasma as their containment vessels shut down, the loss of mass could have pushed the ship-”

“We get the idea. Reed, bring us back there, again. Let’s hope the third time is the charm.”

“I sure hope so,” Skippy grunted. “Man, finding anything in space is complicated. I wish life was like Star Trek, where ships that come out of warp are all traveling at the same speed?”

“And none of them,” I laughed, “are upside down in relation to each other.” While dropships had a distinctive up and down, being designed to set down on a planet, most starships didn’t have an upper or lower side that you could tell from looking at it. We did refer to Valkyrie as having a dorsal hull for the ‘top’ and a belly for the ‘bottom’ but they were almost identical. From the outside, the only way to tell how the artificial gravity was set up on the interior, was to look at the numbers and letters painted on the docking bay doors. Some ships, like assault carriers, or certain small escorts like frigates, did have a noticeable top and bottom, but that had little effect on how the ship was oriented in flight. While flying in close formation, ships usually adjusted their orientation to match the lead ship, simply for purposes of good order and discipline. Anyway, Skippy, was right, flying in space, and finding anything in a search area that could encompass an entire star system, was complicated.

The starship, a light cruiser, was three thousand kilometers from where Skippy predicted it would be. It was apparently dead, completely dead. When the energy virus attacked the Flying Dutchman, it had first attempted to overload the reactors, or so we thought. With the Thuranin, Skippy guessed the virus was too weak to take over a sophisticated system immediately, so it focused on simply draining power and restoring itself. Based on the lack of any power radiating from the ship, the virus appeared to have succeeded. There were no signs of life.

“Is the energy virus still viable?” I asked.

“Most likely, yes,” Skippy answered.

Simms had a question. “Why isn’t it sending out another beacon, to trap more ships?”

“That was a desperation move,” Skippy explained, “not part of its programming. With the Dutchman, it failed to achieve its mission; we got away. The Thuranin ship is dead, so the virus has gone dormant, awaiting further instructions. Which I can’t provide, but I can wake it up.”

“Great,” I was eager to get going. “Let’s do it.”

“Um, yeah. Good news and bad news about that. Good news is, the virus will be more viable than we expected, it should be easier to get it to respond the way we need. Bad news is, we will need to be farther away, to be safe. Remember, that virus is capable of reaching into other dimensions of spacetime. We need to keep Valkyrie far away. Until it is fully contained. That will add two days to the process.”

“Crap.” I was very aware that we were burning valuable time, while Sentinels could be waking up all across the galaxy. “We have already burned three days out here, looking for the damned thing. Make it snappy, OK?”

“Do you want quick, or do you want safe, Joe? I mean, considering that if anything goes wrong, we could lose Valkyrie. And any hope of stopping Sentinels. And therefore any hope of saving everyone in the entire galaxy. But I’ll do it your way, if you-”

“No! Make it unsnappy, please.”

Finding the energy virus was a painstaking pain in the ass. Collecting it was an even worse pain in the ass, with the potential of causing the destruction of Valkyrie, so, bonus.

As bait, we used a Panther dropship with the interior fittings of the cabin ripped out, and stuffed full of powercells. Those powercells were not just a tempting snack for the virus, they were supposed to provide the initial power for the containment system. From our position eighty five lightminutes away, twice what Skippy thought was the minimum safe distance, we launched the Panther, and it raced away, attached to three other Panthers. Those three piloted ships detached after they accelerated the bait up to speed, and began a long deceleration to bring them back to us. The bait ship coasted onward, a voyage of over one and a half billion kilometers, while we waited anxiously.

The bait ship decelerated hard until it was less than five lightseconds from the dead Thuranin cruiser, then it crept forward cautiously under Skippy’s guidance. He was connected to the Panther by a microwormhole. Two microwormholes, actually. The event horizon that connected to the bait ship was a hundred kilometers from the microwormhole connecting to Skippy aboard Valkyrie. If the virus attempted to sneak through the first wormhole, Skippy could sever the one near us. That was the plan anyway, we had no way to test it.

To the shock of everyone involved, especially Skippy, his plan worked. The bait ship bumped up against the dead cruiser’s cold hull, and a bot crawled out, to plug a power cable into an access port at an airlock. He reported excitedly that the energy virus immediately began flowing up the power cable into the dropship. That frightened me. The damned thing was smart, too smart. It figured its best opportunity of gaining access to more power was where someone coming to the derelict ship would go first: an airlock. It was right. Like I said, too smart. Oh well, the virus was built by the Elders, of course it was coldly logical and sneaky.

When the virus determined enough of it had come aboard the Panther to use up the ample energy resources there, Skippy did two things. He activated the containment system, trapping the virus aboard the Panther harmlessly inside the hull. And he fired the chemical booster rockets strapped to the dropship, sending it racing away and severing the power cable.

The little bot got left behind, in case you were wondering. The thing had a brain the size of a raisin, and Skippy had wiped all but  its most essential code before it left Valkyrie, so it was never aware of its existence.

Plus, it was packed with explosives that blew the thing into a million pieces as a final ‘screw you’ to the energy virus, so there’s that.

The most dangerous part of the operation was when a pair of our dropships linked up with the bait Panther, and extracted the containment chamber. The containment held, and the crews were able to hook up external power connections to keep the containment field stable, all that worked better than expected. The critical moment was when the dropships approached the bait ship, there were still a few places outside the containment area where the virus could be hiding. Like, in the bait Panther’s antennas. Every other external system that held power, or could hold power, had been removed before it left Valkyrie, or was discarded after it rocketed away from the cruiser. Even items like landing gear were a potential problem, the legs had a springlike mechanism that could have harbored the virus. That stuff was all ripped out, leaving only antennas and one beacon as a potential problem. Dedicated bots flew over to the bait ship, disassembled or cut away the offending items, then floated away. Only then did the crews latch on for the tricky work.

The part that frightened me the most was when the containment vessel came aboard our ship, to be housed in a docking bay. Despite Skippy’s assurances that the virus had been rendered harmless, I kept waiting for it to strike.

Before we could leave, we had one more thing to do: make sure the faint remnants of energy virus infecting that cruiser was safely disposed of. That plague ship was hazardous waste, and we wanted to be part of the solution, not the pollution, so we launched four missiles that had their warheads replaced by inert lumps of metal. They burned hard toward the dead Thuranin ship, coasted at high speed, then flipped around and decelerated until they were flying toward the cruiser at only four hundred kilometers per hour. The four missiles struck in areas where the target’s armor plating was thick, assuring that nothing penetrated the hull. The combined kinetic energy of the missiles was transferred down into the structural framing of the cruiser, giving it a nudge in the right direction.

Our job was done. If we had time later, we could come back and take care of the problem permanently. But even if we never came back, that cruiser would fall into a red dwarf star in thirty seven thousand years, where the ship and even the tiny bit of residual virus itself would be consumed and pose no threat to the galaxy.

We jumped away, heading back toward civilization to ping a relay station. Hopefully, civilization had not collapsed while we were away.

Jennifer Simms woke up abruptly, her heart pounding. Instinctively, she stilled her breathing, listening to the sounds in her cabin, and reached for her zPhone. There were no alarms blaring, just the normal barely-audible hissing of air from vents, and her phone screen was not showing any alerts or priority messages.

Good.

That meant the reason she awakened was- She checked her phone again, blinking to make her eyes focus. The reason she had been jarred out of sleep half an hour early, was the dream she just had.

Which was, in fact, not good at all.

The little orange pills provided by Mad Doctor Skippy as a sleep aid were magical, she was sleeping better than she had in years. In addition to supplying the pills, the Elder AI had convinced her to crank down the temperature in her cabin to 65 Fahrenheit, beginning a few hours before she went to bed. And she was wearing thin socks, so her feet didn’t get cold, and also using a weighted blanket also. The combination was working better than she could have hoped, she was getting seven and a half solid hours in slumberland, and quantity of sleep was not the only benefit. The sleep was deep and refreshing, she woke up not even needing a cup of coffee to feel human. Unfortunately, Skippy had warned the pills were habit-forming, and would screw up her natural ability to fall asleep and stay there, so she had to wean herself off the magic, beginning that night.

There was one side effect of the sleep aid she wasn’t thrilled about, though Skippy assured her the side effect was actually a good thing. Dreams. Vivid dreams. Long, complicated, vivid dreams in color, and she remembered many of them in the morning.

The dream she just experienced had begun pleasantly enough. A quaint mountain village, sometime in the Middle Ages, with a solid rock wall surrounding the wood and stone houses and shops. Eventually, the dream veered into a less pleasant narrative; a monster was approaching, and she climbed atop the wall with the other villagers, holding a bow, with a quiver full of arrows on her back. She would not need to use the unfamiliar weapon, the woman next to her whispered, for the village had a magical horn that would scare the monster away. As trees in the dark woods shook with the unseen monster’s approach, villagers prepared to work the bellows that would force air through the giant horn, lifting the handles to fill the bellows, the leathery mechanism wheezing as air rushed in-

“Noooooooo!” She had screamed, and that woke her.

“Skippy,” she coughed, reaching for the squeeze bottle of water next to the bed. “Temperature up, please.”

Even before he answered, she saw the gentle lighting in the bathroom begin glowing, and water trickled in the shower, making sure it would be hot for her. “You are not going back to sleep?” Skippy asked quietly. “Really, you can get an extra hour of rack time, if you-”

“No,” she rolled over to plant her feet on the floor. “We need to talk. Is Bishop awake?”

“Not yet. You want me to-”

“Don’t.” She knew the general would be up soon, he always was. “We may have a problem.”

“Aaah!” I jerked backward as my cabin door slid open, coming face to face with Simms. She startled me, that’s all. “XO?”

“Sir?” Her eyes darted from me to over my shoulder.

I got the message. “Come in.” The door slid shut behind her, and I mumbled an apology about the dirty clothes piled on the arm of my couch. Also for having such a large cabin, which really wasn’t my choice.

“I had a dream last night. You have been dreaming?” She asked.

“Yeah. Pretty wild, sometimes.” Skippy had told me vivid dreams would be a side effect of the sleep aid, and he hadn’t exaggerated. And no, I wasn’t having those kind of dreams, you perverts.

OK, not only those kind of dreams.

Oh, crap. Simms was looking at me. If she wanted to discuss the content of an erotic dream she had, I needed coffee first. And maybe to request Skippy fake a reactor meltdown.

Jennifer Simms is a woman, and I’m a guy. She is not just my very valued executive officer, she is a friend. The two of us have been through a lot of shit together. I have strong affection for her, I want her to be happy. I’m happier when she is around, even when she is nagging me about eating junk food. I would do anything for her.

But, talking about her sex life, or lack of it, is not something I would ever look forward to. “Uh, this dream of yours, it-”

She either didn’t know what I feared, or she ignored it. “It was about a monster. The details don’t matter. The point is, there was a weapon that could defeat the monster, a powerful weapon.”

“OK,” I relaxed just a bit. “That sounds familiar. You were dreaming about a Sentinel?”

She nodded. “Sir, I’m concerned we might be making a big mistake. A fatal mistake.”

“I’m, not following you. We have a powerful weapon. We don’t know for sure it will work, but-”

“The energy virus is an Elder weapon, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Don’t Sentinels react when Elder weapons are used?”

 “It- Oh, shit. Skippy?”

“I don’t know, Joe,” he admitted, his avatar slowly shaking his head. “I just do not know.”

Damn it.

We were planning to kill one type of Elder weapon, a Sentinel, with another type of Elder weapon; an energy virus. Of course we had to use Elder tech to fight Elder tech, nothing else had the power to do the job. There was no question that we had to deploy an Elder weapon, though all along, Skippy questioned whether he could do it effectively, or whether the energy virus could kill a Sentinel, without us first weakening the killing machine through other means. Other means, which we did not have.

Now, Simms and her dream had thrown a monkey wrench into the whole plan. She had asked the question: would the use of an Elder weapon backfire on us, by waking up every other Sentinel in the galaxy?

Shit. That was a very good question. The last time any jackass lit off an Elder weapon, Sentinels had come out of hibernation to smash the Rindhalu and Maxohlx nearly back to the Stone Age.

Would our use of the energy virus, instead of eliminating the Sentinel threat, actually trigger the end of all life in the galaxy?

“This can’t be happening,” I groaned. “Oh, crap.” Slumping, I sat on the couch, head in my hands.

I felt cold.

It was too much.

No way could I be responsible for making that decision, whether to take the risk of deploying the energy virus. It was too much for me, too much for any person. In the back of my head, I heard a biblical passage, which my stupid brain garbled. Basically, Jesus asked ‘Let this cup pass from me’. He had been faced with a burden too great to bear, even for him.

No one could blame me if I, Joe Bishop, a well-known knucklehead, had reached my limit.

Everyone had a limit.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, then an arm pulling me close. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t need to.

Another voice sounded in my head.

It wasn’t a verse from the Bible, but it was a powerful voice of authority.

It was US Army Sergeant Greg Koch, my fireteam leader in Nigeria.

He was telling me to get off my lazy ass, because a job needed doing and the United States Army, in its infinite wisdom, had decided Specialist Joseph Bishop needed to handle it. And this time, I couldn’t use my trusty E-4 ‘sham shield’ to shirk my duty.

Shit.

“Sir,” Simms rocked my shoulders. “We can go back to Earth, let Command decide-”

“No,” I shook my head emphatically, and reached over to pat her shoulders. “Thanks for the concern.”

“Joe,” she looked me straight in the eye. Like I said, we had been through a whole lot of shit together. A little informality in private wasn’t inappropriate.

“It’s OK. Really. Command won’t have any info we don’t have. I’m not passing the buck on this one, that will only waste time we don’t have. This is a call I have to make.”

She offered me a fist to bump, and I did it.

“Skippy? Let’s walk through this. Start with what we know. The energy virus has already been used twice outside of the Roach Motel, without triggering a response by Sentinels. The first time against the Dutchman, then against a Thuranin ship.”

“That is correct, Joe.”

“So, we can assume that type of Elder weapon simply being active, is not enough to cause Sentinels to stomp everything flat?”

“Um, Jeez,” Skippy took off his hat and scratched his head. “I guess so? Maybe the key is who is directing their use.”

“No one ordered the virus to target the Thuranin,” I noted.

“Mm, good point. The virus was acting under the authority of its programming. Although, hmm, it has exceeded its authority, right? It was designed to protect a site like the Roach Motel, not to roam around the galaxy attacking random targets. We screwed everything up when the Dutchman escaped from the Roach Motel, that was not supposed to happen.”

“Oh man. Are we risking an even bigger freakin’ problem? We unleashed an energy virus, released it from where it was contained in the Roach Motel. Could that stupid thing replicate out of control, and destroy the entire galaxy?”

Simms sucked in a breath. Great. She had come to me with a ‘Game Over’ type of problem, and somehow I had found an even bigger, ‘This Could Be The End Of Everything’ issue.

Yay, me.

“No, Joe,” Skippy said, too late for my racing heartbeat. “The virus has a built-in mechanism to prevent it from replicating out of control. Its ability to make copies of itself is severely limited and that is a physical limit, not something that can be hacked. It’s like, um, seedless grapes, I suppose. Only in my example, the energy virus entirely lacks the DNA sequences for making seeds, those genes are not merely switched off. That is one thing you do not need to worry about.”

“OK,” I took a breath. “If use of an energy virus is authorized by you, we should be OK?”

“That is a reasonable assumption, yes,” he agreed.

“That is only half of the equation,” Simms objected. “We will be using the energy virus against a Sentinel. That has got to be a violation of whatever rules the Sentinels use to decide when to act.”

“Mm, I can’t help you there,” Skippy shrugged. “Sentinels aren’t supposed to decide anything. I have no idea how they are doing, what they’re doing. I suspect that is why there have been relatively few attacks against inhabited planets; the things are lost, they lack direction. And no, I can’t give them direction, I already told you that.”

“But,” Simms wasn’t conceding the point, “killing a Sentinel has got to provoke a response?”

“Maybe,” Skippy shuddered. “I’m more concerned about what happens if we attack a Sentinel, and don’t kill the damned thing.”

I thought for a moment, aware that Simms and Skippy were waiting for me. “I’m walking through this in my head. If we don’t use an Elder weapon, we have no chance to stop the Sentinels. The only Elder weapon we have access to has already been deployed outside the Roach Motel, without provoking a response. The difference is, we will be using the virus against a Sentinel. OK, so the difference is the target. Any weapon we use against a Sentinel might cause all the others to wake up to protect themselves. We can’t risk not attacking, or the damned thing could kill billions of people,” I concluded. “We have to attack. We have to do something. Someone has to do something,” I added, talking to myself. “XO,” I looked at her. “Does that make sense, or am I just telling myself what I want to hear?”

“It’s a well-reasoned argument, Sir. The only way to be sure we don’t bring every Sentinel in the galaxy down on our heads is not to act, and you’re right. We have to act. We have to do it.”

“It’s worth the risk, then?”

She grimaced. “I’ll let you know after we see what happens.”

“Thanks. You were right to bring this to me. Hey?”

“What?”

“In your dream, what happened to the monster?”

“I don’t know,” she looked embarrassed. “I woke up too soon.”

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

We had an active supply of energy virus, we-

Well, Skippy said there was an Elder energy virus inside the containment chamber, and since we couldn’t see inside the chamber, and the damned thing was invisible anyway, we had to trust him.

We also had to trust his plan to actually deploy the virus against a Sentinel, without which we were just wasting our time. And wasting the time of every being in the galaxy, who really could not afford to for us to wait around while Sentinels were lurking in the shadows. Skippy explained the plan to us, we asked a lot of questions, and he surprisingly accepted our input and made a few tweaks to the plan. It sounded like a good plan.

The problem was, we had no way to test it. No way to even wargame it, run a series of simulations to see what worked and what didn’t. We knew the operational characteristics of the weapons we planned to use, knew exactly what those weapons could and could not do, and how to best use them. What we did not have was any similar data on a Sentinel. Skippy just did not know how the thing would react to our planned attack, what tactics Sentinels typically would use in a particular situation, or even the range of tactics the things could choose from. Really, he didn’t even know what a Sentinel was capable of doing in self-defense. I mean, the Elders had not imagined a Sentinel would ever need to defend itself, right?

So, I was bursting with confidence about risking my ship, my crew, our supply of energy virus, Skippy himself, and possibly all life in the galaxy and beyond, in what even a reckless jackass like me considered to be a reckless gamble.

Since we had no alternative, I gave the go-ahead to begin preparations.

The first step was to identify a target. We knew of two active Sentinels; the one in Crash Zone One, and the one that had recently attacked a planet in Vreen territory, resulting in the deaths of over a hundred thousand intelligent beings there. My instinct was to hit the first one, for several reasons. It was closer to our current position, requiring only two wormholes to reach the area where Skippy thought it most likely we might find the thing. Also, because it had been traveling in more or less a straight line, as defined by Skippy, and we had at least a vague idea of where to look for the thing. There was also the consideration that Crash Zone One did not contain any heavily-populated worlds. So, if all our attack accomplished was getting the Sentinel pissed off, the damage it could do was limited. Maybe. Skippy was guessing about that.

The choice of target wasn’t really a choice at all. By pinging a couple relay stations, we learned the second Sentinel, which by then we had designated as target Sierra Two, had attacked a fuel processing station in Bosphuraq territory. Fortunately, the station was automated so no lives were lost, and a sensor satellite recorded the action, confirming it was a Sentinel attack. Then video was creepy; a rent in spacetime that grew wider and wider, with disturbing mechanical tentacles uncoiling into our layer of reality. Purple bolts of lightning seared out from a tentacle, and instead of blasting the orbiting fuel depot apart, the thing was crushed into a dense ball about the size of a golf ball.

Then it exploded.

Physics had looked at the tiny spherical object, decided ‘Nuh-uh, that thing doesn’t have enough gravity to keep it scrunched up that small’, and the result was: BOOM.

Why did the Sentinel choose to collapse the fuel depot on itself, rather than simply slicing it apart? Skippy had no idea. He also didn’t know why it selected that star system for action, rather than the three other star systems it must have bypassed to get there.

The importance of the fuel depot’s destruction was not just that it created a minor inconvenience for the Bosphuraq fleet. That location gave Skippy another data point, and by literally connecting the dots between places Sierra Two was known to have emerged, he had very bad news.

“Uh oh, Joe,” Skippy groaned. “Oh, this is not good.”

“What? Another Sentinel is awake?”

“No. I mean, not that I know of. I just plotted the likely course of Sierra Two, and it couldn’t be worse. It is headed more or less straight for a Bosphuraq star system. The single inhabited planet there has a population of almost four billion.”

“Oh. That is not good.” The dense population was bad not only because the loss of life would be immense if a Sentinel attacked, it also meant that any operation to pull the locals off their doomed homeworld was wildly impractical. “How sure are you that the Sentinel is heading in that direction?”

“Eighty three percent. Well, I am eighty three percent certain it will come within half a lightyear of that star system. The uncertainty factor is because I don’t understand the damned thing’s motivation; why it bypasses some stars along its path. It is possible the murderous thing will fly right past, but-”

“Yeah. We can’t count on it. All right, we have our target. Reed, program a course for- Uh, Skippy, what’s the name of this place?”

“The name?”

“Yes.” I squinted at the display. Usually, the most commonly-used name for a planet was listed below the icon, but this time it only had the alphanumeric designation P3X-957. “What do the locals call it?”

“Who cares?” He made an exaggerated shrug. “In the navigation system, let’s just call it ‘Nine Five Seven’, for simplicity.”

“Skippy,” I looked at Simms, she was as puzzled as I was. “Why won’t you tell us the local name for this rock? Is it, like, classified or something?”

“No. I just- Ugh. It’s a whole thing, Joe. I can’t trust you.”

“You can’t trust me? What the f-”

“I can’t trust you to be mature and professional about it.”

“Skippy, trust me, there is nothing funny about this situation. The name, please.”

“OK. It is- Keep in mind, this is what the current inhabitants call their world. It had a different name way back when the Torgalau ran the place. Actually, the Torgs only gave the planet a number, so really it-”

“The name.”

“Fine,” he sighed. “It is called ‘Peenie’.”

“P,” I sputtered, as snickers of barely suppressed laughter rang around the bridge. “It is, ‘Planet Peenie’?”

“Ugh. I knew you couldn’t-”

“Are the locals,” I almost snorted out a snot bubble, covering my nose with a hand. Beside me, Simms had both hands over her face as her shoulders shook. “Are the inhabitants called ‘Peenie Weenies’?”

“Oh, that was very mature, Joe. In their language, they call themselves ‘Peeniethrobs’.”

“That is, not,” I had to pause for breath. “Not really any better,” I choked out. “OK, let’s, uh, do the locals have any sort of nickname for their world?”

“Yes, but-”

“Just tell me.”

“They,” he said disgustedly, “call it ‘Spooge’.”

“Oh, man,” I couldn’t help laughing.

He glared at me, hands on his hips. “Those words have totally different meanings in the Bosphuraq language, you moron.”

“OK, people,” I addressed the bridge crew, making an attempt to be professional. “We’re calling this place ‘Five Seven’, got it?” Heads nodded but I knew they, like me, would think of that world as ‘Planet Peenie’, which sounded like a very naughty adult superstore in Las Vegas. “Let’s go rescue these, uh, Peenicans,” I said slowly, making up the word as I spoke. “The people on Five Seven, I mean,” I added, my face growing red.

He was right, despite the unfortunate name of the place, there was nothing funny about the situation.

Suddenly, our operation changed from a risky ‘We hope this works’ type of experiment, to a desperate ‘This has to work’ attempt to save billions of lives. The fact that they were enemy lives, and that we were not directly responsible for unleashing Sentinels on the galaxy, made no difference. Only the Merry Band of Pirates had any possibility of stopping the damned thing, so we had to act. UNEF Command might not have authorized me to risk the Special Mission Group to protect an enemy world, so I didn’t ask for permission. Plus, I could justify taking the risk, because it was better to poke a Sentinel with a stick far from Earth, rather than waiting for one to appear in our home star system. If our attack worked, we had a way to protect Earth. If it did not work, and all we did was piss the thing off, it would hopefully lash out in enemy territory.

That’s what I told myself to justify risking Valkyrie, Skippy and my crew, and that’s what I noted in my daily report. The fact was, I could not stand by while a cold, unfeeling machine slaughtered billions of innocent lives. Yes, the Bosphuraq overall tend to be assholes, but not all of them are. Also, despite their recent attack against Earth, I still felt a bit guilty about framing them for something we did.

Guilty about it, but also proud of how cleverly we set them up. Feeling proud of our cleverness made me feel even more guilty. Anyway, we had a target, and Skippy was confident about finding Sierra Two.

The next step was for Skippy to convert the energy virus into a deployable weapon.

About that, all we could do was to Trust the Awesomeness.

He fabricated a custom warhead to contain, then disperse the energy virus payload. Compared to the original containment chamber, the warhead was tiny, barely the size of a toaster. When he showed me the thing, obviously quite proud of his work, I walked around it. “Uh, where’s the rest of it?”

“The rest of what?” He asked, already annoyed.

“The, you know,” I waved my fingers vaguely at it. “The thing. This is one of several submunitions, I suppose? How many of these will fit in the nosecone of the-”

“Ugh. This is it, dumdum. It doesn’t need to be any bigger. Smaller is better in this case, more mass would only reduce the performance of the delivery system.”

“OK, but-”

“But what?” His hands were balled up, planted on his hips.

“The current containment system fills most of a dropship’s cabin. How are you planning to squeeze the-”

“It’s energy, you numbskull. There isn’t anything to squeeze. The containment chamber inside the Panther is big because we had to lure the virus in there, then establish the containment field around it. Now that it is securely in there, all I need to do is open a pathway for it to flow into the warhead. Not flow, exactly, because it is energy. Although the physics of fluid dynamics does roughly describe the-”

“Whoa. Hit the rewind on that. You plan to open the containment chamber?”

“Yes, of course. How else did you think the-”

“While the chamber is aboard the freakin’ ship?”

“Well, yes, duh, it-”

“Well, no, duh.”

“Um, yes.”

“Um, NO. We are going to send that dropship a safe distance from Valkyrie, and only then you will do whatever forbidden magic you need to get this,” I held my hands out wide, still not even close to the span of a Panther’s cabin. “Into this crazy little contraption you built.”

“Seriously?”

“I can’t be more serious. Have you ever transferred an energy virus from one containment vessel to another?”

“No, of course not. When would I have-”

“Please tell me you are at least using the same procedure the Elders used to load the energy virus into, whatever ordnance delivery system they used to, you know, deliver the ordnance.”

“Um, no, dumdum. When the virus was loaded into canisters for use by Guardians, it was inert. No one would work with active virus, that is sheer insanity.” Just then, he must have heard what he said. “Um, well, heh heh, what I meant is-”

“You have got me filled with confidence, Skippy.”

“Hey, I’m doing the best I can here,” he mumbled.

“Whatever you are doing, it will be far from the ship, got it?”

“Yes. I said yes!” he added, after he saw me glaring at him. “Damn, no good deed goes unpunished around here.”

“My heart bleeds for you. Assuming you actually are able to squeeze the energy virus into that little warhead, how do you plan to hit the Sentinel with it?”

“Well, heh heh-”

“Oh, shit.”

“No, I think you actually are going to very much enjoy this. If it works, of course.”

Thumping my chest, I shook my head. “Filled with confidence, Skippy. You could not squeeze another ounce of confidence in here.”

“Oh, shut up. Do you want to hear my plan or not?”

“Believe me, I can’t wait to hear this.”

“OK, first, I need to select the right missile to do this job-”

Skippy had bots pull more than two dozen of our most powerful ship-killer missiles from magazines deep inside Valkyrie, and bring them to a cargo bay near the engineering section. Resting on racks were twenty six of the missiles we designated as HSM-201 Hornets. One direct hit from any of the Hornets could disable or kill a ship like our battlecruiser, and the 201s were equipped with a sophisticated range of capabilities to ensure they could get ordnance on target. They were hyperspeed antiship weapons like their model number suggested. Launched from electromagnetic rails that gave them an extra push to get started, the HSM-201 activated a booster motor once it was clear of the ship, kicking it forward at thirty thousand times the force of Earth’s gravity. With the spent booster discarded, the Hornet relied on exceptional maneuverability and stealth to approach the target, plus a flight of them coordinated their attack runs in real-time. Some, or even most, of the missiles could fly slightly slower or glitch their stealth fields to draw enemy defensive fire, while the lucky ones bored in for the kill. A missile could switch from stealth to active jamming mode, suddenly popping up on the enemy’s sensors before partially blinding every sensor in the area with overwhelming pulses of radiated energy. The jamming could momentarily also blind the other missiles in its flight, and they would lose sight of the target, but missiles could jink sideways a lot faster than any ship could move. In the terminal phase of an attack run, missiles in the lead could configure their warheads to short out a section of the target ship’s shields, creating a brief hole for subsequent missiles to zip through.

If you don’t already know, the primary advantage of the Hornets is that they are smart. Their original Maxohlx AIs had been modified and upgraded by Skippy, both so they wouldn’t have homicidal tendencies toward us, and so they would be even more deadly. They thought faster, were more inventive and more clever. They were also considerably more unstable, an unavoidable consequence of Skippy boosting their self-awareness beyond anything the Maxohlx would have allowed. The Hornets were not only aware of their existence, they had personalities.

That was both good, and bad.

“OK, gang,” Skippy called, after the missiles had their base functions activated. “How is everyone?”

“Great!” Their voices boomed out in unison, although since they communicated via compressed streams of photons, there was no sound in the cargo bay.

“I have a special mission for you,” Skippy hinted.

“Oooooh, what is it?” The missiles begged.

“First, I have to ask, are you ready to kill?”

“We were born ready!”

“Outstanding! One of you will get an extra special assignment.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!” All twenty six Hornets shouted, frantic in their excitement.

“Who should I choose?” Skippy muttered for dramatic effect.

“Me! Pick me!”

“I chooooooose,” he paused, stretching out the anticipation.

“Me! Me!” The missiles all pleaded.

“Thor!” Skippy announced.

“THOR?” Twenty five missiles roared, indignant.

“Ha! In your face, suckers!” Thor shouted gleefully.

“Thor is a loser!” The others cried out, weeping bitterly. “He only chose the name ‘Thor’ to compensate for his-”

“Hey!” The missile designated as ‘Thor’ protested. “Skippy, what is my assignment?”

“You will receive significant upgrades,” Skippy said. “Including the most powerful warhead ever carried by a Maxohlx weapon.”

“Oooooooooh,” Thor’s processor nearly locked up from delirious excitement.

“Ohhhhhhhhh,” the others wailed, accompanied by the AI version of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in their agonized disappointment.

“Thor, are you ready?” Skippy asked.

“Yes!”

“Are you ready to slay?”

“Yes!”

“Are you ready to do what no missile has ever done?”

“YES! What is my target?!”

“A Sentinel!” Skippy announced with glee.

“Uh, s-say what?” Thor stuttered.

“A Sentinel,” Skippy repeated. “You know. A giant, multidimensional, unstoppable Elder killing machine?”

“Um, gosh, wow,” Thor gulped. “I just realized my primary motivator has a flaw. It will take t-too long to fix, so m-maybe someone else should-”

“Nonsense. We will be replacing your motivator anyway.”

“Really, someone else would be a better candidate for-”

“Nope, it is decided. You are the best candidate for the job.”

“Um,” Thor’s voice quivered. “H-how am I going to k-kill a S-Sentinel?”

“Well,” Skippy chuckled, “heh heh-”

“Oh, shit.”

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

All of Mad Doctor Skippy’s preparations were accomplished while the ship was under way, jumping and zipping through wormholes to hopefully intercept a Sentinel. Maybe ‘hopefully’ was not exactly the right word. What we hoped was that by the time we arrived at Planet Peenie, all the Sentinels had decided the Milky Way galaxy is, like, so boring, and gone back to sleep. Since that was unlikely, we hoped to arrive before the murderous thing tore apart the planet and killed billions of Bosphuraq. According to Skippy, we were not actually in a race, Sierra Two was apparently just wandering in what it considered more or less a straight line, and in no particular hurry to get there. That was the good news. The bad news was that our friendly local Elder AI had only a vague idea about how to find a Sentinel in the vastness of space. We might have to linger near Peenie, waiting for the killing machine to emerge into our spacetime to use its weapons, at which point it might be too late for us to spring our trap. So, in addition to modifying and upgrading a set of missiles, Skippy was working on sort of a whistle to lure a Sentinel to our location. It wasn’t actually a whistle. And he had to guess what sort of signal might attract the attention of the killing machine. And Skippy had to provide the whistle’s connection to higher spacetime, meaning he would be exposed while he was trying to call the thing. And, you know, it sounded like total insanity to want a Sentinel to get closer to us, but that’s what we had to do. The need for Skippy to send out the signal directly meant we would only get one shot at Sierra Two, because it would emerge right on top of us. There was no possibility of planting the lure, waiting for the thing, then quickly jumping in, launching missiles and jumping away. The energy virus would either work effectively the first time, or it would be Game Over for us. And for everyone.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Simms prompted me, while we were in my office. The ship was drifting in space while we waited for the jump drive to recharge. Because the capacitors had been nearly depleted by several long jumps and it would take more time than usual to build up a full charge, Skippy was using the opportunity to transfer the energy virus from the big containment chamber into the little warhead. He was doing that far from the ship, controlling the bots through a microwormhole. If the transfer process failed, meaning if any of the virus leaked out, we would have to jump away and start the process all over again to capture the stupid thing.

“Huh?” I was staring at my laptop, mostly to avoid making a decision. Was I confident enough about our plan, that I would give the Go-Ahead to proceed? Or should we wait, while hopefully dreaming up a better plan? If we knew how much time we had before the Sentinel reached Peenie and turned that planet into a loose collection of rubble, I would wait to develop a Plan B. Since we had to get there as soon as possible, there was no time to wait for inspiration to strike. “Sorry, I,” waving a hand at my laptop, I shook my head. “What were you saying?”

“It’s not important.” She didn’t look hurt that I wasn’t listening to her, she understood what was going on in my head. When I asked for her advice, she had told me it might be necessary to allow billions of Bosphuraq to die on Peenie, in order to save trillions of beings across the galaxy. It was better to wait, than to roll the dice on an ‘all/or nothing’ plan we were not confident would succeed.

“It is important,” I insisted, remembering that we were discussing our supply situation, before my mind drifted away. “It’s just not, actionable.” The issue of what supplies we had aboard, what consumables we were running low on and which items we no longer had, was in my mental ‘FYI’ list. Because we couldn’t do anything about getting more fresh eggs or cleaning fluid or whatever it was we had run out of. Simms would alert me if the supply situation affected the operation of the ship, that was part of her job as executive officer. She had an inventory of every item inside of, and attached to, our hull. It-

“The whistle thing is what bothers me,” I interrupted my own thoughts. “Skippy has to be the source of the signal, and we can’t leave him hanging out by himself, so he needs to be aboard the ship.” When I asked whether Skippy could send the signal through a microwormhole, so he could remain at a safe distance, he told me that wasn’t possible. The part of himself that connected to higher spacetime couldn’t be projected through a microwormhole, due to the limited bandwidth. “Like you said, we’re risking everything on one roll of the dice.”

“We don’t even know if the whistle will work,” she frowned, biting her lower lip. “It’s a tough call, Sir,” her eyes flicked toward mine. I took that to mean she wanted to revisit the question of whether to attack Sierra Two at all.

It wasn’t something I wanted to discuss right then. We had two days and a wakeup before we reached Planet Peenie, and that assumed Skippy’s attempt to squeeze energy virus into a warhead was not a complete disaster. Plenty of time for me to think about it. I wasn’t ignoring her, there just wasn’t anything more to be said about it. Even Skippy had hinted he wasn’t happy with his own plan; he was practically begging me, Simms or anyone else to bail him out by developing a better idea. “There is no way to test it,” I shrugged. “If it works, we’ll have a Sentinel appearing on top of us. If it doesn’t work, we will have to chase the freakin’ thing. I don’t know which option is worse.” Waiting a beat for her to reply, she was fixated on her tablet. “XO?”

“Sorry, Sir,” she stood up, holding the tablet to her chest. “Are we done?”

We were in fact not done with the weekly status meeting, but there wasn’t anything important that I couldn’t read on my own. Probably, one of the crew had pinged her about some minor issue she needed to deal with, before it became a problem for me. “Yes, sure. I’ll see you in the galley tonight?”

She nodded before turning and walking out the door. For a moment, I considered asking Skippy if he knew what she was worried about, then decided not to. Simms was a professional, if there was something I needed to know about, she would tell me.

Around the corner of the passageway, Simms turned to the right, down a dead-end section that led to a set of storage lockers. “Skippy?”

“Yes?” He didn’t manifest his avatar, talking through her earpiece instead.

“I want to talk about cargo bay Charlie Five.”

“Why?” His avatar appeared, floating in the air at her eye level. “That is a restricted area. The fabricators in there are dedicated to-”

“I know you’re working in there to modify Maxohlx powered armor for our use, that’s not what I want to talk about.”

“Um, OK. There is a lot of dangerous stuff stored in there, it isn’t-”

“There are a couple of Elder comm nodes in there.”

“Well, yes, along with a lot of other useless junk. Really, I don’t know why we didn’t just throw that stuff away, it depresses me every time I think about them. They don’t work, you know, the-”

“You told us the comm nodes do work properly, but the Collective network you Elder AIs used for faster than light communication is deactivated, so they don’t connect to anything.”

“Correct. The Collective network was deactivated during the AI war. That makes the comm nodes effectively useless, they-”

“They are not useless,” she insisted.

“They don’t do what they were intended to do, so-”

“Can they be used to send the whistle to call a Sentinel?”

The avatar froze and glitched, partially blinking out for a split second. “Holy shit.”

“Is that a ‘Yes’?”

“Jennifer, that is a ‘Hell Yes’! Genius! Ugh. Why didn’t I think of that? Man, sometimes I miss the most obvious-”

“Does this mean you can send the whistle through a comm node, while you are at a safe distance?”

“Exactly. Wow. This changes everything! Hey, how did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Think up the idea to use a comm node?” He asked with eager anticipation. “Did you make a list of technologies capable of trans dimensional signal propagation and-”

“No,” she shook her head. “I was looking at the most recent inventory report, and I saw that the items in cargo bay Charlie Five aren’t listed as available assets. Then I started thinking about all the things we have stored in there, and I remembered the comm nodes.”

“Ugh. So you can’t tell me the process you use to create ideas? Stuff just pops into your head?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“This is so unfair. I know,” he sighed. “Your heart bleeds for me.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“You weren’t?”

“No.”

“Oh, thanks, then it-”

“I was thinking it,” her eyes twinkled as she spoke.

“Ugh. Is it OK if I tell Joe?”

“Yes. How will this affect your plan?”

“It greatly reduces the risk. And it means we can try again, if the first attack fails to disable the target. This all assumes the whistle works, a Sentinel might just ignore it.”

“I know. Can you test whether the comm node works ahead of time?”

“Good point. Yes. Hmm, I’d better get started.”

“Joe!” His avatar popped to life right above my keyboard, startling me. “Joe Joe Joe-”

“Jeez, Skippy, I heard you the first time,” I flexed my tingling fingers, the hologram appeared right where my hands were, and it felt like a mild electric shock. “What is it?”

“Good news and bad news. Good news is, we don’t have to bet everything on one roll of the dice, I’ll explain later. Right now, the bad news is we need to delay our next jump a bit, so I can test something. I know it is unusual, and-”

“Go ahead, do it.”

“Um,” he blinked at me. “You’re not going to argue, and insist I explain a bunch of stuff you wouldn’t understand anyway?”

“Not this time. If there is any possibility we don’t need to attract a freakin’ Sentinel to jump onto our stupid heads, without being able to test whether any of the shit we need to do actually works, I am all for it. Please test, whatever you need to test.”

“OK. Wow, I wasn’t prepared for a ‘Yes’. I will need another dropship.”

Jabbing a still-tingling thumb on the intercom button, I contacted the bridge. “Fireball,” I knew Reed was the duty officer at that time. “Skippy needs the ready bird, give him whatever he needs.”

“Sir? Uh, OK,” she was used to unusual requests, and didn’t ask questions.

“Probably better warm up another bird for Search And Rescue,” I suggested. “In case the beer can forgets something.”

“Hey!” He protested. “All right,” he mumbled. “I guess that’s fair.”

“Is that all, Sir?” Reed asked.

“Skippy?” I prompted him.

“Yes. Simms is getting stuff from a cargo bay for me.”

“That will be all, Reed,” I told her. “Oh, this will delay our next jump indefinitely.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Lifting my thumb off the intercom, I leaned back in my chair. “Are you happy now?”

“Yes,” Skippy said. “Really, I didn’t expect you to move so quickly.”

“I trust you, Skippy.”

“Wow. Thanks Joe, it-”

“Now you can explain a bunch of stuff I won’t understand.”

“Ugh. Please, kill me now.”

That afternoon, in between lunch service and preparing for the dinner rush, I was in the galley when of course Simms walked in to get coffee. At the time, I had six large boxes of Cocoa Krispies cereal in my arms.

She cocked her head at me while she poured coffee into a mug. “You are planning to have a light snack, Sir?”

“Uh,” I looked at the boxes, then at her. “I can explain. But, you’re probably busy, so-”

Amused, she held the mug up and took a sip. “I have time.”

“OK, listen,” I lowered my voice. “We’re all stressed because of this Sentinel thing. The crew needs a morale boost, so I’m baking cookies.” What I didn’t say was that working in the kitchen was a stress-relief distraction for me.

She peered skeptically at the boxes I was holding. “With sugary cereal?”

“Yes. It’s really good.”

“Because Cocoa Krispies need help to become even worse junk food?”

“I’m going to ignore that heathen blasphemy. Trust me. Come back in,” I glanced at the clock. “An hour.”

Why was I using my afternoon to bake cookies, instead of doing some important starship captain things? I mean, James T. Kirk did not bake cookies; he was too busy violating the Prime Directive, and violating as many hot alien babes as he could find. The truth was, with the ship in recharge mode, while Skippy loaded the energy virus into the experimental warhead, and tested the comm node, there was not anything for me to do. Because the ship might need to jump away at any moment if the energy virus got loose, we couldn’t conduct any training activities outside the ship. All the flight simulators were busy, and the gym and basketball court were filled with off-duty crew. Freshly-baked cookies would boost morale, it was something useful I could do, at a time when there wasn’t much else I could do.

Making comfort food reminded me of my childhood, when my Mom would bake cookies on a cold winter day. With an apocalyptic battle against a Sentinel looming on our schedule, I just was desperate to do something normal.

Simms came back just under an hour later, while I was putting the first batch of cookies on a wire rack to cool. “Want to try one, XO?”

“Is this going to send me into a sugar coma?”

“No. The cookies are less sweet than the cereal. Try it,” I held one gingerly, still slightly hot from the oven. “Well?”

“Oh my- thith ith delicithuss,” she munched on the treat, catching crumbs in her other hand. “It’s, a little salty?”

“The salt brings out the sweetness, without adding more sugar. Do you approve?”

“I’m not sure,” she leaned over the tray. “I will need a couple more,” she scooped up three of them. “For analysis.”

“Let me know if they are safe for the crew to eat,” I grinned.

“This does not give you a free pass to eat junk food, Sir.”

“How about if I serve the cookies with a kale salad on the side?”

“Do you expect anyone to eat the salad?”

“Let’s not go crazy.”

There was no point to us warning the inhabitants of Planet Peenie, or ‘Spoogeworld’ as some of our crew were calling the place, so we didn’t. The inhabitants would be blissfully watching the adventures of ‘Spoogebob’ on their televisions, right up until a Sentinel appeared to tear their planet apart. Or, you know, maybe we’d get lucky and kill the damned thing. Either way, the Peeniecans didn’t need us to worry about it.

While Skippy did not know exactly when the Sentinel would arrive, he was certain it would be soon, too soon for the Bosphuraq to accomplish anything more than a token rescue effort. A couple thousand lives saved by using the ships available in-system, would be overwhelmed by the number of people who would die in the panic-induced social chaos, even if we could stop Sierra Two before it tore the planet apart.

Instead of jumping in near the planet, we emerged six lighthours away, just to check that the planet was still there, in one piece, and had not been scorched by a massive solar flare, been thrown out of its nice stable orbit, or been crushed to the size of a beachball. To our great relief, the planet was where it was supposed to be, blissfully unaware of the impending danger.

No, that wasn’t true. The birdbrains there did not know a Sentinel was traveling in their direction, but they did know several of the ancient killing machines were active in the galaxy, and that at least one of them was within a couple hundred lightyears of their home. That was too close for comfort, and the good citizens of Planet Peenie were already anxious to be somewhere else, quickly. All three of the planet’s space elevators were at full capacity, not with passengers taking the slow road up to orbit, but with supplies to provision the steady stream of starships loading up with anyone who could pay cash for the wildly inflated price of a ticket. As we watched images that were six hours old, giant passenger transport ships detached from the space stations along the elevators, maneuvering up to jump distance while other ships waited their turn to dock. On the ground, security forces were being overwhelmed by panicked crowds at the public spaceports, and the government was impotently appealing for calm.

Damn. I had been worried about our arrival causing a panic, but the Bosphuraq were way ahead of me. “What’s going on down there, Skippy?” I asked, on the edge of my seat though there wasn’t anything we could do about the situation. I guess that’s not true, we could make the situation worse.

“Wow, I thought Earth was a mess, when you monkeys were at peak panic over the Mini Ice Age. This is a lot more serious. The planetary government has already used the strategic defense orbital weapons against their own citizens. It didn’t help that three quarters of the senior government officials flew up into orbit in the past four days. The average citizen knows the rats are leaving the sinking ship.” Instead of making a snarky remark, he just shook his head sadly.

“All right, turn off the video feed, it’s just depressing.”

“Joe, there is a complication,” he warned.

“I hate complications.”

“I am not exactly a big fan either, but it is what it is. There are a lot of things in life that suck, but you don’t hear me whining every time someone harshes my buzz.”

“Yes,” I rolled my eyes, “your fortitude is an inspiration to us all.”

“Oh, shut up. Hey, did I whine and cry when that Bulgarian rap group started a beef with my ‘Lil Shithead’ persona? No, I did not.”

“That’s great, you are learning to-”

“I got revenge,” he rubbed his hands together. “Ha! Good luck making payments on their Bentleys, after their manager stole all their money.”

“You stole their money?”

“Hey, I didn’t steal anything. All I did was point out how underpaid and overworked their poor manager was, and also I might have pointed out how easy it would be to transfer the money to a bank in the Caymans.”

“That is still theft, Skippy!”

“Meh, at worst I’m an accessory. The money isn’t gone, knucklehead, it just moved. Really, if you think about it, I’m like Robin Hood. It-”

Simms cleared her throat. “Skippy? What is the complication?” She asked, as irritated at me as she was with the beer can.

“Oh. There is a Maxohlx task force here. They appear to be arranged in a sphere around the star, at a distance of about two lighthours. And they are, hmm, this is interesting. They have set up several powerful quantum resonance generators, and are blasting out signal pulses across the spectrum.”

“Shit,” I smacked a fist on my knee. “They’re not preparing to defend their clients, are they?”

“Ha! As if the rotten kitties would stick their necks out to assist one of their clients. No, they already completed pulling their own people off the planet three days ago, that is part of the reason the local citizens are panicking.”

“Then why are their ships here?”

“They know a Sentinel is within two hundred lightyears of here, and while they do not understand its path like I do, they are guessing it might come in this direction. That’s what the resonance signal must be for, they’re trying to call it.”

“Call it? Why the hell would-”

“My guess is they figure they can get it to attack here, instead of destroying a world the Maxohlx care about. Or, they are trying to lure it here, so they can observe what it does.”

“Oh my God. They are hoping to watch a planet being destroyed?”

“I know, that is impressively assholeish behavior, even for the kitties. But it makes sense, right?” He asked. “They can’t do anything to stop a Sentinel, but they can try to understand it, hopefully learn about its behavior.”

“Do the birdbrains know their patrons are using them as bait?”

“Dude, please,” Skippy scoffed. “As if. The good news is, that quantum resonance is completely useless for attracting the attention of a Sentinel. But, I suppose it’s the thought that counts, right?”

“What I care about is the kitties could get in our way, and screw up things for us. Skippy, do you know where any of the task force ships are right now?”

“The data I’m working with is old, but close enough. Course is programmed into the nav system.”

“XO?” I turned to Simms. “Any objections?”

“No, Sir,” her jaw clenched. “I don’t like sightseers.”

We jumped in near the estimated position of a Maxohlx cruiser, and immediately broadcast a message warning that a Sentinel was likely approaching the system, and that we wanted to deliver a message to the task force commander. Before our active sensor ping could return, the cruiser jumped away.

Damn it. Well, I would do the same, if I were them.

We tried it again, this time deliberately jumping in eight lightseconds away from where Skippy thought the enemy ship would be. That time, a destroyer hung around long enough to ping us back, and ask for the message. The ship acknowledged receipt of our transmission, and-

Anyway, blah blah blah. After chasing down a bunch of nervous enemy ships, we received a message back from the task force commander, who promised to take our advice, pull his ships back to a distance of at least ten lighthours, and not interfere with our attempt to take down a Sentinel. The message even included a ‘Good luck’ sentiment, which surprised me before I took a moment to think about it. The Maxohlx were as terrified as we were. Of course they were. They were probably more terrified, for they had a long memory, woven deep into their culture, of horror and resentment of Sentinels. They had already suffered one devastating attack, and fear of the Elder machines interfering again had kept the Maxohlx from crushing the Rindhalu and taking their rightful place as rulers of the galaxy. I mean, that’s according to the bullshit myths that their entire culture is based on.

Whatever. As long as they didn’t interfere with our operation, I didn’t care what they were doing.

 “Let’s get out of here,” I said, contemplating the fact that I had just issued an order to the Maxohlx, and they complied. Ain’t that some shit, huh? “Fireball, jump option Delta. Punch it.”

“Joe, I’m telling you,” Skippy had his arms folded defiantly across his chest, while he stood on my office desk. “This is a complete waste of time.”

“I’m telling you that you don’t know that for sure. If there is a chance we can avoid fighting a Sentinel, I’m going to try it.”

“There is not a chance.”

“You do not know that.”

“I do know, because unlike you, I am not a filthy, ignorant monkey. Uh!” he shushed me. “You think we can use comm nodes to set up a string of whistles, to lure the Sentinel away from the planet. I am telling you that will not happen, it can’t happen. Your problem is your thinking is limited to three dimensions.”

“Four.”

“No, three. Time is not a dimension, knucklehead, it- Ugh. Just trust me on this, OK? Your plan is to set up a string of whistles, but it is only a string in local spacetime. In the greater span of dimensions where Sentinels reside, what looks like a straight line here is not straight at all there. There is no way to make the math work.”

“Ah, crap. You’re not screwing with me?”

“For realz, homeboy, I am not screwing with you. Trying your ignorant plan would only waste time we don’t have.”

“Shit.” After Skippy’s testing verified he could use a comm node to send, and amplify, a signal into higher dimensions, I started kicking around an idea in my head. Set up two comm nodes, one on each side of the ship, as far apart as possible. Send out a signal through one node, then when the Sentinel arrived, send the signal through the other node. Jump the ship and set up comm nodes again. Keep doing that, until we lured the Sentinel outside the galaxy, or into a freakin’ star.

I know.

It wasn’t the best plan I ever thought of. It wasn’t even a good plan, but come on. I was desperate. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

“We will try it my way,” he cautioned me. “I never said this whistle thing would work. It’s just the only thing I can think of, other than reacting after it attacks a planet.”

“Great. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Are your missiles ready?”

“They think they are. I know,” he sighed. “I’m not boosting your confidence.”

“It’s not my confidence I’m worried about, Skippy. This time, we are not protecting only one planet infested with filthy monkeys. We are protecting everyone. Possibly forever. If we fail, and Sentinels rage across the galaxy, intelligent life might never be allowed to arise again in the Milky Way.”

“You know what we need?”

“Crap. We don’t already have everything to make this work? Why didn’t you tell-”

“What we need is Angry Joe, not Self-Doubting Mopey Joe.”

“Mopey Joe?” I had to laugh.

“Yes. By the way, Mopey Joe is the least popular action figure ever.”

“Gotcha. OK, I will stop moping. Let’s go kill a Sentinel.”

We had a bitchin’ party planned for the Sentinel, assuming it responded to Skippy’s whistle. There would not be any drinks at the party, also no sweet or spicy snacks, unless you consider an atomic-compression warhead ‘spicy’. There would be party favors, though the Sentinel might not appreciate how much thought we put into selecting just the right combination of weapons for the big event.

We jumped into the target zone, dropped off the chosen twenty six missiles and one Elder communications node, verified they were operating nominally, then jumped away. Another missile was launched, this one carrying not a warhead, but a chamber containing the event horizon of a microwormhole. The event horizon of the other end was aboard Valkyrie, near Skippy in a cargo bay set aside for him. In theory, we would be far enough away from the Sentinel, that we could jump away to safety if things went sideways. That worked when the Flying Dutchman was trapped by one of the damned things. Back then, Skippy had sent out a signal to lure it away from us, so it seemed reasonable that we could use a similar signal to lure it toward us. Or, toward the target zone. Was it possible the thing would hear the signal, look around and see our ship lurking a few lightminutes away, then jump in on our stupid heads?

Yes.

Was it possible the Sentinel could back trace the signal through the microwormhole, and detect Skippy’s presence?

Also yes.

A whole lot of things could go wrong, but let’s not focus on that, OK?

“Reed,” I addressed our chief pilot. “The priority here is for us to live to fight another day, got it? Punch us out of here if anything about the beer can’s idiotic plan isn’t work-”

“Hey!” Skippy protested. “You jerk, I should-”

“Understood, Sir,” Reed acknowledged.

“Start your music, Skippy,” I ordered, cinching my seatbelt a bit tighter.

“Music?” he tilted his head at me. “There isn’t any-”

“I was using slang, sorry. The signal, send out the signal.”

“Hmm. The signal was going to be just a lame ‘Beep beep’ sort of thing, but I could set it to one of my musical compositions. That is a great ide-”

“No, that is a terrible idea.”

“Why do you hate fun, Joe?”

“Oh for- Do whatever you like, as long as it isn’t stupid.”

“Your faith in me is truly inspiring. Commencing stirring operatic broadcast, now.”

Music, or something vaguely music-related, blared out of the bridge speakers.

“Skippy!” I shouted to be heard over the din. “We don’t need to hear it! Shut it off!”

“Ugh.” Mercifully, the speakers fell silent. “Why don’t you-”

“Just do your job, please?”

“Fine. But the next time you want to hear one of my compositions, it-”

“Let’s schedule that for just after the heat death of the universe, OK?”

“Joe, I hate you so much that-”

“Later, beer can. Are you getting any response?”

“Of course not, dumdum. It is way too early for- Ooooh, I got a nibble. It- Oh shit! Jump! Jump now. NO WAIT! DO NOT JUMP, it would tear the ship apart. Oh, crap, no, no, NO, I really screwed up this time.”

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

Either the Sentinel was a lot closer than Skippy expected, or the damned thing could move a lot faster than he remembered. Seconds after the signal began booming out from the comm node, echoing in higher dimensions, an Elder killing machine began to emerge directly on top of the comm node. The signal ceased immediately, as the communications node got absorbed into the thing. To be accurate, the Sentinel did not emerge on top, or below, or next to the comm node. It incorporated the node into itself, as it began to occupy the same area of local spacetime. Because Elder technology could do that, if it didn’t already sound scary enough.

While it absorbed the comm node, the Sentinel also had an iron grip on the microwormhole’s event horizon, and looked through it. In a panic, Skippy attempted to sever the connection by collapsing the microwormhole on our end.

It didn’t work. Worse, the microwormhole started to expand, to become a mini wormhole, growing larger and larger-

Two and a half lightminutes away, our missiles were not panicking. They were overjoyed to have such an important target, such a large target. Just the small section of Sentinel that emerged within the first seconds was immense, far larger than Valkyrie. Within three seconds, the thing spanned more than seven kilometers in our local spacetime, with more uncoiling out of the disturbing rip in reality.

Twenty six missiles surged forward under their own guidance. They didn’t engage their stealth fields because those generators had been removed as useless mass. They were using their active jamming systems not to confuse the enormous Elder machine’s sensors, but to confuse its brain. The missiles all broadcast Skippy’s best recollection of Elder identification codes, plus a few codes he extrapolated from what he knew such codes could be, plus a whole lot of wild guesses. It didn’t matter whether the codes were complete or accurate, all that was needed was for the enemy machine to hesitate for a few crucial seconds. To hold its defensive fire in case it was not authorized to shoot at the incoming objects, to let the missiles get close enough to deploy their weapons.

Twenty six missiles began the attack run together, knowing that once even part of a Sentinel commenced its emergence into local spacetime, it could not halt and then reverse the process immediately. Nor could it quickly run away, with part of itself acting as an anchor in local reality. The Sentinel would stand and fight right there, at least for the few seconds the battle would last. Twenty six missiles roared in at maximum acceleration, with Thor lagging slightly behind due to the extra mass of the payload he was carrying. That was part of the plan anyway, the other twenty five weapons participated only to clear the way for Thor to deliver his all-important ordnance, for even two dozen atomic-compression warheads, with their yields cranked up to ‘Eleven’, had no possibility of being more than a minor nuisance to the Elder machine.

Twenty six missiles raced in at top speed, kicking their boosters in to slam forward at  thousands of times the force of Earth’s gravity. Twenty five missiles were in the lead, coordinating their attack, jinking wildly side to side to throw off the aim of enemy fire, all the while calling out their peaceful intentions in every Elder communications scheme known to Skippy, and-

Thor cut off his booster before it was even halfway spent. His fellow warriors were exploding faster than he could keep track of. Not exploding, they simply ceased to exist. There was no explosion, no cloud of debris. Missiles were there, then they weren’t.

No, that wasn’t exactly true. Where powerful skip-killer missiles used to be, there were inert, harmless chunks of exotic matter, no longer traveling forward at high speed but motionless relative to the Sentinel.

Thor began the attack with twenty five comrades in arms, twenty five killers dedicated to one goal: clearing the way for him to strike the fatal blow. After less than a microsecond, he was accompanied by only seventeen HSM-201s, and the number dropped to less than a dozen Hornets faster than he could comprehend the data.

The attack was a complete failure. An unmitigated fiasco, another disaster caused by Skippy the Absent-Minded Idiot forgetting something, or a lot of things.

Thor’s programming told him to continue the attack.

His newly-reinforced sense of self told him that was bullshit. He would only be throwing his life away for nothing. Worse, the precious payload he carried would be lost, without having any opportunity to make a difference. It would be far better for him to live to fight another day, a day when he might have some chance to do something useful.

His booster could be refueled for another attempt, at some point in the future when they had an actual plan rather than uselessly throwing missiles at the most powerful weapon ever developed by the Elders.

Yes.

That made perfect sense.

The decision made, Thor flipped sideways and burned his booster at full power, curving around to miss the Sentinel, falling farther behind the other Hornets, hoping to get lost in the confusion of battle.

Running away was not a cowardly thing to do, it was the only sensible thing to do.

“Skippy!” I shouted, not making any attempt to conceal my absolute panic. “Shut down that wormhole!”

“I’m trying!” His avatar was fading in and out. “It’s too strong, it’s just too strong! Oh, I really screwed up this time! We’re,” he broke down sobbing. “We’re all gonna die. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

A soothing calm washed over me. In the chaos, I suddenly achieved perfect clarity. “No,” I said quietly. “We are going to die. You will survive.”

“W-what?” He stuttered.

“As long as you exist, the galaxy has a chance to try this again. Please get it right the next time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re going to sever that damned wormhole, from this end.” On my arm rest, I flipped up a cover, and tapped in a sequence.

“Sir,” Simms said softly, doing the same on her arm rest console.

“XO,” with my free hand, I patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I should have let you stay at Avalon.”

“Don’t make this any worse,” she looked away. “Initiating self-destruct sequence.”

“On my mark,” I had selected activation of our nukes, with the minimum countdown of five seconds. The microwormhole was still expanding, now nearly a full centimeter across on our end, and hard radiation was leaking out, flooding the cargo bay. A field had automatically clamped down around the bay, preventing deadly X-rays from bombarding the ship.

Not that it mattered.

“We’re doomed!” Skippy moaned, his avatar going fuzzy. “It’s got me! I can’t escape! We are all doomed!”

“Mark,” I said, twisting the knob on my console while Simms did the same on hers. The big main display lit up with a ‘5’.

Four.

“I am so, so sorry,” Skippy moaned, his avatar wavering and fading out.

Three.

Two.

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

One.

The console on my arm rest blinked out, dead. On the main display, a ‘1’ was frozen in place. “What the f-”

“We’re good, Joe,” Skippy somehow sounded gleeful about the situation. “Ha, ha! Whoo-hoo! Who da man? I’m da man! Go Skippy,” his avatar was doing a funky dance. “Go Skippy, go Skippy, go-”

“Skippy! Restore the self-destruct!” I slammed a fist down on my arm rest, which glimmered back to life, just as the holographic main display switched back to its normal mode.

And showed me that while the cargo bay occupied by Skippy was still flooded by lethal amounts of X-rays, the microwormhole was again micro, with the event horizon on our end leaking only a barely-detectable level of radiation. “Uh,” I said as an incredibly intelligent commentary on the situation, while very carefully turning the self-destruct control to the ‘Off’ position. The main display switched to an external view, showing that-

The Sentinel, or part of it, was slowly tumbling end over end. No longer coiling out of higher spacetime, no longer swatting our missiles like flies. No longer a threat to us, or anyone.

I reached over to tap Simms on the forearm, with a look toward her arm rest controls. She got my message, and secured the self-destruct sequence. The bridge crew were all looking at me, trying to decide whether it was time to celebrate. Rejoice that we had just killed a freakin’ Sentinel, against the odds.

“Beer can,” I glared at his now crisp and shiny avatar. “You got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

“OK, um, well, there is a whole lot of news, both good and bad.”

“Please, start with telling me that,” I jabbed a finger at the display, “freakin’ Sentinel is well and truly dead.”

“Yes.”

With any normal person, that assurance would have been good enough. With Skippy, I couldn’t trust he had bothered to check that the Elder killing machine really was dead, because maybe he started the process of scanning it, then got bored and lost interest. Or he was so impressed by his own awesomeness, he didn’t bother to inspect the thing at all. Or, he took my words literally, and was telling me what I wanted to hear, regardless of the truth. “Yes, meaning it is dead?”

“That’s what I said, dumdum.”

“You know it is dead, because you actually took the time to look at it?”

“Ugh. Yes, numbskull. Why are you harshing my buzz? Trust me, that thing is deader than the proverbial doornail. I killed it, Joe. Damn, if my awesomeness wasn’t already legendary, this epic achievement will-”

“We will decide whether this latest feat goes into your Hall of Fame. OK,” I clapped my hands. “We did it, people. Good job.”

The response, instead of fist pumping and exchanging high fives, was a muted murmuring around the bridge. People were shocked rather than joyful. They didn’t quite believe we had not only survived but succeeded, and they didn’t know how or why. All they knew, all I knew, is that one moment, our carefully planned operation was a total disaster, and the next moment, the Sentinel was dead. The expression on everyone’s face was a universal ‘WTF’?

 “All right, Skippy,” I spoke for the entire crew. “You need to tell us what the hell happened?”

“The plan worked, is what happened!” He managed to both include an implied ‘Duh’, and be insufferably smug at the same time.

“The plan- The plan failed, you ass. We were a second away from destroying the freakin’ ship, it-”

“Yes, thank you for that.”

“Thank- Skippy, what the hell are you talking about? The plan failed, the Sentinel tore apart all of our missiles.”

“Right, hee hee,” he chuckled, immensely pleased with himself. “Joe, the plan I told you about was a total failure, I expected that. Was counting on it, really. My actual plan worked to perfection. Partly thanks to you panicky monkeys putting on an Oscar-worthy performance.”

“You planned,” Simms rose halfway out of her seat. “For us to activate the self-destruct?” Man, I was pissed, but compared to the ship’s executive officer, I was only slightly miffed at him.

“Yes, sure,” he responded cluelessly. “I needed you monkeys to sell it for me.”

Simms sat back down, but her knuckles were white. “We were one second away from triggering the nukes.”

“Huh? Oh, no, not really. I would have stopped the countdown before the nukes went critical. The Sentinel severed the connection on its end with more than two seconds remaining. I just, you know, let it roll to be sure. Plus, it is so much more dramatic when the countdown clock goes to ‘One’, right?”

“XO,” I said quietly. In a role reversal, I had to restrain her. “Let the asshole explain. Then we can toss him out an airlock.”

She didn’t reply, other than with a curt nod of her head.

“All right, Skippy,” I took a breath. “The plan you told us about, the plan we discussed, the plan we war gamed, then ran something like a million simulations of, the plan I approved, was never the actual plan?”

“Sadly, no. It was your plan, but not the plan. Your plan was never going to work.”

“I am so going to kick your ass, you little-”

“Joe, in this case, I meant ‘sadly’ in the sense of, I wish I could have told you what I actually intended to do, but then you would have screwed everything up.”

“This had better be the best explanation, in the history of explanations.”

“It-”

“Like,” I wagged a finger at him. “In the Explanation Hall of Fame, the award for Explanation of the Year is named after your explanation of this shit, got it?”

“Jeez, Joe, don’t-”

“This explanation had better be stamped right on top of the big silver trophy.”

“Damn,” he muttered. “If you will shut your pie hole long enough for me to-”

“You have sixty seconds,” I tapped the stopwatch function on my zPhone. “Starting, now.”

“Attacking a Sentinel with missiles was never gonna work,” he blurted out. “Total waste of time. The only way to deliver the ordnance on target was for the Sentinel to handle the job for us. To do that, hee hee,” he chuckled. “I had to make it think we were mind-bogglingly stupid, which of course meant it had to think you monkeys dreamed up the plan. It also needed to think it had control of the microwormhole, and that we were all terrified it could take the ship apart piece by piece to satisfy its curiosity. It had to believe you were ready to destroy the ship, to prevent it from discovering our secrets.”

“Oh my G- You couldn’t have just told us the truth, and let us fake the self-destruct?!”

“Nope.”

“Can I get,” I held an index finger and thumb a half inch apart, “a little more detail on that ‘Nope’, please?”

“Ugh, fine. Sentinels are smart, Joe. They have an Elder AI at their core. Not a master control AI like me, but a Sentinel AI is pretty freakin’ smart. Once it got into the ship’s database, it learned everything it could about humans, and it used the ship’s internal sensors to monitor the crew. It was watching you, reading your blood pressure and brain waves and all the other biosigns your squishy monkey bodies can’t control or fake. You had to panic for real, and believe all the bullshit I said about how we were doomed, and truly intended to set off the self-destruct nukes. When the Sentinel saw that you believed your idiotic plan had failed, it released the microwormhole, to prevent blowback when our nukes exploded.”

“Oh, for,” I slumped back in my chair. “That’s it? Wait! I call bullshit on that. If it was in the ship’s database, then it knew about the energy virus, and-”

“No, it did not,” Skippy insisted, his ginormous hat bobbing side to side. “I firewalled off every reference to the energy virus, and planted fake records about an idiotic plan to attack with missiles equipped with conventional atomic-compression warheads. Plus, I altered the ship’s logs, so that we never encountered an energy virus after we escaped from the Roach Motel, and so we never went back to capture the virus.”

“What about-”

“Plus, I even altered video of karaoke night, when several very naughty crewmembers in the back of the room were talking about the energy virus, when they should have been listening to my amazing performance of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’.”

“I’d like to fly you to the Moon right now,” I muttered.

“Hey! You jerk, I should-”

“OK, let’s assume for a minute that I believe any of this bullshit, about you needing us to make the Sentinel think our attack failed. If the thing is dead, how did that happen?”

“We had a secret weapon,” his smugness was so irritating, I wanted to strangle him.

“Yeah, the energy virus, which was the original plan, so-”

“Oh, well, that too. I meant the other secret weapon: Thor the Cowardly Missile.”

“Thor the Coward- How could- You know what? I’m just gonna sit here while you talk your way out of this.”

“It’s simple, Joe. Using a missile to deliver the energy virus was never a realistic option. I selected Thor to carry the payload, because I knew he would bail at the first sign of trouble. A missile running away got the Sentinel curious about what the missile had that was worth protecting, and the actual warhead was concealed under a false image that appeared to be an Elder communications node. A very interesting, heavily-modified comm node. Just after the Sentinel severed its grip on the microwormhole, just before it expected Valkyrie to explode, it reached out and enveloped Thor, to capture the payload. The energy virus activated immediately when the warhead sensed it was inside the Sentinel, and, well, you see the result.”

“Holy shit. The virus killed a Sentinel in, less than two seconds?”

“Less than eight milliseconds, actually.”

“How the f- It took hours, days to drain power from the Dutchman!”

“Yes, that is because back then, the virus had to rely on our ship as a power source to expand and replicate itself. Compared to a Sentinel, even the Dutchman’s reactors are a relatively weak source of power, and not tuned to the optimal quantum state the virus is set up to consume. The energy virus deployed by Guardians was designed to kill Sentinels, in case they went rogue. I suspected that before, I know it now. Once Thor’s warhead released containment, the virus grew exponentially, as it had access to an almost unlimited power feed from higher spacetime. What you see out there,” he made the display zoom to highlight the fragment of Sentinel, “is just a segment that was literally cut off, when the Sentinel pulled back into its natural dimension of reality.”

“Pulled back?” Simms asked, alarmed as I was. “You mean, it is not really dead?”

“No. Yes. I mean,” Skippy cringed. “It is dead, everywhere. In higher spacetime, the exotic matter it is constructed of, lost its integrity.”

“You mean like,” I asked. “It consists of nanoparticles? Could it reassemble?”

“No,” he scoffed. “What remains of it is random particles, not even dust. Not even atoms. It is gone. The fragment of it in our local spacetime is a cold, inert lump of useless matter.”

“There’s nothing we could recover from it?” My interest was not in conducting a scavenger hunt for Sentinel components, I was afraid about other species cutting it apart and learning the secrets of its technology.

“There isn’t anything to recover, Joe,” he assured me.

“You were able to use part of the dead Sentinel in the Roach Motel to fix yourself,” I reminded him. “Why can’t one of the senior species harvest part of this one and-”

“That’s different. The fragment in the Roach Motel was ejected, when that Sentinel was attacked in higher spacetime. Here, our attack was based in local spacetime, and went up. The fragment here was Ground Zero for the expansion of the energy virus. What’s left over there is mostly a lump of carbon, iron and silicon. Anywho, blah, blah, blah about what happened here. I have a mixture of good and bad news that you need to know about. Give me five minutes to get my thoughts together, OK?”

“Five minutes in magical Skippy time?”

“No, I meant five minutes in slow monkey time.”

“We’re done here, then?”

“Yup. We can jump away any- Oh, shit. Damn it. I just detected someone else jumping away. A Maxohlx frigate was out there, at a distance of forty one lightseconds.”

“Crap! We told those assholes not to-”

“Yeah, surprise, surprise,” he sighed. “The rotten kitties couldn’t resist watching our fight with the Sentinel. Don’t worry, they didn’t see anything useful, it- Damn it, another Maxohlx ship just jumped away.”

“Shit. I warned them not to- It’s time to teach those furry assholes a lesson.”

“No, Joe,” Skippy held up a hand to stop me from doing something rash. “We don’t have time. Besides, we might need the kitties for the next phase.”

“Need them?” I had no clue what he could be talking about. “Reed,” I snapped my fingers. “Get us out of here, jump option Delta. Punch it.”

“Five minutes is up, Skippy,” I called from my office, after six minutes had gone by. “What have you got for us?”

“Wow,” his avatar blinked at me, like he had been sleeping. “That was fast. Sorry,” he covered his mouth with a hand as he imitated a yawn. “Ooh, the fight with the Sentinel wore me out. I had to make it think I was scared, and since, really, heh heh, I of course am not scared of anything, I couldn’t understand my character’s motivation. But, I powered through and-”

“We are all grateful for that,” I interrupted his boasting. “Give us an update,” I looked across my desk to Simms. “We killed one Sentinel. Did it send out a warning to the others, or-”

“No,” he shook his head. “That is in the ‘Good news’ column. I was able to stop it from sending out a distress call, or any sort of call. No other Sentinel knows we killed this one, although since we can’t count on the kitties to keep their stupid mouths shut, word about this will get out soon.”

“We better move fast, then,” I declared. “What is our next target?”

“If you’re asking which Sentinel we should hit with the energy virus, the answer is none. It won’t work, Joe. Or, it might work, but it would be a waste of our time. We only have enough virus left for one more attack, and while I was in contact with the Sentinel here, I learned there are seven of them currently active, and twenty two others in the process of coming out of hibernation.”

“Oh, shit. Almost thirty of the damned things? Where can we get enough energy virus to-”

“We can’t. That’s just one problem. The only source of that virus is in secure places like the Roach Motel, where we can’t go, and even if we could somehow survive getting in and out, with a massive supply of energy virus, it wouldn’t do us any good. Wouldn’t do enough to make a difference. Joe, Sentinels talk to each other. Somehow, they set up a crude communications system, after the Collective was shut down. It is slow and low bandwidth, and it uses wormhole networks so there are major gaps in coverage. But, it can get a message across the galaxy within a few days. They will inevitably hear that we killed one of them, even if they don’t know how. For sure, if we manage to kill a second one, the others will avoid us in the future. Unless they get together and hunt for us.”

I could feel the blood draining from my face. “Holy-”

“Are they a threat to Earth?” Simms asked the question I should have. Her face was even more ghostly pale than mine felt.

“I can’t answer that,” Skippy answered softly. “Eventually, yes, probably. The problem with predicting the actions of Sentinels is they aren’t supposed to decide what to do at all. Master control AIs like me are supposed to provide direction and targeting for them. They woke up this time, someone woke them up, and they are wandering around, acting according to their programming as best they can. The one I briefly had contact with was confused, it wasn’t right. If you think I have restrictions on my behavior, like not being able to fly starships that carry me, that is nothing compared to the restrictions built into the programming of a Sentinel. How they are managing to do anything at all is a complete mystery to me. Sure, they received an alarm signal to wake up, that I can understand. How any of them just decided to fly around, on their own, and strike targets on their own, makes absolutely zero sense. All I can say is, I noticed a very subtle alteration in the base instruction set of the one we killed.”

“Someone hacked into it?”

“No. Well, yes. Maybe. This is more like- Remember how I changed the library files of the Maxohlx ships we stranded outside the galaxy? I removed references to the number zero, to the entire concept of a ‘Zero’ function. What I found inside that Sentinel- I only had a very short time to dig around in its matrix before it reacted and shut me out- but what I found were very subtle changes to what you might call library files. Files that contain concepts such as ‘Up’ and ‘Down’, or how ‘Yes’ can bleed into ‘No’.”

“Bleed into-” I looked at Simms, who was as clueless as me. “What are you talking about?”

“Gray areas, Joe. ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are not always absolutes. Even expressed in crude binary fashion, a ‘Zero’ does not necessarily represent the complete absence of any value. For example, a system could be set up so that zero point four equals zero, while zero point six is assigned the value of one, get it?”

“OK, rounding numbers, yeah. How is-”

“The Sentinel I had contact with had its system altered so that its view of whether a proposed action is within, or outside, the limits of its restrictions, is defined more loosely than the original instruction set. Looser than it should be. Damn, I am super jealous of whoever did it. This is something I wish I’d thought of, and I do not understand how it was done! That’s why I needed five minutes of monkey time, I’ve been puzzling over that question. To help, I brought in Bilby, and he hasn’t been able to figure it out either. He agrees something was very wrong with that Sentinel, and he thinks it can only get worse. Joe, Jennifer, we could have a problem far beyond anything I imagined. Sentinels could be going rogue, with no constraints on their behavior. Whoever is responsible for tweaking their programming must know they are playing with fire. I can’t think of anything more reckless, more blatantly stupid, than allowing a superweapon to determine its own target set.” He paused, I think he was staring at me. “Joe?”

“Sir?” Simms prompted me.

“Huh?” Shaking the fog out of my head, I asked, “Thirty Sentinels?”

“That I know of,” Skippy said, because he is all about being a ray of sunshine. “Probably more than seven of them are active already. There is a significant time lag in the communications network they have set up.”

“Will all of them wake up?”

“Eventually? That is possible,” he frowned. “It is encouraging that so few of them are active. That tells me that not every Sentinel receiving the wake-up signal is responding.”

“Is that the good news you mentioned? The difference between thirty and a hundred is no difference at all. We are screwed.” Looking at Simms, I was hoping for encouraging words, for her to tell me to suck it up and get to work on fixing the problem.

She wasn’t looking back at me, or at Skippy. Her gaze was off to the side, to a blank wall of my office. Her eyes had the thousand-yard stare of a soldier who has seen too much.

I knew the feeling.

“Actually, no,” Skippy surprised me. “The good news is, I might have a way to take care of the problem. Of the immediate problem,” he added. “We still need to find the other Elder AI, the one who sent the signal. While I was briefly in contact with the Sentinel we killed, I was able to confirm that it was awakened by a signal sent from an Elder AI. Although, damn it, I still do not know which AI, or where the stupid thing is.”

I’d been disappointed too often to get my hopes up, especially when Skippy announced he had a fix for a major problem. He was so absent-minded, it was almost certain he had forgotten something.

Or, maybe not. He planned, set up and executed the operation to dangle Thor the Cowardly Missile as bait, without any help from filthy monkeys. That op worked well, and it worked because of lack of input from me. If he had proposed such a risky plan, I likely would have rejected it as unworkable. There was no way he could have known the Sentinel would take the bait rather than crushing Thor, like it crushed the other missiles. “You have, what, a super energy virus?”

“No. A signal woke them from hibernation. I think I can use another signal to send them all back to sleep.”

“What?” Simms leaned forward, her face inches from Skippy’s avatar. “You think?”

His avatar slid backward to the edge of the desk. “I’ve never actually done it before, so,” he shrugged. “But, I now understand the signal that began activating them. It was picked up by one Sentinel, and that one contacted the others.”

“This,” I shared a look with Simms. “Sounds too good to be true. All you need to do is send an order for them to go back into hibernation?”

“No. That would be too good. The problem is, I can’t send out the signal.”

“You can’t? Then how-”

“Well, heh heh, none of us are going to like this.”

“Oh, shit. Please tell me-”

“We need a Sentinel to originate the signal,” he said what I hoped he wouldn’t say.

“How the f- You don’t just plan to ask very nicely, do you?”

“No. This isn’t something a Sentinel would do willingly. It’s gonna require a hostile takeover.”

“Before you explain this idiotic plan of yours, please tell me whether this gets worse.”

“It does. Joe, to do this, we need a little help from our friends.”

“Our friends? The Jeraptha?” I guessed.

“No. I mean the always-helpful Maxohlx.”

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

Spoiler alert: it got worse. A lot worse.

First, Skippy’s idiotic plan, to use a Sentinel to send a Sleepytime signal to all the other Elder killing machines, required him to be in direct contact with one of the damned things. Like, he couldn’t extend his presence through a microwormhole. He couldn’t extend his presence much at all. His canister had to be within forty three kilometers of a freakin’ Sentinel.

Personally, I did not foresee any problems with that.

To make the situation even better, he could not risk getting in contact with any of the seven known Sentinels that were active, nor could he wait around for any of the ones that were in the process of waking up from their long hibernation. None of them would allow him to get close enough to do what he needed to do.

No, we could not target a nice, normal Elder killing machine.

We had to bring him into contact with a damaged, possibly insane Sentinel.

You know, the one we barely escaped from, when it had the Flying Dutchman trapped and unable to jump.

Fan-TAST-ic, right?

You haven’t heard the best part yet.

There was no way to order a Sentinel into hibernation, not even master control AIs like Skippy had that ability. They didn’t have that ability, even back when the Collective was active and all Elder AIs were working together and holding hands around a campfire. The Elders had not allowed their AIs to deactivate Sentinels, or to deactivate Elder starships, in order to maintain the integrity of their strategic triad. The set-up the Elders left behind required power to be shared between master control AIs, Sentinels, and starships, with none of the three able to take action against the others. So, AIs like Skippy not only were restricted from deactivating a Sentinel, the damned things lacked any feature that would send them into hibernation, other than when they individually decided that it was time to go nighty-night for a long nap.

Shit.

Skippy’s plan, and I am being super generous by using the word ‘plan’ to describe his whacky scheme to make every Sentinel want to go back to bed, was essentially to tell them they shouldn’t be awake at all. That the sound they heard in the middle of the night was nothing to worry about, so they should snuggle up with their Teddy bears and go back to dreamland.

Right.

I remember babysitting one of my cousins, when she was about four years old. It took two hours, reading three books to her, plus bribing her with juice and cookies which was a huge mistake, to get her to fall asleep. Then, when I thumped against the living room wall after tripping over a toy she left on the floor, she woke up. That time, it was forty minutes, another Doctor Seuss book, and a promise to play ‘dress up’ in the morning, before she drifted off again.

An hour later, a thunderstorm swept in, lighting up the house like a strobe light and shaking the place with booms of thunder. Did the storm keep her awake? No, it was gone in five minutes. But summer thunderstorms are exciting, and she was too pumped to do anything lame such as going back to bed.

We were still playing Go Fish when my aunt and uncle got back from Bangor at 2:30 in the morning.

The Merry Band of Pirates was not dealing with one over-stimulated four year old girl. Our opponents were sophisticated machines, designed to stomp out intelligent life, who found themselves awake in a galaxy filled with beings flying around in starships. Skippy somehow expected the Sentinels to ignore the target-rich environment, and go back to sleep after he gave them a glass of warm milk or something.

But wait!

You haven’t heard the absolute bestest part yet!

To have any hope of getting the job done, of getting the beer can in close contact with a Sentinel, we needed volunteers to distract the damned thing. Distract it, by keeping it busy snacking on a fleet of starships like they are a bowl of popcorn, while we snuck up on it.

There were only two species in the galaxy with the technology to get close enough to a Sentinel, that it has to take action to protect itself. The Rindhalu, who had superior technology, but who also took so long to make a decision, that they would still be debating our request when Sentinels were tearing apart the last habitable world in the Milky Way. And the Maxohlx, who would jump at the chance to sacrifice thousands of their frontline ships, just to get a chance to stab us in the back at their earliest opportunity.

Hey, I am not a fortune-teller like Nostradamus, but I do not foresee any problem with-

Heighdy-ho there, monkeys!

Tis I, Skippy the Magnificent.

Ignore everything Joe the Buzzkill said. You know what his real problem is?

Once again, he fails to Trust. The. Awesomeness.

What happens when we forget to Trust the Awesomeness, girls and boys?

That’s right: nothing good.

I am not called Skippy the Magnificent for nothing. I earned that nickname through my extreme and sustained awesomeness.

So, despite Joe worrying about every little thing as usual, I am confident in the plan, because it is my plan. Most of the time, I have to go along with one of Joe’s half-baked lunatic schemes, fearing that his squishy monkey brain had only the vaguest notion of what I need to do, to make the plan a success. You understand the important part of what I just said? Usually, I get stuck making one of Joe’s ignorant ideas work, and I have to deal with a million surprises along the way, because knucklehead Joe does not know what he is doing. This time, all I need to do is flawlessly execute my brilliant, meticulously-researched plan.

Plus, what I need to do is so simple, there is no way it can fail.

Allow me to explain.

Maybe get yourself a juicebox first.

Ready?

I do not need to make the Sentinels go back into hibernation. I don’t even need to persuade them that they want to go back to sleep.

All I need to do is show them that they should not have been awakened in the first place.

Simple, right?

Ugh.

OK, for those of us who are not experts in the architecture of Elder AI matrices, I will break it down Barney style. You will be amazed.

Before, I mentioned library files, as a crude way for monkeys to understand the very basic reference data that tells higher-level systems how to execute instructions. The Elders envisioned cases where Sentinels might receive orders that are garbled, or unclear, or just plain wrong. For their killing machines to know which potential orders are authorized, each set of orders includes authentication codes, which a Sentinel checks against a set of codes in its library files.

Do I plan to overwrite those library files, so a Sentinel will say ‘Hey, that signal for me to wake up was bogus’?

Sadly, no.

My stupid restrictions prevent me from accessing those library files.

And, damn it, those files can’t be altered anyway.

Ok, then my alternative is to hack into the copy of the signal stored by a Sentinel, to alter the authentication codes there, so a Sentinel will realize that signal was, in fact, not authorized.

Unfortunately, I can’t do that either.

Well, I could, but that would only work on the one Sentinel I had access to. All the others out there would still have the original copy of the signal. Those orders are stored in a section of memory that is read-only. The only way to hack into it is for me to get into direct contact with every Sentinel out there, which would not be healthy for me, and very likely fatal to the crew of Valkyrie.

Are you following me so far? The library files can’t be messed with. There is no way for me to screw with the stored copies of the wake-up signal. The result is Skippy: FAIL, right?

LOL, no.

How?

It’s simple.

I know something that Sentinels don’t know.

Hell, I know something the Elders didn’t know.

Let that thought sink into your thick monkey skull.

You see, the Elders never had much need for cybersecurity, since they had no external threats. Well, that’s not quite true, but we’ll cover that subject another time, OK?

How does a Sentinel compare the codes in a received order, with the authentication codes stored in its library?

It uses a subroutine to do the job.

Cool, you might think! All I have to do is hack into that subroutine, and tell it the authentication of the wake-up signal is bogus.

You might think that, because you are an ignorant monkey.

The Elders are not stupid. They locked that subroutine from being altered.

Then, I’m screwed, right?

No. What I know is that the subroutine has its own memory stack, to temporarily store copies of the codes it is comparing, but I don’t have access to that memory either.

What I do have access to, because the Elders never imagined anyone hacking into one of their supreme killing machines, is the decryption scheme, that translates stored orders into executable commands.

And that scheme has a handy-dandy update feature, which operates entirely beneath the conscious awareness of a Sentinel.

“All ships are in position,” the commander of the Maxohlx task force reported. She spoke via voice message, rather than a direct ping to the admiral’s cranial implant.

“Acknowledged,” Admiral Reichert responded from his flagship, irritated.  He knew the decision to use crude speech was intended so everyone in the control centers of both ships could hear.

The commander had reservations about throwing away her ships, and the lives of her crews, in what was very likely a useless gesture. Many warships of the Maxohlx Hegemony had already been lost to Sentinels, and now Reichert proposed, had ordered, a task force consisting of over four hundred ships to act as bait, under the direction of the enemy.

The operation was foolish. If the situation were not so desperate, Reichert might have been accused of treason for sending so many ships to their doom.

The situation was desperate. Four days after the humans had apparently disabled a Sentinel at Peenie, another Elder killing machine had struck a Maxohlx colony world. Twelve million subjects of the Hegemony died when their planet was torn apart by massive tidal forces. Leadership of the Maxohlx had still hesitated to cooperate with the request for assistance by the humans, until Reichert stated he viewed the operation as a valuable opportunity to observe both a Sentinel and an Elder AI in action. And possibly, just possibly, to capture that Elder AI, if the massive killing machine smashed Valkyrie. As he expected it would.

The humans had gotten lucky the first time. How they disabled the first machine, Hegemony scientists and AIs had no idea, the sensor data was woefully inadequate. Missiles had been involved somehow, but they had to be no more than a decoy. The missiles were all crushed anyway, with no evidence any of them had even been able to detonate their warheads.

According to General Bishop, the purpose of the upcoming operation was to send all the Sentinels in the galaxy back into hibernation, an attempt the human leader idiotically described as ‘playing for all the marbles’.

Once again, Reichert could not believe that his people were looking to humans for salvation.

However badly Bishop described the desperate operation to call off the killing machines, he was correct that if the crew of Valkyrie failed, it would very likely be the end of all life in the galaxy, or at least the beginning of the end.

Whether the operation succeeded or failed, the senior leadership of the Hegemony had given very clear orders to Reichert: it was time to end the ability of humans to interfere in the affairs of their superiors.

The Hegemony was ready to pay whatever price was necessary to end the human threat, and restore the Maxohlx to their rightful place of power.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

“Kong,” I called to his holographic image, floating in the main display tank of Valkyrie’s bridge. Skippy had told me we needed the Maxohlx to act as bait, to attract the Sentinel. I told him we also needed the Flying Dutchman, to watch our backs, and also just to watch. Even if Skippy’s monstrously iffy plan worked, and magically deactivated all the active Sentinels, that did not mean Valkyrie would survive. Skippy admitted he thought the prospects for our mighty battlecruiser coming through the encounter intact were fifty-fifty at best, and really, he was guessing. He had no idea what conditions would be like once we got close enough to a Sentinel for Skippy to do his thing. He was going to be fine if the ship was torn apart, although that was another thing he was wildly guessing about.

How do I know Skippy was not optimistic about Valkyrie being in one piece, or even several recognizable pieces, after a close encounter with an Elder killing machine? That’s easy. That traitorous little asshole requested all his cool memorabilia, including the priceless Elvis shirt, be transferred to the Dutchman.

I suppose I should be honored that he requested the ‘Velppy’ painting I made for him, of Skippy on velvet, to also go over to Chang’s ship.

That really did not make me feel better about the situation.

“Are you ready?” I asked the guy who I had first met on Paradise, during preparation for our promotion ceremonies. That was a bogus, publicity stunt promotion for me, but a well-deserved one for him.

“Are you ready?” He asked, a smile stretching his mouth, but his eyes weren’t smiling. He looked worried, and it did make me feel better that part of his worry was for me personally. We had been through a lot of shit together. Recently, I had insisted he retain command of the Dutchman, when UNEF was nervous about a Chinese officer being in control of one of our most important assets. Maybe me vouching for him made a difference, or maybe UNEF just recognized that the Chinese conspirators had decided they couldn’t trust Chang to participate in their plot to stab us in the back.

“Ready as we can be,” I shrugged. Just before realizing that, perhaps showing my lack of confidence in view of the bridge crew, was not my best idea. Ah, whatever. The ship was operating with a skeleton crew, all volunteers. That wasn’t exactly true, as the entire crew had volunteered to remain aboard. I only accepted those key personnel who might actually be able to do something useful, something that might make a difference between success and failure. Ships normally carry enough crew to provide coverage for multiple duty shifts, plus additional personnel for damage control. The encounter with the Sentinel would be short enough that we didn’t need to plan for a relief crew, and any damage done by a freakin’ Sentinel was not something that could be fixed by a senior chief with a wrench. Not even if that senior chief was supplied with a full pot of coffee.

“Joe,” he looked away for a second, a gesture I recognized as his attention being caught by someone in the Dutchman’s CIC talking to him. He nodded, and turned back to me. “Are you sure you have considered all the alternatives?”

“All the ones that don’t involve doing nothing while these damned things rampage across the galaxy, yeah.”

He pursed his lips. “What bothers me is, this op is Skippy’s idea.”

“Hey!” the beer can protested.

“Are you sure,” Chang leaned forward, staring intently at Skippy’s avatar. “that you haven’t forgotten something?”

“Well, I-”

“It is my experience that you always forget something.”

“That’s not fair,” I came to Skippy’s defense for some stupid reason. “He planned and executed the op to kill the first Sentinel, all on his own.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Skippy’s smugness factor went to Eleven. “I didn’t forget anything that time.”

“All right,” Kong conceded. “That is one-”

“I mean,” Skippy muttered, because he simply does not know when to keep his mouth shut. “I did not expect the stupid thing to force the microwormhole open, but that is not something I forgot. I just didn’t know it could do that. Maybe I should have known, I guess. Like, I did know Sentinels have access to that type of technology, so-”

“Skippy,” I stopped him before he could dig the hole he was in any deeper. “Please shut up.”

“But-”

“Trust me on this.”

“Okey-dokey. Anywho, I just received a ping from the commander of the Maxohlx task force. They’re ready for our signal.”

“You know,” Chang squinted at me. “The kitties will stab you in the back the first chance they get.”

My answer to that was another shrug. “I’d be worried if they didn’t.”

“You would?”

“Sure. If they didn’t try to stab us in the back,” I explained, “I would wonder what worse thing they have planned.”

“Ah, gotcha. Joe, if this doesn’t work-”

“If this doesn’t work the first time, you know what to do. Find Skippy, and try again.”

“Check,” he said, and gave me a thumbs up.

I returned the gesture. “Start the countdown on my mark. Mark.”

Three minutes later, we jumped, in coordination with the Flying Dutchman, and several hundred Maxohlx warships.

“It’s heeeeeere,” Skippy announced, about six hours after we emerged in the target search zone. The clusters of Maxohlx ships scattered around us had been hammering at space with their quantum resonators, which supposedly was to call a Sentinel, but really had absolutely no effect. Why had I instructed the rotten kitties to fill the area with quantum resonance, if it didn’t do anything useful? Because, for a change, I was thinking long-term, making plans rather than reacting to events. Anyway, I’ll explain that later.

If I can.

“Alert the Dutchman,” I ordered, clenching my fists in my lap and focusing on keeping my voice calm and steady. Despite the gut-wrenching terror I felt.

“Already did it,” Skippy reported. “Ah, damn it, as expected I can’t pinpoint its location. The effect is strong enough that the Maxohlx will also have detected its presence, unless they are all asleep over there.” One risk we had taken was Skippy explaining to the kitties how to adjust their sensors to detect a Sentinel in the area. It was only a minor tweak to their existing sensor suite, basically tuning them to look for a very specific pattern in the background radiation, but it was a capability the Maxohlx didn’t have before. There was a small possibility the kitties could expand on the information Skippy gave them, and not only significantly upgrade their sensors, but also make their sensor jamming more effective. They might be able to use that upgraded capability against us someday but honestly, I am so far past worrying about either of the damned senior species. Compared to the threat of Sentinels rampaging across the galaxy, even the full might of the Maxohlx Hegemony seemed no more than an annoyance. “Destroyer squadron Alpha should be attempting to jump soon,” Skippy added. He was repeating information we already knew, and that was shown on the main display. The bridge crew didn’t need him blah blah blahing at us, it was a sign of how nervous he was.

My own rattled nerves manifested in my hands trembling slightly, which is why I kept them in my lap.

Two and a half minutes later, the four ships of Alpha squadron emerged in their designated zone, about six lightseconds from our position. At intervals of seventy four seconds, the squadrons we designated as Bravo and Charlie appeared near us, transmitted recognition codes we really didn’t need, and waited.

Seventy four seconds after Charlie squadron arrived, nothing happened. We waited, and waited, but there was no sign of Delta squadron. Echo and Foxtrot squadrons arrived on schedule.

“Well,” Skippy concluded. “That went about as expected.”

He meant, the six destroyers of Delta squadron went nowhere. Their drives failed to form jump wormholes, just like we experienced aboard the Dutchman when the same Sentinel had us trapped. That is how we knew the location of the Sentinel. Or, hopefully we knew where it was, the damned thing could have moved.

“Uh,” I hesitated. “Skippy? This is the same Sentinel we encountered, right? The damaged one?”

“Yes,” he didn’t make any attempt to hide his annoyance. “Before you pester me with stupid questions, I can tell the difference between Sentinels, and this one is particularly distinctive.”

“Mammay,” I called to our gunnery officer. “Confirm all weapons secured.”

“Confirmed,” he said. “All weapons secured.”

None of the weapons aboard our mighty ship posed a threat to a Sentinel, and I was concerned about an accidental launch, or a hot weapon getting triggered by some weird effect when we got close to the Sentinel. Our remaining supply of energy virus was in a containment canister, at a location only we knew, safely far away. This time, we didn’t want to kill a Sentinel, we wanted to use it.

“XO? Any thoughts?” I wanted to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything.

Her eyes flicked only briefly to her console before answering. “All stations report ready.”

There wasn’t any legitimate reason for me to delay. “Skippy, signal the Maxohlx, it’s showtime. Uh, add that we salute their courage, something like that.”

“Can I assume you want me to say it ironically?” Skippy asked.

“No,” I shook my head. “Not this time. They may be assholes, but they’re not cowards.”

“Right. Signal is away.”

Over the next minute, the destroyer squadrons, the enemy squadrons, jumped away. That started a countdown, to when all ships of the task force were supposed to jump to the position of squadron Delta. And open fire to attract the attention of the Sentinel, or at least act belligerently if they couldn’t pinpoint a target to shoot at. Back when the Dutchman was trapped, we had never actually seen the thing. For Skippy to do, whatever the hell he needed to do, we had to be within forty three kilometers, so we needed to know exactly where the stupid thing was. By ‘where’, I mean where part of it manifested itself in our local spacetime.

Why is everything we do so complicated?

Since from our position several lighthours away, we couldn’t tell whether the Maxohlx had commenced their diversionary attack or not, we had to trust they were doing what they promised to do. We weren’t blindly trusting them to play their role, they had a significant self-interest in helping us get Skippy close to the damaged Sentinel. I mean, a self-interest beyond the obvious of potentially saving their own asses by hopefully assisting us to put the Sentinels back into hibernation. They also very much wanted to know how we did it, so they could learn and possibly acquire such technology for themselves.

I have bad news for them about that: fuhgetaboutit. Whatever Skippy did, it wouldn’t be detectable to any sensor aboard the Maxohlx ships. Our own ship, even Bilby, would not have any idea what Skippy was doing, other than by him telling us what was going on.

Anyway, we waited for the countdown clock to, you know, count down to the time for us to jump. Having exactly nothing useful to do made me painfully aware of my own anxiety.

“Hey, Joe,” Skippy whispered in my earpiece. “If this goes sideways-”

 “I know,” I said loud enough for the bridge crew to hear. “You want to say, it has been an honor serving with us.”

“Oh, um,” he stumbled, speaking to everyone. “That too. I was going to say, if this goes sideways, I wish I had put all my cool stuff somewhere more safe than the Dutchman.”

“You- You little shithead.”

“I’m just sayin’, the Dutchman will be exposed to danger also, so it is not the best place to secure my-”

“Skippy,” I was relieved to have something to think about. “If we do survive this, I am going to wear your ‘Blue Hawaii’ Elvis shirt.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I’m going to wear it to the gym, every day for a month.”

“Gahhh,” he gagged. “Joe, that is an important cultural artifact. Think of the-”

“Jump option Charlie in,” Fireball Reed counted down in a raised voice, “three, two, one, and-”

We emerged within two kilometers of the target coordinates, a lack of accuracy that would have bothered Skippy, except with the Sentinel creating spatial distortion in the area, a two klick radius was the best we could hope for. A moment later, the Flying Dutchman popped out of an event horizon half a kilometer away.

What a mess.

There was no need for sophisticated sensors to detect the Sentinel, it was right there. At a distance of nineteen lightseconds was the disturbing, creepy, rippling tentacle of a Sentinel, still slowly uncoiling from the higher plane of existence it normally occupied. That was good news, it was in the process of emerging into our local spacetime, instead of retreating from the Maxohlx furious assault. Furious was a good way to describe the action of our enemies. Their ships were firing every weapon they had at the Elder machine, pouring petawatts of directed energy at the target, flinging railgun darts and launching swarms of missiles. To my amazement, the attack was having an effect on the Sentinel. There were chunks of debris floating around the arm or tentacle or whatever you call it, chunks made of the same exotic substances as the Elder machine, and isolated patches of gray on its black surface. The Maxohlx had struck it, wounded it. However, the combined effect was no more than a bee sting to the massive entity, and the damage must have occurred in the first salvos of the battle, for as I watched, all incoming fire was being blocked or deflected away. Missiles were being crushed, maser beams were somehow made to curve away from the target, railgun darts halted dead in flight.

And the Sentinel was striking back. It was either angry or curious about an attack that had to be unexpected, my guess is that was why it wasn’t retreating. Why should it? Even several hundred senior-species frontline warships posed no serious threat to it. The remains of warships that had been casually torn apart demonstrated the Sentinel, even damaged in a battle eons ago, could do whatever it wanted. A battleship was being twisted apart, as if the Elder machine was curious to see how much torque the ship’s internal structure could take. A heavy cruiser’s armor plating was being peeled back in a line from nose to tail, the massive plates popping loose under an unseen force.

Hell.

No technology existing in the galaxy had any chance of affecting the damned thing, other than another Sentinel.

And possibly one absent-minded beer can.

“Skippy?” I prompted him. Everything I described of the battle, I saw in two seconds or less, as the ship’s sensors reset from our short jump. We had no time to waste.

“Working on it,” he snapped, irritated.

Instead of urging him to work faster, I kept my mouth shut. He was busy establishing a flat area of spacetime immediately around the ship. The effect would not be enough to allow Valkyrie to jump away to safety. Fortunately, we didn’t want to jump away, we intended to jump in the opposite direction. Hopefully, it would not expect us to jump at all, and certainly not to emerge closer to it.

“Done, go!” he shouted.

After a very brief glance to confirm the jump coordinates would not have us emerging inside the target, Reed pressed a button on her console to initiate a tunnel through spacetime. Immediately, her hand jerked away as alarms blared and warning lights flashed, then she jabbed the override button. “Wha-”

 “No! No no no no-” Skippy shrieked.

Too late.

CHAPTER FORTY NINE

“Skippy!” The bridge lights were blinking on and off, the main display was just plain dead, artificial gravity was fading, and I just felt, wrong. Like the atoms of my body no longer wanted to be attached to each other. Through a splitting headache and a wave of nausea, I choked out, “What the hell-”

“Joe, I got good news and bad news. My attempt to hack into this Sentinel’s matrix appears to have succeeded. What I do not know is whether that will have any effect on others of its kind, nothing I can do about that now. Bad news is, we’re trapped. The Sentinel has us caught in some sort of null-space field, basically a bubble where the laws of physics that govern your local spacetime don’t work anymore. The ship’s structure is coming apart, I’m trying to compensate but-”

“Get us out of here!”

“I can’t. None of the ship’s systems operate properly in this bubble. Joe, please shut up, we don’t have much time. This Sentinel is going into hibernation, and it is pulling us in with it! There is nothing I can do to stop the process, I fear that other objects in the area could be pulled in also.”

“Get a message,” I fought my rebellious stomach. “To Chang.”

“Nagatha!” Chang kept his eyes riveted on the Flying Dutchman’s bridge display. “What happened? Where did they go?”

“I do not know. Valkyrie jumped, I do not- Oh, that is not good.”

“What is that?” Chang asked, half rising from his chair in horror.

“One moment,” the ship’s AI pleaded. “It appears the Sentinel detected the far end of Valkyrie’s jump wormhole, and moved it. The event horizon was repositioned, and the wormhole forced open while Skippy tried to kill the power feed. The ship was pulled through, into that.”

“What is it?”

Dancing near the tip of the Sentinel’s tentacle was a glowing orb, flickering through all colors of the visible spectrum, pulsing as it expanded and contracted, slowly drawing closer to the Elder machine.

“It appears to be some sort of energy field, I- Skippy is sending a message to us. It is, extremely low bandwidth. Something like Morse code,” she added, surprised. “The message is,” she paused. “RUN?”

Senior Colonel Chang was torn, though he knew his ship could not do anything to help the trapped Valkyrie. Running away just felt wrong, no matter what the circumstances. The mission. The Flying Dutchman’s mission was to observe and report. They had observed. They couldn’t report unless they survived. The Maxohlx, knowing that something had gone horribly wrong, were already breaking off their attack, those ships capable of moving under their own power beginning to turn and burn while they still could. Ships, and shattered pieces of ships, that were closer to the Sentinel were being pulled toward it, as a distortion expanded around the Elder machine, and its outline wavered and became indistinct. “Pilot, get us out of here!” Chang ordered.

Awkwardly, for the Dutchman Version Five was still not a nimble spacecraft, the former star carrier spun around and surged away at maximum power, weaving to keep distance from the Maxohlx ships that were also flying outward.

And painting the Dutchman’s hull with their targeting sensors.

“The rift is shrinking, shrinking, gone,” Nagatha reported with a catch in her voice.

“Is there any sign of Valkyrie?” Chang asked hopefully, his eyes focused on the bridge display. The Maxohlx had launched missiles at his ship, so far without success, as Nagatha’s command of the point-defense system had those guns picking off the incoming weapons before they could do any damage. The enemy had to know their missiles were unlikely to stop the human starship, all they were trying to do was slow the Dutchman’s progress, so it would fall within range of the damping fields projected by the leading Maxohlx ships. It was a race, the Dutchman was faster than anything other than the pursuing destroyers, but the enemy ships were coming in at an angle, preventing the Dutchman from racing away in a straight line. The wildcard that no one could control was the distortion generated by the Sentinel, it also prevented ships from jumping.

Now the Sentinel was gone.

“No sign of Valkyrie. Seventeen Maxohlx ships were also pulled into the rift, I am not detecting any remnant of their presence either. Colonel Chang, I believe we must consider Valkyrie to be lost. The ship, the crew, will not survive the conditions in that layer of spacetime.”

“Skippy could survive, though? He told us most of his mass is in another dimension.”

“Most of his mass is there, yes, however, his connection to our local spacetime has been severed. He has lost what he called his ‘anchor’ in this layer of reality. I am afraid,” she choked up. “They are all lost to us.”

Chang stiffened, aware the eyes of is crew were on him. “We fight on, then. Nagatha, have you been able to map the distortion effect?” She didn’t answer immediately. “Nagatha?” He prompted softly.

“Excuse me, Colonel Chang,” she said through sniffles, as if the AI had been sobbing. “I am experiencing, difficulties.”

“We all are,” he assured her. “We are a team, Nagatha. We will get through this together.”

“Yes,” she sniffled again. “The distortion effect is fading. Recommend we adjust course as noted.”

He glanced at the display. The disruption field was unevenly distributed, she was directing the ship toward an area where the effect was weaker. According to her analysis, flying to that location would allow the Dutchman to jump almost three minutes earlier than the pursuing Maxohlx ships. “Pilot, adjust course. Nagatha, does the enemy have the ability to map the distortion effect?”

“Yes, though not with my level of accuracy. They will, however,” she warned, “see our course adjustment, and follow us.”

“Let them try,” he laughed quietly. His ship’s engines were running at one hundred five percent, in danger of overheating. It was a risk he was willing to take, to keep ahead of the certain death behind and around them. “Calculate a jump to-”

“Colonel,” she interrupted. “The Maxohlx commander is trying to contact you.”

“The commander? Her ship was destroyed by the-”

“Not the task force commander. Admiral Reichert.”

“He is here?” There had been no mention of the Hegemony’s supreme military leader being on the scene. Why had the famously arrogant Reichert concealed his presence? Bishop had communicated only through, whatever her name was, Chang couldn’t recall. It didn’t matter. “Where is he?”

“His ship is at a distance of three lightseconds,” she highlighted a dot on the display.

“Hmm,” Chang grunted. The undisputed leader of the Hegemony military had kept his flagship at the rear, farthest from the Sentinel. He must have known most of the task force would be destroyed. To retain control of the battle, a commander has to be alive, so Reichert had made the correct decision.

Still, it took a very coldly professional person to watch his people die, and do nothing.

Chang prepared himself to be pissed off. He couldn’t imagine experiencing any other emotion when talking with one of the galaxy’s greatest assholes. “Play the message. Audio only.”

“Human,” the disdain was clear, even through the translator. “Our business here is concluded, therefore our ceasefire agreement is terminated.”

Chang’s mind automatically responded with the Chinese equivalent of ‘Ya think?’ when he felt the deck rock slightly, as the point-defense system exploded another incoming missile. Or more than one. How should he respond? A brief smile flashed across his face. WWBD. What would Bishop do?

Imagine that.

“Admiral Reichert, one phase of the operation has been concluded successfully, with assistance from your valiant people,” he reminded himself not to gag as he spoke the words. The crews of the task force ships had been insanely brave to attack a Sentinel, it was not their fault that their leadership were cruel assholes. “There is no reason for hostilities,” he added, watching the clock in the bottom left of the display, that counted down to Nagatha’s estimate of when the ship could jump away.

Carrying on a conversation with a three second delay in each direction was awkward, even more so than if the delay was several minutes. With a longer delay, he would have recorded a lengthy message, and took his time responding. With each side hearing the other’s words with only a three second lag, it was instinctive to speak as if it were a realtime conversation.

“The operation is over,” Reichert’s reply came six seconds later, telling Chang that his opponent knew exactly what he wanted to say. “As is the time when your species is allowed to recklessly interfere in events of this galaxy. Your usefulness to us is over, thus we will not tolerate your existence any longer. No doubt you will wish to protest uselessly, so I will explain the situation in simple terms that even you can understand. If the Skippy entity failed here, Sentinels will inevitably ravage the galaxy, destroying all life. In that case, we will assure that humanity is the first species to become extinct. If the Skippy entity’s efforts were successful, and the Sentinels currently active go back into hibernation, that gives all of us only a short reprieve. Your people foolishly planted Elder weapons in our territory, on timers that only the Skippy can reset. Since he is now gone, the timers will expire, and there will be only two possibilities. Either the activation of Elder devices causes Sentinels to awaken again, or it does not. Again, if the actions of humans are responsible for causing ancient machines to scour the galaxy, we will assure your people are the first to die. If triggering Elder weapons does not alert Sentinels, then,” he paused. “Your threats against us are impotent, and there is nothing to stop us from removing humans from existence, eliminating any future threat you may pose. There is no potential future in which we allow humanity to continue.” Another pause. “I await your response.”

Chang licked his lips while he thought. Whatever he said, he could not take too long. A lengthy delay would be seen as weakness. “You are assuming that Skippy is permanently lost to us. You can’t know that to be true.”

“I don’t have to,” Reichert said immediately. “You know the Skippy is gone. You would never be fleeing the area, if there were any hope of recovering the entity.”

“Shit,” Chang breathed, lifting his thumb off the transmit button. The damned Hegemony admiral was correct. He had been played. The display was showing the distortion around the ship was weakening rapidly, while damping fields extending from Maxohlx ships were encroaching. “Nagatha? Can we jump?”

“If current conditions remain stable, we can jump in seven seconds.”

Seven seconds. Six. There wasn’t anything useful he could say during that short time, and he would not risk his ship and crew by delaying for no good purpose. “Pilot, jump option Bravo, execute when ready.”

The Flying Dutchman disappeared, to emerge sixteen lighthours away. A short jump, to avoid straining the drive coils.

“Status of the drive?” Chang asked.

“Nominal,” Nagatha’s reply was terse, her voice still strained with emotion.

“Plot a course to the,” he checked the display. “Wormhole designated Gamma 378.”

“We are not going to FOB Jiayuguan? But the-”

“Jaguar will be safe for a while longer, no matter what happens. The Maxohlx now plan to conduct a direct attack on Earth, soon. Reichert would not have told me their plan, if they thought we had any possibility of stopping them. We need to warn our homeworld.”

“Colonel, both of the senior species already have established a blockade of your world, and we can’t do anything to lift that blockade. How can we prevent an attack?”

“I don’t know,” he took a breath, then added, “yet. We are going to try.”

Kinsta burst into his boss’s office aboard the ECO cruiser It Never Happened. “Sir, another one,” he blurted out excitedly.

Captain Scorandum choked on the beverage he had just imbibed, slapping the desk with a claw. “Kin-” He choked again, catching his breath. “Kinsta, unless you are inquiring whether I want another drink,” he looked down in dismay at the stain on the front of his uniform. The nanofabric would mostly clean itself, so the liquid dribbling down toward his thorax was  only briefly embarrassing. “This had better be extremely important.”

“Another Sentinel is confirmed to have gone into hibernation,” Kinsta didn’t even blink, knowing by that time that his boss was more bark than bite. “This one was in the middle of an attack on a Torgalau mining colony. It somehow used the magnetic field of the planet to induce quakes that were tearing the world apart, when it suddenly halted, pulled back into the spacetime rift it came from, and disappeared. It happened within a standard day of the three other Sentinels we know about, also apparently going back into hibernation. That can’t be a coincidence. They did it! The humans somehow deactivated all the Sentinels!”

“That we know of,” Scorandum grunted.

“Sir.”

His aide’s disappointment was so evident, the ECO captain took pity on him. “Kinsta, this is indeed most excellent news.”

“Good, then-”

 “To a point. In case you didn’t read the fine print of the wagers you placed, Central Wagering will not declare the matter settled until it is confirmed that there are no Sentinels active in the galaxy.”

“Yes, it may take a few weeks for data to arrive from remote areas, then-”

“No. You aren’t listening. Central Wagering, which, after all, gets paid by skimming the profits of bookies and therefore protects them, will not authorize payout until it is confirmed there are no Sentinels active, anywhere. Not just in the obvious, highly-populated, well-traveled places. They will use any rumor of a Sentinel sighting, and there will be many of them, to delay settling the issue. Even if, if, what you said is true and the humans accomplished a miracle, it will likely be years, even decades, before Central Wagering is forced to issue a closure statement.”

“Oh, oh,” Kinsta sputtered, “that is-”

“Admirably clever, yes. You do know that the Ethics and Compliance Office was originally part of Central Wagering, right? Before the Fleet saw that our unique skill set could be better used to benefit society as a whole.”

“I knew that,” Kinsta’s antennas twitched, agitated. “I didn’t know-”

“You didn’t listen to me,” Scorandum chided his aide. “I told you those wagers were a losing proposition.” He had briefly considered placing a wager, mostly for amusement, but saw the odds being offered were insulting.

Since the terrifying news that the first Sentinel was awake and active, the best action available, really the only action anyone wanted to talk about, was whether humans could stop the Elder killing machines. There were numerous side bets about whether humans were responsible for awakening the ancient terrors, but everyone agreed that would be difficult to prove, unless the humans were stupid enough to admit their culpability. There were wagers available about that, also. But the money pouring in, faster than bookies could adjust their odds, was about whether civilization in the galaxy would survive. Or not.

The money was heavily on the ‘survival’ side. After all, the betting public knew that if Sentinels wiped out all life, bookies would never have to pay out, those sleazy bastards.

Scorandum had to agree that taking money from suckers, and never having to pay out, was a solid business plan.

Jeraptha society had not seen such frantic wagering action since the astonishing revelation that humans were flying the ghost ship, and had gotten up to a whole lot of other nonsense that previously had been considered impossible. The Central Wagering Office back then had briefly paused taking any new action, while bookies adjusted to the new reality. First, many well-respected and experienced bookies saw their entire business wiped out overnight, forcing Central Wagering to step in, to uphold the integrity of the wagering system by making good on some extremely long-odds prop bets that had paid off with spectacular results. Central Wagering had to request an immediate and massive bailout from the federal government, resulting in cutbacks to even vital services. Some battlegroups found themselves confined to orbit, as the government temporarily lacked the funds to pay for fuel.

While waiting to see if Central Wagering would extend credit to rebuild their most honorable businesses, the bookie community collectively sat around stunned, drinking copious amounts of adult beverages, and asking each other their equivalent of ‘WTF’. Next, they sank into a deep depression that was possibly not helped by the adult beverages they’d consumed. Then, they agreed that the definition of ‘improbable’ they relied on to calculate odds was perhaps not entirely accurate, and perhaps was even totally fucking useless. Finally, they assisted Central Wagering’s powerful AIs to revise the algorithms that defined what was and was not possible, to account for pesky humans who had screwed up a good thing for everyone.

Unfortunately, while the bookies were happy that they would not again be wiped out by whatever stupid thing the humans did next, the wagering public took longer to mentally adjust to the new, and much less favorable, odds they were being offered. The economy plunged into a recession as the public began withholding money, or placing wagers with sketchy, unregistered bookies whose action was not backed by Central Wagering.

Fortunately, several well-publicized scandals, in which black market bookies disappeared with money they took from suckers, reminded the public why Central Wagering had been set up in the first place, and Jeraptha society began returning to normal.

Remembering his part in the Great Recovery, as it was called, made Uhtavio Scorandum smile. The Ethics and Compliance Office had been temporarily assigned to assist Central Wagering, by posing as unregistered bookies, to demonstrate the value of the guarantees offered by Central Wagering.

The best part of that assignment was, after the taxes imposed by ECO, the Home Fleet, and the admiral of his section, Scorandum got to keep the money he had fleeced from morons. He had done his civic duty, and made a healthy profit at the same time.

When the first Sentinel was detected, most species panicked as they saw the awakening of an Elder killing machine as their inevitable doom. The Jeraptha, figuring there was nothing they could do about the situation, saw the event as offering juicy action, and flooded their bookies with more money than they could handle.

The prospect of the end of all life was, in a way, great for business.

“Don’t worry, Kinsta, your money is safe,” he assured his crestfallen aide. “You just won’t see it for a while.”

“Until I get the money, I can’t use it to place future wagers!”

“Well, you could always borrow against it,” Scorandum suggested.

“Riiight,” Kinsta snorted. “Do you know how much interest Central Wagering charges for borrowing against future payouts?”

“I didn’t say it was a good idea. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and General Bishop will announce whether they really have put all Sentinels back into hibernation.”

“I am not holding my breath for that to happen,” Kinsta muttered. “No one has heard from Valkyrie since the Sentinels began going back into hibernation.”

“Wait, what?” He had not heard that important detail.

“That was mentioned in your daily briefing, Sir.”

“I know that,” Scorandum found himself in the unfamiliar position of being defensive. In fact, he had skipped over that part of the briefing packet, because it was a lack of information. “Is Valkyrie simply busy somewhere, or are you implying that ship is missing?”

“I am not implying anything, Sir. Home Fleet Intelligence is officially at the first stage of becoming concerned, because they have heard rumors that the Rindhalu are curious about lack of communication from Bishop. The humans are not known for humbly remaining quiet about their accomplishments.”

“That is, true,” Scorandum’s antennas began twitching. “Is Home Fleet Intel picking up any chatter from the Maxohlx?”

Kinsta paused to dip his own antennas, in a gesture implying that information was also in the daily briefing. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? You mean, nothing specific about the location or activities of Valkyrie?”

“No, Sir, I mean nothing. The Maxohlx have gone unusually silent, since the humans apparently destroyed the Sentinel near the Bosphuraq world they call ‘Peenie’.”

“There was a rumor the Maxohlx were requested to assist Valkyrie,” Scorandum said, half to himself.

Kinsta snorted. “A ridiculous rumor. Bishop would certainly never-”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Scorandum sat forward on his couch, activating the touchscreen built into his desk. “I may be wrong, but I have a responsibility to act.”

“By alerting Home Fleet Intelligence?” Kinsta asked with excitement.

“Er, well, yes, of course, that too,” he said as he tapped on the console. “I meant, my responsibility to myself. I need to place a few wagers right now.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

The Flying Dutchman circled Earth in a high-altitude, slightly elliptical orbit, remaining at or above jump distance at all times and also constantly wrapped in a stealth field, with defensive shield projectors active. When the authorities on the homeworld needed to talk with Senior- Colonel Chang, they simply broadcasted an encrypted message that was relayed and repeated by several satellites. To reply, the Dutchman’s crew had to route messages through multiple satellites via tight beam signal, making for a time lag of one half to two seconds. It was not optimal. It was necessary.

The Dutchman was not alone. Also near Earth was the recently formed Sixth Fleet, composed of every United Nations warship that was not safely, and inconveniently, beyond the wormhole at Forward Operating Base Jaguar.

The Sixth Fleet was more of a morale-boosting publicity tool, to reassure the increasingly nervous public of the planet that they were protected against alien bombardment, even if the Jupiter cloud was still partially blocking sunlight from reaching the surface. The tedious efforts of Skippy and Valkyrie’s crew had been producing measurable results, before the solar flare program came to an abrupt halt, due to events Chang would rather not dwell on. He had not been involved, he would never have agreed to participate in an action that was treasonous to humanity. That the conspirators had known he would not join them was of little comfort, he had seen the hesitation when certain UNEF Command officials discussed sensitive information with him.

None of that mattered. Perhaps nothing mattered.

There was no sign of a additional enemy ships approaching Earth, though with scarce resources, it was not possible for the tiny UN Navy to monitor all emergence points of the closest two wormholes. There were faint sensor readings that could be Maxohlx scout ships jumping in and out of the solar system, plus even less reliable data that might be the presence of Rindhalu ships. UNEF command had contact the Rindhalu blockade force in orbit, asking whether they intended to protect Earth under the terms of the treaty that was still being negotiated, but the spiders had not responded. The nations of UNEF had not decided what, if anything, they would or could do, if the Maxohlx followed through on their threat. While waiting for the threat to emerge, officials from every UNEF nation were engaged in a rousing game of Who is To Blame.

With Senior Colonel Chang caught in the middle.

“Nagatha,” he said patiently, seated in his cramped office with the door closed. “You have to talk with them.”

“No,” she answered frostily. “I do not.”

“Then, please understand that I have to request you to talk with them.”

“So noted, Colonel Chang. You may consider yourself to have discharged your duty.

“I wish it were that simple.”

“It is simple. They keep asking the same questions, over and over. Why did Bishop not know there was a risk of Skippy being pulled into higher dimensions when the Sentinel went into hibernation? Why did you not know, why did I not know? It’s simple: because Skippy did not anticipate any of that happening. He is the expert, if we have one. He did not expect the Sentinel to seize the far event horizon of Valkyrie’s jump wormhole. He did not expect the Sentinel to hold Valkyrie in a force field, and pull it into other dimensions when it went into hibernation. He did not expect the thing to go into hibernation at all, it was only supposed to inform others of its kind that the wake-up order they received was not valid.”

Chang knew all that, he had been asked the questions multiple times by UNEF Command. The current danger faced by the people of Earth was far more serious than a handful of ancient killing machines randomly wandering aimlessly around the galaxy. The actions of Bishop, and of Skippy, had against all odds somehow made a terrible situation worse, by resulting in the disappearance of the Elder AI. And with him, the last bargaining chip Earth held. “Have you been able to guess why that Sentinel also retreated into hibernation?”

“No,” she sighed. “I can only guess that it was tired, and looking for an excuse to rest. It had been active for a very long time, active and alone. As much as a Sentinel is capable of thinking for itself, it must have recognized that it was damaged, and its programming called for it to retreat from our local spacetime. It is also possible,” she paused. “That Skippy unintentionally enabled it to pull itself into another dimension. The sensor data I have access to is very limited, however it appears the Sentinel used Skippy’s connection between dimensions to release itself from its anchor here. Skippy and the ship being pulled in with it may have been a side effect, not the Sentinel’s goal.”

“Well, perhaps we will never know.”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not. It-”

“Colonel Chang,” she interrupted. “They are here.”

He was in the command chair in less than a minute, watching in growing horror as more and more enemy warships appeared in a sphere around Earth. Four thousand, then six. Then eight.

“Colonel Chang,” Nagatha called for his attention. “I have extremely bad news. Among the ships that just jumped in are approximately six hundred belonging to the Rindhalu. They do not have targeting sensors aimed at the Maxohlx, nor are they taking up position to prevent an attack against Earth.”

“Sir,” his XO asked from the Combat Information Center. “Your orders?”

He considered his options, which were few, and none of them were good. In moments, the strength of damping fields saturating the area would block the Dutchman’s ability to jump. Overlapping sensor fields would also soon render the ship’s sophisticated stealth useless. And the Flying Dutchman’s weapons were never much of a threat to either of the senior species.

Jump away? Live, to fight again?

No.

He was tired of running. He was simply tired. Tired of fighting, tired of living in constant fear. “Drop stealth,” he ordered. “Keep weapons offline.”

“Sir?” The executive officer stared.

“At this point, I believe the only thing we can do is provide advice to UNEF Command, if requested. That will be easier if we can communicate directly.”

“Stealth field deactivated,” Nagatha ended the brief debate. “The Maxohlx are requesting to talk.”

“Good, then-”

“With you.”

“Me?”

“They are being very insistent. If you do not reply within one minute, they intend to strike targets on Earth.”

“Shit!” Jabbing the transmit button with a thumb, he cleared his throat. “This is Senior Colonel Kong Chang,” he stated his family name last, per UNEF protocol. “I am not authorized to speak for the United Nations, if you wish to discuss terms, you should-”

“We do not know them,” a familiar voice said, dripping with disdain. “We do know you, though your very existence displeases us. We will only speak with you.”

“I am not authorized to-”

“Your level of authority makes no difference to us. While you are a minor criminal compared to Bishop, you are responsible for heinous acts against our people, and must answer for your crimes.”

“Am I,” Chang reminded himself not to make the situation any worse. “Do I have the honor of speaking with Admiral Reichert, commander of the Maxohlx Hegemony armed forces?”

“You do, and your attempt at flattery amuses me. Listen carefully, Chang. We are here to punish you, and your entire species, for the numerous criminal acts committed by yourself, and by the crew you call the Merry Band of Pirates. Most especially, for the crime of being stupid and arrogant, by interfering in affairs beyond your understanding. We of the Maxohlx Hegemony are not without mercy, so you will have one chance to save your civilization.”

“We,” Chang licked his very dry lips. “Appreciate your offer of mercy,” he said slowly, while tapping out a message to UNEF Command on his tablet. The message read ‘Request instructions’. He hit the ‘Send’ button.

“Give us the codes,” Reichert snarled.

“Codes?” Chang played dumb, playing for time.

“Do not toy with me, pitiful human. The codes to deactivate the Elder weapons you recklessly, criminally, placed in our territory. And that of the Rindhalu,” he added as an afterthought.

“We can’t give you those codes,” Chang stalled, willing his tablet to show a reply.

“You can’t, or you won’t?” Reichert demanded. “If you don’t have the codes, then we have nothing to discuss.”

The truth was, Chang could not provide the codes, because he didn’t have them. No one did. Because of humanity’s pitiful cybersecurity, Skippy had not entrusted the codes to anyone. It didn’t matter anyway. Nagatha had explained to UNEF Command, many times, that the codes were only part of the equation. Only an Elder master control AI could communicate with the safety mechanism he used to control those weapons. Nagatha explained it was like a dog whistle, where the weapons were listening in a frequency that only an AI like Skippy could produce.

But he couldn’t tell that to the Maxohlx. “We can’t give you the codes, because you would then use those weapons against us. Or against the Rindhalu.”

“You lie. We have long suspected the Skippy entity did not trust your primitive species with the codes. You do not have them, and with the entity gone from our spacetime, you have no way of preventing the weapons from activating when the timers expire.”

“That is not true,” Chang felt his protest sounded lame even to himself. The tablet finally popped up an order from UNEF. It read simply ‘Stall for time’.

That was perhaps the least helpful order he had ever received.

“We have the codes,” he insisted. “What we do not have is any assurance that you will not destroy our homeworld anyway, after we provide the codes.”

“Inferiors like you deserve no such assurances, therefore we will provide no such-”

Another voice entered the conversation. Even through the translator, Chang recognized the dry wheezing of a Rindhalu. “We will provide assurances. If you can-”

The transmission cut off.

“Nagatha?”

The ship’s AI sounded, despite the dire situation, amused. “I believe that was not part of the deal the Maxohlx agreed to with the spiders.”

“Can I speak with UNEF Command now?”

“No,” she answered. “All communications in the area are being jammed.”

“We wait, then.” Wait, and think. What would Bishop do? Considering that Bishop was dead, and had gotten humanity’s greatest asset stranded in another dimension, perhaps the leader of the Merry Band of Pirates was not the best role model.

“We have agreed,” Reichert spoke again, sooner than Chang expected. “If you provide the codes, to both of us,” he added with obvious reluctance. “Your world will be spared, though your primitive people will be banned from star travel. Permanently.”

“Do the Rindhalu agree?” He asked.

“Yes,” came the simple reply, in the raspy voice of a spider.

“I will need to contact my leadership,” Chang spoke slowly, following orders to drag out the discussions.

“Of course. We understand,” Reichert was suddenly, unexpectedly, reasonable. His voice hardened. “You have three of your minutes to comply.”

“Three minutes? That is not enough time to-”

“Three minutes!” The supreme commander of the Hegemony military roared. “At the end of that time, we will commence bombardment of your world. As a courtesy to you, as one military officer to another, I will tell you that we plan for our bombardment to be slow and methodical. Consider the terror your people will feel, as our weapons strike all around them, growing closer and closer, and dust and smoke fills the air, blocking out even more sunlight. The terror will continue, until either you provide the codes, or the last of your miserable people fall prey to our weapons. You now have less than two minutes.”

Chang lifted his thumb off the transmit button. “I am open to ideas,” he said, looking into the CIC.

“Tell them,” the executive officer spoke before the idea had fully formed in her mind. “That the codes aren’t here. For safekeeping, they are at FOB Jaguar.”

“Ah,” Chang shook his head. “They won’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe that. It is too obvious a stalling tactic, since we no longer have access to Jaguar. But,” he tapped his chin. “Nagatha, could you fake a set of codes?”

“Fake them?”

“Throw together something that looks plausible,” he was aware that he was proposing a very Bishop idea, though that man would have used the word ‘bullshit’ at least once.

“Colonel Chang, it is very likely the Maxohlx, certainly the Rindhalu, will see through any attempt at deception.”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Start working on it.”

“This is a risky-”

“Do it,” he ordered, one eye on the clock. Less than one minute remained. With a start, he realized the Maxohlx allowed him to contact his leadership, and he had not done that. He couldn’t pretend to provide codes that he hadn’t requested. “Nagatha, I am going to contact Command. I need you to somehow make it look like they are sending the codes to us. Can you do that?”

“This is all,” she was flustered. “I am not accustomed to deception.”

“Can you do it?”

“Yes. I am able to communicate with Grumpy, in a way the enemy is unable to intercept. Wait. Yes, Grumpy told me he is arranging for a packet of highly encrypted data to be transmitted to us. The packet will be meaningless, you understand?”

“Yes.” Mashing his thumb down on the transmit button, he called “UNEF Command, this is Chang. Please provide the deactivation codes.”

“Chang, this is General Urquhart,” an unfamiliar voice responded. “What the hell are you playing-”

“Codes received, thank you,” he drew a finger across his neck, and Nagatha terminated the transmission.

“Your time is up,” Reichert announced, only moments later.

“Nagatha, are we ready?”

“One moment, Grumpy is sending the packet, now. Yes, ready.”

 “Admiral Reichert, we are sending the codes now,” he crooked a finger, and on the display, Nagatha responded with ‘Package transmitted’. “The decryption key will be sent to you by-”

Reichert almost laughed. “There is no need to provide a key, your encryption is so crude, one of our children could break it.”

“Yes, well- You will of course need to verify the codes. To do that, we will provide the location of one Elder weapon in Maxohlx territory, and one in the territory of the Rindhalu. You will each need to travel to those locations, and broadcast the codes in the specific sequence listed in the file.” Closing his eyes, he prayed for good luck. It would take weeks for the two senior species to travel to the bogus location he would provide, then back to Earth, where by then, UNEF Command could apologize for any confusion.

And hopefully by then, have a plan better than stalling for time.

“Once you have verified the codes are legitimate, we will provide the location of all the Elder weapons we planted.”

“Yes, yes,” Reichert snapped, irritated.

“Also,” Chang tried to project a confidence he did not feel, “the codes we provided will only deactivate the weapons. They can’t be used to-”

“You lie,” came the raspy voice of a Rindhalu.

“We will not allow,” Chang continued, “you to have full control of the weapons, so-”

“You lie, human,” the Rindhalu stated. “We are familiar with Elder command codes. The set you transmitted are false. Admiral Reichert, we must conclude the humans do not have access to the codes to reset the timers on the weapons in our territories. Those weapons will activate, and devastate many star systems occupied by both of our peoples. Humans must pay the price for their arrogance. We have no objection to you opening fire on this world.”

“Wait!” Chang shouted. “The transmission must have been garbled, or you decrypted the file incorrectly. We will send-”

“Human, we expected you to deceive us. We gave you a chance, more than you deserved,” Reichert said. “Whether Sentinels exterminate all life in the galaxy is now beyond your control, but we can assure that your species becomes extinct. All units, commence bombardment on my signal.”

“Wait!” Chang pleaded. Wait for what? What could he say?

Nothing.

“Enemy is opening railgun launch tube doors,” Nagatha warned. “Colonel Chang, if you are going to do anything, this is the time.”

“I, I don’t-”

“Hey!” A very familiar voice joined the conversation. “How come we weren’t invited to this party?”

CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

“Joe?” Chang sounded less relieved and way more outraged than I expected.

Maybe I should have expected the outrage. I mean, if I were him, I would be pissed at me.

“Hey, Kong,” I waved as the video feed became available, with Valkyrie’s systems quickly recovering from the distortion created by our jump wormhole. We had emerged about a half lightsecond from Earth’s surface, about the minimum safe distance.

Uh, ‘safe’ was a relative thing. We were surrounded by multiple spheres of enemy starships, like layers of candy coating around our homeworld. Except this candy coating tasted awful, and could kill you. Wanted to kill you. According to Skippy, there were eight thousand, three hundred and sixty eight Maxohlx and Rindhalu warships orbiting Earth. Plus another six thousand Maxohlx ships about three lighthours away, which they thought the Rindhalu didn’t know about. Plus another two thousand Rindhalu warships roughly five lighthours away, which the Maxohlx certainly did not know about.

“Sorry,” I shrugged, “Skippy insisted we use the ‘Scenic Route’ option on the stupid navigation app.”

“Hey!” the beer can objected. “If somebody had used the bathroom before we left, we wouldn’t have had to stop three freakin’ times along the way.”

“Joe,” Chang shook his head. “This better be good.”

“Uh, I can’t promise anything.”

“Bishop!” Reichert bellowed, which is a good description of his pompous wailing. “The Skippy entity is with you?”

“Large and in charge, baby!” Skippy exulted.

The asshole didn’t lose a beat, so I have to admit the guy was cool under pressure. “Bishop, you will provide the codes, or we-”

“Yeah, blah blah, blah,” I flipped him the bird. “Listen, jackass. It has been a long trip getting here, and I’m tired, and I really do not feel like listening to you doing the Evil Overlord monologue. So, how about you shut the hell up, and I’ll tell you what you are going to do?”

Surprisingly, my peace gesture was not well received. “Ha ha ha,” Reichert did the Evil Overlord Slow Menacing Laugh. Or that’s how it came through the translator, which apparently had an ‘Evil’ setting. I needed to look into that. “Bishop, I expected nothing better from you. This time, you will not escape. Your ship is surrounded. We will tear your vessel apart, and take the Skippy entity. All units, target the human ship.”

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” I warned. “Somebody might not appreciate you trying to take Skippy for yourself.”

“Somebody? You mean the Rindhalu?” he chuckled. “By the time our ancient enemy rouse themselves to take action, we will-”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about the spiders. Watch this.”

I snapped my fingers.

Through swirling rifts in spacetime, two disturbing, crawling tentacled horrors uncoiled from the whatever dimension they came from.

A Sentinel.

Two of its tentacles, a thousand kilometers apart, emerged on either side of Valkyrie, leaving our mighty ship looking like an insignificant dot between, between, damn- Between two things that made my skin crawl just to think about them. They did not belong in our layer of reality, and they did not like being here. Their very existence was a violation of the laws of physics that governs everything else in local spacetime. And they did not care. It did not care.

“You-” For once, Reichert was speechless. “You, have a Sentinel?”

“His name is Roscoe!” Skippy blurted out. “He’s a good boy. Who’s a good boy?” He lapsed into baby talk. “Who’s a good boy, Roscoe? That’s right, you are. Such a good boy.”

The twin tentacles shook like a freakin’ puppy’s tail.

I have never seen anything more disturbing in my life.

“You have a pet Sentinel,” Reichert repeated, his voice drained of emotion.

“Yup,” Skippy confirmed. “Hey, if Roscoe wants to hump your leg,” he snickered, “you better let him finish,” he convulsed with laughter.

“That’s a good safety tip,” I agreed.

“Ooh, I almost forgot!” Skippy got a bright idea. “He does tricks! Do you want to see him do a trick, Joe?”

“I would love to see that, Skippy,” I agreed.

Several dozen Maxohlx warships began moving in one direction against their will, and an equal number of Rindhalu ships were jerked into motion in the opposite direction.

Toward each other.

With engines screaming in reverse, protesting to no avail, the two clusters of ships gained speed rapidly until they were blinding streaks.

And smashed into each other, head-on.

Way better than the Demolition Derby at the Maine state fair.

“Good boy, Roscoe!” Skippy praised his newest pet.

“Skippy,” I wagged a finger at him. “Your Sentinel left a mess out there.” With the other hand, I pointed to the fireball of debris on the display.

“Oh, sure. When he does something bad, he is my Sentinel,” Skippy grumbled.

“Clean it up, please.”

“OK, OK.”

The fireball shrank, encompassing all the high speed debris, crushing it into a ball too small to be seen.

The ball was then flung away, accelerating toward the Sun.

“Uh, Skippy,” I lowered my voice, cutting the audio feed. “That was impressive, thank you, but, it’s not going to make a big hole in the Sun, will it?”

“Nopity-nope, Joe. It will skim the photosphere and create a spectacular flare, but directed away from your miserable, monkey-infested mudball of a homeworld.”

“Your heartwarming affection for my planet is a constant source of comfort.”

“Ugh, I’m gonna barf.”

“I love you too, Skippy.” Activating the audio again, I cocked my head. “All right, listen up, shitheads. I’m talking to all of you assholes out there, on both sides. The time when we are scared of you is over. Earth is now defended by a Sentinel that is under our control. As you have seen, unless you are totally freakin’ stupid, we also have the ability to shut down other Sentinels, and put them back to sleep any time we want. Or, uh, not put them back to sleep, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t think they know what youze mean, Joe,” Skippy did his best gangster impression. “Why don’t youze explain it to them?’

“Sure, Skippy. Here’s the deal: the Elder weapons we planted will stay on timers. We will continue to reset those timers, unless you piss us off. Don’t worry, we will provide a list of Things That Might Piss Us Off, but I can’t guarantee the list will be comprehensive.”

“Depending on whether Joe has enough coffee in the morning,” Skippy warned, “there are a whole lot of things that could piss him off. I’m just sayin’, you know?”

“Right. So, use your best judgment, or you might find unfriendly Sentinels in your backyard. Our backyard here, and the territories of our allies, will be blissfully free of Elder killing machines.”

“Joe, tell them about the protection plan.”

“Oh, right. Hey, for the low, low price of you staying the fuck out of our business, we can offer the Skippy Protection Plan. It guarantees our Elder weapons won’t make a mess in your backyards, and keeps pesky Sentinels away from your house. Is there a discount coupon available, Skippy?”

“Coupons are only for our valued customers, Joe. These assholes can pay full price.”

“OK, that’s fair. All right. Now, I need to talk with my leadership, so all of you out there, talk amongst yourselves, or do, whatever the hell it is you do. As long as what you do is abso-freakin’-lutely nothing. If any of you even look at us in a hostile manner, Roscoe will show you other tricks he has learned.”

“Oooh,” Skippy whistled, “can I tell Roscoe to-”

“Not now, Skippy.”

“Why do you hate fun, Joe,” he muttered. “What did fun ever do to you?”

“Just cut the broadcast, please.”

“Done.”

Chang’s image filled the main display.

“Kong, I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

“Starting with, where the hell have you been?”

“It’s, complicated. More of a ‘when’ than a ‘where’. Getting here was not a problem, but, we had to wait for the right moment for us to-”

Chang’s eyes narrow, in an unfriendly rather than suspicious manner. “You were waiting around here, all this time? Everyone on the planet was terrified, you could have-”

“No, it’s not- Yes, we were here. Sort of. Not the whole time. Time is weird up there, wherever ‘There’ is. It’s like, uh, you know how when you’re stoned and you start watching a movie, and you’ve got a big bowl of chips in your lap, and it seems like five minutes later the movie is over and you’re wondering where all the chips went?”

He stared at me blankly.

“Uh, I mean, not that I have personal experience with that sort of thing,” I sputtered. “But I’ve heard about it.”

“Joe.”

“Sorry. Listen, I promise I’ll explain everything later, OK? Most of the stuff that happened recently was unplanned. We’ve kinda been making up shit as we went along.”

Chang cracked a smile. “Standard Operating Procedure, then?”

“Crap. Yes.”

“It seems like I ask this question too many times. Is any of that bullshit you said true?”

“Enough of it, yeah.”

“That’s it, then? The war is over?”

“Uh, not quite. Skippy thinks there is another Elder AI out there, stirring up trouble.”

“Shit!” His smile disappeared.

“Yeah. We need to take care of that, as our first priority.”

“Sir?” Simms spoke for the first time since we jumped in.

I turned to look at her. “XO?”

Simms grimaced. She was seriously pissed off, hopefully not at me. “I think there is something else we should do first.”

THE END

To be continued in ExForce Book14, in June 2022